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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jap Herron, by Emily Grant Hutchings
+
+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: Jap Herron
+       A Novel Written from the Ouija Board
+
+Author: Emily Grant Hutchings
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2010 [EBook #33048]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAP HERRON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: A DRAWING FROM LIFE BY JOHN CECIL CLAY]
+
+
+
+
+
+JAP HERRON
+
+
+A NOVEL WRITTEN FROM
+
+THE OUIJA BOARD
+
+
+
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION
+
+THE COMING OF JAP HERRON
+
+
+
+
+by
+
+Emily Grant Hutchings
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+MITCHELL KENNERLEY
+
+MCMXVII
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1917 BY
+
+MITCHELL KENNERLEY
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+THE COMING OF "JAP HERRON"
+
+
+On the afternoon of the second Thursday in March, 1916, I responded to
+an invitation to the regular meeting of a small psychical research
+society.  There was to be a lecture on cosmic relations, and the
+hostess for the afternoon, whom I had met twice socially, thought I
+might be interested, my name having appeared in connection with a
+recently detailed series of psychic experiments.  To all those present,
+with the exception of the hostess, I was a total stranger.  I learned,
+with some surprise, that these men and women had been meeting, with an
+occasional break of a few months, for more than five years.  The record
+of these meetings filled several type-written volumes.
+
+When word came that the lecturer was unavoidably detained, the hostess
+requested Mrs. Lola V. Hays to entertain the members and guests by a
+demonstration of her ability to transmit spirit messages by means of a
+planchette and a lettered board.  The apparatus was familiar to me; but
+the outcome of that afternoon's experience revealed a new use for the
+transmission board.  After several messages, more or less personal, had
+been spelled out, the pointer of the planchette traced the words:
+
+"Samuel L. Clemens, lazy Sam."  There was a long pause, and then:
+"Well, why don't some of you say something?"
+
+I was born in Hannibal, and my pulses quickened.  I wanted to put a
+host of questions to the greatest humorist and the greatest philosopher
+of modern times; but I was an outsider, unacquainted with the usages of
+the club, and I remained silent while the planchette continued:
+
+"Say, folks, don't knock my memoirs too hard.  They were written when
+Mark Twain was dead to all sense of decency.  When brains are soft, the
+method should be anæsthesia."
+
+Not one of those present had read Mark Twain's memoirs, and the plaint
+fell upon barren soil.  The arrival of the lecturer prevented further
+confession from the unseen communicant; but I was so deeply impressed
+that I begged my hostess to permit me to come again.  For my benefit a
+meeting was arranged at which there was no lecturer, and I was asked to
+sit for the first time with Mrs. Hays.
+
+In my former psychic investigation, it had been my habit to pronounce
+the letters as the pointer of the planchette indicated them, and Mrs.
+Hays urged me to render the same service when I sat with her, because
+she never permitted herself to look at the board, fearing that her own
+mind would interfere with the transmission.  Scarcely had our
+finger-tips touched the planchette when it darted to the letters which
+spelled the words:
+
+"I tried to write a romance once, and the little wife laughed at it.  I
+still think it is good stuff and I want it written.  The plot is
+simple.  You'd best skeletonize the plot.  Solly Jenks, Hiram
+Wall--young men.  Time, before the Civil War."
+
+Then the outline of a typical Mark Twain story came in short, explosive
+sentences.  It was entitled, "Up the Furrow to Fortune."  A brief
+account of its coming seems vital to the more sustained work which was
+destined to follow it.  I was not present at the next regular meeting
+of the society; but at its close I was summoned to the telephone and
+informed that Mark Twain had come again and had said that "the Hannibal
+girl" was the one for whom he and Mrs. Hays had been waiting.  When
+they asked him what he meant, the planchette made reply:
+
+"Consult your record for 1911."
+
+One of the early volumes of the society's record was brought forth, and
+a curious fact that all the members of the society had forgotten was
+unearthed.  About a year after his passing out, Mr. Clemens had told
+Mrs. Hays that he had carried with him much valuable literary material
+which he yearned to send back, and that he would transmit stories
+through her, if she could find just the right person to sit with her at
+the transmission board.  Although she experimented with each member of
+the club, and with several of her friends who were sympathetic though
+not avowed investigators, he was not satisfied with any of them.  Then
+she gave up the attempt and dismissed it from her mind.  A
+twenty-minute test with me seemed to convince him that in me he had
+found the negative side of the mysterious human mechanism for which he
+had been waiting.
+
+The work of transmitting that first story was attended with the
+greatest difficulty.  No less than three distinct styles of diction,
+accompanied by correspondingly distinct motion in the planchette under
+our fingers, were thrust into the record.  At first we were at a loss
+to understand these intrusions.  That they were intrusions there could
+be no doubt.  In each case there was a sharp deviation from the plot of
+the story, as it had been given to us in the synopsis.  After one of
+these experiences, which resulted in the introduction of a paragraph
+that was rather clever but not at all pertinent.  Mark regained control
+with the impatiently traced words:
+
+"Every scribe here wants a pencil on earth."
+
+Not until the middle of summer did we achieve that sureness of touch
+which now enables us to recognize, intuitively, the presence of the one
+scribe whose thoughts we are eager to transmit.  That the story of Jap
+Herron and the two short stories which preceded it are the actual
+post-mortem work of Samuel L. Clemens, known to the world as Mark
+Twain, we do not for one moment doubt.  His individuality has been
+revealed to us in ways which could leave no question in our minds.  The
+little, intimate touches which reveal personality are really of more
+importance than the larger and more conspicuous fact that neither Mrs.
+Hays nor I could have written the fiction that has come across our
+transmission board.  Our literary output is well known, and not even
+the severest psychological skeptic could assert that it bears any
+resemblance to the literary style of "Jap Herron."
+
+Mrs. Hays has found the best market for her short stories with one of
+the large religious publishing houses, and in the early days Mark Twain
+seemed to fear that her subconscious mind might inadvertently color or
+distort his thought, in process of transmission.  We had come to the
+end of our fourth session when he added this:
+
+"There will be minor errors that you will be able to take care of.  I
+don't object.  Only--don't try to correct my grammar.  I know what I
+want to say.  And, dear ladies, when I say d-a-m-n, please don't write
+d-a-r-n.  Don't try to smooth it out.  This is not a smooth story."
+
+That Mark should fear the blue pencil, at our hands, amused us greatly.
+The story bristles with profanity and is roughly picturesque in its
+diction.  It deals with a section of the Ozark country with which
+neither of us is familiar, and in the speech of the natives there are
+words that we had never heard, that are included in no dictionary but
+are, it transpires, perfectly familiar to the primitive people in the
+southwestern part of the state.  When the revision of the story was
+almost complete.  Mark interrupted the dictation, one afternoon, to
+remark:
+
+"You are too tired.  Forces must be strong for results.  Somebody
+handed you a lemon, back there.  Cut out that part about the apple at
+fly time.  I am not carping.  You have done well.  The interpretation
+is excellent.  I was afraid of femininity.  Women have their ideas, but
+this is not a woman's story.  Good-bye."
+
+There was another meeting, at which the revision of "Up the Furrow to
+Fortune" was completed, and then we went to work on the second story,
+"A Daughter of Mars."  As in the case of the first one, it began with a
+partial synopsis.  Vallon Leithe, an enthusiastic aeronaut, was resting
+after a long flight, when a strange air-craft fell out of the sky,
+lodging in the top of a great tree.  The occupant of the marvelously
+constructed flying machine proved to be a girl from the planet Mars.
+Her name was Ulethe, and she had many thrilling adventures on our
+earth.  The synopsis ended with the wholly unexpected words:
+
+"Now, girls, it is not yet clear in my mind whether we'd better send
+Ulethe back to Mars, kill her, marry her to Leithe, or have an
+expedition from Mars raise the dickens.  But we will let it develop
+itself."
+
+The board, on which two short stories and a novel have already been
+transmitted, is one of the ordinary varieties, a polished surface over
+which the planchette glides to indicate the letters of the alphabet and
+the figures from 1 to 10.  In the main our dictation came without any
+apparent need for marks of punctuation.  Occasionally the words
+"quotation marks," or "Put that in quotes" would be interjected.  Once
+when my intonation, as I pronounced the words for the amanuensis who
+was keeping our record, seemed to indicate a direct statement, the
+planchette whirled under our fingers and traced the crisp statement, "I
+meant that for a question."
+
+When I told my husband of these grippingly intimate evidences of an
+unseen personality, it occurred to him that a complete set of
+punctuation marks, carefully applied in India ink, where the pointer of
+the planchette could pick them out as they were required, would
+facilitate the transmission of sustained narrative.  To him it seemed
+that the absence of these marks on the board must be maddening,
+especially to Mark Twain, whose thought could be hopelessly distorted
+by the omission of so trivial a thing as a comma, and whose subtle use
+of the colon was known to all the clan of printers.  Before our next
+meeting the board had been duly adorned with ten of the most important
+marks, including the hyphen and the M-dash.  The comma was at the head
+of the right-hand column and the apostrophe at the bottom.  My husband,
+Mrs. Hays and I knew exactly what all these markings meanly yet we had
+some confusion because Mark insisted on using the comma when he wished
+to indicate a possessive case.  The sentence was this, as I understood
+it:
+
+"I was not wont to disobey my father, scommand."
+
+Instantly my husband, who had become interested and had taken the place
+of our first amanuensis, perceived that I had made a mistake, when I
+pronounced the combination, "f-a-t-h-e-r, comma, s-c-o-m-m-a-n-d."
+
+"But," I defended myself, "the pointer went to the comma.  I can see
+now that it should have been the apostrophe."  As I spoke the pointer
+of the planchette traced the words on the board:
+
+"Edwin did a pretty piece of work, but that apostrophe is too far down.
+I am in danger of falling off the board every time I make a run for it."
+
+The result was that another apostrophe was placed in the middle of the
+board, directly under the letter S.  In connection with the M-dash we
+had a yet more startling evidence of an outside personality, one
+dependent on us for his means of communication, but wholly independent
+of our thought and knowledge.  Mark had dictated the synopsis for the
+second story and had enlarged upon the first situation.  Then, as has
+since become his fixed habit, he indicated that the serious work for
+the evening was ended, and returned for an informal chat.  Mrs. Hays
+and I had discussed the plot at some lengthy and after my husband had
+read aloud the second evening's dictation we commented on some of the
+obscure points, our fingers resting, the while, lightly on the
+planchette.  Suddenly it became agitated, assumed a vigorous sweeping
+motion and traced very rapidly these words:
+
+"It is starting good; but will you two ladies stop speculating?  I am
+going to take care of this story.  Don't try to dictate.  You are
+interrupting the thread of the story.  There is ample time for
+smoothing the rough places.  I am not caviling.  I am well pleased."
+After a pause, he continued: "There is the same class of
+interruption--those who could write stories, but are not to write
+my----"  At this, the planchette turned to the M-dash and slid back and
+forth under it several times.  It then spelled the word "stories."  We
+were utterly at a loss, until he explained: "I was using that black
+line for an underscore."
+
+Again and again we have had the word "good" in an adverbial
+construction, a usage that is not common to either Mrs. Hays or me; but
+Mark has told us that he liked it, in familiar conversation.  We have
+tried to adhere with absolute fidelity to even the seeming errors which
+came over the board.
+
+The second installment of the story gave all of us much trouble.
+Incidentally it served to develop several bits of humorous
+conversation.  When it was finished, we received this comment:
+
+"I think that is all we can do to-night.  I intend to enlarge upon this
+chapter before going further.  The forces are not strong enough
+to-night.  We will rewrite this part Monday night."
+
+We naturally expected a rehandling of that installment, which for
+convenience he had designated a "chapter."  To our surprise, the
+pointer of the planchette gave this:
+
+"I have changed my mind.  We will proceed to New York.  I will probably
+want to handle chapter second in a different way.  It reads like a
+printed porous plaster; but that is no one's fault.  Begin!"
+
+The dictation went smoothly, and there were no interruptions from the
+unseen rivals who had so persistently contested Mark Twain's right to
+the exclusive use of our "pencil."  Before the next meeting I was urged
+to take a prominent part in another piece of psychic work, and to
+persuade both my husband and Mrs. Hays to join me.  I said nothing to
+either one of them about it, intending to discuss it with them when the
+evening's work was over.  As soon, however, as we applied our finger
+tips to the planchette, this astonishing communication came:
+
+"I am afraid that my pencil-holders are going to get wound up in other
+stuff that will make much confusion.  I heard Emily talking over the
+telephone and making promises that are not good for our work."
+
+When I had been questioned concerning the meaning of this rebuke, and
+had explained its import, Mark added: "If we are going to make good
+there must be concentration, to that end.  Get busy."  We did!  It was
+a hot July night, and the planchette flew over the board so swiftly
+that at times I could scarcely keep pace with it as I pronounced the
+letters.  With other amanuenses I had been forced to pronounce the
+finished words, and to repeat sentences in whole or in part; but after
+my husband came into the work this was not necessary.  As much as a
+score of letters might be run together, to be divided into words after
+the dictation was ended.  Sometimes, when I had failed utterly to catch
+the thought, and would hesitate or ask to have the thing repeated, my
+husband would say to me: "Don't stop him.  I know what it means."  Mrs.
+Hays avoided looking at the board lest her own mind interfere with the
+transmission, and with less efficient help, the entire responsibility
+had been on me.  When I came to realize that nothing was expected of me
+beyond the mere pronouncing of the letters, the three of us developed
+swiftly into a smoothly working machine.  Yet Mark was constantly
+worried for fear that my heart would be alienated and that I would "go
+chasing after strange gods," as he once put it.
+
+When he had finished the fifth installment of the story, with a climax
+that surprised and puzzled us, he said:
+
+"I reckon we had better lay by for a few days till I get this thing
+riffled out.  It has slipped its tether.  I have had such things happen
+often.  Don't get scared."
+
+We discussed the use of the word "riffle," and then Mark became serious.
+
+"I don't want to be disappointed in the Hannibal girl.  I have been
+trying for several years to get through to the light.  I don't want a
+false sentiment for a crew of fanatics to wreck my chance.  I don't
+want to act nasty, but if you go into that other work I am likely to
+ruin your reputation.  You are likely to explode into some of the
+mediocre piffle that is the height and depth of such would-be
+communications with the other world.  There is nothing to hold to.  So,
+my dear girls, if you want a future, cut it out.  I don't want to
+command all your time, but right now it is best to avoid all
+complications."
+
+It is needless to say I declined the invitation.  After this, whenever
+anything went wrong, the rebuke or complaint was invariably addressed
+to me.  When there were humorous or pleasant things to be said, they
+were dispensed equally to the three of us, whom Mark Twain had come to
+designate as "my office force."  Two bits of personal communication
+came within the succeeding week which seem to have a bearing on the
+whole mysterious experience.  That second installment was undertaken
+and abandoned again and again.  Finally he said:
+
+"I am going ahead with the main body of the story.  There will be
+another round with that second chapter, but not until the theme is
+fully developed.  The second chapter sticks in my throat like the
+cockleburr that I tried to swallow when I was five.  It won't slip down
+or come up."
+
+We had worked patiently on the latter part of the narrative and had
+accomplished a big evening's work, when the dictation was interrupted
+by this remark:
+
+"It is going good; but I sure wish that I had Edwin's pipe."
+
+We fairly gasped with astonishment; but we had no time for comment, as
+the planchette continued its amazing revelation:
+
+"Smoke up, old man, for auld lang syne.  In the other world they don't
+know Walter Raleigh's weed, and I have not found Walter yet to make
+complaint.  I forget about it till I get Edwin's smoke.  But for pity's
+sake, Ed, cut out that tobacco you were trying out.  It made me sick.
+I hoped it would get you, so that you wouldn't try it again."
+
+My husband; whom neither Mrs. Hays nor I would, under any
+circumstances, address by the abbreviation of his name, "Ed," asked
+Mark what tobacco he had in mind.  He replied:
+
+"That packet you were substituting, or that some one that had a grudge
+against you gave you."
+
+A comparison of dates revealed the fact that on the evening when that
+troublesome second installment was transmitted, my husband had smoked
+some heavy imported tobacco that had been given to him by a friend he
+had met that afternoon.  The circumstance had passed from the minds of
+all of us.  Indeed, it had never impressed us in the least, and it had
+not occurred to any of us that our unseen visitor still retained the
+sense of smell, or that he could distinguish between two brands of
+tobacco.  He had given evidence of both sight and hearing, had told us
+frequently that he was tired, at the end of a long evening's work, and
+had made other incidental revelations of his environment and condition:
+but his reference to the pipe was more significant than any of them.
+
+Early in August, when our second story was nearing completion, the
+transmission began with this curious bit, which none of us understood
+for a long time:
+
+"Emily, I think that when we finish this story we will do a pastoral of
+Missouri.  There appear high lights and shadows, purple and dark, and
+the misty pink of dawnings that make world-weary ones have surcease."
+
+Not until "Jap Herron" was more than half finished did we realize that
+it was the Missouri pastoral.  There was one other veiled reference to
+that story which must not be omitted.  We had planned a trip to New
+York, for some time in October or early November, although we had never
+discussed it while at the board.  One evening Mark terminated his
+dictation abruptly, and said:
+
+"Emily, I think well of your plan."  I asked what plan he referred to.
+"New York.  I will go, too.  I will try to convince them that I am not
+done working.  I am rejuvenated and want to finish my work.  When I was
+in New York last I had a very beautiful dream.  I did not understand it
+then.  It meant that my days were numbered, and gave me the picture of
+an angel bringing a book from heaven to earth, and on its cover was
+blazoned this: MARK TWAIN'S COMPLIMENTS.  Ask them what they think
+about that.  I was so tired--so tired that I could not rest.  A cool
+hand seemed to soothe my weariness away and I slept, and, sleeping,
+dreamed."
+
+When I found that passage in the early part of our record, I wondered
+if "Jap Herron" might be the book sent to earth with Mark Twain's
+compliments.  I asked him about it, one evening when our regular
+dictation had been finished.  The reply was a slow journey of the
+planchette to the word, "Yes," followed by the rapidly spelled words,
+"But old Mark isn't done talking yet."
+
+We assumed that he had something further to say to us, and when I asked
+him what he wanted to talk about, he gave this tantalizing reply:
+
+"Curious?  Wait and see."  Then, after a pause, "I shall have other
+work for my office force."
+
+The explanation of this cryptic statement was not given until we had
+completed the final revision of the story.  Before I reveal what he had
+in mind, I wish to state that which is to me the most convincing proof
+of the supernormal origin of the three stories that had been traced,
+letter by letter, on our transmission board.  That they come through
+Mrs. Hays, there can be no doubt whatever.  My total lack of psychic
+power has been abundantly demonstrated.  Mrs. Hays has written much
+light fiction; but it is necessary for her to write a story at one
+sitting.  If it does not come "all in one piece" it is foredoomed to
+failure.  I know nothing of Mark Twain's habits; but in all the work we
+have done for him, the first draft has been rough and vigorous, and
+sweeping changes have been made by him while the work was undergoing
+revision.  In the case of "Jap Herron" some of the most important
+changes were made without a rereading of the story, changes that
+involved incidents which we had forgotten, and for which I was
+compelled to search the original record.  When I had substituted these
+passages for the ones they were to supplant, I made a typewritten copy
+of the entire story and we read it aloud to Mark.  Mrs. Hays and I sat
+with our finger tips on the planchette so that he could interrupt; but
+he made only a few minor corrections.  The story had been virtually
+rewritten twice, although a few of the chapters, as they now stand, are
+exactly as they were transmitted, not so much as a word having been
+changed.  The only change made in the fourteenth chapter came near the
+end, where Mark had suggested a line of dashes or stars to bridge the
+break between Jap's leaving his mother and the announcement that his
+mother was dead.  Forty-eight words were dictated to show what Jap
+actually did, in that painful interim, the three sentences being
+rounded out by the words, "There, I think that sounds better."
+
+Sometimes, in the course of the revision, we have been interrupted by
+the jerkily traced words, "Try this," or "We'll fix that better," or "I
+told Emily to take out those repetitions."  It has happened that he
+used the same word four times in one paragraph, and in copying I have
+substituted the obvious synonym.  Occasionally he did not approve of my
+correction and would rebuke me sharply.  In the main he has expressed
+himself as well pleased with the labor I have spared him.  On the 10th
+of January, 1916, Mrs. Hays came to my home for a last reading of the
+finished manuscript.  When she read it through, I asked her to sit at
+the board with me.  There was something about which I wanted to
+question Mark, and I did not wish her mind to interfere in any way with
+the answer.  Mrs. Hays had had two curious psychic experiences in
+connection with our work.  The first came to her when we were still at
+work on "A Daughter of Mars."  It was in the form of a vivid dream in
+which Mark Twain said to her, "Don't be discouraged, Lola.  All that we
+have done in the past is just forging the hammer for the larger strokes
+we are going to make."  The second was similar; but the man who
+appeared to her was a stocky, bald-headed man in a frock coat.  When
+she asked him who he was and what he wanted, he replied, "Mark Twain
+sent me to call on you."
+
+At this time, "Jap Herron" was being revised, and she supposed that
+this man, with the striking personality, would be introduced somewhere.
+However, the story was ended, and no such character had appeared.  I
+wanted to know whether or not the dream was significant.  I said:
+
+"Mark, did you ever send anybody to call on Lola?"  The planchette
+replied:
+
+"Yes, I sent him.  We will do another story.  We will wait until the
+smoke of this one clears away.  I want Emily to have a rest, and many
+other things will be adjusted.  I would like to have my old office
+force.  It is to be a bigger book than this one--more important.  The
+man I sent you was Brent Roberts."
+
+We dropped our hands in amazement.  Brent Roberts appears twice in the
+Jap Herron story.  He is not half so conspicuous as Holmes, the
+saloon-keeper, or Hollins, the grocer.  In truth, we had scarcely
+noticed him.  I asked:
+
+"Mark, are you going to give a sequel to 'Jap Herron'?"  He said:
+
+"No.  Brent Roberts had a story before he elected to spend his last
+years in Bloomtown.  Now, girls, don't speculate.  I am taking care of
+Brent Roberts."
+
+He added that it was "up to Emily" to give his book to the world, and
+that he intended to explore a little of the Uncharted Country while he
+was waiting for his office force to resume work.  Once I asked him,
+while he was transmitting "A Daughter of Mars," whether he had ever
+visited that planet.  He replied:
+
+"No, this is pure fiction.  I elected to return to earth.  I wanted to
+take the taste of those memoirs out of my mouth."
+
+One other passage from the early record may profitably precede the
+actual story of Jap's coming.  We were in the midst of the most
+critical revision.  My husband was commanded to read the story,
+paragraph by paragraph.  When there was no comment, the planchette
+remained motionless under our fingers, but there were few passages that
+escaped some change.  Several times the changed wording conflicted with
+something farther along in the story, and it was necessary to go back
+and make another correction.  The revision sheets covered a big table,
+and my husband found it very exasperating to make the corrections.  At
+length Mark said:
+
+"Smoke up and cool off, old boy.  Perhaps I should apologize.  The last
+secretary I had used to wear an ice-soaked towel inside his head.  The
+girls and old Mark together make a riffle.  Well, we will slow up.  In
+my ambition, I have been too eager.  It is hard to explain how great a
+thing is the power to project my mentality through the clods of
+oblivion.  I have so long sought for an opening.  Be patient, please.
+I am not carping.  I get Edwin's position.  We will be easy with the
+new saddle, so the nag won't run away.  I heard Edwin's suggestion, and
+it is a good one.  We will go straight through the story, beginning
+where we left off to-night.  That was what I intended to do, but that
+second chapter nipped me."
+
+When next we met we had no thought of any other work than the revision
+of the story on which we had been working at frequent intervals for
+about two months.  We never knew whether a session at the board would
+begin with a bit of personal conversation or a prolonged stretch of
+dictation.  We held ourselves passive, ready to fall in with the humor
+or whim of our astonishingly human though still intangible guest.  The
+beginning of that evening's work--it was the 6th of September--was
+almost too great an upheaval for me.  The planchette fairly raced as it
+spelled the words:
+
+"This story will have legitimate chapters.  Nosy nopsis.  Then
+ameisjapherron.  Begin.  Asevery well-bred story has a hero, and as the
+reseems better material in jap than in any other party to this story,
+we will dignify him."
+
+I wanted to stop, but my husband insisted that I make no break in the
+impatient dictation.  He had perceived that the first string of letters
+spelled the words, "No synopsis.  The name is Jap Herron," but I could
+not see his copy, and to my mind the sentences spelled chaos.  A little
+farther along I ventured an interruption, when we had transmitted the
+sentence, "The folks in Happy Hollow continued to say Magnesia long
+after she left its fragrant depths."  I had just spelled out the name,
+Agnesia, and I was too deeply engrossed with the labor of following the
+letters to even attempt to understand the meaning.  I turned to my
+husband and said:
+
+"It probably didn't intend to stop on that letter M," whereat the
+planchette rebuked my stupidity thus: "Emily, they called her Magnesia."
+
+After that, I contrived to get control of my nerves, and the rest of
+the dictation was not so difficult.  When we had received the crisp
+final sentence, "And stay he did," the planchette went right on with
+this information, "This is the first copy of the first chapter.  There
+will be 25 or more chapters.  This is enough for this time, as the
+office force is a little weak.  But results ... very good.  We will
+finish the other story and dip into this at the next session.  There
+will be better speed in this, for there will be no revision until it is
+finished.  We will work hard and fast.  Emily may meet folks she knows
+in this tale, for she knows a town with a river and a Happy Hollow.  I
+did not intend to start another story so soon, but other influences are
+so strong that they may try to dominate the board.  This will not tire
+you so much.  You must be determined not to permit intruders.  If they
+are recognized, you will not be free of them again.  I am pushed aside.
+Leave the board when they appear.  Good-bye."
+
+The use of the name, Happy Hollow, forms a link with Hannibal; but if
+any of the characters in "Jap Herron" were drawn from life, they must
+have belonged to Mark Twain's generation and not to mine.  Mark never
+seems to take into account the fact that he left Hannibal before I was
+born, and that there have been many changes in the old town.  The
+character of Jacky Herron may have been suggested by a disreputable
+drunken fisherman whose experiences I have heard my father relate; but
+there is one little touch in that first chapter that must have come
+from Mark's own mind, since the underlying fact was not known to any of
+us until we read Walter Prichard Eaton's article on birds' nests,
+months later.  When we transmitted that statement, "The father of the
+little Herrons was a kingfisher," none of us knew that the kingfisher's
+home nest is a filthy hole, close to the river bank.  The application
+is too perfect to have been accidental.
+
+Before another chapter of the story was transmitted, I went to spend a
+morning with Mrs. Hays.  At the request of her son, we consented to
+allay his curiosity by a visible demonstration of the workings of the
+mysterious board, of which he had necessarily heard much.  He hoped to
+receive some definite communication from his father, or the sister who
+had died in her girlhood; but this is what he recorded:
+
+"Emily, I gave those synopses not for a guide but to prevent others
+from imposing their ideas and confusing you.  It might be said that it
+made it easier for you, but that idea is wrong.  It would be easier to
+write the story direct.  You have learned that this was wise, because
+constant efforts have been made to break in and alter the stories.  For
+this reason I gave you the synopses, so that you could not be deceived.
+Now I am going to trust you.  I intended to advise you that it would be
+a more convincing psychic record, if you have nothing on which a
+subconscious mind might be said to be working.  The synopsis was for
+your protection, and has no value to the record.  At first you had such
+a conglomerate method of working that it was necessary.  You did not
+recognize the difficulties that were likely to occur.  You were apt to
+employ temporary help, so eliminate."
+
+Just what was meant by "temporary help" is not apparent; but there was
+no opportunity to question him further, for at that moment we were
+interrupted by the arrival of another luncheon guest and the board was
+put aside.  We devoted two sessions to the revision and finishing
+touches of the troublesome short story, and then we plunged into the
+transmission of "Jap Herron" in deadly earnest.
+
+As far as possible, we sat twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.  We
+usually worked uninterruptedly for two hours, with no sound save that
+of my voice as I pronounced the letters and punctuation marks over
+which the pointer of the planchette paused in its swift race across the
+board.  My husband discovered early in the work that if he permitted
+himself the luxury of a smile he was in danger of distracting Mrs.
+Hays, who always sat facing him, and thus of bringing about confusion
+in the record.  Under Mark's specific instruction she has schooled
+herself to keep her mind as nearly blank as is possible for a woman who
+is absolutely conscious and normal, and the evidence that something
+humorous was being transmitted through her would be diverting, to say
+the least.  As for my own part in the work, I seldom realized the
+import of the sentences I had spelled out, my whole attention being
+concentrated on the rapidly gliding pointer.  When my husband read
+aloud the copy he had taken down it almost invariably came to Mrs. Hays
+and me as something entirely new.
+
+The story of Jap Herron, as it stands completed, does not follow the
+original order of the first fifteen chapters.  The early part of the
+tale was handled in a manner so sketchy and rapid in its action that
+three whole chapters and seven fragments of chapters were dictated and
+inserted after the work was finished.  In the original copy the second
+chapter suffered little change up to the point of George Thomas's
+advent, with the suggestion that he might bring in some more turnips.
+Following the disaster to Judge Bowers's speech, Mark took a short cut
+to pave the way for the next chapter.  It ran thus:
+
+"But bad luck cannot camp on your trail forever.  In the gladsome
+June-time, Ellis married Flossy Bowers, and her dowry of two thousand
+dollars and her following of kin set the _Herald_ on its feet."
+
+These two sentences were expanded into the more important half of the
+third chapter, almost five months after they had been dictated, and
+this without a rereading of the story.  At another time, when this
+curious kind of revision was under way, Mark dictated the latter part
+of the second chapter, wherein Ellis Hinton tells Jap how he happened
+to be starving in Bloomtown.  When he had finished the dictation, with
+the words, "My boy, that blue calico lady was Mrs. Kelly Jones," he
+continued:
+
+"Emily will know where to fit it in."
+
+This fitting in was not extremely difficult, since there was only one
+place in the story into which each of the inserted chapters or
+fragments could be made to fit; but the original copy had to be read
+several times before these thin places became apparent, and I got no
+help whatever from Mark.  Once, when I implored him to tell me where a
+certain brief but gripping paragraph belonged, he replied, "Emily, that
+is your job.  I don't want the Hannibal girl to fall down on it."
+
+On that second Monday night in September, when the "office force"
+settled itself to serious work, my husband read to us the copy we had
+transmitted.  The chapter ended with what is now the closing paragraph
+of the third chapter:
+
+"The _Herald_ put on a new dress, and the hell-box was dumped full of
+the discarded, mutilated types that had so long given strabismus to the
+patient readers of the Bloomtown _Herald_."
+
+The diet of turnips and sorghum and the other humorous touches of the
+narrative overwhelmed us with laughter, whereat the planchette under
+our fingers wrote:
+
+"Sounds like Mark, eh?"
+
+I asked him if he was satisfied with the use of the word "_Herald_"
+twice in that last sentence.  He replied:
+
+"You must excuse me.  I am all in.  I told you I would leave minor
+points to your pencil.  T-i-r-e-d.  Good-bye."
+
+Our first acquaintance with Wat Harlow, as he appeared in the fourth
+chapter, gave little promise of the character into which he was
+destined to be developed.  To the three of us, who laughed over the
+episode of the vermilion handbill, he appeared to be nothing more than
+a third-rate country politician.  In the original transcription he
+received only an occasional passing touch, until the death of Ellis
+brought him forth in a new light.  We did not know then what Ellis had
+meant by "that reformed auctioneer," for the story of Wat's connection
+with the upbuilding of Bloomtown, as it is set forth in the sixth
+chapter, was not told until we were well along with the work of
+revision.
+
+One of the most interesting personal touches, to be found only in our
+private record, was introduced at the end of the fourth chapter.  It
+had been a long stretch of dictation, and when the planchette stopped I
+asked if there was any more.  The pointer gave only this, "No--30."
+Having had no experience with printing offices, I was mystified until
+my husband explained that "30 on the hook" means the end of a given
+piece of work.
+
+Mark once made use of the expression, "the story contains a great deal
+of brevity that will have to be untied later on."  This untying process
+is nowhere more aptly illustrated than in the fourth chapter of our
+original copy, a brief chapter that contained the condensed material of
+Wat Harlow's letter to Jap, the birth of little J.W. and Isabel
+Granger's first kiss.  There was nothing about Bill's boyhood, no
+record of Jap's home surroundings, none of the amusing details of the
+printing office wherein Jap and Bill were learning their trade.  All
+these incidents, which seem so essential to the story, were introduced
+when the first draft of the story had been completed.  The seventh
+chapter, which has to do with the babyhood of little J.W., was dictated
+after the revision had apparently been completed.  When I asked Mark
+why he inserted it, the planchette made this curious reply:
+
+"I was thinking that we'd better soften the shock of the boy's death."
+
+For us, through whom the story was being transmitted, there was no
+softening of Ellis Hinton's death.  We knew from the foregoing chapter
+that the country editor had gone to the mountains for his health, and
+that Flossy had no hope; but when we had recorded the words: "Jap
+closed the press upon the inky type, and gathered the great bunches of
+fragrant blossoms and heaped them upon the press, to be forever
+silent," a great wave of sadness swept over me, I knew not why.  The
+action of the planchette was so rapid that I could not stop to think or
+question.  It was as if the man dictating the story had an unpleasant
+task before him, which he wished to have done with as soon as possible.
+When the final words, "At rest.  FLOSSY," had been spelled out, and the
+planchette stopped abruptly, Mrs. Hays cried:
+
+"My God, what has happened!" and I looked up to see that she was very
+white, and tears were slipping down her cheeks.
+
+"Ellis is dead," my husband said, very simply.  He had foreseen the
+end, had grasped the infinite pathos of that old Washington press,
+decked as a funeral casket with the flowers that had been sent to usher
+in the new régime.
+
+When the evening's copy had been read, I asked Mark if he wished to
+comment on it.
+
+"Not to-night, Emily," the planchette spelled.  "I am all broken up.  I
+didn't want Ellis to die.  I tried to figure a way to save him; but I
+couldn't make it go."
+
+When we met again, on the 2d of October, the dictation began with these
+words:
+
+"I want Edwin to go back to the beginning of the last chapter.  I left
+out a sentence that is necessary.  It explains why Ellis left by rail.
+You insert."
+
+Then he dictated the passage relating to the new railroad and the
+temporary station.  When he had finished he said, "Go on with the
+story," and the next sentence began, "When Ellis went away it was to
+the sound of jollity."  The reference to Robert Louis Stevenson was new
+to both of us, and we have not sought to verify the incident.  That
+Mark wanted it included in his story was sufficient for us.
+
+That next chapter contained another accumulation of brevity which was
+afterward untied.  The funeral, the reading of Ellis Hinton's will,
+Judge Bowers's candidacy, the nomination of Jap Herron as the ugliest
+man in Bloomtown, Bill's first spree and the local option fight, all
+these were sketched with the sharpness and sudden transition of
+pictures on a cinematograph screen.  The following chapter was almost
+as tightly packed with incident, and in the midst of it there was a
+break, with an astonishing explanation.  Three evenings in succession
+we had had trouble with the planchette.  It had seemed to me that Mrs.
+Hays was trying to pull it from beneath my fingers.  Meanwhile she had
+mentally accused me of digital heaviness.  She uses the finger tips of
+her left hand while I use my right.  As a rule our touch is so light
+that the planchette glides automatically.  On these three evenings we
+had left the board with cramped fingers, and a general sense of
+dissatisfaction.  Several sentences that were plainly spurious were
+afterward stricken from the record; but we had forgotten about the
+other scribes who wanted "a pencil on earth," until Mark interrupted
+the story to say:
+
+"I must ask you to be wary and sharp to dismiss impostors.  Right now
+there are more than twenty hands trying to control your dictation.  It
+is very hard for me.  I am disconsolate, and powerless to help myself.
+If we do not watch every avenue, our work is spoiled.  There has been a
+constant struggle for my rights.  I only ask a little help, and you are
+all my hope.  If you fail me, I am undone."
+
+This illuminating outburst served to clear the atmosphere, and the
+three chapters were afterward expanded into seven, much of the same
+diction being reproduced.  It was as if Mark, knowing the difficulties
+on his own side of the shadow-line, had tried to get at least the
+outline of his story down on paper, lest he lose his hold entirely.
+After that evening we had almost no trouble with intruders.
+
+The story of Jones, of the Barton _Standard_, came to us like a thunder
+clap from a cloudless sky, for the part which old Pee-Dee Jones played
+in the development of Bloomtown and Barton was not related until we had
+begun the work of revision.  In the original story of that near-fight,
+Mark gave us a significant cross-light on the conditions under which he
+lives.  The marshal had appeared in the office at the crucial moment,
+as if he had dropped through the roof or arisen out of the floor.
+Several times in the earlier part of the work the characters had thus
+appeared without obvious means of locomotion, and I had called
+attention to the inconsistency, with the result that Mark had dictated
+a few words to show how or whence the new arrival had come.  When
+Wilfred Jones shouted to the marshal, "I demand protection," my
+husband, who was reading the evening's copy aloud to us, said:
+
+"How does the marshal happen to be there?  I don't see any previous
+mention of him."
+
+Instantly the planchette, which we always kept in readiness under our
+finger tips, began to move.  It dictated this:
+
+"You might say, 'at that moment the town marshal, wearing his star
+pinned to his blue flannel shirt, strolled in.'  I have been away from
+the need of going up-stairs and down-stairs for so long that I forget
+about it."
+
+"How do you get from one place to another, Mark?" I asked.
+
+"Now, Emily, curiosity!  But you know we haven't any Pullman cars or
+elevators here.  When I want to be at a place where I am free to
+go--why, I am there."
+
+He took occasion, when our difficulties seemed to be at an end and his
+grip on his "pencil" was once more firmly established, to make it very
+plain to me that I alone was responsible for the annoyance we had had.
+He put it thus:
+
+"Things will be all right if you don't give way to any more curiosity.
+In the beginning I told you that it would not do.  Emily wants to
+investigate too much.  It must be one or all.  Edwin and I understand.
+It was you that mixed the type.  Lola must be passive.  If she tries to
+watch for intruders, she gets in my way.  So it is up to the Hannibal
+girl."
+
+I do not know, even now, how I could have prevented the trouble that
+well-nigh wrecked our work.  It is true I had taken part in another
+psychic demonstration, but it was in a remote part of the city and it
+had nothing to do with Mark Twain's "pencil."  However, I took no
+further chance with psychic investigation.
+
+When Jap Herron was elected Mayor of Bloomtown, and the girl he loved
+had walked right into his astonished arms, it seemed to us that the
+story must be ended.  We had forgotten that Jap ever had a family of
+his own, a mother and two sisters, and when the drunken hag reeled into
+the _Herald_ office we were as greatly horrified as Jap himself was.  I
+had put my husband's carefully kept copy into type-written form, and it
+occurred to me to get the opinion of a master critic on the story, not
+as evidence of the survival of the human mind after physical death, but
+as pure fiction.  Acting upon the impulse, and without telling either
+my husband or Mrs. Hays what I intended to do, I took the copy to
+William Marion Reedy,[1] permitting him to infer that I had created it,
+and asked him to tell me whether, in his judgment, the story was worth
+finishing.  It was the beginning of the week, when the issuing of the
+_Mirror_ consumed all his time, and while I was waiting for his verdict
+we received three more chapters.  In the first of these we had a new
+light on Isabel Granger's character, and came for the first time
+absolutely to love Bill Bowers.  After that nothing that Bill might do
+would shake our faith in his ability to make good in the end.  He might
+be weak and foolish, but we understood why Jap believed in and loved
+him.  We were jubilant when Rosy Raymond was eliminated from the game,
+for we feared, whenever we permitted ourselves to speculate, that Bill
+would marry her, and regret the step.  We assumed that the son of the
+much-married Judge Bowers had inherited a nature sufficiently mobile to
+recover from the shock of the silly girl's perfidy.
+
+While this unexpected development of the story was being revealed to
+us, William Marion Reedy sent me, in the envelope with the first ten
+chapters of "Jap Herron," a criticism that fairly made me tingle with
+delight.  Had the work been my own, I could not have been more pleased
+with his unstinted praise.  I wanted to go to him at once and confess
+the truth; but he was not in his office when I called.
+
+Two of the succeeding chapters were taken down by friends who had been
+let into the secret of our work and had asked permission to sit with
+us.  It was the time of year when my husband could seldom spare an
+evening from his work, and Mark consented to break into his beloved
+office-force arrangement, for the sake of expediency.  Three men and
+five women served us in the capacity of amanuenses while the latter
+third of the book was being transmitted.  The first deviation from our
+original arrangement came in connection with the dictation of the
+seventeenth chapter, the chapter that ends with the death of Flossy and
+her son.  We were three sympathetic women, and when the planchette had
+traced the words, "It was a smile of heavenly beauty, as the pure soul
+of Ellis Hinton's wife flew to join her loved ones," we three burst
+simultaneously into violent weeping.  I have never experienced more
+genuine grief at the grave of a departed friend or relative than I felt
+when this woman, who had come to be more than human to me, was released
+from her envelope of mortal clay.
+
+The following day Mrs. Hays and I were invited to the home of a
+delightful little Scotch woman who asked us to bring the planchette
+board.  She knew nothing of the story, and had no intimation of the
+personality on the other side who was sending it across, through our
+planchette; nevertheless she was willing to keep copy for us.  The
+chapter she wrote down is the eighteenth in the finished story, Jap's
+funeral sermon and Isabel's song beside Flossy's coffin.  Even now I
+cannot think of that scene without a swelling of the throat and a
+blinding rush of tears.  It is needless to say we wept when the
+dictation was ended.
+
+When our hostess had read aloud the copy I asked our invisible
+companion if he had anything more to say.  I avoided mentioning his
+name, for we did not wish his identity disclosed.  The planchette
+traced the curious words:
+
+"You know that the air gets pretty damp for an old boy after this."
+
+I looked out of the window.  It was a murky November afternoon, and I
+asked, "Do you feel the dampness of the material atmosphere?"  Like a
+flash came the reply:
+
+"Emily, girl, you have been getting sob stuff."
+
+Then I yearned to get my fingers in his shock of white hair, for I knew
+Mark Twain was laughing at me.  But I had that which gave me
+consolation, for I had brought with me Mr. Reedy's letter, analyzing
+and commenting upon the story that Mark had created.  Incidentally Mrs.
+Reedy had asked Mrs. Hays and me to come to her home the following day
+to luncheon.  I had told her that Mrs. Hays possessed a high degree of
+psychic power, and I consented to bring our board for a demonstration.
+I wanted to see Mr. Reedy alone and explain to him that "Jap Herron"
+had come to us over that insensate board, but opportunity was denied
+me.  As soon as luncheon was over we went up to that beautiful yellow
+room in which the best of _Reedy's Mirror_ is created, and Mrs. Hays
+and I placed the board on our knees.  As soon as Mr. Reedy's fountain
+pen was ready for action our planchette began:
+
+"Well, I should doff my plaidie and don a kirtle, for 'tis not the
+sands o' Dee but the wearing o' the green."  There was a wide sweep of
+the planchette, and then, "'Tis not the shine of steel that always
+reflects; but it is the claymore that cuts.  Both are made of steel and
+both will mirror sometimes the shillalah.  Yet the shillalah is better
+than the claymore, for the man that is cut will run; but if ye slug him
+with the blackthorn he will have to listen.  This is just a flicker of
+high light.  Bill jumped from bed as the rattle of the latch announced
+the arrival of a visitor."
+
+My heart thumped wildly for a moment, then sank.  I knew that the Bill
+referred to was Bill Bowers, and not the editor whom hundreds delight
+to call "Bill Reedy," and I knew, too, that it would be only a moment
+until he must realize that the sentences he was writing down from my
+dictation were part and parcel of the story whose first ten chapters he
+had read and praised.  I dared not lift my eyes from the board, yet I
+wanted to stop and explain that I had not intended to deceive him--that
+I only wanted an unbiased opinion of Mark Twain's story.  In vain I
+tried to stop the whirling planchette, my voice so husky that I could
+scarcely pronounce the letters.  It went right on, with a situation
+that neither Mrs. Hays nor I had anticipated.  We had schooled
+ourselves not to speculate, yet the previous afternoon we had left Jap
+in a fainting condition and on the verge of a long illness.  The
+chapter we transmitted that day was the story of a gubernatorial
+election in a small Missouri town.
+
+Subsequently, when Mark gave us the intervening chapter, Jap's visit to
+the cemetery and the humorous incidents of the campaign, I asked him:
+
+"Why didn't you give this chapter last Thursday?"
+
+"I thought that election would amuse Reedy.  Don't worry, Emily.  He
+understood you.  He knows the Hannibal girl is honest," was the
+comforting reply.
+
+When the revision of the story was under way, and several fragments had
+been dictated, the planchette spelled the words, "I want to add
+something to the Reedy chapter," and without further ado it proceeded:
+"The Bloomtown _Herald_ did itself proud that week."  That fragment was
+the easiest of them all to fit into place.  At its conclusion we were
+favored with a bit of pleasantry that seems significant.  My husband
+gave us a lift whenever he could spare the time; but on this occasion a
+woman friend was sitting with us.  She had written about two thousand
+words of copy, when the tenor of the dictation changed suddenly to the
+personal vein.
+
+"Old Mark has been working like a badger, and is pleased with the
+story.  The girls and friend Ed are going as well as Twain ever did
+when he wielded his own pen.  When Edwin lights up a fresh smoke and
+smiles, I know that all is well.  But when Lola frowns and Edwin
+forgets to smoke, look out for leaks.  The story has sprung and therain
+was hesitthininspots." The last of the sentence came so rapidly that
+none of us had any idea what it meant, or that it meant anything at
+all.  Before we had separated it into the words, "the rain washes it
+thin in spots," I asked that that last part be repeated.  Instead we
+got the words:
+
+"When a board is sprung, it lets in rain.  It is Emily who has to hold
+the drip pan for the temperamental ones."
+
+"Thank you for those few kind words, Mark," I said.  "But if you think
+enough of me to trust me with this important work, why do you single me
+out for all the scoldings, when Edwin and Lola sometimes deserve at
+least a share in your displeasure?"
+
+"Whist, Hannibal girl, we know our office force," was the humorous
+rejoinder.
+
+The appearance of Agnesia was one of the keen surprises of the story,
+and before we realized what Jap's little sister would mean to
+Bloomtown, Mark interrupted his dictation with the words, "Stop!
+Girls, the yarn is nearly all unwound.  We will skip a bit that we will
+tie in later.  But now--Bill sat doubled over the case, the stick held
+listlessly in his hand.  Nervously he fingered the copy, not knowing
+what he was reading."
+
+Without a break, we received the brief final chapter, ending with the
+words, "Isabel wants to call him Jasper William."  The planchette
+added, "The End."  We transmitted no more that day, although we knew
+that our story was far from completion.
+
+The next time we met we had another surprise in the coming of Jap's
+elder sister.  When the twenty-fifth chapter was finished, Mark said:
+
+"Girls, I think the story is done."
+
+"It's pretty short for a book," I protested.  By way of reply, he gave
+this:
+
+"Did you ever know about my prize joke?  One day I went to church,
+heard a missionary sermon, was carried away--to the extent of a hundred
+dollars.  The preacher kept talking.  I reduced my ante to fifty
+dollars.  He talked on.  I came down to twenty-five, to ten, to five,
+and after he had said all that he had in him, I stole a nickel from the
+basket.  Reason for yourselves.  Not how long but how strong.  Yet I
+have a sneaking wish to tell you something of the early days of Ellis's
+work, especially about Granger and Blanke.  But to-day I have writer's
+cramp.  So let's get together soon and make the finish complete."
+
+There were two more sessions, with the dictation of a whole chapter and
+several fragments, at each meeting, and we met no more until I had put
+the whole complex record into consecutive form.  We had a final review
+of the work, and a few minor changes in words and phrases were made.
+Mark expressed himself as well pleased, and as a little farewell he
+gave us this, which has nothing to do with Jap Herron:
+
+"There will be a great understanding some day.  It will come when the
+earth realizes that we must leave it, to live, and when it can put
+itself in touch with the heavens that surround it.  I have met a number
+of preachers over here who would like to undo many things they
+promulgated while they had a whack at sinners.
+
+"There are hardshell Baptists who have a happy time meeting their
+members, to whom they preached hell and brimstone.  They have many
+things to explain.  There is one melancholy Presbyterian who frankly
+stated the fact--underscore 'fact'--that there were infants in hell not
+an ell long.  He has cleared out quite a space in hell since he woke
+up.  He doesn't rush out to meet his congregation.  It would create
+trouble and be embarrassing if they looked around for the suffering
+infants.  As I said before, there is everything to learn, after the
+shackles of earth are thrown aside.  I would like to write a story
+about some of these preachers, and the mistakes they made, when the
+doctrines of brimstone and everlasting punishment were ladled out as
+freely to the little maid who danced as to the harlot.  It showed a
+mind asleep to the undiscovered country."
+
+"Can you shed any light on that undiscovered country?" I asked him.
+
+"Perhaps.  But for the present there is enough of the truth of life and
+death in 'Jap Herron' to hold you."
+
+And with that he told us good-bye.
+
+EMILY GRANT HUTCHINGS.
+
+
+
+[1] William Marion Reedy, Editor and Publisher of _Reedy's Mirror_, a
+weekly journal published in St. Louis, has long been interested in
+psychic phenomena, as a source of exotic and unusual literature.  He
+has also discovered and developed much purely terrestrial literary
+talent, having brought out some of the best poets and fiction writers
+of present-day America.  As a critic, he is a recognized master.
+
+
+
+
+JAP HERRON
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+As every well-bred story has a hero, and as there seems better material
+in Jap than any other party to this story, we will dignify him.  Mary
+Herron feebly asserted her rights in the children by naming them
+respectively, Fanny Maud, Jasper James and Agnesia.  Jasper
+deteriorated.  He became Jap, and Jap he remained, despite the fact
+that Fanny Maud developed into Fannye Maude and Agnesia changed her
+cognomen, without recourse to law, to Mabelle.  The folks in Happy
+Hollow continued to say "Magnesia" long after she left its fragrant
+depths.
+
+The father of the little Herrons was a kingfisher.  He spent his hours
+of toil on the river bank and his hours of ease in Mike's place.  One
+Friday, good luck peered through the dingy windows of the little shanty
+where the Herrons starved, froze or sweltered.  It was Friday, as I
+remarked before.  Mary was washing, against difficulties.  It had
+rained for a week.  The clothes had to dry before Mary could cash her
+labor, and it fretted Jacky Herron sorely.  His credit had lost caste
+with Mike, and Mike had the grip on the town.  He had the only thirst
+parlor in Happy Hollow.  So Jacky smashed the only remaining window,
+broke the family cup, and set forth defiantly in the rain.  And in the
+fog and slashing rain he lost his footing, and fell into the river.  As
+it was Friday, Mary had hopefully declared that luck would change--and
+it did!
+
+The town buried Jacky and moved his family into decent lodgings,
+because the Town Fathers did not want to contract typhoid in
+ministering to them.  Loosed of the incubus of a father, the little
+family grew in grace.  Jappie, as his baby sister called him, was the
+problem.  Agnesia was pretty, and the Mayor's wife adopted her.  Fanny
+Maud went west to live with her aunt, and Jap remained with his mother
+until she, after the manner of womankind, who never know when they have
+had luck, married another bum and began supporting him.  Jap ran away.
+
+He was twelve years old, red-headed, freckled and lanky, when he
+trailed into Bloomtown.  He loafed along the main street until he
+reached the printing office, and there he stopped.  An aphorism of his
+late lamented dad occurred to him.
+
+"Ef I had a grain of gumption," said dad, during an enforced session of
+his family's society, "I would 'a' went to work in my daddy's printin'
+office, instid of runnin' away when I was ten year old.  I might 'a'
+had money, aplenty, 'stid of bein' cumbered and helt down by you and
+these brats."
+
+Jap straggled irregularly inside and heard the old Washington hand
+press groan and grunt its weary way through the weekly edition of the
+_Herald_.  After the last damp sheet had been detached from the press,
+and the papers were being folded by the weary-eyed, inky demon who had
+manipulated the handle, he slouched forward.
+
+"Say, Mister," he asked confidently, "do you do that every day?"
+indicating the press, "'cause I'm goin' to work for you."
+
+The editor, pressman and janitor looked upon him in surprise and pity.
+
+"I appreciate your ambition," he said, more in sorrow than anger, "but
+I have become so attuned to starving alone that I don't think I could
+adjust myself to the shock of breaking my fast on you."
+
+Jap was unmoved.
+
+"My dad onct thought he'd be a editor, but he got married," he said
+calmly.
+
+"Sensible dad," commented the editor, with more truth than he dreamed.
+"I suppose that he had three meals a day, and a change of socks on
+Sunday."
+
+"But Ma had to get 'em," argued Jap.  "I want to be a editor, and I am
+agoin' to stay."  And stay he did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"Run out and get a box of sardines," ordered the boss of the Washington
+press.  "I've got a nickel.  I can't let you starve.  I lived three
+months on them--look at me!"
+
+Jap surveyed him apprehensively.
+
+"I'd hate to be so thin," he complained, "and I don't like sardines nor
+any fishes.  My dad fed us them every day.  Allus wanted to taste
+doughnuts.  Can I buy them?"
+
+Ellis Hinton laughed shortly, and spun the nickel across the imposing
+stone.  Jap caught it deftly.  An hour later he appeared for work,
+smiling cheerfully.
+
+"Why the shiner?" queried Ellis, indicating a badly swollen and rapidly
+discoloring eye.
+
+"Kid called me red-top," said Jap bluntly.
+
+"Love o' gracious," Ellis exclaimed, "what is the shade?"
+
+"It's red," quoth Jap, "but it ain't his business.  If I am agoin' to
+be a editor, nobody's goin' to get familiar with me."
+
+This was Jap's philosophy, and in less than a week he had mixed with
+every youth of fighting age in town.  The office took on metropolitan
+airs because of the rush of indignant parents who thronged its portals.
+Ellis pacified some of the mothers, outtalked part of the fathers and
+thrashed the remainder.  After he had mussed the outer office with
+"Judge" Bowers, and tipped the case over with the final effort that
+threw him, Jap said, solemnly surveying the wreck:
+
+"If I had a dad like you, I'd 'a' been the President some day."
+
+Ellis gazed ruefully into the mess of pi, and kicked absently at the
+hell-box.
+
+"I'll work all night," cried Jap eagerly.  "I'll clean it up."
+
+"We'll have plenty of time," said Ellis gloomily.  "We have to hit the
+road, kid.  Judge Bowers owns the place.  He has promised to set us out
+before morning."
+
+But luck came with Jap.  It was Friday again, and Bowers's wife
+presented him with twins, his mother-in-law arrived, and his uncle
+inherited a farm.  There was only one way for the news to be
+disseminated, and he came in with his truculent son and helped clean
+up, so that the _Herald_ could be issued on time.  More than that, he
+made the boys shake hands, and concluded to put Bill to work in the
+_Herald_ office.  After he had puffed noisily out, Ellis looked
+whimsically at Bill.
+
+"Are you going to board yourself out of what I am able to pay you?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't reckon Pappy cares about that," the boy said cheerfully.
+"He just wants to keep me out of mischief, and he said that lookin' at
+you was enough to sober a sot."
+
+Months dragged by.  Bill and Jap worked more or less harmoniously.
+Once a day they fought; but it was fast becoming a mere function, kept
+up just for form.  Ellis was doing better.  He had set up housekeeping,
+since Jap came, in the back room of the little wooden structure that
+faced the Public Square, and housewives sent them real food once in a
+while.
+
+Once Ellis feared that Jap was going to quit him for the Golden Shore.
+It was on the occasion of Myrtilla Botts's wedding, when she baked the
+cakes herself, for practice, and her mother thoughtfully sent most of
+them to the Editor, to insure a big puff for Myrtilla.  Ellis was
+afraid; but Jap, with the enthusiasm and inexperience of youth, took a
+chance.  Bill was laid up with mumps, or the danger would have been
+lessened.  As it was, it took all the doctors in town to keep Jap alive
+until they could uncurl him and straighten out his appendix, which
+appeared to be cased in wedding cake.  This experience gave Jap an
+added distaste for the state of matrimony.
+
+"My dad allus said to keep away from marryin'," he moaned.  "But how'd
+I know you'd ketch it from the eatin's?"
+
+The subscription list grew apace.  There was a load of section ties,
+two bushel of turnips and six pumpkins paid in November.  Bill and Jap
+went hunting once a week, so the larder grew beyond sardines.  Jap
+acquired a hatred of turnips and pumpkins that was in after years
+almost a mania.  At Christmas, Kelly Jones brought in a barrel of
+sorghum, "to sweeten 'em," he guffawed.  Jap had grown to manhood
+before he wholly forgave that pleasantry.  It was a hard winter.
+Everybody said so, and when Jap gazed at Ellis across the turnips and
+sorghum of those weary months, he said he believed it.
+
+"Shame on you," rebuked Ellis, gulping his turnips with haste.  "Think
+of the wretched people who would be glad to get this food."
+
+"Do you know any of their addresses?" asked Jap abruptly.  "Because I
+can't imagine anybody happy on turnips and sorghum.  I'd be willin' to
+trade my wretched for theirn."
+
+Kelly said that Jap would be fat as butter if he ate plenty of
+molasses, and this helped at first; but when the grass came, he begged
+Ellis to cook it for a change.
+
+When George Thomas came in, one blustery March day, to say that if the
+turnips were all gone, he would bring in some more, Ellis pied Judge
+Bowers's speech on the duties of the Village Fathers to the alleys,
+when he saw the malignant look that Jap cast upon the cheery farmer.
+
+Once a week Bill and Jap drew straws to determine which one should fare
+forth in quest of funds, and for the first time in his brief business
+career, Jap was glad the depressing task had fallen to him.  "Pi" was
+likely to bring on an acute attack of mental indigestion, and the boy
+had learned to dread Ellis Hinton's infrequent but illuminating flame
+of wrath.
+
+The catastrophe had been blotted out, the last stickful of type had
+been set and Bill had gone home to supper when Jap, leg-weary and
+discouraged, wandered into the office.  Ellis looked up from the form
+he was adjusting.
+
+"How did you ever pick out this town?" the boy complained, turning the
+result of his day's collection on the table.
+
+Ellis turned from the bit of pine he was whittling, a makeshift
+depressingly familiar to the country editor.  He scanned the meager
+assortment of coins with anxious eye.  Jap's lower jaw dropped.
+
+"I'll have to fire you if you haven't got enough to pay for the paper."
+
+"Got enough for that," said Jap mournfully, "but not enough for meat."
+
+"Didn't Loghman owe for his ad?" Ellis demanded.  "Did you ask him for
+it?"
+
+"Says you owe him more 'n he's willin' for you to owe," Jap ventured.
+
+Ellis sighed.
+
+"Meat's not healthy this damp weather," he suggested.  "Cook something
+light."
+
+"It'll be darned light," said Jap.  "There's one tater."
+
+"No bread?" asked Ellis.
+
+"Give that scrap to the cat," Jap returned, "Doc Hall says she's done
+eat all the mice in town and if we don't feed her she'll be eatin'
+off'n the subscribers."
+
+"Confound Doc Hall," stormed Ellis.  "You take your orders from me.
+That bread, stewed with potato, would have made a dandy dish."  He
+shook the form to settle it, and faced Jap.
+
+"How did I come to pick this place?" he said slowly.  "Well, Jap, it
+was the dirtiest deal a boy ever got.  I had a little money after my
+father died.  I wanted to invest it in a newspaper, somewhere in the
+West, where the world was honest and young.  I had served my
+apprenticeship in a dingy, narrow little New England office, and I
+thought my lifework was cut out for me.  I had big dreams, Jap.  I saw
+myself a power in my town.  With straw and mud I wanted to build a town
+of brick and stone.  Dreams, dreams, Jap, dreams.  Some day you may
+have them, too."
+
+He let his lean form slowly down into a chair.  Jap braced himself
+against the table as the narrative continued:
+
+"In Hartford I met Hallam, the man who started the Bloomtown _Herald_.
+I heard his flattering version.  I inspected his subscription list and
+studied the columns of his paper, full of ads.  I bought.  The subs
+were deadheads, the ads--gratuitous, for my undoing.  It was indeed
+straw and mud, and, lad, it has remained straw and mud."  He leaned his
+head on his hand for a moment.
+
+"That was the year after you were born, Jap.  I was only twenty-one.
+For a year I was hopeful; then I dragged like a dead dog.  You will be
+surprised when I tell you what brought me to life again.  I tell you
+this, boy, so that you will never despise Opportunity, though she may
+wear blue calico, as mine did.
+
+"It was one dark, cold day.  No human face had come inside the office
+for a week.  That was the period of my life when I learned how human a
+cat can be.  We were starving, the cat and me, with the advantage in
+favor of the cat.  She could eat vermin.  I sat by the table, wondering
+the quickest way to get out of it.  Yes, Jap, the first and, God help
+me, the only time that life was worthless.  The door opened and a plump
+woman dressed in blue calico, a sunbonnet pushed back from her smiling
+face, entered."
+
+To Jap, who listened with his heart in his throat, it seemed that Ellis
+was quoting perhaps a page from the memoirs he had written for the
+benefit of his townsmen.  His deep, melodious voice fell into the
+rhythmic cadence of a reader, as he continued:
+
+"'Howdy, Mr. Editor,' she chirped.  'I've been keenin' for a long time
+to come in to see you.  I think you are aprintin' the finest paper I
+ever seen.  I brought you a mess of sassage and a passel of bones from
+the killin'.  It's so cold, they'll keep a spell.  And here's a dollar
+for next year's paper.  I don't want to miss a number.  I am areadin'
+it over and over.  Seems like you are agoin' to make a real town out of
+Bloomtown,' and with a friendly pat on the arm, she was gone."
+
+Ellis brushed the long hair from his brow, the strange modulation went
+out of his voice and the fire returned to his brown eyes as he said:
+
+"Jap, I got up from that table and fell on my knees, and right there I
+determined that starvation nor cold nor any other enemy should rout me.
+Jap, I am going to make Bloomtown a real town yet.  My boy, that blue
+calico lady was Mrs. Kelly Jones."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Ellis scowled and kicked his stool absently with his heels.
+
+"Will you explain where the colons and semicolons have emigrated to?"
+he asked Bill, with suppressed wrath.
+
+"We was short of quads, and I whittled 'em off."
+
+Ellis glared at Bill's ingenuous face.
+
+"And what, pray, did you whittle to take their place?"
+
+"Never had no call to use 'em," muttered Bill, chewing up the item he
+had just disposed of.  "I can say all that I can think with commas and
+periods."
+
+"Abraham Lincoln used colons and semicolons," said Ellis, shortly, "and
+I am setting his immortal speech.  What am I going to do about it, my
+intelligent co-printer?"
+
+Bill coughed violently as the wad of paper slipped down his throat.
+
+"Try George Washington," he advised,  "They didn't have so much
+trimmin's to their talk them days."
+
+Jap shoved a chair against the door sill and flung the door ajar to cut
+off the blast of hot air that swept the office.
+
+"Gee-whiz!" he complained, "I'm chokin' on the dust.  However did they
+get 'Bloomtown' hitched on to this patch of dirt?  There ain't a flower
+'in a mile, 'ceptin' the half-dead sprigs the wimmin are acoaxin'
+against their will."
+
+"When I came here," said Ellis, "the old settlers told me that whenever
+I wanted information I should hunt up Kelly Jones.  There he goes now.
+Call him in."
+
+But Kelly was coming anyway.  He carried a mysterious basket and his
+sun-burned face was full of suppressed excitement.
+
+"Wife allowed that you and Jap must be putty nigh starved," he
+chuckled, shifting the quid to his other cheek.  "I reckon she knowed
+that Jap done the cookin' Wednesdays and Thursdays."
+
+He lifted the clean white towel from the basket, disclosing a pound of
+yellow butter, a glass of jelly, a loaf of bread and two pies, fairly
+reeking aroma.
+
+"Fu'st blackberries," asserted Kelly.  "I ain't had a pie myself yet,
+and wife forbid me to take a bite o' yourn."
+
+"God bless the wife of our countryman, Kelly Jones.  May her shade
+never grow less," said Ellis fervently, stowing the basket away.  "If
+Jap and Bill stick all the matter on the hooks before noon, they may
+have pie.  Otherwise the Editor of the _Herald_ exercises his
+prerogative and eats both pies."
+
+"Kelly," asked Jap abruptly, "why did they call this patch of dust
+'Bloomtown'?  Did they ever have even peppergrass growin' along its
+edges?"
+
+Kelly settled himself comfortably in Ellis's chair and draped his long
+legs over the exchanges.  Filling his mouth with Granger twist, he said:
+
+"'Twa'n't because of the blooms.  Fact is, it never was 'bloom' in the
+fu'st place.  Old man Blome owned this track of land--his name was
+Jerusalem Blome.  Folks used to say Jerusalem Blown.  Purty nice story
+there is about this town and Barton, why neither of 'em has got a
+railroad, and why Barton is bigger in money and scarcer in folks."
+
+Ellis put his stickful of type on the case resignedly.  Bill and Jap
+deposited their weary frames on the doorstep.  The hot wind blew in
+their faces, laden with dust.  The smell of dried grass was odorous.
+
+"Looks like it mout blow up a rain," said Kelly, sniffing approvingly.
+
+"Well, Kelly," declared Ellis, "you have tied the wheels of this
+machine.  Deliver the goods you promised.  We are not interested in
+rain."
+
+"Humph!" ruminated Kelly, "it was this-a-way: Old man Blome bought this
+track about the time that Luellen Barton moved to her plantation.  It
+mout 'a' been sooner; I ain't sure.  Barton--leastways, what is Barton
+now--belonged to old Simpson Barton.  When he went south and married a
+rip-snortin' widow, he brought his wife and a passel o' niggers to live
+at the old home place.  There hadn't never been no niggers there, along
+of the fu'st Mis' Barton.
+
+"When war broke out the niggers run away, along of Jerusalem Blome,
+that got up a nigger regimint.  After the war there was talk of a
+railroad.  It would run right through the Blome farm and cross the
+Barton place crossways.  My daddy was overseer for Mis' Barton.  Simp
+didn't have nothin' to say about the runnin' of the place.  I was a
+tyke, doin' errands for everybody, and I heerd a lot o' the railroad
+talk.  Old Blome was sellin' his farm in town lots, gettin' ready for
+the boom--for who would 'a' thought that Mis' Barton would turn her
+back on such a proposition?
+
+"You see, it was this-a-way: Mis' Luellen was allus speculatin' in
+niggers, and a month before war broke, she had bought a load of Guinea
+niggers--the kind that looks like they are awearin' bustles, you know.
+Simp kinder smelt war, but, Lordee, Luellen wouldn't be dictated to!
+And she went broke, flat as a flitter.  All that was left was the
+thousand acres of Barton land.
+
+"Railroad?  No, siree!  She heard about old man Blome's activity, and
+she had it in for Blome.  She sat up and primped her lips when Pee-Dee
+Jones come in behalf of the railroad.  That's how the Barton Joneses
+come to settle in this neck o' the woods.  Pee-Dee Jones--no kin o'
+mine--had a winnin' way, and he purty nigh got Mis' Luellen's name on
+the paper, when he let slip that he intended buildin' a town on her
+land.  'Do you think that I am agoin' to have a lot of blue-bellied
+Yankees in my very dooryard?' she yelled.  'You are mistaken.'  And so
+she stuck.
+
+"Afterwards she learned that Pee-Dee Jones had follered Grant.  Whew!
+She nigh busted with rage.  Mis' Luellen allus said that she could
+smell a Yankee a mile, and as she didn't like the smell, she cropped
+the railroad boom.  It went five mile north of her place, and missed
+Bloomtown twenty mile.  That's why the two towns are just livin' along.
+The folks that bought lots of old Blome tried to get another railroad
+to come their way.  That was when the Wabash looked like it was headed
+for my farm; but I reckon that opportunities like that don't come but
+onct in a lifetime.
+
+"I wonder that Mis' Luellen's spook don't howl around Barton every
+night, for Jones bought the big house after she died, and the fambly
+comes back there to live whenever their luck goes wrong.  Pee-Dee's
+boy, Brons Jones, started a paper there, about the time that Hallam
+started the Bloomtown _Herald_.  He sold out to a poor devil that's
+racin' to see if he can starve quicker'n Ellis.  Brons ain't been
+around these parts, the last few years, but he owns a lot o' Barton
+property that he thinks 'll make good some day."
+
+Kelly aimed a clear stream of tobacco juice at the dingy brown
+cuspidor, and made as if to settle himself for further narrative.
+
+"Jap, Bill, get to work," commanded Ellis.  "And, Kelly, much as I
+appreciate you and your excellent wife, I must dispense with your
+society.  I need these boys."
+
+As the farmer departed, grinning cheerfully, Tom Granger appeared at
+the door of the _Herald_ office.  A conference of prominent citizens
+had been summoned to meet, early that afternoon, in the Granger and
+Harlow bank, a somewhat more pretentious building, separated from the
+_Herald_ office by a narrow alley; and during a lull in the morning's
+business Tom was serving himself in the capacity of errand boy.  From
+his place on the front steps, he could watch for the possible advent of
+depositor or daylight robber, there being no rear door to the bank.
+
+"You'll be on hand, Ellis," he reminded.  "Couldn't have any kind of a
+meeting without the _Herald_, you know.  We won't keep you long."
+
+But the session was more important than the banker had anticipated.
+Judge Bowers had prepared a lengthy discourse, and others had opinions
+that needed ventilating.  Once or twice, Ellis was irritated by shrieks
+of laughter that emanated from the office across the alley, usually in
+Bill's shrill treble.  When the cause of the merriment had reached an
+exceptional climax, the Editor pounced upon his assistants, wearing the
+scowl of a thunder god.  Jap and Bill got up, shamefacedly, as he
+demanded:
+
+"What do you think I am conducting this plant for?  A circus for
+horse-play?"
+
+He kicked the cat loose from the box Jap had it hitched to.  The two
+boys looked ruefully at their over-turned cart.
+
+"There goes the hell-box!" Bill screamed.
+
+Ellis stared at him in transfixed wrath.
+
+"Was that pi?" he demanded, looking down the hole in the floor into
+which most of the contents of the box had spilled.
+
+Bill darted into the back room and sneaked swiftly out through the
+alley door.  The office saw him no more that day.  With such tools as
+were available, Jap set to work to undo the mischief he had wrought.
+An hour later, he replaced the plank in the floor.  The rescued type
+was piled in a dirty litter of refuse.  Ellis leaned over it, attracted
+by a gleam that shone as not even new type could glitter.
+
+"It's a ring," explained Jap, furtively.  "I reckon you won't be so mad
+now.  I can soak it when we get hungry.  I soaked my ma's ring, lots of
+times."
+
+"Why, you young reprobate!" exclaimed Ellis, "that ring is not yours,
+or mine.  We will advertise it."  He smiled in Jap's disappointed face.
+"It looked like a beefsteak, didn't it, boy?  Well, virtue is its own
+reward, and maybe the owner will pay for the ad."
+
+But she did not, and yet the kick given to the inoffensive office cat
+had effects as far-reaching in the result to Bloomtown as did the kick
+of the famous Chicago cow, with this difference, that the effects were
+not disastrous.  The brief ad in the _Herald_ brought Flossy Bowers
+from her home in Barton to claim a ring she had lost fifteen years
+before.
+
+"The office used to belong to Pap's daddy," Bill explained to Jap, as
+Ellis and Miss Bowers stood chatting in the front door.  "When Grandpap
+was lawyerin', he had this for his office, and Aunt Flossy lost her
+ring, scrubbin' the floor.  I have heard tell that he made the wimmin
+folks curry the horses.  They say he had a big funeral.  I wonder--"
+Bill spoke wistfully, "I wonder if I have any kinfolks on the man-side
+that love anybody but theirselves.  Flossy didn't get to go off to
+school till her daddy died.  She's been teaching up to Barton, since my
+pappy married this last time, and my stepmother don't like her, so she
+never comes home."
+
+Jap and Bill noted that Ellis found frequent business in Barton, and
+despite the inhospitable atmosphere of the substantial Bowers home,
+across the little park from the _Herald_ office, Flossy came oftener
+than usual to her girlhood town.  The autumn, the winter and the spring
+sped by.  Ellis Hinton was too happy to scold, even when there was an
+excess of horse-play.  In the gladsome June-tide the young girls of
+Bloomtown stripped their mothers' gardens to weave garlands for the
+little church, and Judge Bowers opened his heart and his house for the
+wedding reception.
+
+Flossy had a dower of two thousand dollars, besides the cottage, a part
+of her father's patrimony, on one of the side streets, a ten-minute
+walk from the office.  In her trunk were stowed away the yellow linens
+that should have served her, had a certain college friend proved
+faithful, and the wedding presents came near to doing the rest.  This
+strange turn of the wheel of fortune landed Jap Herron in his first
+real home.  Flossy could cook, and thank the kind fates, she brought
+something to cook with her.  Flossy was a misnomer, for even in her
+salad days, she had never been the least bit "flossy," and when Ellis
+bestowed himself upon her she had well turned thirty.
+
+The Judge made Ellis a present of the office, thereby relieving him of
+the haunting fear that he might, at some time, demand the rent.  The
+paper put on a new dress, and the hell-box was dumped full of the
+discarded, mutilated types that had so long given strabismus to the
+patient readers of the Bloomtown _Herald_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"To-morrow is Jap's birthday," announced Ellis, one noontide early in
+July.  "Jap, you are a joy-spoiler.  With the Fourth yet smoking in the
+air, we must be upset by your birthday."
+
+"Dad allus cussed that day," remarked Jap, wiping the blackberry juice
+from his freckled face.  "Gee, I never guessed that there was such grub
+as this," regretfully gazing at the generous blackberry
+cobbler--regretfully, because his exhausted stomach refused to give
+another stitch.
+
+"Cussed it?" queried Ellis, who was beginning to fat up a bit.
+
+"He said that I was the first nail in the coffin of his troubles,"
+replied Jap cheerfully.
+
+"How dreadfully inhuman," exclaimed Flossy, scraping the scraps to the
+chickens.  "Well, Jappie," she bustled back to the dining-room where
+her little family lingered, "we are going to begin making your
+birthdays pleasant.  What do you want most?"
+
+She had her mind's eye on the discarded ties of gorgeous hue, bought
+while Ellis was courting, and still brand new.
+
+"Ca-can I have just what I want?" stuttered Jap, excitedly.
+
+"Why, certainly, Jappie.  That is, if we can afford it."
+
+"Well--well," floundered Jap, astounded at his own temerity, "I allus
+wanted a pair of knee pants.  Ma thought that some time she could get
+'em; but the folks that she washed for allus kept giving her pants of
+their menfolks.  I had to wear 'em.  Can I have knee pants?"
+
+Flossy stared dazedly after Ellis, whose vision of Jap in knee trousers
+was most unsettling.  Before the momentous request had been granted, he
+was already half way down the alley.  He was still convulsed with
+laughter when he reached the side door of the _Herald_ office.  But his
+mental picture paled into dull commonplace, by comparison with the
+reality that was in store for him.
+
+Jap bought the cherished pants!
+
+Bloomtown had seen the circus, the Methodist church fire and Judge
+Lesley's funeral, the greatest in the history of the county; but none
+of these created the interest that Jap brought out when he traveled the
+length of Spring street, rounded the corner at Blanke's drug store and
+walked solemnly along Main street to the office.
+
+Ellis was looking out of the window when he appeared, and despite his
+effort at composure, was writhing on the floor in agony when Jap
+entered.  Bill looked up, as the vision crossed the threshold, and he
+involuntarily swallowed four type he was holding in his lips while he
+adjusted a pied stickful of "More Anon's" communication from Pluffot.
+Jap was so interested in himself that these things passed him by.  He
+sat solemnly on his stool and looked vacantly into the e-box.  Poking
+absently among the dusty types, he said, with profound solemnity:
+
+"Bill, did you ever want anything right bad?"
+
+Bill swallowed the last type with difficulty.  It was the last capital
+Z, and they were getting five dollars for the announcement of Zachariah
+Zigler's daughter, Zella Zena's graduation into matrimony, and Bill had
+been picking enough Z's out of the "More Anon" to spell it, when the pi
+happened.  His mind feebly recognized the calamity.  He stared at the
+apparition before him, too stunned by the catastrophe to apprehend
+Jap's appearance further.  Jap pressed him for reply.
+
+"Once," he admitted gloomily.  "I wanted to eat musherroons."
+
+"Did you like 'em--when you got them?" asked Jap wanly.
+
+"Naw!  Tasted nasty.  Never could see why folks keened after 'em."
+
+Jap sighed.
+
+"I allus wanted knee pants," he said plaintively.  "But seems like I
+wa'n't made for that kind of luxury.  I ain't a bit happy, like I
+thought.  Seems kind of indecent to show your legs, when you never done
+it before."
+
+And Jap donned his long trousers again, much to the relief of
+Bloomtown.  Ellis afterward declared that the three-and-a-half feet of
+spindling legs that dangled along under the buckled bands of those
+short trousers were the most remarkable things he had ever seen.  They
+resembled nothing more than the legs of a spring lamb, cavorting in
+knee pants, in the butcher's window.
+
+When we have achieved our heart's desire, we often taste the ashes of
+illusion.
+
+Jap did not worry further about his appearance, but, dressed in the
+neat jumpers that Flossy provided, he seemed content.  The memory of
+the episode was beginning to lose some of its sting when Dame Fortune
+gave a mighty turn to her wheel.  He was in the alley with Bill,
+playing marbles, when Wat Harlow came rushing out.
+
+"Where is Ellis?" he gasped.  "There's hell afloat."
+
+"Ellis and Flossy have gone to Birdtown to stay till Monday,"
+vouchsafed Bill.  "It's goin' to be big doin's at an anniversary,
+Sunday."
+
+"Good God!" cried Wat, "what can I do?"
+
+Jap arose and dusted himself.
+
+"Is it a dark secret?" he inquired.  "Did Ellis owe you a bill?
+Lordee, man, you can find plenty more in your fix.  Forget it."
+
+Wat continued to tear up and down the narrow alley.
+
+"I'm ruined," he groaned.  "They've got an infernal lie out about me,
+and it's going to kill me out."
+
+Jap was interested.
+
+"Maybe I know what Ellis could do," he suggested.
+
+"I am running for the Legislature again," Wat said, pacing wildly over
+the marbles.  "The Morgan crowd have got it out that I sold myself to
+the crowd that are trying to lobby a bill for a big appropriation for
+the State University.  The county is solid against it, and they will
+vote me out of politics forever."
+
+"What could Ellis do?" asked Jap, sympathetically.
+
+"I thought that he could print the truth in handbills that could be
+sent out.  It is now Friday, and Tuesday is election day.  There will
+be no chance for help after Monday.  They would have to have time to
+get all over the county."  He sat down and wiped his forehead.
+
+"What is your defense?" asked Jap judicially.
+
+"They said that I was in the headquarters of the University gang--and I
+was," he said bitterly.  "They said I shook hands with Barks--and I
+did.  They said that he walked with me down the steps, with his arm
+around my shoulder--and he did."
+
+"Love of Mike!" exploded Bill, "What do you want to talk about it for,
+then?"
+
+"The University headquarters are in Bolton's furniture store,"
+explained Wat.  "My--my baby died last night, and I went there for her
+little coffin."  He choked and walked over to the gate.  After a moment
+he turned back.  "Barks was there.  When he found why I came, he walked
+out with me.  He put his arm around my shoulder.  He--he was telling me
+that he buried his youngest, a few weeks ago.  And now, while I am tied
+here, and the time is so short, Ellis is gone.  And I'll be ruined!"
+
+He leaned heavily on the rickety gate.  Bill wiped his snub nose,
+openly, but Jap straightened up.  The fire of battle was in his eyes.
+
+"Come inside," he cried valiantly.  "Ellis is gone, but the office is
+here.  Come on, Bill.  We have great things to do."
+
+All night long the two boys labored.  After the story was in type, they
+printed it on the Washington press.  It was Bill's suggestion that
+brought forth a can of vermilion, to lend color to the heart story.
+Wat was in and out all night, but there was no "in and out" for the
+boys.  At daybreak they flung the last handbill upon the stack of bills
+and sank exhausted upon them.  Wat carried a mail pouch full of them to
+the stage that started on its daily trip to Faber, at seven o'clock,
+and the pathetic story saved the day for Legislator Harlow.
+
+"Boys, I will never forget it," he declared.
+
+Ellis saw one of the badly spelled, ink-smeared agonies on Saturday
+evening, and took the next stage for home, wrathful enough to thrash
+both boys.  They had adorned the bill with the cut that Ellis had had
+made for Johnson, the tombstone cutter, a weeping angel drooping its
+long wings over a stately head-stone.  A rooster and two prancing
+stallions at the bottom presaged victory for the vilified Wat.
+
+It was midnight when Ellis slammed the door open.  The two boys were
+asleep in the midst of the litter of torn, ink-gaumed and otherwise
+spoiled copies of that hideous handbill.  The last pull on the lever of
+the press had let it fly back too quickly, and it had flapped its
+handle loose and lay wrecked on the floor.  The office had the
+appearance of a battleground.  The ink was blood, and the press and
+scattered type, casualties.  He stirred the boys with an angry kick.
+Jap sat up and peered through the ink over his eyes at his angry
+employer.
+
+"We fixed him solid," he declared jubilantly.  "There can't nothing
+beat Wat now.  We opened the eyes of the county."
+
+"You surely did," groaned Ellis.  "When the Press Association add to
+their Hall of Fame, they will shroud me in the folds of that dad-blamed
+bit of art!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Jap came running into the office, early in January, his freckled face
+aglow, his red hair standing wildly erect.
+
+"Golly Haggins!" he exploded, "I got a letter from Wat.  He's up at the
+Legislator and he writes--he writes this!"  He fairly lunged the letter
+at Ellis.
+
+Ellis read, scowling:
+
+
+"My dear young Friend,--
+
+"I am at the Halls of Justice and I want to fill my promise to reward
+you for the noble deed you done.  There is a chance for a bright boy as
+page, and I have spoke for it for my noble boy.  Come at once.  Time
+and tide won't wait, and there is thirty other boys camped on the trail,
+
+"Respectfully your Friend,
+  "WAT HARLOW."
+
+
+"Whoopee!" yelled Bill, jumping from his stool and turning a handspring
+across the office.
+
+"Reckon I'd better ask Flossy to fix my things--get my clothes out?"
+asked Jap, beaming radiantly over the big barrel stove.  He started
+toward the door.
+
+"Stop!" said Ellis, in a voice Jap had never heard.  "You are not
+going."
+
+"Not going?" echoed both boys hollowly.
+
+"No!" almost shouted Ellis, his brown eyes flashing.  "I might have
+expected this from that wooden-headed son of a lost art.  Do you think
+that you are going to leave my office to lick the boots of that loafing
+gang of pie-biters?  Not in a thousand years!  I am going to put a tuck
+in that idea right now.  And while I'm talking about it, you may as
+well know that Flossy is getting ready to teach you how to 'read and
+write and 'rithmetic,' as Bill says.  And as for you, Bill, Flossy says
+that if your father hasn't enough pride to do the right thing by you,
+she'll give you an education, along with Jap.  You begin your lessons
+to-morrow evening.
+
+"Jap, write to that reformed auctioneer and thank him for his favor.
+Tell him that you belong to the ancient and honorable order of
+printers.  When he runs for governor, you will boom him.  Till then,
+nothing doing in the 'Halls of Justice.'"
+
+Jap sulked all day, but he wrote the letter whose contents might have
+changed his career, and the following evening he and Bill began the
+schooling that Flossy had planned.  It was a full winter for the boys,
+the most important of their lives.  Even when spring came, with its
+yawns and its drowsy fever, they begged that the lessons continue.
+Already the effect was beginning to show in the galley proof.
+
+One morning in July, Jap had held down the office alone.  Flossy was
+not well, and Ellis spent as much time with her as possible.  Bill
+blustered in, a look of disgust in his brown eyes.
+
+"Ain't nothin' doin' in town, 'cept at Summers's," he exploded,
+luxuriating in the kind of speech that was tabooed in the presence of
+his elders.  "Only ad I could scare up was at Summers's, and Ellis
+don't want that."
+
+Jap looked from the door, beyond the little village park and the hotel,
+to where the dingy white face of the saloon stared impudently upon the
+town.
+
+"I never see one of them places without scringin'," he said slowly.
+"My pappy almost lived in one.  When we were cold, he was warm.  When
+Ma and us children were hungry, the saloon fed him, because--because he
+could be so amusing and entertaining when he was half drunk.  Ma said
+that my pappy's folks were quality, but they didn't have any time for
+him.
+
+"I used to creep around to the side winder to see what kind of a drunk
+he had.  If it was a mean one, I'd run home and sneak Aggie out and
+hide.  He had a spite agin us two, and when he had a mean drunk he used
+to beat us.  He was skeered to fetch Fanny Maud.  She had the
+wild-cattest temper you ever saw.  He tried to pull her out of bed by
+her hair one night, and she jumped on him and scratched his face like a
+map.  Ma had to drag her off, and if he hadn't run, Fanny would 'a' got
+him again.  After that he would brag what a fine girl she was.  One
+night Aggie and me hid in a straw stack all night."
+
+Bill looked sorrowfully upon his friend.
+
+"I thought I was the most forsakenest boy in the world," he said.  "But
+my father never beat me, and he never touches no kind of licker.  He
+just don't like me around.  You know my mother died when I was born,
+and somehow he seems to blame it on me.  I don't know how to figger it,
+for he married in a year, and when that one died it didn't take him no
+time to start lookin' out again.  He hardly ever speaks to me, 'cept to
+cuss me or tell me what a nuisance I am.  Allus makes me feel like a
+cabbage worm."
+
+"Cabbage worm?" queried Jap.
+
+"Yes, they turn green when they eat, and I feel like I am green, every
+bite I take.  He looks at me so mean, like he thought I hadn't any
+right to eat.  That's why I eat at Flossy's, every time she asks me.
+The only nice thing my pappy ever done for me was to put me in here
+with Ellis.  Jap," he broke off suddenly, "I'm durn glad you licked me,
+that day.  But your hair _was_ red!"
+
+Ellis had come quietly in at the rear door and had listened, half
+consciously, to the sacred confession.  His face saddened for a moment.
+Then he squared his shoulders and his dark eyes flashed.
+
+"I am going to make men of those boys yet," he promised himself.  "Who
+knows----"
+
+He interrupted the spasm of painful speculation, the dark foreboding
+that had for days hovered over him.  The heat of summer and his anxiety
+over Flossy were beginning to tell on his nerves.  He tiptoed softly
+out of the back door, across the weed-grown yard and out through the
+alley gate.  A moment later he came in at the front door, whistling
+blithely.
+
+The summer was intensely hot.  As the dog-days waxed, Ellis grew ever
+more and more morose.  His sharp bursts of temper were made tolerable
+only by the swift justice of the amend.  Late in September he came down
+to the office one morning, pale and shaken.  The boys had been sticking
+type for an hour when his sudden entrance startled them.
+
+"Flossy is very sick," he said with lips that quivered, "and I will
+have to trust you boys."
+
+Jap followed him to the door.  His face was downcast.
+
+"Is it true, Ellis?  Bill said that Flossy would--would----"  He
+gulped.  He could not finish.  Ellis turned suddenly and sat down at
+the table and buried his face in the pile of exchanges.  His body shook
+with the effort to suppress his emotion.  Bill slipped down from his
+stool and the two awkward, ungainly youths looked at each other in
+embarrassed sorrow.  Finally Jap laid an inky hand on Ellis's shoulder.
+
+"Tell her--tell her," he stuttered, "that Bill and me are--are
+a--prayin'."
+
+Ellis gave a mighty sob and rushed away, bare-headed.
+
+The two apprentices sat at their cases, the tears wetting the type in
+their sticks.  The long day dragged by.  Neither of them remembered
+noon, but plodded stolidly and silently through the clippings on their
+copy hooks.
+
+It was growing dusk when a great commotion arose.  It seemed to come
+from the corner near Blanke's drug store.  It gathered force as it
+neared Granger's bank, Now it had reached the mouth of the alley that
+separated the bank from the _Herald_ office.  There was cheering and
+laughter.  Jap's face hardened.  He slung one leg to the floor.  How
+dared any one cheer or laugh, when Flossy lay dying?
+
+In another instant Ellis burst into the room.  His dark locks were
+rumpled, his eyes wild and bright.
+
+"Get out all the roosters--and the stallions, too!" he shouted.  "Open
+a can of vermilion and, in long pica, double-lead it: 'It is a boy!'"
+
+Jap let the other leg fall and dragged himself around.  His mouth had
+fallen loose on its hinges.  He sat down on the floor and gaped
+foolishly at Ellis.
+
+"She's feeling fine," babbled Ellis, "and you and Bill are coming in
+the morning to see the boy."  He rushed out again.
+
+Jap looked at Billy glued to the stool, holding in one paralyzed hand
+the inverted stick.
+
+"Gee!" said Jap.
+
+In the morning they tiptoed into Flossy's room.  Very pale and weak was
+the energetic little woman who had taken the moulding of their
+destinies into her hands.  She smiled gently and, as mothers have done
+since time was, she tenderly drew back the covers from a tiny black
+head and motioned for the two to look.
+
+"Our boy," she said, smiling radiantly.  "I am going to name him Jasper
+William, and I want you to make him very proud of the men he was named
+for."
+
+The hot tears sprang to Jap's eyes and fell upon the little red face.
+The wee mite, perhaps prompted by an angel whisper from the land from
+whence he came, threw aloft one wrinkled hand and touched him on the
+cheek.  Sobbing stormily, Jap hid his face in the covers as he knelt
+beside the bed.  Then he took the little fingers in his.
+
+"If God lets me live, Flossy, I will make him proud of me."
+
+He choked and dashed outside to join Bill, who was snubbing
+[Transcriber's note: "snubbing" is what's in the source book.  Perhaps
+the author meant "snuffling" or "sobbing".] audibly on the back steps.
+After a muffled silence he said, his eyes growing suddenly bright:
+
+"Bill, did you notice what Flossy said?  She said the 'men' that he was
+named after.  Bill, we've got to quit kiddin' and begin to grow up."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Time passed, after the easy-going manner of Bloomtown.  Jap was
+sixteen, long, ungainly and stooped from bending over the case.  Bill,
+a little older in months, but possessed of immortal youth, was stocky
+and rather good looking.  Four years of daily intercourse had wrought a
+subtle change in their relations, four years of the stern and the sweet
+that Ellis and Flossy Hinton had brought, for the first time, into
+their lives.
+
+Bill was at the table, the exchanges pushed back in a disorderly heap,
+as he surreptitiously figured a tough problem in bookkeeping that
+Flossy had given him.  Jap, with furtive air, bolted the history lesson
+that ought to have been learned the day before.  Ellis, his back to the
+one big window in the office, scowled over the proofs he was rattling.
+From time to time he peppered the air with remarks that fell like bird
+shot on the tough oblivion of his two assistants.  At length
+forbearance gave way under the strain, and he said, in cold and
+measured tones:
+
+"When you are unable to decipher the idea I am trying to convey, I wish
+that you would take me into your confidence."
+
+Bill looked up, a grin on his round, shining face, a grin that was
+fixed to immobility by the fierceness of Ellis's glance.
+
+"I note that you have injected much native humor into perfectly
+legitimate prose," the stern voice continued.  He read:
+
+"'Jim Blanke has a splendid assortment of Sundays.'  Now please
+explain.  You are causing the good folks of this town unnecessary
+worry.  My copy reads, 'sundries.'"
+
+"Jap done it," vouchsafed Bill.
+
+"Who done this?" Ellis stressed the verbal blunder witheringly, as he
+pointed his pencil at the next item.  It read:
+
+"Ross Hawkins soled twenty-five yearling calves."
+
+"It looked that way," argued Jap.
+
+"A devil of a couple you are," declared Ellis wrathfully.  "Can't
+either of you reason?  Did you ever hear of any one soling a yearling
+calf?  Ross Hawkins is an auctioneer, not a shoemaker."
+
+The boys looked sheepishly at each other.  Suddenly Bill flung himself
+on his stomach and howled in glee.
+
+"Lordee!  What if that had 'a' got in the paper!" he gasped.
+
+"There would be two fine, large, lazy boys out of a job," Ellis said
+severely.
+
+He threw aside the copy and lifted the type.  Jap followed the movement
+with anxious eye.  Another explosion hung, tense and imminent, in the
+air.
+
+"Have you washed that type yet, Bill?" he asked, eager to placate Ellis.
+
+It was the custom for the boy nearest the door to disappear when the
+time for washing a form was at hand.
+
+"It was your job," protested Bill.  "You promised to wash Wat Harlow's
+speech if I cleaned Kelly Joneses stock bill."
+
+Ellis sat down wearily.
+
+"Oh, we're agoing to do it all, this evening," cried Bill, defiantly.
+"You promised that we could clean out that box of cuts.  You promised a
+long time ago."
+
+"Go to it," said Ellis, his voice relaxing, and the two boys bolted
+into the back room.  A little later he joined them.  Jap and Bill sat
+on the floor, blowing the dust from a lot of dirty old woodcuts.
+
+"I bought them with the job," he said, turning the pile over with his
+foot.  He sat down on the emptied box and watched them as they examined
+the cuts.
+
+"What is this?" asked Jap, peering at the largest block in the lot.
+
+"That is a cut of the town, as it was when I came here," said Ellis, a
+shadow of reminiscence crossing his face, as he took the block in his
+long fingers.
+
+Bill drew himself to his knees and looked at the maze of lines and
+depressions curiously.  The picture was as strange to him as it was to
+Jap.  Ellis continued:
+
+"There were three business houses here, besides the blacksmith shop and
+the saloon.  Here they are.  Ezra Bowers, Bill's grandfather, with the
+help of his three sons, ran a general store where they sold everything
+from castor oil to mowing machines.  Phineas Blome--an unmistakable son
+of old Jerusalem--sold clothing and more castor oil and mowing
+machines.  There wasn't such a thing as a butcher shop in Bloomtown.
+When the natives wanted fresh meat, they ordered it brought out on the
+hack.  In other parts of the world, that institution is sometimes
+called a stage; but here I learned that its right name is 'hack.'  The
+southern terminus of the Bloomtown, Barton and Faber hack-line, that
+has done its best for thirty years to prevent us from being entirely
+marooned, was over there at the south side of Blome's Park, exactly as
+it is to-day.  The hotel didn't have a bit more paint, the first night
+I slept in it, than it has now."
+
+"Flossy said that weathered shingles were fashionable," Bill grinned,
+taking up another cut.  "Here's the Public Square--you call it Blome's
+Park, but I never heard anybody else call it that," he added, his voice
+lifting in a note of query.  "That's the Square, all right, and the
+Town Hall, with 'leven horses hitched in front of it."
+
+"Yes, when old man Blome laid out his farm in town lots, he reserved
+his woods pasture for a city park.  You never heard of an orthodox town
+that didn't begin with a Public Square, and that little rocky glade
+with the wet-weather spring had the only trees within ten miles of
+here.  It wasn't fit for farming, so Blome argued that nobody would buy
+it with a view to raising garden truck.  But your foxy Uncle Blome
+didn't sacrifice anything by his generosity to the town that was about
+to be born.  He reserved the lots facing the park on three sides, and
+held them at an exorbitant figure--as much as five dollars a front
+foot, I should say.
+
+"The lots at the north and east were to be sold for high-class
+residences only.  Those at the west were reserved for business houses.
+Behold the embryo Main street!  Overlooking the park at the south was
+Blome's farm house, since metamorphosed into a tavern and barns for the
+stage horses.  The last of the Blomes shook the dust of Bloomtown from
+his feet when Carter bought his interest in the hack line.  Bill's
+grandfather had a farm adjoining Blome's land at the west; but Ezra
+Bowers, merchant prince and attorney-at-law," he said whimsically, "had
+to have a residence in the fashionable quarter, fronting the park.  A
+little patch of the old farm is quite good enough for Mr. and Mrs.
+Ellis Hinton and their two sons, Jap and Jasper William."
+
+Jap caught Ellis's hand, a lump arising in his throat.  Bill relieved
+the momentary tension by turning over another cut.  A familiar face
+looked out at him from the grime of years.  Ellis glanced at it and
+smiled.
+
+"It is a great thing, Jap, the birth of a town.  Bloomtown was really
+never born.  The stork dropped her when he was traveling for a friendly
+haven.  For ten years she lay, just as she fell, without visible signs
+of life.  About twenty families existed, somehow.  They had pigs,
+chickens and garden truck, and to all intents they would go on existing
+till the last trump.
+
+"One day I went out into the country to attend a sale.  Boys, I was
+never so well pleased with a day's work as I was with that day's jaunt.
+I heard the most masterly bit of eloquence that ever came from the lips
+of an auctioneer.  The man had the crowd hypnotized.  He even sold me
+an accordion, a thing I was born to hate.  The fact that it was
+wind-broken and rattly never occurred to me until I woke up, after he
+had done.  Then I went to him and said:
+
+"'You an auctioneer!  You should be in the Halls of Justice, telling
+the people how to interpret their laws.'
+
+"The idea struck him.  He came into town with me and we talked the
+matter over.  He was easily the best known and most liked man in the
+county.  It was then that the political bug stung our good friend, Wat
+Harlow.  Wat moved his family to town and soon he had a decent
+habitation.  He stimulated a rain of paint and a hail of shingle nails.
+He prodded the older inhabitants to an era of wooden pavements and
+stone crossings.  Bill's grandfather objected, because he said it cut
+down the sale of rubber hip-boots; but Wat's eloquence was the key to
+fit anything that tried to lock the wheels of progress.  He did more
+than that.  He brought Jim Blanke from Leesburg to start a decent drug
+store.
+
+"After that he robbed Barton of Tom Granger, and together they started
+the first bank of Bloomtown.  Granger's wife and baby, with Wat's wife,
+were the civilization.  Mrs. Granger was almost an invalid, even then,
+but she gathered the women together and formed an aid society.  She
+begged and cajoled Bowers out of enough money to build a little church
+on the lot that Blome had donated.  I joined the church, for the moral
+example.  I don't remember what denomination it was supposed to be.  We
+had services once a month; but Mrs. Granger was the real power in the
+town.  She introduced boiled shirts and neckties.  Tom bought the big
+patch of ground, north of the park, and set out those elm trees before
+his foundation was in.  Then Jim Blanke got Otto Kraus to come here and
+start a private school.  Otto played the little cabinet organ in
+church, and taught all the children music, after school hours.  Thus
+was Bloomtown born.  Wat Harlow made the blood circulate in her
+moribund veins."
+
+Jap looked into Ellis's face, his freckled cheeks glowing.
+
+"That's not what Wat Harlow said," he declared breathlessly.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Ellis sharply.
+
+"Why--why," gulped Jap, "he said that Bloomtown was dead as a herring,
+and too no-account to be buried, till Ellis Hinton came and jerked her
+out of the mud and started her to breathe."
+
+Ellis got up and dusted his trousers.
+
+"As I said before, Wat was an eloquent auctioneer.  Talk is his trade,
+and he keeps in practice.  Dilute his enthusiasm one-half, Jap.  And
+now, get to work, washing up."
+
+As he left the office he encountered a group of tittering girls, in
+front of the bank.  They scattered when they perceived that Ellis and
+not Bill had come forth.  Bill was the lion of the town.  Already the
+girls had begun to come after papa's paper, on publishing day, which
+upset the machinery of the office, never too dependable.
+
+One Thursday when the air was full of snow, the little office
+registered its capacity crowd.  Ellis was at home with a heavy cold,
+and Jap and Bill were getting out the paper.  The ink congealed on the
+rollers and needed constant warming to lubricate the items reposing on
+the bosom of the Washington press.  This warming was Bill's job, and
+Jap was exasperated to fighting pitch by the dilatory method of Bill's
+peregrinations around the circle of rosy-faced girls, hanging
+admiringly on his efforts.
+
+"Chase those girls out," he growled.  "No use for them to hang around.
+We won't get this paper out in a week if they stick around after you."
+
+"Old Crabby!" sniffed one of the girls.  "You're just mad because
+nobody wants to hang after you."
+
+"Jap is particular," chaffed Bill, half apologetically.  Since they had
+assumed the responsibility for the right uplift of Flossy's boy, there
+had been growing a new, shy pride in themselves.  "Better wait and come
+back in the morning," he suggested.
+
+The girls filed slowly out.  As they passed the table, where Jap was
+piling the papers to fold, Isabel Granger, doubtless inspired by the
+demon of mischief, leaned forward suddenly and kissed him full on the
+mouth.  Then she fled, shrieking with glee.  Jap stood as if stricken
+to stone.  Bill looked at him in fright.  There was no color in his
+freckled face.  His gray eyes were staring, as if some wonderful vision
+had blasted his sight.
+
+"Gee, Jap," said Bill uneasily, "are you sick?"
+
+Jap aroused himself and turned toward the press.
+
+"No," he said slowly, "but I don't like for folks to be familiar like
+that.  If I wanted to be a fool like you----"  He stopped and stared a
+moment from the window.
+
+"The next time she kisses me," he said shortly, "she will mean it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+What a wonderful thing is a baby!  Babies were not new to either Bill
+or Jap.  In Bill's memory lingered the shrill duet of his twin
+half-sisters, a continuous performance that had lasted more than a
+year.  And Jap had never fully corrected a lurch to the left side, due
+to carrying his sister, Agnesia, when he was little more than a baby
+himself.  Yet the little visitor from the Land of Yesterday was a never
+failing miracle to them.  His cry filled them with fear for his
+well-being, and his laugh intoxicated them with its glee.
+
+"Wait till he can talk," smiled Flossy, "Then you will see how wise he
+is."
+
+In her heart she was beginning to combat the fear that he would never
+talk.  Other children of his age were already chattering like magpies.
+
+"Ma said that I said 'papa' when I was eight months old," declared Jap.
+"But I don't know why I should 'a' said that."
+
+Bill grinned fatuously as the baby pulled at his hair.
+
+"Bill won't get his hair cut," said Jap.  "He knows that J. W. would
+hang after me, if it wasn't for his curly hair."
+
+The little fellow, who for obvious reasons could be neither Jasper nor
+William, had learned to respond with amiable toleration to the soothing
+abbreviation, "J. W."  Kicking his stubby legs gleefully, he tangled
+his fingers more mercilessly in Bill's brown locks.  Flossy loosed the
+fingers gently, as she cooed:
+
+"Naughty, naughty!  Mamma said baby mustn't."
+
+Flinging his fingers aloft in protest, he gurgled: "Ja--Bi!"
+
+Flossy's eyes shone with sudden joy.  It was her son's first attempt at
+articulate speech.  The boys lunged forward with one impulse.
+
+"He said 'Jappie,'" Jap cried, his chest swelling with the importance
+of it.  Bill glared.
+
+"Why, Jap!"  Pain and indignation were in his tone.  "He tried to say
+'Bill.'"
+
+Flossy smiled on them both.  It was a wonderful little kingdom, of
+which she had assumed the place of absolute monarch, a monarch so
+gentle and so just that her sway was never questioned.
+
+"Ellis puts in half his time trying to teach baby to say the two names
+all in one mouthful, so that you boys won't fight about his first
+word," she vouchsafed.  "It would have to be either Jap or Bill,
+because you never tell him anything but your names."
+
+When they waved their caps in farewell, they were still discussing the
+mooted question vehemently.  Was it "Jappie," or a combination of Jap
+and Bill?  To both of them the question was vital.  Jap had the better
+of the argument, when Bill blurted:
+
+"Anyhow, he's my cousin, and he ain't no relation of yours."  Then he
+remembered that significant remark of Ellis's: "A little patch of the
+old farm is quite good enough for Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Hinton and their
+two sons, Jap and Jasper William," and he was silent the rest of the
+way back to the office.
+
+Little J. W. was three years old before he could speak distinctly.  The
+child was born with other afflictions than the serious impediment to
+his speech, and the four who hung with anguished love on his every
+gesture were never free from a certain unnamed anxiety.  He loved Bill,
+but he worshipped Jap.  Both were his willing slaves.
+
+One rainy, dismal night in early fall, when Bill's step-mother lay
+seriously ill, Flossy left her baby to the care of the small but
+usually capable maid who assisted her with the work of the cottage,
+while she and Ellis went to the home of Judge Bowers to relieve the
+trained nurse who had come up from the city.  At the supper table,
+Ellis had remarked that Jap and Bill would be working late that night,
+in order to get out a job that had come in when all the resources of
+the office were needed for the weekly edition of the _Herald_.  He had
+added that he would go over and help them, if his presence could be
+spared from the sick-room.
+
+The remark must have lodged in the baby's mind, for he slipped out of
+bed, while the maid was employed in the kitchen, and toddled through
+the cold rain almost all the way to Main street.  Jim Blanke found him
+lying exhausted in the road, a little way from the drug store, the rain
+beating pitilessly on his unconscious head and his scantily clad body.
+
+After a night of anxious care, the little fellow relapsed into a state
+of coma, and lay for hours, white and still, save for the rasping of
+his breath.  The office was closed.  Both boys, frantic with fear,
+stood with Ellis as the child lay in his mother's arms, the four
+dreading that each hoarse breath would be his last.  Flossy sat erect
+in the wide rocking chair, her brave eyes watching every sigh that tore
+the little bosom.  Dr. Hall, whose dictum was life and death, was
+silent.  And this silence was the last straw for Jap.  He crept nearer.
+In fear, he turned from the face of the beloved sufferer.  Ellis caught
+the look in the boy's anguished eyes, and a spasm crossed his tightly
+compressed lips.  The physician rallied himself from the torpor of
+despair that had laid hold on him.
+
+"Try to arouse him," he commanded.  "Try again."  The resources of his
+experience and his prescription blank had long since been exhausted.
+
+Flossy bent over her child and called softly:
+
+"Baby, dearest, mamma loves you.  Won't you speak?"
+
+Ellis leaned forward.  His face blanched.  The rasping had ceased!  Jap
+caught the look of horror, and dragged himself up to look into the
+baby's face.
+
+"He isn't dead!  He's all right!" he shrieked, not knowing that he
+spoke.  "He's still breathing.  I can hear him."  His hands grasped the
+cold body and lifted it, unconscious of the thing he was doing.
+
+"Oh, J. W.!  Oh, J. W.!" he screamed, "don't go away from us!"
+
+He pressed the child to his breast convulsively, and the miracle
+happened.  The solemn black eyes opened and a husky voice said,
+"Jappie."
+
+After the excitement was over, and the exhausted mother slept beside
+her sleeping child.  Bill said humbly:
+
+"He did say 'Jap' first."
+
+"But he tried to say 'Bill,' too," Jap said loyally.
+
+The next morning, when the office had resumed its normal routine, a
+routine that was destined to be only partially interrupted by the death
+of Bill's second stepmother, a few days later, Ellis called Jap into
+the little back room where, in the dismal days before Flossy's coming,
+they had performed all the functions of housekeeping.  He closed the
+door, as he laid his hand on Jap's shoulders.
+
+"You saved J. W.'s life," he said solemnly.  "Doc Hall said that you
+stopped him, on the threshold, when you gave that dreadful cry."
+
+The baby did not rally, and Ellis worried about this incessantly.  One
+day, some weeks after another mound had been added to the group in
+Judge Bowers's family lot, and Bill had gone with his father to
+appraise the merits of a prospective housekeeper from Birdtown, Ellis
+looked up from the proof he was correcting.  Jap noted the anxiety in
+his face, and the gray eyes, that could so often render speech
+unnecessary, put the question.  Ellis sighed.
+
+"He's not getting along the way he ought to," he mused.  "Doc Hall
+prescribed a tonic for him a month ago; but it doesn't seem to take
+hold.  He has no constitution to begin with.  His father, exhausted by
+privation and ill-health, has handicapped him in the start.
+
+"Jap," he said, as he arose and laid one arm confidingly around the
+boy's shoulder, "you must remember that, in the years to come.  I
+didn't give the baby a fair chance.  He may need all the help he can
+get to carry him through.  If you should live longer than I, you must
+be his father and big brother, both."
+
+Jap's gray eyes opened in astonishment.  The idea that there could ever
+be a time when Ellis would not be there had never entered his mind.  He
+looked into the dark, thin face with its pallor and its unnaturally
+bright eyes, and a joyous smile took the place of the momentary shock.
+
+"Doc Hall said that you had grit enough to outlive any disease that
+ever lurked in the brush of Bloomtown," he declared eagerly.
+
+"Doc Hall is an optimist," Ellis laughed hollowly.  "I'm not so much
+concerned for myself as for the boy and his mother.  You know what J.
+W. means to her."
+
+"Bill and I have already talked it over," Jap returned.  "We're going
+to be big brothers to J. W.  We're going to take turns at taking him
+for long rides on Judge Bowers's old horse, Jeremiah.  Doc Hall said
+that long, jolty rides would set him up, rosy and fat, in a little
+while.  Bill told me this morning that he had J. W. weighed again, on
+Hollins's scales, and he has gained three pounds."
+
+Ellis Hinton's face cleared.  There was a new elasticity in his step as
+he crossed the room and laid the copy down on the case.  Unconsciously
+he began to whistle, as he clicked the type in the stick.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Flossy came into the office, leading the boy by the hand, and called
+Ellis aside.  Old Jeremiah had done wonders for the little fellow; but
+on Flossy Hinton's face there was a look that boded ill to some one.
+
+"I sent for Brother William to meet me here," she said crisply.  "I
+want you to back up all that I say."
+
+Before Ellis had breathed twice, she was out looking up the street, and
+in less time than you could think it out, she was back, towing the
+Judge, who puffed explosively.  Ellis and the three boys had retreated
+to the rear office.
+
+"There is not a bit of use to argue, William," she said, her lips in a
+hard, straight line.  "Ellis has done more than any one else in town
+could do.  When I heard that you had subscribed five thousand dollars
+to the new church, I concluded that your charity was a little far
+fetched.  Now I want you to subscribe five thousand dollars to the
+institution that is making a man of your son.  I want five thousand
+dollars for the printing office.  It is too small, and the press is out
+of date.  We need all that goes into an up-to-date printing office."
+
+Her brother looked upon her tolerantly.
+
+"Keep it up, Floss.  It never fazed you to ask favors, and you ain't
+run down yet."
+
+"It's a shame," she stormed.  "Just look at this little shed!  Why,
+even a cross-road blacksmith shop is better."
+
+He looked around appraisingly.
+
+"I reckon it'll house all Ellis's business," he commented.
+
+"Ellis," she flashed, "tell William about the railroad."
+
+Ellis came from the inside office.  He generally withdrew from the
+conferences between Flossy and her brother.
+
+"Wat Harlow told me that two of the big railroad systems have entered
+into a joint arrangement to shorten their mileage, on through trains to
+the West.  He's got it all fixed for the new track to pass through
+Bloomtown.  It will give us all the benefit of two railroads."
+
+"You see," said Flossy triumphantly, "the town will boom.  People will
+move in, and a first-class newspaper will be the greatest asset."
+
+"I think that the town will take a big start," assured Ellis.  "The
+boys will have all they can do with job work, and the office is small
+for our present needs."
+
+"Pap, you should watch us carving letters when we get short,"
+interposed Bill.  "Last week Jap had to carve three A's for Allen's
+handbill.  There are only three of 'em in that case, and Allen wanted
+to use six.  His name is Pawhattan Abram Allen, and he wanted the whole
+blamed thing spelled out in caps.  I told Jap it was lucky Allen's
+folks didn't name him Aaron, on top of all the rest."
+
+"That's good practice for you boys," the Judge snorted.  "I'm mighty
+glad you learned something for all the money I spent on you."  He
+glanced at his sister witheringly; but Flossy had her eyes fixed on her
+husband.
+
+"I wish," Ellis stirred himself to say, "that the town would boom
+enough to take all these frame shacks off of Main street, so that the
+place wouldn't look like a settlement of campers."
+
+"A good fire would help," commented Bill boldly.
+
+Judge Bowers looked over his glasses at his son.
+
+"Well, when the railroad comes, and the rest of the shacks are moved
+out, I will write you a check for five thousand dollars," he snorted,
+turning his rotund form out of the door.
+
+Flossy picked up the boy and flounced out, in speechless indignation.
+By argument and cajolery she had succeeded in getting six months apiece
+for Bill and Jap at the School of Journalism, and at twenty the boys
+were far more expert than Ellis was when he began the publication of
+the _Herald_.  She had set her heart on the new printing office, and
+her eyes were abrim with tears as she stumbled home.
+
+The week wore on until printing day.  It was a day of unimagined
+exasperations.  Everything went wrong.  Ellis's usually smooth temper
+bent under the stormy comments of the boys, and in the late afternoon
+he developed a violent headache and went home.  Things continued to
+pile up until it was evident that the boys would have to print the
+paper after dark.
+
+It was ten o'clock when they finished.  Jap followed Bill to the
+pavement, pausing to lock the door and slip the key in his pocket.  The
+town was asleep.  Not a soul was to be seen on Main street.  Bill, who
+usually took the short cut across the Public Square to his fathers
+house, turned with Jap and walked along Main street to the farther end
+of the block.  At Blanke's drug store, he turned into Spring street.
+He was saying, in a tone of mixed penitence and anxiety:
+
+"I wish we hadn't riled Ellis so, to-day.  I don't like those headaches
+he's having so often, and the way his face gets red every afternoon.
+If he ever sneaked out and took a drink--But I know he never does."
+
+"Oh, Ellis is all right, now that little J. W. is getting strong," Jap
+insisted.
+
+They had gone some distance in the direction of Flossy's cottage, when
+Bill looked across an expanse of vacant lots to where a dim light
+burned in the loft of Bolton's barn.
+
+"They're running a poker game," said Bill wisely.
+
+Almost before the words were gone, a wild shriek rent the air.  A flash
+of light from the barn loft, a scrambling of feet, and a succession of
+dark objects catapulted the ooze of the barnyard, and it was all
+ablaze.  A stiff breeze was blowing from the southwest.  Bill ran to
+the mill to set the fire whistle, and Jap scrambled through a window of
+the Methodist church and began to fling the chimes abroad, so that he
+who slept might know that there was a fire in town.  There had been no
+rain for weeks, and the frame structures were ripe for burning.
+
+In less than half an hour the row of stores on Main street, in the
+block below the _Herald_ office, began to smoke.  From Hollins's
+grocery store a brand was carried by the wind and lodged among the dry
+shingles of Summers's saloon.  The excitement was augmented, a few
+minutes later, by a series of pyrotechnic explosions.  Bucket brigades
+were formed, the firemen mostly in undress uniform.
+
+Jap and Bill were in their glory.  Jap was mounted on top of the Town
+Hall, directing operations.  Right down the row rushed the flames,
+eating up the town.  As if in parting salutation, the fiery monster
+leaped across a vacant lot, thick set with dried weeds, and clutched
+with heat-red claws at the _Herald_ office.
+
+"This way, men!" yelled Jap.  "You have to get the press and enough
+type out to tell about the fire."
+
+Ellis was staring hopelessly at the flame that was licking at the rear
+of the office.  The water was exhausted from the town well, and there
+was no hope of saving the plant.  But youth is omniscient, and the
+townsmen followed the wildly yelling apprentices and hastened to
+demolish the office and drag away the debris, some of it already
+blazing.  From the salvage rescued from Price's hardware store, and
+heaped in a disorderly pile in the Public Square, Jap handed out the
+latest thing in fire fighting apparatus.  The flimsy structure, that
+had been Ellis Hinton's stronghold for almost twenty years, gave way to
+an assault with axes, and the contents, pretty well scattered, were
+left standing.  It was nothing that Granger and Harlow's bank went down
+with little left to show its location save the fire-proof vault, and
+that only a shift in the wind prevented the flames from crossing to the
+fashionable residence section east of Main street.
+
+In the morning the _Herald_ force began business in the ruins of its
+time-worn shelter, and set up gory accounts of the fire, on brown
+manila paper with vermilion and black ink.  A crowd assembled to watch
+the exciting spectacle.
+
+"What's the use of a railroad now?" bleated Judge Bowers.  "There ain't
+no town to run it through."
+
+"Why ain't there?" asked Jap sharply.
+
+"Why, all the folks are talking of pulling up stakes and moving to
+Barton."
+
+"Well, if that is the kind of backbone they have been backing this town
+with," snapped the youth, his red hair standing erect, "you help them
+move, and the _Herald_ will show them up for quitters--and fill the
+town with real men."
+
+And being full of wrath, he proceeded to incorporate this thought in
+the half column he was setting up.  The paper was eagerly snapped up by
+the crowd.
+
+"Who wrote this?" fairly howled Tom Granger.  "I want to hold his grimy
+hand and help him shout for a bigger and better town."
+
+Ellis shoved Jap forward.
+
+"Here is the fire-eater," he announced.  Jap flushed through the dirt
+on his face.
+
+"It's true," he said, half shyly.  "There's no good in a quitter.  The
+best thing is to smoke them out and get live men to take their places."
+
+"Bravely said," shouted Granger.  "The bank will rebuild with brick.
+Who else builds on Main street?"
+
+Before the end of the following week the town was humming with
+industry.  Every hack brought its contingent of insurance adjusters,
+and merchants elbowed contractors in the little telegraph office, in
+endeavors to get supplies.  On Thursday a curious crowd stood watching
+Ellis and the boys run the blistered but still faithful Washington
+press in the boiling sun.
+
+"Goin' to get winter after a while, Jap," shouted one of the
+bystanders.  "You'll have to wear ear muffs to get out your paper."
+
+Jap grinned and swung the lever around methodically.
+
+"What are you going to do, Ellis?" asked the honorable member from the
+"Halls of Justice," who had hurried to his little home town in her hour
+of trouble.  "There ain't a vacant shack in town.  It seems a darned
+shame that you'll have to give up, after starving with the town till it
+gets its toes set in gravel at last.  Now that the railroad is running
+this way like a scared wolf, the town needs a paper worse than ever."
+
+"Who said they was going to quit?" demanded Judge Bowers pugnaciously.
+"They ain't!  Ellis is goin' to have a two-story brick, with a printin'
+press that runs itself.  This here town ain't no quitter."  He glared
+fiercely at Harlow.
+
+Jap lingered with Ellis until the last of the day's work was finished.
+As he started for home he came upon an animated group, in the shade of
+the half-burned drug store.  Behind a pile of wreckage, Bill was
+holding court.  Jap stopped short.  Bill was telling a lurid tale of
+superhuman strength and dare-devil bravery, of which Jap Herron was the
+hero, a tale that grew with every telling.  A wave of embarrassment
+swept over Jap.  As he turned hastily away, he felt a soft clutch on
+his arm.  He looked back.  Two sparkling black eyes were looking up
+into his.
+
+"I think that you are the bravest boy in the world," whispered Isabel
+Granger, "and--and I am glad I kissed you that time."
+
+Jap stared at her, stunned by a new emotion.  In another moment she was
+gone, flying across the street in the direction of her home.
+
+"Anybody but Jap would 'a took her up on that," insinuated Bill, who
+had heard Isabel's last words.
+
+Jap turned a murderous look upon him.  The crowd of girls tittered as
+they dispersed.  When supper was over Jap returned to the spot, and
+long after dark he sat upon the pile of wreckage, thinking long, long
+thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The scraping of saw, the clang of hammer and the smell of fresh paint
+classed Bloomtown as "Boomtown."  The railroad had already peered into
+the northern environs of the town, cutting diagonally across Main
+street, some half-dozen blocks from the plot of ground that had been
+rechristened Court House Square.  A substantial municipal building took
+the place of the dingy old Town Hall, and the barns of the now almost
+defunct Bloomtown, Barton and Faber hack line had been cleared away to
+make room for a decent hotel.  In the angle between the railroad tracks
+and Main street a small temporary station sheltered travelers.  The
+half-moribund village had burst its swaddling bands and begun to
+expand.  Everybody was wearing grins as a radiant garment.
+
+As the summer traveled toward July, the headaches that had been so
+frequent the past winter merged into a feeling of utter exhaustion, and
+Ellis came down to the office but few days of each week.  Flossy
+stopped Jap at the gate one noon hour.
+
+"Ellis has something to tell you, Jappie, and I want you to be very
+composed.  Don't let yourself go."  Her voice was full of pleading.
+She turned quickly as Ellis appeared in the doorway.  He walked out to
+meet them.
+
+"Let us sit out under the trellis while Flossy finishes fixing dinner,"
+he said, leading the way.  "Jap, your birthday comes to-morrow, and I
+am going to ask you to accept a sacred trust that is a burden.  You are
+twenty-one and, as they say, 'your own man.'  I want to ask you to be
+_my man_.  Jap, I am going away, how far God only knows.  The doctor
+says that my lungs are all wrong, and life in the mountains may save
+me.  My boy--for you have been my boy since you walked through my door,
+nine years ago--I want you to take charge of the office, and shoulder
+the support of Flossy and the little one if--if----"  He caught the
+horror-stricken boy's hand.  "Jap, I will never come back.  I know it.
+I have talked with my soul and it is well.  Will you do it, Jap?"
+
+Jap pressed Ellis's feverish hand between his strong young palms.  He
+could not speak.  His eyes were dry and his lips twitched.
+
+"There," cautioned Ellis, "no heavy face before Flossy.  God bless her!
+she thinks that I will be well before the new office is done, and is
+making more splendid plans for the big opening!  She is----  Jap, you
+dunce, grin about something!"
+
+Flossy and the boy came dancing down the sun-flecked path and Jap swung
+the slender little fellow to his shoulder and began a mock race from
+Ellis.
+
+As soon as dinner was over, a dinner that stuck in his throat for
+hours, he told Flossy that two men were rushing Bill to desperation for
+their handbills.  He hurried out by way of the alley.  Flossy ran after
+him.  "You forgot your hat, Jap," she cried breathlessly.  He took the
+hat and started off silently.
+
+"Wait a minute, Jap."  Her voice was insistent.  "You didn't put on a
+grave face with Ellis, did you?  Oh, Jap"--the cry was from her
+heart--"he will never live to see the new office!  He will never know
+of the realization of his dreams, the big town, the trains whirling
+through, and he looking down from his lofty window with a smile of
+superior joy.  Oh, Jap, how often have we heard him tell about it!  He
+doesn't know.  He is full of hope.  Only just before you came he was
+joking about the Star Spangled Banner he was going to wind around his
+brow when he dedicated the _Herald_ office.  Jap, be true to his faith,
+for he will never open the door of that office.  He will never help to
+get out the first paper."
+
+She strangled and turned away.  Then in brisk tones she added:
+
+"Now, Jap, hurry along.  Here comes Ellis to scold."  And in the
+marvelous manner that is God-given to loving women, she forced a smile
+to her lips as she gave the youth a playful shove and ran to meet her
+husband.
+
+A few days later they left.  The town took a holiday, and with laughter
+and merrymaking it celebrated Ellis Hinton's first vacation.  A water
+tank was in process of construction, at the upper end of a half-mile
+stretch of double track, and at the lower end of the siding, close to
+Main street, the imposing brick railroad station stood in potential
+grandeur, its bricks still separated by straw and its ample foundation
+giving promise of stability as it reposed in sacks of cement and piles
+of crushed stone.  Something of this was incorporated in Ellis's
+farewell speech as he addressed his townspeople.  When the train began
+to move his black head was still visible, as he returned quip for joke.
+And Flossy was flitting from her lifelong friends as if no trouble
+clouded her brow.
+
+Little J. W. was the feature of the going, and under the pretense of
+caring for his wants, their sleeper compartment had been piled with
+fruit and flowers by loving friends who had gone on to the nearest town
+to meet the train, so that the surprise should be the more complete.
+Then, to the sound of the village band, Ellis left what he had always
+called "my town."  Jap did not go to the station, and when Bill found
+the door of their improvised office locked, he turned silently away.
+His heart was full, too.
+
+The Widow Raymond had offered them a room for a printing office.  The
+press occupied the room.  Jap and Bill set the type in the woodshed and
+carried the galleys in.  During the nine years of their association
+Bill had been the unsteady member of the team, consuming more effort in
+devising ways and means of escaping work than the work would have cost,
+and toiling with feverish penitence when he realized that he had
+wrought a hardship to Jap or Ellis.  But now, inspired by the dimpled
+face of Rosy Raymond, he worked as he had never worked in his life.
+Odd things began to happen.  Bill insisted on doing all the
+proof-reading, a task he had hitherto detested.  A bit of verse
+occasionally crept into the columns of the _Herald_.  Jap did not
+detect this verse for several weeks.  When he did, he descended upon
+Bill.
+
+"Where in Heck did you filch that doggerel?"
+
+"Who said it was doggerel?" demanded Bill.
+
+"Lord love you," cried Jap, "what could any sane being call it?  What
+did you get for publishing it--advertising rates?"
+
+"You're a fool!" snapped Bill.  "You think that you're a criterion.  I
+will have you know that lots of folks have complimented it."
+
+Jap took up the offending sheet.
+
+"'Thine eyes are blue, thine lips are red, thine locks are gold,'" he
+groaned.  He looked at Bill.  Just then the door opened and Rosy
+stepped into the room.  A great light shone on Jap's understanding.
+Her eyes were blue, her lips certainly red, and a fervid imagination
+could call her hair gold.  He sighed pathetically.
+
+"Bill, don't you think you could write it out and relieve the pressure
+on your heart, without endangering our prestige?"
+
+Bill kicked at the mongrel dog that had its habitat under the press,
+and marched out indignantly.
+
+"I'll be glad if I get him out of here single," mused Jap.  "He has
+these spells as regular as the seasons change.  Heretofore his
+prospects have never entitled him to consideration.  This time it may
+be different."
+
+Bill had been systematically chased from every front gate in town,
+behind which rosy-cheeked girls abode; but the disquieting conviction
+swooped down upon Jap that Barkis, in the shape of the Widow Raymond,
+might be more than "willin'" to hitch Bill to her sixteen-year-old
+daughter.  And if Bill had not contracted a new variety of measles at
+the most opportune time, Jap's forebodings might have been realized.
+Bill had the "catching" habit.  No contagion in town ever escaped him,
+and this time he was so ill that he had to go to the country to
+recuperate.
+
+The new stores opened, one by one, with much celebration.  Owing to
+several unaccountable financial complications, the last of all the
+important buildings on Main street to be finished was the _Herald_
+office.  A cylinder press, second-handed, to be sure, but none the less
+an object of admiration, was installed, and fonts of clean, new type
+stood ready for work.  There was a great, sunny front office on the
+main floor, and the ample space behind it had been divided into
+composing room, press room and private office.  On the second floor was
+a small job press, and here, at Jap's suggestion, the old Washington
+press was stored.  The rooms were decorated with flags, and bunting was
+strung across the front of the office.  Judge Bowers had personally
+attended to this.
+
+"You're going to have a dandy paper," Tom Granger beamed, as he
+accompanied Jap on the final tour of inspection.  "We'll all have to
+stop business to watch this cylinder press spill out the news."
+
+Wat Harlow had run down from the Capital to congratulate the staff.  At
+his suggestion the merchants had ordered flowers from the city, and
+great vases of roses and carnations, and decorative pieces in symbolic
+design, stood around in fragrant profusion.  Every room of the office
+was filled with them.
+
+The forms were ready for the printing of that first paper, and only
+awaited the conclusion of Wat's speech, to be placed upon the press, so
+that Bloomtown should receive the salutatory _Herald_.  Jap turned to
+the assemblage, waiting in eager curiosity to see the cylinder revolve.
+
+"The paper will be printed on Ellis's press," he said briefly.  "I
+don't want to be ungrateful for your kindness, but will you leave Bill
+and me alone to get out our first edition?"
+
+They filed out slowly, awed by the grief in the voice of Ellis's boy.
+
+With the old types, on the old Washington hand press, they printed the
+first _Herald_ of the new régime.  With the exception of the greeting
+on the front page, every word was reprinted from the predictions
+written by Ellis in the years agone, and the greeting, in long pica on
+the first page, was his telegram to them and his townsmen received that
+morning.
+
+When the last paper was printed by the two sad-faced boys on their day
+of jubilee, and the pile had been folded and carried downstairs, Jap
+closed the press upon the inky type, and gathered the great bunches of
+fragrant blossoms and heaped them upon the press, to be forever silent.
+With a groan of anguish, he threw himself against them.  Bill slipped
+his arm through Jap's, and together they celebrated the day that was
+Ellis's.  And in the night the telegram came:
+
+"At rest.  FLOSSY."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+When Ellis went away it was to the sound of jollity.  He came back to a
+town shrouded in mourning.  Every store was closed, and symbols of
+grief adorned most of them.  Wat Harlow, with a delicacy Ellis would
+scarcely have expected of him, had ordered purple ribbon and white
+flowers to tie with the crape.  Silent and grief-stricken, the town
+stood waiting the arrival of the train.  When it came, the coffin was
+lifted by loving hands and carried the ten long blocks to the church.
+No cold hearse rattled his precious body, but, even as the body of
+Robert Louis Stevenson was held by human touch until the last office
+was done, so was Ellis Hinton, the country printer, carried to his last
+repose by the hands of his friends.
+
+Not until Jap looked for a long, anguished moment upon the
+flower-massed grave did he realize that he was alone, that he was
+drifting, that he had no anchor.  Something of this he expressed to
+Flossy, between dry sobs, when they had left Ellis alone in the
+secluded little cemetery.  Her eyes burned with a strange, maternal
+light as she comforted the boy whose grief was of the fibre of her own.
+
+"Ellis knew that you would feel that way," she said gently, "and
+because of that, he made a will that is to be read to-night.  Wat
+Harlow has it.  Until it is read, I want you not to trouble."
+
+That evening, with all the important men of the town assembled in the
+big front room of the _Herald_ office, Wat Harlow read brokenly the
+last "reading notice" of Bloomtown's sleeping hero.  It was written in
+the familiar scrawl that everybody knew, with scarcely a waver in its
+lines to tell that a dying hand had penned it:
+
+
+"I am going a long journey, but not so far that I cannot vision your
+growth.  It was the labor of love to plan for this time.  In the
+gracious wisdom of God it was not intended that I should enjoy it with
+you; but as Moses looked into his promised land, so through the eyes of
+the _Herald_ I have seen mine.  And God, in His wonderful way, has sent
+you another optimist to do the royal work of upbuilding a town.
+
+"My town, my people, I leave to you the greatest gift I have to offer.
+I give you my boy, Jap.  He is worthy.  Hold up his hands, in memory of
+
+"ELLIS HINTON."
+
+
+As Harlow folded the paper, with hands that trembled, he was not
+conscious of the fact that hot tears were streaming down his cheeks.
+There was an instant of tense silence.  Then Tom Granger walked over to
+the boy who lay, face downward across the table, arms outspread in
+abandon of grief.  He took one limp hand in his, and a voiceless
+message went from heart to heart.  Jap aroused himself.  One by one the
+men of Bloomtown filed by.  No word was spoken, but each man pledged
+himself to Ellis Hinton as he took the hand of Ellis's boy in a firm
+clasp.  When the others had gone, Wat Harlow remained.
+
+For a moment he stood silent beside the table.  Then with a cry of
+utter heartbreak, he sank to his knees and permitted the bereaved boy
+to give vent to his long-repressed agony in a saving flood of tears.
+When they left the office together, there had been welded a friendship
+that was stronger than years of any other understanding could have
+given.
+
+Flossy went back to the cottage, and, like the brave helpmeet of such a
+man as Ellis Hinton must have been, did not sadden the days with her
+grief.  Sometimes, in the little arbor, with J. W. playing at her feet,
+she sang softly over her sewing:
+
+  "Beautiful isle of Somewhere,
+    Isle of the true, where we live anew,
+  Beautiful isle of Somewhere."
+
+
+It was her advice that caused the boys to fit up a bedroom and
+living-room on the second floor of the office.  It was her idea that
+separated Bill from the unsteady air of his home.  The Judge, heeding
+the scriptural injunction implied in the immortal words of Moses, "It
+is not good that man should be alone," had taken unto himself a fourth
+wife, and Bill had so many rows with his latest stepmother that there
+was no opposition to the change.  Tom Granger observed that it had been
+so many matrimonial moons since Bill had a mother that he did not know
+whether he had any real kinfolks at all.  It was certain that he knew
+little of the real meaning of the word "home."  Flossy boarded them,
+and her cottage was their haven of refuge during many a long evening.
+It was sad comfort, and yet it was the surest comfort, to have her live
+over again those last days in the mountains, when Ellis's thoughts
+bridged space and visualized the rebuilding of Bloomtown.
+
+Perhaps Flossy sensed the fact that these evenings were bone and sinew
+to Jap's manhood.  The boy, never careless, was changing to a man of
+purpose, such as would be the product of Ellis Hinton's training.  The
+stray, born of the union of purposeless, useless Jacky Herron, and
+Mary, peevish and fretful, changeable and inconstant, had been born
+again into the likeness of the man who bad been almost a demigod to him.
+
+The town was growing, as Ellis had prophesied, and was creeping in
+three directions across the prairie.  It incorporated and began to
+settle into regular lines.  Spring street showed but few gaps in the
+line of cottages that ran almost all the way from the rear of Blanke's
+drug store to Flossy's home, and another line of modest cottages looked
+at them from the other side of the street.  A new and fashionable
+residence place was laid out, in the extreme south end of town, as far
+from the grime and soot of the railroad as possible; but the
+substantial old families still clung to their ancestral halls in the
+vicinity of Court House Square.
+
+One day in early spring Bill burst into the office, his reporter's pad
+flapping wildly.  His brown eyes danced.
+
+"Big doings!" he shouted.  "Pap's going to run for mayor, and he wants
+the _Herald_ to voice the cry of the town for his services."
+
+"Who said so?" queried Jap, sticking away at the last legislative
+report.
+
+"Nobody but him--as far as I can find out," Bill returned, grinning
+knowingly.  "It seems that they had a mess of turnip greens, from
+cellar sprouts, and they gave him cramps.  He was dozing under
+paregoric when the idea hit him.  It grew like the turnip sprouts, fast
+but pale.  He wants us to water the sprouts and give 'em air, so that
+they'll get color in them."
+
+"How much did he send in for the color?" asked Jap, climbing down
+interestedly.
+
+The Associate Editor flashed a two-dollar bill.
+
+"I told Pap that if any opposition sprouted, he'd have to raise the
+ante," he remarked.  "He squealed loud enough when I squeezed him for
+this, but I convinced him that we had about done away with charity
+practice.  Told him the _Herald_ was out of the amateur class, and
+after this election the ante 'd be five bones."
+
+"Well," conceded Jap, "as he is Flossy's brother, we'll have to spread
+it on thick for the low price of introduction.  Look up that woodcut of
+Sames, the Chautauqua lecturer.  If you'll chisel off the beard, we can
+use it for the Judge.  I think that we will kill that story you cribbed
+from the St. Louis _Republic_, about the President's morning canter
+with his family physician, and run the Judge along the first column.
+By the way, Bill, it would be a good idea to trace his career from
+joyous boyhood to the dignity of the judicial office.  What judge was
+he?  Since I have known him, he has never 'worked at the bench.'"
+
+Bill grinned wickedly.
+
+"He was judge of live stock at the county fair!"
+
+"Fallen is Caesar!" Jap exploded.  "What can we say about him?"
+
+"Nothin' for certain, as Kelly Jones says," Bill lamented.
+
+"I never tried fiction," Jap averred, "but for the honor of the first
+aspirant to the office of Mayor of Bloomtown, and the greater glory of
+our Associate Editor, I am going to plunge."
+
+And plunge he did.  When the town read the eulogium that Jap spread
+upon the front page of the _Herald_ it gasped as from a sudden cold
+plunge, sat up, rubbed its eyes, and concluded that it had somehow
+failed to understand or appreciate its foremost son.  Hollins, the
+leading grocer, and Bolton, the furniture dealer, had felt the itch for
+office; and Marquis, the attorney, had stood in his doorway for a week
+awaiting the delegation that would press upon him the nomination; but
+all these aspirants faded like poppies in the wake of the reaper.
+Nobody could be found to buck a sure thing, such as Judge Bowers,
+backed by the power of the press.
+
+The week after election, the _Herald_ sported fifty small flags through
+its columns, and quoted Wat Harlow's speech in which he declared that
+Judge William Hiram Bowers was "the noblest Roman of them all."  For
+which Bill accounted to Jap by the astute observation that Rome was a
+long way off.  The Judge hardly caught Wat's meaning, and came into the
+office to protest.
+
+"I am afeard that folks 'll think we have Catholic blood in the
+family," he complained, shaking the paper nervously.
+
+"Mystery is the blood of progress, Pap," assured Bill gravely.  "If you
+will notice, the men that get there always have a skeleton rattling a
+limb now and then."
+
+"Mis' Bowers don't like it," he objected.  "I had to quit the
+Methodists and be immersed in the Baptists afore she'd have me, and now
+she's fairly tearin' up the wind over this talk about me bein' a Roman.
+You gotta correct it!"
+
+"We have given you a hundred dollars' worth of advertising for a measly
+two-dollar bill," declared Jap emphatically.  "The columns of the
+_Herald_ are free to news.  Advertising at our regular rates.  Bill
+will give you particulars."
+
+"Dollar an inch for display," crisped Bill; "ten cents a line for
+readers."  He seated himself, pencil in band, as he added, "payable in
+advance."
+
+"Make a flat rate of ten dollars, as it is the Judge," advised Jap
+judicially.
+
+The Mayor-elect decided to let it alone; but Jap mentioned the fact, in
+the next issue of the _Herald_, that Judge Bowers had alleged that he
+was born in New England, of Puritan stock, and had no Italian
+sympathies--which lucid statement abundantly satisfied Judge and Mrs.
+Bowers, but set the town to wondering what the Judge was hiding in the
+dim annals of his past.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"I worked a bunch of passes out of the agent for that Indian medicine
+show," announced Bill, washing his hands.  "Want to take her, Jap?" and
+he jerked his head in the direction of the front door, where Isabel
+Granger was passing.
+
+"No; I'm going out to Flossy's a while.  I want to talk some things
+over with her."
+
+There was no further discussion, for at that moment Rosy Raymond
+floated by, and Bill started out in eager pursuit.  Ever since the
+election, Jap had been obsessed by a disquieting foreboding.  One of
+Mayor Bowers's first official acts was to authorize the opening of a
+second saloon on Main street, and he was rapidly pushing the work of
+erecting two new business houses which, rumor declared, were to house
+other thirst palaces.  Hitherto the natives and the surrounding
+territory had been amply supplied by Holmes; but Bloomtown was growing
+beyond the reach of one saloon.
+
+Holmes had come across with a double-sized license, under promise of
+the Mayor that he should continue to have a monopoly of the trade.  And
+when the good people of the various churches waited upon Judge Bowers
+to protest against what they were disposed to call the "introduction of
+Satan into their town," he called their attention to the need for
+municipal revenue.  If one saloon was a help, two saloons would double
+that help.  The town had already begun to show signs of genuine
+progress.  It had to build a calaboose to take care of the saloon's
+patrons, and the regular fines for plain drunks almost paid the cost of
+the court that collected them.
+
+Once Jap thought he detected a sinister reason for Bill's flushed
+cheeks and unsteady gait as he passed hastily through the office on his
+way to the sleeping room above.  The next morning Bill declared that he
+had been a fool, and had paid for his folly with a severe headache, and
+Jap, with the delicacy that was Jap's, let the subject drop.  It was
+becoming fashionable for the young fellows of the town to assume a
+tough swagger.  Those who had formerly resorted to barn lofts and musty
+cellars paraded their sophistication on Main street, and Bill would
+rather be dead than out of style.  Jap wanted to talk it over with
+Flossy, but he had never found the key to open such poignant
+confidence.  What right had he to burden Flossy with fresh anxiety?  In
+his loneliness, he yearned for Ellis as he had never yearned before.
+
+He was sitting on the little front porch, tossing J. W. on the tough
+old trotting horse afforded by his two ill-padded knees, and vaguely
+wondering how he could introduce the subject of Bloomtown's swift
+decay, without wounding Judge Bowers's sister and Bill's aunt, when
+they heard a great tumult in the vicinity of the medicine show.  After
+a while Bill came up the walk with Rosy.
+
+"What was the racket about?" Jap asked incuriously.
+
+Rosy giggled.
+
+"They wanted to nominate the ugliest man in town, and there was a
+fight," she said.
+
+"Shut up!" growled Bill.  "Haven't you got any sense?"
+
+"Sam Waldron nominated Jap," she sputtered, between giggles.
+
+A hot flush swept over Jap.  Always keenly sensitive, he had never
+armored himself against the playful brutalities of his friends.  The
+shame of being made a subject of ridicule cut deeply.
+
+"Rosy is a fool!" snapped Bill.
+
+"What was the fuss about?" asked Flossy, prompted by a conviction that
+further revelation would be good for Jap.
+
+"Why, Isabel Granger slapped his face, and Bill jumped in and punched
+him in the ribs, and the crowd wanted to take him down to the pond and
+duck him."
+
+Flossy's hand sought Jap's, and she laughed softly.
+
+"That was worth while, boy.  How Ellis would have written it up!"
+
+Jap smiled, but the sting was still there.  When it was evident that
+Bill and Rosy expected to spend the evening, he arose with a tired,
+"Well, I'll be going," and walked around the cottage to the alley gate.
+He was afraid of meeting some one on Spring street, and he made excuse
+to his own consciousness that the alley had always been the rational
+highway between the cottage and the office.  He put his hand in his
+pocket for his key, as he emerged on Main street.
+
+As he approached the door, he saw that some one was sitting on the
+steps.  She sprang up and laid trembling hands on his arm.
+
+"Oh, Jap, you won't mind!  You won't let it hurt you?  Everybody knows
+that you are the best-looking man in town.  At least I--think so!"
+
+Before he could grasp her arm, the girl was gone.  That night Jap lay
+awake long hours, thinking, thinking.  With the morning, reason
+returned.  He had assumed responsibility for Flossy and the boy.  He
+must not think again.
+
+And indeed the next few days gave him little time for thought.  Wat
+Harlow slipped into the office late one afternoon.  He wore a furtive
+look and an appearance of guilt.  There was about him a suggestion of
+gum shoes.  Something must be amiss.
+
+"I want to see you alone, Jap," he confessed.
+
+Jap led the way to the little private office.  Harlow was pulling
+nervously at the stubby mustache that hid his short upper lip.
+
+"In trouble, Wat?" asked Jap anxiously.
+
+"No--not exactly.  You see, it's this way----"  He coughed
+apologetically.  "The wife had a dream, a funny dream, the other night.
+She's had curious dreams ever since we took that long trip, to New York
+and all over, last year, and there may be nothing to it, but----"  He
+lit a fresh cigar, and went at it again.  "She says that she saw me
+going into the Capitol at Washington just as if I belonged there.  And
+she got a notion----  Jap, you know how notionate women are.  She
+thinks--well, she thinks that I might be called to run for the House of
+Representatives."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Jap, illuminated.  "It would sound good for the
+_Herald_ to mention that you are in line?"
+
+"Not rough-like, Jap!  Just a little tickle in the ribs, to see what
+they'd say."
+
+"Oh, I'll fix that," declared Jap, laughing.  And the _Herald_ flung
+the hat in the ring for "Harlow, the one honest man."
+
+Jap smiled sadly as he read his copy over.  He had a habit of wondering
+what Ellis would have said.  He wondered, too, what attitude the editor
+of the Barton _Standard_ would take.  The _Standard_ had recently
+changed hands, and since Bloomtown had pulled a saloon, a sunbonnet
+factory and two business houses out of Barton, a rapid-fire editorial
+war had been in progress.  By some curious dispensation of Providence,
+Jones of the _Standard_ and Herron of the _Herald_ had never met.  Jap
+was not hunting trouble, but the same spirit that prompted him to
+thrash his tormentors, the day of his advent in Ellis Hinton's town,
+caused him to wield a fire-tipped pen against the _Standard_.
+
+That opposition to Wat's candidacy would develop, before the
+nomination, was to be expected; but opposition on the part of the
+Barton _Standard_ would be a purely personal matter, the _Standard_
+having its own party fights to foster.  But that was all Jap feared.
+
+It was even worse than he could have imagined, for Jones dug up a
+bloody ghost to walk at every political meeting.  Not only were all Wat
+Harlow's sins of omission and commission paraded in the _Standard_, but
+he was proclaimed as the implacable foe of higher education.  In vain
+did his home paper print his record, of beneficent bills introduced, of
+committee work on behalf of the district schools, and his great speech
+setting forth the need of a new normal school building.  Jones had one
+trump card left in his hand, and the day before the convention he
+played it.  It was a handbill, yellow with age and ragged around the
+edges, but still showing a badly spelled, abominably punctuated story
+in vermilion ink, with a weeping angel at the top and a rooster and two
+prancing stallions at the bottom.  It proved Wat Harlow the undying foe
+of the State University.
+
+Despite all the _Herald's_ valiant work, that nightmare was Harlow's
+undoing.  The nomination went to a rising politician at the opposite
+side of the congressional district.  A great change had come over the
+sentiment, of the state, since the day when the University had been the
+favorite tool of the political grafters.  Every village had its band of
+rooters for the Alma Mater, and when the nominating convention came to
+a close it was apparent that Wat Harlow was hardly an "also ran."
+
+Defeat was galling enough; but the _Standard's_ expressions of glee
+were unbearable.  Jap's red hair stood on end, "like quills upon the
+fretful porcupine," as he stood at his case and threw the type into the
+stick, hot from the wrath in his soul.  The paper was printed, as
+usual, on Thursday; but Friday brought a change in the even tenor of
+Bloomtown's way.  Jones, of the _Standard_, was a passenger on the
+eastbound train that left Barton a little after noon.  His destination
+was Bloomtown.
+
+"I am looking for a cross-eyed, slit-eared pup by the name of Herron,"
+was the greeting he flung into the _Herald's_ sanctum.  The door to the
+composing room was open.  Jap looked up wearily.
+
+"Would you mind sitting down and keeping quiet till I finish setting up
+this address to the bag of wind that edits the Barton _Standard_?" he
+said impersonally.
+
+Jones, of the _Standard_, sat down and gaped at the long, lank figure
+on the stool.  A moment he went limp and terrified; then he rallied his
+courage.
+
+"Do you unwind all at once?" he asked, as Jap disentangled his legs
+from the stool.  "I take back what I said about a pup.  You're a
+full-grown dog, all right.  I wasn't looking for a brick-top, either.
+No wonder you have a weakness for vermilion."
+
+"Better come outside of town," Jap interrupted.  "I've been intending
+to go over to Barton to have a look at you, but it's better thus.  I
+have been stealing space from my readers long enough.  They pay for
+more important things than my private opinion of you.  I made up my
+mind to stop the argument by giving you a hell of a licking, and I've
+only waited because I didn't care to risk my reputation in a
+neighboring town.  Here it will be different.  In the midst of my
+friends, I hope to fix you so that you'll never try to throw filth on
+any one again."
+
+Jones arose hastily.
+
+"I want no row," he said uneasily.  "I just want an understanding."
+
+"You have the right idea," cried Jap.  "You are going to get lots of
+understanding before you leave Bloomtown."
+
+At that moment the town marshal strolled in, wearing his star pinned on
+his blue flannel shirt.
+
+"I demand protection," Jones shouted.  "This man has threatened me."
+
+"What's the row, Jap?" asked the monitor of peace tolerantly.
+
+"This is Mr. Wilfred Jones, of the Barton _Standard_," was all that Jap
+said.  But the effect was electrical.  The man of peace was transformed
+into an engine of vengeance.
+
+"Going to beat him up?" he yelled.  "Go to it, and I'm here, if you
+need help."
+
+Jap took off his coat, deliberately.  He unclasped his cuffs and was in
+the act of unbuttoning his collar, when the local freight whistled for
+the crossing below town.  With a mighty leap the man from Barton
+cleared the space between his chair and the door.  The strolling
+populace of Main street was scattered like leaves before a sudden gust
+of wind.  There was an abortive cry of "Stop, thief!" and a bewildered
+pursuit by several tipsy bums who had been loafing in front of
+Bingham's saloon, but the appearance of the marshal, wearing a broad
+grin of satisfaction, dispelled apprehension.
+
+"That was Jones, travelin' light," he explained.
+
+The next issue of the _Standard_ failed to mention the editorial visit
+to Bloomtown; but the scurrilous articles ceased and there was quiet
+again.
+
+"Did Ellis ever have a fight--that kind of a fight--with anybody?" Jap
+asked Flossy, when Bill had finished his second-hand recital of the
+show that "he wouldn't have missed for his farm in Texas."  In Bill's
+heart there arose a mighty resentment against Rosy Raymond, who had
+enticed him from the office just before Jones arrived.
+
+"Ellis did a good deal of fighting before he got me to fight his
+battles for him," she said, a whimsical smile in her gentle eyes.  "You
+ought to know, Jap.  I never would have had Ellis if he hadn't whipped
+Brother William."
+
+"But that wasn't a matter of personal grudge," Jap argued.  It had
+seemed to him that somehow he had degraded himself when he went down to
+Jones's ethical level.  "I wanted to use my fists because Jones
+ridiculed me.  When Ellis licked the Judge, it wasn't a personal
+matter.  He did it for me."
+
+"And you did this for--for the honor of Bloomtown," cried Bill, with
+enthusiasm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"Something's broke loose," announced Bill, slamming the door violently.
+"Pap's bought an automobile."  Which illuminative remark indicated that
+Judge Bowers's mind had expanded to let in a fresh vagary.
+
+Jap looked up inquiringly.
+
+"I reckon it's all on account of Billy Wamkiss," Bill explained.
+
+"Billy who?  There never was no such animal," and Jap scowled at the
+stick in his hand.  Conditions in Bloomtown were, as Jim Blanke
+expressed it, all to the bad.  While the political fight was at white
+heat the Mayor had contrived to have his own way.  He was going to
+"make the town" which Ellis Hinton had failed to make.  There would be
+revenue enough to provide metropolitan improvements, and already there
+was a metropolitan, perhaps even a Monte Carlo-tan, air to the recently
+awakened village, as every train disgorged its Saturday evening crowd
+of gamblers from the city where the lid had gone on with ruthless
+completeness.
+
+Mrs. Granger had arisen from a sick-bed to call together the women of
+all the churches to make protest at the licensing of another pool-room,
+with bar and poker attachment, not two blocks from her home, a stroke
+that had met its counter stroke when the saloon element threatened to
+boycott Granger's bank and open a rival financial institution in one of
+the store-rooms of the recently erected hotel that faced the Court
+House Square, half a block away.  Another crowd, the men with
+store-rooms and cottages to rent, promised to carry all their banking
+business to Barton, if Granger didn't "sit on his wife good and proper."
+
+"Never was no such animal?" Bill repeated.  "Wake up, Jap.  Don't you
+know who Billy Wamkiss is?"
+
+"Never heard of the guy," Jap insisted.
+
+"He's that greasy, wall-eyed temperance lecturer that's been stringing
+the town for a week."
+
+"Humph!" Jap snorted.  "Time for you to wake up, Bill.  You brought in
+the ad yourself, and you wrote the account of the first lecture.  The
+columns of the _Herald_ will bear me out that the reverend gentleman's
+name is Silas Parsons."
+
+"Yes, that's his reverend name," Bill snorted.  "When he's the advance
+agent of a rotgut whiskey house over in Kentucky that supplies fancy
+packages to all the dry territory around here, he's plain Billy
+Wamkiss."
+
+"Oh, that's his game!"  Jap sat up, his gray eyes wide with
+astonishment.  "How did you get next to it?"
+
+"Your good friend, Wilfred Jones, put me wise.  He didn't mean to, but
+he let it slip out when he wasn't watching.  I ran into him over in
+Barton this morning and he was roasting Bloomtown as usual.  Said we
+were a bunch of Rubes, to fall for a raw proposition like Billy
+Wamkiss, dressed up as a temperance lecturer.  And then he went on to
+say that my daddy would get richer'n he already is, from his rake-off
+on the moisture that'll be injected into the town after she goes dry.
+He said he met Wamkiss in Chicago three years ago, and he's been doing
+a rattling business all over the country--deliver lectures on the evils
+of the Demon Rum that'd bring tears to the eyes of a potato; dry up the
+territory, with the help of the churches; and then fill up the town
+with drug stores.  That's his program, and it's going to work here,
+thanks to my amiable and honorable father."
+
+Jap was silent.  He had no words with which to express his emotions.
+Bill went out on the street, his reporter's pad under his arm.  In half
+an hour he returned.
+
+"It's worse--I mean more incriminating--than I thought, Jap," he said,
+as he drew his partner into the private office and shut the door.
+
+"Did you attend that meeting at the Baptist Church?" Jap asked
+anxiously.
+
+"Yes, and I had to dig out before it was over.  I wanted to explode,
+and blow up the whole bunch of idiots and crooks.  Pap and Wamkiss,
+alias Parsons, have formed some kind of a Templar lodge, and my daddy's
+got himself elected secretary.  They're going to dry up Bloomtown.
+Fancy it!  They did a lot of crooked work over at the Court House, so
+as to make it look as if all the licenses would expire at the same
+time.  Holmes is the only one that's likely to squeal, because he's
+paid his second fee, and the others have only a few months to run.
+They'll make it up to Holmes, I reckon, rather'n have him give the snap
+away.  Of course, Jap, I haven't got the goods for any of this.  I just
+put two and two together while I was listening to the speeches,
+especially my father's speech."
+
+"Bill"--Jap laid his hand on Bill's arm--"you made the mistake of your
+career when you picked that owl for a daddy.  He has made more trouble
+than three towns could stand up against.  First, he throws the place
+wide open and takes all the stray saloons and gambling dens to his
+bosom; and just when we have a reputation for being the toughest town
+on the road and doing a land-office business in sin, he is--he is fool
+enough to try to pull off a stunt like this.  What becomes of his plea
+for municipal revenue when he turns saloons into drug stores?"
+
+"Well, the lid's going on," Bill returned.  "The preachers and the
+ladies are strong for it, and the right honorable Mayor announced that
+he was the Poo Bah that was going to put up the shutters."
+
+"Better order a granite," Jap muttered, as he returned to the composing
+room.
+
+And his prediction was well founded, for the town had become so used to
+its "morning's morning" that it fairly ravened for the blood of Mayor
+Bowers.  The _Herald_ office became a forum for indignant orators,
+while the Mayor strutted proudly up and down Main street, with the
+black-coated Parsons, feeling that the eyes of the world were glued on
+him.
+
+"Parsons!  Bah!" spluttered Kelly Jones, who had driven four miles with
+his empty jug.  "Ef the town has got any git-up, it'll ride him and
+that old jackass of a mayor on a rail."
+
+"Judge Bowers is the honored father of our Associate Editor," informed
+Jap gravely.
+
+As Bill looked up he thumped the galley he was carrying against the
+case and pied the whole column.  After he had said what he thought
+about the catastrophe, Kelly grinned appreciatively.
+
+"Them's my sentiments, Bill.  Ef you love your pappy, you'd better let
+him go, along of Parsons, 'cause there's goin' to be doings around
+Bloomtown that'll hurt his pride.  Parsons!  They say out our way that
+his right name's Wamkiss."
+
+The turgid tide of popular sentiment caused Mayor Bowers some
+uneasiness; but before anything could happen five new drug stores were
+opened for business and things moved placidly along again.  Barton
+began to refer to "our neighbor, Bumtown," and it was reported that two
+blind tigers prowled in the environs of the railroad station.
+
+"Bill," said Jap one morning, "this won't do.  We'll have to raise hell
+in this town.  This is Ellis's town, and we're not going to let a
+dod-blinged mugwump like your asinine daddy ruin it.  Bill, if you have
+got any speech to make, get ready.  If you can't stand for my program,
+name your price, for the _Herald_ is going to everlastingly lambaste
+William Bowers, Senior."
+
+"Pull the throttle and run 'er wild," Bill retorted, as he ducked down
+behind the press and dragged forth a box from the corner.  "I'm going
+to get out that last lot of cuts that Ellis made," he continued.
+"Kelly Jones knows sense.  If I remember right, Ellis had twenty-five
+cuts of jacks for the stock bill.  We will stick every blamed one of
+'em in next week's issue, and label 'em Mayor Bowers.  He has killed
+the town with his ideas.  What can we do with him but hang him?"
+
+When the _Herald_ appeared the following Thursday afternoon, the town
+quit business to read the war cry of Ellis's boy.  It was a flaming
+sword, hurled at the Board of Aldermen.  Bowers, foaming with wrath,
+stormed into the office.
+
+"You take all that back," he yelled, "or I'll put you out of this here
+building.  I've told you times enough this office belongs to me.  I
+never turned it over to Ellis."
+
+Jap stuck type, deadly calm on the surface of his being.  Bill shifted
+uneasily, his hands clinched, his ruddy face glowing.
+
+"You hear me?" bawled the irate Mayor.
+
+Jap turned to consult his copy.  Before the act could be imagined
+Bowers had struck him over the head with the revolver he dragged from
+his pocket.  Jap fell, crumpling to the floor, the blood spurting
+across the type.  For an instant there was horrified silence.  Then,
+with a howl like that of a wild beast, Bill threw himself upon his
+father.  But for the intervention of Tom Granger, who had followed the
+Mayor because he scented trouble, there would have been a quick finish
+to the pompous career of Bill Bowers's progenitor, for Bill had wrested
+the pistol from his father's hand and was pressing it against the
+temple of the worst scared coward Bloomtown had ever seen.  There was a
+sharp tussle between the broad-shouldered banker and the frenzied
+youth.  Several men rushed in from the street.
+
+"Let me go!" shouted Bill, "for if he's killed Jap he's got to die."
+
+They were carrying Jap out of the composing room, limp and bleeding.
+
+"Let him alone, Bill," Tom counselled wisely.  "Let your father alone,
+for if Jap is dead, we'll lynch him."
+
+Jap was pretty weak when they brought the Mayor's resignation up from
+the calaboose for him to read.  A representative delegation stood
+around his bed.
+
+"Let the Judge out, for Bill's sake," Jap said.
+
+"We'd better keep him locked up for his own sake," declared Tom
+Granger.  "For in Bill's present frame of mind he's likely to make an
+orphan of himself."
+
+Flossy came in from the little sitting-room and leaned over the bed.
+
+"I am going to see Brother William," she said quietly.  "I am going to
+take Brent Roberts with me.  William will give you boys a quitclaim
+bill to this property, for this dastardly deed."
+
+She was an impersonation of righteous wrath as she swept into the jail,
+followed by Bloomtown's leading attorney.  Judge Bowers had said more
+than once that Flossy had a willing tongue, but its full willingness
+was never conceived until she descended upon him that eventful day.
+
+An arrangement, made by Ellis just before his departure, gave the
+contents of the office to the boys, on regular payments to Flossy.  The
+ground on which the new building stood had been deeded to Ellis and
+Flossy on their wedding day; but the building, presumed to be a gift to
+Ellis, had been reclaimed by Bowers; it was held, however, as Bill's
+share in the firm.  As yet no occasion had arisen that demanded the
+settling of the question of ownership.  Whenever the Judge had an
+attack of bile he came into the office to remind Bill and Jap that the
+building was still his.
+
+For one heated hour Flossy detailed the past, present and future of her
+cowering brother.  When she left him he was a wiser, and probably a
+sadder, man, for she had deprived him of his weapon.
+
+There was a big bonfire on the circus grounds, and a celebration in
+Court House Square that night.  The next day there was a great vacuum
+in the City Hall, for the Board of Aldermen resigned unanimously.  A
+special election was called, and before Jap was strong enough to sit at
+his case he had been elected Mayor of Bloomtown.
+
+He looked sadly from the window of his bedroom, after the joyous crowd
+of serenaders that had come to congratulate him.  Bill had followed in
+their wake, to escort Rosy home.  It was late.  The clock in the
+Presbyterian church spire chimed twelve, as he stood alone.  He took
+his hat from the rack and went cautiously downstairs.  On the pavement
+he paused a moment to steady himself.  His head still reeled after any
+unwonted exertion.  Then he walked slowly up Main street, across the
+railroad tracks, and out to the quiet village whose inhabitants slept
+'neath marble and sod.  Standing beside the grave of his first friend,
+he said:
+
+"Ellis, make the town proud of your boy.  Help me to be your right
+hand.  If I can only fulfill your plan, I am willing that no other
+ambition be fulfilled."
+
+A lonely night bird called softly.  The willow branches waved in the
+breeze.  Thick darkness hung over the City of the Dead.  Suddenly the
+moon peered through the clouds, flooding the night with beauty, and Jap
+read from the stone the last message of Ellis:
+
+"I go, but not as one unsatisfied.  In God's plan, my work will live."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"Now that you've got it, Jap," asked Tom Granger, "what are you going
+to do with it?"  Jap looked silently from the door.
+
+"He put in about eight hours of thinking about that himself," Bill
+averred.  "News is that ten saloons are loaded on freight cars, waiting
+word from Jap."
+
+"You'll have to strike a happy medium," suggested Tom.  "I know that
+you are the boy to deliver the goods."
+
+"Ellis wasn't against saloons," commented Bill, "so Jap won't have that
+to chew over.  Ellis wasn't either for or against 'em."
+
+"No," Tom said seriously, "Ellis was dead set against hypocrisy.  He
+hated a liar and a grafter worse than a murderer.  He knew that the way
+to make people want a thing was to tell 'em they couldn't have it."
+
+Jap's face was grave.  A panorama of wretched pictures moved slowly
+before his wandering gaze, pictures that began and ended in Mike's
+place, in the half-forgotten village of Happy Hollow.  He aroused
+himself with a start.
+
+"I'm going to put it up to the new Board to allow as many saloons as
+want to, to come in," he said shortly.
+
+Tom Granger let go a shrill whistle.
+
+"At the license asked," continued Jap calmly.  "The license will be
+three thousand dollars a year, and strict enforcement of all laws.  At
+the first break, the lid will fall."
+
+"Jumping cats!" howled Tom.  "Where will you get the saloon that'll pay
+that?"
+
+Jap smiled wearily.  "I am not hunting a saloon for Bloomtown," he
+said, and turned toward the door in time to bump into Isabel Granger,
+her arms full of bundles.  She blushed and dimpled prettily.
+
+"I am looking for my papa," she cried, pinching Tom's cheek with her
+one free hand.  "I want you to carry these packages for me."
+
+"Run along, pet.  I'm busy."
+
+"You look it," she reproved.  "I simply can't carry all these things.
+My arm is almost broken now, and the dressmaker has to have them."
+
+"Jap will tote them for you," chuckled Tom, watching the blood rush
+over Jap's sensitive face.  To his surprise, Jap took the bundles and
+walked out with Isabel.  He looked after them approvingly.
+
+"Now there goes the likeliest boy in the state," he declared.  "It's
+plumb funny the way he's got of getting right next to your marrow
+bones.  I wish I had a boy like him."
+
+"No great matter," drawled Bill, with tantalizing indefiniteness.
+
+Tom looked up at him quizzically, as he picked absently at the pile of
+exchanges.  Something in the young man's tone piqued him.
+
+"If Jap wasn't so all-fired conscientious," Bill blurted, "you'd have a
+son, in quick order."
+
+"Lord!" exploded Tom.  "Dunderhead that I am!"  He slapped his thigh,
+and a great, joyous laugh set his shoulders to heaving.  "Bill, you're
+a genius for spying out mysteries.  How did you get on to it?"
+
+"Mysteries!" shouted Bill.  "Why, everybody in Bloomtown, including
+Isabel, knows that Jap is fairly sapheaded about her."
+
+"Well, what's hampering him?" inquired Tom.  "Why don't he confide in
+me?"
+
+"Confide your hat!" remarked Bill crisply.  "Isabel will die of old age
+before Jap asks her.  You see, he is such a durn fool that he thinks he
+isn't good enough for her.  When the Lord made Jap Herron He made a
+man, I tell you!"
+
+"Who said He didn't?" stormed Tom.  "I can't know what is in the boy's
+mind, can I?  What do you want me to do, kidnap him and get his
+consent?  Bill, you're a fool.  You needn't tell me that Jap Herron is
+such a mealy-mouth."
+
+"All I know is that he won't ask Isabel," Bill said gloomily.  "I'd
+like to get married myself, but as long as Jap stays single, I stick
+too."  And thinking of Rosy's blue eyes, he sighed heavily.
+
+"It beats me, the way young folks do.  It was different when I went
+courting," Tom muttered, turning to go.
+
+At the door he met Kelly Jones, who had come in to inquire what Jap
+intended to do about the "licker" business.  He was too busy with his
+fall plowing to be running over to Barton for his jug of good cheer,
+and he didn't like the brand he could get at Bingham's drug store, on
+Doc Connor's prescription.  While he was still holding forth, Jap came
+in, with half-a-dozen constituents, all busy with the same problem.
+Bill took up his notebook and wandered out.  At Blanke's drug store he
+met Isabel.  She motioned for him to come back in the store.
+
+"What do you want to know, Iz?" he asked with the familiarity born of
+long years of propinquity.  "Reckon you want to ask what everybody else
+wants to know--when is Jap going to get a saloon?"
+
+"You are too smart, Bill Bowers," she retorted, with annoyance.  She
+had had a subject of more personal nature on the tip of her tongue.  "I
+think that Jap will be able to answer his own questions without any
+help from you."
+
+"It is to be hoped that he will make a better stagger at answering than
+he does at asking," remarked Bill shortly.
+
+"Now, Bill Bowers, just what do you mean?" she demanded, her black eyes
+flashing angrily.
+
+"What's the use?" said Bill, in disgust.  "Rosy says that she's going
+to Kansas this fall, and I just will have to let her go because I can't
+ask her to stay."
+
+"Pity about you," she snapped.  "Thought you said Jap couldn't ask."
+
+"I did," assented Bill, "for if he had gumption enough to get married,
+or even go courting, I might get by.  But as long as he sticks alone
+I'm going to stick, too."
+
+Isabel's face flamed.  She stooped to pick up a hit of paper.
+
+"What do you want to tell me about it for?" she complained.  "My
+goodness, I'm not to blame."
+
+"You are," stormed Bill.  "Jap knows that he is not your equal, and he
+never will marry."
+
+"Who said that Jap Herron was not more than the equal of any man on
+earth?" she blazed.  "If Jap will ask me, I'll marry him to-morrow."
+
+She whirled away in her wrath, and ran into the arms of Jap Herron,
+standing half paralyzed with the wonder of it.  Bill, who had been
+watching the unconscious Jap approaching for several minutes,
+discreetly withdrew.
+
+"Gee!" he said, "but they ought not to be kissing in such a public
+place."
+
+There were a dozen customers in the store, but neither Jap nor Isabel
+knew it.  And it is to the credit of Bloomtown that they all looked the
+other way, as they hurriedly transacted their business and departed.
+Blanke declared afterward that he filled fifteen prescriptions with
+epsom salts in his abstraction, and accidentally cured Doc Horton's
+best paying patient.  Moss, the paper hanger, went out with his rolls
+of paper, and hung the border on the walls, instead of the siding.  The
+mistakes reported were legion; but the town was all courting Isabel
+with Jap, at heart.
+
+Bill rambled into the bank and suggested that Tom go over to Blanke's
+and lead Jap and Isabel out, as Blanke might want to close the store.
+Half an hour later Tom came from the drug store, with an arm locked
+with each of the glowing pair.  Straight across Main street they
+marched, and down the shady walk that flanked the little park until
+they were opposite the front gate of the Granger home.  Then they went
+in to break the news to Isabel's invalid mother.
+
+Flossy heard about it, almost before Jap had awakened to his own joy,
+and he never knew of the hour she spent in passionate grief.  In some
+vague way it seemed to tear open the old wound.  Without knowing why,
+she resented the fact that Isabel's brunette beauty had won Jap.  She
+told herself that it was not a fitting match for him.  Flossy, in her
+maternal soul, had looked to heights undreamed of by the retiring boy.
+She had planned a future for him that would be sadly hampered by
+marriage with a village belle.  But only smiles met him when he brought
+Isabel to her, his plain features glorified by joy in her possession.
+
+Somehow the story of Jap Herron, the youthful Mayor of Bloomtown, his
+advent in its environs, and the story of his romance with the banker's
+daughter, crept into the country press, was carried over into the city
+papers and flung broadcast, so that friend and foe might seek him out.
+One dreary fall day, when the rain was beating sullenly down on the
+sodden leaves, a haggard, dirty woman straggled into the office.
+
+"I'm lookin' for Jasper Herron," she mumbled.  "They told me I'd find
+him in here."
+
+Jap looked at her in horror.  His heart sank.
+
+"I am his poor old mother, that he run away from and left to starve,"
+she said viciously.
+
+And Jap, just on the threshold of his greatest happiness, was turned
+aside by this grizzly, drunken phantom from the past.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Little J. W. crawled out from under Bill's case, his brown eyes wide
+with surprise at this vagrant who called Jap "son."
+
+"Run like sin," counselled Bill, in a whisper, "and bring your mother.
+She will know what to do."
+
+While the boy went to do his bidding, Bill slipped out of the rear door
+of the office and was waiting in front of the bank when Flossy came
+hurrying along.
+
+"Oh, Bill, what has Jap said?" she asked breathlessly.  From J. W.'s
+lisping description--he always lisped when he was excited--she had come
+to fear the worst.
+
+"Nothing," said Bill bluntly.  "He's sitting at his case, sticking type
+as if he was hired by the minute."
+
+"And she--that awful woman?"
+
+"Gee!"  Bill spat the word.  "You don't know anything yet.  Wait till
+you lamp her over."
+
+"That bad, Bill?"
+
+"Worse," muttered Bill.  And when Flossy came inside and looked into
+the little inner office where the woman sprawled, half asleep and
+muttering incoherently, the fumes of liquor and the presence of filth
+all too evident, her stomach rebelled and she retreated swiftly.
+Softly she slipped into the composing room through the wide-open door.
+Timidly she approached Jap and touched his arm.  He looked at her with
+eyes utterly hopeless.
+
+"Oh, Jap, what can I do!"
+
+"You cannot do anything," his voice flat and emotionless.  "No one can.
+Could you take her in?  No!  She is impossible, and yet--she is my
+mother.  Perhaps if I had stayed with her it would have been different,
+so I must make up for it."
+
+Flossy looked into his set face in affright.
+
+"I am going away--with her."  Jap's tones were calm.  "You can see,
+Flossy, that it is the only way.  I cannot be Mayor of Ellis's town
+with such a disgrace to shame me.  I must give up Isabel and--and the
+_Herald_."
+
+Flossy clung to his arm.
+
+"Listen to me, Jap Herron," she cried shrilly.  "You shall not do it!
+You shall not let this horrible old woman drag you down in the dirt."
+
+Jap smiled sadly.
+
+"What could I do, Flossy?  She must be cared for.  She has been all
+over town.  Everybody has seen her.  They know the truth, that my
+mother is--what she is."
+
+Suddenly he threw himself forward on the case and began to sob, such
+hard, racking sobs as might tear his very breast.  Flossy threw her
+arms around him and cried aloud.  Bill stood in the little private
+office, looking down upon the snoring woman with a murderous glare.  He
+turned as Tom Granger came noiselessly from the outer office and stood
+beside him.  Grief was in Granger's face.
+
+"I heard what Jap said just now," he whispered, "and he is right.  It
+would be impossible for him to stay with her in the town.  She has
+ruined Jap."
+
+"You're a gol-dinged fool," shouted Bill, dragging him across the big
+office and out of the front door.  "Pretty sort of friend you are,
+anyway.  I'll fight you, or a half-dozen like you, if you murmur a word
+like that to Jap."
+
+He whirled as his father ambled up the street, his round face wearing a
+grin.
+
+"What is that greasy smirk for?" demanded Bill.  "If you have any
+business in the _Herald_ office, spit it out."
+
+"I knowed it would come out sooner or later," spluttered Bowers,
+shifting his position to avoid a pool in the pavement, left by the
+recent rain.  "With half an eye, anybody could see the mongrel streak
+in----"
+
+He stopped as his son advanced swiftly toward him.
+
+"What kind of a streak?" he threatened.  "I dare you to say that again,
+and hitch anybody's name to it."
+
+"Why, William," expostulated his father, "you shorely ain't goin' to
+have Jap and his mammy hitched up to the _Herald_?  Barton 'll ride
+Bloomtown proper."
+
+"It will give Jones a whack at the _Herald_," suggested Granger mildly.
+
+"And it will be his last whack!" foamed Bill.  "For I'll finish him and
+his filthy paper before I go to the pen for burning down the _Herald_
+office.  The day that Jap Herron leaves the _Herald_, there will be the
+hell-firedest bonfire that Bloomtown ever saw!"  His eyes were blazing.
+"Get away from here," he cried fiercely, "you--you milksop friends!"
+
+He stopped as Isabel, her eyes swollen from crying, crossed the street.
+She had come across the corner of the park, and her face was white and
+drawn.  Bill stepped up into the doorway and awaited her.
+
+"I want to speak to Jap," she said, as he barred the passage.
+
+"What do you want with him?" Bill demanded truculently.  "Because he is
+packing all the load now that he can stand, and you ain't going to add
+another chip to it.  Give me your old engagement ring, and I'll pitch
+it in the hell-box.  I reckon that's what you came for."
+
+She pushed him aside, her eyes blazing with wrath.
+
+"Get out of my way, Bill Bowers.  You never did have any sense.  Let me
+by!"
+
+She flung herself past him and ran into the composing room.  At sight
+of Flossy, she paused.  Flossy raised her head from Jap's shoulder and
+looked defiantly at the girl, but only for a second.  She knew, in that
+glance.  Softly she crept out as Isabel, with a heart-shaking cry, ran
+to Jap and threw herself against him.
+
+"Take me in your arms, Jap," she cried stormily, "for I love you."
+
+Jap stared up, dully, for an instant.  Then, forgetting all but love,
+he opened his arms and clasped her to his heart.  Bill rushed outside
+after Flossy.
+
+"I never knew that she was the real goods," he said remorsefully,
+wiping his eyes.
+
+"Get a wagon from the grocer," Flossy said, decisive again.  "I am
+going to take her home with me."
+
+"Meaning that?"  Bill flipped his thumb toward Jap's mother.
+
+"Send her up to the house, and I will have a doctor, and some one to
+bathe her and clean her up.  Maybe after she is clean and sober, she
+won't be so dreadful."
+
+When Jap came out of his stupor enough to try to put Isabel away, he
+discovered what Flossy had done.  With Isabel clinging to him, he
+walked with downcast head through the streets that lay between the
+_Herald_ office and Flossy's cottage.
+
+His mother was in bed, clean and yet disgusting in her drunken sleep.
+He forgot Isabel, silent by his side, as he stood looking down upon the
+blotched and sunken face, thinking what thoughts God only knew.  He
+seemed years older as he walked out again, after the doctor had told
+him that nothing could be determined until she had slept the liquor
+off.  Slowly and silently he and Isabel walked past the row of neat
+cottages until they reached Main street.  On the corner Jap paused.
+
+"You must go home, Isabel," he said brokenly.  "Sweetheart, I
+understand, and I know that you are the bravest girl in the world.  But
+you must leave me now."
+
+"I will not," she declared.  "I want you to take me right down to the
+office and send for a license.  I am going to marry you, and show this
+town what I think of you!"
+
+"But I cannot let you," Jap said simply.  "I know--you don't."
+
+"Then," said Isabel defiantly, "I will go back to Flossy's and take
+care of your mother until you are ready to talk sense."
+
+Jap looked at her helplessly.  They were in front of Blanke's drug
+store.  Jim Blanke stepped outside and grasped Jap's hand.  Isabel
+looked proudly up at him, her arm drawn tightly through Jap's.  As they
+passed down the street, citizens sprang up, apparently from nowhere,
+and clasped Jap's hand in a fraternal grip.  Isabel peered into his
+silent face.  The tears were streaming unheeded down his cheeks.  Her
+father frowned as they appeared at the door of the bank.
+
+"Papa," she called resolutely, "you coming with us?"
+
+He stood gnawing at his lips, his face overcast.  An instant he battled
+with his pride and his love for the boy.  Then, with his old
+heartiness, he clapped Jap on the shoulder.
+
+"Straighten your shoulders, lad.  We're all your friends!"  And the
+storm cloud lightened.
+
+All that night Jap paced the floor of the office, while Bill, too
+sympathetic for sleep, tossed in the room above and swore at fate.  It
+was noon the next day when little J. W. came in to say that Mrs. Herron
+was awake and wanted to see her son.
+
+She was half sitting among the pillows when Jap entered.  Flossy had
+drawn the muslin curtains, to soften the garish light as it fell on her
+seamed and shame-scarred face.  She peered up at him from blood-shot,
+sunken eyes.
+
+"You look like your pappy's folks, Jasper," she croaked.  "And they
+tell me you air a fine, likely boy, and follerin' in the trade of your
+gran'pap.  I wisht that I had a known where you was, long ago.  I have
+had a hard life, Jasper.  Your step-pa beat me, and that's more'n your
+pappy ever done.  He died of the trimmins, three year ago, and I have
+been wanderin' every since, huntin' my childurn.  But Aggie's a bigbug
+now, and she drove me off.  And Fanny's goin' to a fine music school,
+and sent me word that she'd have me put in a sanitary if I bothered
+her.  She saw a piece about you in the paper, and sent it to me.  So I
+tramped thirty mile to come."
+
+Her face was pathetic in its misery.  She sank back in the pillows and
+closed her eyes.  Jap leaned down and drew the covers tenderly over her
+arms.  She opened her eyes, at the touch, and looked up at him sadly.
+
+"Thanky, Jasper," she mumbled,  "You be-ant mad?"
+
+He patted her cheek softly, and the sunken eyes lighted with a smile of
+weary contentment.  Then the lids fluttered, like the last effort of a
+spent candle, and she slept.  Like one in the maze of a vague,
+uncertain dream, Jap went back to the office.  Unconsciously he took
+the familiar way, through the alley.  Automatically he climbed to his
+stool and began setting up the editorial that had been interrupted by
+his mother's coming the previous day.
+
+
+At sunset Bill touched his shoulder softly.  Jap raised his head from
+his hands.
+
+"Your--your mother never woke up after you left her, Jap," he said
+huskily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Bill looked up as a long, lank form glided surreptitiously into the
+office.
+
+"Been a long time since you drifted our way," he commented, as the form
+resolved itself into the six-foot length of Kelly Jones.
+
+"Might' nigh three month," averred Kelly grimly.  "I've been tradin'
+over at Barton.  Couldn't stand for Jap's damfoolishness.  Had to buy
+my licker there, and just traded there.  It's twelve mile from my farm
+to Barton, and four mile to Bloomtown.  Spring's comin' on, and work to
+do.  I hate to take that trip every time the wife needs a spool o'
+thread.  Did you get my letter, sayin' to stop the paper?"
+
+"Stopped it, didn't we?" queried Bill crisply, scattering the type from
+the financial report of Bloomtown into the case.
+
+"Yes," assented Kelly, "you did.  What'd you do it for?"
+
+"Not forcing the _Herald_ on anybody," announced Bill glibly.  "Got
+past that.  We used to hold 'em up and feed the _Herald_ to them, but
+we don't have to do it now."
+
+"I hear tell that Jap made Tim Simpson night marshal.  Why, he run a
+blind tiger beyond the water tank," exclaimed Kelly.  "I reckon Jap
+didn't know that."
+
+"Just because he did know it, he made Tim night marshal," declared
+Bill, flinging the last type into the box and descending from the
+stool.  "Just you stroll down the tracks in either direction, and see
+if you can find a whisker or a tawny hair from the tip of any tiger's
+tail lying loose along the way.  Jap knows several things, Kelly, my
+boy, and he is fighting fire with fire.  Tim Simpson understands the
+operations of the kind of menagerie that usually flourishes in a dry
+town, and Jap put him on his honor.  He's so conscientious that he goes
+over to Barton to get full.  He won't drink it here.  He's got pride in
+making Bloomtown the whitest town in the state.  But explain the return
+of the prodigal.  How come your feet in our dust again?"
+
+"Well," said Kelly shamefacedly, "the wife said that I was a durn fool.
+I stopped the _Herald_ and subscribed for the _Standard_--and a pretty
+standard it is!  While Jap Herron was cleanin' up, it was slingin' muck
+at him.  The wife read it, and one day she goes up to Barton and starts
+an argument with Jones.  I reckon she had the last word.  If she
+didn't, it was the fu'st time.  She come home so rip-snortin' mad that
+she threatened to lick me if I didn't tackle Jones.  Well, to keep
+peace in the family, I run in to see him the next time I went to
+Barton.  Well, Jones put it up to me, if Jap was doin' much for
+Bloomtown in havin' unlicensed drug stores, instid of regular saloons."
+
+"Sure sign that you don't know the news," said Bill, unfolding a copy
+of the _Herald_.  "Since last Saturday night there has been only one
+drug store in Bloomtown.  That's Blanke's, and Jim Blanke wouldn't sell
+liquor on anybody's prescription but Doc Hall's, and Doc Hall would let
+you die of snake-bite, if nothing but whiskey would cure you.  Any
+other drug stores that may open up in this town 'll have to pattern
+after Blanke's or out they go."
+
+Kelly took the paper up and scanned its columns.  He snorted.
+
+"Well, I do declare!  I see that might' nigh all the doctors have
+packed up and are threatenin' to leave town.  Well, there wa'n't enough
+doctorin' to keep twenty of 'em in cash nohow."
+
+"You ought to have heard Jap's speech when they were putting a plea for
+local option," said Bill.  "My pap has carried a sore ear against Jap's
+reign ever since he was elected to fill out that unexpired term, and he
+stirred up a lot of bellyaches among the guzzlers.  It was a sickening
+mess, because the whole town knows that my daddy can't stand even the
+smell of liquor.  It wouldn't be so bad--so hypocritical, if he really
+liked it and was used to it.  As I was telling you, he and the old
+booze gang had been burning the midnight dip to plan a crimp for Mayor
+Herron, when that local option idea struck him.  Well, Jap got up and
+made a speech, calling their attention to the bonds we voted, and the
+sound financial condition back of those bonds; the granitoid pavement
+on Main street, the electric light plant that's going up, and the water
+works, and sewers that are under way--all managed since the town went
+dry.  Then he nominated Tom Granger for mayor, and what do you reckon
+they did?"
+
+"Seein' as how he ain't mayor," said Kelly, with a twinkle, "I allow
+they done nothin'."
+
+"Why," said Bill, his brown eyes kindling, "they arose as one man and
+yelled, 'We want Jap Herron!' and that settled it."
+
+The farmer stood in the middle of the office, his arms gesticulating
+and his head bobbing with animation, as Jap hurried in.  He gazed at
+the back of Kelly's familiar slicker incredulously.
+
+"What!" he hailed joyously, "our old friend of the sorghum barrel!
+Where have you been hibernating?  Surely a cure for sore eyes," and Jap
+seized his shoulder and whirled him around so that he could grasp his
+hand.
+
+"Chipmunking in Barton," prompted Bill.  "This sadly misguided farmer
+has been lost but now is found."
+
+"The Missus sent a package to Miss Flossy.  You and Bill 'll eat it, I
+reckon," and he produced a parcel from his pocket.  "She said if Ellis
+was here, he'd appreciate it.  It's sausage that she made herself.
+And--and she sent a dollar for the paper.  She wants the _Herald_."
+
+"And what about Kelly?" Jap asked, a wave of memory sweeping over him.
+
+"Just you write it down that Kelly Jones is a yaller pup," said Kelly
+morosely.
+
+"Never!" declared Jap heartily.  "Misled, perhaps, but with a heart of
+gold."
+
+Kelly groped for his handkerchief.
+
+"I've got on the water wagon, Jap," he sniffled.  "I reckon I kin get
+along without the stuff.  Sary hid my jug, and I done 'thout it for a
+week, and I felt fine.  I am goin' to make a stagger at it, if I do
+fall down."
+
+Jap pushed him into a chair.
+
+"Why, you old rascal," he cried, "you have backbone enough to do
+anything you will to do.  Move into town and help us turn the wheels."
+
+Kelly wiped his nose on the tail of his slicker as he started for the
+door.
+
+"Don't happen to need any basses, do you?" he grinned.
+
+Jap flung an empty ink bottle after him.  When quiet had returned to
+the office, he said, as he hung his hat on the nail:
+
+"Isabel wants to learn to stick type."
+
+"Funny," said Bill shortly, "so does Rosy, and they hate each other
+like Pap hates beer.  Pretty mix-up we'll have on our hands."
+
+"That's all nonsense, Bill.   Rosy can't help liking Isabel."
+
+Bill scanned the copy on his hook, his eyes narrowing.
+
+"Appears like she can," he muttered.
+
+"Now, Bill, this won't do," argued Jap earnestly.  "We can't afford to
+have dissension in such a vital matter.  You must talk to Rosy."
+
+"You can have the job," waived Bill, picking up a type.  "Isabel said
+that Rosy was shallow and only skin-deep, and Rosy heard about it.
+Isabel Granger is not so much----"
+
+He stopped abruptly as Jap's hand went up in pained alarm.
+
+"Look here, Bill, are we going to let the chatter of women come between
+us?  There is something deeper holding us together than the friendship
+of a day.  Give me your hand, Bill, and tell me that it is Ellis's work
+and not these trifles that you care for.  We have a work to do, you and
+I."
+
+Bill threw the stick upon the case and grasped Jap's outstretched hand.
+Tears glistened in his eyes.
+
+"Better than all the loves in the world, I love you, Jap," he stormed.
+Jerking his hat from the nail, he strode out to walk off the
+emotionalism he decried.
+
+That afternoon he strove manfully to show Isabel how to put type in the
+stick upside down, and to save her feelings he stealthily corrected her
+faulty work, suppressing a grin at Jap's pride in her first attempt.
+Bill shook his head sadly as they strolled out together, Jap's eyes
+drinking in the girl's slender beauty.
+
+"Petticoat government 'll get old Jap tripped up," he complained to the
+office cat.  "And then where'll I be?  When Jap marries I'll play
+second fiddle.  Come seven, come 'leven!" and he snapped his fingers in
+the air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The sun was streaming through the east windows.  Jap looked anxiously
+up and down the street.  Bill had not been home all night.  This was a
+state of affairs alarming to Jap.  He walked back to the table and
+turned the exchanges over restlessly.
+
+"I wonder if the boy could have persuaded that butterfly to elope with
+him, as he threatened he would, when her mother cut up so rough," he
+worried.
+
+Tim Simpson came in and peered around furtively.
+
+"Bill is drunk as a lord," he announced in a stage whisper.  "I've got
+him in the back room of the calaboose, to sober up without the news
+leakin'."
+
+Jap paled.
+
+"Bill drunk?" he faltered.  "Who got him into it?  Is he asleep, Tim?"
+
+"Lord, no!  If he was, I would 'a' left him out when he come to, and
+said no word to you about it.  But I'm plum scared about him.  He's
+chargin' up and down like a Barnum lion.  I reckon as how you'd better
+mosey down there and try to ca'm him."
+
+As Jap walked rapidly down the alley beside the night marshal, he asked:
+
+"Did you try to talk to him?"
+
+"Yes," said Simpson ruefully.  "He kicked me out and was chasin' after
+me when I slammed the door on him.  He's blind crazy loaded.  I fu'st
+seen him after number nine pulled in, so I think he come on her.  He
+was mutterin' and shakin' his fist when he hove in sight.  I got him
+and steered him into the jug without much trouble, and it was only a
+hour ago that he started this ragin' and ravin'."
+
+As they entered the jail, sounds of tramping feet and mutterings
+reached their ears.  Bill's swollen, blotched face and reddened eyes
+appeared behind the grating.
+
+"Let me out of here!" he shouted.  "You'll get a broken head for this,
+you old mule."  He shook the grating furiously.
+
+"Bill," said Jap slowly, "do you want to come with me, or do you want
+me to stay here with you till you've had a bath and a good sleep?"
+
+Bill laughed discordantly.
+
+"A sleep!  A sleep!" he cried.  "Yes, a long, long sleep.  As soon as
+you take me out of this hell-hole, I'll take a sleep that'll last."
+
+Jap opened the door and stepped inside.
+
+"Don't come any nearer," warned Bill.  "I'm too filthy, Jap.  But let
+me stay as I am till it's over."
+
+He sat down on the cot and stared crazily into the corridor.  Jap sat
+down beside him and drew his arm around his shoulder, with the
+tenderness of a woman.
+
+"Tell me about it, Bill, boy," he counselled gently.  "Tim, you may
+leave us."
+
+Bill sat a long time, staring sullenly at the floor.
+
+"Well, this is a hell of a display for me to bring to Bloomtown," he
+declared at last.  "I should have ended it in Jones's town.  If I
+hadn't been so dumb with rotgut that I didn't know what I was doing, I
+would be furnishing some excitement for the Bartonites this morning.
+The finest place in the world to die in--it isn't fit to live in."
+
+Jap shook him briskly.
+
+"Straighten up, Bill, and tell me what kind of a mess you have been in."
+
+Bill laughed wildly.  After a moment he dragged a letter from his
+pocket.  Jap read:
+
+"When you read this, I will be the wife of Wilfred Jones, the Editor of
+the Barton _Standard_.  Maybe you will be pleased?  I prefer to marry a
+real editor, not the half of Jap Herron."
+
+The letter was signed, "Rosalie," but the affectation carried none of
+the elements of a disguise.  To Jap it was the crowning insult.
+Crushing the silly note in his hand, he threw it from him.  Standing
+up, he drew Bill to his feet.
+
+"We are going home," he said curtly.  "When you are sober I will tell
+you how disappointed I am in my brother."
+
+The news that Bill had been jilted spread over Bloomtown like fire in a
+stubble-field, and deep resentment greeted the announcement that Jones
+of the _Standard_ had scored another notch against the _Herald_.
+
+Bill, sullen and defiant, had battled it out in the room above the
+office.  All the vagaries of a sick mind were his.  Murder, suicide,
+mysterious disappearance, chased each other across the field of his
+vision, and ever the specter of suicide returned to grin at him.  For a
+day and a night Jap sat beside his bed, talking, soothing, comforting.
+Finally he made this compact:
+
+"To show you that I love you better than myself, Bill, I am going to
+promise that I will not marry until you are cured of this blow.  Not a
+word, Bill!  Happiness would turn to ashes if I accepted it at your
+cost.  How far I am to blame in your trouble, I can only guess.  I am
+not going to preach philosophy.  I am only going to plead my love for
+you."
+
+He took the revolver from the drawer and laid it on the table beside
+Bill.
+
+"If you are the boy I think you are, you will be sticking type when I
+come back from Flossy's.  If you are a coward, I will not grieve to
+find you have taken the soul that God gave you and flung it at His
+feet."
+
+Not trusting himself to look back, he hurried down the stairs.  His
+heart was heavy with dread as he locked the office and walked blindly
+to the cottage where all his problems had been carried.  He could not
+talk to Flossy, but, sitting beside her on the little front porch, he
+fought the mad impulse to run back to the office.  He strained his ears
+for the sound that he was praying not to hear.
+
+Two hours he sat there, fighting with his fears, the longest hours of
+his life.  Flossy sat as silent.  No one knew Jap as Flossy did.
+Smoothing his tumbled hair and stroking his tightly clenched hands were
+her only expressions.  Futile indeed would words be now.  The tragedy
+that hovered over them both must work itself out.
+
+A whistle shrilled from the road.  Jap sprang up with a strangled cry,
+as Wat Harlow came through the gate.  His face was stern.
+
+"Bill allowed that this is where I'd find you, chatting your valuable
+time away," he chaffed.  Then the mask of his countenance broke into a
+grin.
+
+"Is Bill in the office?"  Jap's lips were so stiff he could scarcely
+articulate.
+
+"Sure he is," said Harlow cheerfully.  "He wants you to ramble down
+there."
+
+"There's a hen on, Jap," he confided, after they had taken leave of
+Flossy.  "We'll try to hatch something this time.  I'm going to get in
+the game again.  You know the old saying: 'You mustn't keep a good dog
+chained up.'"
+
+"Well?" queried Jap, his thoughts springing space and picturing what
+Bill might be doing.  Wat was discreetly silent until they had passed
+through town and were inside the office.  Bill, pale and haggard,
+looked up from his desk.  He extended the paper he was writing on.  Jap
+took it without a word.
+
+"WAT HARLOW FOR GOVERNOR!"
+
+"How's that for a head?" he demanded.  "If we're going into this thing,
+we might as well go with both feet."
+
+He looked into Jap's face.  Their eyes met.  With one voice they cried:
+
+"Ellis!"
+
+"'When Harlow runs for governor,'" Jap quoted tremulously, "'you will
+boom him.  Till then, nothing doing in the Halls of Justice.'  Bill,
+Ellis was a prophet.  He even knew that he wouldn't be in the game.
+Wat, we'll put you across this time."
+
+"Yes, and it'll be a nasty fight," Wat returned, as Bill leaned over
+and picked nervously at the ears of the office cat.  "We've got Bronson
+Jones to buck up against, in all political probability.  He's almost
+sure of the nomination."
+
+"Just who is Bronson Jones?" Jap asked.  "Seems to me I ought to place
+him.  He's been in the papers down in the southwestern part of the
+state a good deal."
+
+"He's the smooth proposition that came back here a couple of years ago
+and bought back his old newspaper for his son and has managed up to the
+present time to keep his own name discreetly out of that same paper,"
+vouchsafed Harlow.  "He won't let it leak out till the psychological
+moment.  He's the daddy of the split-hoofed imp of Satan that runs the
+Barton _Standard_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Jap threw his pencil impatiently on the desk.
+
+"I can't get my thoughts running clear this morning," he said abruptly.
+"Every time I try to write, the pale face of little J. W. comes between
+me and the page."
+
+"They're back from the city," Bill said uneasily.  "I saw them coming
+from the train.  I fully meant to tell you, Jap."
+
+"I hope the specialist has quieted Flossy's fears."  Jap ran his
+fingers through his loose red locks.  "The boy is growing too fast.
+Why, look at the way he has shot up in the last year.  Ellis told me
+that he ran up like a bean pole, the way I did, and just as thin.  J.
+W. is exactly like him."
+
+"And Ellis died at forty----"
+
+"Don't, Bill," Jap choked.  "I can't bear it."  He walked to the door
+and gazed out into the hazy silver autumn air.
+
+"This weather is like wine," he declared.  "It will set the boy up,
+fine as a fiddle.  You must remember, Bill, that Ellis impoverished his
+system by the life of hardship he was forced to endure while the town
+was growing.  The things he used to tell were humorous enough, the
+droll way he had of telling them.  But they break our hearts when we
+think of them now, and know that it was that privation that killed him.
+It was bad enough here when I was a youngster, and that was luxury to
+what he had had.  J. W. has not had such a handicap.  Of course he was
+a delicate baby, but he certainly outgrew all that."
+
+Bill was discreetly silent.  He knew that Jap was only arguing with his
+fears.  In the early summer, J. W. had been acutely ill, and as the
+heat progressed, he languished with headache and fever.  In the end,
+Dr. Hall had counselled taking him to a noted specialist in the city.
+
+"Better take a run up to Flossy's," Bill suggested.  "You'll be better
+satisfied."
+
+Jap took a copy of the _Herald_ from the table and went out.  All the
+way along Spring street he strove with his anxiety.  Flossy met him on
+the porch.  One glance was enough for Jap.  He sat down, helpless, on
+the lower step.
+
+"J. W. is tired out and asleep," said Flossy softly.  "Come with me,
+Jap, down to the arbor.  You remember the day that Ellis told you the
+truth about himself?"
+
+Jap followed her beneath the grape trellis, stumbling clumsily.  When
+they reached the arbor, with its bench and rustic table, she faced him,
+slender to attenuation.
+
+"Jap," she said brokenly, "J. W. has tuberculosis in the worst form.
+His entire body is filled with it.  He contracted it while we were with
+Ellis--and we never knew, never suspected----"  Her voice broke.  "Not
+even a miracle can prolong his life longer than spring.  The doctors
+insisted on examining me, too.  They say I have it, in incipiency, and
+my only chance of escape is to leave my boy to the care of others.
+Under the right conditions they say I have a fighting chance."
+
+"You are sure that you have every advice?"  Jap's voice was so hoarse
+that she looked up at him in alarm.
+
+"Yes, Jap, but I knew it before.  Months ago, even before he was so
+sick in the summer, I had a dream, and this was my dream: Ellis, with
+that beautiful smile that every one loved, was waiting out there at the
+gate, and I was hurrying to get the boy ready to go with him.  I knew,
+when I awoke, that he was ready to wait our boy's coming.  Oh, Jap, do
+you think that smile was for me, too?"
+
+The look of agony in Jap's sensitive face was more than she could bear.
+She clutched his arm.
+
+"Oh, Jap, pray--help me to pray that he was waiting for me, too.  The
+time has been so long.  I want to be with my boy to the last.  You
+understand, Jap.  I don't believe that words are needed."
+
+He put his arms around her.  He could not speak, but his head bent
+above hers and the hot tears dropped upon her brown hair, now streaked
+with gray.
+
+"I have done the work he wanted me to do," she sobbed.  "He wanted me
+to be a mother until you were on the plane he had planned.  Like the
+butterfly whose day is done, Jap, I would go.  I am so tired, and--boy,
+I have never ceased to long for Ellis.  The world could not supply
+another soul like his."
+
+"Flossy," Jap said in smothered tones, "I know.  I have walked the
+floor for hours, missing him until I was almost frantic.  But, little
+Mother, what is left to me if you go?  Without you, I am drifting
+again."
+
+"I would fear that, if I had never seen into the deeps of Isabel's
+nature.  And to think that I once decried--but I didn't understand,
+Jap.  When your mother came, there was a revelation.  I don't fear for
+your future now.  And when I knew this, I suddenly felt tired and old.
+I pray not to survive my boy."
+
+
+The following morning brought the first fall rain.  And then, for
+endless weeks, the leaden sky drooped over the world.  Dreary
+depression and the penetrating chill of approaching winter filled the
+air.  Only the unwonted pressure of work kept the boys from brooding
+over the inevitable that would come with the spring-time.  To relieve
+Flossy of all unnecessary burdens, Jap and Bill went to the hotel for
+their meals, but every evening one or the other went to sit with her.
+At length there came a time, late in November, when the office work was
+more than both of them could handle, and for several days the visits
+were interrupted.
+
+"Flossy is sick," announced Bill, hanging his dripping raincoat behind
+the door.  "I saw Pap just now, and he told me.  He and his wife were
+there all night.  He says that J. W. has been so bad off for a week,
+has had such bad spells at night, that Flossy has hardly slept, and
+yesterday she broke down and sent for Pap.  He took Doc Hall along, and
+they are afraid she has pneumonia."
+
+Jap threw his paper aside.
+
+"Why didn't we know that J. W. was worse?" he demanded.  "I sent some
+one to inquire every morning while we had the big rush on, and Flossy
+said that they were all right.  I thought that she was going to take
+him to the mountains."
+
+"I guess that she didn't know how sick he was," commented Bill.  "Pap
+was to haul the trunks to-morrow, as Flossy told us.  She wanted to
+start on Sunday so that you and I could go as far as Cliffton with her.
+She knew we were working overtime to get things cleaned up."
+
+Jap put on his raincoat, for it was pouring a deluge.
+
+"I will not be back if Flossy needs me," he said.
+
+For three days and nights he hovered over the two sick-beds, while the
+wind soughed mournfully around the cottage, and the rain dripped,
+dripped, dripped, like tears against the wall outside.  Neighbors and
+friends volunteered their services.  Bill and Isabel came as often as
+was possible; but when all the others had gone, Jap kept his solemn
+vigil alone.  On the afternoon of the fourth day, there was a sudden
+turn for the worse.  Dr. Hall was hastily summoned.  And then, all at
+once, without any seeming warning, it happened.
+
+The last gasping breath faded from the body of Ellis's child, and as
+Jap leaned over to close the wide, staring eyes, he could hear the
+rasping breaths that rent Flossy's bosom, as she lay unconscious in the
+next room.
+
+"With God's help we may pull her through," whispered Isabel, twining
+her arms around his neck.  He turned stony eyes of grief upon her.
+
+"If God helps, He will let her go with J. W. to meet Ellis," he said in
+a voice strained to breaking.
+
+He drew the girl from the chamber of death, and sat down beside
+Flossy's bed.  He caught one fluttering, fever-burned hand in his, and
+the restless muttering ceased.  Then the eyes opened.  They seemed to
+be looking not at Jap but above him.
+
+"Ellis!" she cried, and slept.
+
+"When she awakes, she will be better or----"  Dr. Hall broke off, and
+went over to the window.  "It's the crisis," he finished huskily.
+
+Flossy, in her quiet, optimistic bravery, had made her place in the
+hearts of her townspeople.  Isabel knelt beside her, watching Jap's
+face, with its unnatural calm, fearfully.  She dared not speak.  Bill
+stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed, his cap twirling uncertainly in
+his hand.  His eyes shifted uneasily from the thin, white face on the
+pillow to the frozen features of Jap.  A clock ticked loudly.
+
+The thick gloom broke.  A tiny linnet that Jap had given Flossy
+fluttered to the swing in its cage and burst, all at once, into song,
+and a vagrant sunbeam darted through the western clouds.  Flossy opened
+her eyes.
+
+"Jap," she gasped painfully, "is this the thing called Death, this
+uplift of joy?"
+
+The doctor raised her in his arms and gave her a few sips of medicine.
+She was easier.  She motioned Jap to bend closer.
+
+"Is he gone?" she asked clearly.  "Is my boy with his father?"
+
+Jap kissed her forehead gently.
+
+"He is with Ellis," he whispered.
+
+"Then I thank You, great Giver of all Good," she cried happily, "for I
+can go now."  She summoned Bill with her eyes.
+
+"I want you to make the boy very proud of the men he was named for,"
+she smiled.  It was a smile of heavenly beauty, as the pure soul of
+Ellis Hinton's wife flew to join her loved ones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Bill and Isabel led Jap from the room as the doctor drew the sheet over
+Flossy's face.  Together the three left the cottage.  In dazed silence
+they walked past the row of modest homes until the business street was
+reached.  Across Main street they went, in stony silence, the girl
+clinging to an arm of each of her escorts.  In front of the elm-shaded
+residence of Tom Granger, now stark and bare in its late autumn
+undress, they paused.  Isabel, unheedful of the passing crowd, threw
+her arms around Jap's neck and kissed him passionately.  A moment he
+held her in his arms, his tearless eyes burning.  And in her awakened
+woman's heart, she knew that he was looking through her, beholding the
+trio of adored ones whose influence had made his heart a fitting
+habitation for her own.  And in that consciousness Isabel Granger
+experienced no twinge of jealousy.
+
+Silently she walked up the brick-paved path to the stately old house,
+as Jap and Bill turned back toward Main street.  When they reached the
+office, they locked the door behind them.  With the mechanical action
+of automata, they climbed to their stools and threw the belated issue
+of the _Herald_ into type.
+
+"Bill, can you do it?" Jap asked at length.
+
+"I'll do my best," Bill said huskily.  And his tears wet the type as he
+set up a brief obituary notice.
+
+The morning of the funeral broke clear and sunny, as fall days come.
+The air was clear and sounds echoed for long distances.  It was a
+joyous new day, and yet a threnody swept through its music.  Something
+of this Jap and Bill felt as they hurried to the house of Death.  Judge
+Bowers met them at the door.  His face was red and overcast.  He
+shifted uneasily.
+
+"I sent for you, because we have to fix things decently for Flossy."
+
+"Decently?" echoed Bill.
+
+"Why, yes.  Ma and me got the caskets and all that.  Everything's
+'tended to, but the service.  You know Flossy was a free-thinker, and
+never belonged to no church."
+
+"Well, what of it?" Bill said shortly.
+
+"We have got to get somebody to preach a sermon," asserted the Judge,
+his flaccid face showing real concern.  "I don't see how we are going
+to manage it.  It looks queer to ask anybody to preach over a
+non-professor."
+
+"Why do it then?"  Bill's tone was enigmatic, as he followed Jap into
+the little parlor where the effects of the Judge's work were apparent.
+
+Side by side stood the caskets, each one holding a jewel more precious
+than any diadem.  Jap sat down between them, dumb to the greetings of
+the friends who came for a last look at the two set faces, and there he
+sat until the afternoon.  The room was half filled with people when the
+Judge aroused him by a sharp grip on his arm.
+
+"Come on, Jap," he whispered huskily, "they have come for them."
+
+"Who?" asked Jap, tonelessly.
+
+"The hearses," said the Judge, his flabby cheeks trembling.
+
+Jap walked outside and climbed into the carriage with Bill, and
+together they went to the church where Ellis had met his townsmen for
+the last time.  It was the handsome new church whose claim on her
+brother's generosity had called forth from Flossy such righteous
+resentment.  Mechanically the two young men followed the usher to the
+pew that had been set apart for them.  Vaguely Jap smiled at Isabel as
+she passed him, clinging to the arm of her father.  As in a dream, he
+followed her slender form as she took her accustomed place at the
+organ.  Clutching the arm of the seat, he sat there, deaf, dumb and
+blind, until the wailing notes of the organ appraised him that the
+service was beginning.
+
+He turned his head as a heavy, rolling sound reached him, and looked
+upon the most heart-shaking sight in the history of the town: two
+coffins traveling up the aisles to meet at the altar.  Sick and faint,
+he turned his head away.  Bill's arm crept around him, while Bill
+sobbed aloud.
+
+Frozen to silence, Jap stared at the boxes containing all that linked
+him to his past.  Stony-eyed, he gazed at the masses of flowers,
+casually admiring the gorgeous chrysanthemums and the pink glory of the
+carnations.  He even read, with calm curiosity, the card of sympathy
+hanging from one of the floral offerings on Flossy's casket.  Then he
+sank into blunt indifference until he was aroused by Bill's start.
+
+He looked up dully.  The minister was praying--and his prayer was for
+forgiveness for Flossy.
+
+"She was a wanderer from grace," the ominous voice droned, "but Thou
+who didst forgive the thief on the cross wilt grant her mercy."
+
+Bill clasped his hands fiercely over Jap's arm.  His breath hissed
+through his set teeth.  Jap sat upright, his gray eyes searching the
+face of the man of God, as he drawled through a flock of platitudes,
+promising in the end that on the last great day Flossy and her son
+would be called by the trump to arise, purified and forgiven.
+
+Wiping his forehead complacently, he sat down.
+
+Jap Herron arose to his feet and walked to the coffin of the only
+mother he had ever known.  Facing the assembly, he said in low, clear
+tones:
+
+"Friends of mine, friends of Flossy and her boy, and friends of Ellis
+Hinton, you have listened to this minister.  Now you must listen to me.
+I knew Flossy.  Some of you knew her, but none as I did.  She had no
+religion, he says.  Flossy Hinton's life was a religion.  What is
+religion?  Love, faith and works.  Dare any of you claim that she had
+not all of these?  If such soul as hers needs help to carry it through
+the ramparts of heaven, then God help all of you.
+
+"She will not sleep until a trumpet calls her!  No!  Alive and vital
+and everlasting, her soul is with us now.  Did Ellis Hinton sleep?  He
+has never been away.  He has dwelt right here, in the hearts of all who
+loved him.  Friends, dry your eyes if you grieve for the sins of
+Flossy."
+
+Raising his hand above the casket, as if in benediction, and looking
+into the face beneath the glass, he said brokenly:
+
+"A saint she lived among us.  In heaven she could be no more."
+
+The descending sun shot a ray of white light across the church, as it
+sank below the opaque designs in the gorgeous memorial window that
+flanked the choir.  A moment later it would be crimson, then purple,
+then amber; but for an instant it filtered through pure, untinted
+glass.  Creeping stealthily, the white ray reached the space in front
+of the altar and rested a moment on the still face within the casket.
+To Jap it seemed that the lips that had always smiled for him relaxed
+into a smile of transcendent beauty.  Entranced he looked, forgetting
+all else.  Then the strength of his young manhood crumbled.  The hinges
+of his knees gave way, and he sank to the floor.
+
+Bill sprang to his side and carried him to a seat.  Isabel, half
+distracted, started from her place at the organ.  As she passed, the
+white face in the coffin met her eyes.  She stopped.  A tide of feeling
+swept her back, back from Jap, whose limp form called her.  The song
+that Flossy had loved came singing to her lips.  Inspired in that
+moment, she stood beside the coffin and sang, as never before, the
+words that had comforted Flossy in her years of loneliness:
+
+  "Somewhere the stars are shining,
+    Somewhere the song birds dwell.
+  Cease then thy sad repining!
+    God lives, and all is well."
+
+
+Her face was glorified.  She sang to that silent one, and to the world
+that had been hers.  In a dream she sang on, as the mother and her boy
+were taken from her sight, sang on while the people silently departed.
+"Somewhere, somewhere," she sang,
+
+  "Beautiful isle of Somewhere,
+    Isle of the true, where we live anew,
+  Beautiful isle of Somewhere."
+
+
+Her voice broke as uncontrollable sobs rent her slender body, and she
+sank against the shoulder of her father and followed Bill from the
+church.  Half-a-dozen kindly hands were carrying Jap outside.
+
+The long line of carriages had already started on its way to the little
+plot of ground where two fern-lined graves awaited the loved ones of
+Ellis Hinton.  The horses of the remaining carriage pawed the ground
+restlessly in the sharp November air.
+
+"Better take him to his room in a hurry," Dr. Hall commanded.  "The boy
+has been through too much.  I was afraid of this."
+
+"You can't take him to that dreary office," Isabel pleaded.  "Papa,
+tell Dr. Hall what to do."
+
+And, as always, she had her way.  In the sunny south room above the
+library, with the shadows of the stark elms doing grotesque dances on
+the window panes, with Isabel and her mother hovering in tender
+solicitude over him, Jap Herron tossed for weeks in the delirium of
+fever, calling always for Flossy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"Mr. Bowers wants to talk to you," Isabel said, smoothing Jap's limp
+hair from his haggard face.  "He has been here every day for a week,
+and Mamma wouldn't hear to his bothering you, especially as you had
+concluded that you must talk to Bill about the office."
+
+"Let him come," said Jap wearily.
+
+The Judge tramped heavily into the bedroom.
+
+"I want to talk to you about Flossy's affairs," he declared, dropping
+into a chair and blowing his nose.
+
+Jap's face flushed, then paled.  He lifted one thin hand to his eyes
+and leaned back in the pillows.
+
+"I sent for Bill to meet me here and have Brent Roberts read Flossy's
+will."
+
+"Why?"  Jap's voice rasped with pain.
+
+"You have been sick nigh a month," said the Judge, "and there's a power
+o' things that oughter be seen to, and Brent refused to read Flossy's
+will till you could hear it.  I want to settle the bills."
+
+Isabel slipped her arm around Jap's shoulder and glared at the Judge.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed," she cried.  "Jap is not strong enough to be
+bothered with business."
+
+Jap put her aside gently and sat up.
+
+"The Judge is right, sweetheart," he said.  "I will not be tired with
+doing anything for--for her."
+
+He covered his face with his hands.  Bill entered softly.  His brows
+lowered at sight of his father.
+
+"What did you want with me and Roberts?" he queried shortly.
+
+"It is all right, Bill," Jap said brokenly.  "It will hurt whenever it
+comes, so let's get it done."
+
+After the will was read Jap lay silent, the tears slipping down his
+cheeks, for Flossy's will gave all that she possessed to her son, Jap
+Herron.  It was made the day after she knew that her own child was
+doomed to an early death.
+
+They filed slowly from the room, even the Judge awed by the face of the
+boy.
+
+The New Year had turned the corner when Jap was moved to the office.
+Little by little he grew back into harness.  They did not talk of
+Flossy in those early days.  It was not possible.  One chill spring
+day, when the grass was greening, and the first blossoms were opening
+among the hyacinths on Ellis's grave, Jap walked with Bill to the
+cemetery.  He bent above the dried wreaths with their faded ribbons,
+sodden and dinged by the winter's snows.
+
+"Throw them away, Bill," he choked.  "They are the tawdry tokens of
+mourning.  I am trying to forget that mourning."
+
+Bill gathered the dry bundles and carried them away.  Coming back, he
+stood looking mournfully upon the muddy sod.  Jap raised his eyes
+suddenly, and they gazed for a long minute into each other's hearts.
+Bill threw his hands over his eyes and cried aloud.
+
+"Don't, Bill!" Jap's hand clutched him tightly.  "For God's sake, help
+me to be a man!"
+
+And forgetting the sodden grass, they knelt beside the grave and sobbed
+together in an abandon of grief.  Boys they were, despite their years,
+and Flossy had been more to them than the mother whom youth is prone to
+take for granted.  When the tempest of sorrow and desolation had spent
+itself they arose.
+
+"It is done," said Jap, looking up into the sky where the stars were
+beginning to twinkle palely.  "It had to be done.  Now I can realize
+that they laid Flossy beneath the earth.  But, please God, I can forget
+it.  Now I know that she has left the beautiful shell behind.  But,
+Bill," he touched the mound with his fingers, "Flossy has never been
+here, never for an instant."
+
+"She is in heaven," said Bill reverently.
+
+Jap laid his arm around Bill's shoulders.
+
+"You don't believe that, Bill.  You know better.  Flossy is right with
+us, as Ellis has always been.  Just as he has inspired us to develop
+his paper and his town, so she will stay with us, to create good and
+optimism and faith in ourselves.  Bill, when those two wonderful people
+came into our lives, they came to stay.  Do you think Ellis and Flossy
+would get any joy out of strumming on a harp and taking their own
+selfish ease?  No, Bill, that's all a mistake.  They're working right
+with us, and it's up to you and me to so wholly reflect them that we
+will be to this town what they have been to us.  In any crisis in our
+lives, let us not forget that Ellis and Flossy Hinton are not dead.  We
+may have need to remember it, Bill."
+
+The next morning he climbed on his stool and took the stick in his
+hand.  Bill stopped at the door of the composing room, something in
+Jap's attitude arresting him.
+
+"What are you going to do, Jap?"
+
+"Get busy," declared Jap.  "We have given out enough plate.  The
+_Herald_ is going back on the job."
+
+Bill felt a lump rise in his throat as he paused to finger the copy on
+his hook.
+
+"We have to get the drums beating," said Jap.  "We have to elect Wat
+Harlow governor, and, believe the Barton _Standard_, we have some rough
+road to travel."
+
+And the battle was on!  Alone, the Bloomtown _Herald_ tackled the job
+of making a governor.  Watson Harlow had been a familiar figure in
+state politics for more than twenty years, but as gubernatorial timber
+no one had ever regarded him seriously.  His opponent, on the other
+hand, was a fresh figure in the state, with all the novelty of the
+unknown quantity about him.  It was an off year for the dominant party,
+both locally and nationally, and the fight promised to be a complicated
+one.
+
+Week by week the battle raged between the types.  Little by little the
+country press began to get in the fight.  Not content with the
+picturesque drumming of his own machine, Jap interested the city press
+in the history of Wat Harlow, the "Lone Pine, of Integrity Absolute."
+This descriptive title was proclaimed in and out of season during the
+months of battle, both before and after the nomination of Harlow and
+Jones.  Jap invented a stinger for Bronson Jones.  In his past history,
+it was alleged, he had much that were better concealed than revealed.
+Not the least of his offenses was that he had assisted his father, a
+certain P. D. Jones, in stealing red-hot cook-stoves from the ruins of
+the Chicago fire.  Jap so declared, and he offered to prove that Jones
+had sold these same stoves to their former owners, when they became
+cold.  In one instance, the victim was a widow who had lost everything,
+even her former mate, in the fire.  And Jones carried the title, "The
+Widow's Friend," for years.  All this was fun for the city dailies, and
+cartoons of the "Lone Pine" being fed to the "Cook-Stove" alternated
+with those of the pine falling upon the "Widow's Friend" as he was
+about to sell a stove to the above-mentioned widow.
+
+The color came back to Jap's cheeks, and the battle light flamed in his
+gray eyes.  His one relaxation was the tranquil hour with Isabel.
+Harlow, like an uneasy ghost, haunted the _Herald_ office when he was
+not out storming the hustings.  The Barton _Standard_ continued to pry
+into Wat's past, while the _Herald_ continued to lift the lid from the
+chest of Bronson's secret garments.  Unfortunately, the _Standard_ had
+played its big trump card in the congressional campaign.  The vermilion
+handbill was once more dragged to light, but it worked like a
+boomerang, for several of Wat's own party workers had been caught
+red-handed in the act of attempting to operate a shameless graft game,
+in the name of the university.  And Jap utilized the story to show that
+Wat was a man above party, a man in whose mind integrity was indeed
+absolute.
+
+Argument grew red hot, every place but Bloomtown.  There, there was no
+one to argue with.  Bloomtown was one man for Harlow.  Jones undertook
+to deliver one speech there, and that bright hour nearly became his
+last.  After the good-natured raillery of the opening address, Jones
+plunged into the vitriolic explosion he had delivered at the various
+places he had spoken.  For exactly ten minutes it lasted.  By that
+time, Kelly Jones had reached Hollins's grocery store and gathered
+enough eggs to start a protest against the defamation of Wat Harlow's
+character.  And the protest was proclaimed unanimous!
+
+It was stated that there were no eggs on Bloomtown's breakfast table
+next morning, and no Sunday cakes.
+
+"But," said the _Herald_, "if Bronson Jones wants any more hen-fruit,
+the housewives of Bloomtown will cheerfully sacrifice themselves in his
+behalf."
+
+And so the months sped away until the grass had mossed the graves in
+the cemetery with lush beauty, and the three mounds were merged into
+one by the riotous growth of sweet alyssum, Flossy's best loved
+blossom.  The summer waned.  The autumn hasted, and chill winds
+whispered around the Lone Pine as the last sortie was made.  Then
+Bloomtown pressed her hands to her throbbing breast and got ready
+for--Victory?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Bill jumped from bed as the rattle of the latch announced the arrival
+of a visitor.  Without waiting for the formality of more than a
+bathrobe, Rosy Raymond's last birthday gift to him, he bolted down the
+stairs and across the office.  He flung the door open and disclosed the
+hazy features of Kelly Jones, peering at him through the November fog.
+
+"What, ho!  Kelly, what brings you to our door in the glooming?"
+
+Kelly shook the rain from his slicker and came inside.
+
+"Wife called me at three o'clock," he announced.  "Had my breakfast and
+rid like hell to git to town early.  I want to cast the fu'st vote for
+Wat for governor."
+
+Bill yawned.
+
+"You could have ridden more leisurely, and saved us a couple of hours'
+sleep," he complained.  "There are at least a thousand voters of
+Bloomtown with that same laudable intention.  Tom Granger has been
+missing since seven o'clock last night.  It is believed that he is
+locked in the booth so that his vote will skin the rest."
+
+Kelly looked ruefully back into the rain.
+
+"I reckon that I will come in and set a while, that bein' the report."
+
+"Any man found voting for Jones is to be lynched at sunset," declared
+Bill, pushing a chair forward.
+
+"Reckon this'll be a big day for the Democrats," commented Kelly,
+stretching his feet across the table comfortably.  "'Tain't nothin' to
+keep 'em home, so they'll kill time, votin'.  That's why I allus cussed
+my daddy for raisin' me a Democrat.  Bein' as I am one, I've got to
+stick by and see the durn fools shuckin' corn while the Republicans are
+haulin' their grand-daddies in town to vote the Republicans in."
+
+Bill retired to don a few garments and Jap tumbled from bed, for this
+was a big day in Bloomtown.  Before six o'clock the roads were lined
+with vehicles, as for an Independence holiday.  The county was coming
+in to help the town vote for her favorite son.
+
+About noon Harlow came creeping up the alley and slipped in at the back
+door.  He wore a slicker that he had borrowed from some constituent who
+was short.  It hung sorrowfully about his knees.  Bill remembered that
+in spike-tail coat and white necktie Wat Harlow looked enough like a
+governor to pass for one, but just now he resembled nothing so much as
+a draggled rooster.  The stove in the little private office hissed and
+sputtered as he shook the rain from the coat.
+
+"I thought that the only place that victory would be complete would be
+the _Herald_ office," he said, relaxing into a chair.  "And if we are
+beat, I could meet it better here."  He took a paper in his shaking
+hands and tried to read.
+
+The rain poured in torrents, but Bloomtown cast her record vote--and
+not one scurrilous vote against him dropped into the ballot box.  At
+sunset a wild yell proclaimed that Bloomtown had done her duty.  It was
+now up to the rest of the state whether Wat Harlow, proclaimed from
+border to border as an honest man, would be its next governor.  On his
+record as opposed to State University graft, he had once been elected
+to the legislature when the running was close.  On that same record, as
+opposed to higher education, he was defeated for United States
+Congressman, and on that same record he was running for governor of his
+state.
+
+The _Herald_ office lighted up.  All the big men of Bloomtown smoked
+the air blue, waiting for the returns.  First good, then crushingly
+bad, they varied.  By the tone of the operator's yell, the waiters
+guessed each bulletin.  If he came silent, they all coughed and waited
+for some one to take the fatal slip of paper.  The dawn was graying
+when they dispersed, with the issue still in doubt.  It was late
+afternoon before they knew that Harlow was elected.  Bill grinned
+joyously, for the first time since Rosy Raymond carried her heart to
+Barton and left it there.
+
+"How many roosters have we?" he asked impishly, as he walked over to
+the telephone.
+
+"Why?" queried Jap.
+
+"I am going to 'phone Jones that we want to borrow all that he don't
+need," said Bill, taking the receiver from the hook.
+
+"We done it!" yelled Kelly Jones, slapping his slouch hat against the
+door.  "And I'm goin' over to Barton and git on the hell-firedest drunk
+that that jay town ever seen.  Whoopee!"  And off he set at a run to
+catch the local freight.
+
+About half of Bloomtown seemed inspired with the same spirit, and the
+freight pulled out amid wild yells of joy.  Several of the most agile
+among the jubilant ones draped the box cars with strips of faded, soggy
+bunting, and Harlow's picture adorned the cow-catcher.  The yelling,
+that had been discontinued for economic reasons, was resumed in raucous
+chorus as the train rolled into Barton to celebrate Harlow's victory in
+Jones's town.
+
+The Bloomtown _Herald_ did itself proud that week.  A mammoth picture
+of the Lone Pine stood forth on the front page.  Around it fluttered
+one hundred flags.  Every page sported roosters and flags in each
+available space, between local readers and editorial paragraphs.  It
+was a thing of beauty and a joy forever--at least to Wat Harlow.  One
+other cut found place at the bottom of the editorial page.  Bill did
+not forget to boomerang Wilfred Jones by reprinting the weeping angel.
+For a week there were bonfires every night, and a number of Bloomtown's
+citizens sought to lighten Barton's woes by buying fire-water there.
+Wat swelled until he looked more like a corpulent oak than a lone pine.
+
+"My house is yours," he cried, alternately wringing Jap and Bill by
+their weary hands.  He had come across once more from his headquarters
+in the Court House to make sure his appreciation was understood.  Jap
+smiled wanly as the village band followed him with its intermittent
+serenade.
+
+Bloomtown had long since outgrown the village class; but not a drum nor
+a horn had encroached upon the old traditions of that band.  Mike
+Hawkins was far too conservative to permit innovation, and as there was
+no provision for retiring the bandmaster on half pay, the problem of
+dividing nothing in half having as yet been unsolved, Mike continued to
+hold the job.  All day the band had been vibrating between the Court
+House and the _Herald_ office, having delivered ten serenades at each
+side of Main street, for it was understood that the _Herald_ shared the
+victory with Harlow.  As the Governor-elect retreated to the other side
+of the street, the band at his heels, Bill groaned aloud.
+
+"I wish that that bunch of musicians had had more confidence that Wat
+was going to get it," he sighed, "so that they could have learned one
+tune good."
+
+Kelly Jones was capering down the street.  Kelly had absorbed enough of
+Barton booze to make him believe he owned the half of Bloomtown that
+did not belong to Wat Harlow.  He had been having what Bill described
+as "one large, full time."  As he came in sight, Bill's brow darkened.
+
+"I've been afraid that Kelly would burst and catch fire," he said
+morosely, "and now, by jolly, I wish he would.  It's funny how much
+your good friends will get in your way when they pair off with John
+Barleycorn.  Kelly is certainly one ding-buster when he is lit up."
+
+Jap leaned from the door to watch the procession that had formed for
+the purpose of escorting Wat Harlow to the station.
+
+"Kelly's time is wrinkling," he laughed.  "Here comes Mrs. Kelly Jones,
+with worriment on her brow."
+
+Bill ran his inky fingers through his hair.  Something was troubling
+him.
+
+"Jap," he said as he walked toward the door of the composing room,
+"that skunk of a Jones----"
+
+"Who?  Kelly?"
+
+"Oh, no."  Bill wheeled, and his face was deadly earnest.  "Kelly's not
+a skunk, even when he has soaked up all the rotgut in Barton.  But I
+had Kelly Jones in the back of my head, just the same, when I mentioned
+the honorable Editor of the Barton _Standard_.  It's getting under my
+skin, Jap, the way he has of tempting these Bloomtown fools over to his
+filthy village to get the booze we won't let 'em have at home, and then
+holding them up to ridicule when they make asses of themselves."
+
+"It's one of the angles of this problem that I haven't figured out
+yet," Jap said earnestly.  "Do you think it would do any good to go
+gunning for Jones?"
+
+"I've thought of that possibility several times," and Bill's tone was
+not entirely humorous.
+
+Jap shoved his stool to the case.  As he climbed upon it, he sighed
+uneasily.  It had been sixteen months since Wilfred Jones turned the
+neat trick that left Bill disconsolate, and still the venom lingered in
+the bereft boy's heart.  To Jap, with his standard of womanhood
+established by Flossy and Isabel, the thing was monstrous,
+inconceivable.  And yet it was a fact to be faced.
+
+"We'll have to get busy, Bill," he said.  "We've got enough job work on
+the hooks to keep us up till midnight for a week.  We haven't done a
+thing the last month but elect Wat Harlow."
+
+"I hope to grab he won't run for another office till I have six sons to
+help me," Bill snorted.
+
+Jap heaved a sudden sigh of relief.
+
+"Looking out again, Bill?" he asked, jerking his thumb in the direction
+of the vacant photograph frame above Bill's case.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+It was the day after Thanksgiving.  Bill was twirling the chambers of
+his revolver around.  His face was grim.  Jap halted in the door of
+their bedroom.
+
+"Going gunning for Jones?" he asked lightly.
+
+Bill turned, and the black look on his face startled Jap.
+
+"I am," he said deliberately, "and I will come back to jail or in my
+coffin."
+
+Jap caught the revolver from his hand.
+
+"Bill," he said sharply, "wake up!"
+
+Bill threw a letter to him, and continued his hasty toilet.  Jap read:
+
+
+"Dear Will,--
+
+"Come to me.  I am almost crazy.  Wilfred accused me of giving you
+information against his father that beat him in the election, and he
+struck me in the mouth.  He said he only married me to spite you, and
+he hates me.  I will meet you at the section house, where the train
+slows up for the switch, at six o'clock.  I want you to take me away, I
+don't care where.  I don't love anybody but you, and I can't live with
+Wilfred another night.  I don't care whether anybody ever speaks to me
+again, if you will take me and love me.
+
+"Your distracted ROSALIE."
+
+
+Jap stared at the note as if it had been a snake-tressed Medusa that
+turned him to stone.  He stood rigid and paralyzed as Bill said, deadly
+calm:
+
+"I am going to Barton, and I am going to shoot that dog."
+
+"And after that?"  Jap's voice was toneless.
+
+"After that!" Bill broke out fiercely.  "After that, what more?"
+
+Jap drew Bill around to face him.  Rivers of fire seemed suddenly to
+course through his body, and an unprecedented rage burned up within him.
+
+"You are not going to Barton, and you are not going to meet that
+foolish light-o'-love at the section house," he said sternly.
+
+"Who will stop me?  Not you, Jap, for even if an angel from heaven
+tried to bar my way, I would brush it aside.  I wanted to kill him when
+he stole her away and----"
+
+Jap shook him angrily.
+
+"No one stole her, Bill.  Have you forgotten the insolent, flippant
+letter she wrote you?"
+
+Bill shook Jap's hand from his shoulder.
+
+"It's no use, Jap.  I am going to kill him!"
+
+Jap set his teeth and his gray eyes blazed as he gripped Bill's arms
+and shoved him into a chair.
+
+"I will have you locked up, you foolish hot-head," he exclaimed, "and
+give Wilfred Jones a few hours to consider his attitude toward his
+wife.  She _is_ his wife, Bill, and all your heroics won't gloss that
+fact from sight.  Do you want to hang, because you were a damned fool?
+I can consider a romantic close to your career, but not as an intruder
+in another man's home--no matter how great your feeling of injustice.
+Rosy was not a child when she married Wilfred Jones."
+
+"But he struck her," gulped Bill.
+
+"I have known times," declared Jap vehemently, "when, if I had been of
+the fibre of Wilfred Jones, I would have felt satisfaction in thrashing
+Rosy Raymond.  Not having been Jones, I had to content myself with
+kicking the furniture around.  I don't want to rile you, Bill, but I
+rather think there are two sides to this story, and I want to hear both
+sides.  If it is proven that Jones has mistreated Rosy brutally, I will
+hold him while you give him the licking he deserves.  More than that, I
+will help Rosy to get a divorce.  Isn't that fair enough, Bill?  What
+is revenge upon a dead body, especially if you expiate that revenge on
+the gallows?  Tell me, who profits?  For the woman, disgrace.  For
+you----  Humph! the only one who comes out of it honorably is the dead
+man, Jones."
+
+Bill glowered at him.
+
+"You had no mother, Bill, because she died when she gave you to the
+world.  I had no mother, because Providence gave me where I was a
+burden.  But God gave both of us a mother.  Bill, before you go any
+farther with this adventure--misadventure--I want you to kneel with me
+before Flossy's picture and ask for her approval and her blessing.
+Because, Bill, brother, she knows.  And what do you suppose will be her
+counsel?  What would Flossy want you to do?"
+
+He took the photograph from the table and held it out to Bill.  The
+brown eyes remained downcast.  The hands opened and closed
+spasmodically.  Jap lowered the picture so that Bill's eyes could not
+choose but meet the loved face.  A great, gulping sob shook him, and he
+dashed into the other room and slammed the door.  Jap's tense features
+relaxed into a smile.  He knew that Flossy had won.
+
+"Will you let me go to Barton instead of you?" he asked through the
+closed door.  There was no reply, and he turned the knob.  Bill was
+staring stolidly from the window.  "I won't carry healing oil if the
+case doesn't call for it," he insisted.  "You will believe me, boy?"
+
+"It's your job," Bill said, in smothered, tear-drenched tones.
+
+"I can just make the 5:20," said Jap, as he caught up his hat and
+overcoat from the foot of the bed where he had flung them.  Then he
+hurried to the station, with Rosy's foolish letter in his pocket.
+
+Without looking to right or left he boarded the train that would have
+carried Bill to his love tryst.  Already the evening shadows were
+beginning to settle, and it was almost dark when the local train ran
+into the siding to permit the east-bound special to pass.  He stood on
+the steps of the rear coach as the wheels crunched with the stopping of
+the train.  Then he dropped quietly to the ground.  The special, that
+was wont to throw dust in the eyes of both Bloomtown and Barton, came
+thundering by, and the friendly local took up its westward journey.
+
+Jap hurried over to the cloaked figure that crouched in the shadow of
+the little section house.  Rosy crept out quickly, but retreated with a
+cry of alarm when she saw that Jap, and not Bill, was coming to meet
+her.  He caught her by the arm and drew her into the light of an
+electric bulb that glowed above the section boss's door.  Scanning her
+silly face for a moment, he said sharply:
+
+"So you lied to Bill!  There is no mark of a blow on your face."
+
+"He--he did push me," she sobbed.  "And I don't love him, anyway.  It
+was your fault that I ran away with Wilfred."
+
+"My fault?" echoed Jap.
+
+"Yes," she said, and her tone rasped with cruel spite.  "What girl
+wants to have her sweetheart only half hers?  Jap Herron only had to
+twist his thumb, and Bill would run like a foolish girl.  I wanted a
+whole man or none."
+
+"Seems that you got one," commented Jap, "and don't appreciate him.
+Now, Rosy, if you think you are going to ruin three lives by starting
+this kind of a play, I am going to undeceive you.  I am going to take
+you home and look into this affair."
+
+"I won't go!" she screamed.  "He would kill me."
+
+"What did you do?" demanded Jap, holding her tightly.
+
+"I wrote him a note that I had run away with Bill," she confessed
+sullenly.
+
+For the first time Jap became conscious of the suitcase at her feet.
+His grip on her arm tightened until she cried with pain.
+
+"You idiotic little fool," he ground between his teeth.  "Where is your
+husband?"
+
+"He went to the city this morning.  He said he'd come home on the local
+if he got through his business in time.  Otherwise he wouldn't come
+till the midnight train.  I thought Bill could get a rig and drive to
+Faber.  I thought he could take me away somehow before Wilfred got the
+news."
+
+"News?  Great God!" cried Jap.  "And such as you could win the golden
+heart of Bill Bowers!  Come with me.  If your husband takes the late
+train, there is still time to destroy that note.  If he is already at
+home----"
+
+"He'd go to the office first, anyway," Rosy cried.  "But I don't want
+to go home."
+
+"You're going home, no matter what the consequences," Jap told her.
+"And if you ever attempt to communicate with Bill again, I will have
+you put in an asylum.  You are not capable of going through life
+sensibly."
+
+He walked her rapidly up the railroad track and through the streets
+that lay between the business part of Barton and her own pretty home.
+On the corner opposite the house he stopped, while she ran across the
+street in terror and rushed up the steps.  She had told him that if all
+was yet well, she would appear at the window.  As he stood there, his
+eyes glued on the great square of glass, some one touched him on the
+arm.  He turned.  It was Wilfred Jones.
+
+"Well, Daddy-long-legs," he said brusquely.  "You think you turned a
+pretty trick.  Well, it was a fair fight, and I'm all over it."
+
+Jap shook his hand mechanically, his eyes seeking the window from which
+Rosy was peering.
+
+"Tell Bill that bygones must be bygones," Jones continued, "for we want
+to get the two papers together on the main issue.  The old man will
+come in on the senatorship on the strength of his race for governor.
+And I want to tell you a secret that makes me very happy--and will make
+Bill feel different.  The doctor has just told me that these queer
+spells and moods that Rosalie has been having lately mean--Jap, do you
+understand?  I will be a father before summer!"
+
+Jap wrung Jones's hand, a whirl of fancies going through his head.  As
+he sought for suitable words of congratulation, a boy ran up.
+
+"I been chasin' all over town ahuntin' for you, Mr. Herron," he said
+breathlessly.  "I got a telegram for you."
+
+Trembling with dread, Jap tore it open and read:
+
+
+"_Come home at once.  Your sister Agnosia is here._--BILL."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+The streets were deserted as Jap came from the station.  In his state
+of mind, he did not reflect on the oddity of this circumstance.  But
+had he reflected, the condition of traffic congestion at the corner
+near Blanke's drug store and the further congestion in front of the
+bank would have enlightened him.  All the business men of Bloomtown,
+who had rushed to the _Herald_ office with important advertisements or
+news items, were reluctantly giving place to those who had discovered a
+sudden want of letter-heads.
+
+The telegraph office at Bloomtown was no secret repository, and in less
+than ten minutes after Bill had telegraphed Jap to hurry home the whole
+street knew that the beautiful vision that arrived on the 6:20 was Jap
+Herron's sister, Agnesia.  And forthwith traffic filed that way.
+
+The vision arose as Jap entered the front door, and waited until he
+came into the private office.  It was apparent that Bill had played
+host, to the limit of his meager resources.  Agnesia's hat and
+fur-trimmed coat lay on the table of exchanges.
+
+"Well, Jappie," she laughed in silvery tones, "how long you are!"
+
+He took her little ringed hands in his and looked at her silently.
+Agnesia was the beauty of the family.  Her golden curls fluffed
+bewitchingly about her face and her wide blue eyes smiled
+affectionately.
+
+"You are grown, too, Aggie.  I have been thinking of you as a very
+little----"
+
+"Mercy!" she broke in.  "Please, Jappie, don't drag that awful name to
+light.  When I went to the new home, they mercifully killed Agnesia.  I
+have been Mabelle Hastings so long that I had almost forgotten Aggie
+Herron.  I gave that hideous name to your friend," she flung a
+gold-flashed smile at Bill, "because you had no sister Mabelle in the
+old days.  Our folks made a bad selection of names for their progeny.
+And why Jasper?  Why didn't they put the James first?  It sounds so
+much more human."
+
+"Not a bit of it!" declared Bill.  "What is there about James?  This
+town had to have its Jap Herron.  No substitute would have made good."
+
+She slipped a glance through her long lashes at Bill.
+
+"I called him 'Jappie,'" she confided.  "I was a lisping baby and
+couldn't say 'Jasper.'  Dear old Jappie, how he slaved for me!  And I
+was a tyrant, demanding service every minute of the day."
+
+Jap's face clouded.  "Aggie is a bigbug now," came surging into his
+memory, as a wizened face obtruded itself between the laughing eyes of
+his sister and his own.  The girl noted the swift change.  She took his
+handy her voice quivering with appeal.
+
+"I know what you are thinking about," she said.  "But I could not help
+it, Jappie.  We don't have to keep up the pretense before Mr. Bowers.
+He knows the worst, I take it.  Jappie, you may not remember, but when
+Mrs. Hastings adopted me, my mother had reported that she would either
+turn me out or give me to the county.  Afterward my foster-mother took
+me away from Happy Hollow when she saw that our mother was bringing
+disgrace on all of us.  She sacrificed her home and moved far enough
+away so that no smirch could come to me.  You don't know, brother, and
+I would never want you to know the dreadful things she did.  I had not
+heard from her since she married that drunken brute, until she came to
+the house one hot day.  When she found no one at home, she laid down on
+the porch and went to sleep, drunk and unspeakably filthy.  She was
+there when we returned with a party of friends.  Can you imagine it,
+Jappie?"
+
+Jap nodded his head slowly.
+
+"Mrs. Hastings had her taken out of town, and told her if she came
+there again she would have her put in an asylum for drunkards.  After
+that she threatened to descend upon Fanny Maud.  Fanny could not afford
+to have her career spoiled.  Perhaps we were cruel.  I read the
+scorching letter you wrote to Fanny after her--after mother's death.
+But Fanny was not angry with you, and--and she was willing to have me
+come to you now.  Next spring she will graduate in vocal music from the
+highest university in the country, and then she goes to Paris to study
+under the artists there.  Jappie, she has made a large part of it,
+herself, teaching and singing in the church choir, and studying
+whenever she had enough money ahead.  At last Uncle Francis died and
+left her a snug little sum, and she went to New York, where they say
+her voice is a wonder.  We should be proud of her.  She wants you to
+come with me in June to hear her sing when she graduates."
+
+Jap stared at the floor.  She laid her hand coaxingly on his shoulder.
+
+"Of course Jap will go!"  Bill's brown eyes were glowing.  Jap looked
+across at him in astonishment and wonder.  His brain reeled.  The day
+had been too full.
+
+"And you?" the girl queried, smiling into those dancing brown eyes.
+
+"We can't both go at once," he blurted.  "The paper has to come out on
+time."
+
+She arose and wandered through the rooms that occupied the lower floor
+of the building, stepping from a hasty and uncomprehending glance at
+the press room and the composing room to dwell with critical eye on the
+big, bare office.
+
+"You need a little fixing up," she commented.  "You should have a nice
+rug and shades, and a roll-top desk and swivel chair."
+
+"So we should," lamented Bill, looking around with an air of
+disapproval.  "But not having anybody to tell us----"  He stopped
+short, embarrassed.
+
+"I guess that I will have to keep house for Jappie, and boss the office
+too.  That is, if you want me, Jappie," she appealed.  "Mrs. Hastings
+died last March, and I have been with Fanny ever since.  My
+foster-mother left me well provided for.  I won't be a burden, Jappie,"
+she cried.  "We have all made good.  We must rejoice together."
+
+Bill was half way across the office in his excitement.
+
+"You can take Flossy's house," he burst out.  "It's ready any time,
+because Pap had it completely overhauled after the tenants moved out.
+It's the only ready-furnished house in Bloomtown and----"  His voice
+lowered and there was a note of wistfulness in it.  "Jap, Flossy would
+be so happy!"
+
+Jap surveyed his erstwhile desperate friend with a gleam of merriment.
+As yet, Bill did not know but that his sacrificing partner was a
+fugitive from the law.  He had not even remembered to ask about the
+well-being of Wilfred Jones and his wife.
+
+"Perhaps Aggie--Mabelle," he hastily corrected, "is just joking.  She
+would hardly like to bury herself in this little town after New York.
+There would be so little to compensate."
+
+"Oh, I don't fear that I will regret New York," said Mabelle, letting
+her blue eyes dwell on Bill's ingenuous countenance for a throbbing
+moment.  "Really, Jappie, there's nothing to regret."
+
+Bill's heart turned over twice.  His face was appealing.  He met Jap's
+dancing eyes defiantly.
+
+"Well," said Jap, "you might get the keys and show the cottage to
+Ag--Mabelle, and see how much enthusiasm it provokes.  Perhaps it would
+make a better first impression by electric light.  Here, put an extra
+bulb in your pocket, if one happens to be missing," and he drew out the
+table drawer, where many things lay hidden.
+
+Bill was helping Mabelle on with her coat, his well-set body charged
+with electricity that was strangely illuminating to Jap.  As the two
+left the office, a few minutes later, a teasing voice called after them:
+
+"Remember, Bill, that you took on a pile of orders this evening, and we
+were loaded to the guards with job work already."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Jap looked up as a shadow fell across the door of the composing room.
+
+"Well," he queried quizzically, "what about it?"
+
+"Well," Bill repeated, drawing the girl into the room after him,
+"Mabelle thinks that the cottage needs a bathroom and about a wagon
+load of plumbing, besides paint and paper.  Otherwise, it's all right."
+
+Mabelle slipped past him and approached the case.  Standing on tiptoe
+beside the high stool, she laid a hand coaxingly on the strong, angular
+shoulder.
+
+"Now, Jappie, boy, iron out that worry-frown.  I am going to do the
+fixing up myself.  It shan't cost you a cent."
+
+"No!" Jap exploded.
+
+"Now, dear boy, forget your pride.  I have lots and lots of money, and
+this is to be my home."
+
+"The firm is not insolvent," suggested Bill.
+
+"It isn't a matter for the firm," Jap said gravely.  "The cottage
+belongs to me, and we can't allow our finances to get mixed.  I'm
+willing to have you put in all the repairs that I can afford."
+
+His mind reverted to Flossy, happy and clean without a bathroom.
+
+"Let me take a mortgage on the property for whatever the work costs,"
+Mabelle pleaded, her lips puckering irresistibly.
+
+Jap descended from the stool and caught her in his arms.  Somehow she
+had, all at once, become his baby sister again.  The episode of the
+straw stack loomed before him.  She had puckered her lips just like
+that when she fled to him for protection.  With little coquettish
+touches, she slipped one arm around his neck, while she smoothed his
+red locks gently.  Bill, looking on, was overcome by an unaccountable
+restlessness.
+
+"What a pity Isabel isn't home!" he blurted.  And Bill never knew why
+he had recourse to Isabel at that moment.  The observation bore the
+desired fruit.  Mabelle freed herself from her brother's embrace, with
+the pained exclamation:
+
+"Isabel not at home!  Oh, Jappie, I have just been waiting for you to
+tell me about her.  Ever since we read in the paper--and the one little
+reference to her in your letter to Fanny----"
+
+She stopped, her blue eyes filling with tears.
+
+"They went away just after the election was over," Bill explained.  "Iz
+wouldn't leave Jap while the thing was in doubt, not even for her
+mother."
+
+"I don't think that's quite square," Jap interposed.  "Mrs. Granger
+didn't want to go at all, and only consented when Dr. Hall told her how
+ill Isabel was.  The rest of us knew that Mrs. Granger couldn't live
+through another winter here; but he had to make Isabel's poor health
+the pretext when he sent them to Florida for the cold weather."
+
+"Is she--is she seriously sick?" Mabelle asked tremulously.  "The
+mother, I mean."
+
+"It's a desperate hope, a kind of last resort," Bill vouchsafed.  "I
+heard Doc Hall talking to Tom Granger in the bank, the morning before
+they left.  He said he didn't want to scare him, but he wanted to
+prepare him for the worst, I thought."
+
+"I'm sure if Isabel were at home, she'd insist on your coming right to
+her," Jap said slowly.  "Bill and I have been bunking together up
+there," he jerked his thumb in the direction of the ceiling.  "We have
+a bedroom and a little combination living-room, dressing-room and
+library.  The library's Bill's part.  We take our meals at the hotel,
+down in the next block.  The hotel isn't bad for a town of this size."
+
+"Oh, I've already met the hotel," Mabelle laughed.  "Bill--Mr. Bowers
+took me there to dinner this evening while we were waiting for you to
+come home."
+
+"Aw, chuck that 'Mr. Bowers,'" Bill interrupted.  "I'm plain Bill to
+everybody in this town, and I guess Jap's sister can call me that."
+
+"The hotel, as I was saying," Jap resumed, "will have to take care of
+you for the present till you can get a bathroom attachment for the
+cottage.  It'll probably be lonely for you, just at first."
+
+"I'll see to it that Mabelle meets all the best people in town," Bill
+offered.
+
+The temporary housing problem settled, they returned to the discussion
+of repairs necessary and repairs superfluous.  After two hours of
+parley, Jap consented to let his energetic sister work her will on
+Flossy's cottage.  It was after midnight when the girl had been
+established in her room at the hotel, and Jap and Bill tumbled into
+bed.  The shank of that night had wrought miracles for unsuspecting
+Bloomtown.  A vision of blue eyes, red lips and golden tresses kept
+floating through Bill's dreams, a vision that bore not the least
+resemblance to Rosy Raymond.  Meanwhile Jap stalked through one dream
+controversy after another with plumbers, painters and the other
+defilers of Flossy's home.
+
+By noon on Monday Mabelle had Bloomtown by the ears, and by the end of
+the week it was all up with Bill.  Jap had to hire a boy to help get
+out the _Herald_.  It consumed all of Bill's time threatening and
+cajoling merchants into the prompt delivery of supplies, and seeing to
+it that the workmen were on the job when Mabelle arrived at the cottage
+in the morning.  Bloomtown carpenters, paper hangers and plumbers
+usually took their own sweet time.  They had a great awakening when
+Mabelle employed them.  With Bill to pour oil on the troubled waters,
+strikes were narrowly averted.
+
+One morning, soon after the radiant one arrived, Kelly Jones wandered
+into the office, where a lively dispute with the boss plumber was under
+way.  In ten minutes, Kelly had fallen a victim to the little tyrant.
+
+"'Tain't no use talkin' about her gittin' along without a cellar," he
+confided to Jap.  "I'll dig it myself, and that'll save all this row
+about how the pipes is got to run.  I ain't got nothin' much to do, now
+the corn's all in.  And it's lucky we ain't had a hard freeze.  The
+ground's fine for diggin'," and the following morning he was on the job.
+
+For two months Bloomtown was demoralized.  A cellar made possible a
+furnace, and the elimination of stoves called for a fireplace in the
+living-room, a fireplace framed in by soft blue and yellow tiles.  One
+by one Mabelle added her receipted bills to the packet of documents
+that would go into the making of that mortgage on Jap's property.  One
+by one the housewives of Bloomtown demanded of their paralyzed husbands
+bathrooms, cellars, furnaces, tiled fireplaces.
+
+At last the agony was over.  A load of furniture had arrived from the
+city, and Bill, as usual, left his stickful of type and hastened to
+superintend the transfer of it from the freight depot to the cottage.
+The evening shadows were lengthening in the office when he returned.
+Jap had gone up-stairs to get out a rush order on the job press, and
+there was a little commotion on the stairway just before Bill presented
+himself, his brown eyes full of trouble.  Jap looked at him, and his
+heart sank.  Had it come to this?  Mabelle, in spite of her scanty
+years, was older than Bill.  She must have known.  The whole town knew.
+
+"For goodness' sake, Bill, don't pi this galley," he shouted, bending
+over the imposing stone.  "Look where you're going.  I wish that
+Mabelle would wake to the fact that you have a half-hearted interest in
+this office.  She thinks you have nothing to do but keep tagging on her
+errands."
+
+The office cat rubbed her sleek side against Bill's leg.
+
+"Get out and let me alone!" he screamed, jumping with nervous
+irritation.
+
+"Don't do that, Bill," Jap said firmly.  "What's the matter with you,
+anyway?  You are as pernickety as a setting hen, as Kelly said
+yesterday.  When even Kelly begins to notice your aberrations it's time
+for you to get a wake-up.  Are you sick?  Have things gone wrong?"
+
+Bill walked over to the window and ran his thumb down the pane of glass
+absently.
+
+"Jap, have you that mortgage handy--all that business that Mabelle gave
+you?"
+
+Jap went to the safe and took out the packet of papers.
+
+"Why?" he asked, as he glanced through the long list of items.  "Has my
+sister thought of anything else she absolutely needs?  In another week,
+I'll owe her more than the cottage is worth."
+
+Bill took the documents gingerly.  His mobile face flamed.
+
+"I--I--want to take up the deeds," he stammered.
+
+Jap whirled to face him.
+
+"You see," stuttered Bill, "I--that is, we--Mabelle and I, we----"
+
+Jap sprang forward, lithe as a panther, and caught Bill by the arm.
+Drawing him to the light, he looked full in the embarrassed face.
+
+"Where is she?" he shouted.  "Where is that sister of mine?  Where is
+she hiding?"
+
+The girl came from the dark hall, her eyes defiant, her head set with
+charming insolence on one side.  Jap struggled with his self-possession
+an instant.  Then a great, gurgling laugh shook his shoulders as he
+gathered the pair into his long arms.
+
+"Golly Haggins!" the expletive of his boyhood leaped to his lips, "I'm
+glad the agony is over.  Now perhaps we will be able to get the
+_Herald_ to our subscribers on time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+"Tom Granger got a telegram," announced Bill, coming into the office
+one morning early in April.  "He wants to see you at once, Jap."
+
+Jap's face blanched.  He looked dumbly at Bill.
+
+"No, it's not her," Bill hastened to say.  "It's her mother."
+
+Jap stumbled awkwardly up the walk to the Granger home.  The letters
+from Isabel had been far from reassuring, and only the previous day Dr.
+Hall had sounded a warning that the care of the invalid was too much
+for the girl, taxed as she was in both mind and body.  Into Jap's
+consciousness there crept the thought that she had never fully
+recovered from those terrible weeks when she hovered over him.
+
+Tom Granger met him at the door.  His eyes were red with weeping.  He
+drew Jap into the parlor and gave him two telegrams.
+
+"This came at midnight," he said brokenly.  Jap read:
+
+"Mother sinking.  Come.  ISABEL."
+
+"And this just arrived," Granger choked, as the fatal words met Jap's
+eye:
+
+"Mother dying.  Come.  Bring Jap.  ISABEL."
+
+"The train leaves in half an hour.  I don't have to ask you anything,
+my boy."
+
+Jap turned and hastened away.  He did not weaken Granger's feeble
+strength with words of sympathy.
+
+It was the afternoon of the second day when the two stood with Isabel
+at the foot of the bed.  Alice Granger lifted her heavy lids, and a
+gleam of recognition shone in her eyes.  Swiftly those two, the husband
+and the child, drew near, eager for any word that might pass the
+stiffening lips.  Jap stood looking sorrowfully down on her as they
+knelt at her side.
+
+"Jap," she whispered, "you, too," and her feeble fingers drew him.
+
+With a choked sob he knelt beside Isabel.  The mother fumbled with the
+covers until her hand, icy cold, touched his.  Instantly his firm,
+strong hand closed over it.  She smiled and murmured:
+
+"Tom.  Isabel."
+
+They leaned over her in a panic of fear.
+
+"Isabel's hand," she breathed, and placed the two hands together.
+"Tom, there is time," she whispered; "I want----"  She sank helpless.
+
+"I know what you would say," cried Granger, the tears streaming down
+his face.  "You want him to be our son before--before you say good-bye."
+
+A flash of joy illumined her thin face.  She sighed contentedly.
+
+A minister was hastily summoned, and a half hour later Isabel sobbed
+her grief in the arms of her husband, as they stood awaiting the coming
+of the Death Angel.
+
+"It made such a difference in her feeling toward you, your illness at
+our house," Tom said, looking down upon her closed eyes and fluttering
+lips.  "She never understood you, and in her quiet way she was always
+reserving judgment, when I used to talk so much about you.  A mother
+finds it hard to think any man is the right one for her only child, and
+she was so dependent on Isabel.  She hadn't any doubts, after she saw
+you in that dreadful fever, with all your soul laid bare to us.  She
+knew Isabel would be safe, and after that she stopped worrying."
+
+A grim hand caught at Jap's throat, as Tom sank on his knees and buried
+his face in the pillow to smother his sobs.  Into his memory there came
+the words of Flossy: "When your mother came, there was a revelation.  I
+don't fear for your future now.  And when I knew this, Jap, I suddenly
+felt tired and old."
+
+Flossy had clung to life until he had found the woman who could take
+her place.  Then, all at once, she let go.  And now Alice Granger, an
+invalid for twenty-three years, had relaxed her feeble hold on life
+when she knew that her child was in safe and gentle hands.  Must Death
+forever draw its grim fingers between him and his happiness?  He looked
+at his bride, fragile as a spring flower, and a great fear rushed over
+him.  Dumb, he stood there, stroking Isabel's hair with futile caresses.
+
+At last the glazing eyes opened, and Alice Granger said faintly:
+
+"Tom, not alone."
+
+"Not alone?" he cried in anguish.  "Always alone without you, Alice."
+
+She only smiled--and then she fell asleep.
+
+
+It was a strange wedding journey.  Between the half-crazed father and
+the exhausted wife, Jap was taxed to the uttermost.  Isabel, for once
+helpless, lay white and silent in the compartment, too weak to do more
+than cling to her one tower of strength, while Tom Granger rent Jap's
+sympathetic heart with his unreasoning grief.  At length nature
+demanded her own; from sheer exhaustion they slept.  Jap left them
+alone and stood out on the platform between the coaches.
+
+"Is my life always to hold grief?" he queried of his soul.  A throb of
+fear tore at his consciousness.  Isabel's death-white face arose before
+him.
+
+"No!" he cried fiercely, "there is a God.  He will not take all from
+me."
+
+He went back into the car and, kneeling beside his sleeping wife,
+prayed madly to his God for mercy.
+
+The grasses were green along the tracks, and the blue violets lifted
+their rain-washed faces as the familiar stations loomed in sight near
+the journey's end.  At the last station below Bloomtown, Bill and Dr.
+Hall entered the sleeper.
+
+"We have everything arranged," Dr. Hall said to Jap, while Bill fought
+with his tears.  "Isabel Granger has gone through too much to stand the
+harrowing experience of a funeral.  The carriages are waiting, and it
+has all been attended to at the cemetery.  We'll just have a short
+service out there, and I want you to keep her in the carriage with you.
+Bill and I did things with a high hand, but it had to be so.  I
+wouldn't risk having the girl look into her mother's grave.  She
+couldn't stand it."
+
+The platform was crowded with friends, and Tom Granger was responding
+to sympathetic greetings with tears he did not try to hold.  Jap half
+carried Isabel to the nearest carriage, and Dr. Hall took his place
+with them.  Bill had hurried to meet Mabelle, who tactfully drew Tom
+Granger into the second carriage, in which the minister sat waiting.
+In a dream the well known landmarks of Bloomtown passed before Jap's
+eyes.  There was the quick jolt that marked the crossing of the
+railroad tracks, and then the cool green of the cemetery came into view.
+
+While the brief service was read, Jap held Isabel tight to his aching
+breast.  His eyes wandered away beyond the yellow mound of earth, and
+in the hazy distance he saw his City of Hope.  The young grass smiled
+above the mounds that held the empty shells of those he had loved, the
+first in all the world who had loved him.  On Flossy's straight white
+shaft he read "I Hope."  That was all.
+
+After the slow cortège had moved its way back to town, Mabelle left the
+carriage and approached her brother.  Bill, with his face frankly
+tear-stained, was beside her.  The coachman had descended from his box,
+and was opening the door.
+
+"Let me take her--let me take your sweetheart to our cottage," she
+pleaded.  Leaning past him, she took one of Isabel's black-gloved
+hands.  "Dear, I am Jappie's sister.  I want to have you with me until
+you are better."
+
+Tom Granger sat up and leaned out of the carriage, so that all could
+hear him.
+
+"Jap is coming home with us," he said.  "He is my son.  He was married
+to Isabel just before her mother left us."
+
+And it was thus that after well-nigh three years of waiting Bloomtown
+celebrated the long-expected happiness of her best loved son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Isabel had a long, lingering illness.  It was plainly impossible for
+Jap and Mabelle to go to New York to see Fanny Maud make her debut.
+Mabelle had been a ministering angel, so faithful in her care of the
+invalid that an unreasoning jealousy blotted the grin of contentment
+from Bill's face as he uncomplainingly took the brunt of work at the
+office.  Jap was too abstracted to notice the Associate Editor's woe.
+One day, when rosy June was just bursting its buds, he glanced
+hurriedly through the columns of the _Herald_, still damp from the
+press.  He started, and looked keenly at Bill.  Second column, first
+page, under a double head that reduced the day's political sensation to
+minor importance, he read:
+
+"OUR NEIGHBOR REJOICES; TWINS COME TO THE EDITOR OF THE BARTON
+STANDARD."
+
+"Whew!" he whistled.  Bill looked up.  The red flew to his cheeks.
+
+"Both boys," he commented, folding papers rapidly.  "Be in line for
+pages, when old Brons lands in the Halls of Justice."
+
+Jap hurried home to tell the news.  Isabel, still pale and weak, was
+lying in the hammock on the screened porch.  She laughed, her old merry
+laugh, when Jap told her of Rosy Raymond's achievement.  Mabelle tossed
+her yellow curls.
+
+"Well, I don't think she was worrying Bill," she snapped.
+
+"There is no heavier blow to romance than twins," Jap said.
+
+"Maybe she will call them Jap and Bill," crisped Mabelle, and stopped
+short when her brother walked abruptly to the other end of the porch.
+
+"I hope that it won't fluster you to know that Bill and I are going to
+be married before Fanny Maud leaves for Europe," she flung at him.  "I
+want that haughty sister of mine to know that I am marrying a real man."
+
+Jap came swiftly back.
+
+"Have you taken Bill into your confidence, Sis?" he asked, patting
+Isabel's shoulder gently, as he smiled his whimsical smile at Mabelle.
+
+"You're naughty to tease her so," his wife chided.
+
+"Bill and I are going to New York on our wedding trip, just as soon as
+Isabel can spare me.  I want Fanny Maud to see----"  She stopped, then
+took the bit in her teeth.  "Jappie, you never knew why I ran away from
+New York last Thanksgiving.  Of course I told Bill all about it long
+ago.  Fanny and I certainly don't agree when it comes to men.  I can't
+imagine she will approve of Bill, after the one she picked for me."
+
+Further confidence was cut short by the appearance of Bill, turning the
+corner.  She arose and ran to meet him.
+
+"Poor Bill," Jap laughed, as the two came arm in arm up the shady lawn.
+
+Before her designs upon Bill could be executed, a strange thing
+happened.  Fanny Maud and a company of musicians made a summer concert
+tour.  It was only a little run from the city, and such an aggregation
+of artists as Bloomtown's wildest dreams had never visioned descended
+upon the town.  The hotel was taxed to its uttermost capacity, with six
+song birds, an orchestra, three lap dogs, and an Impresario whose
+manner implied that he had designs other than professional on the
+leading soprano.  Her stay was short, and left an impression of
+perfume, fluffy ruffles, French and haste.  Her manager consented to
+have her sing for Jap and Isabel.
+
+Bloomtown stood out in the road, listening, agape.  Perhaps Kelly Jones
+had been to Barton that summer night, for he declared that cats were
+climbing out of Tom Granger's chimneys, screeching for help, and a man
+kept scaring them worse by howling at them.  When Fanny Maud reached
+the famous high note she was justly proud of, Kelly clapped his hands
+to his stomach and yelled for mercy.
+
+"That's clawsick music," abjured Bill, who was sitting on the lawn with
+Mabelle.  Kelly looked at them with sorrow.
+
+"I was skeered that she had busted her throat, and all the sound was
+comin' out to onct," he complained.
+
+The last night of the brief but exciting visit Bill and Mabelle were
+quietly married.  Quietly--yes and no.  Mike Hawking rallied the band
+and all the tinware in town to celebrate.  Mabelle was indignant at
+first, but soon began to enjoy the fun, and created the happiest
+impression on the older generation of Bloomtown by insisting on
+marching arm in arm with Kelly Jones at the head of the procession.
+After Bill had given his solemn oath never to repeat the offense the
+"chivaree" broke up, with wild yells of congratulation.
+
+They took up residence in Mabelle's cottage.  By consensus of opinion
+it was Mabelle's cottage.  The town in fact so thoroughly recognized
+Mabelle, in the possessive case, that Jap cautioned Bill against the
+contingency of being referred to as "Mabelle's husband."  Bill was
+proud of his wife, and when fortune brought him lucre, from the
+long-forgotten bit of Texas land that suddenly showed oil, he began to
+improve the whole street by putting out trees.
+
+As Jap feelingly declared, Mabelle had even improved the dirt under the
+doorstep of the cottage, and Bill was fairly pushed out on the street
+for improving to do.  Under her fostering care, Bill had learned to
+make violent demands on the Town Board.  And they, the aldermen of
+Bloomtown, bent on pursuing the even tenor of their way at any hazard,
+had to adjust themselves to a new ebullition from Bill every Tuesday
+night.  But Bill and Mabelle were not doomed to see their enthusiasm go
+up in vapor.  It bore, instead, the most substantial fruit.  The
+barren, treeless town was beginning to grow shade for the aldermen to
+rest under in their old age.
+
+Kelly Jones said that if Jap had brought Mabelle with him, instead of
+waiting fourteen years to import her, the town would be larger than St.
+Louis.  As it was, Bloomtown might yet run that city a swift race.
+Mabelle set the fashions; told the School Board how to run the schools;
+the preachers how to make their churches popular; the mothers how to
+train their children.  And the Town Fathers all carried their hats in
+their hands when she breezed down the street.  Jap and Isabel watched
+and smiled, serene in the happiness that was theirs.
+
+
+"How wonderful it is, Jap, dear," said Isabel, standing in the sunset
+glow, on that Easter Sunday, after the year had flown.  The last red
+gleam touched the tip of the monument to Ellis Hinton, that had been
+erected by Bloomtown and dedicated that morning.  Together they had
+gone to the cemetery, when the crowd would not be there, Isabel's arms
+full of garlands for the low green tents of their loved ones.
+
+"It seemed that Flossy must be smiling at you as you stood there,
+saying the marvelous things that must have come to you direct from the
+lips of your spirit father.  Ellis Hinton spoke through you when you
+told the story of our town."
+
+Jap drew her tenderly to the fostering shadow of the monument and
+pressed her to his heart.  Her face was glorified as she looked up into
+his.
+
+"Oh, Jap, what if Ellis had never lived!"
+
+Jap drew her close.  Many hours had he wrought with his fear, but now
+the roses had come again to her cheeks and the light to her eyes.  He
+looked over the City of Peace, and his own eyes were full with joy.
+
+"But, thank God, Ellis did live."  And arm in arm they walked back to
+Ellis Hinton's real town.
+
+As they crossed the railroad tracks, Kelly Jones came ambling down from
+the station, where a large contingent from the vicinity of the steel
+highway between Barton and Bloomtown waited for the evening
+"Accommodation."
+
+"Gimmeny!" he exclaimed, clapping Jap on the shoulder, "I sure was
+proud of Ellis's boy to-day.  Ellis says to me, the day he went away,
+says he, 'Watch my boy, Kelly.  He is goin' to put the electricity in
+Bloomtown's backbone,' and, by jolly, you done it!  I reckon you felt
+proud," he went on, turning to Isabel, "when Wat Harlow called Jap the
+man that made Bloomtown a real town, and the crowd yelled, 'Yes.'
+Well, ma'am, for a minute I shook and grunted.  And then the wife said,
+'Wait a bit,' so I waited.  And when Jap got up and told the folks that
+not Jap Herron but a greater man than he ever hoped to be, had cradled
+and nussed Bloomtown and learnt her to walk, I might' nigh split my
+guzzle yellin' for joy.  Did you hear me yellin', 'Hurrah for Ellis's
+boy!'  And did you hear the crowd say it after me?"
+
+As Isabel took his hardened hand in hers, her eyes overflowed.
+
+"Jap is Ellis," she said gently, "to you and to his town.  I know it,
+and I am glad."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Bill sat doubled over the case, the stick held listlessly in his hand.
+Nervously he fingered the copy, not knowing what he was reading.  From
+time to time he slid down from the stool and lounged across the big
+office to the street door.  Vacantly he returned the greetings of his
+townsmen, as he gazed past them, across the corner of the little park
+that lay, brown and gold, in the glory of Indian Summer, across the
+intervening street where Tom Granger's sedate old house looked out on
+the leaf-strewn lawn.  He could see Tom Granger, pacing up and down the
+walk.  He could see Jap, sitting under the great elm, his face hidden
+in his hands.
+
+"Poor old Jap," Bill muttered, brushing aside a tear, as he returned
+once more to his case, "life has slammed him so many tough licks that
+he is always cringing, afraid of another lick."
+
+The morning wore on.  Bill gave up the effort at type-setting and tried
+to apply himself to the exchanges, so that he could the better watch
+the front of that house.  He was near the door, trying to read, when,
+all at once, Tom stopped pacing.  Jap sprang up and bounded across the
+lawn and into the front door.  A white-capped nurse ran through the
+wide hall, and in a little while Mabelle put her head out of an upper
+window and peered over at the office.  Bill pushed his chair back and
+tramped heavily to the pavement.  Then he tramped back again.
+
+"Certainly there are enough of them to let somebody come here with
+news," he growled.  "They don't seem to know that there are
+telephones--or that I would care."
+
+Half an hour dragged.  Then, all alone, his face shining with holy joy,
+Jap hurried to the office.  For a moment neither could speak.  Hand in
+hand, heart beating with heart, they stood looking into each other's
+eyes.  Then Jap said huskily:
+
+"Do you remember what Ellis said, that day when his greatest joy came?"
+
+Bill flung his arms around Jap and hugged him lustily.
+
+"Get out all the roosters?" he cried, tears gushing from his brown eyes.
+
+"And," said Jap slowly, "Isabel wants to call him Jasper William."
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Jap Herron, by Emily Grant Hutchings
+
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