BOOK IIINIGHT

O Holiest Truth! how have I lied to thee!I vow’d this day thy sacrifice to be;But I am dim ere night.Surely I made my prayer, and I did deemThat I could keep in me thy morning beam,Immaculate and bright.But my foot slipp’d; and, as I lay, he came,My gloomy foe, and robb’d me of heaven’s flame.Help thou my darkness, Lord, till I am light.—John Henry Newman.

O Holiest Truth! how have I lied to thee!

I vow’d this day thy sacrifice to be;

But I am dim ere night.

Surely I made my prayer, and I did deem

That I could keep in me thy morning beam,

Immaculate and bright.

But my foot slipp’d; and, as I lay, he came,

My gloomy foe, and robb’d me of heaven’s flame.

Help thou my darkness, Lord, till I am light.

—John Henry Newman.

CHAPTER XXIV

Christianity has hitherto only partially, feebly, and waveringly taught its great doctrine. Christendom has not believed its own gospel. Forsaking the vital religion of Jesus, and of all the heroes and saints as impracticable, men have put up with a sort of conventional Christianity, from which the great essential ideas of the Golden Rule and the real presence of God were dropped out.

—C. F. Dole.

“I have spoken for three nights in this place, and for three nights you have heard me patiently. I have not regarded the favour of any man, but neither have I wished to bruise or wound. And yet, as I stand here now for the last time, I must declare the whole truth as it has been given to me. I have charged upon our present social and industrial conditions grave responsibility. To-night I declare plainly that you who calmly accept and profit by them, whether you know it or whether you know it not, are rejecting Jesus of Nazareth and his kingdom.”

The speaker was John Gregory, the place a large hall in the city of Burlington, crowded to its utmost with eager listeners, for the theories which he proclaimed were new and startling in that day.

As in his earlier revival preaching, so now, Gregory’s utterance was attended with peculiar power. There was this difference, however, between his relation to his audience now and in that other time: then a familiar appeal was reënforced, even though involuntarily and unconsciously, by the full weight of his personal and psychic influence; now he relied wholly, it appeared,upon the dynamic of his message. His manner was more impassioned than in that earlier time, but less exciting.

Keith and Anna Burgess, from their places in the audience with Mrs. Ingraham, whose guests they were, watched and listened with almost breathless intensity of interest. They had not heard it on this wise before.

“Do you remember,” continued Gregory, with searching emphasis, “that on a certain day the Master said, ‘Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven’? Do you remember how the twelve men who followed him were said to have been ‘exceedingly amazed’? From the fourth century, when the Church and the world formed their unhallowed union, down to the present day, men have continued to be ‘exceedingly amazed’ at a saying so inconvenient and so revolutionary, and have set themselves to blunt its sharp edge or to explain it away altogether.

“To-night I am here to say to you plainly, This is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation, and woe unto him who seeks to take it away from the words of Christ. Put with it, if you will, other like words from the lips of Christ and his Apostles, rather than seek to abate the force of these. But why are the rich condemned? Surely they are the most law-abiding, most influential class in every community! Because the riches of the rich man are founded upon a lie! This is the lie:that a man has the right to build up his own prosperity and enjoyment upon the suffering and privation of his fellow-men.

“Ask yourselves, men who listen to me now, do I tell the truth?

“You made your money in trade; very well—is trade just? Could you, under present conditions, have mademoney, had you dealt justly and loved mercy? had you lived the truth, shown the truth? Could your trade have prospered if you had followed the simplest rule of Christ, ‘Do unto others as ye would have them do unto you?’

“Is not the very basis of your trade and of your gains that you force other men into failure, dejection, and poverty, and rise upon the wreck of them? Well has it been said, ‘A rich man’s happiness is built up of a thousand poor men’s sorrows.’

“Many men make their money in manufacture, perhaps not largely so in this city; but the conditions are familiar to us all. Very well, is manufacture true to God, true to men?

“The profits, we will say of a given manufacture, were not great enough last year; the owners had a large income, but not as large as they wanted; some of the rich stockholders grumbled. What did they do? They reduced the beggarly wages of the toilers in their iron prisons, sent them home to their wives and children with less than sufficed to give them daily bread and shelter, and they knew it. They sent pure girls to the life of shame, and honest men to the black refuge of despair. Thus they declared their dividend, and their rich neighbours praised their business genius and pocketed their share of the gains complacently; and the rich grew richer, and the poor, poorer. This done, they come before God with pious words; they pass boxes in the churches to gather the widows’ and the orphans’ mites whose burdens they do not lift, no, not with one finger; they build a hospital now and then; they found a university, and their names are exalted; they sit in their homes with all their treasures of art, of intellect, and ofrefinement about them, and thank the Lord that they are not as other men are, or even as that poor fellow they hear reeling, profane and drunken, down the street, becausenohome is his, no hope, no God.

“Hear the words which God hath sworn by his holy prophets:

“‘Forasmuch, therefore,as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat; ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

“‘For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins; they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

“‘Woe to the City of Blood!

“‘Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

“‘Woe to them that are at ease in Zion!... that lie upon beds of ivory and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall, that chant to the sound of the viol and invent to themselves instruments of music, ... that drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the chief ointments; but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph!

“‘Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity!

“‘Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord’s wrath.

“‘For, behold, the Lord said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line. Then said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumb-line in the midst ofmy people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more.

“‘For judgment will I lay to the line and righteousness to the plumb-line: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place.

“‘For ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.

“‘But your covenant with death shall be disannulled and your agreement with hell shall not stand.’”

As the speaker went on marshalling and massing with stern conviction the tremendous indictments and declarations of the Hebrew prophets, which the people before him had never heard thus definitely applied to their own social conditions, the dramatic effect became irresistible. A mighty blast of wind seemed to bow their heads, and many trembled and grew pale.

Suddenly John Gregory, whose whole face and figure had been rigid and set with the awe of what he spoke, stepped out to the very edge of the platform, and, with a gesture of gentleness and reconcilement, and a smile which relaxed the tense mood of his hearers, cried:—

“But this is not all! Never did the prophets leave the people without a ray of hope—never did they withhold

“‘Belief in plan of God enclosed in time and space,Health, peace, salvation.’“‘Is it a dream?Nay, but the lack of it a dream,And failing it life’s love and wealth a dream,And all the world a dream.’”

“‘Belief in plan of God enclosed in time and space,Health, peace, salvation.’

“‘Belief in plan of God enclosed in time and space,

Health, peace, salvation.’

“‘Is it a dream?Nay, but the lack of it a dream,And failing it life’s love and wealth a dream,And all the world a dream.’”

“‘Is it a dream?

Nay, but the lack of it a dream,

And failing it life’s love and wealth a dream,

And all the world a dream.’”

These words were spoken with no less conviction than those which had gone before, but the change of voice, of expression, of attitude and gesture, were those which only a master of oratory could have so swiftly effected. The audience, now wholly under his control, felt a new thrill of comfort, of hope, even of exultation.

“The Spirit of God is brooding in the bosom of all this chaos, and a new day dawns. Fear not, but look within. Your own heart confesses the bond of brotherhood which unites you to all the race. Let your heart speak.

“Men everywhere see the new light, and confess and deny not that it is the true light, the light which lighteth every man coming into the world, until sin and selfishness quench it.

“The day is come when men shall no longer greedily seek their own salvation; the straitened individualism of the fathers has had its day; even the passion for personal perfection is refined selfishness from the new point of view. Many Christian souls have been misled in the past by the mistaken idea of self-sacrifice and renunciation, not for their results to humanity, but for the perfecting of self, a fruitless, joyless, Christless thing. The continual seeking for the safety here and hereafter of the individual—the man’s own advantage, what if spiritual?—held up always as his chief and noblest aim, have resulted in Christianity becoming a symbol for sublimated selfishness.

“A greater, nobler motive is ours to-day—no new gospel, but a right reading of the old, a deeper insight into his purpose who said, ‘If any man serve me, let him follow me.’

“Here may we, at last, and perhaps for the first timein long years of blind and baffled longing for the fellowship of Christ our Sacrifice, learn the awful joy of dying in our own lives that so we may not live alone.

“Your soul cannot rise toward God, my brother, while you are treading down other souls beneath your feet. Cease the hopeless effort. Take the world’s burden on your heart, and you shall know Christ. Refuse the joys which can only be for the few and the rich. Take nothing but what you can share. Learn poverty and simplicity and hardihood; unlearn luxury, exclusiveness, epicureanism. Be pioneers in the new state, apostles of the new-old gospel—the Gospel of Brotherhood, of Fellowship, of Sacrifice.”

As Anna Mallison, in her early girlhood, had responded with swift, unquestioning response to the simple appeal of the missionary, and had offered herself unreservedly to the work of seeking lost souls in the heathen world, so now, in the maturity of her womanhood, her inmost soul confessed that her hour had come. The message of John Gregory, heard vaguely and partially before, had now reached her fully, and she found its claim upon her irresistible.

“Where this leads, I follow,” a voice said in her heart; “I follow though I die! It is for this I have waited.”

Turning, she looked into her husband’s face, and their eyes met. Keith Burgess read what he intuitively expected in the deep awe of Anna’s eyes; while she read in his a sympathy and response, real, and yet strangely sad.

Gregory had been about to leave the platform, his address ended; but the audience sat unmoving, as if they would hear more. A man rose up then, in the middle of the hall, and spoke.

“Mr. Gregory,” he said, “some of the people aresaying that, having told us so much, you ought to tell us more. If it is true that you have some scheme or system by which people like us could live such a life as you describe, we want to hear about it.”

Having so said, he sat down.

John Gregory turned about and came slowly back to his former place. Here he stood, confronting the people with a gravely musing smile. Again, as she saw him, there swept over Anna’s memory the sense that this was the presence of her girlish dream, and the old indefinable sense of joy in the power of this man was shed into her heart.

“You want to hear me say something about Fraternia, I suppose,” said Gregory, slowly.

“I am not here for that purpose. I covet no man’s silver or gold for my project, let that be distinctly understood first of all. Fraternia has not had to beg for support, thus far. Men and women who are like-minded with ourselves are welcome to join themselves to us. No others need apply,” and he smiled a peculiar, humorous smile of singular charm.

“Fraternia,” he continued, “is an experiment. It is only a year old. Is is what may be called a coöperative colony, I should think; that is, a little community of people who believe that no one ought to be idle and no one ought to overwork, and accordingly all work a reasonable number of hours a day. We also believe that an aristocratic, privileged class is not a good thing, not even a necessary evil, but a mere gross product of human selfishness. We have none, accordingly, in Fraternia, nor anything corresponding to it. We are all on a precisely equal footing. That bitterest and tightest of all class distinctions, the aristocracy of money,is unknown among us. Those who have joined us have thus far put their property into the common treasury, and all fare alike. We propose to work out this social problem on actual and practical lines. We all work and all share alike in the results of our work.

“You will ask what we do. Fraternia lies in a valley among the foothills of southwestern North Carolina. We raise all kinds of fruit, some grain, and some cotton. We have water-power, a mountain stream as beautiful as it is useful, and so we have built a cotton mill. We have made it as pretty as we could, this mill,—better than any man’s house, since the house is for the individual, and the mill for the use of all. By the same token our church and our library are to be finer than our houses when we advance so far as to build them. We have nothing costly or luxurious in Fraternia, but our mill is really very attractive. We all like to work in it. You know it is natural to like to work under human and decent conditions. I believe no man ever liked absolute idleness. It is overwork and work under hideous and unwholesome conditions against which men revolt.

“In our personal and home life, simplicity and hardihood are the key-notes. No servants are employed, for all serve. Our luxuries are the mountain laurel and pine, the exquisite sky and air, the voices of the forest, the crystal clearness of the brook. In these we all share. So do we in the books and the few good pictures which we are so happy as to own; in the best music we can muster and in the service of divine worship. Life is natural, homely, simple, joyous. Its motive: By love, serve one another. From no one is the privilege of service withheld. Thank God, we have no forlorn leisure class.

“Our mission, however, is not to ourselves alone, but to the world outside. We are holding up, by our daily living, a constant object-lesson. We are preaching coöperation and social brotherhood louder than any voice can ever preach it, and the small child and the simple girl can preach as well as the cultured woman and the strong man.

“Who are we? We are mostly from England, many from the slums of London, others from its higher circles, some Germans and Scandinavians, and thus far not more than a dozen American families. Some of us had nothing to begin with, and some had large property; some were so unfortunate as to belong to the number of those who oppress the poor in mills and mines, while others were simple peasants. We have no difficulty in living happily together on the broad basis of a common human nature, a common purpose, and a common hope.

“But there is another side to this adventure, friends,” and Gregory spoke with deeper seriousness. “Fraternia is nothing unless it is builded on the immutable laws of God and of righteousness. Never, never can we succeed if sin grows little to us and self large. Our message will be taken from us, our arm will be paralyzed, if the day shall ever come when the lust of gold, the lust of power, the lust of pride, shall taint the free air of our high valley.

“So then, if any among you would join our ranks, see that you shrive your souls and come to us seeking only the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

CHAPTER XXV

Sin and hedgehogs are born without spikes, but how they wound and prick after their birth we all know. The most unhappy being is he who feels remorse before the deed, and brings forth a sin already furnished with teeth in its birth, the bite of which is soon prolonged into an incurable wound of conscience.

—Richter.

On the steps of the rostrum, as he descended them, John Gregory was met by a man of singular aspect, a man who has been encountered by us before, in the house of Senator Ingraham,—his son, Oliver.

As the two clergymen whom he had then addressed had been disturbed, and even dismayed, by this strange face and figure, the smooth, egglike face with its enormous forehead, narrow eyes, and wide, thin-lipped mouth, so now Gregory drew back instinctively, finding the singular apparition thus suddenly before him.

Mr. Oliver Ingraham did not appear to notice the movement, but, smiling his peculiarly complacent smile, held out one long, sinuous hand, and as Gregory took it, not over eagerly, he remarked in his high, feminine voice:—

“I liked your line very much, Mr. Gregory. Nothing would suit me better than to see these rich men brought to book. They’ll get their come-uppance in the next world, anyway; but I sometimes get tired of waiting. It would be a satisfaction to see Dives, Esquire, taking his torments here once in a while, don’t you think so?” and the malevolent leer with which the question was accompanied gave Gregory a chill of disgust.

Oliver held in his left hand a handsomely bound note-book and silver pencil-case which it was his custom to carry everywhere. Gregory, now about to pass on, and greet the crowds who were waiting to speak with him just below, was again stopped.

“Just a moment, Mr. Gregory,” said the other, slipping off the elastic, and opening the note-book with the dexterity of constant habit; “I want you to help me a little in gathering some very valuable statistics. It’s rather in your line, I take it. I have been engaged in this work for several years, and find it extremely interesting.”

Gregory noted the long, white, flexible fingers of the man, and the look, half of deficient intellect and half of cunning, in his face.

“Please make haste, Mr. Ingraham,” he said shortly, “there are others waiting.”

“I am making a computation,” Oliver continued imperturbably, “in fact, a carefully tabulated record, according to nations, of the probable number of souls from each nation now in Sheol—it is considered polite now to call it Sheol, I believe. We used to say hell when we were boys, didn’t we, Mr. Gregory?” and Oliver laughed his low, cruel laugh.

“Excuse me,” exclaimed Gregory, impatiently; “I could not give you any information on that subject. I have never been there. Allow me to pass on, if you please.”

Oliver closed his book as if not unaccustomed to rebuffs; but, as Gregory’s forward movement obliged him to retreat down the steps, he remarked slyly:—

“I had a message to you from the senator, if you only weren’t in such a hurry. He is one of the fellows thatwill have to go to now, weep and howl. He has the shekels, I can tell you! What he wants of you is more than I can figure out. I should suppose Ahab would as soon have sent for Elijah.”

“Did your father send for me?” asked Gregory, surprised. They were now at the foot of the steps, and the crowd was gathering about them.

“Yes; he would like to see you in his office on this same block, next building, as soon as you can get away from here. You work him right, and you can get something out of him for your Utopia.” The last words were called back aloud with a series of confidential nods, as Oliver turned and plunged into the crowd, who seemed to make a way for him with especial facility. Gregory saw him go with a keen sense of heat and discomfort.

Half an hour later, Gregory found himself in the office of Senator Ingraham, seated in a substantial office-chair by the well-appointed desk, while Mr. Ingraham, himself in evident and most unusual mental disturbance, walked up and down the room. Suddenly he wheeled, and confronted Gregory, as if with sudden, though difficult, resolution.

“Mr. Gregory,” he said, low, and with the stern, terse brevity of a man who finds himself forced to speak what he would rather leave unsaid, “for over thirty years I have carried certain facts in my personal history shut up in my own memory. Not one other being, to the best of my belief, has shared my knowledge. To-night, I cannot tell how, I do not know why, I feel that I must break silence, and before you—stranger as you are—unload my burden. A strange compulsion seems upon me to disclose the things I have hitherto lived to conceal. What there is in you or in what Ihave heard you say, to bring me to this point, I cannot understand; but I feel in you something which makes you alone, of all men I have ever met, the one to whom I can speaks—and must. Are you willing to hear me?”

John Gregory noted the set, hard lines in the lawyer’s face, the knotted cords in his hands, and the tone, half of defiance, half of self-abasement, with which he threw out this abrupt question. Accustomed to encounters with men in their innermost spiritual struggles, Gregory was in no way astonished or excited by this surprising beginning of their interview, and simply nodded gravely in token that Ingraham should proceed.

“I will not affront you by demanding secrecy on your part,” the latter began haughtily; “if it were possible for you to betray my confidence, it would have been impossible for me to give it to you. I understand men.”

He paused. Gregory made no remark in confirmation of this assertion, but the direct, unflinching look with which he met the appeal in the eyes of the speaker was full guarantee of good faith. There was promise of profound and sympathetic attention in Gregory’s look, there was also judicial calmness and reserve; in fine, the characteristics of the priest and the judge were singularly united in him, and it was to the perception of this fact that he owed the present interview.

“I do not know whether I am a respectable citizen or a murderer,” Ingraham now began, turning again to walk the floor, while an uncontrollable groan as of physical anguish accompanied this unexpected declaration. “Imagine, if you will, what thirty years have been inwardly with this uncertainty as food for thought, servedto me by conscience, or some fiend, morning and night. If I could have forgotten for one blessed day, it has been ingeniously rendered impossible, for sin in bodily form is ever before me. You have seen my son.”

With this sentence, harsh and curt, Ingraham paused, glanced aside at Gregory, who assented, and then continued to walk and speak. His voice and manner alike showed that he was holding himself in control by the effort of all his will. Strange distorting lines appeared in his face, and there was heavy sweat on his forehead.

“I was twenty-five years old when I was married, and was alone in the world save for one brother,—Jim, we always called him,—two years younger than I. We had inherited a good name, strong physique, and some little property from our parents, and started in life shoulder to shoulder. In Burlington, where we first began business life together, we became intimately acquainted with a family in which there were two daughters. The elder, Cornelia, was very pretty and singularly attractive. Men always fell in love with her. I did, desperately. The younger sister was a commonplace, uninteresting girl, rather sentimental perhaps, not otherwise remarkable.

“I shall make this story as short as possible. I offered myself to Cornelia after long wooing, and was refused. I was bitterly wounded, angry, defiant. While I was in that state of mind, it became apparent to me that I was secretly an object of peculiar interest to the younger sister. Like many another fool, half in spite and half in heart-sickness, I sought her hand, and was at once accepted, and our marriage followed quickly. Within the year Cornelia and Jim became engaged. There was a hard, silent grudge against Jim in my heart from the day I first suspected that it was he who had stood between Corneliaand me, and their engagement increased the grudge to hate.

“We had, before this, put the whole of our inheritance into mining fields in what was then the far West, buying up a large tract of land, divided equally between us. The year after my marriage we moved West for a time, and I started out on a prospecting tour of our land; Jim to follow me when he had finished establishing a kind of business office in pioneer quarters, in a small town as near the base of our operations as was feasible. My wife remained in this town.

“On horseback, with two engineers and a copper expert and an Indian guide, I rode through our possessions. Miners were already at work, and had pursued the lead far enough to prove pretty distinctly that, while Jim’s part of the tract was likely to be fairly productive, the vein stopped short of mine, which was thus practically worthless.

“I rode back to our camp in a black mood. Jim, it seemed, was to succeed in everything; all that he sought was his, and for me there was nothing but failure and defeat. All the way back I brooded bitterly on the contrast between us, until I was in a still frenzy of jealousy when I reached the camp. The contrast between Cornelia, for whom I still had a wild, hopeless passion, and my wife, sickly, dull, indeed disagreeable to me already, was maddening, and had been sufficiently so before. But now, when I thought of Jim, with Cornelia for his wife and the certain prospect of large wealth to add to his elation, while I was without a penny or a prospect of any sort, the rage and fury in my mind became almost intoxicating.

“We had encountered hostile Indians on the trail aswe returned, but our bold, dare-devil dash through this danger made slight impression on me. I think death would have been welcome to me that night. God knows I wish I had met it then. My heart was evil enough, but at least it had not the guilt that came later.

“I suppose, Mr. Gregory, that I am answerable for my brother’s death—not in the eye of the law, but before God. And yet—if you could tell me that I am mistaken, that I exaggerate, that other men would have done the same and held themselves guiltless—if that could be—” Ingraham broke off and fixed his eyes on Gregory’s face once more, as if in appeal for his life.

“Please go on,” was Gregory’s response, but the words were gently spoken, as the words of a physician when he is diagnosing a manifestly mortal disease.

“Very well,” said Ingraham, harshly. “Jim was at the camp, and was boy enough to parade a letter from Cornelia before me. We quarrelled fiercely, about what I cannot remember, but I could not restrain the storm of rage and jealousy in me. It had to break loose somewhere. I refused to tell Jim what I had discovered regarding the lead, and he declared he would go and find out for himself. I said he would be a fool if he did, but gave him no hint of the fact that there were hostile Indians on the way. He knew nothing of the conditions, nor the character of the people about us, having never been in the country before. It was early in the morning. We had ridden all night, and the men had gone to their tents and were sleeping off the effects of our struggle. I told Jim he could not get a guide. He merely whistled in a light-hearted, careless way he had, and started off to a neighbouring camp, in search, as I inferred, of some escort. I saw him no more, and madeno attempt to govern his actions, and did not even know whether he had started. Who and what the guide was whom he obtained, I learned later.

“I slept most of that day, after Jim disappeared, exhausted in body and mind, and continued to sleep far into the night, keeping my tent door securely closed, as I wished to see and speak to no one. It was, perhaps, three o’clock of the morning following when I was roused by a strange noise at my tent door. Starting up from my bed on the ground, I saw that some one had cut open the fastenings, and that the flap was drawn back. In the opening thus formed stood the shape of an Indian rider on horseback, perfectly motionless. The moonlight, which was unusually brilliant, fell full upon the face of this man, and I recognized him at once, with a horrible chill of foreboding, as a half-witted Indian who sometimes acted as guide, but only to those who knew no better than to accept his services, which were worthless and treacherous. He was a half-breed, an odious, repulsive being, with only wit enough to be malicious, and of abnormal treachery and cruelty even for his kind. Never can I forget that face of his in the moonlight. He spoke not one word, but simply sat his horse and looked at me with his narrow, gleaming eyes, a malignant grin making his ugliness fairly fiendish. If you want to get a faint idea of his look, recall the face of Oliver—my son;” Ingraham’s voice sunk to a whisper, and he added, “I can never escape it.”

Gregory’s brows knit heavily, and his face reflected something of the tortured misery of the man before him.

“It was not,” said Ingraham, “until I had staggered to my feet that I saw that across his saddle-bow thiscreature carried a dead body—Jim. There was an Indian arrow in his side.”

“No matter, no matter for the rest; I understand,” said Gregory, hastily.

There was silence for a moment, and then Ingraham, with a strong effort, rallied himself to conclude his story.

“I was Jim’s heir.” These words were spoken with hard and scornful emphasis. “That was a feature of the case which presents complications to a man in forming a judgment. Perhaps you will believe me when I say that this issue had not entered my mind in letting the boy go to his death. Indeed, the whole series of events was without deliberation, but under the influence of blind, sullen anger.”

“I believe you,” said Gregory.

“All the same, I profited by his death. The mines proved immensely valuable, and are even to-day. They have made me rich—and incomparably wretched. A word or two more, and you will know the whole story. Jim was brought home, here, for burial, my wife and I returning with his body. All through that journey, and continually, for many months, I saw before me, waking or sleeping, that face of cruelty incarnate, the half-witted Indian guide, as I had seen him on that awful night. That face was my Nemesis. It is still.

“Within the year my wife gave birth to a son, Oliver,—a strange perversion, made up of moral obliquity, mental distortion, and physical deformity, like an embodiment of sin. On his face was stamped by some strange trick of nature the image which had haunted me—as if the Fates, or the Fiends, or God himself, had feared I might forget, and know a day of respite.

“My wife died when Oliver was a few months old,—diedof cold, I believe, the chill of our loveless marriage. Two years later Cornelia and I were married. I believe she has been happy. I have been prospered, and have risen to a position of some influence, and we have all that could be desired in our home, in our three daughters. But when, to-night, I heard you pronounce the judgments of God on men who had built up prosperity upon a lie, I was like a man struck in his very heart. I felt that I could no longer endure my hidden load, and must confess to one human being my past, and make restitution, if by any means it is yet possible. The Romish Church is merciful, when it provides the possibility of confession to sinful men.

“What have you to say to me? Have you healing for such a sore as mine?”

With these abrupt words Ingraham threw himself into a leather-covered arm-chair with the action of complete exhaustion. His aspect was changed from that of the alert, confident man of the world and of affairs, to that of a broken down and shattered age.

CHAPTER XXVI

Sin is not a monster to be mused on, but an impotence to be got rid of.

—Matthew Arnold.

Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you; and though it kill your bodies, it shall not be able to kill your souls: and though it bring you to the grave, as it did your Head, it shall not be able to keep you there.—Baxter.

John Gregory met the demand thus made upon him with all the moral and spiritual resources of which he was master, for all were needed. The full strength of the man’s personality was brought into action, the lofty severity, the unflinching hate of sin, and yet the clear vision which could see beyond the torture and taint of it, and sound the depth of a nature which thus agonized for redemption and for righteousness.

“The only sin,” he said, in the words of another, “which is unforgiven is the sin which is unrepented of. That early yielding to a paroxysm of jealousy and rage had a fearful, and yet it may even be a merciful, result. There are those who have given way to worse, and, no result following, have lived on in hardness of heart and contempt of God’s law. Christ’s inflexible law, far more rigorous than the old law of Moses, says he that hateth his brother is a murderer. Murder, then, is the commonest of social sins, rather than the rarest. Christ also says that it was for sinners that he came to die, not for the righteous. His love overflows all our sin, and finds no halt at the degrees of guilt which men emphasizein their shallow judgment. Men judge by consequences, by outward events; God looks upon the heart.

“Looking upon the heart, as far as we may, with God, I say then, you have been guilty of murder, but so have other men. Many a man has cherished a spirit of bitter revenge and hatred against one who had injured him, who has not suffered what you have, not having caused or profited by the death of that person, directly or indirectly; but before God you are perhaps equally guilty.

“I do not count your sin slight. I would not seek to make it small in your own eyes, but I believe that you are released from the guilt and burden borne so long, and should no longer stagger under it. Has not Almighty God given to his servants power and commandment to declare to those who are penitent the absolution and remission of their sins?

“What did our Lord say to the leper who sought his cleansing? ‘I will, be thou clean.’ Even this he says to you. Throw off that old yoke of bondage. It is your right. Go free in the liberty of the sons of God, but go to sin no more.”

These words, spoken with the authority of a priest, and with the solemnity of absolute conviction, brought something of light and release to the troubled heart of Ingraham.

The hour was late, indeed, morning was at hand, when, lifting his face upon which a certain calmness had settled, he said to Gregory, earnestly:—

“I believe I grasp the truth of what you say, and that there is for me a certain peace, a partial release, although forgetfulness never. But this is not enough; the cry of my whole soul is to make restitution in somesort, somewhere, although how and to whom I cannot see. I still have the stain that I profit by my sin. What can you tell me? Do you see a way for me?”

John Gregory looked at Ingraham steadily for a moment before speaking, and then said very slowly:—

“Do you remember what the Master said to a certain ruler, ‘Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and come, follow me’? If you are in earnest, Mr. Ingraham, and if you feel that, as your experience of sin has been in no light and common form, but in a depth of agony which few men ever know, so your repentance should be along no mild and easy lines, but should reach to the foundations of your life—if, I say, you see things thus, and can bear so strong a prescription, I should repeat to youliterallywhat Christ said to the rich ruler. It is a hard saying; not every man can receive it.”

The two men faced each other in silence for a moment, and Gregory saw the leap of a sudden question in the other’s eyes.

“No,” he said sternly, as if in answer to a spoken inquiry, “I am not advising you with an eye on my own advantage. My thought was not of my own cause, but of the cause of humanity anywhere. Pardon me if I speak plainly; I could not use a farthing of your money, were it all at my disposal, for building up the work I am seeking to establish in Fraternia. Recall what you heard me say to-night of the true Kingdom of God. I could not use your money, Mr. Ingraham, in seeking to show forth that kingdom; but I could use you, should you wish to come with us, if you came empty-handed.”

The lawyer felt the pitiless severity of Gregory’s moral standard and all that this dictum implied, but hedid not resist it. His humiliation and submission were sincere, and, for the time at least, controlling; but doubt and conflict were plainly read in his face.

“Is it a hard saying?” John Gregory asked, with a slight smile.

“Yes, harder than you know. I could do what you say, were I alone to be considered; but to reduce my family to beggary, to cut short my career and stain my reputation by the cloud which would inevitably rest upon it in the community by such an unheard-of course of action, to take my wife and daughters from their social world to follow me, sent like a scapegoat into some wilderness—really, Mr. Gregory, what you name is beyond reason!”

Gregory made absolutely no response. After a long silence, Ingraham said thoughtfully:—

“This is about the way I see for myself: from this time on I shall seek to live a humbler and a sincerely Christian life, and shall strive in every way open to me to aid and further the cause of righteousness, with my money and with my influence. In this way I shall bring happiness and satisfaction to my wife, to whom I owe the highest obligation, next to God, instead of destroying her comfort by dragging her with me into some late missionary endeavour or eccentric experiment. Pardon me, Mr. Gregory, if I too speak plainly.

“But this is not all. Although I feel no individual call in the direction of your coöperative colony, and am not over sanguine of its success, I do believe profoundly in you, personally, as I must have shown you. Now I want you to reconsider what you said a little while ago. Frankly, this discriminating between money made in one way or another savours to me of superstition. Thismoney, which is mine, cannot be destroyed; even you would hardly advise that. Why not put it to a good use, the best possible from your point of view? I have never given away money largely, but I am able to, and I want to seal our interview to-night with a substantial gift.”

As he spoke, Ingraham turned to his desk and touched a check-book which lay upon it.

“Mr. Gregory, I want to write my check for fifty thousand dollars to be placed unconditionally in your hands. You want a little church down there in your settlement, and you want it beautiful, worthy of its purpose; you want a library—both are necessary to carry on the kind of work you project. Here they are,” and again he touched the little leather book with his forefinger; “let me do that much as a memorial of this night and what you have done for me.”

John Gregory met the look of sincere and even anxious appeal with which these words were spoken with unyielding, although not unkindly, firmness.

“This is a generous impulse on your part, Mr. Ingraham. Do not for a moment think I fail to appreciate it. You are right; the money must be used, and will be, I hope, promptly and wisely. You must pardon me a certain over nicety perhaps in preferring not to build my church in Fraternia, or even my library, with it. You will find plenty of men less fastidious, and no one but myself will, I suppose, have reason to entertain such scruples.”

Gregory had risen, and was ready now to go. It was four o’clock, he found, by his watch, and it had been a long vigil; but, while Ingraham’s face was haggard and even ghastly, that of Gregory was unchanged in its massive firmness and its strong, fine lines.

Ingraham stood at his desk plainly chagrined and ill at ease.

“In your eyes, I see,” he said ruefully, “I am still in the place of the man who went away sorrowful because he had great possessions.”

“Perhaps,” said Gregory; “it is too soon to tell.”

“Every man must judge for himself, Mr. Gregory, when it comes to the supreme acts of his life.”

“Yes,” said the other, sadly; “to the supreme acts or to the supreme compromises. Will you excuse me now? I believe that I must go.” Gregory held out his hand, which Ingraham grasped with eagerness. “You have honoured me by your confidence and your generosity. Count me your friend if you will. Good night.”

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