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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aladdin O'Brien, by Gouverneur Morris

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Title: Aladdin O'Brien

Author: Gouverneur Morris

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5172]
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[This file was first posted on May 29, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALADDIN O'BRIEN ***











ALADDIN O'BRIEN

BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS





BOOK I

    "It was many and many a year ago,
      In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden there lived whom you may know
      By the name of Annabel Lee.
    And this maiden she lived with no other thought
      Than to love and be loved by me.
    I was a child and she was a child"--





ALADDIN O'BRIEN

I


It was on the way home from Sunday-school that Aladdin had
enticed Margaret to the forbidden river.  She was not sure
that he knew how to row, for he was prone to exaggerate his
prowess at this and that, and she went because of the fine
defiance of it, and because Aladdin exercised an irresistible
fascination.  He it was who could whistle the most engagingly
through his front teeth; and he it was, when sad dogs of boys
of the world were met behind the barn, who could blow the
smoke of the fragrant grapevine through his nose, and swallow
the same without alarm to himself or to his admirers.  To be
with him was in itself a soulful wickedness, a delicious and
elevating lesson in corruption.  But to be with him when he
had done wrong, and was sorry for it (as always when found
out), that was enough to give one visions of freckled angels,
and the sweetness of Paradise in May.

Aladdin brought the skiff into the float, stern first, with a
bump.  Pride sat high upon his freckled brow, and he whistled
piercing notes.

"I can do it," he said.  "Now get in."

Margaret embarked very gingerly and smoothed her dress
carefully, before and after sitting down.  It was a white and
starchy dress of price, with little blue ribbons at the throat
and wrists--such a dress as the little girl of a very poor
papa will find laid out on the gilt and brocade chair beside
her bed if she goes to sleep and wakes up in heaven.

"Only a little way, 'Laddin, please."

The boy made half a dozen circular, jabbing strokes, and the
skiff zigzagged out from the float.  It was a fine blue day,
cool as a cucumber, and across the river from the deserted
shipyards, where, upon lofty beamings, stood all sorts of
ships in all stages of composition, the frequent beeches and
maples showed pink and red and yellow against the evergreen
pines.

"It's easy 'nough," said Aladdin.  And Margaret agreed in her
mind, for it is the splash of deeds rather than the skill or
power which impresses a lady.  The little lady sat primly in
the stern, her mitted paws folded; her eyes, innocent and
immense, fastened admiringly upon the rowing boy.

"Only 'bout's far's the cat-boat, 'Laddin, please," she said.
"I oughtn't to of come 't all."

Somehow the cat-boat, anchored fifty yards out and straining
back from her moorings, would not allow herself to be
approached.  For although Aladdin maintained a proper
direction (at times), the ocean tide, setting rigidly in and
overbearing the current of the river, was beginning to carry
the skiff to some haven where she would not be.

Aladdin saw this and tried to go back, catching many crabs in
the earnestness of his endeavor.  Then the little girl,
without being told, perceived that matters were not entirely
in the hands of man, and began to look wistfully from Aladdin
to the shore.  After a while he stopped grinning, and then
rowing.

"Can't you get back, 'Laddin?" said the little girl.

"No," said the boy, "I can't."  He was all angel now, for he
was being visited for wrong.

The little girl's lips trembled and got white.

"I'm awful sorry, Margaret."

"What'll we do, 'Laddin?"

"Just sit still, 'n' whatever happens I'll take care of you,
Margaret."

They were passing the shipyards with a steady sweep, but the
offices were closed, the men at home, and no one saw the
distressed expedition. The last yard of all was conspicuous by
a three-master, finished, painted, sparred, ready for the
fragrant bottle to be cracked on her nose, and the long
shivering slide into the river. Then came a fine square,
chimneyed house with sherry-glass-shaped elm-trees about it.
The boy shouted to a man contorted under a load of wood. The
man looked up and grinned vacantly, for he was not even
half-witted. And they were swept on. Presently woods drew
between them and the last traces of habitation,--gorgeous woods
with intense splashes of color, standing upon clean rocks that
emphatically divided the water from the land,--and they
scurried into a region as untroubled by man as was Eden on the
first morning. The little boy was not afraid, but so sorry and
ashamed that he could have cried. The little girl, however, was
even deeper down the throat of remorse, for she had sinned
three times on Sunday,--first, she had spoken to the
"inventor's boy"; second, she had not "come straight home";
third, she had been seduced into a forbidden boat,--and there
was no balm in Gilead; nor any forgiveness forever. She
pictured her grand, dark father standing like a biblical
allegory of "Hell and Damnation" within the somber leathern
cube of his books, the fiercely white, whalebone cane upon
which he and old brother gout leaned, and the vast gloomy
centers at the bases of which glowed his savage eyes. She
thought of the rolling bitter voice with which she had once
heard him stiffen the backs of his constituents, and she was
sore afraid. She did not remember how much he loved her, or the
impotence of his principles where she was concerned. And she
did not recollect, for she had not been old enough to know,
that the great bitter voice, with its heavy, telling sarcasm,
had been lifted for humanity--for more humanity upon earth.

"Oh, 'Laddin," she said suddenly, "I daren't go home now."

"Maybe we can get her in farther up," said Aladdin, "and go
home through the woods.  That'll be something, anyhow."

Margaret shuddered.  She thought of the thin aunt who gave her
lessons upon the pianoforte--one of the elect, that aunt, who
had never done wrong, and whom any halo would fit; who gave
her to understand that the Almighty would raise Cain with any
little girl who did not practise an hour every day, and pray
Him, night and morning, to help her keep off the black notes
when the white notes were intended.  First there would be a
reckoning with papa, then one with Aunt Marion, last with
Almighty God, and afterward, horribile dictu, pitchforks for
little Margaret, and a vivid incandescent state to be
maintained through eternity at vast cost of pit-coal to a
gentleman who carried over his arm, so as not to step on it, a
long snaky tail with a point like a harpoon's.

Meanwhile, Aladdin made sundry attempts to get the boat
ashore, and failed signally.  The current was as saucy as
strong.  Now it swept them into the very shade of the trees,
and as hope rose hot in the boy's heart and he began to stab
the water with the oars, sent them skipping for the midriver.
Occasionally a fish jumped to show how easy it was, and high
overhead an eagle passed statelily in the wake of a cloud.
After the eagle came a V of geese flying south, moving through
the treacherous currents and whirlpools of the upper air as
steadily and directly as a train upon its track.  It seemed as
if nature had conspired with her children to demonstrate to
Margaret and Aladdin the facility of precise locomotion.  The
narrow deeps of the river ended where the shore rolled into a
high knob of trees; above this it spread over the lower land
into a great, shallow, swiftly currented lake, having in its
midst a long turtlebacked island of dense woods and abrupt
shores.  Two currents met off the knob and formed in the
direction of the island a long curve of spitting white.
Aladdin rowed with great fervor.

"Do it if you can, 'Laddin," said the little girl.

It seemed for one moment as if success were about to crown the
boy's effort, for he brought the boat to an exciting nearness
to the shore; but that was all.  The current said: "No,
Aladdin, that is not just the place to land; come with me, and
bring the boat and the young lady."  And Aladdin at once went
with the current.

"Margaret," he said, "I done my best."  He crossed his heart.

"I know you done your best, 'Laddin." Margaret's cheeks were
on the brink of tears.  "I know you done it."

They were dancing sportively farther and farther from the
shore.  The water broke, now and again, and slapped the boat
playfully.

"We 've come 'most three miles," said Aladdin.

"I daren't go back if I could now," said Margaret.

Meanwhile Aladdin scanned the horizon far and wide to see if
he could see anything of Antheus, tossed by the winds, or the
Phrygian triremes, or Capys, or the ships having upon their
lofty poops the arms of Caicus.  There was no help in sight.
Far and wide was the bubbling ruffled river, behind the
mainland, and ahead the leafy island.

"What'll your father do, 'Laddin?"

Aladdin merely grinned, less by way of explaining what his
father would do than of expressing to Margaret this: "Have
courage; I am still with you."

"'Laddin, we're not going so fast."

They had run into nominally still water, and the skiff was
losing momentum.

"Maybe we'd better land on the island," said Aladdin, "if we
can, and wait till the tide turns; won't be long now."

Again he plied the oars, and this time with success.  For
after a little they came into the shadow of the island, the
keel grunted upon sand, and they got out.  There was a little
crescent of white beach, with an occasional exclamatory green
reed sticking from it, and above was a fine arch of birch and
pine.  They hauled up the boat as far as they could, and sat
down to wait for the tide to turn.  Firm earth, in spite of
her awful spiritual forebodings, put Margaret in a more
cheerful mood.  Furthermore, the woods and the general mystery
of islands were as inviting as Punch.

"It's not much fun watching the tide come in," she said after
a time.

Aladdin got up.

"Let's go away," he said, "and come back.  It never comes in
if you watch for it to."

Margaret arose, and they went into the woods.

A devil's darning-needle came and buzzed for an instant on the
bow of the skiff.  A belated sandpiper flew into the cove,
peeped, and flew out.

The tide rose a little and said:

"What is this heavy thing upon my back?"

Then it rose a little more.

"Why, it's poor little sister boat stuck in the mud," said the
tide.

From far off came joyful crackling of twigs and the sounds of
children at play.

The tide rose a little more and freed an end of the boat.

"That's better," said the boat, "ever so much better.  I can
almost float."

Again the tide raised its broad shoulders a hair's-breadth.

"Great!" said the boat.  "Once more, Old Party!"

When the children came back, they found that poor little
sister boat was gone, and in her stead all of their forgotten
troubles had returned and were waiting for them, and looking
them in the face.




II


It is absurdly difficult to get help in this world.  If a lady
puts her head out of a window and yells "Police," she is
considered funny, or if a man from the very bottom of his soul
calls for help, he is commonly supposed to be drunk.  Thus if,
cast away upon an island, you should wave your handkerchief to
people passing in a boat, they would imagine that you wanted
to be friendly, and wave back; or, if they were New York
aldermen out for a day's fishing in the Sound, call you names.
And so it was with Margaret and Aladdin.  With shrill piping
voices they called tearfully to a party sailing up the river
from church, waved and waved, were answered in kind, and
tasted the bitterest cup possible to the Crusoed.

Then after much wandering in search of the boat it got to be
hunger-time, and two small stomachs calling lustily for food
did not add to the felicity of the situation.

With hunger-time came dusk, and afterward darkness, blacker
than the tall hat of Margaret's father.  For at the last
moment nature had thought better of the fine weather which man
had been enjoying for the past month, and drawn a vast curtain
of inkiness over the luminaries from one horizon even unto the
other, and sent a great puff of wet fog up the valley of the
river from the ocean, so that teeth chattered and the ends of
fingers became shriveled and bloodless.  And had not vanity
gone out with the entrance of sin, Margaret would have noticed
that her tight little curls were looser and the once stately
ostrich feather upon her Sunday hat, the envy of little girls
whom the green monster possessed, as flabby as a long sermon.

Meanwhile the tide having turned, little sister boat made fine
way of it down the river, and, burrowing in the fog, holding
her breath as it were, and greatly assisted by the tide,
slipped past the town unseen, and put for open sea, where it is
to be supposed she enjoyed herself hugely and, finally,
becoming a little skeleton of herself on unknown shores, was
gathered up by somebody who wanted a pretty fire with green
lights in it. The main point is that she went her selfish way
undetected, so that the wide-lanterned search which presently
arose for little Margaret tumbled and stumbled about clueless,
and halted to take drinks, and came back about morning and lay
down all day, and said it never did, which it certainly hadn't.
All the to-do was over Margaret, for Aladdin had not been
missed, and, even if he had, nobody would have looked for him.
His father was at home bending over the model of the wonderful
lamp which was to make his fortune, and over which he had been
bending for fifteen rolling years. It had come to him, at about
the time that he fell in love with Aladdin's mother, that a
certain worthless biproduct of something would, if combined
with something else and steeped in water, generate a certain
gas, which, though desperately explosive, would burn with a
flame as white as day. Over the perfection of this invention,
with a brief honeymoon for vacation, he had spent fifteen
years, a small fortune,--till he had nothing left, --the most
of his health, and indeed everything but his conviction that it
was a beautiful invention and sure of success. When Aladdin
arrived, he was red and wrinkled, after the everlasting fashion
of the human babe, and had no name, so because of the wonderful
lamp they called him Aladdin. And that rendered his first
school-days wretched and had nothing to do with the rest of his
life, after the everlasting fashion of wonderful names.
Aladdin's mother went out of the world in the very natural act
of ushering his young brother into it, and he remembered her as
a thin person who was not strictly honorable (for, having
betrayed him with a kiss, she punished him for smoking) and had
a headache. So there was nobody to miss Aladdin or to waste the
valuable night in looking for him.

About this time Margaret began to cry and Aladdin to comfort
her, and they stumbled about in the woods trying to find
--anything.  After awhile they happened into a grassy glade
between two steep rocks, and there agreeing to rest, scrunched
into a depression of the rock on the right.  And Margaret, her
nose very red, her hat at an angle, and her head on Aladdin's
shoulder, sobbed herself to sleep.  And then, because being
trusted is next to being God, and the most moving and gentlest
condition possible, Aladdin, for the first time, felt the full
measure of his crime in leading Margaret from the straight way
home, and he pressed her close to him and stroked her draggled
hair with his cold little hands and cried.  Whenever she moved
in sleep, his heart went out to her, and before the night was
old he loved her forever.

Sleep did not come to Aladdin, who had suddenly become a
father and a mother and a nurse and a brother and a lover and
a man who must not be afraid.  His coat was wrapped about
Margaret, and his arms were wrapped about his coat, and the
body of him shivered against the damp, cold shirt, which would
come open in front because there was a button gone.  The fog
came in thicker and colder, and night with her strange noises
moved slower and slower.  There was an old loon out on the
river, who would suddenly throw back his head and laugh for no
reason at all.  And once a great strange bird went rushing
past, squeaking like a mouse; and once two bright eyes came,
flashing out of the night and swung this way and that like
signal-lanterns and disappeared.  Aladdin gave himself up for
lost and would have screamed if he had been alone.

Presently his throat began to tickle, then the base of his
nose, then the bridge thereof, and then he felt for a
handkerchief and found none.  For a little while he maintained
the proprieties by a gentle sniffling, finally by one great
agonized snuff.  It seemed after that as if he were to be left
in peace.  But no.  His lips parted, his chin went up a
little, his eyes closed, the tickling gave place to a sudden
imperative ultimatum, and, when all was over, Margaret had
waked.

They talked for a long time, for she could not go to sleep
again, and Aladdin told her many things and kept her from
crying, but he did not tell her about the awful bird or the
more awful eyes.  He told her about his little brother, and
the yellow cat they had, and about the great city where he had
once lived, and why he was called Aladdin.  And when the real
began to grow dim, he told her stories out of strange books
that he had read, as he remembered them--first the story of
Aladdin and then others.

"Once," began Aladdin, though his teeth were knocking together
and his arms aching and his nose running--"once there was a
man named Ali Baba, and he had forty thieves--"




III


Even in the good north country, where the white breath of the
melting icebergs takes turn and turn with diamond nights and
days, people did not remember so thick a fog; nor was there a
thicker recorded in any chapter of tradition.  Indeed, if the
expression be endurable, so black was the whiteness that it
was difficult to know when morning came.  There was a fresher
shiver in the cold, the sensibility that tree-tops were
stirring, a filmy distinction of objects near at hand, and the
possibility that somewhere 'way back in the east the rosy
fingers of dawn were spread upon a clear horizon.  Collisions
between ships at sea were reported, and many a good sailorman
went down full fathom five to wait for the whistle of the
Great Boatswain.

The little children on the island roused themselves and groped
about among the chilled, dripping stems of the trees; they
had no end in view, and no place to go, but motion was
necessary for the lame legs and arms.  Margaret had caught a
frightful cold and Aladdin a worse, and they were hungrier than
should be allowed.  Now a jarred tree rained water down their
necks, and now their faces went with a splash and sting into
low-hanging plumes of leaves; often there would be a slip and a
scrambling fall.  And by the time Aladdin had done grimacing
over a banged shin, Margaret would have a bruised anklebone to
cry about.  The poor little soul was very tired and penitent
and cold and hurt and hungry, and she cried most of the time
and was not to be comforted.  But Aladdin bit his lips and
held his head up and said it all would be well sometime.
Perhaps, though he still had a little courage left, Aladdin
was the more to be pitied of the two: he was not only
desperately responsible for it all, but full of imagination
and the horrible things he had read.  Margaret, like most
women, suffered a little from self-centration, and to her the
trunk of a birch was just a nasty old wet tree, but to Aladdin
it was the clammy limb of one drowned, and drawn from the
waters to stand in eternal unrest.  At length the stumbling
progress brought them to a shore of the island: a slippery
ledge of rock, past whose feet the water slipped hurriedly,
steaming with fog as if it had been hot, two big leaning
birches, and a ruddy mink that slipped like winking into a
hole.  The river, evident for only a few yards, became lost in
the fog, and where they were could only be guessed, and which
way the tide was setting could only be learned by experiment.
Aladdin planted a twig at the precise edge of the water, and
they sat down to watch.  Stubbornly and unwillingly the water
receded from the twig, and they knew that the tide was running
out.

"That's the way home," said Aladdin.  Margaret looked
wistfully down-stream, her eyes as misty as the fog.

"If we had the boat we could go now," said Aladdin.

Then he sat moody, evolving enterprise, and neither spoke for
a long time.

"Marg'ret," said Aladdin, at length, "help me find a big log
near the water."

"What you going to do, 'Laddin?"

"You 'll see.  Help look."

They crept along the edge of the island, now among the
close-growing trees and now on the bare strip between them and
the water, until at length they came upon a big log, lying
like some gnarled amphibian half in the river and half on the
dry land.

"Help push," said Aladdin.

They could move it only a little, not enough.

"Wait till I get a lever," said Aladdin.  He went, and came
back with a long, stiff little birch, that, growing recklessly
in the thin soil over a rock, had been willing to yield to the
persuasion of a child and come up by the roots.  And then,
Margaret pushing her best, and Aladdin prying and grunting,
the log was moved to within an ace of launching.  Until now,
for she was too young to understand about daring and
unselfishness, Margaret had considered the log-launching as a
game invented by Aladdin to while away the dreary time; but
now she realized, from the look in the pale, set, freckly,
almost comical face of the boy, that deeds more serious were
afoot, and when he said, "Somebody'll pick me up, sure,
Marg'ret, and help me come back and get you," she broke out
crying afresh and said, "Don't, 'Laddin!  Doo-on't, 'Laddin!"

"Don't cry, Marg'ret," said Aladdin, with a gulp.  "I'd do
more'n that for you, and I can swim a little, too--b-better'n
I can row."

"Oh, 'Laddin," said Margaret, "it's so cold in the water."

"Shucks!" said Aladdin, whose teeth had been knocking all
night. "She's the stanch little craft" (he had the phrase of a
book) "Good Luck. I'm the captain and you're the builder's
daughter"--and so she was. "Chrissen 'er, Marg'et. Kiss her on
the bow an' say she's the Good Luck."

Then Margaret, her hat over one ear, and the draggled ostrich
feather greatly in the way, knelt, and putting her arms about
the shoreward end of the log, kissed it, and said in a drawn
little voice

"The Good Luck."

"And now, Margaret," said Aladdin, "you must stay right here'
n' not go 'way from the shore, so's I can find you when I come
back.  But don't just sit still all the time,--keep moving,
so's not to get any colder,--'n I'll come back for you sure."

Then, because he felt his courage failing, he said, "Good-by,
Marg'ret," and turning abruptly, waded in to his ankles and
bent over the log to give it that final impetus which was to
set it adrift.  In his heart were several things: the desire
to make good, fear of the river, and, poignant and bitter, the
feeling that Margaret did not understand.  He was too young to
believe that death might really be near him (almost reckless
enough not to care if he had), but keenly aware that his
undertaking was perilous enough to warrant a more adequate
farewell.  So he bent bitterly over the log and stiffened his
back for the heave.  It must be owned that Aladdin wanted more
of a scene.

"'Laddin, I forgot something.  Come back."

He came, his white lips drawn into a sort of smile.  Then they
kissed each other on the mouth with the loud, innocent kiss of
little children, and after that Aladdin felt that the river
was only a river, the cold only cold, the danger only danger
and flowers--more than flowers.

He moved the log easily and waded with it into the icy waters,
until his feet were dragged from the bottom, and after one
awful instant of total submersion the stanch little ship Good
Luck and valiant Captain Kissed-by-Margaret were embarked on
the voyage perilous.  His left arm over and about the log, his
legs kicking lustily like the legs of a frog, his right hand
paddling desperately for stability, Aladdin disappeared into
the fog.  After a few minutes he became so freezing cold that
he would have let go and drowned gladly if it had not been for
the wonderful lamp which had been lighted in his heart.

Margaret, when she saw him borne from her by the irresistible
current, cried out with all the illogic of her womanly little
soul, "Come back, 'Laddin, come back!" and sank sobbing upon
the empty shore.




IV


However imminent the peril of the man, it is the better part
of chivalry to remain by the distressed lady, and though
impotent to be of assistance, we must linger near Margaret,
and watch her gradually rise from prone sobbing to a sitting
attitude of tears.  For a long time she sat crying on the
empty shore, regarding for the most part black life and not at
all the signs of cheerful change which were becoming evident
in the atmosphere about her.  The cold breath across her face
and hands and needling through her shivering body, the
increasing sounds of treetops in commotion, the recurring
appearance of branches where before had been only an opaque
vault, did little to inform her that the fog was about to
lift.  The rising wind merely made her the more miserable and
alone.  Nor was it until a disk of gold smote suddenly on the
rock before her that she looked up and beheld a twinkle of
blue sky.  The fog puffed across the blue, the blue looked
down again,--a bigger eye than before,--a wisp of fog filmed
it again, and again it gleamed out, ever larger and always
more blue.  The good wind living far to the south had heard
that in a few days a little girl was to be alone and
comfortless upon a foggy island, and, hearing, had filled his
vast chest with warmth and sunshine, and puffed out his merry
cheeks and blown.  The great breath sent the blue waves
thundering upon the coral beaches of Florida, tore across the
forests of palm and set them all waving hilariously, shook the
merry orange-trees till they rattled, whistled through the
dismal swamps of Georgia, swept, calling and shouting to
itself, over the Carolinas, where clouds were hatching in
men's minds, banked up the waters of the Chesapeake so that
there was a great high tide and the ducks were sent scudding
to the decoys of the nearest gunner, went roaring into the
oaks and hickories of New York, warmed the veins of New
England fruit-trees, and finally coming to the giant fog, rent
it apart by handfuls as you pluck feathers from a goose, and
hurled it this way and that, until once more the sky and land
could look each other in the face.  Then the great wind
laughed and ceased.
For a long time Margaret looked down the cleared face of the
river, but there was no trace of Aladdin, and in life but one
comfort: the sun was hot and she was getting warm.

After a time, in the woods directly behind where she sat
hoping and fearing and trying to dry her tears, a gun sounded
like an exclamation of hope.  Had Aladdin by any incredible
circumstance returned so soon? Mindful of his warning not to
stray from where she was, Margaret stood up and called in a
shrill little voice

"Here I am! Here I am!"

Silence in the woods immediately behind where Margaret stood
hoping and fearing!

"Here I am!" she cried.  And it had been piteous to hear, so
small and shrill was the voice.

Presently, though much farther off, sounded the merry yapping
bark of a little dog, and again, but this time like an echo of
itself, the exclamation of hope--hope deferred.

"Here I am! Here--I--am!" called Margaret.

Then there was a long silence--so long that it seemed as if
nothing in the world could have been so long.  Margaret sat
down gasping.  The sun rose higher, the river ran on, and hope
flew away.  And just as hope had gone for good, the merry
yapping of the dog broke out so near that Margaret jumped, and
bang went the gun--like a promise of salvation.  Instantly she
was on her feet with her shrill,

"Here I am!  Here I am!"

And this time came back a lusty young voice crying:

"I'm coming!"

And hard behind the voice leaves shook, and a boy came
striding into the sunlight.  In one hand he trailed a gun, and
at his heels trotted a waggish spaniel of immense importance
and infinitesimal size.  In his other hand the boy carried by
the legs a splendid cock-grouse, ruffled and hunger-compelling.
The boy, perhaps two years older than Aladdin, was big and strong
for his age, and bore his shining head like a young wood-god.

Margaret ran to him, telling her story as she went, but so
incoherently that when she reached him she had to stop and
begin over again.

"Then Senator St. John is your father?" said the boy at
length.  "You know, he's a great friend of my father's.  My
father's name is Peter Manners, and he used to be a
congressman for New York.  Are you hungry?"

Margaret could only look it.

They sat down, and the boy took wonderful things out of his
wonderful pockets--sandwiches of egg and sandwiches of jam;
and Margaret fell to.

"I live in New York," said the boy, "but I'm staying with my
cousins up the river.  They told me there were partridges on
this island, and I rowed down to try and get some, but I
missed two."
The boy blushed most becomingly whenever he spoke, and his
voice, and the way he said words, were different from anything
Margaret had ever heard.  And she admired him tremendously.
And the boy, because she had spent a night on a desert island,
which he never had, admired her in turn.

"Maybe we'll find 'Laddin on the way," said Margaret,
cheerfully, and she looked up with great eyes at her godlike
young friend.




V


Meanwhile to Aladdin and his log divers things had occurred,
but the wonderful lamp, burning low or high at the will of the
river, had not gone out.  Sliding through the smoking fog at
three miles an hour, kicking and paddling, all had gone well
for a while.  Then, for he was more keen than Margaret to note
the fog's promise to lift, at the very moment when the shores
began to appear and mark his course as favorable, at the very
moment when the sun struck one end of the log, an eddy of the
current struck the other, and sent the stanch little craft
Good Luck and her captain by a wide curve back up the river.
The backward journey was slow and tortuous, and twice when the
Good Luck turned turtle, submerging Aladdin, he gave himself
up for lost; but amidships of the island, fairly opposite to
the spot where he had left Margaret, the log was again seized
by the right current, and the voyage recommenced.  But the
same eddy seized them, and back they came, with only an arm
stiffened by cold between Aladdin and death.  The third
descent of the river, however, was more propitious.  The eddy,
it is true, made a final snatch, but its fingers were weakened
and its murderous intentions thwarted.  They passed by the
knob of trees at the narrowing of the river, and swept grandly
toward the town.  Past the first shipyard they tore unnoticed,
but at the second a shouting arose, and a boat was slipped
overboard and put after them.  Strong hands dragged Aladdin
from the water, and, gulp after gulp, water gushed from his
mouth.  Then they rowed him quickly to land, and the Good
Luck, having done her duty, went down the river alone.  Years
after, could Aladdin have met with that log, he would have
recognized it like the face of a friend, and would have
embraced and kissed it, painted it white to stave off the
decay of old age, and set it foremost among his Lares and
Penates.

For the present he was insensible.  They put him naked into
coarse, warm horse-blankets, and laid him before the great
fire in the blacksmith's shop across the road from the
shipyard.  And at the same time they sent one flying with a
horse and buggy to the house of Hannibal St. John, for Aladdin
had not passed into unconsciousness without partly completing
his mission.

"Margaret--is--up--at--" he said, and darkness came.

At the moment when Aladdin came to, the door of the smithy was
darkened by the tremendous figure of Hannibal St. John.
Wrapped in his long black cloak, fastened at the throat by
three links of steel chain, his face glowering and cavernous,
the great man strode like a controlled storm through the awed
underlings and stopped rigid at Aladdin's side.

"Can the boy speak?" he said.

To Aladdin, looking up, there was neither pity nor mercy
apparent in the senator's face, and a great fear shook him.
Would the wrath descend?

"Do you know where my daughter is?"

The great rolling voice nearly broke between the "my" and the
"daughter," and the fear left Aladdin.

"Mister St. John," he said, "she's up at one of the islands.
We went in a boat and couldn't get back.  If you'll only get a
boat and some one to row, I can take you right to her."  Then
Aladdin knew that he had not said all there was to say.
"Mister St. John," said Aladdin, "I done it all."

Men ran out of the smithy to prepare a boat.

"Who is this boy?" said St. John.

"It's Aladdin O'Brien, the inventor's boy," said the smith.

"Are you strong enough to go with me, O'Brien?" said the
senator.

"Yes, sir; I've got to go," said Aladdin.  "I said I'd come
back for her."

"Give him some whisky," said St. John, in the voice of Jupiter
saying "Poison him," "and wrap him up warm, and bring him
along."

They embarked.  Aladdin, cuddled in blankets, was laid in
the bow, St. John, not deigning to sit, stood like a black
tree-trunk in the stern, and amidships were four men to row.

A little distance up the river they met a boat coming down.
In the stern sat Margaret, and at the oars her godlike young
friend.  Just over the bow appeared the snout and merry eyes
of the spaniel, one of his delightful ears hanging over on
each side.

"I am glad to see you alive," said St. John to Margaret when
the boats were within hailing distance, and to her friend he
said, "Since you have brought her so far, be good enough to
bring her the rest of the way."  And to his own rowers he
said, "Go back."
When the boats came to land at the shipyard, Margaret's father
lifted her out and kissed her once on each cheek.  Of the
godlike boy he asked his name, and when he learned that it was
Peter Manners and that his father was Peter Manners, he almost
smiled, and he shook the boy's hand.

"I will send word to your cousins up the river that you are
with me," he said, and thus was the invitation extended and
accepted.

"O'Brien," said the great man to Aladdin, "when you feel able,
come to my house; I have something to say to you."

Then Senator St. John, and Margaret, and Margaret's godlike
young friend, and the spaniel got into the carriage that was
waiting for them, and drove off.  But Margaret turned and
waved to Aladdin.

"Good-by, Aladdin!" she called.




VI

They helped Aladdin back to the smithy, for his only covering
was a clumsy blanket; and there he put on his shrunken
clothes, which meanwhile had dried.  The kindly men pressed
food on him, but he could not eat.  He could only sit blankly
by the fire and nurse the numb, overpowering pain in his
heart.  Another had succeeded where he had failed.  Even at
parting, just now, Margaret's eyes had not been for him, but
for the stranger who had done so easily what he had not been
able to do at all.  The voyage down the river had been mere
foolishness without result.  He had not rescued his fair lady,
but deserted her upon a desert island.  For him no bouquets
were flung, nor was there to be any clapping of hands.  After
a time he rose like one dreaming, and went slowly, for he was
sick and weak, up to the great pillared house of Hannibal St.
John.  The senator in that stern voice of his had bade him
come; nothing could be any worse than it was.  He would go.
He knocked, and they showed him into the library.  It was four
walls of leather books, an oak table neater than a pin, a huge
chair covered with horsehair much worn, and a blazing fire of
birch logs.  Before the fire, one hand thrust into his coat,
the other resting somewhat heavily upon the head of a
whalebone cane, stood the senator.  Far off Aladdin heard
Margaret's laugh and with it another young laugh.  Then he
looked up like a little hunted thing into the senator's
smoldering eyes.

"Sit down in that chair," said the senator, pointing with his
cane to the only chair in the room.  His voice had the effect
of a strong muscular compulsion to which men at once yielded.
Aladdin sat into the big chair, his toes swinging just clear
of the ground.  Then there was silence.  Aladdin broke it.

"Is Margaret all right?" he gulped.

The senator disregarded the question.  Having chosen his
words, he said them.

"I do not know," he began, "what my daughter was doing in a
boat with you.  I do not object to her enjoying the society at
proper times of suitable companions of her own age, but the
society of those who lead her into temptation is not
suitable."  Aladdin fairly wilted under the glowering voice.
"You will not be allowed to associate with her any more," said
the senator.  "I will speak to your father and see that he
forbids it."

Aladdin climbed out of the chair, and stumbled blindly into
the table.  He had meant to find the door and go.

"Wait; I have not done," said the senator.

Aladdin turned and faced the enemy who was taking away the joy
of life from him.

"In trying to atone for your fault," said the senator, "by
imperiling your life, you did at once a foolhardy and a fine
thing--one which I will do my best to repay at any time that
you may see fit to call upon me.  For the present you may find
this of use."  He held forward between his thumb and
forefinger a twenty-dollar gold piece.  Aladdin groped for
words, and remembered a phrase which he had heard his own
father return to a tormentor.  He thrust his red hands into
his tight pockets, and with trembling lips looked up.

"It's a matter of pride," he said, and walked out of the room.
When he had gone the senator took from his pocket a leather
purse, opened it, put back the gold piece, and carefully tied
the string.  Then far from any known key or tune the great man
whistled a few notes.  Could his constituents have heard, they
would have known--and often had the subject been debated--that
Hannibal St. John was human.

Aladdin stood for a while upon the lofty pillared portico of
the senator's house, and with a mist in his eyes looked away
and away to where the cause of all his troubles flowed like a
ribbon of silver through the bright-colored land.  Grown men,
having, in their whole lives, suffered less than Aladdin was
at that moment suffering, have considered themselves
heartbroken.  The little boy shivered and toiled down the
steps, between the tall box hedges lining the path, and out
into the road.  A late rose leaning over the garden fence gave
up her leaves in a pink shower as he passed, and at the same
instant all the glass in a window of the house opposite fell
out with a smash.  These events seemed perfectly natural to
Aladdin, but when people, talking at the tops of their voices
and gesticulating, began to run out of houses and make down
the hill toward the town, he remembered that, just as the
rose-leaves fell and just as the glass came out of the
window-frame, he had been conscious of a distant thudding
boom, and a jarring of the ground under his feet.  So he
joined in the stream of his neighbors, and ran with them
down the hill to see what had happened.

Aladdin remembered little of that breathless run, and one
thing only stood ever afterward vivid among his recollections.
All the people were headed eagerly in one direction, but at
the corner of the street in which Aladdin lived, an awkish,
half-grown girl, her face contorted with terror, struggled
against the tugging of two younger companions and screamed in
a terrible voice:

"I don't wahnt to go! I don't wahnt to go!"

But they dragged her along.  That girl had no father, and her
mother walked the streets.  She would never have any beauty
nor any grace; she was dirt of the dirt, dirty, but she had a
heart of mercy and could not bear to look upon suffering.

"I don't wahnt to go!  I don't wahnt to go!" and now the
scream was a shudder.

Aladdin's street was crowded to suffocation, and the front of
the house where Aladdin lived was blown out, and men with
grave faces were going about among the ruins looking for what
was left of Aladdin's father.

A much littler boy than Aladdin stood in the yard of the
house.  In his arms folded high he clutched a yellow cat, who
licked his cheek with her rough tongue.  The littler boy kept
crying, "'Laddin, 'Laddin!"

Aladdin took the little boy and the yellow cat all into one
embrace, and people turned away their heads.




VII


In the ensuing two days Aladdin matured enormously, for though
a kind neighbor took him in, together with his brother Jack and
the yellow cat, he had suffered many things and already sniffed
the wolf at the door. The kind neighbor was a widow lady, whose
husband, having been a master carpenter of retentive habits,
had left her independently rich. She owned the white-and-green
house in which she lived, the plot of ground, including a small
front and a small back yard, upon which it stood, and she spent
with some splendor a certain income of three hundred and
eighty-two dollars a year. Every picture, every chair, every
mantelpiece in the Widow Brackett's house was draped with a
silk scarf. The parlor lamp had a glass shade upon which,
painted in oils, by hand, were crimson moss-roses and scarlet
poppies. A crushed plush spring rocker had goldenrod painted on
back and seat, while two white-and-gold vases in precise
positions on the mantel were filled with tight round bunches of
immortelles, stained pink. Upon the marble-topped,
carved-by-machine-walnut-legged table in the bay-window were
things to be taken up by a visitor and examined. A white plate
with a spreading of foreign postage-stamps, such as any boy
collector has in quantities for exchange, was the first
surprise: you were supposed to discover that the stamps were
not real, but painted on the plate, and exclaim about it. A
china basket contained most edible-looking fruit of the same
material, and a huge album, not to be confounded with the
family Bible upon which it rested, was filled with speaking
likenesses of the Widow Brackett's relatives. The Bible beneath
could have told when each was born, when many had died, and
where many were buried. But nobody was ever allowed to look
into the Widow Brackett's Bible for information mundane or
spiritual, since the only result would have been showers of
pressed ferns and flowers upon the carpet, which was not
without well-pressed flowers and ferns of its own.

Very soon after the explosion of the wonderful lamp the Widow
Brackett had taken Aladdin and Jack and the cat into her house
and seen to it that they had a square meal.  Early on the
second day she came to the conclusion that if it could in any
way be made worth her while, she would like to keep them until
they grew up.  And when the ground upon which Aladdin's
father's house had stood was sold at auction for three hundred
and eight dollars, she let it be known that if she could get
that she would board the two little waifs until Aladdin was
old enough to work.  The court appointed two guardians.  The
guardians consulted for a few minutes over something brown in
a glass, and promptly turned over the three hundred and eight
dollars to the Widow Brackett; and the Widow Brackett almost
as promptly made a few alterations in the up-stairs of her
house the better to accommodate the orphans, tied a dirty
white ribbon about the yellow cat's neck, and bought a
derelict piano upon which her heart had been set for many
months.  She was no musician, but she loved a tightly closed
piano with a scarf draped over the top, and thought that no
parlor should be without one.  Up to middle C, as Aladdin in
time found out, the piano in question was not without musical
pretensions, but above that any chord sounded like a nest of
tin plates dropped on a wooden floor, and the intervals were
those of no known scale nor fragment thereof.  But in time he
learned to draw pleasant things from the old piano and to
accompany his shrill voice in song.  As a matter of fact, he
had no voice and never would have, but almost from the first
he knew how to sing.  It so happened that he was drawn to the
piano by a singular thing: a note from his beloved.

It came one morning thumb-marked about the sealing, and
covered with the generous sprawl of her writing.  It said:

DEAR ALADDIN: Do not say anything about this because I do not
know if my father would like it but I am so sorry about your
father blowing up and all your troubles and I want you to know
how sory I am.  I must stop now because I have to practis.

         Your loving friend

                        MARGARET ST. JOHN.

Aladdin was an exquisite speller, and the first thing he
noticed about the letter was that it contained two words
spelled wrong, and that he loved Margaret the better by two
misspelled words, and that he had a lump in his throat.

He had found the letter by his plate at breakfast, and the
eyes of Mrs. Brackett fastened upon it.

"I don't know who ken have been writin' to you," she said.

"Neither do I," said Aladdin, giving, as is proper, the direct
lie to the remark inquisitive.  He had put the letter in his
pocket.

"Why don't you open it and see?"

Aladdin blushed.

"Time enough after breakfast," he said.

There was a silence.

"Jack's eatin' his breakfast; why ain't you eatin' yours?"

Aladdin fell upon his breakfast for the sake of peace.  And
Mrs. Brackett said no more.  Some days later, for she was not
to be denied in little matters or great, Mrs. Brackett found
where Aladdin had hidden the letter, took it up, read it,
sniffed, and put it back, with the remark that she never "see
such carryin's-on."

Aladdin hid, and read his letter over and over; then an
ominous silence having informed him that Mrs. Brackett had
gone abroad, he stole into the parlor, perched on the
piano-stool, and, like a second Columbus, began to discover
things which other people have to be shown.  The joy of his
soul had to find expression, as often afterward the sorrow
of it.

That winter Jack entered school in the lowest class, and the
two little boys were to be seen going or coming in close
comradeship, fair weather or foul.  The yellow cat had affairs
of gallantry, and bore to the family, at about Christmas-time,
five yellow kittens, which nobody had the heart to drown, and
about whose necks, at the age of eye-opening, the Widow
Brackett tied little white ribbons in large bows.

Sometimes Aladdin saw Margaret, but only for a little.

So the years passed, and Aladdin turned his sixteenth year.
He was very tall and very thin, energetic but not strong, very
clever, but with less application than an uncoerced camel.  To
single him from other boys, he was full of music and visions.
And rhymes were beginning to ring in his head.

A week came when the rhymes and the music went clean out of
his head, which became as heavy as a scuttle full of coal, and
he walked about heavily like an old man.




VIII


One day, during the morning session of school, Aladdin's head
got so heavy that he could hardly see, and he felt hot all
over.  He spoke to the teacher and was allowed to go home.
Mrs. Brackett, when she saw him enter the yard, was in great
alarm, for she at once supposed that he had done something
awful, which was not out of the question, and suffered
expulsion.

"What have you done?" she said.

"Nothing," said Aladdin.  "I think I'm going to be sick."

Mrs. Brackett tossed her hands heavenward.

"What is the matter?" she cried.

"I don't know," said Aladdin.  She followed him into the house
and up the stairs, which he climbed heavily.

"Where do you feel bad, 'Laddin O'Brien?" she said sharply.

"It's my head, ma'am," said Aladdin.  He went into his room
and lay face down on the bed, having first dropped his
schoolbooks on the floor, and began to talk fluently of kings'
daughters and genii and copper bottles.

The Widow Brackett was an active woman of action.  Flat-footed
and hatless, but with incredible speed, she dashed down the
stairs, out of the house, and up the street.  She returned in
five minutes with the doctor.

The doctor said, "Fever."  It was quite evident that it was
fever; but a doctor's word for it put everything on a
comfortable and satisfactory footing.

"We must get him to bed," said the doctor.  He made the
attempt alone, but Aladdin struggled, and the doctor was old.
Mrs. Brackett came to the rescue and, finally, they got
Aladdin, no longer violent, into his bed, while the doctor, in
a soft voice, said what maybe it was and what maybe it
wasn't,--he leaned to a bilious fever,--and prescribed this
and that as sovereign in any case.  They darkened the room,
and Aladdin was sick with typhoid fever for many weeks.  He
was delirious much too much, and Mrs. Brackett got thin with
watching.  Occasionally it seemed as if he might possibly
live, but oftenest as if he would surely die.

In his delirium for the most part Aladdin dwelt upon Margaret,
so that his love for her was an old story to Mrs. Brackett.
One gay spring morning, after a terrible night, Aladdin's
fever cooled a little, and he was able to talk in whispers.

"Mrs. Brackett," he said, "Mrs. Brackett."

She came hurriedly to the bed.

"I know you're feelin' better, 'Laddin O'Brien."

He smiled up at her.

"Mrs. Brackett," he said, "I dreamed that Margaret St. John
came here to ask how I was--did she?"

Margaret hadn't.  She had not, so hedged was her life, even
heard that Aladdin lay sick.

Mrs. Brackett lied nobly.

"She was here yesterday," she said, "and that anxious to know
all about you."

Aladdin looked like one that had found peace.

"Thank you," he said.

Mrs. Brackett raised his head, pillow and all, very gently,
and gave him his medicine.

"How's Jack?" said Aladdin.

"He comes twice every day to ask about you," said Mrs.
Brackett.  "He's livin' with my brother-in-law."

"That's good," said Aladdin.  He lay back and dozed.  After a
while he opened his eyes.

"Mrs. Brackett-"

"What is it, deary?"  The good woman had been herself on the
point of dozing, but was instantly alert.

"Am I going to die?"

"You goin' to die!"  She tried to make her voice indignant,
but it broke.

"I want to know."

"He wants to know, good land!" exclaimed Mrs. Brackett.

"If a man's going to die," said Aladdin, aeat-sixteen, "he
wants to know, because he has things that have to be done."

"Doctor said you wasn't to talk much," said Mrs. Brackett.

"If I've got to die," said Aladdin, abruptly, "I've got to see
Margaret."

A woman in a blue wrapper, muddy slippers, her gray hair
disheveled, hatless, her eyes bright and wild, burst suddenly
upon Hannibal St. John where he sat in his library reading in
the book called "Hesperides."

"Senator St. John," she began rapidly, "Aladdin O'Brien's sick
in my house, and the last thing he said was, 'I've got to see
Margaret'; and he's dyin' wantin' to see her, and I've come
for her, and she's got to come."

It was a tribute to St. John's genius that in spite of her
incoherent utterance he understood precisely what the woman
was driving at.

"You say he's dying?" he said.

"Doctor's given up hope.  He's had a relapse since this
mornin', and she's got to come right now if she's to see him
at all."

The senator hesitated for once.

"It's got nothin' to do with the proprieties," said Mrs.
Brackett, sternly, "nor what he was to her, nor her to him;
it's a plain case of humanity and--"

"What is the nature of the sickness?" asked the senator.

"It's fever--"

"Is it contagious?" asked the senator.

"No, it ain't!" almost shrieked the old lady.  "And what if it
was?"

"Of course if it were contagious she couldn't go," said the
senator.

"It ain't contagious, and, what's more, he once laid down his
life for her on the log, that time."

"If you assure me the fever is not contagious--"

"You'll let her come--"

"It seems nonsense," said the senator.  "They are only
children, and I don't want her to get silly ideas."

"Only children!" exclaimed Mrs. Brackett.  "Senator, give me
the troubles of the grown-ups, childbirth, and losing the
first-born with none to follow, the losing of husband and
mother, and the approach of old age,--give me them and I'll
bear them, but spare me the sorrows and trials of little
children which we grown-ups ain't strong enough to bear.  You
can say I said so," she finished defiantly.

The senator bowed in agreement.

"I believe you are right," he said.  "I will take you home in
my carriage, Mrs.--"

"Brackett," said she, with pride.

The senator stepped into the hall and raised his voice the
least trifle.

"Daughter!"

She answered from several rooms away, and came running.  Her
hands were inky, and she held a letter.  She was no longer the
timid little girl of the island, for somehow that escapade had
emancipated her.  She had waited for a few days in expectation
of damnation, but, that failing to materialize, had turned
over a leaf in her character, and became such a bully at home
that the family and servants loved her more and more from day
to day.  She was fourteen at this time; altogether exquisite
and charming and wayward.

"Aladdin O'Brien is very sick, daughter," said the senator,
"and we are going to see him."

"And don't tell him that you didn't come to ask after him
yesterday," said Mrs. Brackett, defiantly, "because I said you
did.  I had my reasons," she went on, "and you can say I said
so."

Margaret ran up-stairs to get her hat.  She was almost wild
with excitement and foreboding of she knew not what.

The letter which she had been writing fell from her hand.  She
picked it up, looked hastily at the superscription, "Mr.
Peter Manners, Jr.," and tore it into pieces.




IX


There is no doubt that Aladdin's recovery dated from Margaret's
visit. The poor boy was too sick to say what he had planned,
but Margaret sat by his bed for a while and held his hand, and
said little abrupt conventional things that meant much more to
them both, and that was enough. Besides, and under the guns of
her father's eyes, just before she went away she stooped and
kissed him on the forehead, and that was more than enough to
make anybody get over anything, Aladdin thought. So he slept a
long cool sleep after Margaret had gone, and woke free of
fever. As he lay gathering strength to sit up in bed, which
treat had been promised him in ten days, Aladdin's mind worked
hard over the future, and what he could machinate in order one
day to be almost worthy to kiss the dust under Margaret's feet.
She sent him flowers twice, but was not allowed to come and see
him again.

Aladdin had awful struggles with the boredom of convalescence.
He felt perfectly well, and they wouldn't let him get up and
out; everything forbidden he wanted to eat.  And his one
solace was the Brackett library.  This was an extraordinary
collection of books.  They were seven, and how they got there
nobody knows.  The most important in the collection was, in
Mrs. Brackett's estimation, an odd volume of an encyclopedia,
bound in tree-calf and labeled, "Safety-lamps to Stranglers."
Next were four fat tomes in the German language on scientific
subjects; these, provided that anybody had ever wanted to read
them, had never succeeded in getting themselves read, but they
had cuts and cuts which were fascinating to surmise about.
The sixth book was the second volume of a romance called "The
Headsman," by "the author of 'The Spy,'" and the seventh was a
back-split edition of Poe's poems.

The second volume of "The Headsman" went like cakes and syrup
on a cold morning, for it was narrative, and then it was laid
aside, because it was dull.  The four German books had their
cuts almost examined out of them, and the encyclopedia book,
from "Safety-lamps to Stranglers," practically had its
contents torn out and devoured.  In after life Aladdin could
always speak with extraordinary fluency, feeling, and
understanding on anything that began with S, such as Simeon
Stylites and Senegambia.  But the poems of Poe were what made
his sickness worth while and put the call upon all his after
life.  We learn of the critics and professors of English that
there are greater lyric poets than Poe.  They will base this
on technicalities and theories of what poetry has been and
what poetry ought to be, and will not take into account the
fact that of all of them--Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth when he
is a poet at all, Heine, and the lyric body of Goethe and the
rest--not one in proportion to the mass of his production so
often leaves the ground and spreads wings as Poe,--

    If I might dwell
    Where Israfel
    Hath dwelt, and he where I,
    He might not sing so wildly well
    A mortal melody,
    While a bolder note than his might swell
    From my lyre within the sky,--

and that where they have, they have perhaps risen a little
higher, but never have sung more hauntingly and clear.  The
wonderful sounds and the unearthly purity--the purity of a
little child that has died--took Aladdin by the throat and
shook up the imagination and music that had lain dormant
within him; his father's bent for invention clarified into
a passion for creation.  The first thing he read was three
stanzas on the left-hand page where the book opened to his
uneager hands, and his eyes, expectant of disappointment,
--for up to that time, never having read any, he hated
poetry,--fell on one of the five or six perfect poems in
the world:

    Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicean barks of yore
    That gently o'er a perfumed sea
    The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.

    On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
    Thy naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece,
    And the grandeur that was Rome.

    Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
    How statue-like I see thee stand,
    The agate lamp within thy hand!
    Ah, Psyche! From the regions which
    Are holy land.

And he knew that he had read the most exquisite, the most
insouciant, and the most universal account of every man's
heart's desire--Margaret as she would be when she grew tall.
He knew little of the glory that was Greece or the grandeur
that was Rome, but whatever they were, Margaret had all of
them, and the hyacinth hair, very thick and clustery and
beautiful, and the naiad airs.  Ah, Psyche!

And he read forward and back in the book, and after a little
he knew that he had a soul, and that the only beautiful thing
in the world is beauty, and the only sad thing, and that
beauty is truth.

Open at the lines to Helen he laid the book face down upon his
heart, with his hands clasped over it, and shut his eyes.

"Now I know what I've got to do," he said.  "Now I know what
I've got to do."

He dreamed away hours until suddenly the need of deeds set him
bolt upright in bed, and he called to Mrs. Brackett to bring
him pencil and paper.  From that time on he was seldom without
them, and, by turns reading and writing, entered with hope and
fortitude into the challenging field of literature.  And from
the first, however ignorant and unkempt the effort, he wrote a
kind of literature, for he buckled to no work that he knew,
and was forever striving after an ideal (nebulous,
indescribable, and far) of his own, and that is literature.
Go to those who have wrought for--forever (without, of course,
knowing it) and those who have wrought earnestly for the day,
and these things you will find made the god in their machine:
Raphael's sonnets and Dante's picture!  Aladdin had no
message, that he knew of, for the world, but the call of one
of the arts was upon him; and he knew that willy-nilly he must
answer that call as long as eyes could see, or hands hold pen,
or tongue call for pencil and paper, money buy them, or theft
procure them.  He set himself stubbornly and courageously to
the bitter-sweet task of learning to write.

"It must be like learning anything else," he said, his eyes on
a sheet of seemingly uncorrectable misbalances, "and just
because I'm rotten at it now doesn't prove that if I practise
and practise, and try and try, and hope and hope, I won't be
some good sometime."

He saw very clearly the squat dark tower itself in the midst
of the chin-upon-hand hills, and the world and his friends
sitting about to see him fail.  He saw them, and he knew them
all, and yet, with Childe Roland,

    Dauntless the slughorn to his lips he set,
    And blew.

And incidentally, when he got well and returned to school, he
entered on a period of learning his lessons, for he thought
that these might one day be of use to him in his chosen line.




X


Senator St. John, for he was at heart democratic, and heard
little of Aladdin that was not to Aladdin's credit,
derigorized the taboo which he had once placed on Aladdin's
and Margaret's friendship, and allowed the young man to come
occasionally to the house, and occasionally loaned him books.
Margaret was really at the bottom of this, but she stayed
comfortably at the bottom, and teased her father to do the
needful, and he, wrapped up in the great issues which were
threatening to divide the country, complied.  In those days
the senator's interests extended far beyond his family,
Margaret and the three powerful sons who were building a
reputation for the firm of John St. John & Brothers, lawyers
in Portland.  He gave Aladdin leave to come and go, even
smiled grimly as he did so, and, except at those moments when
he met him face to face, forgot that Aladdin existed.
Margaret enjoyed Aladdin hugely, and unconsciously sat for the
heroine of every novel he began, and the inspiration of every
verse that he wrote.  When Aladdin reached his eighteenth year
and Margaret her sixteenth there was such a delightful and
strong friendship between them that the other young people of
the town talked.  Margaret in her heart of hearts was fonder
of Aladdin than of anybody else--when she was with him, or
under the immediate influence of having been with him, for
nobody else had such extraordinary ideas, or such a fund of
amusing vitality, or such fascinating moods.  Like every one
with a touch of the Celt in him, Aladdin was by turns
gloomiest and most unfortunate of all mortals upon whom the
sun positively would not shine, or the gayest of the gay.
From his droll manner of singing a song, to the seriousness
with which he sometimes bore all the sufferings of all the
world, he seemed to her a most complex and unusual individual.
But his spells were of the instant, and her thoughts were very
often on that beautiful young man, Manners, who, having
completed his course at the law school, was coming to spend a
month before he should begin to practise.  Since his first
visit years ago, Manners, now a grown man of twenty, had spent
much of many of his vacations with the St. Johns.  The senator
was obliged, as well as his limitations would allow, to take
the place of a mother to Margaret, and though it was barely
guessable from his words or actions, he loved Peter Manners
like a son, and had resolved, almost since the beginning, to
end by having him for one.  And the last time that Manners had
visited them in Washington, St. John had seen to it that he
shook hands with all the great men who were making history.
Once the senator and Margaret had visited the Manners in New
York.  That had been a bitter time for Aladdin, for while all
the others of his age were sniffing timidly at love and life,
he had found his grand passion early and stuck to it, and was
now blissful with hope and now acrid with jealousy.  Peter
Manners he hated with a green and jealous hatred.  And if
Peter Manners had any of the baser passions, he divined this,
and hated Aladdin back, but rather contemptuously.  They met
occasionally, and the meetings, always in the presence of
Margaret, were never very happy.  She was woman enough to
rejoice at being a bone of contention, and angel enough to
hate seeing good times spoiled.

But it was hard on Aladdin.  He could go to her house almost
when he liked, and be welcomed by her, but to her father and
the rest of the household he was not especially welcome.  They
were always polite to him, and always considerate, and he
felt--quite rightly--that he was merely tolerated, as a more
or less presentable acquaintance of Margaret's.  Manners, on
the other hand, and it took less intuition to know it, was not
only greatly welcome to Margaret, but to all the others--from
the gardener up to the senator.  Manners' distinction of
manner, his wellbred, easy ways, his charmingly enunciative
and gracious voice, together with his naive and simple nature,
went far with people's hearts.  Aladdin bitterly conceded
every advantage to his rival except that of mind.  To this,
for he knew even in his humble moments that he himself had it,
he clung tenaciously.  Mrs. Brackett, with a sneaking
admiration for Peter Manners, whom she had once seen on the
street, had Aladdin's interests well in heart, and the lay of
the matter well in hand.  She put it like this to a friendly
gossip:

"I guess' Laddin O'Brien's 'bout smaht enough to go a long
ways further than fine clothes and money and a genealogical
past will carry a body.  He writes sometimes six and eight big
sides of paper up in a day, and if he ain't content with that
he just tears it up and goes at it again.  There won't be
anybody'll go further in this world than 'Laddin O'Brien, and
you can say I said so--"

Here under oath of secrecy Mrs. Brackett lowered her voice and
divulged a secret:

"He got a letter this mornin' sayin' that the Portland'spy' is
goin' to print three poems he sent 'em, and enclosin' three
dollars to pay for 'em.  I guess beginnin' right now he could
go along at that rate and make mebbe five or six hundred
dollars a year.  Poetry's nothin' to him; he can write it
faster than you and I can baste."

At the very moment of this adoring act of divulgence Aladdin
was in the parlor, giving his first taste of success a musical
soul, and waiting--waiting--waiting until it should be late
enough in the day for him to climb the hill to the St. Johns'
and hand over the Big News to Margaret.  And as he sat before
the piano, demipatient and wholly joyful, his fingers twinkled
the yellowed and black keys into fits of merriment, or, after
an abrupt pause, built heap upon heap of bass chords.  Then
the mood would change and, to a whanging accompaniment, he
would chant, recitative fashion, the three poems which alone
he had made.

The day waned, and it was time to go and tell Margaret.  His
way lay past the railway-station, under the "Look out for the
locomotive" sign, across the track, and up the hill.  In the
air was the exhilarating evening cool of June, and the
fragrance of flowers, which in the north country, to make up
for the shorter tale of their days, bloom bigger and smell
sweeter than any other flowers in the world.  Even in the
dirty paved square fronting the station was a smell of summer
and flowers.  You could see people's faces lighten and sniff
it, as they got out of the hot, cindery coaches of the
five-forty, which had just rolled in.

The St. Johns' fine pair of bays and their open carriage were
drawn up beside the station.  The horses were entering a
spirited, ground-pawing protest against the vicinity of that
alway inexplicable and snorting monster on wheels.  On the
platform, evidently waiting for some one to get off the train,
stood St. John and Margaret.  She looked much fresher and
sweeter than a rose, and Aladdin noted that she was wearing
her hair up for the first time.  Her dress was a floaty white
affair with a blue ribbon round it, and her beautiful, gay
young face flushed with excitement and anticipation till it
sparkled.  There was a large crowd getting off the train, at
that aggravating rate of progression with which people
habitually leave a crowded public conveyance or a theater, and
Margaret and her father were looking through the windows of
the cars to see if they could catch a glimpse of whom they
sought.  Suddenly the senator broke into a smile and waved his
cane.  The action was so unusual for him that it looked
grotesque.  Margaret stood on tiptoe and waved her hand, and a
presentiment came to Aladdin and took away all his joy.

Peter Manners, looking fresh and clean in spite of his long,
dusty ride, got off the train and made a hilarious rush for
his friends.  He shook hands with Margaret, then with the
senator, and turned again to Margaret.  She was altogether too
pretty, and much too glad to see him.  In the excitement of
the moment it couldn't be borne, and he kissed her.  Then they
both laughed, and the senator laughed, for he was glad.  He
put his great hand on Manners' shoulder, and laughing and
talking, the three went to the carriage.  Then the senator
remembered that the checks had been forgotten, and against a
voluble protest he secured them from Manners, and went after
an expressman.  Having found the expressman--one of his
constituents and a power in the town,--he handed him the
checks, a fifty-cent piece, and a ponderous joke as old as
Xerxes, at which the expressman roared.  Manners stood by the
carriage and looked at Margaret.  "Lord God," he thought, "it
has come at last!" and they grinned at each other.

"Mmm!" said Margaret, who stood for the glory that was Greece
and the grandeur that was Rome.  She had not expected to be so
glad to see him.

Meanwhile Aladdin had turned and was going home.

Margaret caught sight of his back, and the pitiful little
droop in the usually erect shoulders, and she divined like a
flash, and called after him.  He pretended not to hear and
went on.  In his pocket was the editor's letter which he had
designed to show her.  It had lain down and died.

"Why does that man hate me so?" said Manners.

A little of the joy of meeting had gone.  A cloud passed over
the sun, and the earth was darkened.  Many drops of rain began
to fall, each making a distinct splash as it struck.  One
began to smell the disturbed dust.  But the flowers continued
to send up their incense to heaven, and Manners put his light
overcoat about Margaret.




XI


Aladdin had a large acquaintance in the town among all sorts
of men, and, as he went home sorrowfully in the rain, he met a
youth, older than himself, who had an evil notoriety; for
being born with brains, of respectable people, and
propitiously launched on the world, he had begun in his early
teens, and in the face of the most heartrending solicitude, to
drink himself to death.  The miserable part of it was that
everybody loved him when he was sober, and out of
consideration to his family still asked him to the best that
the town could do in the way of parties and entertainments.
He was a good-looking young man with a big frame and a pale
face.  His real name was William Addison Larch, but he was
better known as "Beau Larch."  He had a nervous, engaging
smile, of which he made frequent use.

"My word, Aladdin," he said, "you look sick as a dog.  Come
with me and take a snifter for it."

Aladdin hesitated a moment.  And as soon as he had thoroughly
made up his mind that it was wrong to say so, he said:

"I believe I will."  The Celt in him was feeling suicidal.
They went into the ground-floor room of a house where liquor
was sold.

"For me, whisky," said Beau Larch.

"The same for me," said Aladdin, with something suspiciously
like a gulp.  The first drink which a man takes against his
better judgment is a grisly epoch in his life.  Aladdin
realized this, and was at once miserable and willing that it
should be so.

"To those that love us!" said Beau Larch.

Aladdin put down his liquor without grimace or gasp.

Beau Larch paid.

In Aladdin's pocket were three dollars, the first mile-post on
the steep road to his ideal.  He felt, to be sure that they
were there.

"Now you 'll have one with me," he said.

When the sudden rain-storm had rained and thundered and
lightened itself out, they went to another saloon, and from
there to the Boat Club, of which Beau Larch was a member and
whither he asked Aladdin to supper.  Fishes and lobsters and
clams were the staple articles of Boat Club suppers, and over
savory messes of these, helped down with much whisky and
water, Aladdin and Beau Larch made the evening spin.  Aladdin,
talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why
he had never liked this man so much before.  And Larch told
the somewhat abject story of his life three times with an
introduction of much racy anecdote.

Aladdin's head held surprisingly well.  Every now and then he
would hand himself an inward congratulation on the alertness
and clearness of his mind, and think what a fine constitution
he must have.  They got to singing after a while, and reciting
poems, of which each knew a quantity by heart.  And, oddly
enough, Aladdin, though he had been brought up to speak sound
American, developed in his cups, and afterward clung to, in
moments of exhilaration or excitement, an indescribably faint
but perfectly distinct Hibernian accent.  It was the heritage
to which he was heir, and made his eager and earnest rendering
of "Annabel Lee" so pathetic that Beau Larch wept, and knocked
a glass off the table. . . .

Men came and sat with them, and Aladdin discovered in himself
what he had hitherto never suspected--the power of becoming
heart-to-heart friends with strangers in two seconds.

Aladdin was never able to remember just how or when or with
whom they left the Boat Club.  He only remembered walking and
walking and talking and talking, and finally arguing a knotty
question, on which all defended the same side, and then
sitting down on the steps of a house in a low quarter of the
town, and pouring the ramifications of all his troubles into
the thoroughly sympathetic if somewhat noncomprehending ears
of Beau Larch.  He talked long and became drunker as he
talked, while Larch became soberer.  Then Aladdin remembered
that the door at the top of the steps had opened, and a frowzy
head had been stuck out, and that a brassy voice, with
something at once pathetic and wheedling in it, had said:

"Aren't you coming in, boys?"

Then Aladdin remembered that Beau Larch and he had had angry
words, and that Beau Larch had told him not to make an ass of
himself, and for heaven's sake to go home.  To which Aladdin
had retorted that he was old enough to know what was good for
him, and hated the world and didn't give a damn who knew it,
and wouldn't go home.  Aladdin could swear that after that he
only closed his eyes for a second to shut out something or
other, and that when he opened them, the reverberation of a
door closing was in his ears.  But for all that Beau Larch had
gone, and was to be seen neither up the street nor down.
Although his own was past mending, Beau Larch, drunk as he
was, had done a good deed that night, for he had guarded a
precious innocence against the assaults of a drunken little
Irish boy who was feeling down about something--a girl named
something or other, Beau Larch thought, and another boy named
something or other.  The next day Beau had forgotten even that
much.

Aladdin thought that Larch was hiding in jest.  He arose
unsteadily and wandered off in search of him.  After a time he
found himself before the door of his own house.  There were
lights in the parlor, and Aladdin became almost sober.  He
realized with a thrill of stricken conscience that Mrs.
Brackett was sitting up for him, and he was afraid.  He tried
the front door and found it unlocked.  He went in.  On the
right, the door leading into the parlor stood open.  On the
table burned a lamp.  Beside the table in the crushed plush
rocker sat Mrs. Brackett.  Her spectacles were pushed high up
on her forehead.  Her eyes were closed, and her mouth was
slightly open.  From the corners of her eyes red marks ran
down her cheeks.  Her thin gray hair was in disarray.  In her
lap, open, lay her huge family Bible; a spray of pressed
maidenhair fern marked the place.

Aladdin, somewhat sobered by now, and already stung with the
anguish of remorse, tiptoed into the parlor and softly blew
out the light; but the instant before he did so he glanced
down at the Bible in the good lady's lap and saw that she had
been reading about the prodigal son.  Great tears ran out of
Aladdin's eyes.  He went up-stairs, weeping and on tiptoe, and
as he passed the door of his brother's room he heard a stir
within.

"Is that you, 'Laddin?"

"Sssh, darlint," said Aladdin; "you'll wake Mother Brackett."

In his own room there was a lamp burning low, and on his
bureau was a note for him from Margaret:

DEAR ALADDIN: Papa wants you to come up and have supper with
us.  Peter Manners is here, and I think it will be fun.
Please do come, and remember a lot of foolish songs to sing.
Why wouldn't you speak to me?  It hurts so when you act like
that .  .  .  .

Aladdin, kissing the note, went down on his knees and twice
began to pray, "O God--O God!"  He could say no more, but all
the penitence and heartburnings of his soul were in his
prayer.  Later he lay on his bed staring into a darkness which
moved in wheels, and he kept saying to the darkness:

    "Neither the angels in Heaven above,
       Nor the demons down under the sea,
     Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
       Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."

Late in the still morning he awoke, grieving and hurt, for he
did not see how he should ever face Mrs. Brackett, or his
brother, or Margaret, or himself, or anybody ever again.




XII


There was in town at this time what passed for a comic-opera
troupe, and Margaret and her father, by way of doing honor to
their guest, invited all the young people to go to the
performance and attend a supper afterward.  The party occupied
the three foremost rows in the music-hall, and Aladdin sat
next to Margaret, and Manners sat upon the other side.

The hero of the piece was a jovial big rascal with a spirited
voice, and much byplay which kept his good-natured audience in
titters--from the young gentlemen and little shrieks--from the
young ladies.  Mr. Blythoe, the hero, when the curtain had
fallen upon what the management was pleased to call the second
act, consented, in response to continued applause, due to a
double back somersault and two appropriate remarks fired off
in midair (this was his great psychic moment), to make a
little speech and sing a song.  His speech, though
syntactically erratic, was delivered in a loud, frank way that
won everybody's heart, and in closing he said:

"Three nights ago I met with a young feller in this tow--city
[applause], and when we had taken one together for luck
[titters from the young gentlemen, who wanted one another to
know that they knew what he meant], he made me the loan of the
song I'm a-going to sing.  He made up the words and the tune
of this song hisself, and he's right here in this audience."
This gave an opportunity for some buffoonery among the young
gentlemen.  Mr. Blythoe looked for one instant straight at
Aladdin, and Aladdin went into a cold sweat, for he began to
recollect that somewhere on a certain awful night he had taken
drinks with Mr. Blythoe and had sung him songs.  Mr. Blythoe
went on:

"This young gentleman said I specially wasn't to mention his
name, and I won't, but I want all you ladies and gentlemen to
know that this here beautiful ballad was composed right here
in this tow--city [applause] by a citizen of this city.  And
here goes."

Then Mr. Blythoe did a wonderful thing.  Much was owing to the
words and air, but a little something to the way in which Mr.
Blythoe sang.  He took his audience with the first bar, and
had some of them crying when he was through.  And the song
should have been silly.  It was about a gay, gay young dog of
a crow, that left the flock and went to a sunny land and lived
a mad, mad life; and finally, penitent and old, came home to
the north country and saw his old playmates in the distance
circling about the old pine-tree, but was too weak to reach
them, or to call loud enough for them to hear, and so lay down
and died, died, died.  The tune was the sweetest little
plaintive wail, and at the end of each stanza it died, died,
till you had to cry.

Mr. Blythoe received tremendous applause, but refused to
encore.  He winked to Aladdin and bowed himself off.  Then
Aladdin executed an unparalleled blush.  He could feel it
start in the small of his back and spread all over him--up
under the roots of his hair to the top of his head.  He should
have felt proud, instead of which he was suffused with shame.
Margaret caught sight of his face.

"What is it, Aladdin?" she said in a whisper.

"Nothing."

"Won't you tell me?"

"It's nothing."  He got redder and redder.

"Please."

With downcast eyes he shook his head.  She looked at him
dubiously and a little pathetically for a moment.  Then she
said, "Silly goose," and turned to Manners.

"Poor old crow!" said Manners.  "I had one, Margaret, when I
was little; he had his wings clipped and used to follow me
like a dog, and one day he saw some of his old friends out on
the salt-marsh, and he hopped out to talk it over with them,
and they set upon him and killed him.  And I couldn't get
there quick enough to help him--I beg your pardon."  He picked
up a fan and handed it to the girl on his left, and she,
having dropped it on purpose, blushed, thanked him, and
giggled.  Manners turned to Margaret again.  "Ever since
then," he said, "when I have a gun in my hand and see a crow,
I want to kill him for the sake of the crows that killed mine,
and to let him go for the sake of mine, who was such a nice
old fellow.  So it's an awful problem."

Aladdin sat and looked straight before him.  "Is real fame as
awful as this?" he thought.

Somebody clapped him on the shoulder, and a hearty voice,
something the worse for wear, said loudly in his ear, "Bully,
Aladdin, bully!"

Aladdin looked up and recognized that bad companion, Beau
Larch.

"That's all right," Aladdin tried to say, but Mr. Larch would
not be downed.

"Wasn't it bully, Margaret?" he said.

"Oh--hallo--hallo, Beau!" said she, starting and turning round
and collecting her wits.  "What?  Wasn't what bully?"

Aladdin frowned at Larch with all the forbiddingness that he
could muster, but Larch was imperturbable.

"Why, Aladdin's song!" he said.  "You know, the one about the
old crow--the one the man just sang."

Here a young lady, over whom Beau Larch was leaning, confided
to her escort in an audible, nervous voice that she knew Beau
Larch had been drinking, but she wouldn't say why she knew
--anybody could see he had; and then she sniffed with her nose
by way of indicating that seeing was not the only or best
method of telling.

"You don't mean to say--"said Margaret to Aladdin, and looked
him in the eyes.  "Why, Aladdin!" she said.  And then:
"Peter--Peter--'Laddin wrote it, he did.  Isn't it gr-reat!"

And Peter, rising to the occasion, said, "Bully," and "I
thought it was great," with such absolute frankness and
sincerity that Aladdin's heart almost warmed toward him. It was
presently known all over the house that Aladdin had written the
song. And some of the more clownish of the young people called
for Author, Author. Aladdin hung his head.

At supper at the St. Johns' later was a crisp, brisk gentleman
with grayish hair, who talked in a pleasant, dry way.  Aladdin
learned that it was Mr. Blankinship, editor and proprietor of
the Portland "Spy."  Almost immediately on learning this
important item, he saw Mr. Blankinship exchange a word with
Margaret and come toward him.

"Mr. O'Brien?"

"Yes, sir."

"The same that sent us three poems a while ago?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you wrote that song we heard to-night?"

"Yes, sir." Aladdin was now fiery red.

"What do you do for a living?"

"I've just finished school," said Aladdin.  "And I don't know
what to do."

"Newspaper work appeal to you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Timid as a coot," thought Mr. Blankinship.

"Write easily?" he said.  "Fast--short words?"

Aladdin thought a moment.  "Yes, sir," he said coolly.

"Less timid than a coot," thought Mr. Blankinship.

"Willing to live in Portland?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll give you five dollars a week and give you a trial."

"Thank you, sir."

"Can you get moved and start work Monday?"

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Blankinship smiled cheerfully.

"Pretty entertainment, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, O'Brien, see you Monday; hope we get on." Mr.
Blankinship nodded pleasantly and passed up the room to the
punch, muttering as he went, "Writes better than talks--dash
of genius--more or less timid than a coot."

Aladdin went quickly to find Margaret.  He traced her to the
pantry, where she was hurrying the servant who had charge of
the ice-cream.  Aladdin waited until the servant had gone out
with a heaping tray.

"Margaret," he said, "I'm going away to live."

He spoke in the flat, colorless voice with which a little
child announces that it has hurt itself.

"What do you mean, Aladdin?" She changed color slightly.

"Only that I've got to make a living, Margaret, and it's on a
paper, so I ought to be glad."

"Aren't you glad, Aladdin?"

"A little."

"Aladdin--"

"Margaret--O Margaret--"

She read in his eyes what was coming.

"Not now, Aladdin," she said.

"Not now--dear Aladdin."

"Then you know?"

"I've always known, Aladdin, and been grateful and that
proud."

"Will there never be any chance for me, Margaret?"

"Aladdin, I think I like you better than anybody else in the
world--"

"Darling--" he had never supposed that it could be said so
easily; he leaned toward her.

"No," she said suddenly; "I've got to go and see after all
those foolish people."

"Just for the sake of old times, and now, and new times--"

She hesitated, reddened a little, and then, as sweetly and
innocently as a child, put up her lips for him to kiss.




XIII


Hannibal St. John's campaign for reelection to the senatorship
was, owing to a grievous error in tact, of doubtful issue.  A
hue and cry arose against him among his constituents, and
things in general fell out so unhappily that it looked toward
the close of the contest as if he would be obliged to sit idle
and dangle his heels, while the two halves of the country,
pushing against each other, were rising in the middle like the
hinge of a toggle-joint into the most momentous crisis in the
nation's history.  It looked as if the strong man, with his
almost blasphemous intolerance of disunion, his columnlike
power of supporting, and his incomparable intellect, was to
stand in the background and watch the nightmare play from
afar.  He fought for his place in the forefront of the battle
with a great fervor of bitterness, and the possibility of
defeat weighed upon his glowering soul like a premature day of
judgment.  He knew himself to be the one man for the
opportunity, and could his true feelings have found utterance,
they would have said, "Damn us everlastingly in hell, but
don't shelve us now!"

Opposed to St. John was a Mr. Bispham, of about quarter his
height intellectually and integrally--a politician, simple,
who went to war for loot.  But he was blessed with a
tremendous voice and an inexhaustible store of elemental,
fundamental humor, upon the waves of which the ship bearing
his banner floated high.  It seemed that because of one
glaring exhibition of tactlessness, and a lack of humor, a
really important, valuable, and honest man was to lose the
chance of serving his country to a designing whipper-snapper,
who was without even the saving grace of violent and virulent
prejudices.  And so the world goes.  It seemed at one time
that St. John's chance was a ghost of a chance, and his
friends, sons, and relatives, toiling headstrong by night and
day, were brought up at the verge of despair.  To make the
situation even more difficult, St. John himself was prostrated
with the gout, so that his telling oratory and commanding
personality could not be brought to bear.  Margaret was never
far from her father's side, and she worked like a dog for him,
writing to dictation till her hands became almost useless, and
when the spasms of pain were great, leaving her work to kiss
his old brow.

It was at this time that people all over the State began to
take up a song with an inimitably catching tune.  The words of
this song held up Mr. Bispham in so shrewdly true and
farcically humorous a light that even his own star began to
titter and threatened to slip from its high place in the
heavens.  The song fell so absolutely on the head of the nail
that Mr. Bispham, when he heard it for the first time, was
convulsed with anger and talked of horse-whips.  The second
time he heard it, he drew himself up with dignity and
pretended not to notice, and the third time he broke into a
cold sweat, for he began to be afraid of those words and that
tune.  At a mass-meeting, while in the midst of a voluble
harangue, somebody in the back of the hall punctuated--an
absurd statement, which otherwise might have passed unnoticed,
by whistling the first bar of the song.  Mr. Bispham faced the
tittering like a man, and endeavored to rehabilitate himself.
But his hands had slipped on the handle of the audience, and
the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not have enabled him
to regain his grip.  He was cruelly assured of the fact by the
hostile and ready-witted whistler.  Again Mr. Bispham
absurded.  This time the tune broke out in all parts of the
hall and was itself punctuated by catcalls and sotto-voce
insults delivered with terrific shouts.  Mr. Bispham's speech
was hurriedly finished, and the peroration came down as flat
as a skater who tries a grape-vine for the first time.  He
left the hall hurriedly, pale and nervous.  The tune followed
him down the street and haunted him to his room.  The alarming
takingness of it had gotten in at his ear, and as he was
savagely undressing he caught himself in the traitorous act of
humming it to himself.

Among others to leave the hall was a tall, slim young man with
freckles across the bridge of his nose and very bright blue
eyes.  A party of young men accompanied him, and all were a
little noisy, and, as they made the street, broke lustily into
the campaign song.  People said, "That's him," "That's
O'Brien," "That's Aladdin O'Brien," "That's the man wrote it,"
and the like.  The young men disappeared down the street
singing at the tops of their voices, with interlardations of
turbulent, mocking laughter.

Aladdin's song went all over the North, and his name became
known in the land.

Hannibal St. John was not musical.  There were only four
tunes, and three of them were variations of "Carry Me Back to
Old Virginia," that he recognized when he heard them.  As he
lay on his bed of pain, he heard the shrill whistle of his
gardener piping in the garden below.  Unconsciously the
senator's well hand marked the time.  All day, as he came and
went about his business, the gardener kept whistling that
tune, and the senator heard and reheard ever with increasing
pleasure.  And this was an extraordinary thing, for it was as
difficult or nearly so to move Hannibal St. John with music as
it must have been for Orpheus to get himself approached by
rocks and stones and trees, and far more difficult than it
ever was for the Pied Piper to achieve a following of brats
and rats.

Margaret had been for a drive with a girl friend.  She came
home and to her father's side in great spirits.

"Oh, papa," she cried, "will you do me a favor?"

She read consent.

"Claire has got the wonderfulest song, and I want you to let
her come in and sing it for you."

"A song?" said the senator, doubtfully.

"Papa de-e-ear, please."

He smiled grimly.

"If Claire will not be shocked by my appearance," he said
against hope.

"Rubbish," cried Margaret, and flew out of the room.


There were a few preliminary gasps and giggles in the hall,
and the two maidens, as sedate and demure as mice, entered.
Claire was a little party, with vivacious manners and a
comical little upturned face.

"How do you do, senator?" she said.  "I'm so sorry you're laid
up.  Isn't it lovely out?"  She advanced and shook his well
hand.

"Won't you take a chair?" said the senator.

"I just ran in for a moment.  Margaret and I thought maybe
you'd like to hear the new campaign song that everybody's
singing.  My brother brought it up from Portland--" she
paused, out of breath.

"It would afford me great pleasure," said the senator.

And forthwith Claire sang in a rollicking voice.  The tune was
the same as that which the gardener had been whistling.  St.
John recognized it in spite of the difference in the mediums
and smiled.  Then he smiled because of the words, and
presently he laughed.  It was the first real pleasure he had
had in many a day.

"Everybody is wild about it," said Claire, when she had
finished.

The senator was shaking with laughter.

"That's good," he said, "that's good."

"Papa," said Margaret, when Claire had gone, "who do you think
wrote that song?"

"I don't know," said the senator.  "But it's good."

"Aladdin wrote it," said Margaret.

"Upon my word!" said the senator.

Margaret knelt and threw her arms about her father's neck and
blushed a lovely blush.

"Isn't it splendid?"

There was a ring at the front door, and a telegram was brought
in.

"Read it, Peggy," said the senator.  He used that name only
when moved about something.  The despatch was from the
senator's youngest son, Hannibal, and read:

    Do not worry; we are singing Bispham up a tree.

"And Aladdin wrote the song!" cried Margaret.  "Aladdin wrote
it!"

The senator's face clouded for a moment.  He forced the cloud
to pass.

"We must thank him," he said.  "We must thank him."

Senator St. John was reelected by a small majority.  Everybody
admitted that it was due to Aladdin O'Brien's song.  It was
impossible to disguise the engaging childishness of the vote.




XIV


As he went to his desk in the back room of the Portland "Spy"
offices the morning after the election, Aladdin had an evil
headache, and a subconscious hope that nobody would speak to
him suddenly.  He felt that his arms and legs might drop off
if anybody did, and he could have sworn that he saw a gray
sparrow with blue eyes run into a dark corner, and turn into a
mouse.  But he was quite free from penitence, as the occasion
of this last offense had been joy and triumph, whereas that of
his first had been sorrow.  He lighted a bad cigar, put off
his editorial till later, and covered a whole sheet of paper
with pictures like these:

(Transcriber's note: These are simple sketches of birds and
animals.)

He looked back with a certain smug satisfaction upon a
hilarious evening beginning with a dinner at the club, which
some of the older adherents of St. John had given him in
gratitude for the part he had taken in the campaign.  He
remembered that he had not given a bad exhibition, and that
noble prophecies had been made of his future by gentlemen in
their cups, and that he himself, when just far enough gone to
be courageous without being silly, had made a snappy little
speech of thanks which had been received with great applause,
and that later he had sung his campaign song and others, and
that finally, in company with an ex-judge, whose hat was also
decorated with a wreath of smilax, he had rolled amiably about
the town in a hack, going from one place where drinks could be
gotten to another, and singing with great fervor and
patriotism:

    Zhohn Brownzh bozhy liezh a mole-ring in zhe grave.

Aladdin thought over these things with pleasure, for he had
fallen under the dangerous flattery of older men, and with
less pleasure of the editorial which it was his immediate
business to write.  His brisk, crisp chief, Mr. Blankinship,
came in for a moment, walking testily and looking like the
deuce.

"So you've showed up, Aladdin, have you?" he said.  "That's
young blood.  If any question of politics--I mean policy
--arises, I leave it absolutely to you.  I'm going back to
bed.  Can't you stop smoking that rotten cigar?"

Aladdin laughed aloud, and Mr. Blankinship endeavored to
smile.

"Somewhere," he said, "in this transcendentally beautiful
continent, Aladdin, there may be some one that feels worse
than I do, but I doubt it."  He turned to go.

"Won't Mr. Orde be here either?" said Aladdin.

"No; he's home in bed.  You're editor-in-chief and everything
else for the day, see?  And I wish I was dead."  Mr.
Blankinship nodded, very slightly, for it hurt, and went out.

The misery of others is a great cure: with the first sight
of Mr. Blankinship, Aladdin's headache had gone, and
he now pounced upon fresh paper, got a notion out of the
God-knows-where, wrote his editorial at full speed, and
finished it without once removing the cigar from his mouth.

He had just done when the shrewd, inky little boy, who did
everything about the "Spy" offices which nobody else would do,
entered and said that a gentleman wanted to speak with Mr.
O'Brien.  Aladdin had the gentleman shown up, and recognized
the oldest of Hannibal St. John's sons; he knew them well by
sight, but it so.  happened that he had never met them.  They
were the three biggest and most clean-cut young men in Maine,
measuring between six feet three and four; erect, massive,
utterly composed, and, if anything, a little stronger than so
many dray-horses.  They were notable shots, great fishermen,
and the whole State was beginning to speculate with excitement
about their respective futures and the present almost
glittering success of the law firm which they composed.  The
oldest was the tallest and the strongest.  He had been known
to break horseshoes and to tear a silver dollar in two.  Iron
was as sealing-wax in his huge hands.  His habits were
Spartan.  The second son was almost a replica of the first--a
little darker and a little less vivid.  The third was like the
others; but his face was handsomer, and not so strong.  He was
of a more gentle and winning disposition, for his life was not
ignorant of the frailties.  The girl to whom he had been
engaged had died, and that had left a kind of sweetness,
almost beseechingness, in his manner, very engaging in so tall
and strong a man.

"Mr. O'Brien?" said John St. John.

Aladdin arose and held out his long, slender hand.

Aladdin had a way of moving which was very individual to
himself, a slight, ever so slight, exaggeration of stride and
gesture, a kind of captivating awkwardness and diffidence that
was on the borderland of grace and assurance.  Like all
slender people who work much with their heads, he had a strong
grip, but he felt that his hand was as inconsistent as an eel
when St. John's closed over it.

"I came in for a moment," said St. John, "to say that we are
all exceedingly grateful to you.  Your song was a great factor
in my father's reelection to the Senate.  But we do not hold
so much by the song as by the good will which you showed us in
writing it.  I want you to understand and believe that if I
can ever be of the slightest service to you, I will go very
far to render it."

"I'm as obliged as I can be," said Aladdin.  "It's mighty good
of you to come and talk to me like this, and except for the
good will I have toward all your family, I don't deserve it a
bit."

When John St. John had gone, the inky boy came to announce
that another gentleman wished to speak with Mr. O'Brien.

The second gentleman proved to be the second brother, Hamilton
St. John.

"Mr. O'Brien?" said he.

Aladdin shook hands with him.

"I came in for a moment," said Hamilton St. John, "for the
pleasure of telling you how tremendously grateful we all are
to you for your song, which was such a big factor in my
father's redirection to the Senate.  But I want to say, too,
that we're more grateful for your good will than for the song,
and if I can ever do you a service, I want you to feel
perfectly free to come and ask it of me, whatever it is."

Aladdin could have laughed for joy.  Margaret did not seem so
far away as sometimes.

"I'm as obliged as I can be," he said.  "It's mighty good of
you to come and talk to me like this, and except for the good
will I have toward all your family, I don't deserve it a bit,
but I appreciate it just the same."

Presently Hamilton St. John departed.

Again the inky boy, and this time grinning.

"There's a gentleman would like to speak with you, sir," he
said.

"Show him in," said Aladdin.

Hannibal St. John, Jr., entered.

"O'Brien," he said, "I've often heard my sister Margaret speak
about you, and I've been meaning for ever so long to look you
up.  And I wish I'd done it before I had such an awfully good
excuse as that song of yours, because I don't know how to
thank you, quite.  But I want you to understand that if at any
time--rubbish, you know what I mean.  Come up to the club, and
we'll make a drink and talk things over."

He drew Aladdin's arm into his, and they went out.

Aladdin had never before felt so near Margaret.

He returned to the office in half an hour, happy and a slave.
Hannibal St. John, Jr., had won the heart right out of him in
ten minutes.  He sat musing and dreaming.  Was he to be one of
those chosen?

"Gentleman to see you, sir."

"Show him in."

The inky snickered and hurried out.  He could be heard saying
with importance, "This way, sir.  Look out for that press,
sir.  It's very dark in here, sir." And then, like a smart
flunky in a house of condition, he appeared again at the door
and announced

"Senator Hannibal St. John."

Aladdin sprang up.

The senator, still suffering from the gout, and leaning
heavily on his whalebone cane, limped majestically in.  There
was an amiability on his face, which Aladdin had never seen
there before.  He placed a chair for his distinguished guest.
The senator removed his high hat and stood it upon the edge of
Aladdin's desk.

"My boy," he said,--the word tingled from Aladdin's ears to
his heart, for it was a word of great approachment and
unbending,--"I am very grateful for your efforts in my behalf.
I will place honor where honor is due, and say that I owe my
recent reflection to the United States Senate not so much to
my more experienced political friends as to you.  The present
crisis in the affairs of the nation calls for men of feeling
and honor, and not for politicians.  I hope that you will not
misconstrue me into a braggart if I say from the bottom of my
heart I believe that, in returning a man of integrity and
tradition to his seat in the Congress of the nation, you have
rendered a service to the nation."

The senator paused, and Aladdin, still standing, waited for
him to finish.

"After a week," said the senator, "I shall return to my duties
in Washington.  In the meanwhile, Margaret" (he had hitherto
always referred to her before Aladdin as "my daughter") "and I
are keeping open house, and if it will give you pleasure we
shall be charmed" (the word fell from the senator's lips like
a complete poem) "to have you make us a visit.  Two of my sons
will be at home, and other young people."

"Indeed, and it will give me pleasure!" cried Aladdin, falling
into the least suspicion of a brogue.

"I will write a line to your chief," continued the senator,
"and I have reason to believe that he will see you excused.
We shall expect you to-morrow by the fourthirty."

"I'm ever so much obliged, sir," said Aladdin.

"My boy," said the senator, gravely, after a full minute's
pause, "we are all concerned in your future, which promises to
be a brilliant one.  It rests with you.  But, if an old man
may be permitted a word of caution, it would be this: Let your
chief recreation lie in your work; leave the other things.  Do
I make myself clear enough?" (Aladdin nodded guiltily.) "Leave
the frailties to the dullards of this world."

He rose to go.

"My young friend," said the senator, "you have my best
wishes."

Grimacing with the pain in his foot, limping badly, but always
stately and impressive,--almost superimpending,--Hannibal St.
John moved slowly out of the office.



XV


The weather turned suddenly gusty and cold, and that afternoon
it began to snow, and it kept on snowing.  All night fine dry
flakes fell in unexampled profusion, and by morning the face of
the land was many inches deep.  Nor did the snow then cease.
All the morning it continued to fall with vigor.  The train by
which Aladdin was to go to the St. Johns' left at two-thirty,
arriving there two hours later; and it was with numb feet and
stinging ears that he entered the car reserved for smokers,
and, bundling in a somewhat threadbare over coat, endeavored
to make himself comfortable for the journey.  As the train
creaked and jerked out of the protecting station, the storm
smote upon the windows with a noise like thrown sand, and a
back draft down the chimney of the iron stove in one end of
the car sent out puffs of smutty smoke at whatever points the
various castings of the stove came together with insufficient
snugness.  There were but half a dozen people in the whole
train.

"Troubles, old man," said Aladdin, for so he was in the habit
of addressing himself at moments of self-communication, "this
is going to be the slowest kind of a trip, but we're going to
enjoy every minute of it, because it's taking us to the place
where we would be-God bless her!"

Aladdin took a cigar from his breast pocket.

"Troubles," said he, "may I offer you a smoke?  What?  Oh,
you're very much obliged and don't mind if you do.  There you
are, then."  Aladdin sent out a great puff of white smoke;
this turned into a blue wraith, drifted down the aisle,
between the seats, gathering momentum as it went, and finally,
with the rapidity of a mint julep mounting a sucked straw (that
isn't split) and spun long and fine, it was drawn through a
puncture of the isinglass in the stove door and went up the
chimney in company with other smoke, and out into the storm.
Aladdin, full of anticipation and glee, smoked away with great
spirit.  Presently, for the car was empty but for himself,
Aladdin launched into the rollicking air of "Red Renard"

   "Three scarlet huntsmen rode up to White Plains
    With a carol of voices and jangle of chains,
    For the morning was blue and the morning was fair,
    And the word ran, "Red Renard" is waiting us there."

He puffed at his cigar a moment to be sure that its fire
should not flag, and sang on:

   "The first scarlet huntsman blew into his horn,
    Lirala, Lovely Morning, I'm glad I was born";
    The second red huntsman he whistled an air,
    And the third sang, "Red Renard" is waiting us there."

"Just such weather as this, Troubles," he said, looking out
into the swirl of snow.  "Just the beautifulest kind of
cross-country weather!"  He sang on:

    Three lovely ladies they met at the meet,
    With whips in their hands and with boots on their feet;
    And the gentlemen lifted their hats with a cheer,
    As the girls said, "Red Renard is waiting you here."

He quickened into the stanza he liked best:

    Three scarlet huntsmen rode off by the side
    Of three lovely ladies on horses of pride.
    Said the first, "Call me Ellen"; the second, "I'm Claire";
    Said the third, "I'm Red Renard--so called from my hair."

The train, which had been running more slowly, drew up with a
chug, and some minutes passed before it again gathered itself
and lurched on.

"That's all right," said Aladdin.  He was quite warm now, and
thoroughly happy.

    Three scarlet huntsmen rode home from White Plains,
    With its mud on their boots, and its girls on their brains;
    And the first sang of Ellen, the second of Claire,
    But the third sang, "Red Renard is waiting back there."

He made a waggish face to finish with:

    Three scarlet huntsmen got into frock-coats,
    And they pinched their poor feet, and they tortured their throats;
    And the first married Ellen, the second wed Claire,
    While the third said, "Re Renar izh waishing back zhere."

He assumed the expression for a moment of one astutely drunk.

"A bas!" he said, for this much of the French language was his
to command, and no more.  He turned and attempted to look out.
He yawned.  Presently he threw away the reeking butt of his
cigar, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

The water below the veranda was alive with struggling fishes
in high hats and frock-coats.  Each fish had a label painted
across his back with his name and address neatly printed on
it, and each fish was struggling to reach a tiny minnow-hook,
naked of bait, which dangled just out of reach above the
water.  The baitless hook was connected by a fine line (who
ever heard of baiting a line at the wrong end?) with
Margaret's hand.  She had on a white dress stamped with big
pink roses, and there was a pale-green ribbon round the middle
of it; her hair was done up for the first time, and she was
leaning over the railing, which was made of safety-lamps and
stranglers alternately, painted light blue, regarding the
struggling fishes with a look at once full of curiosity and
pity.  Presently one of the fishes' labels soaked off, and
went hurtling out to sea, with the fish weeping bitterly and
following at express speed, until in less than one moment both
label and fish were hull down below the horizon.  Then another
label washed off, and then another and another, and fish after
fish, in varying states of distraction, followed after and
disappeared, until all you could see were two, whereof the one
was labeled Manners and the other O'Brien (these continued to
fight for the hook), and all you could hear was Neptune, from
down, down, down in the sea, saying coquettishly to Cleopatra,
"I'm Red Renard--so called from my hair."  And then all of a
sudden valiant Captain Kissed-by-Margaret went by on a log
writing mottos for the wives of famous men.  And then Manners
and O'Brien, struggling desperately to drown each other, sank
down, down, down, and Cleopatra could be heard saying
perfectly logically to Neptune, "You didn't!"  And then there
was a tremendous shower of roses, and the dream went out like
a candle.


Aladdin opened his eyes and stroked his chin.  He was troubled
about the dream.  The senator had spoken to him of "others."
Could Peter Manners possibly be there? Was that the especial
demolishment that fate held in store for him? He was very wide
awake now.

At times, owing to the opaqueness of the storm, it was
impossible to see out of the car window.  But there were
moments when a sudden rush of wind blew a path for the eye,
and by such occasional pictures--little long of the
instantaneous--one could follow the progress of the blizzard.
Aladdin saw a huddle of sheep big with snow; then a man
getting into a house by the window; an ancient apple-tree with
a huge limb torn off; two telegraph poles that leaned toward
each other, like one man fixing another's cravat; and he
caught glimpses of wires broken, loosened, snarled, and fuzzy
with snow.  Then the train crawled over a remembered trestle,
and Aladdin knew that he was within four miles of his station,
and within three of the St. Johns' house by the best of short
cuts across country.  He looked precisely in its direction,
and kissed his fingers to Margaret, and wondered what she was
doing.  Then there was a rumbling, jumping jar, and the train
stopped.  Minute after minute went by.  Aladdin waited
impatiently for the train to start.  The conductor passed
hurriedly through.

"What's up?" called Aladdin after him.

"Up!" cried the conductor.  "We're off the track."

"Can't we go on to-night?"

"Nup!"  The conductor passed out of the car and banged the
door.

"Got to sit here all night!" said Aladdin.  "Not much!  Get
up, Troubles!  If you don't think I know the way about here,
you can stay by the stove.  I'm going to walk."

Aladdin and Troubles rose, buttoned their coat, left the car,
and set out in the direction of the St. Johns'.  Aladdin's
watch at starting read five o'clock.

"Our luggage is all checked, Troubles," he said, "and all
we've got to face is the idea of walking three miles through
very disagreeable weather, over a broad path that we know like
the palm of our hand (which we don't know as well as we
might), arriving late, wet to the skin, and without a change
of clothes.  On the other hand, we shall deserve a long drink
and much sympathy.  As for you, Troubles, you're the best
company I know, and all is well."

    The first scarlet huntsman blew into his horn,
    "Lirala, Lovely Morning, I'm glad I was born."




XVI


At first the way, lying through waist-high fir scrub, was
pretty bad underfoot, but beyond was a stretch of fine timber,
where the trees had done much to arrest the snow, and the
going was not so severe.  Aladdin calculated that he should
make the distance in an hour and a half; and when the wood
ended, he looked at his watch and found that the first mile,
together with only twenty-five minutes, was behind him.

"That's the rate of an hour and a quarter, Troubles," he said.
"And that's good time.  Are you listening?"

But following the wood was a great open space of country
pitched up from the surrounding levels, and naked to every
fury of nature.  Across that upland the wind blew a wicked
gale, scarifying the tops of knolls to the brown, dead grass,
and filling the hollows flush with snow.  At times, to keep
from being blown over, it was necessary to lean against the
gusts.  Aladdin was conscious of not making very rapid
progress, but there was something exhilarating in the
wildness, the bitter cold, and the roar of the wind; it had an
effect as of sea thundering upon beach, great views from
mountain-tops, black wild nights, the coming of thunder and
freshness after intense heat, or any of the thousand and one
vaster demonstrations of nature.  Now and again Aladdin sang
snatches of song:

          Gaily bedight,
         A gallant knight
       In sunshine and shadow
         Journeyed long,
         Singing a song,
       In search of El Dorado.

Or from "The Mole of Marimolena"

  I was turning fifty-odd when the everlasting God
    Smote a path of molten gold across the blue,
  Says, "There's many million men would have done the like again,
    But you didn't, and, my man, there's hope for you.

   "Start sheets and sail for the Mole--
    For the old rotten Mole of Marimolena;
     There's maybe some one there
     That you're longing to treat fair,
    On the dismal, woeful Mole of Marimolena."

And other deep-sea chanteys,--the one in which the pirate
found the Lady in the C-a-a-bin and slivered off her head, or
back to Red Renard, or further to his own campaign song, and
furthest of all to the bad, bad young dog of a crow.  Then he
got quite out of breath, and pausing for a moment to catch it,
noted for the first time the extreme bitterness of the cold.
It stung the face like insects.  "Woof!" he said.  "And now
for lost time."

Again he stepped out, but with each step the snow became
deeper, and presently he floundered in to his waist.  "Must be
a ditch!" he said, turning a little to the right and
exclaiming, "Thought so!" as the wading got shallower.
Whereupon he stepped into a deep hole and fell.  After
plunging and plowing about, it was brought home to him that he
had lost the path.  Even at that the difficulty remained one
of hard walking alone, for he had been familiar with that
country since childhood, and knew the precise direction in
which it was necessary for him to locomote.  It was a pity
that the only structure in the vicinity was an ancient and
deserted house,--it lay just off there,--as he should have
liked to have warmed himself by a good fire before going
farther.  He remembered that there were a partly preserved
stove in the deserted house, broken laths, and naily boards,
and swathes of curious old wall-papers, layer upon layer,
which, dampening and rotting from the wall, hung raggedly
down.  He had once explored the house with Margaret, and it
seemed almost wise to go to the place and make a fire.  But on
account of the delay involved and the approach of darkness, he
discarded the notion, and, a little impatient at being badly
used by a neighborhood he knew so well, struggled on.

"Troubles," he said, "what sort of a storm is this anyway?
Did you ever see anything quite like it round here?  Because I
never did.  It must be like those things they have out West,
when millions of poor little baa-sheeps and horses and cattles
freeze to death.  I'd hate to be a horse out in this, but I
wish I had one.  I--"

If, as a child, you have ever slipped, though only an inch,
while climbing over roofs, you will know that sudden,
stabbing, sinking feeling that came to Aladdin and stopped the
beating of his heart by the hairbreadth of a second.  He had
been proceeding chin on breast, and head bent against the
wind, or he would have seen it before, for it was a notable
landmark in that part of the world, and showed him that he had
been making way, not toward his destination, but toward the
wilderness.

He gazed up at the great black blasted pine, its waist the
height of a tall tree, and its two lonely lightning-scathed
and white arms stretched out like a malediction; and for a
moment he had to take himself in hand.  After a little he
mastered the fear that had seized him.

"It's only a poor old lonely vegetable out in the cold," he
said.  "And it shows us exactly where we are and exactly which
way we have to go."

He set himself right, and, with head lowered and hands
clenched, again started on.  But he was beginning to be very
much bored, and sensible that his legs were not accustomed to
being used so hard.  Furthermore, there was a little
difficulty--not by any means an insurmountable one--in
steering straight, because of the constantly varying point of
the compass in which the wind blew.  He went on for a long
time .  .  .  .

He began to look for the high ground to decline, as it should,
about now, if it was the high ground he took it for.  "I ought
to be getting somewhere," he said.

And, God help him! tired out, half frozen and very foot-sore,
he was getting somewhere, for, glancing up, he again beheld
the gigantic and demoniac shape of the blasted pine.

It is on prairies and among mountains, far from the
habitations of men, that man is most readily terrified before
nature, and not on the three-mile primrose way from a railway
accident to a house-party.  But for a moment cold terror
struck at Aladdin like a serpent, and the marrow in his bones
froze.  Before he could succeed in reducing this awful feeling
to one of acute anxiety alone, he had to talk to himself and
explain things as to a child.

"Then it is true, Troubles, old man," he said, "about a
person's tendency to go to the left.  That's interesting,
isn't it?  But what do we care?  Being gifted with a certain
(flighty, it is true) intelligence, we will simply take pains,
and every step pull a little to the right; and that will make
us go straight.  Come now-keep thinking about it-every step!"

As the end of the day approached, a lull came in the gale, and
the snow fell less freely.  The consequently widened horizon
of vision was eminently comforting, and Aladdin's unpleasant
feeling of anxiety almost disappeared.

Suddenly he was aware of a red horse.




XVII


It was standing almost leg-clear, in an angle of what seemed a
drifted-over snake-fence.  Its ugly, Roman-nosed head was
thrown up and out, as if about to neigh.

"Poor beastie," said Aladdin, after a start.  "You must be
direfful cold, but we'll ride you, and that will make you
warm, and us cold, and we'll all get along faster."

Drawing near, he began to gentle the horse and call it pet
names.  It was a huge brute, over seventeen hands high, and
Aladdin, aided only by a rickety fence, and a pair of legs
that would hardly support him, was appalled by the idea of
having to climb to that lofty eminence, its back.  Without
doubt he was dreadfully tired.

"The fence will help, old man" he said.  "Here, you, pay
attention and get over."  He tried to insinuate himself
between the horse and the fence, but the horse did not seem
inclined to move.

"Get over, you!" he said, and gave a shove.  The horse moved a
little, very unwillingly.  "Farther yet," said Aladdin: "Get
over, you, get over."  Again he shoved; this time harder.  He
slapped the great shoulder with his open hand.  And again the
horse moved, but very slowly.  "You're an unwilling brute,
aren't you?" he said angrily.

For answer the thing tottered, and, to his horror, began to
fall, at first slowly, but ever with accelerating speed,
until, in the exact attitude in which it had stood by the
fence,--the great Roman-nosed head thrown up and out, as if to
neigh,--he beheld the horse stretched before him on the
ground, and noted for the first time the awful death-like
glint of the yellow teeth through the parting of the lips.

He went very gravely from that place, for he had been looking
upon death by freezing, and he himself was terribly cold,
terribly tired, and--he admitted it now--completely lost.

But he went on for a long time--four or five hundred years.
And it grew darker and colder.

He began to talk to himself, to try and steady himself, as he
had done ever since childhood at forsaken times.

"Troubles," he said, "You're full of troubles, aren't you, old
man?  You always were.  But this is the worst.  You can't walk
very much farther, can you?  I can't.  And if you don't get
helped by some one pretty soon, you're going to come to the
end of your troubles.  And, Troubles, do you know, I think
that's what's going to happen to you and me, and I want you to
stand up to it if it comes [gulp] and face it like a man.  Now
let's rest a little, Troubles, will we?"

Troubles and Aladdin rested a little.  When the rest was over
they could hardly move, and they began to see the end of a
young man that they had hoped would live a long time and be
very happy.  They went on.

"Troubles," said Aladdin, "do you suppose she knows that we
are out here, perhaps dying?  We would know if she were,
wouldn't we?  And do you think she cares?  Liar, you know she
cares, and a lot.  She wouldn't be she if she didn't care.
But we didn't think that all the years of waiting and hoping
and loving and trying to be something would end like this, did
we, Troubles?  We thought that it might end with the godlike
Manners (whom we wouldn't help if he were freezing to death,
would we?), but not like this--O Lord God, not like this! . . .
And we weren't sure it would end with Manners; we were
going to fight it out to a mighty good finish, weren't we,
Troubles?  But now it's going to end in a mighty good storm,
and you're going to die for all your troubles, Troubles . . .
And I'm talking to you so that we won't lose our sand,
even if we are afraid to die, and there's no one looking on."

Though Aladdin stopped making talk in his head, the talk kept
going on by itself; and he suddenly shouted aloud for it to
stop.  Then he began to whimper and shiver, for he thought
that his mind was going.

Presently he shook himself.

"Troubles," he said, "we've only a little farther to go--just
as far as our feet will carry us, and no farther.  That's the
proper way to finish.  And for God's sake keep sane.  We won't
give her up yet!"

Ten steps and years passed.

"Troubles," said Aladdin, "we're going to call for help, and
if it don't come, which it won't, we're going to try and be
calm.  It seems simplest and looks best to be calm."

Aladdin stood there crying aloud for the help of man, but it
did not come.  And then he cried for the help of God.  And he
stood there waiting--waiting for it to come.

"We must help ourselves, Troubles," he said, with a desperate
effort to be calm.  "We've got ten steps left in us.  Now,
then, one--two--"

During the taking of those ten steps the snow ceased entirely
to fall, and black night enveloped the earth.

Aladdin was all numb, and he wished to sleep, but he made the
ten steps into eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, before his
limbs refused to act, and he fell forward in the snow.  He
managed to raise himself and crawl a little way.  He saw a
light afar off, and guessing that it must be an angel, held
out his hands to it--and one of them encountered a something
in the dark.

Even through his thick mitten it felt round and smooth and
colder than his fingers, like a ball of ice.  Then Aladdin
laughed aloud, for he knew that his last walk upon earth had
been in the form of a silly circle.  He had returned to the
dead horse, and his gloved hand was resting upon its frozen
eye.  He shrieked with laughter and became heavy with a desire
to sleep.

He sank deliciously down, and began to see showers of roses,
when it flashed upon him that this was not sleep, but death.

It was like lifting prodigious dumb-bells to get his eyes to
open, and a return to consciousness was like the stabbing of
knives.  But he opened his eyes and roused himself.

"I won't give her up yet," he cried.

And then, by the help of God Almighty, he crawled the whole
length of the horse.

And fell asleep.




XVIII


It was a miserable, undressed thing wrapped in a horse-blanket
and a buffalo-robe that woke up in front of a red-hot stove
and remembered that it used to be Aladdin O'Brien.  It had a
dreadful headache, and could smell whisky and feel warm, and
that for a long time was about all.  Then it noticed that the
wall opposite was ragged with loosened wall-paper and in
places stripped of plaster, so that the lathing showed
through, and that in its own head--no, in the room beyond the
wall--an impatient stamping noise of iron on wood was
occurring at intervals.  Then it managed to turn its head, and
it saw a big, beautiful man sitting on the end of an old
soapbox and smoking a pipe.  Then it was seized with a
wrenching sickness, and the big man came quickly and held its
head and was very good to it, and it felt better and went to
sleep.  After a while it descended into the Red Sea, with the
avowed intention of calling Neptune Red Renard to his face,
and when it got to the bottom, which was of red brick
sprinkled with white door-knobs that people kept diving for,
it became frightened and ran and ran until it came to the
bottom of an iceberg, that had roots like a hyacinth bulb and
was looking for a place to plant itself, and it climbed up to
the top of the iceberg, which was all bulrushes, and said, "I
beg your pardon, but I forgot; I must go back and make my
apologies."  Then it woke up and spoke in a weak voice.

"Peter Manners," said Aladdin, "come here."

Manners came and sat on the floor beside him.

"Feel better now?" he said.

"Tell me--"said Aladdin.

"Oh, stuff!" said Manners.

"Manners," said Aladdin, "you don't look as if you hated me
any more."

"You sleep," said Manners.  "That's what you need."

Aladdin thought for a long time and tried to remember what he
wanted to say, and shutting his eyes, to think better, fell
asleep.

For the third time he awoke.  Manners was back on the
soap-box, still as a sphinx, and smoking his pipe.

"Please come and talk some more," said Aladdin.

Again Manners came.

"Tell me about it," said Aladdin.

"You be good and go to sleep," said Manners.

"What time is it?"

"Nearly morning."

"Still storming?"

"No; stars out and warmer."

Aladdin thought a moment.

"Manners," he said, "please talk to me.  How did you find me?"

"Simply enough," said Manners.  "I took the senator's cutter
out for a little drive, and got lost.  Then I heard somebody
laughing, and I stumbled over you and your horse; that's all.
How the devil did you manage to lose your saddle and bridle?"

"It was a dead horse," said Aladdin, and he shivered at the
recollection.

"Quite so," said Manners.

"It was the funniest thing," said Aladdin, and again he
shuddered with a kind of reminiscent revolt.  "I pushed it,
and it fell over frozen to death."  He was conscious of
talking nonsense.

"Wait a minute, Manners," he said.  "I'll be sensible in a
minute."

Presently he told Manners about the horse.

"I saw alight just then," he said, "and I thought it was an
angel."

"It was I," said Manners, naively.

"Yes, Manners, it was you," said Aladdin.

He thought about an angel turning out to be Manners for a long
time.  Then a terrible recollection came to him, and, in a
voice shaking with remorse and self-incrimination, he cried:

"God help me, Manners, I would have let you freeze."

Manners pulled at his pipe.

"Manners," said Aladdin, "it's true I know it's true, because,
for all I knew, I was dying when I said it."

Manners shook his head.

"Oh, no," said Manners.

"Make me think that," said Aladdin, with a quaver.  "Please
make me think that if you can, for, God help me, I think I
would have let you freeze."

"When I found you," said Manners, "I--I was sorry that the
Lord hadn't sent somebody else to you, and me to somebody
else.  That was because you always hated me with no very good
reason, and a man hates to be hated, and so, to be quite
honest, I hated you back."

"Right," said Aladdin, "right."

Light began to come in through the windows, whose broken panes
Manners had stopped with crumpled wall-paper.

"But when I got you here," said Manners, "and began to work
over you, you stopped being Aladdin O'Brien, and were just a
man in trouble."

"Yes," said Aladdin, "it must be like that.  It's got to be
like that."

"At first," said Manners, "I worked because it seemed the
proper thing to do, and then I got interested, and then it
became terrible to think that you might die."

"Yes," said Aladdin.  His face was ghastly in the pre-sunrise
light.

"You wouldn't get warm for hours," said Manners, "and I got so
tired that I couldn't rub any more, and so I stripped and got
into the blankets with you, and tried to keep you as warm as I
could that way."

He paused to relight his pipe.

Aladdin stared up at the tattered ceiling with wide, wondering
eyes.

"When you got warm," said Manners, "I gave you all the rest of
the whisky, and I'm sorry it made you sick, and now you're as
fit as a fiddle."

"Fit-as-a-fiddle," said Aladdin, slowly, as the wonder grew.
And then he began to cry like a little child.  Manners waited
till he had done, and then wiped his face for him.

"So you see," said Manners, simply, though with difficulty,
--for he was a man shy, to terror, of discussing his own
feelings,--"I can't help liking you now, and--and I hope you
won't feel so hard toward me any more."

"I feel hard toward you!" said Aladdin.  "Oh, Manners!" he
cried.  "I thought all along that you were just a man that
knew about horses and dogs, but I see, I see; and I'm not
going to worship anybody any more except you and God, I'm
not!"

Then he had another great long, hot cry.  Manners waited
patiently till it was over.

"Manners," said Aladdin, in a choky, hoarse voice, "I think
you're different from what you used to be.  You look as if--as
if you 'd got the love of mankind in you."

Manners did not answer.  He appeared to be thinking of
something wonderful.

"Do you think that's it?" cried Aladdin.

Manners did not answer.

"Can't I get it, too?" Aladdin cried.  "Have I got to be
little and mean always?  So help me, Manners, I don't love any
one but you and her."

"You 're not fit to talk," said Manners, with great
gentleness.  "You go to sleep."  He arose, and going to the
door of the house, opened it a little way and looked out.

"It's warm as toast out, Aladdin," he called.  "There's going
to be a big thaw."  He closed the door and went into the next
room, and Aladdin could hear him talking to the horse.  After
a little he came back.

"Greener says that she never was better stalled," he said.

"Manners," said Aladdin, "have I been raving?"

"Not been riding quite straight," said Manners.

"How soon are we going to start?" said Aladdin.

"We've got to wait till the snow's pretty well melted," said
Manners.  "About noon, I think."

Then, because he was very tired and sick and weak, and perhaps
a trifle delirious, Aladdin asked Manners if he would mind
holding his hand.  Manners took the hand in his, and a thrill
ran up Aladdin's arm and all over him, till it settled
deliciously about his heart, and he slept.

The sun rose, and dazzling beams of light filled the room.






BOOK II




"In this combat no man can imagine, unless he had seen and
heard as I did, what yelling and hideous roaring Apollyon made
all the time of the fight, he spake like a Dragon; and on the
other side, what sighs and groans burst from Christian's
heart.  I never saw him all the while give so much as one
pleasant look, till he perceived he had wounded Apollyon with
his two-edged sword: then indeed he did smile and look
upward."





XIX


Senator St. John, attended by Margaret, her maid, and a
physician, had made the arduous journey from Washington to
Portland without too much fatigue, and it seemed reasonable to
suppose that a long rest in his comfortable house, far from
the turmoil of public affairs, would do much to reinstate his
body after the savage attack of gout with complications to
which it had been subjected during six long weeks.  Arrived at
Portland, he was driven to the house of his old friend Mr.
Blankinship, and helped to bed.  Next morning he was seized
with acute pains in the region of the heart, and though his
valiant mind refused for a single moment to tolerate the
thought that the end might be near, was persuaded to send for
his daughter and his sons.

Margaret was in the parlor with Aladdin.  It was April, and
the whole land dripped.  Through the open window, for the day
was warm, the moisture of the soaked ground and trees was
almost audible.  Margaret had much to say to Aladdin, and he
to her; they had not met for several months.

"I want to hear about Peter," said Aladdin--"all about him.
He met you, of course, and got you across the city?"

"Yes, and his father came, too," said Margaret.  "Such an
old dear--you never saw him, did you?  He's taller than
Peter, but much thinner, and a great aristocrat.  He's the
only man I ever saw that has more presence than papa.  He
looks like a fine old bird, and you can see his skull very
plainly--especially when he laughs, if you know what I
mean.  And he's really witty.  He knows all about you and
wants you to go and stay with them sometime."  Aladdin
sighed for the pure delight of hearing Margaret's voice
running on and on.  He was busy looking at her, and did not
pay the slightest attention to what she said.  "And the
girl came to lunch, Aladdin, and she is so pretty, but not
a bit serene like Peter, and the men are all wild about
her, but she doesn't care that--"

"Doesn't she?" said Aladdin, annoyingly.

"No, she doesn't!" said Margaret, tartly.  "She says she's
going to be a horse-breaker or a nurse, and all the while she
kept making eyes at brother John, and he lost his poise
entirely and smirked and blushed, and I shouldn't wonder a bit
if he'd made up his mind to marry her, and if he has he will--"

Aladdin caught at the gist of the last sentence.  "Is that all
that's necessary?" he said.  "Has a man only got to make up
his mind to marry a certain girl?"

"It's all brother John would have to do," said Margaret,
provokingly.

"Admitting that," said Aladdin, "how about the other men?"

"Why," said Margaret, "I suppose that if a man really and
truly makes up his mind to get the girl he wants, he'll get
her."

She looked at him with a grand innocence.  Aladdin's heart
leaped a little.

"But suppose two men made up their minds," said Aladdin, "to
get the same girl."

"That would just prove the rule," said Margaret, refusing to
see any personal application, "because one of them would get
her, and the other would be the exception."

"Would the one who spoke first have an advantage?" said
Aladdin.  "Suppose he'd wanted her ever so long, and had tried
to succeed because of her, and"--he was warming to the
subject, which meant much to him--"had never known that there
was any other girl in the world, and had pinned all his faith
and hope on her, would he have any advantage?"

"I don't know," said Margaret, rather dreamily.

"Because if he would--" Aladdin reached forward and took one
of her hands in his two.

She let it lie there, and for a moment they looked into each
other's eyes.  Margaret withdrew her hand.

"I know--I know," she said.  "But you mustn't say it, 'Laddin
dear, because--somehow I feel that there are heaps of things
to be considered before either of us ought to think of that.
And how can we be quite sure?  Anyway, if it's going to
happen--it will happen.  And that's all I'm going to say,
'Laddin."

"Tell me," he said gently, "what the trouble is, dear.  Is it
this: do you think you care for me, and aren't sure?  Is that
it?"

She nodded gravely.  Aladdin took a long breath.

"Well," he said finally, "I believe I love you well enough,
Margaret, to hope that you get the man who will make you
happiest. I don't know," he went on rather gloomily, "that I'm
exactly calculated to make anybody happy, but," he concluded,
with a quavering smile, "I'd like to try." They shook hands
like the two very old friends they were.

"We'll always be that, anyway," said Margaret.

"Always," said Aladdin.

"Mademoiselle!" Eugenie opened the parlor door and looked
cautiously in, after the manner of the French domestic.

"What is it?" said Margaret in French.

Aladdin listened with intense admiration, for he did not
understand a word.

"Monsieur does not carry himself so well," said Eugenie, "and
he asks if mademoiselle will have the goodness to mount a
moment to his room."

"I'll go at once." Margaret rose.  "Papa's worse," she said to
Aladdin.  "Will you wait?"

"I am so sorry," said Aladdin.  "No, I can't wait; I have to
get out the paper.  I"--he smiled--"am announcing to an eager
public what general, in my expert opinion, is best fitted to
command the armies of the United States."

"Of course there'll be fighting."

"Of course - and in a day or two.  Good-by."

"Good-by."

"I'll come round later and inquire about your father.  Give
him my love."

Margaret ran up-stairs to her father's room.  He was in great
pain, but perfectly calm and collected.  As Margaret entered,
the doctor went out, and she was alone with her father.

"Are you feeling badly, dear?" she said.

"I am feeling more easy than a moment ago," said the senator.
"Bring a chair over here, Peggy; we must have a little talk."

She brought a little upright chair and sat down facing him,
her right hand nestling over one of his.

"The doctor," said the senator, "considers that my condition
is critical."

"Papa"

"I disagree with him.  I shall, I believe, live to see the end
of this civil riot, but I cannot be sure.  So it behooves me
to ask my dear daughter a question."  St. John asked it with
eagerness.  "Which is it to be, Peggy?"

She blushed deeply.

"You are interested in Aladdin O'Brien?"

Her head drooped a little.

"Yes, papa."

The senator sighed.

"Thank you, dear," he said.  "That is all I wanted to know.  I
had hoped that it would be otherwise.  Peggy," he said, "I
love that other young man like a son."

"Peter?"

"I have always hoped that you would see him as I have seen
him.  I would be happy if I thought that I could leave you in
such strong young hands.  I trust him absolutely."

"Papa."

"Well, dear?"

"You don't like Aladdin?"

"He is not steady, Margaret."  The simple word was pregnant
with meaning as it fell from the senator.

"You don't mean that he--that he's like--"

"Yes, dear; I should not wish my youngest son to marry."

"Poor boy," said Margaret, softly.

"It's the Irish in him," said the senator.  "He must do all
things to extremes.  There, in a word, lies all his strength
and all his weakness."

"You would be sorry if I married Aladdin?"

"I should be afraid for your happiness.  Do you love him?"

"I am not sure, papa."

"You are fond of Peter, aren't you?"

She leaned forward till her cheek touched his.

"Next to you and 'Laddin."

The senator patted her shoulder, and thus they remained for
some time.

A great shouting arose in the neighborhood.

The senator sat bolt upright in bed.  His nostrils began to
quiver.  He was like an old war-horse that hears bugles.

"Sumter?" he cried.  "Sumter?  Do I hear Sumter?"

The shouting became louder.

"Sumter?" he cried.  "Have they fired upon Sumter?"

Margaret flew to the window and threw it open.  It acted upon
the shouting like the big swell of an organ, and the cries of
excitement filled the room to bursting.  South Carolina had
clenched her hand and struck the flag in the face.

The doctor rushed in.  He paused flabbergasted at sight of the
man whom he had supposed to be dying.

"Great God, man!" cried the senator, "can't you get my
clothes?"

When he was dressed they brought him his whalebone stick.

"Damn it, I can walk!" said he, and he broke the faithful old
thing over a knee that had not been bent for a month.




XX


New fervor of enlistment took place, and among the first to
enlist was Aladdin, and when his regiment met for organization
he was unanimously elected major.  He had many friends.

At first he thought that his duty did not lie where his heart
lay, because of his brother Jack, now fourteen, whom he had to
support.  And then, the old promises coming to mind, he
presented himself one morning before Senator St. John.

"Senator," he said, "you promised to do me a favor if I should
ever ask it."

The senator thought of Margaret and trembled.

"I have come to ask it."

"Well, sir?"

"I want to enlist, sir, but if I do there's nobody to look
after Jack."

Again the senator thought of Margaret, and his heart warmed.

"He shall live in my house, sir," said the senator, "as a
member of my family, sir."

"God bless you, sir!" cried Aladdin.

In a state of dancing glee he darted off to the "Spy" office
to see his chief.

Mr. Blankinship was leaning against the post of the street
door, reading his own editorial in the morning issue.

"Hallo, Mr. Blankinship!" cried Aladdin.

"Hallo, Aladdin!" cried Mr. Blankinship, grinning at his
favorite.  "Late as usual."

"And for the last time, sir."

"I know of only one good reason for such a statement."

"It's it, sir!"

Mr. Blankinship folded his paper carefully.  His eyes were
red, for he had been up late the night before.

"I'd go, too," he said simply, "if it wasn't for the mother."


The firm of John St. John & Brothers sat in its office.  The
head of the firm was gorgeous in a new uniform; he had hurried
up from New York (where he had been paying vigorous court to
Ellen Manners, whom he had made up his mind to marry) in
order, as oldest, biggest, and strongest, to enlist for the
family in one of the home regiments.  There lingered on his
lips the thrill of a kiss half stolen, half yielded, while in
his pockets were a number of telegrams since received, and the
usually grave and stern young man was jocular and bantering.
The two younger members of the firm were correspondingly
savage.

"For God's sake, clear out of here," said Hamilton.  "Your
shingle's down.  Bul and I are running this office now."

"Well, it's the chance of your lives, boys," said the frisky
colonel.  "I'll have forgotten the law by the time I come
back."

"Hope you may choke, John," said Hannibal, sweetly.

"Don't allow smoking in here, do you, boys?"  He got no
answer.  It was a hard-and-fast rule which he himself had
instituted.

"Well, here goes."  He lighted a huge cigar and puffed it
insolently about the office.  He surveyed himself in the
cracked mirror.

"Cursed if a uniform isn't becoming to a man!" he said.

"Chicken!" said Hamilton.

"Puppy!" said Hannibal.

"Titmouse!" said Hamilton.

"Ant!" said Hannibal.

John's grin widened.

"Boys," he said, "you've got one swell looker in the family,
anyway, and you ought to be glad of that."

The boys exchanged glances.

Hannibal had upon his desk a pen-wiper which consisted of a
small sponge heavy with the ink of wiped pens.  Hamilton had
beneath his desk an odd rubber boot which served him as a
scrap-basket.  These ornamental missiles took John St. John in
the back of the head at about the same moment, the weight and
impetus of the boot knocking the cigar clean out of his mouth,
so that it dashed itself against the mirror.

The gallant colonel turned, still grinning.  "Which threw the
boot?" said he.

"I did," said Hamilton.

"Then you get the first licking."

Hamilton met his brother's hostile if grinning advance with
the hardest blow that he could strike him over the left eye.
Then they clenched, and Hannibal joined the fray.  The three
brothers, roaring with laughter, proceeded to inflict as much
damage to each other and the office as they jointly could.
Over and under they squirmed and contorted, hitting, tripping,
falling and rising.  Desks went over, lawbooks strewed the
floor, ink ran, and finally the bust of George Washington,
which had stood over the inner door since the foundation of
the firm, came down with a crash.

By this time the three brothers were helpless with laughter.
The combat ceased, and they sat upon the floor to survey the
damage.

"You can't handle the old man yet, boys," said the colonel.
His left eye was closed, and his new uniform looked like the
ribbons hung on a May-pole.

Hamilton was bleeding at the nose.  Hannibal's lip was split.
The three looked at each other and shook with laughter.

"I'm inclined to think we've had a healthy bringing-up," said
Hamilton between gasps.

"Better move, colonel," said Hannibal; "you're sitting in a
pool of ink."

"So I am," said the colonel, as the cold struck through his
new trousers.

The laughter broke out afresh.

Beau Larch, in the uniform of a private, appeared at the door.

"Hallo, Beau!"

"Come in."

"Take a hand?"

"Thank you, no," said Beau.  "I just dropped in to tell you
fellows that we've just had a hell of a licking at Bull Run."

"Us!" said the colonel, rising.

"Us!" said Hamilton.  "Licked!"

"Us!" said Hannibal.

"And I've got other news, too," said Beau, bashfully.  "If I
stop drinking till my year's up, and don't ever drink any
more, Claire says she'll marry me."

Hannibal was the first to shake his hand.

"Boys," said Beau, "I hope if any of you ever sees me touch a
drop you'll strike me dead."

He went out.

"I'm going to find out about this," said John; "what did he
say the name of the licking was?"

"Bull Run."

"Bull Run.  And I'll come back and tell you."

He was starting to descend the steep stairs to the street,
when he caught the sound of snickers and creeping footsteps
behind him.  He turned like a panther, but was not in time.
The heavily driven toes of the right boots of the younger St.
Johns lifted him clear of the stairs, and clean to the bottom
of them.  There he sat, his uniform a thing of the past, his
left eye blackening and closed, and roars of laughter shaking
him.

But Hamilton and Hannibal put the office more or less to
rights, and sat down gloomily at their respective desks.  Up
till now they had faced being left behind, but this licking
was too much.  Each brooded over it, while pretending to be up
to the ears in work.  Hamilton wrote a letter, sealed it,
addressed it, and presently rose.

"Bul," he said, and to Hannibal the whole manoeuver smacked
suspicious, "I'm going to run up and see the old man for a few
minutes."

"All right," said Hannibal.

Hamilton reached the door and turned.

"By the way," he said, "I left a letter on my desk; wish you'd
put a stamp on it and mail it."

He went out.

Hannibal felt very lonely and fidgety.

"I think I'll just mail that letter and get it off my mind,"
he said.

He put on his hat, licked a stamp, and crossed to his
brother's desk.  The letter was there, right enough, but it
did not require a stamp, for on it was written but one word,
and that word was Hannibal.

Hannibal tore open the envelop and read:

DEAR OLD Bul :I can't stand it any longer, but you'll try and
not be mad with me for running off and leaving you to keep up
the old place alone, and damn it, Bul, two of us ought to go
anyway .  .  .  .

The letter ran on for a little in the same strain.  Hannibal
put the letter in his pocket, and sat down at his brother's
desk.

"It will kill the old man if we all go," he said.  "And of all
three I'm the one with the best rights to go and get shot."

He took from somewhere in his clothes a little gold locket,
flat and plain.  Each of the St. John boys had carried one
since their mother's death.  Facing her picture each had had
engraved the motto which he had chosen for himself to be his
watchword in life.  In John's locket was engraved, "In fortis
vinces"; in Hamilton's, "Deo volente"; and in Hannibal's,
"Carpe diem."  But in Hannibal's locket there was another
picture besides that of his mother.  He opened the locket with
his thumb-nails and laid it on the desk before him.  Presently
his eyes dimmed, and he looked beyond the locket.

Hamilton St. John's ink-well was a globe of glass, with a hole
like a thimble in the top to contain ink.  Hannibal found
himself looking at this, and noting the perfect miniature
reproduction of the big calendar on the wall, as it was
refracted by the glass.  With his thoughts far away, his eyes
continued to look at the neat little curly calendar in the
ink-well.  Presently it seemed to him that it was not a
calendar at all, but just a patch of bright green color--a
patch of bright green that became grass, an acre of it, a
ten-acre field, a great field gay with trampled flowers,
rolling hills, woods, meadows, fences, streams.  Then he
saw, lying thickly over a fair region, broken guns, exploded
cannons, torn flags, horses and men contorted and sprung in
death; everywhere death and demolition.  He wandered over
the field and came presently upon himself, scorched, mangled,
and dead under the wheel of a cannon.

After a little it seemed to him that the field of battle
shrank until it became again the calendar.  But there was
something odd about that calendar; the dates were queer.  It
read July, right enough; but this was the year 1861, whereas
the calendar bore the date 1863.  And why was there a cross to
mark the third day of July?  Hannibal came to with a shock;
but he could have sworn that he had not been asleep.

"God is very--very good!" he said solemnly.

Then he opened his pen-knife, and scratched a deep line of
erasure through the "Carpe diem" in his locket, and
underneath, cutting with great pains, he inserted a date,
"July 3, 1863," and the words "Nunc dimittis."  Below that he
cut "Te Deum laudamus."

He looked once more at the picture of his mother and at the
picture that was not of his mother, shut the little gold case,
and put it back in his pocket.

Then he inked on the white inside of a paper-box cover, in
large letters, these words:

This office will not be opened until the end of the war.

That office was never opened again.




XXI


The lives of sixty million people had become suddenly full of
drill, organization, uniforms, military music, flags, hatred,
love, and self-sacrifice, and the nations of the Old World
stood about, note-book in hand, like so many medical students
at a clinic: could a heart, cut in two, continue to supply a
body with blood after the soul had been withdrawn?  And the
nations of the Old World hoped that there would be enough
fresh meat left on the carcass for them to feed on, when the
experiment should be at an end.  Mother England was
particularly hungry, and dearly hoped to have the sucking of
the eggs which she herself had laid.

It was a great time for young men, and Margaret shed secret
tears on behalf of five of them.  It had fallen upon her to
tell the old man that his three sons had enlisted, and that
task had tortured her for an hour before she had dared go and
accomplish it.

"Papa," she said, "Ham has enlisted, and so has Bul."

The senator had not moved a muscle.

"It was only a question of time," he said.  "I wish that I had
begotten a dozen others."

He had borrowed her well-marked Bible from old Mrs.
Blankinship and read Isaiah at a gulp.  Then he had sought out
his boys and bantered them on their new clothes.

Margaret sat very still for a long time after the interview
with her father.  She knew that Bul, whom she loved best of
her brothers, was going to be killed.  She had never before
seen his face so serenely happy as when he came to tell her
that he had sworn in, nor had she ever before seen that
unexplainable phenomenon, known variously as fate, doom,
numbered, Nemesis, written upon a face.  And there were others
who might be taken.

Aladdin came in for a moment to give her the news.  He was
nervous with enthusiasm, and had been working like a horse.
His regiment was to leave Friday for the front; he could stay
but a minute; he had only dashed in on his way to drill.
Would she care to come?  Quite right; there was nothing much
to look at.  He talked as cheerfully and as rapidly as a
mountain brook runs.  And then he gave his best piece of news,
and looked almost handsome as he gave it.

"Peter's here," he said.  "He's outside talking to the
senator.  He looks simply stunning, and he's a whole lot of
things on a staff--assistant adjutant-general with the rank of
a colonel; and he's floated up here on a dash against time to
say good-by to us."

Aladdin's face puckered.

"You and Peter and I, Margaret," he said, "Lord, what a
muddle!"

"I'm terribly blue, old man," said Margaret, "and it hurts to
have you say things like that."

Instantly Aladdin was all concern.

"You know I wouldn't hurt you purposely," he said, "but I'm
terribly blue, too, dear, and one tries to keep up and says
asinine things, and"--he smiled, and his smile was very
winning--"is at once forgiven by an old dear."

She held out her hand and gave his a friendly squeeze.

"You old darling!" he said, and ran out.

She followed him into the hall, and met Manners, who had just
parted from the senator at the front door.  His uniform was
wonderfully becoming.

"Is it Peter?"

They shook hands.

"Never," she said, "have I seen anything so beautiful!"

Peter blushed (looking even more beautiful, for he hated to be
talked about).

"Where was 'Laddin going?" he said.  "He went by me like a
shot out of a gun, and had only time to pull my hat over my
eyes and squeal Peeeter."

"He's very important now," said Margaret, "and wonders how
anybody can want to write things and be a poet or a musician
when there are real things to do in the world."

Peter looked at his watch.

"Isn't that the least bit rude?" said Margaret.

"No," said Peter; "my train back leaves in one hour, and I
could better afford to lose my chances of heaven.  I had no
business to come, as it was.  But I had to come."

Margaret sighed.  She had hoped that it would not happen so
soon.  He followed her into the parlor and closed the door
behind him.

"First, Margaret," he said, "I'm going to tell you something
that may surprise you a little.  It did me; it was so sudden.
My sister Ellen is going to be married."

"Ellen!" exclaimed Margaret.  "Why, she always said--"
"It's only been arranged in the last few days," said Peter,
"by many telegrams.  I was told to tell you."

"Is he nice?"

"Yes.  He's a good chap."

"Rich?"

"Well--rather rising than rich."

"Who is it?"

"Your brother John."

"My dear Peter--"

"No--I never did, either!"

"Isn't that splendid!"

Peter pulled a grave face.

"Yes--and no," he said.

"I hope you're not going to be insolent," said Margaret.

"It depends on what you call insolent.  My father, you see,
objects very much to having Ellen go out of the family, but he
says that he can learn to bear that if the only other girl in
the world will come into the family."

Manners' voice had become husky toward the last of the
sentence, and perhaps not husky so much as hungry.  Margaret
knew better than to say anything of the kind, but she couldn't
help looking as innocent as a child and saying:

"Won't she?"

"How do I know?" said Peter.  "I have come to ask her."

He looked so very strong and manly and frank that Margaret,
whose world had been terribly blue recently, was half tempted
to throw herself into his arms and cry.

"O Peter!" she said pitifully.

He came and sat beside her on the sofa, and drew her close to
him.

"My darling," he said brokenly.

A great sense of trust and security stole over Margaret, but
she knew that it was not love.  Yet for a moment she
hesitated, for she knew that if she took this man, his arm
would always be about her, and he would always--always--always
be good to her.  As she sat there, not trusting herself to
speak, she had her first doubt of Aladdin, and she wondered if
he loved her as much--as much as he loved Aladdin.  Then she
felt like a traitor.

For a little neither could find any words to say.  So still
they sat that Margaret could hear the muffled ticking of
Peter's watch.  At length Peter spoke.

"What shall I tell my father?" he said.

"Tell him--" said Margaret, and her voice broke.

"Aren't you sure, darling--is that it?"

She nodded with tears in her eyes.

He took his arm from round her waist, and she felt very
lonely.

"But I'm always going to love you," he said.

She felt still more alone.

"Peter," she said, "I can't explain things very well, but I
--I--don't want you to go away feeling as if--"

Manners' eyes lifted up.

"As if it was all over?" he asked eagerly.

"Almost that, Peter," she said.  "I--I can't say yes now--but
God knows, Peter, perhaps sometime--I--I can."

She was thinking of the flighty and moody Aladdin, who had
loved her so long, and whom (she suddenly realized in spite
of the words just spoken) she loved back with all her heart
and soul.

Honor rose hot in her to give Peter a final answer now and
forever--no.  But she looked into his eyes and could not.
He looked at his watch.

"Margaret dear," he said, "I've got to go.  Thanks for
everything, and for the hope and all, and--and I may never
see you again, but if I do, will you give me my answer then?"

"I will," said Margaret, "when I see you again."

They rose.

"May I kiss you, Margaret?" he said.

"Certainly, Peter."

He kissed her on the cheek, and went away with her tears on
his lips.

A newly organized fife-and-drum corps marched by struggling
with "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

In those days the most strangled rendering of that tune would
bring lumps into the throats of those that heard.




XXII


Hannible and Hamilton were privates in the nth regiment,
Aladdin was major, and John was colonel.  If any of them
had the slightest military knowledge, it was Aladdin.  Not
in vain had he mastered the encyclopedia from Safety-lamps
to Stranglers.  He could explain with strange words and in
long, balanced sentences everything about the British
army that began with an S, except only those things whose
second letter stood farther down in the alphabet than
T.  But the elements of knowledge kept dropping in, at
first on perfunctory calls, visitors that disappeared
when you turned to speak with them, but that later came
to stay.  The four young men were like children with a
"roll-the-seven-number-eight-shot-into-the-middle" puzzle.
They could make a great rattling with the shot, and
control their tempers; that was about all.  Later they
were to form units in the most efficient and intelligent
large body of men that the world ever saw, with the possible
exception of the armies it was to be pitted against; but
those, it must be owned, were usually smaller, though, in the
ability of their commanders to form concentration, often of
three times the size.  They learned that it is cheaper to let
a company sleep in tents upon hard ground of a rainy night
than to lodge them in a neighboring hotel at one's own
expense, and that going the rounds in pitch-darkness grows
less thrilling in exact ratio to the number of times you do
it, and finally, even in sight of the enemy's lines, becomes
as boring as waltzing with a girl you don't like.  They began
to learn that cleanliness is next to godliness only in times
of peace, and that food is the one god, and the stomach his
only prophet.  They learned that the most difficult of all
duties is to keep the face straight when the horse of a
brother officer who mounts for the first time is surprised to
vehemence by its first experience with a brass band.

Aladdin was absolutely equal to the occasion, and developed
an astonishing talent for play-acting, and, it is to be
feared, strutted a little, both in the bosom of his soul and
on the parade-ground.  It was only when he looked at two of
the "tall men on the right," Hamilton and Hannibal St. John,
who had chosen humble parts that they might serve under their
brother, that he felt properly small and resented himself.
Sometimes, too, he searched his past life and could find in
it only one brave deed, his swim down the river, and he
wondered with an awful wonder what he would do when the
firing began.  He need not have troubled: he was of too
curious and inquiring a disposition to be afraid of most
things.  And he was yet to see proved on many Southern fields
that a coward is, if anything, a rarer bird than a white
quail.  Only once in action did Aladdin see a man really show
the white feather.  The man had gone into the army from a
grocery-store, and was a very thin, small specimen with a
very big, bulbous head; and, like many others of his class,
proved to be a perfect fire-eater in battle, and a regular
buzzard to escape fever and find food.  But during the famous
seven days before Richmond a retreat was ordered of a part of
the line which the Buzzard helped compose, and he was
confronted by the necessity, for his friends were hastening
him from behind, of crossing a gully by means of a somewhat
slender fallen tree.  It was then that Aladdin saw him show
fear.  Bullets tore up the bark of the tree, and pine
needles, clipped from the trees overhead, fell in showers.
But he did not mind that.  It was the slenderness and
instability of the fallen tree that froze the marrow in his
bones: would it bear his one hundred and twenty-four pounds,
or would it precipitate him, an awful drop of ten feet, into
the softest of muds at the bottom of the gully, where a
sickeningly striped but in reality harmless water-snake lay
coiled?

Finally, pale and shaking, he ventured on the log, got
half-way across, turned giddy, and fell with such a howl
of terror that it was only equaled in vehemence by the
efforts of the snake to get out of the way.  After which
the Buzzard picked himself up, scrambled out, and
continued his retreat, scraping his muddied boots among
the fallen leaves as he went.  "Some talk of Alexander
and some of Hercules," but it may be that an exceedingly
giddy elevation coupled with a serpent would have made
shivering children of both those heroes.  To each his
own fear.  Margaret's and Aladdin's was the same they
both feared Aladdin.

That afternoon the regiment was to leave for the front, and
Aladdin went to bid Margaret good-by.  She and her father
were still staying with the Blankinships.

They had a very satisfactory talk, beginning with the
beginning of things, and going over their long friendship,
laughing, remembering, and regretting.  Jack was to live with
the St. Johns, and they talked much of him, and of old Mrs.
Brackett, and of affairs at home.  Jack about this time was
in the seventh hell of despair, for his extreme youth had
prevented him from bringing to its triumphant conclusion a
pleasant little surprise, consisting of a blue uniform, which
he had planned for himself and others.  No love of country
stirred the bosom of the guileless Jack; only hatred of
certain books out of which he was obliged to learn many
useless things, such as reading, writing, spelling, and
arithmetic.  Besides, word had come to him that persimmons
were to be had for the picking and chickens for the
broiling in that country toward which the troops were
heading.  And much also had he heard concerning the beauty
of Southern maidens, and of the striped watermelons in
the watermelon-patch.  And so he was to be left behind,
and God was not good.

Toward the end their talk got very serious.

"I'm going to turn over a new leaf," said Aladdin, "and be
better things, Margaret, and you must save up a lot of pride
to have in me if I do, and perhaps it will all come right in
the end."

"You know how fond I am of you," said Margaret, "and because
I am, and because you're all the big things that are hard to
be, I want you to be all the little things that ought to be
so easy to be.  That doesn't seem very plain, but I mean--"

"I know exactly what you mean," said Aladdin.  "Don't you
suppose I know myself pretty well by this time, and how far
I've got to climb before I have a ghost of a right to tell
you what I tell you every time I look at you?"

Aladdin rose.

"Margaret," he said, "this time I'm going like an old friend.
If I make good and live steady, as I mean to do, I shall come
back like a lover.  Meanwhile you shall think all things
over, and if you think that you can care for me, you shall
tell me so when I come back.  And if you conclude that you
can't, you shall tell me.  I'm not going to ask you to marry
me now, because in no way am I in a position to.  But if I
come back and say to you, 'Margaret, I have turned into a man
at last,' you will know that I am telling the truth and am in
a position to ask anything I please.  For I shall come back
without a cent, but with a character, and that's everything.
I shall not drink any more, and every night I shall pray to
God to help me believe in Him.  But, Margaret, I may not come
back at all.  If I don't it will be for one of two reasons.
Either I shall fail in becoming worthy to kiss the dust under
your blessed feet, or I shall be killed.  In the first case,
I beg that you will pray for me; but in the second I pray
that you will forget all that was bad in me and only remember
what was good.  And so, darling--" his voice broke, "because
I am a little afraid of death and terribly afraid of
myself--"

She came obediently into his arms, and knew what it was to be
kissed by the man she loved.

"Aladdin," she said, "promise that nothing except--"

"Death?" said Aladdin.

"--that nothing, nothing except death--shall keep you from
coming back."

"If I live," said Aladdin, "I will come back."

Everybody of education knows that Lucy Locket lost her pocket
and that Betty Pringle found it without a penny "in it" (to
rhyme with "found it "), but everybody does not know that the
aforementioned Lucy Locket had a tune composed for her
benefit that has thrilled the hearts of more sons of the
young republic when stepping to battle than any other tune,
past, present, or to come.  There is a martial vigor and a
tear in "The Girl I Left Behind Me"; some feet cannot help
falling into rhythm when they hear the "British Grenadiers";
North and South alike are possessed with a do-or-die madness
when the wild notes of "Dixie" rush from the brass; and "John
Brown's Body" will cause the dumb to sing.  But it is the
farcical little quickstep known by the ridiculous name of
"Yankee Doodle" which the nations would do well to consider
when straining the patience of the peace-loving and United
States.

And so they marched down the street to the station, and the
tall men walked on the right and the little men on the left,
and the small boys trotted alongside, and the brand-new flags
flung out, and bouquets were thrown, and there were cheers
from the heart up all along the line.  But ever the saucy
fifes sang, and the drums gaily beat

          Yankee Doodle came to town
            Riding on a pony,
          Stuck a feather in his Hat,
            And called it macaroni.

At the station the emotions attendant on departure found but
one voice.  The mother said to the son what the sweetheart
said to the lover, and the sister to the brother.  Nor was
this in any manner different from what the brother, lover,
and son said to the sister, sweetheart, and mother.  It was
the last sentence which bleeding hearts supply to lips at
moments of farewell:

"Write to me."

And the supercilious little quickstep went on:

          Yankee Doodle came to town
         Riding on a pony,
          Stuck a feather in his Hat,
            And called it macaroni.




XXIII


A tongue of land with Richmond (built, like another capital
beginning with R, on many hills) for its major root, and a
fortification vulgarly supposed to be of the gentler sex for
its tip, is formed by the yellow flow of the James and York
rivers.  To land an army upon the tip of this tongue, march
the length of it and extract the root, after reducing it to a
reminiscence, was the wise plan of the powers early in the
year 1862.  To march an army of preponderous strength through
level and fertile country, flanked by friendly war-ships and
backed by unassailable credit; to meet and overcome a much
smaller and far less rich army, intrenched behind earthworks
of doubtful formidableness, and finally to besiege and
capture an isolated city of more historic than strategic
advantages, seemed on the face of it as easy as rolling a
barrel downhill or eating when hungry.  But the level,
fertile country was discovered to be very muddy, its supply
of rain from heaven unparalleled in nature, its streams as
deadly as arsenic, and its topography utterly different from
that assigned to it in any known geography.  Furthermore, in
its woods, and it was nearly all woods, dwelt far more
mosquitos than there are lost souls in Hades, and each
mosquito had a hollow spike in his head through which he not
only could but would squirt, with or without provocation, the
triple compound essence of malaria into veins brought up on
oxygen, and on water through which you could see the pebbles
at the bottom.  A bosom friend of the mosquito, and some say
his paramour, was little Miss Tick.  Of the two she was
considerably the more hellish, and forsook her dwelling-places
in the woods for the warm flesh of soldiers where it is
rosiest, next the skin.  The body, arms, and legs of Miss
Tick could be scratched to nothing by poisonous finger-nails,
but her detached head was eternal, and through eternity she
bit and gnawed and sometimes laughed in the hollow of her
black soul.  For the horses, mules, and cattle there were
shrubs which disagreed with them, and gigantic horse-flies.
And for the general at the head of the vast body of
irritation there was an opposing army whose numbers he
overrated, and whose whereabouts he kept discovering
suddenly.  It is said that during the Peninsular campaign the
buzzards were so well nourished that they raised a second
brood.

While the army was still in the vicinity of Fort Monroe,
numbers of officers secured leave to ride over to Newport
News and view the traces of the recent and celebrated naval
fight, which was to relegate wooden battle-ships to the
fireplace.  Aladdin was among those to go.  At this time he
was in great spirits, for it had been brought home to him
that he was one of the elect, one of those infinitely rare
and godlike creatures whom mosquitos do not bite nor ticks
molest.  His nights were as peaceful as the grave, and the
poisonous drinking-waters glanced from his rubber
constitution.  Besides, he had forsaken his regimental duties
to enjoy a life of constant variety upon the staff of a
general, and had begun to feel at home on horseback.
It was one of those radiant, smiling days, which later on
were to become rarer than charity, and the woods were
positively festive with sunshine.  And the temperature was
precisely that which brings to a young man's fancy thoughts
of love.  So that it was in the nature of a shock to come
suddenly upon the shore and behold for the first time the
finality of war.  There was no visible glory about it.  What
had happened to the Cumberland and the Congress was
disappointingly like what would happen to two ships destroyed
in shallow water.  The masts of the Cumberland, slightly off
the vertical and still rigged, projected for half their
length from the yellow surface of the river.  That was all.
Some distance to the left and half submerged was a blackened
and charred mass that bore some resemblance to a ship that
had once been proud and tall, and known by the name of
Congress.  That was all.  Aladdin had hoped that war would be
a little more like the pictures.

As he rode back, pondering, toward the encampment, however,
he came upon something which was truly an earnest of what was
to come.  There were so many buzzards perched in the trees of
a certain wood that he turned in to see what they had.  He
came upon it suddenly, just beyond a cheerful bush of holly,
and the buzzards stepped reluctantly back until he had
looked.  It was only a horse.  Some of the buzzards, heavy
with food, raised their eyelids heavily and looked at
Aladdin, and then lapsed back into filthy sleep.  Others, not
yet satiated, looked upon him querulously, and suggested as
much as looks can suggest that he go, and trouble them no
more.  Others, the newly arrived and ravenous, swooped above
the trees, so that dark circles were drawn over the fallen
sunlight.  Now a buzzard opened and closed its wings, and now
one looked from the horse to Aladdin, and back, fretfully, to
the horse.  There seemed to be hundreds of them, dark and
dirty, with raw heads and eyelids.  Aladdin sat solemn and
motionless upon his horse, but he could feel the cold sweat
of horror running down his sides from under his arms, and the
bristling of his hair.  He wanted to make a great noise, to
shout, to do anything, but he did not dare.  It would have
been breaking the rules.  In that assembly no sound was
allowed, for the meeting was unholy and wicked and worked
with hurried stealth, so that the attention of God should not
be drawn.  Aladdin knew that he had no right to be there,
that without knocking he had entered the bedroom of horror
and found her naked in the arms of lust.  He turned and rode
away shivering and without looking back.  He had not ridden
the distance between two forest trees before the carcass was
again black with the descending birds, and the blood streamed
to their bills.

The Peninsular campaign developed four kinds of men: the
survivors, the wounded, the dead, and the missing.  When the
campaign was over Aladdin sometimes woke starting in the
night to think of those missing and of what he had seen in
the woods.




XXIV


The tedious locomotion of an army and the incessant
reluctance of the battle to be met will try a sinner; but a
scarcity of tobacco and constantly wet feet will try a saint.
Aladdin was somewhat of both.  But in the fidgety gloom which
presently settled upon man and beast, his, great Irish gift
of cheerfulness shone like a star.  He even gave up longing
for promotion, and strained his mind to the cracking-point
for humorous verses and catching tunes.  He went singing up
the Peninsula, and thumped the gay banjo by the camp-fire,
and was greatly beloved by the foot-sore and sick.  He had
given up worrying about what he would do in battle, for there
were much more important things to think about.

Battles are to soldiers what Christmas trees are to children:
you must wait, wait, and wait for them, and forever wait; and
when they do come the presents are apt to be a little tawdry.
And you are only envied by the other little children who
didn't really see what you really got.  The most comforting
man in the army was one minister of the gospel, and the most
annoying was another.  The first had the divine gift of
story-telling and laughter, and the second thanked God
because the soldiers had run out of their best friend,
tobacco, which he described through his nose as "filthy
weed," "vile narcotic," or "pernicious hell-plant."  And they
both served the Lord as hard as they could--and they both
suffered from dysentery.

As the days passed and the temperature of the army rose, and
its digestion became permanently impaired, Aladdin, by giving
out, and constantly, all that was best in himself, became
gradually exhausted.  He found himself telling stories as
many as three times to the same man, and he began to steal
from the poets and musicians that he knew in order to keep
abreast of his own original powers of production.  He even
went so far as to draw inspiration from men of uneven heights
stood in line: he would hum the intervals as scored by their
heads on an imaginary staff and fashion his tune accordingly,
but this tended to a somewhat compressed range and was not
always happy in its results.  His efforts, however, were
appreciated, and the emaciated young Irishman became a most
exceptional prophet, and received honor in his own land.

For the rest, being a staff-officer, he was kept busy and
rode hundreds of extra miles through the rain.  It was a
large army, as inexperienced as it was large, and it stood in
great need of being kept in contact with itself.  If you
lived at one end of it and wanted to know what was going on
at the other end, you had to travel about as far as from New
York to New Haven.  The army proper, marching by fours,
stretched away through the wet lands for forty miles.  A
fly-bitten tail of ambulances and wagons, with six miserable
horses or six perfectly happy mules attached to each, added
another twenty miles.  At the not always attained rate of
fifteen miles a day the army could pass a given point in four
days.  To the gods in Olympus it would have appeared to have
all the characteristic color and shape of an angleworm,
without, however, enjoying that reptile's excellent good
health.  If the armies of Washington, Cornwallis, Clive,
Pizarro, Cortes, and Christian de Wet had been added to it,
they would have passed unnoticed in the crowd.  And the
recurring fear of the general in command of this army was
that the army he sought would prove to be twice as big.  So
speculation was active between the York and James rivers.

In the minds of the soldiers a thousand years passed, and
then there was a little fight, and they learned that they
were soldiers.  And so did the other army.  Another thousand
years passed, and it seemed tactful to change bases.
Accordingly, that which had been arduously established on a
muddy river called the Chickahominy (and it was very far from
either of those two good things) was forsaken, and the host
began to be moved toward the James.  This move would have
been more smoothly accomplished if the enemy had not
interfered.  They, however, insisted upon making history,
turning a change of base into a nominal retreat, and
begetting in themselves a brass-bound and untamable spirit
which it took vast wealth and several years to humble.  From
Gaines's Mill to the awful brow of Malvern Hill there were
thunder and death.  Forty thousand men were somewhat
needlessly killed, wounded, or (as one paradoxical account
has it) "found missing."

Aladdin missed the fight at Malvern Hill and became wounded
in a non-bellicose fashion.  His general desired to make a
remark to another general, and writing it on a piece of thin
yellow paper, gave it to him to deliver.  He rode off to the
tune of axes,--for a Maine regiment was putting in an hour in
undoing the stately work of a hundred years,--trotted fifteen
miles peacefully enough, delivered his general's remark, and
started back.  Then came night and a sticky mist.  Then the
impossibility of finding the way.  Aladdin rode on and on,
courageously if not wisely, and came in time to the dimly
discernible outbuildings of a Virginia mansion.  They stood
huddled dark and wet in the mist, which was turning to rain,
and there was no sign of life in or about them.  Aladdin
passed them and turned into an alley of great trees.  By
looking skyward he could keep to the road they bounded.  As
he drew near the mansion itself a great smell of box and
roses filled his nostrils with fragrance.  But to him,
standing under the pillared portico and knocking upon the
door, came no word of welcome and no stir of lights.  He gave
it up in disgust, mounted, and rode back through the rich mud
to the stables.  Had he looked over his shoulder he might
have seen a face at one of the windows of the house.

He found a door of one of the stables unlocked, and went in,
leading his horse.  Within there was a smell of hay.  He
closed the door behind him, unsaddled, and fell to groping
about in the dark.  He wanted several armfuls of that hay,
and he couldn't find them.  The hay kept calling to his nose,
"Here I am, here I am"; but when he got there, it was hiding
somewhere else.  It was like a game of blindman's-buff.  Then
he heard the munching of his horse and knew that the sought
was found.  He moved toward the horse, stepped on a rotten
planking, and fell through the floor.  Something caught his
chin violently as he went through, and in a pool of filthy
water, one leg doubled and broken under him, he passed the
night as tranquilly as if he had been dosed with laudanum.




XXV


Aladdin came to consciousness in the early morning.  He was
about as sick as a man can be this side of actual
dissolution, and the pain in his broken leg was as sharp as a
scream.  He lay groaning and doubled in the filthy half-inch
of water into which he had fallen.  About him was darkness,
but overhead a glimmer of light showed a jagged and cruel
hole in the planking of the stable floor.  Very slowly, for
his agony was unspeakable, he came to a realization of what
had happened.  He called for help, and his voice was thick
and unresonant, like the voice of a drunken man.  His
horse heard him and neighed.  Now and again he lapsed into
semi-unconsciousness, and time passed without track.  Hours
passed, when suddenly the glimmer above him brightened, and
he heard light footsteps and the cackling of hens.  He called
for help.  Instantly there was silence.  It continued a long
time.  Then he heard a voice like soft music, and the voice
said, "Who's there?"

A shadow came between him and the light, and a fair face that
was darkened looked down upon him.

"For God's sake take care," he said.  "Those boards are
rotten."

"You 're a Yankee, aren't you?" said the voice, sweetly.

"Yes," said Aladdin, "and I'm badly hurt."

The voice laughed.

"Hurt, are you?" it said.

"I think I've broken my leg," said Aladdin.  "Can you get
some one to help me out of this?"

"Reckon you're all right down there," said the voice.

Aladdin revolved the brutality of it in his mind.

"Do you mean to say that you're not going to help me?" he
said.

"Help you?  Why should I?"

Aladdin groaned, and could have killed himself for groaning.

"If you don't help me," he said, and his voice broke, for he
was suffering tortures, "I'll die before long."

A perfectly cool and cruel "Well?" came back to him.

"You won't help me?"

"No."

Anger surged in his heart, but he spoke with measured
sarcasm.

"Then," he said, "will you at least do me the favor of
getting from between me and God's light?  If I die, I may go
to hell, but I prefer not to see devils this side of it,
thank you."

The girl went away, but presently came back.  She lowered
something to him on a string.  "I got it out of one of your
holsters," she said.

Aladdin's fingers closed on the butt of a revolver.

"It may save you a certain amount of hunger and pain," she
said.  "When you are dead, we will give it to one of our men,
and your horse too.  He's a beauty."

"I hope to God he may--" began Aladdin.

"Pretty!" said the girl.

She went away, and he heard her clucking to the chickens.
After a time she came back.  Aladdin was waiting with a plan.

"Don't move," he said, "or you'll be shot."

"Rubbish!" said the girl.  She leaned casually back from the
hole, and he could hear her moving away and clucking to the
chickens.  Again she returned.

"Thank you for not shooting," she said.

There was no answer.

"Are you dead?" she said.

When he came to, there was a bright light in Aladdin's eyes,
for a lantern swung just to the left of his head.

"I thought you were dead," said the girl, still from her
point of advantage.  The lantern's light was in her face,
too, and Aladdin saw that it was beautiful.

"Won't you help me?" he said plaintively.

"Were you ever told that you had nice eyes?" said the girl.

Aladdin groaned.

"It bores you to be told that?"

"My dear young lady," said Aladdin, "if you were as kind as
you are beautiful--"

"How about your horse kicking me to a certain place?  That
was what you started to say, you know."

"Lady--lady," said Aladdin, "if you only knew how I'm
suffering, and I'm just an ordinary young man with a
sweetheart at home, and I don't want to die in this hole.
And now that I look at you," he said, "I see that you're not
so much a girl as an armful of roses."

"Are you by any chance--Irish?" said the girl, with a laugh.

"Faith and of ahm that," said Aladdin, lapsing into full
brogue; "oi'm a hireling sojer, mahm, and no inimy av yours,
mahm."

"What will you do for me if I help you?" said the girl.

"Anything," said Aladdin.

"Will you say 'God save Jefferson Davis, President of the
Confederate States of America,' and sing 'Dixie'--that is, if
you can keep a tune.  'Dixie''s rather hard."

"I'll 'God bless Jefferson Davis and every future President
of the Confederate States, if there are any,' ten million
times, if you'll help me out, and--"

"Will you promise not to fight any more?"

A long silence.

"No."

"You needn't do the other things either," said the girl,
presently.  Her voice, oddly enough, was husky.

"I thought it would be good to see a Yankee suffer," she said
after a while, "but it isn't."

"If you could let a ladder down," said Aladdin, "I might be
able to get up it."

"I'll get one," said the girl.  Then she appeared to reflect.
"No," she said; "we must wait till dark.  There are people
about, and they'd kill you.  Can you live in that hole till
dark?"

"If you could throw down a lot of hay," said Aladdin.  "It's
very wet down here and hard."

The girl went, and came with a bundle of hay.

"Look out for the lantern," she called, and threw the hay
down to him.  She brought, in all, seven large bundles and
was starting for the eighth, when, by a special act of
Providence, the flooring gave again, and she made an
excellent imitation of Aladdin's shute on the previous
evening.  By good fortune, however, she landed on the soft
hay and was not hurt beyond a few scratches.

"Did you notice," she said, with a little gasp, "that I
didn't scream?"

"You aren't hurt, are you?" said Aladdin.

"No," she said; "but--do you realize that we can't get out,
now?"

She made a bed of the hay.

"You crawl over on that," she said.

Aladdin bit his lips and groaned as he moved.

"It's really broken, isn't it?" said the girl. Aladdin lay
back gasping.

"You poor boy," she said.




XXVI


The girl borrowed Aladdin's pocket-knife and began whittling
at a fragment of board.  Then she tore several yards of
ruffle from her white petticoat, cut his trouser leg off
below the knee, cut the lacings of his boot, and bandaged his
broken leg to the splint she had made.  All that was against
a series of most courteous protests, made in a tearful voice.

When she had done, Aladdin took her hand in his and kissed
the fingers.

"They're the smallest sisters of mercy I ever saw," said he.
She made no attempt to withdraw her hand.

"It was stupid of me to fall through," she said.

"Isn't there any possible way of getting out?"

"No; the walls are stone."

"O Lord!" said Aladdin.

"I'm glad I repented before I fell through," said the girl.

"So am I," said Aladdin.

"What were you doing in our stable?" said the girl.

"I got lost, and came in for shelter."

"You came to the house first.  I heard you knocking, and saw
you from the window.  But I wouldn't let you in, because my
father and brother were away, and besides, I knew you were a
Yankee."

"It was too dark to see my uniform."

"I could tell by the way you rode."

"Is it as bad as that?"

"No--but it's different."

The girl laid her hand on Aladdin's forehead.

"You've got fever," she said.

"It doesn't matter," said Aladdin, politely.

"Does your leg hurt awfully?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Did any one ever tell you that you were very civil for a
Yankee?"

"It doesn't matter," said Aladdin.

She looked at him shrewdly, and saw that the light of reason
had gone out of his eyes.  She wetted her handkerchief with
the cold, filthy water spread over the cellar floor and laid
it on his forehead.  Aladdin spoke ramblingly or kept silence.
Every now and then the girl freshened the handkerchief, and
presently Aladdin fell into a troubled sleep.

When he awoke his mind was quite clear.  The lantern still
burned, but faintly, for the air in the cellar was becoming
heavy.  Beside him on the straw the girl lay sleeping.  And
overhead footsteps sounded on the stable floor.  He remembered
what the girl had said about the people who would kill him if
they found him, and blew out the lantern.  Then, his hand over
her mouth, he waked the girl.

"Don't make a noise," he said.  "Listen."

The girl sat up on the straw.

"I'll call," she whispered presently, "and pretend you're not
here."

"But the horse?"

"I'll lie about him."

She raised her voice.

"Who's there?" she called.

"It's I--Calvert.  Where are you?"

"Listen," she answered; "I've fallen through the floor into
the cellar.  Don't you see where it's broken?"

The footsteps approached.

"You're not hurt, are you?"

"No; but don't come too close, don't try to look down; the
floor's frightfully rickety.  Isn't there a ladder there
somewhere?"

A man laughed.

"Wait," he said.  They heard his footsteps and laughter
receding.  Presently the bottom of a ladder appeared through
the hole in the floor.

"Look out for your head," said the man.

The girl rose and guided the ladder clear of Aladdin's head.

"What have you done with the Yankee's horse?" she called.

"He's here."

"Where's the Yankee, do you suppose?"

"We think he must have run off into the woods."

"That's what I thought."

The girl began to mount the ladder.

"I'm coming up," she said.

She disappeared, and the ladder was withdrawn.

She came back after a long time, and there were men with her.

"It's all right, Yankee," she called down the hole.  "They're
your own men, and I'm the prisoner now."

The ladder reappeared, and two friendly men in blue came down
into the cellar.

"Good God!" they said.  "It's Aladdin O'Brien!"

Hannibal St. John and Beau Larch lifted Aladdin tenderly and
took him out of his prison.

Outside, tents were being pitched in the dark, and there was a
sound of axes.  Fires glowed here and there through the woods
and over the fields, and troops kept pouring into the
plantation.  They laid Aladdin on a heap of hay and went to
bring a stretcher.  The girl sat down beside him.

"You'll be all right now," she said.

"Yes," said Aladdin.

"And go home to your sweetheart."

"Yes," said Aladdin, and he thought of the tall violets on the
banks of the Maine brooks, and the freshness of the sea.

"What is her name?" said the girl.

"Margaret," said Aladdin.

"Mine's Ellen," said the girl, and it seemed as if she sighed.

Aladdin took her hand.

"You 've been very good to me," he said, and his voice grew
tender, for she was very beautiful, "and I'll never forget
you," he said.

"Oh, me!" said the girl, and there was a silence between them.

"I tried to help you," said the girl, faintly, "but I wasn't
very good at it."

"You were an angel," said Aladdin.

"I don't suppose we'll ever see each other again, will we?"
said the girl.

"I don't know," said Aladdin.  "Perhaps I'll come back some
day."

"It's very silly of me--"said the girl.

"What?" said Aladdin.

"Nothing."

He closed his eyes, for he was very weak.  It seemed as if a
great sweetness came close to his face, and he could have
sworn that something wet and hot fell lightly on his forehead;
but when he opened his eyes, the girl was sitting aloof, her
face in the shadow.

"I dreamed just then," said Aladdin, "that something wonderful
happened to me.  Did it?"

"What would you consider wonderful?"

Aladdin laid a finger on his forehead; he drew it away and saw
that the tip was wet.

"I couldn't very well say," he said.

The girl bent over him.

"It nearly happened," she said.

"You are very wonderful and beautiful," said Aladdin.

Her eyes were like stars, and she leaned closer.

"Are you going to go on fighting against my people?" she said.

Roses lay for a moment on his lips.

"Are you?"

He made no sign.  If she had kissed him again he would have
renounced his birthright and his love.

"God bless and keep you, Yankee," she said.

Tears rushed out of Aladdin's eyes.

"They're coming to take you away," she said.  "Good-by."

"Kiss me again," said Aladdin, hoarsely.

She looked at him quietly for some moments.

"And your sweetheart?" she said.

Aladdin covered his face with his arm.

"Poor little traitor," said the girl, sadly.  She rose and,
without looking back, moved slowly up the road toward the
house.

Nor did Aladdin ever see her again, but in after years the
smell of box or roses would bring into his mind the wonderful
face of her, and the music of her voice.

In the delirium which was upon him all that night, he harped
to the surgeon of Ellen, and in the morning fell asleep.

"Haec olim meminisse juvabit," said the surgeon, as
rain-clouded dawn rose whitely in the east.




XXVII


Aladdin was jolted miserably down the Peninsula in a white
ambulance, which mules dragged through knee-deep mud and over
flowing, corduroy roads.  He had fever in his whole body,
anguish in one leg, and hardly a wish to live.  But at Fort
Monroe the breezes came hurrying from the sea, like so many
unfailing doctors, and blew his fever back inland where it
belonged.  He lay under a live-oak on the parade  ground and
once more received the joy of life into his heart.  When he
was well enough to limp about, they gave him leave to go home;
and he went down into a ship, and sailed away up the laughing
Chesapeake, and up the broad Potomac to Washington.  There he
rested during one night, and in the morning took train for New
York.  The train was full of sick and wounded going home, and
there was a great cheerfulness upon them all.  Men joined by
the brotherhood of common experience talked loudly, smoked
hard, and drank deep.  There was tremendous boasting and the
accounting of unrivaled adventures.  In Aladdin's car,
however, there was one man who did not join in the fellowship,
for he was too sick.  He had been a big man and strong, but he
looked like a ghost made of white gossamer and violet shadows.
His own mother would not have recognized him.  He lay back
into the corner of a seat with averted face and closed eyes.
The more decent-minded endeavored, on his account, to impose
upon the noisy a degree of quiet, but their efforts were
unavailing.  Aladdin, drumming with his nails upon the
windowpane, fell presently into soft song:

        Give me three breaths of pleasure
         After three deaths of pain,
        And make me not remeasure
         The ways that were in vain.

Men grew silent and gathered to hear, for Aladdin's fame as a
maker of songs had spread over the whole army, and he was
called the Minstrel Major.  He felt his audience and sang
louder.  The very sick man turned a little so that he, too,
could hear.  Only the occasional striking of a match or the
surreptitious drawing of a cork interrupted.  The stately tune
moved on:

        The first breath shall be laughter,
         The second shall be wine;
        And there shall follow after
         A kiss that shall be mine.

Somehow all the homing hearts were set to beating.

        Roses with dewfall laden
         One garden grows for me;
        I call them kisses, maiden,
         And gather them from thee.

The very sick man turned fully, and there was a glad light of
recognition in his eyes.

        Give me three kisses only--
         Then let the storm break o'er
        The vessel beached and lonely
         Upon the lonely shore.

If Aladdin's singing ever moved anybody particularly, it was
Aladdin, and that was why it moved other people.  He sang on
with tears in his voice

        Give me three breaths of pleasure
         After three deaths of pain,
        And I will no more treasure
         The hopes that are in vain.

There was silence for a moment, more engaging than applause,
and then applause.  Aladdin was in his element, and he
wondered what he would best sing next if they should ask him
to sing again, and this they immediately did.  The train was
jolting along between Baltimore and Philadelphia.  There was
much beer in the bellies of the sick and wounded, and much
sentiment in their hearts.  Aladdin's finger was always on the
pulse of his audience, and he began with relish:

     Oh, shut and dark her window is
      In the dark house on the hill,
     But I have come up through the lilac walk
      To the lilt of the whippoorwill,
     With the old years tugging at my hands
      And my heart which is her heart still.

There was another man in the car whose whole life centered
about a house on a hill with a lilac walk leading up to it.
He was the very sick man, and a shadow of red color came into
his cheeks.

     They said, "You must come to the house once more,
      Ere the tale of your years be done,
     You must stand and look up at her window again,
      Ere the sands of your life are run,
     As the night-time follows the lost daytime,
      And the heart goes down with the sun."

There were tears in the very sick man's eyes, for the future
was hidden from him.  Aladdin sang on:

     Though her window be darkest of every one,
      In the dark house on the hill,
     Yet I turn to it here from this ruin of grass,
      She has leaned on that window's sill,
     And dark it is, but there is, there is
      An echo of light there still!

There was great applause from the drunk and sentimental.  And
Aladdin lowered his eyes until it was over.  When he raised
them it was to encounter those of the very sick man.  Aladdin
sprang to his feet with a cry and went limping down the aisle.

"Peter," he cried, "by all that's holy!"

All the tenderness of the Celt gushed into Aladdin's heart as
he realized the pitiful condition and shocking emaciation of
his friend.  He put his arm gently about him, and thus they
sat until the journey's end.  In New York they separated.

Aladdin rested that night and boarded an early morning
train for Boston.  He settled himself contentedly behind a
newspaper, and fell to gathering news of the army.  But
it was difficult to read.  A sentence beginning like this:
"Rumors of a savage engagement between the light horse
under" would shape itself like this: "I am going to see
Margaret to-morrow--to-morrow--to-morrow--I am going to
see Margaret to-morrow-tomorrow--and God is good--is
good--is good."

Oddly enough, there was another man in the car who was having
precisely the same difficulty in deciphering his newspaper.
At about the same time they both gave up the attempt; and
their eyes met.  And they laughed aloud.  And presently,
seated together, they fell into good talk, but each refrained
pointedly from asking the other where he was going.

With a splendid assumption of innocence, they drove together
across Boston, and remarking nothing on the coincidence, each
distinctly heard the other checking his luggage for Portland,
Maine.

Side by side they rolled out of Portland and saw familiar
trees and hills go by.  Presently Aladdin chuckled:

"Where are you going, Peter, anyway?" he said.

"Just where you are," said Peter.




XXVIII


Peter," said Aladdin, presently, "it seems to me that for two
such old friends we are lacking in confidence.  I know
precisely what you are thinking about, and you know precisely
what I am.  We mustn't play the jealous rivals to the last;
and to put it plainly, Peter, if God is going to be good to
you instead of me, why, I'm going to try and thank God just
the same.  A personal disappointment is a purely private
matter and has no license to upset old ties and affections.
Does it occur to you that we are after the same thing and that
one of us isn't going to get it?"

"We won't let it make any difference," said Peter, stoutly.

"That's just it," said Aladdin.  "We mustn't."

"The situation--"Peter began.

"Is none the less difficult, I know.  Here we are with a
certain amount of leave to occupy as we each see fit.  And,
unfortunately, there's only one thing which seems fit to
either of us.  And, equally unfortunately, it's something we
can't hold hands and do at the same time.  Shall I go straight
from the station to Mrs. Brackett's and wait until you've had
your say, Peter?--not that I want to wait very long," he
added.

"That wouldn't be at all fair," said Peter.

"Do you mind," said Aladdin after a pause, "telling me about
what your chances are?"

Peter reddened uncomfortably.

"I'm afraid they're not very good, 'Laddin," he said.  "She
--she said she wasn't sure.  And that's a good deal more apt
to mean nothing than everything, but I can't straighten my
life out till I'm sure."

"My chances," said Aladdin, critically, "shouldn't by rights
be anywhere near as good as yours, but as long as they remain
chances I feel just the same as you do about yours, and want
to get things straightened out.  But if I were any kind of a
man, I'd drop it, because I'm not in her class."

"Nonsense," said Peter.

"No, I'm not," said Aladdin, gloomily.  "I know that.  But,
Peter, what is a man going to do, a single, solitary, pretty
much good-for-nothing man, with three great bouncing Fates
lined up against him?"

Peter laughed his big, frank laugh.

"Shall we chuck the whole thing," said Aladdin, "until it's
time to go back to the army?"

"No," said Peter, "that would be shirking; it's got to be
settled one way or another very quickly."  He became grave
again.

"I think so, too, Peter," said Aladdin.  "And I think that if
she takes one of us it will be a great sorrow for the other."

"And for her," said Peter, quietly.

"Perhaps," said Aladdin, whimsically, "she won't take either
of us."

"That," said Peter, "should be a great sorrow for us both."

"I know," said Aladdin.  "Anyway, there's got to be sorrow."

"I think I shall bear it better," said Peter, "if she takes
you, 'Laddin."

A flash of comparison between his somewhat morbid and warped
self and the bigness and nobility of his friend passed through
Aladdin's mind.  He glanced covertly at the strong, emaciated
face beside him, and noted the steadiness and purity of the
eyes.  A little quixotic flame, springing like an orchid from
nothing, blazed suddenly in his heart, and for the instant he
was the better man of the two.

"I hope she takes you, Peter," he said.

They rolled on through the midsummer woods, heavy with bright
leaves and waist-deep with bracken; little brooks, clean as
whistles, piped away among immaculate stones, and limpid light
broken by delicious shadows fell over all.

"Who shall ask her first?" said Aladdin.  Peter smiled.
"Shall we toss for it?" said Aladdin.  Peter laughed gaily.
"Do you really want it to be like that?" he said.

"What's the use of our being friends," said Aladdin, "if we
are not going to back each other up in this of all things?"

"Right!" said Peter.  "But you ought to have the first show
because you mentioned it first."

"Rubbish!" said Aladdin.  "We'll toss, but not now; we'll wait
till we get there."

Peter looked at his watch.

"Nearly in," he said.

"Yes," said Aladdin.  "I know by the woods."

"Did you telegraph, by any chance?" said Peter.  "Because I
didn't."

"Nor I," said Aladdin; "I didn't want to be met."

"Nor I," said Peter.

The sick man and the lame man will take hands and hobble up
the hill," said Aladdin.  "And whatever happens, they mustn't
let anything make any difference."

"No," said Peter, "they mustn't."




XXIX


Our veterans walked painfully through the town and up the
hill; nor were they suffered to go in peace, for right and
left they were recognized, and people rushed up to shake them
by the hands and ask news of such an one, and if Peter's
bullet was still in him, and if it was true, which of course
they saw it wasn't, that Aladdin had a wooden leg.  Aladdin,
it must be owned, enjoyed these demonstrations, and in spite
of his lameness strutted a little.  But Peter, white from the
after effects of his wound and weary with the long travel, did
not enjoy them at all.  Then the steep pitch of the hill was
almost too much for him, and now and again he was obliged to
stop and rest.

The St. Johns' house stood among lilacs and back from the
street by the breadth of a small garden.  In the rear were
large grounds, fields, and even woods.  The place had two
entrances, one immediately in front of the house for people on
foot, and the other, a quarter of a mile distant, for people
driving.  This latter, opening from a joyous country lane of
blackberry-vines and goldenrod, passed between two prodigious
round stones, and S-ed into a dark and stately wood.  Trees,
standing gladly where God had set them, made a screen,
impenetrable to the eye, between the gateway and the house.

Here Peter and Aladdin halted, while Aladdin sent a coin
spinning into the air.

"Heads!" called Peter.

Aladdin let the piece fall to the ground, and they bent over
it eagerly.

"After you," said Peter, for the coin read, "Tails."

Aladdin picked up the coin, and hurled it far away among the
trees.

"That's our joint sacrifice to the gods, Peter," he said.

Peter gave him five cents.

"My share," he said.

"Peter," said Aladdin, "I will ask her the first chance I get,
and if there's nothing in it for me, I will go away and leave
the road clear for you.  Come."

"No," said Peter; "you've got your chance now.  And here I
wait until you send me news."

"Lord!" said Aladdin, "has it got to be as sudden as this?"

"Let's get it over," said Peter.

"Very good," said Aladdin.  "I'll go.  But, Peter, whatever
happens, I won't keep you long in suspense."

"Good man," said Peter.

Aladdin turned his face to the house like a man measuring a
distance.  He drew a deep breath.

"Well--here goes," he said, and took two steps.

"Wait, 'Laddin," said Peter.

Aladdin turned.

"Can I have your pipe?"

"Of course."

Aladdin turned over his pipe and pouch.  "I'm afraid it's a
little bitter," he said.

Again he started up the drive; but Peter ran after him.

"'Laddin," he cried, "wait--I forgot something."

Aladdin came back to meet him.

"Aladdin," said Peter, "I forgot something."  He held out his
hand, and Aladdin squeezed it.

"Aladdin," said Peter, "from the bottom of my heart I wish you
luck."

When they separated again there were tears in the eyes of
both.

Just before the curtain of trees quite closed the view of
the gate, Aladdin turned to look at Peter.  Peter sat upon
one of the big stones that marked the entrance, smoking and
smoking.  He had thrown aside his hat, and his hair shone
in the sun.  There was a kind of wistfulness in his poise, and
his calm, pure eyes were lifted toward the open sky.  A great
hero-worship surged in Aladdin's heart, and he thought that
there was nothing that he would not do for such a friend.  "He
gave you your life once," said a little voice in Aladdin's
heart; "give him his.  He is worth a million of you; don't
stand in his way."

Aladdin turned and went on, and the well-known house came into
view, but he saw only the splendid, wistful man at the gate,
waiting calmly, as a gentleman should, for life or death, and
smoking smoking.

Even as he made his resolve, a lump of self-pity rose in
Aladdin's throat.  That was the old Adam in him, the base clay
out of which springs the fair flower of self-sacrifice.

He tried a variety of smiles, for he wished to be easy in the
difficult part which he had so suddenly, and in the face of
all the old years, elected to play.  "He must know by the
look of me," said Aladdin, "that I do not love her any more,
for, God help me, I can't say it."

He found her on the broad rear veranda of the house.  And
instead of going up to her and taking her in his arms,--for he
had planned this meeting often, as the stars could tell, he
stood rooted, and said:

"Hallo, Margaret!"

He acted better than he knew, for the great light which had
blazed for one instant in her eyes on first seeing him went
out like a snuffed candle, and he did not see it or know that
it had blazed.  Therefore his own cruelty was hidden from him,
and his part became easier to play.  They shook hands, and
even then, if he had not been blinded with the egotism of
self-sacrifice, he might have seen.  That was his last chance.
For Margaret's heart cried to her, "It is over," and in
believing it, suddenly, and as she thought forever, an older
sweetness came in her face.

"You've changed, Aladdin," she said.

"Yes, I'm thinner, if possible," said Aladdin, "almost
willowy.  Do you think it's becoming?"

"I am not sure," said Margaret.  "The fact remains that I'm
more than glad to see you."

Aladdin fumbled for speech.

"I'm still a little lame, you see," he said apologetically,
and took several steps to show.

"Very!" said Margaret, in such a voice that Aladdin wondered
what she meant.

"But it doesn't hurt any more."

"Then that's all right."

"Where's Jack?" he asked at length.

Margaret became very grave.

"I'm afraid we've betrayed our trust, Aladdin," she said.
"Because only yesterday he slipped away and left a little note
to say that he was going to enlist.  We're very much
distressed about it."

"Perhaps it's better so," said Aladdin, "if he really wanted
to go.  Did he leave any address?"

"None whatever; he simply vanished."

"Ungrateful little brute!" said Aladdin.  Then he bethought
him of Peter.  "I'll come back later, Margaret," he said, "but
it behooves me to go and look up the good Mrs. Brackett."

He hardly knew how he got out of the house.  He felt like a
criminal who has been let off by the judge.

The sun was now low, and the shadows long and black.  Aladdin
found Peter where he had left him, balancing on the great
stone at the entrance, and sending up clouds of smoke.  He
rose when he saw Aladdin, and he looked paler and more worn.
"Peter," said Aladdin, "from the bottom of my heart I wish you
luck."

Aladdin had never seen just such a look as came into Peter's
eyes; at once they were full of infinite pity, and at peace
with the whole world.

"Peter," said Aladdin, "give me back my pipe."  His voice
broke in spite of himself, for he had given up golden things.
"I--" he said, "I'll wait here a little while, but if--if all
goes well, Peter, don't you bother to come back."

They clasped hands long and in silence.  Then Peter turned
with a gulp, and, his weakness a thing of the past, went
striding up the driveway.  But Aladdin sat down to wait.
And now a great piping of tree-frogs arose in all that
country.  Aladdin waited for a long time.  He waited until the
day gave way to twilight and the sun went down.  He waited
until the twilight turned to dark and the stars came out.  He
waited until, after all the years of waiting and longing, his
heart was finally at peace.  And then he rose to go.

For Peter had not yet come.






Book III


  "Where are the tall men that marched on the right,
    That marched to the battle so handsome and tall?
   They 've been left to mark the places where they saw the foemen's faces,
   For the fever and the lead took them all, Jenny Orde,
    The fever and the lead took them all.

  "I found him in the forefront of the battle, Kenny Orde,
    With the bullets spitting up the ground around him,
   And the sweat was on his brow, and his lips were on his sword,
   And his life was going from him when I found him.

  "We lowered him to rest, Jenny Orde,
    With your picture on his breast, Jenny Orde,
   And the rumble of pursuit was the regiment's salute
    To the man that loved you best, Jenny Orde."




XXX


As a dam breaking gives free passage to the imprisoned waters,
and they rush out victoriously, so Vicksburg, starving and
crumbling in the West, was about to open her gates and set the
Father of Waters free forever.  That was where the Union
hammer, grasped so firmly by strong fingers that their
knuckles turned white, was striking the heaviest blows upon
the cracking skull of the Confederacy.  On the other hand,
Chancellorsville had verged upon disaster, and the powers of
Europe were waiting for one more Confederate victory in order
to declare the blockade of Southern ports at an end, and to
float a Southern loan.  That a Confederate victory was to be
feared, the presence in Northern territory of Lee, grasping
the handle of a sword, whose splendid blade was seventy
thousand men concentrated, testified.  That Lee had lost the
best finger of his right hand at Chancellorsville was but
job's comfort to the threatened government at Washington.
That government was still, after years of stern fighting,
trying generals and finding them wanting.  But now the Fates,
in secret conclave, weighed the lots of Union and Disunion;
and that of Disunion, though glittering and brilliant like
gold, sank heavily to the ground, as a great eagle whose wing
is broken by the hunter's bullet comes surely if fiercely
down, to be put to death.

Early on the morning of July 1, 1863, Lee found himself in the
neighborhood of a small and obscure town named Gettysburg.  A
military invasion is the process of occupying in succession a
series of towns.  To occupy Gettysburg, which seemed as
possible as eating breakfast, Lee sent forward a division of a
corps, and followed leisurely with all his forces.  But
Gettysburg and the ridges to the west of Gettysburg were
already occupied by two brigades of cavalry, and those, with a
cockiness begotten of big lumps of armed friends approaching
from the rear, determined to go on occupying.  This, in a
spirit of great courage, with slowly increasing forces,
against rapidly increasing forces, they did, until the brisk
and pliant skirmish which opened the business of the day had
grown so in weight and ferocity that it was evident to the
least astute that the decisive battle of the New World was
being fought.




XXXI

There was a pretty girl in Manchester, Maryland (possibly
several, but one was particularly pretty), and Aladdin,
together with several young officers (nearly all officers were
young in that war) of the Sixth Army Corps, rather flattered
himself that he was making an impression.  He was all for
making impressions in those days.  Margaret was engaged to
marry Peter--and a pretty girl was a pretty girl.  The pretty
girl of Manchester had several girls and several officers to
tea on a certain evening, and they remained till midnight,
making a great deal of noise and flirting outrageously in dark
corners.  Two of the girls got themselves kissed, and two of
the officers got their ears boxed, and later a glove each to
stick in their hat-bands.  At midnight the party broke up with
regret, and the young officers, seeking their quarters, turned
in, and were presently sleeping the sleep of the constant in
heart.  But Aladdin did not dream about the pretty girl of
Manchester, Maryland.  When he could not help himself--under
the disadvantage of sleep, when suddenly awakened, or when
left alone--his mind harped upon Margaret.  And often the
chords of the harping were sad chords.  But on this particular
night he dreamed well.  He dreamed that her little feet did
wrong and fled for safety unto him.  What the wrong was he
knew in his dream, but never afterward--only that it was a
dreadful, unforgivable wrong, not to be condoned, even by a
lover.  But in his dream Aladdin was more than her lover, and
could condone anything.  So he hid her feet in his hands until
those who came to arrest them had passed, and then he waked to
find that his hands were empty, and the delicious dream over.
He waked also to find that it was still dark, and that the
Sixth Army Corps was to march to a place called Taneytown,
where General Meade had headquarters.  He made ready and
presently was riding by his general at the head of a creaking
column, under the starry sky.  In the great hush and cool that
is before a July dawn, God showed himself to the men, and they
sang the "Battle-hymn of the Republic," but it sounded sweetly
and yearningly, as if sung by thousands of lovers:

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
  His truth is marching on.

The full sunlight gives man poise and shows him the practical
side of things, but in the early morning and late at night man
is seldom quite rational.  He weakly allows himself to dwell
upon what was not, is not, and will not be.  And so Aladdin,
during the first period of that march, pretended that Margaret
was to be his and that all was well.

A short distance out of Manchester the column met with orders
from General Meade and was turned westward toward Gettysburg.
With the orders came details of the first day's fight, and
Aladdin learned of the officer bringing them, for he was a
Maine man, that Hamilton St. John was among the dead.
Aladdin and the officer talked long of the poor boy, for both
had known him well.  They said that he had not been as
brilliant as John, nor as winning as Hannibal, but so honest
and reliable, so friendly and unselfish.  They went over his
good qualities again and again, and spoke of his great
strength and purity, and of other things which men hold best
in men.

And now they were riding with the sun in their eyes, and white
dust rolled up from the swift feet of horses and men.  Wild
roses and new-mown grass filled the air with delightful
fragrance, and such fields as were uncut blazed with daisies
and buttercups.  Over the trimmed lawns about homesteads
yellow dandelions shone like stars in a green sky.  Men,
women, and children left their occupations, and stood with
open mouths and wide eyes to see the soldiers pass.  The sun
rose higher and the day became most hot, but steadily,
unflinchingly as the ticking of a clock, the swift, bleeding,
valiant feet of the Sixth Army Corps stepped off the miles.
And the men stretched their ears to hear the mumbled distant
thunder of artillery--that voice of battle which says so much
and tells so little to those far off.  The Sixth Corps felt
that it was expected to decide a battle upon Northern soil for
the North, and marching in that buoyant hope, left scarcely a
man, broken with fatigue and disappointment, among the wild
flowers by the side of the way.

If you have ever ridden from Cairo to the Pyramids you will
remember that at five miles' distance they look as huge as at
a hundred yards, and that it is not until you actually touch
them with your hand that you even begin to realize how
wonderfully huge they really are.  It was so with the thunders
of Gettysburg.  They sounded no louder, and they connoted no
more to the column now in the immediate vicinage of the
battle, than they had to its far-distant ears.  But presently
the column halted behind a circle of hills, and beheld white
smoke pouring heavenward as if a fissure had opened in the
earth and was giving forth steam.  And they beheld in the
heavens themselves tiny, fleecy white clouds and motionless
rings, and they knew that shells were bursting and men falling
upon the slopes beyond the hills.

A frenzy of eagerness seized upon the tired feet, and they
pressed upward, lightly, like dancers' feet.  Straps creaked
upon straining breasts, and sweat ran in bubbles.  Then the
head of the column reached the ridge of a hill, and its
leaders saw through smarting eyes a great horseshoe of sudden
death.




XXXII


That morning Peter Manners had received a letter, but he had
not had a chance to open and read it.  It was a letter that
belonged next to his heart, as he judged by the writing, and
next to his heart, in a secure pocket, he placed it, there to
lie and give him strength and courage for the cruel day's
work, and something besides the coming of night to look
forward to.  For the rest, he went among the lines, and smiled
like a boy released from school to see how silently and
savagely they fought.

The Sixth Corps rested wherever there was shade along the
banks of Rock Creek, and gathered strength and breath for
whatever work should be assigned to it.

Aladdin, sharing a cherry-pie with a friend, shivered with
excitement, for there was a terrific and ever-increasing
discharge of cannons and muskets on the left, and it seemed
that the time to go forward again and win glory was at hand.
Presently one came riding back from the battle.  His face was
shining with delight, and, sitting like a centaur to the fiery
plunges of his horse, he swung his hat and shouted.  It was
Sedgwick's chief of staff, McMahon, and he brought glorious
news, for he said that the corps was to move toward the heavy
firing, where the fighting was most severe.

Then the whole corps sprang to its feet and went forward,
tearing down the fences in its path and trampling the long
grass in the fields.  A mile away the long, flowery slopes
ended in a knobbed hill revealed through smoke.  That was
Little Round Top, and its possession meant victory or defeat.
The corps was halted and two regiments were sent forward up
the long slope.  To them the minutes seemed moments.  They
went like a wave over the crest to the right of the hill, and
poured down into the valley beyond.  Here the blue flood of
men banked against a stone wall, spreading to right and left,
as the waters of a stream spread the length of a dam.  Then
they began to fire dreadfully into the faces of their enemy,
and to curse terribly, as is proper in battle.  Bullets stung
the long line like wasps, and men bit the sod.

Aladdin was ordered to ride up Little Round Top for
information.  Half-way up he left his horse among the boulders
and finished the laborious ascent on foot.  At the summit he
came upon a leaderless battery loading and firing like
clockwork, and he saw that the rocks were strewn with dead men
in light-blue Zouave uniforms, who looked as if they had
fallen in a shower from the clouds.  Many had their faces
caved in with stones, and terrible rents showed where the
bayonet had been at work, for in this battle men had fought
hand to hand like cave-dwellers.  Bullets hit the rocks with.
stinging blows, and round shot screamed in the air.  Sometimes
a dead man would be lifted from where he lay and hurled
backward, while every instant men cried hoarsely and joined
the dead.  In the midst of this thunder and carnage, Aladdin
came suddenly upon Peter, smiling like a favorite at a dance,
and shouted to him.  They grinned at each other, and as
Aladdin grinned he looked about to see where he could be of
use, and sprang toward a gun half of whose crew had been
blasted to death by a bursting shell.  The sweat ran down his
face, and already it was black with burning powder.  The flash
of the guns set fire to the clothing of the dead and wounded
who lay in front, and on the recoil the iron-shod wheels broke
the bones of those lying behind.  It was impossible to know
how the fight was going.  It was only possible to go on
fighting.

There was a voice in front of the battery that kept calling so
terribly for water that it turned cold the stomachs of those
that heard.  It came from a Confederate, a general officer,
who had been wounded in the spine.  Occasionally it was
possible to see him through the smoke.  Sometimes a convulsion
seized him, and he beat the ground with his whole body, as a
great fish that has been drawn from the water beats the deck
of a vessel.  It was terrible to look at and hear.  Bullets
and shot tore the ground about the man and showered him with
dust and stones.  Aladdin shook his canteen and heard the
swish of water.  It seemed to him, and his knees turned to
water at the thought, that he must go out into that place
swept by the fire of both sides, and give relief to his enemy.
He did not want to go, and fear shook him; but he threw down
the rammer which he had been serving, and drawing breath in
long gasps, took a step forward.  His resolve came too late.
A blue figure slipped by him and went down the slope at a run.
It was Manners.  They saw him kneel by the dying Confederate
in the bright sunlight, and then smoke swept between like a
wave of fog.  The red flashes of the guns went crashing into
the smoke, and on all sides men fell.  But presently there
came a star-shaped explosion in the midst of the smoke,
hurling it back, and they saw Manners again.  He was
staggering about with his hands over his eyes, and blood was
running through his fingers.  Even as they looked, a shot
struck him in the back, and he came down.  They saw his
splendid square chest heaving, and knew that he was not yet
dead.  Then the smoke closed in, but this time another figure
was hidden by the smoke.  For no sooner did Aladdin see Peter
fall than he sprang forward like a hound from the leash.
Aladdin kneeled by Manners, and as he kneeled a bullet struck
his hat from his head, and a round shot, smashing into the
rocky ground a dozen feet away, filled his eyes with dirt and
sparks.  There was a pungent smell of brimstone from the
furious concussions of iron against rock.  A bullet struck the
handle of Aladdin's sword and broke it.  He unstopped his
canteen and pressed the nozzle to Manners' lips.  Manners
sucked eagerly, like an infant at its mother's breast.  A
bullet struck the canteen and dashed it to pieces.  The
crashing of the cannon was like close thunder, and the air
sang like the strings of an instrument.  But Aladdin, so cool
and collected he was, might have been the target for praises
and roses flung by beauties.  He put his lips close to Peter's
ear, and spoke loudly, for the noise of battle was deafening.

"Is it much, darlint?"

Manners turned his bleeding eyes toward Aladdin.

"Go back, you damn little fool!" he said.

"Peter, Peter," said Aladdin, "can't you see?"

"No, I can't.  I'm no use now.  Go back; go back and give 'em
hell!"

Aladdin endeavored to raise Peter in his arms, but was not
strong enough.

"I can't lift you, I can't lift you," he said.

"You can't," said Peter.  "Bless you for coming, and go back."

"Shut up, will you?" cried Aladdin, savagely.  "Where are you
hit?"

"In the back," said Peter, "and I'm done for."

"The hell you are!" said Aladdin.  Tears hotter than blood
were running out of his eyes.  "What can I do for you, Peter?"
he said in a husky voice.

Manners' blackened fingers fumbled at the buttons of his coat,
but he had not the strength to undo them.

"It's there, 'Laddin," he said.

"What's there?" said Aladdin.  He undid the coat with swift,
clever fingers.

"Let me hold it in my hands," said Peter.

"Is it this--this letter--this letter from Margaret?" asked
Aladdin, chokingly, for he saw that the letter had not been
opened.

A shower of dirt and stones fell upon them, and a shell burst
with a sharp crash above their heads.

"Yes," said Peter.  "Give it to me.  I can't ever read it
now."

"I can read it for you," said Aladdin.  He was struggling with
a sob that wanted to tear his throat.

"Will you?  Will you?" cried Peter, and he smiled like a
beautiful child.

"Sure I will," said Aladdin.

With the palm of his hand he pressed back the streaming sweat
from his forehead twice and three times.  Then, having wiped
his hands upon his knees, he drew the battered fragment of his
sword, and using it as a paper-knife, opened the letter
carefully, as a man opens letters which are not to be
destroyed.  Then his stomach turned cold and his tongue grew
thick and burred.  For the letter which Margaret had written
to her lover was more cruel than the shell which had blinded
his eyes and the bullet which was taking his life.

"'Laddin--" this in a fearful voice.

"Yes."

"Thank God.  I thought you'd been hit.  Why don't you read?"

Aladdin's eyes, used to reading in blocks of lines rather than
a word at a time, had at one glance taken in the purport of
Margaret's letter, and his wits had gone from him.  She called
herself every base and cruel name, and she prayed her lover to
forgive her, but she had never had the right to tell him that
she would marry him, for she had never loved him in that way.
She said that, God forgive her, she could not keep up the
false position any longer, and she wished she was dead.

"There's a man at the bottom of this," thought Aladdin.  He
caught a glimpse of Peter's poor, bloody face and choked.

"I--it--the sheets are mixed," he said presently.  "I'm trying
to find the beginning.  There are eight pages," he went on,
fighting for time," and they 're folded all wrong, and they're
not numbered or anything."

Peter waited patiently while Aladdin fumbled with the sheets
and tried, to the cracking-point, to master the confusion in
his mind.

Suddenly God sent light, and he could have laughed aloud.  Not
in vain had he pursued the muse and sought after the true
romance in the far country where she sweeps her skirts beyond
the fingers of men.  Not in vain had he rolled the arduous
ink-pots and striven manfully for the right word and the
telling phrase.  The chance had come, and the years of
preparation had not been thrown away.  He knew that he was
going to make good at last.  His throat cleared of itself, and
the choking phlegm disappeared as if before a hot flame of
joy.  His voice came from between his trembling lips clear as
a bell, and the thunder of battle rolled back from the plain
of his consciousness, as, slowly, tenderly, and helped by God,
he began to speak those eight closely lined pages which she
should have written.

"My Heart's Darling--" he began, and there followed a molten
stream of golden and sacred words.

And the very soul of Manners shouted aloud, for the girl was
speaking to him as she had never spoken before.




XXXIII


When the fighting was over for that day, Aladdin wrote as
follows to Margaret:

MARGARET DEAR: Peter was shot down to-day, while doing more
than his duty by his enemies and by his country and by
himself, which was always his way.  He will not live very
long, and you must come to him if it is in any way possible.
His love for you makes other loves seem very little, and I
think it would be better that you should walk the streets than
that you should refuse to come to him now.  He had a letter
from you, which God, knowing about, blinded him so that he
could not read it, and he believes that you love him and are
faithful to him.  It is very merciful of God to let him
believe that.  He must not be undeceived now, and you must
come and be lovely to him and pretend and pretend, and make
his dying beautiful.  I have the right to ask this of you,
for, next to Peter, I was the one that loved you most.  And
when I made you think I didn't I lied.  I lied because I felt
that I was not worthy, and I loved you enough to want you to
belong to the best man God ever made, and I loved him too.
And that was why it was.  I tell you because I think you must
have wondered about it sometimes.  But it was very hard to do,
and because I did it, and because Peter is what he is, you
must come to him now.  If God will continue to be merciful,
you will get here in time.  I hope I may be on hand to see
you, but I do not know.  Hamilton is gone, and Peter is going,
and there will be a terrible battle to-morrow, and thousands
of poor lads will lie on this field forever.  And here, one
way or another, the war will be decided.  I have not the heart
to write to you any more, my darling.  You will come to Peter,
I know, and all will be as well as it can be.  I pray to God
that I too shall live to see you again, and I ask him to bless
you and keep you for ever and ever.  Always I see your dear
face before me in the battle, and sometimes at night God lets
me dream of you.  I am without dogma, sweetest of all possible
sweethearts, but this creed I say over and over, and this
creed I believe: I believe in one God, Maker of heaven and
Margaret.

        Angels guard you, darling.

                                     ALADDIN.
GETTYSBURG, July 2, 1863.





XXXIV


On the morning of the third day of July, young Hannibal St.
John shaved his face clean and put himself into a new uniform.
The old nth Maine was no longer a regiment, but a name of
sufficient glory.  On three occasions it had been shot to
pieces, and after the third the remaining tens were absorbed
by other regiments.  Hannibal's father had obtained for him a
lieutenancy in the United States artillery, Beau Larch was
second lieutenant in another Maine regiment, and John, the old
and honored colonel of the nth, was now, like Aladdin, serving
on a staff.

The battle began with a movement against Johnson on the
Confederate left, and one against Longstreet on their right.

That against Longstreet became known in history as
Farnsworth's charge, and Aladdin saw it from the
signal-station on Little Round Top.

It was a series of blue lines, whose relations to one another
could not be justly estimated, because of the wooded nature of
the ground, which ran out into open places before fences and
woods that spat red fire, and became thinner and of less
extension, as if they had been made of wax and were melting
under the blaze of the July sun.  In that charge Farnsworth
fell and achieved glory.

Aladdin held a field-glass to his eyes with trembling hands,
and watched the cruel mowing of the blue flowers.  Sometimes
he recognized a man that he knew, and saw him die for his
country.  Three times he saw John St. John in the forefront of
the battle.  The first time he was riding a glorious black
horse, of spirit and proportions to correspond with those of
the hero himself.  The second time he was on foot, running
forward with a-halt in his stride, hatless, and carrying a
great battle-flag.  Upon the top of it gleamed a gold eagle,
that nodded toward the enemy.  A dozen blue-coated soldiers,
straggling like the finishers in a long-distance race,
followed him with bayonets fixed.  The little loose knot of
men ran across a field toward a stone wall that bounded it
upon the other side.  Then white smoke burst from the wall,
and they were cut down to the last man.  The smoke cleared,
and Aladdin saw John lying above the great flag which he had
carried.  A figure in gray leaped the stone wall and ran out
to him, stooped, and seizing the staff of the flag in both
hands, braced his hands and endeavored to draw it from beneath
the great body of the hero.  But it would not come, and as he
bent closer to obtain a better hold, the back of a great
clenched hand struck him across the jaw, and he fell like a
log.  Other men in gray leaped the wall and ran out.  The flag
came easily now, for St. John was dead; but so was the gray
brother, for his comrades raised him, and his head hung back
over his left shoulder, and they saw that his neck had been
broken like a dry stick.

Aladdin had not been sent to that place to mourn, but to gain
information.  Twice and three times he wiped his eyes clear of
tears, and then he swept his faltering glass along the lines
of the enemy, until, ranged in their center, he beheld a great
semicircle of a hundred and more iron and brass cannons, and
movements of troops.  Then Aladdin scrambled down from Little
Round Top to report what he had seen in the center of the
Confederate lines.

At one o'clock the Confederate batteries, one hundred and
fifteen pieces in all, opened their tremendous fire upon the
center of the Union lines.  Eighty cannons roared back at them
with defiant thunder, and the blue sky became hidden by smoke.
Among the Union batteries horses began to run loose, cannons
to be splintered like fire-wood, and caissons to explode.  At
these moments men, horses, fragments of men and horses,
stones, earth, and things living and things dead were hurled
high into the air with great blasts of flame and smoke, and it
was possible to hear miles of exultant yells from the hills
opposite.  But fresh cannon were brought lumbering up at the
gallop and rolled into the places of those dismantled, shot
and shell and canister and powder were rushed forward from the
reserve, and the grim, silent infantry, the great lumbermen of
Maine and Vermont, the shrill-voiced regiments from New York,
the shrewd farmers of Ohio and Massachusetts, the deliberate
Pennsylvanians, and the rest, lay closely, wherever there was
shelter, and moistened their lips, and gripped their rifles,
and waited--waited.

For two hours that terrible cannonading was maintained.  The
men who served the guns looked like stokers of ships, for,
such was the heat, many of them, casting away first one piece
of clothing and then another, were half naked, and black sweat
glistened in streams on their chests and backs.  As sight-seers
crowd in eagerly by one door of a building where there is an
exhibition, and come reluctantly out by another and go their
ways, so the reserves kept pressing to the front, and the
wounded maintained an unceasing reluctant stream to the rear.

A little before three o'clock Hannibal St. John had his right
knee smashed by the exploding of a caisson, and fell behind
one of the guns of his battery.  He was so sure that he was to
be killed on this day that it had never occurred to him that
he might be trivially wounded and carried to the rear in
safety.  An expression of almost comical chagrin came over his
face, for life was nothing to him, and somewhere far above the
smoke a goodly welcome awaited him: that he knew.  Men came
with a stretcher to carry him off, but he cursed them roundly
and struggled to his well knee.  The cannon behind which he
had fallen was about to be discharged.

"Give 'em hell!" cried Hannibal.

As he spoke, the piece was fired, and leaping back on the
recoil, as a frenzied horse that breaks its halter, one of the
wheels struck him a terrible blow on the body, breaking all
the ribs on that side and killing him instantly.  His face
wore a glad smile, and afterward, when Aladdin found him and
took the gold locket from his pocket, and read the inscription
written, a great wonder seized men:

                July 3, 1863.
                Nunc dimittis.
               Te Deum laudamus.

Thus in one battle fell the three strong hostages which an old
man had given to fortune.




XXXV


Three o'clock the Union batteries were ordered to be silent,
for it was well known to those in command that presently there
would be a powerful attack by infantry, for which the
cannonade was supposed to have paved the way with death and
disorder, and it was necessary that the pieces should be kept
cool in order to be in efficient condition to grapple with and
suppress this attack.  Sometimes a regiment, stung to a frenzy
of courage by bullets and the death of comrades, will rise
from its trench without the volition of its officers, and go
frantically forward against overwhelming odds.  A different
effect of an almost identical psychological process is
patience.  Men will sometimes lie as quietly under a rain of
bullets, in order to get in one effective shot at an enemy, as
cattle in the hot months will lie under a rain of water to get
cool.  It was so now.  The whole Union army was seized by a
kind of bloody deliberation and lay like statues of men,
while, for quarter of an hour more, the Confederates continued
to thunder from their guns.  Now and again a man felt lovingly
the long black tube of a cannon to see if its temperature was
falling.  Others came hurrying from the rear with relays of
powder, shot, shell, and canister.

It seemed now to the Confederate leaders that the Union
batteries had been silenced, and that the time had come for
Pickett, the Ney of the South, to go forward with all his
forces.  Only Longstreet demurred and protested against the
charge.  When Pickett asked him for the order to advance he
turned away his head sorrowfully and would not speak.  Then
Pickett, that great leader of men, who was one half daring and
one half magnetism and all hero, said proudly: "I shall go
forward, sir."  And turned to his lovers.

Silence and smoke hung over Gettysburg.

Presently out of the smoke on the Confederate side came three
lines of gray a mile long.  Battle-flags nodded at intervals,
and swords blazed in the sun.

Very deliberately and with pains about aiming, the Union
batteries began to hurl solid shot against the gray advance.
Soon holes were bitten here and there, and occasionally a flag
went down, to be instantly snatched up and waved defiantly.
When Pickett, Pettigrew, and the splendid brigade of Cadmus
Wilcox had reached the bottom of the valley, their
organization was as unbroken as a parade.  But there shell,
instead of round shot, met them, and men tasted death by fives
and tens.  But the lines, drawing together, closed the spaces
left by mortality, and the flags began to approach each other.
Then the gray men began to come up the slope, and there were
thousands of them.  But shell yielded to canister, and the
muskets of the infantry sent out death in leaden showers, so
that the great charge began to melt like wax over heat, and
the flags hung close together like a trophy of battle in a
chapel.  But still the gray men came.  And now, in a storm of
flame and smoke, they reached the foremost cannons of the
Union line, and planted their flags.  So much were they
permitted for the glory of a lost cause.  For a little, men
killed one another with the butts of guns, with bayonets, and
with stones, and then, as the overdrip of a wave broken upon
an iron coast trickles back through the stones of the beach to
the ocean, so all that was left of Pickett's great charge
trickled back down the slope, driblets of gray, running blood.
For a little while longer the firing continued.  Battle-flags
were gathered, and thrown together in sheaves.  There was a
little broken cheering, and to all intents and purposes the
great war was at an end.

Aladdin, broken with grief and fatigue, went picking his way
among the dead and wounded.  He had lost Peter and Hannibal in
that battle, and Hamilton and John were dead; he alone
remained, and it was not just.  He felt that the Great Reaper
had spared the weed among the flowers, and he was bitter
against the Great Reaper.  But there was one more sorrow
reserved for Aladdin, and he was to blaspheme against the God
that made him.

There was still desultory firing from both armies.  As when,
on the Fourth of July, you set off a whole bunch of
firecrackers, there is at first a crackling roar, and
afterward a little explosion here and a little explosion
there, so Gettysburg must have sounded to the gods in Olympus.
Thunder-clouds begotten of the intense heat rolled across the
heavens from east to west, accentuating the streaming glory of
the setting sun, and now distant thunder rumbled, with a sound
as of artillery crossing a bridge.  Drops of rain fell here
and there.

Aladdin heard himself called by name, "'Laddin, 'Laddin."

As quickly as the brain is advertised of an insect's sting, so
quickly did Aladdin recognize the voice and know that his
brother.  Jack was calling to him.  He turned, and saw a
little freckled boy, in a uniform much too big for him,
trailing a large musket.

"Jack!" he cried, and rushed toward him with outstretched
arms.  "You little beggar, what are you doin' here?"

Jack grinned like one confessing to a successful theft of
apples belonging to a cross farmer.  And then God saw fit to
take away his life.  He dropped suddenly, and there came a
rapid pool of blood where his face had been.  With his arms
wrapped about the little figure that a moment before had been
so warlike and gay, Aladdin turned toward the heavens a face
of white flint.

"I believe in one God, Maker of hell!" he cried.

Thunder rumbled and rolled slowly across the battle-field from
east, to west.

"I believe in one God, Maker of hell!" cried Aladdin, "Father
of injustice and doer of hellish deeds!  I believe in two
damnations, the damnation of the living and the damnation of
the dead."

He turned to the little boy in his arms, and terrible sobs
shook his body, so that it appeared as if he was vomiting.
After a while he turned his convulsed face again to the sky.

"Come down," he cried, "come down, you--"

Far down the hill there was a puff of white smoke, and a
merciful bullet, glancing from a rock, struck Aladdin on the
head with sufficient force to stretch him senseless upon the
ground.

When the news of Gettysburg reached the Northern cities,
lights were placed in every window, and horns were blown as at
the coming of a new year.  Senator Hannibal St. John had lost
his three boys and the hopes of his old age in that terrible
fight, but he caused his Washington house to be illuminated
from basement to garret.

And then he walked out in the streets alone, and the tears ran
down his old cheeks.




XXXVI


There had been a wedding in the hospital tent.  Margaret bent
over Peter and kissed him goodby.  She was in deep black, and
by her side loomed a great, dark figure, whose eyes were like
caverns in the depths of which burned coals.  The great, dark
man leaned heavily upon a stick, and did not seem conscious of
what was going on.  The minister who had performed the
ceremony stood with averted face.  Every now and then he
moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.  The wounded in
neighboring cots turned pitiful eyes upon the girl in black,
for she was most lovely--and very sad.  Occasionally a throat
was cleared.

"When you come, darling," said the dying man, "there will be
an end of sorrow."

"There will be an end of sorrow," echoed the girl.  She bent
closer to him, and kissed him again.

"It is very wonderful to have been loved," said Peter.  Then
his face became still and very beautiful.  A smile, innocent
like that of a little child, lingered upon his lips, and his
blind eyes closed.

St. John laid his hand upon Margaret's shoulder.

A man, very tall and lean and homely, entered the tent.  He
was clad in an exceedingly long and ill-fitting frock-coat.
Upon his head was a high black hat, somewhat the worse for
wear.  He turned a pair of very gentle and pitying eyes slowly
over those in the tent.

Aladdin, his head almost concealed by bandages, sat suddenly
upright in a neighboring cot.  A wild, unreasoning light was
in his eyes, and marking time with his hand, he burst suddenly
into the "Battlehymn of the Republic"

  He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call
         retreat;
  He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
  Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
         Our God is marching on.

He sang on, and the wounded joined him with weak voices:

  In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
  With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
  As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
         While God is marching on.

The tall man who had entered, to whom every death was nearer
than his own, and to whom the suffering of others was as a
crucifixion, removed the silk hat from his head, and wiped his
forehead with a colored handkerchief.

Margaret knelt by Aladdin and held his unconscious form in her
arms.

Outside, the earth was bathing in exquisite sunshine.




XXXVII


It was not long before Aladdin got back the strength of his
body, but the gray bullet which had come in answer to his cry
against God, even as the lightning came to Amyas Leigh, in
that romance to which it is so good to bow, had injured the
delicate mechanism of his brain, so that it seemed as if he
would go down to the grave without memory of things past, or
power upon the hour.  Indeed, the war ended before the
surgeons spoke of an operation which might restore his mind.
He went under the knife a little child, his head full of
pictures, playthings, and fear of the alphabet; he came forth
made over, and turned clear, wondering eyes to the girl at his
side.  And he held her hand while she bridged over the years
for him in her sweet voice.

He learned that she had married Peter, making his death
peaceful, and he God-blessed her for so doing, while the tears
ran down his cheeks.

But much of Aladdin that had slept so long was to wake no
more.  For it was spring when he woke, and waking, he fell in
love with all living things.

One day he sat with Margaret on the porch of a familiar house,
and looked upon a familiar river that flowed silverly beyond
the dark trees.

Senator St. John, very old and very moving, came heavily out
of the house, and laid his hands upon the shoulders of
Margaret and Aladdin.  It was like a benediction.

"I have been thinking," said the senator, very slowly, and in
the voice of an old man, "that God has left some flowers in my
garden."

"Roses?" said Aladdin, and he looked at Margaret.

"Roses perhaps," said the senator, "and withal some
bittersweet, but, better than these, and more, he has left me
heart's-ease.  This little flower," continued the senator, "is
sown in times of great doubt and sorrow and trouble, and it
will grow only for a good gardener, one who has learned to bow
patiently in all things to God's will, and to set his feet
valiantly against the stony way which God appoints.  I call
Margaret 'Heart's-ease,' and I call you, too, 'Heart's-ease,'
Aladdin, for you are becoming like a son to me in my declining
years.  Consider the river, how it flows," said the old man,
"smoothly to the sea, asking no questions, and making no
lamentations against the length of its days, and receiving
cheerfully into the steadfast current of its going alike the
bitter waters and the sweet."

We have forgotten Aladdin's songs and the tunes which he made,
for the people's ear is not tuned to them any more.  But that
is a little thing.  It is pleasant to think of that night
when, the knocking of his heart against his ribs louder than
the knocking of his hand upon her door, he carried to
Margaret's side the wonderful lamp which, years before, had
been lighted within him, and which, burning always, now high,
now low, like the rising and falling tides in the river, had
at length consumed whatever in his nature was little or base,
until there was nothing left save those precious qualities,
love and charity, which fire cannot calcine nor cold freeze.
Also it is pleasant to think that little children came of
their love and sang about their everlasting fire.








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