As violently rent from his job as Maxim Waldron had been torn from his alliance with Catherine, Gabriel Armstrong met the sudden change in his affairs with far more equanimity than the financier could muster. Once the young electrician's first anger had subsided—and he had pretty well mastered it before he had reached the Oakwood Heights station—he began philosophically to turn the situation in his mind, and to rough out his plans for the future.
"Things might be worse, all round," he reflected, as he strode along at a smart pace. "During the seven months I've been working for these pirates, I've managed to pay off the debt I got into at the time of the big E. W. strike, and I've got eighteen dollars or a little more in my pocket. My clothes will do a while longer. Even though Flint blacklists me all over the country, as he probably will, I can duck into some job or other, somewhere. And most important of all, I know what's due to happen in America—I've seen that note-book! Let them do what they will, they can't takethatknowledge away from me!"
The outlook, on the whole, was cheering. Gabriel broke into a whistle, as he swung along the highway, and slashed cheerfully with his heavy stick at the dusty bushes by the roadside. A vigorous, pleasing figure of a manhe made, striding onward in his blue flannel shirt and corduroys, stout boots making light of distance, somewhat rebellious black hair clustering under his cap, blue eyes clear and steady as the sunlight itself. There must have been a drop of Irish blood somewhere or other in his veins, to have given him that ruddy cheek, those eyes, that hair, that quick enthusiasm and that swiftness to anger—then, by reaction, that quick buoyancy which so soon banished everything but courageous optimism from his hot heart.
Thus the man walked, all his few worldly belongings—most precious among them his union card and his red Socialist card—packed in the knapsack strapped to his broad shoulders. And as he walked, he formulated his plans.
"Niagara for mine," he decided. "It's there these hellions mean to start their devilish work of enslaving the whole world. It's there I want to be, and must be, to follow the infernal job from the beginning and to nail it, when the right time comes. I'll put in a day or two with my old friend, Sam Underwood, up in the Bronx, and maybe tell him what's doing and frame out the line of action with him. But after that, I strike for Niagara—yes, and on foot!"
This decision came to him as strongly desirable. Not for some time, he knew, could the actual work of building the Air Trust plant be started at Niagara. Meanwhile, he wanted to keep out of sight, as much as possible. He wanted, also to save every cent. Again, his usual mode of travel had always been either to ride the rods or "hike" it on shanks' mare. Bitterly opposed to swelling the railways' revenues by even a penny, Armstrong in the past few years of his life had done some thousands of miles, afoot, all over the country. His best means of Socialist propaganda, he had found, was in just such meanderings along the highways and hedges of existence—a casual job, here or there, for a day, a week, a month—then, quick friendships; a little talk; a few leaflets handed to the intelligent, if he could find any. He had laced the continent with such peregrinations, always sowing the seed of revolution wherever he had passed; getting in touch with the Movement all over the republic; keeping his finger on the pulse of ever-growing, always-strengthening Socialism.
Such had his habits long been. And now, once more adrift and jobless, but with the most tremendous secret of the ages in his possession, he naturally turned to the comfort and the calming influence of the broad highway, in his long journey towards the place where he was to meet, in desperate opposition, the machinations of the Air Trust magnates.
"It's the only way for me," he decided, as he turned into the road leading toward Saint George and the Manhattan Ferry. "Flint and Herzog will be sure to put Slade and the Cosmos people after me. Blacklisting will be the least of what they'll try to do. They'll use slugging tactics, sure, if they get a chance, or railroad me to some Pen or other, if possible. My one best bet is to keep out of their way; and I figure I'm ten times safer on the open road, with a few dollars to stave off a vagrancy charge, and with two good fists and this stick to keep 'em at a distance, than I would be on the railroads or in cheap dumps along the way.
"The last place they'll ever think of looking for me will be the big outdoors.Theiridea of hunting for a workman is to dragnet the back rooms of saloons—especially if they're after a Socialist. That's the limit of their intelligence, to connect Socialism and beer. I'll beat 'em; I'll hike—and it's a hundred to one I land in Niagara with more cash than when I started, with better health, more knowledge, and the freedom that, alone, can save the world now from the most damnable slavery that ever threatened its existence!"
Thus reasoning, with perfect clarity and a long-headedness that proved him a strategist at four-and-twenty, Gabriel Armstrong whistled a louder note as he tramped away to northward, away from the hateful presence of Herzog, away from the wage-slavery of the Oakwood Heights plant, away—with that precious secret in his brain—toward the far scene of destined warfare, where stranger things were to ensue than even he could possibly conceive.
Saturday morning found him, his visit with Underwood at an end, already twenty miles or more from the Bronx River, marching along through Haverstraw, up the magnificent road that fringes the Hudson—now hidden from the mighty river behind a forest-screen, now curving on bold abutments right above the sun-kissed expanses of Haverstraw Bay, here more than two miles from wooded shore to shore.
At eleven, he halted at a farm house, some miles north of the town, got a job on the woodpile, and astonished the farmer by the amount of birch he could saw in an hour. He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful dinner, and—after half an hour's smoke and talk with the farmer, towhom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack—said good-bye to all hands and once more set his face northward for the long hike through much wilder country, to West Point, where he hoped to pass the night.
Thus we must leave him, for a while. For now the thread of our narration, like the silken cord in the Labyrinth of Crete, leads us back to the Country Club at Longmeadow, the scene, that very afternoon, of the sudden and violent rupture between the financier and Catherine Flint.
Catherine, her first indignation somewhat abated, and now vastly relieved at the realization that she indeed was free from her loveless and long-since irksome alliance with Waldron, calmly enough returned to the club-house. Head well up, and eyes defiant, she walked up the broad steps and into the office. Little cared she whether the piazza gossips—The Hammer and Anvil Club, in local slang—divined the quarrel or not. The girl felt herself immeasurably indifferent to such pettinesses as prying small talk and innuendo. Let people know, or not, as might be, she cared not a whit. Her business was her own. No wagging of tongues could one hair's breadth disturb that splendid calm of hers.
The clerk, behind the desk, smiled and nodded at her approach.
"Please have my car brought round to the porte-cochère, at once?" she asked. "And tell Herrick to be sure there's plenty of gas for a long run. I'm going through to New York."
"So soon?" queried the clerk. "I'm sure your father will be disappointed, Miss Flint. He's just wired that he's coming out tomorrow, to spend Sunday here. He particularly asks to have you remain. See here?"
He handed her a telegram. She glanced it over, then crumpled it and tossed it into the office fire-place.
"I'm sorry," she answered. "But I can't stay. I must get back, to-night. I'll telegraph father not to come. A blank, please?"
The clerk handed her one. She pondered a second, then wrote:
Dear Father: A change of plans makes me return home at once. Please wait and see me there. I've something important to talk over with you.Affectionately,Kate.
Dear Father: A change of plans makes me return home at once. Please wait and see me there. I've something important to talk over with you.
Affectionately,
Kate.
Ordinarily people try to squeeze their message to ten words, and count and prune and count again; but not so, Catherine. For her, a telegram had never contained any space limit. It meant less to her than a post-card to you or me. Not that the girl was consciously extravagant. No, had you asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy—she rarely, for instance, paid more than a hundred dollars for a morning gown, or more than a thousand for a ball-dress. It was simply that the idea of counting words had never yet occurred to her. And so now, she complacently handed this verbose message to the clerk, who—thoroughly well-trained—understood it was to be charged on her father's perfectly staggering monthly bill.
"Very well, Miss Flint," said he. "I'll send this at once. And your car will be ready for you in ten minutes—or five, if you like?"
"Ten will do, thank you," she answered. Then she crossed to the elevator and went up to her own suite of rooms on the second floor, for her motor-coat and veils.
"Free, thank heaven!" she breathed, with infinite relief, as she stood before the tall mirror, adjusting these for the long trip. "Free from that man forever. What a narrow escape! If things hadn't happened just as they did, and if I hadn't had that precious insight into Wally's character—good Lord!—catastrophe! Oh, I haven't been so happy since I—since—why, I'veneverbeen so happy in all my life!
"Wally, dear boy," she added, turning toward the window as though apostrophizing him in reality, "now we can be good friends. Now all the sham and pretense are at an end, forever. As a friend, you may be splendid. As a husband—oh, impossible!"
Lighter of heart than she had been for years, was she, with the added zest of the long spin through the beauty of the June country before her—down among the hills and cliffs, among the forests and broad valleys—down to New York again, back to the father and the home she loved better than all else in the world.
In this happy frame of mind she presently entered the low-hung, swift-motored car, settled herself on the luxurious cushions and said "Home, at once!" to Herrick.
He nodded, but did not speak. He felt, in truth, somewhat incapable of quite incoherent speech. Not having expected any service till next day, he had foregathered with others of his ilk in the servants' bar, below-stairs, and had with wassail and good cheer very effectively put himself out of commission.
But, somewhat sobered by this quick summons, he hadmanaged to pull together. Now, drunk though he was, he sat there at the wheel, steady enough—so long as he held on to it—and only by the redness of his face and a certain glassy look in his eye, betrayed the fact of his intoxication. The girl, busy with her farewells as the car drew up for her, had not observed him. At the last moment Van Slyke waved a foppish hand at her, and smirked adieux. She acknowledged his good-bye with a smile, so happy was she at the outcome of her golf-game; then cast a quick glance up at the club windows, fearing to see the harsh face of Wally peeping down at her in anger.
But he was nowhere to be seen; and now, with a sudden acceleration of the powerful six-cylinder engine, the big gray car moved smoothly forward. Growling in its might, it swung in a wide circle round the sweep of the drive, gathered speed and shot away down the grade toward the stone gates of the entrance, a quarter mile distant.
Presently it swerved through these, to southward. Club-house, waving handkerchiefs and all vanished from Kate's view.
"Faster, Herrick," she commanded, leaning forward, "I must be home by half past five."
Again he nodded, and notched spark and throttle down. The car, leaping like a wild creature, began to hum at a swift clip along the smooth, white road toward Newburgh on the Hudson.
Thirty miles an hour the speedometer showed, then thirty-five and forty. Again the drunken chauffeur, still master of his machine despite the poison pulsing in hisdazed brain, snicked the little levers further down. Forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, the figures on the dial showed.
Now the exhaust ripped in a crackling staccato, like a machine gun, as the chauffeur threw out the muffler. Behind, a long trail of dust rose, whirling in the air. Catherine, a sportswoman born, leaned back and smiled with keen pleasure, while her yellow veil, whipping sharply on the wind, let stray locks of that wonderful red-gold hair stream about her flushed face.
Thus she sped homeward, driven at a mad race by a man whose every sense was numbed and stultified by alcohol—homeward, along a road up which, far, far away, another man, keen, sober and alert, was trudging with a knapsack on his broad back, swinging a stick and whistling cheerily as he went.
Fate, that strange moulder of human destinies, what had it in store for these two, this woman and this man? This daughter of a billionaire, and this young proletarian?
Who could foresee, or, foreseeing, could believe what even now stood written on the Book of Destiny?
For a time no danger seemed to threaten. Kate was not only fearless as a passenger, but equally intrepid at the wheel. Many a time and oft she had driven her father's highest-powered car at dizzying speeds along worse roads than the one her machine was now following. Velocity was to her a kind of stimulant, wonderfully pleasurable; and now, realizing nothing of the truth that Herrick was badly the worse for liquor, she leaned back in the tonneau, breathed the keen slashing air with delight, and let her eyes wander over the swiftly-changing panorama of forest, valley, lake and hill that, in ever new and more radiant beauty, sped away, away, as the huge car leaped down the smooth and rushing road.
Dust and pebbles flew in the wake of the machine, as it gathered velocity. Beneath it, the highway sped like an endless white ribbon, whirling back and away with smooth rapidity. No common road, this, but one which the State authorities had very obligingly built especially for the use of millionaires' motor cars, all through the region of country-clubs, parks, bungalows and summer-resorts dotting the west shore region of the Hudson. Let the farmer truck his produce through mud and ruts, if he would. Let the country folk drive their ramshackle buggies over rocks and stumps, if they so chose. Nothing of that sort for millionaires! No,theymust have macadam and smooth, long curves, easy grades and—where the road swung high above the gleaming river—retaining walls to guard them from plunging into the palisaded abyss below.
At just such a place it was, where the road made a sharper turn than any the drunken chauffeur had reckoned on, that catastrophe leaped out to shatter the rushing car.
Only a minute before, Kate—a little uneasy now, at the truly reckless speeding of the driver, and at the daredevil way in which he was taking curves without either sounding his siren or reducing speed—had touched him on the shoulder, with a command: "Notquiteso fast, Herrick! Be careful!"
His only answer had been a drunken laugh.
"Careful nothing!" he slobbered, to himself. "You wanted speed—an' now—hc!—b'Jesus, youget—hc!—speed!Iain't 'fraid—are—hc!—you?"
She had not heard the words, but had divined their meaning.
"Herrick!" she commanded sharply, leaning forward. "What's the matter with you? Obey me, do you hear? Not so fast!"
A whiff of alcoholic breath suddenly told her the truth. For a second she sat there, as though petrified, with fear now for the first time clutching at her heart.
"Stop at once!" she cried, gripping the man by the collar of his livery. "You—you're drunk, Herrick! I—I'll have you discharged, at once, when we get home. Stop, do you hear me? You're not fit to drive. I'll take the wheel myself!"
But Herrick, hopelessly under the influence of the poison, which had now produced its full effect, paid no heed.
"Y'—can't dri'thishcar!" he muttered, in maudlin accents. "Too big—too heavy for—hc!—woman! I—Idri' it all right, drunk or sober! Good chauffeur—good car—I know thish car! You won't fire me—hc!—for takin' drink or two, huh? I drive you all ri'—drive you to New York or to—hc!—Hell! Same thing, no difference, ha! ha!—I—"
A sudden blaze of rage crimsoned the girl's face. In all her life she never had been thus spoken to. For a second she clenched her fist, as though to strike down this sodden brute there in the seat before her—a feat she would have been quite capable of. But second thought convinced her of the peril of such an act. Ahead of them a long down-grade stretched away, away, to a turn half-hidden under the arching greenery. As the car struck this slope, it leaped into ever greater speed; and now, under the erratic guidance of the lolling wretch at the wheel, it began to sway in long, unsteady curves, first toward one ditch, then the other.
Another woman would have screamed; might even have tried to jump out. But Kate was not of the hysteric sort. More practical, she.
"I've got to climb over into the front seat," she realized in a flash, "and shut off the current—cut the power off—stop the car!"
On the instant, she acted. But as she arose in the tonneau, Herrick, sensing her purpose, turned toward her in the sudden rage of complete intoxication.
"Naw—naw y' don't!" he shouted, his face perfectlypurple with fury and drink. "No woman—he!—runs this old boat while I'm aboard, see? Go on, fire me!Idon't give—damn! But you don't run—car! Sit down!Irun car—New York or Hell—no matter which!I—"
Hurtling down the slope like a runaway comet, now wholly out of control, the powerful gray car leaped madly at the turn.
Catherine, her heart sick at last with terror, caught a second's glimpse of forest, on one hand; of a stone wall with tree-tops on some steep abyss below, just grazing it, on the other. Through these trees she saw a momentary flash of water, far beneath.
Then the leaping front wheels struck a cluster of loose pebbles, at the bend.
Wrenched from the drunkard's grip, the steering wheel jerked sharply round.
A skidding—a crash—a cry!
Over the roadway, vacant now, floated a tenuous cloud of dust and gasoline-vapor, commingled.
In the retaining-wall at the left, a jagged gap appeared. Suddenly, far below, toward the river, a crashing detonation shattered harsh echoes from shore to shore.
Came a quick flash of light; then thick, black, greasy smoke arose, and, wafting through the treetops, drifted away on the warm wind of that late June afternoon.
A man, some quarter of a mile to southward, on the great highway, paused suddenly at sound of this explosion.
For a moment he stood there listening acutely, a knotted stick in hand, his flannel shirt, open at the throat, showing a brown and corded neck. The heavy knapsackon his shoulders seemed no burden to that rugged strength, as he stood, poised and eager, every sense centered in keen attention.
"Trouble ahead, there, by the Eternal!" he suddenly exclaimed. His eye had just caught sight of the first trailing wreaths of smoke, from up the cliff. "An auto's gone to smash, down there, or I'm a plute!"
He needed no second thought to hurl him forward to the rescue. At a smart pace he ran, halloo'ing loudly, to tell the victims—should they still live—that help was at hand. At his right, extended the wall. At his left, a grove of sugar-maples, sparsely set, climbed a long slope, over the ridge of which the descending sun glowed warmly. Somewhat back from the road, a rough shack which served as a sugar-house for the spring sap-boiling, stood with gaping door, open to all the winds that blew. These things he noted subconsciously, as he ran.
Then, all at once, as he rounded a sharp turn, he drew up with a cry.
"Down the cliff!" he exclaimed. "Knocked the wall clean out, and plunged! Holy Mackinaw, what a smash!"
In a moment he had reached the scene of the catastrophe. His quick eye took in, almost at a glance, the skidding mark of the wheels, the ragged rent in the wall, the broken limbs of trees below.
"Some wreck!" he ejaculated, dropping his stick and throwing off his knapsack. "Hello, Hello, down there!" he loudly hailed, scrambling through the gap.
From below, no answer.
A silence, as of death, broken only by the echo of his own voice, was all that greeted his wild cry.
He gathered her up as though she had been a child.
He gathered her up as though she had been a child.
He gathered her up as though she had been a child.
He gathered her up as though she had been a child.
Gabriel Armstrong leaped, rather than clambered, through the gap in the wall, and, following the track of devastation through the trees, scrambled down the steep slope that led toward the Hudson.
The forest looked as though a car of Juggernaut had passed that way. Limbs and saplings lay in confusion, larger trees showed long wounds upon their bark, and here and there pieces of metal—a gray mud-guard, a car door, a wind-shield frame, with shattered plate glass still clinging to it—lay scattered on the precipitous declivity. Beside these, hanging to a branch, Gabriel saw a gaily-striped auto robe; and, further down, a heavy, fringed shawl.
Again he shouted, holding to a tree-trunk at the very edge of a cliff of limestone, and peering far down into the abyss where the car had taken its final plunge. Still no answer. But, from below, the heavy smoke still rose. And now, peering more keenly, Armstrong caught sight of the wreck itself.
"There it is, and burning like the pit of Hell!" he exclaimed. "And—what's that, under it? A man?"
He could not distinctly make out, so thick the foliage was. But it seemed to him that, from under the jumbled wreckage of the blazing machine, something protruded,something that suggested a human form, horribly mangled.
"Here's where I go down this cliff, whatever happens!" decided Gabriel. And, acting on the instant, he began swinging himself down from tree to bush, from shrub to tuft of grass, clinging wherever handhold or foothold offered, digging his stout boots into every cleft and cranny of the precipice.
The height could not have been less than a hundred and fifty feet. By dint of wonderful strength and agility, and at the momentary risk of falling, himself, to almost certain death, Gabriel descended in less than ten minutes. The last quarter of the distance he practically fell, sliding at a tremendous rate, with boulders and loose earth cascading all about him in a shower.
He landed close by the flaming ruin.
"Lucky this isn't in the autumn, in the dry season!" thought he, as he approached. "If it were, this whole cliff-side, and the woods beyond, would be a roaring furnace. Some forest-fire, all right, if the woods weren't wet and full of sap!"
Parting the brush, he made his way as close to the car as the intense heat would let him. The gasoline-tank, he understood, had burst with the shock, and, taking fire, had wrapped the car in an Inferno of unquenchable flame. Now, the woodwork was entirely gone; and of the wheels, as the long machine lay there on its back, only a few blazing spokes were left. The steel chassis and the engine were red-hot, twisted and broken as though a giant hammer had smitten them on some Vulcanic anvil.
"There's a few thousand dollars gone to the devil!"thought he. But his mind did not dwell on this phase of the disaster. Still he was hoping, against hope, that human life had not been dashed and roasted out, in the wreck. And again he shouted, as he worked his way to the other side of the machine—to the side which, seen from the cliff above, had seemed to show him that inert and mangled body.
All at once he stopped short, shielding his face with his hands, against the blaze.
"Good God!" he exclaimed; and involuntarily took off his cap, there in the presence of death.
That the manwasdead, admitted of no question. Pinned under the heavy, glowing mass of metal, his body must already have been roasted to a char. The head could not be seen; but part of one shoulder and one arm protruded, with the coat burned off and the flesh horribly crackled; while, nearer Gabriel, a leg showed, with a regulation chauffeur's legging, also burned to a crisp.
"Nothing for me to do, here," said Gabriel aloud. "He's past all human help, poor chap. I don't imagine there can be anybody else in this wreck. I haven't seen anybody, and nobody has answered my shouts. What's to be done next?"
He pondered a moment, then, looking at the license plate of the machine—its enamel now half cracked off, but the numbers still legible—drew out his note-book and pencil and made a memo of the figures.
"Four-six-two-two, N.Y.," he read, again verifying his numbers. "That will identify things. And now—the quicker I get back on the road again, and reach a telephone at West Point, the better."
Accordingly, after a brief search through the bushes near at hand, for any other victim—a search which brought no results—he set to work once more to climb the cliff above him.
The fire, though still raging, was obviously dying down. In half an hour, he knew, it would be dead. There was no use in trying to extinguish it, for gasoline defies water, and no sand was to be had along that rocky river shore.
"Let her burn herself out," judged Gabriel. "She can't do any harm, now. The road for mine!"
He found the upward path infinitely more difficult than the downward, and was forced to make a long detour and do some hard climbing that left him spent and sweating, before he again approached the gap in the wall. Pausing here to breathe, a minute or two, he once more peered down at the still-smoking ruin far below. And, as he stood there all at once he thought he heard a sound not very far away to his right.
A sound—a groan, a half-inchoate murmur—a cry!
Instantly his every sense grew keen. Holding his breath he listened intently. Was it a cry? Or had the breeze but swayed one tree limb against another; or did some boatman's hail, from far across the river, but drift upward to him on the cliff?
"Hello!Hello!" he shouted again. "Anybody there?"
Once more he listened; and now, once more, he heard the sound—this time he knew it was a cry for help!
"Where are you?" shouted he, plunging forward along the steep side of the cliff. "Where?"
No answer, save a groan.
"Coming! Coming!" he hailed loudly. Then, guidedas it seemed by instinct, almost as much as by the vague direction of the moaning call, he ploughed his way through brush and briar, on rescue bent.
All at once he stopped short in his tracks, wild-eyed, a stammering exclamation on his lips.
"A woman!" he cried.
True. There, lying as though violently flung, a woman was half-crouched, half-prone behind the roots of a huge maple that leaned out far above a sheer declivity.
He saw torn clothing, through the foliage; a white hand, out-stretched and bleeding; a mass of golden-coppery hair that lay dishevelled on the bed of moss and last autumn's leaves.
"A woman! Dying?" he thought, with a sudden stab of pity in his heart.
Then, forcing his way along, he reached her, and fell upon his knees at her side.
"Not dead! Not dying! Thank God!" he exclaimed. One glance showed him she would live. Though an ugly gash upon her forehead had bathed her face in blood, and though he knew not but bones were broken, he recognized the fact that she was now returning, fast, to consciousness.
Already she had opened her eyes—wild eyes, understanding nothing—and was staring up at him in dazed, blank terror. Then one hand came up to her face; and, even as he lifted her in both his powerful arms, she began to sob hysterically.
He knew the value of that weeping, and made no attempt to stop it. The overwrought nerves, he understood, must find some outlet. Asking no question, speaking no word—for Gabriel was a man of action, not speech—he gathered her up as though she had been a child. A tall woman, she; almost as tall as he himself, and proportioned like a Venus. Yet to him her weight was nothing.
Sure-footed, now, and bursting through the brambles with fine energy, he carried her to the gap in the wall, up through it, and so to the roadway itself.
"Where—where am I?" the woman cried incoherently. "O—what—where—?"
"You're all right!" he exclaimed. "Just a little accident, that's all. Don't worry! I'll take care of you. Just keep quiet, now, and don't think of anything. You'll be all right, in no time!"
But she still wept and cried out to know where she might be and what had happened. Obviously, Gabriel saw, her reason had not yet fully returned. His first aim must be to bathe her wound, find out what damage had been done, and keeping her quiet, try to get help.
Swiftly he thought. Here he and the woman were, miles from any settlement or house, nearly in the middle of a long stretch of road that skirted the river through dense woods. At any time a motor might come along; and then again, one might not arrive for hours. No dependence could be put on this. There was no telephone for a long distance back; and even had one been near he would not have ventured to leave the girl.
Could he carry her back to Fort Clinton, the last settlement he had passed through? Impossible! No man's strength could stand such a tremendous task. And even had it been within Gabriel's means, he would have chosenotherwise. For most of all the girl needed rest and quiet and immediate care. To bear her all that distance in his arms might produce serious, even fatal results.
"No!" he decided. "I must do what I can for her, here and now, and trust to luck to send help in an auto, down this road!"
His next thought was that bandages and wraps would be needed for her cut and to make her a bed. Instantly he remembered the shawl and the big auto-robe that he had seen caught among the trees.
"I must have those at once!" he realized. "When the machine went over the edge, they were thrown out, just as the girl was. A miracle she wasn't carried down, with the car, and crushed or burned to death down there by the river, with that poor devil of a chauffeur!"
Laying her down in the soft grass along the wall, he ran back to where the wraps were, and, detaching them from the branches, quickly regained the road once more.
"Now for the old sugar-house in the maple-grove," said he. "Poor shelter, but the best to be had. Thank heaven it's fair weather, and warm!"
The task was awkward, to carry both the girl and the bulky robes, but Gabriel was equal to it She had by now regained some measure of rationality; and though very pale and shaken, manifested her nerve and courage by no longer weeping or asking questions.
Instead, she lay in his arms, eyes closed, with the blood stiffening on her face; and let him bear her whither he would. She seemed to sense his strength and mastery, his tender care and complete command of the situation. And, like a hurt and tired child, outworn and suffering, she yielded herself, unquestioningly, to his ministrations.
Thus Gabriel, the discharged, blacklisted, outcast rebel and proletarian, bore in his arms of mercy and compassion the only daughter of old Isaac Flint, his enemy, Flint the would-be master of the world.
Thus he bore the woman who had been betrothed to "Tiger" Waldron, unscrupulous and cruel partner in that scheme of dominance and enslavement.
Such was the meeting of this woman and this man. Thus, in his arms, he carried her to the old sugar-house.
And far below, the mighty river gleamed, unheeding the tragedy that had been enacted on its shores, unmindful of the threads of destiny even now being spun by the swift shuttles of Fate.
In the branches, above Gabriel and Catherine, birdsong and golden sunlight seemed to prophesy. But what this message might be, neither the woman nor the man had any thought or dream.
Arriving at the sugar-house, tired yet strong, Gabriel put the wounded girl down, quickly raked together a few armfuls of dead leaves, in the most sheltered corner of the ramshackle structure, and laid the heavy auto-robe upon this improvised bed. Then he helped his patient to lie down, there, and bade her wait till he got water to wash and dress her cut.
"Don't worry about anything," he reassured her. "You're alive, and that's the main thing, now. I'll see you through with this, whatever happens. Just keep calm, and don't let anything distress you!"
She looked at him with big, anxious eyes—eyes where still the full light of understanding had not yet returned.
"It—it all happened so suddenly!" she managed to articulate. "He was drunk—the chauffeur. The car ran away. Where is it? Where is Herrick—the man?"
"I don't know," Gabriel lied promptly and with force. Not for worlds would he have excited her with the truth. "Never you mind about that. Just lie still, now, till I come back!"
Already, among the rusty utensils that had served for the "sugaring-off," the previous spring, he had routed out a tin pail. He kicked a quantity of leaves in under the sheet-iron open stove, flung some sticks atop of them, and started a little blaze. Warm water, he reflected,would serve better than cold in removing that clotting blood and dressing the hurt.
Then, saying no further word, but filled with admiration for the girl's pluck, he seized the pail and started for water.
"Nerve?" he said to himself, as he ran down the road toward a little brook he remembered having crossed, a few hundred yards to southward. "Nerve, indeed! Not one complaint about her own injuries! Not a word of lamentation! If this isn't a thoroughbred, whoever or whatever she is, I never saw one!"
He returned, presently, with the pail nearly full of cold and sparkling water. Ignoring rust, he made her drink as deeply as she would, and then set a dipperful of water on the now hot sheet-iron.
Then, tearing a strip off the shawl, he made ready for his work as an amateur physician.
"Tell me," said he, kneeling there beside her in the hut which was already beginning to grow dusk, "except for this cut on your forehead, do you feel any injury? Think you've got any broken bones? See if you can move your legs and arms, all right."
She obeyed.
"Nothing broken, I guess," she answered. "What a miracle! Please leave me, now. I can wash my own hurt. Go—go find Herrick! He needs you worse than I do!"
"No he doesn't!" blurted Gabriel with such conviction that she understood.
"You mean?" she queried, as he brought the dipper of now tepid water to her side. "He—he's dead?"
He hesitated to answer.
"Dead! Yes, I understand!" she interpreted his silence. "You needn't tell me. I know!"
He nodded.
"Yes," said he. "Your chauffeur has paid the penalty of trying to drive a six-cylinder car with alcohol. Now, think no more of him! Here, let me see how badly you're cut."
"Let me sit up, first," she begged. "I—I'm not hurt enough to be lying here like—like an invalid!"
She tried to rise, but with a strong hand on her shoulder he forced her back. She shuddered, with the horror of the chauffeur's death strong upon her.
"Please lie still," he begged. "You've had a terrific shock, and have lived through it by a miracle, indeed. You're wounded and still bleeding. Youmustbe quiet!"
The tone in his voice admitted no argument. Submissive now to his greater strength, this daughter of wealth and power lay back, closed her tired eyes and let the revolutionist, the proletarian, minister to her.
Dipping the piece of shawl into the warm water, he deftly moistened the dried blood on her brow and cheek, and washed it all away. He cleansed her sullied hair, as well, and laid it back from the wound.
"Tell me if I hurt you, now," he bade, gently as a woman. "I've got to wash the cut itself."
She answered nothing, but lay quite still. And so, hardly wincing, she let him lave the jagged wound that stretched from her right temple up into the first tendrils of the glorious red-gold hair.
"H'm!" thought Gabriel, as he now observed the cutwith close attention. "I'm afraid there'll have to be some stitches taken here!" But of this he said nothing. All he told her was: "Nothing to worry over. You'll be as good as new in a few days. As a miracle, it'ssomemiracle!"
Having completed the cleansing of the cut, he fetched his knapsack and produced a clean handkerchief, which he folded and laid over the wound. This pad he secured in place by a long bandage cut from the edge of the shawl and tied securely round her shapely head.
"There," said he, surveying his improvisation with considerable satisfaction. "Now you'll do, till we can undertake the next thing. Sorry I haven't any brandy to give you, or anything of that sort. The fact is, I don't use it, and have none with me. How do you feel, now?"
She opened her eyes and looked up at him with the ghost of a smile on her pale lips.
"Oh, much, much better, thank you!" she answered. "I don't need any brandy. I'm—awfully strong, really. In a little while I'll be all right. Just give me a little more water, and—and tell me—who are you?"
"Who am I?" he queried, holding up her head while she drank from the tin cup he had now taken from his knapsack. "I? Oh, just an out-of-work. Nobody of any interest to you!"
A certain tinge of bitterness crept into his voice. In health, he knew, a woman of this class would not suffer him even to touch her hand.
"Don'task me who I am, please. And I—I won't askyourname. We're of different worlds, I guess. But forthe moment, Fate has levelled the barriers. Just let it go at that. And now, if you can stay here, all right; perhaps I can hike back to the next house, below here, and telephone, and summon help."
"How far is it?" she asked, looking at him with wonder in her lovely eyes—wonder, and new thoughts, and a strange kind of longing to know more of this extraordinary man, so strong, so gentle, so unwilling to divulge himself or ask her name.
"How far?" he repeated. "Oh, four or five miles. I can make it in no time. And with luck, I can have an auto and a doctor here before dark. Well, does that suit you?"
"Don't go, please," she answered. "I—I may be still a little weak and foolish, but—somehow, I don't want to be left alone. I want to be kept from remembering, from thinking of those last, awful moments when the car was running away; when it struck the wall, at the turn; when I was thrown out, and—and knew no more. Don't go just yet," the girl entreated, covering her eyes with both hands, as though to shut out the horrible vision of the catastrophe.
"All right," Gabriel answered. "Just as you please. Only, if I stay, you must promise to stop thinking about the accident, and try to pull together."
"I promise," she agreed, looking at him with strange eyes. "Oh dear," she added, with feminine inconsequentiality, "my hair's all down, and Lord knows where the pins are!"
He smiled to himself as she managed, with the aid of such few hairpins as remained, to coil the copperymeshes once more round her head and even somewhat over the bandage, and secure them in place.
At sight of his face as he watched her, she too smiled wanly—the first time he had seen a real smile on her mouth.
"I'm only a woman, after all," she apologized. "You don't understand. You can't. But no matter. Tell me—why need you go, at all?"
"Why? For help, of course."
"There's sure to be a motor, or something, along this road, before very long," she answered. "Put up some signal or other, to stop it. That will save you a long, long walk, and save me from—remembering! I need you here with me," she added earnestly. "Don't go—please!"
"All right, as you will," the man made reply. "I'll rig a danger-signal on the road; and then all we can do will be to wait."
This plan he immediately put into effect, setting his knapsack in the middle of the road and piling up brush and limbs of trees about it.
"There," he said to himself, as he surveyed the result, "no car will get bythat, without noticing it!"
Then he returned to the sugar-house, some hundred yards back from the highway in the grove, now already beginning to grow dim with the shadows of approaching nightfall. The glowing coals of the fire gleamed redly, through the rough place. The girl, still lying on her bed of leaves and auto-robes, with the mutilated shawl drawn over her, looked up at him with an expression of trust and gratitude. For a second, only one, something quick and vital gripped at the wanderer's heart—some vague, intangible longing for a home and a woman, a longing old as our race, deep-planted in the inmost citadel of every man's soul. But, half-impatiently, he drove the thought away, dismissed it, and, smiling down at her with cheerful eyes and white, even teeth, said reassuringly:
"Everything's all right now. The first machine that passes, will take you to civilization."
"And you?" she asked. "What of you, then?"
"Me? Oh, I'll hike," he answered. "I'll plug along just as I was doing when I found you."
"Where to?"
"Oh, north."
"What for?"
"Work. Please don't question me. I'd rather you wouldn't."
She pondered a moment.
"Are you—what they call a—workingman?" she presently resumed.
"Yes," said he. "Why?"
"And are you happy?"
"Yes. In a way. Or shall be, when I've done what I mean to do."
"But—forgive me—you're very poor?"
"Not at all! I have, at this present moment, more than eighteen dollars in my pocket, and I havethese!"
He showed her his two hands, big and sinewed, capable and strong.
"Eighteen dollars," she mused, half to herself. "Why, I have spent that, and more, for a single ounce of a new perfume—something very rare, you know, from Japan."
"Indeed? Well, don't tellme," he replied. "I'm not interested in how you spend money, but how you get it."
"Get it? Oh, father gives me my allowance, that's all."
"And he squeezes it out of the common people?"
She glanced at him quickly.
"You—you aren't a Socialist, into the bargain, are you?" she inquired.
"At your service," he bowed.
"This is strange, strange indeed," she said. "Tell me your name."
"No," he refused. "I'd still rather not. Nor shall I ask yours. Please don't volunteer it."
Came a moment's silence, there in the darkening hut, with the fire-glow red upon their faces.
"Happy," said the girl. "You say you're happy. While I—"
"Are not unhappy, surely?" asked Gabriel, leaning forward as he sat there beside her, and gazing keenly into her face.
"How should I know?" she answered. "Unhappy? No, perhaps not. But vacant—empty—futile!"
"Yes, I believe you," Gabriel judged. "You tell me no news. And as you are, you will ever be. You will live so and die so. No, I won't preach. I won't proselytize. I won't even explain. It would be useless. You are one pole, I the other. And the world—the whole wide world—lies between!"
Suddenly she spoke.
"You're a Socialist," said she. "What does it mean to be a Socialist?"
He shook his head.
"You couldn't understand, if I told you," he answered.
"Why not?"
"Oh, because your ideas and environments and interests and everything have been so different from mine—because you're what you are—because you can never be anything else."
"You mean Socialism is something beyond my understanding?" she demanded, piqued. "Of course, that's nonsense. I'm a human being. I've got brains, haven't I? I can understand a scheme of dividing up, or levelling down, or whatever it is, even if I can't believe in it!"
He smiled oddly.
"You've just proved, by what you've said," he answered slowly, "that your whole concepts are mistaken. Socialism isn't anything like what you think it is, and if I should try to explain it, you'd raise ten thousand futile objections, and beg the question, and defeat my object of explanation by your very inability to get the point of view. So you see—"
"I see that I want to know more!" she exclaimed, with determination. "If there's any branch of human knowledge that lies outside my reasoning powers, it's time I found that fact out. I thought Socialists were wild, crazy, erratic cranks; but if you're one, then I seem to have been wrong. You look rational enough, and you talk in an eminently sane manner."
"Thank you," he replied, ironically.
"Don't be sarcastic!" she retorted. "I only meant—"
"It's all right, anyhow," said he. "You've simply got the old, stupid, wornout ideas of your class. You can't grasp this new ideal, rising through the ruck and wasteand sin and misery of the present system. I don't blame you. You're a product of your environment. You can't help it. With that environment, how can you sense the newer and more vital ideas of the day?"
For a moment she fixed eager eyes on him, in silence. Then asked she:
"Ideals? You mean that Socialism has ideals, and that it's not all a matter of tearing down and dividing up, and destroying everything good and noble and right—all the accumulated wisdom and resources of the world?"
He laughed heartily.
"Who handed you that bunk?" he demanded.
"Father told me Socialism was all that, and more,"
"What's your father's business?"
"Why, investments, stocks, bonds, industrial development and all that sort of thing."
"Hm!" he grunted. "I thought as much!"
"You mean that father misinformed me?"
"Rather!"
"Well, if he did, what is Socialism?"
"Socialism," answered the young man slowly, while he fixed his eyes on the smouldering fire, "Socialism is a political movement, a concept of life, a philosophy, an interpretation, a prophecy, an ideal. It embraces history, economics, science, art, religion, literature and every phase of human activity. It explains life, points the way to better things, gives us hope, strengthens the weary and heavy-laden, bids us look upward and onward, and constitutes the most sublime ideal ever conceived by the soul of man!"
"Can this be true?" the girl demanded, astonished.
"Not only can, but is! Socialism would free the world from slavery and slaves, from war, poverty, prostitution, vice and crime; would cleanse the sores of our rotting capitalism, would loose the gyves from the fettered hands of mankind, would bid the imprisoned soul of man awake to nobler and to purer things! How? The answer to that would take me weeks. You would have to read and study many books, to learn the entire truth. But I am telling you the substance of the ideal—a realizable ideal, and no chimera—when I say that Socialism sums up all that is good, and banishes all that is evil! And do you wonder that I love and serve it, all my life?"
She peered at him in wonder.
"You serve it? How?" she demanded.
"By spreading it abroad; by speaking for it, working for it, fighting for it! By the spoken and the printed word! By every act and through every means whereby I can bring it nearer and nearer realization!"
"You're a dreamer, a visionary, a fanatic!" she exclaimed.
"You think so? No, I can't agree. Time will judge that matter. Meanwhile, I travel up and down the earth, spreading Socialism."
"And what do you get out of it, personally?"
"I? What do you mean? I never thought of that question."
"I mean, money. What do you make out of it?"
He laughed heartily.
"I get a few jail-sentences, once in a while; now and then a crack over the head with a policeman's billy, or maybe a peek down the muzzle of a rifle. I get—"
"You mean that you're a martyr?"
"By no means! I've never even thought of being called such. This is a privilege, this propaganda of ours. It's the greatest privilege in the world—bringing the word of life and hope and joy to a crushed, bleeding and despairing world!"
She thought a moment, in silence.
"You're a poet, I believe!" said she.
"No, not that. Only a worker in the ranks."
"But do you write poetry?"
"I write verses. You'd hardly call them poetry!"
"Verses? About Socialism?"
"Sometimes."
"Will you give me some?"
"What do you mean?"
"Tell me some of them."
"Of course not! I can't recite my verses! They aren't worth bothering you with!"
"That's for me to judge. Let me hear something of that kind. If you only knew how terribly much you interest me!"
"You mean that?"
"Of course I do! Please let me hear something you've written!"
He pondered a moment, then in his well-modulated, deep-toned voice began: