The swing-stage was poised in the air ready to be lowered, and two of the deck-hands were dropping from the shore end to trail the bow line up the paved slope to the nearest mooring-ring. There was an electric arc-light opposite the steamer's berth, and Charlotte shaded her eyes with her hands to follow the motions of the two bent figures under the dripping hawser.
One of the men was wearing a cap, and there was a small bundle hanging at his belt. She recognized him at once. At the mooring-ring he was the one who stooped to make the line fast, and the other, a negro, stood aside. At that moment the landing-stage fell, and in the confusion of debarkation which promptly followed, the thrilling bit of by-play at the mooring-ring passed unnoted by all save the silent watcher on the saloon-deck.
While the man in the cap was still on his knees,two men stole from the shadow of the nearest freight pyramid and flung themselves upon him. He fought fiercely for a moment, and though he was more than doubly outweighted, rose to his feet, striking out viciously and dragging his assailants up with him. In the struggle the bundle dropped from his belt, and Charlotte saw him kick it aside. The waiting negro caught it deftly and vanished among the freight pyramids; whereupon one of the attacking pair wrenched himself out of the three-man scuffle and darted away in pursuit.
This left but a single antagonist for the fugitive, and Charlotte's sympathies deserted her convictions for the moment. But while she was biting her lip to keep from crying out, the fugitive stepped back and held out his hands; and she saw the gleam of polished metal reflecting the glare of the arc-light when the officer snapped the handcuffs upon his wrists.
It was with a distinct sense of culpability oppressing her that she went back to her aunt, and she was careful not to let the invalid see her face. Fortunately, there was a thing to be done, and the transfer to the other steamer came opportunely to help her to re-establish the balance of things distorted.
She was sorry, but, after all, the man had only himself to blame. None the less, the wish that some one else might have been his betrayer was promising to grow later into remorseful and lasting regret when, with her aunt, she left theBelle Julie, and walked up the levee to go aboard theStar of the North.
After suffering all the pangs of those who lose between the touch and the clutch, Griswold had found the red-handkerchief bundle precisely where it had been hidden; namely, buried safely in the deck-load of sacked coffee on the engine-room guard.
It came to light in the final half-hour of the voyage, when he and his mates were transferring the coffee to the main-deck, forward. It had not been disturbed; and what had happened was obvious enough, after the fact. After its hiding, arm's-length deep, in a cranny between the sacks, some sudden jar of the boat had slightly shifted the cargo, closing one cranny and opening another.
With the money once more in his possession he had a swift return of the emotions which had thrilled him when he found himself standing on the sidewalk in front of the Bayou State Security with the block of bank-notes under his arm. Once more he was on fair fighting terms with the world, and the star of hope, which had gone out like a candle in a gust of wind at the discovery of his loss, swung high in the firmament, shining all the more brightly for its long occultation.
As to the battle for the keeping which was probably awaiting him at the St. Louis landing, the prospect of coming to blows, man-fashion, with the enemy, was not wholly unwelcome. With all of his incompletenesses this young rebel of life was no coward. If the New Orleans thief-takers were waiting for him in the shadows of the great city's landing-place, so be it; he would try to give them their money's worth: and an eager impatience to be at it got into his blood.
The few necessary preliminaries were arranged while theBelle Juliewas backing and filling for the landing. Since to be taken with the money in his possession was to give the enemy the chance of winning at one stroke both the victory and the spoils, he made a confederate of the negro whose part he had taken in the quarrel with M'Grath. The man was grateful and loyal according to his gifts; and Griswold's need was too pressing to stick at any trifle of unintelligence.
"Mose, you'll go ashore with me on the spring line," he said, when he had found his man at the heel of the landing-stage.
"Yes, suh, Mars' Gravitt; dat's me, sholy."
"All right. You see this bundle. If anybody tackles me while we're making fast, I'm going to drop it, and you must get it and run away. Do you understand?"
The negro eyed the bundle suspiciously.
"Ain't no dinnymite, 'r nothin' er that sawt in hit, is dey, Cap'm?"
"No."
"Whut-all mus' I do when I's done tuk out wid hit?"
"Get away, first; then keep out of sight and hang around the levee for an hour or two. If I don't turn up before you get tired, pitch the thing into the river and go about your business. How much money does the captain owe you?"
"Cap'm Mayfiel'? Shuh! he don't owe me nothin'. I done draw de las' picayune dat was comin' to me yistiday—an' dat yaller nigger over yonder got it in de crap-game, same as turrers."
Griswold put a twenty-dollar bill into the black palm, and when the crap victim made out the figure of it by the glow of the furnace fires, his eyes bulged. "Gorra-mighty!" he gasped; and would have given it back.
"No, keep it; it's yours. Do exactly as I have told you, and if I'm able to keep my date with you, I'll double it. But if I don't show up, remember—the bundle goes into the river just as it is. If you open it, it'll conjure you worse than any Obi-man you ever heard of."
"No,suh! I ain't gwine open hit, Cap'm—not if dey's cunjah in hit; no, suh!"
"Well, there is—the worst kind of conjure this old world has ever known. But it won't hurt you if you don't meddle with it. Keep your wits about you and be ready to grab it and run. Here we go."
The pilot had found his wharfage and was edging theBelle Julieup to it. The bow men paid outslack, and Griswold and the black, dropping from the swinging stage, trailed the end of the wet hawser up to the nearest mooring-ring. Though haste in making fast is the spring-line man's first duty, Griswold took a fraction of a second to look around him. The mooring-ring lay fair in the mock noonday of electric light, and there was no cover near it save a tarpaulined pyramid of sugar barrels. Up the levee slope the way was open to the one-sided river-fronting street; and beyond the tarpaulin-covered sugar were more freight pyramids, with shadowy alleys between them.
Satisfied with what he saw, Griswold bade the negro keep watch and knelt to knot the hawser in the ring. The line was water-soaked and stiff, and in the momentary struggle with it his caution relaxed its eyehold on the pyramid of sugar barrels. The lapse was hardly more than a glance aside, but it sufficed. While the negro sentinel was stammering, "L-l-lookout, Mars' Cap'm!" the trap was sprung.
In deference to the up-coming passengers from theBelle Julie, the two man-catchers tried to do their job quietly. But Griswold would not have it so, and he was up and had twisted himself free when a blow from a clubbed pistol drove him back to his knees. Half stunned by the clubbing, he still made shift to spring afoot again, to drop his handkerchief bundle and kick it aside, and to close with his assailants while the negro was snatching up the treasure and darting away among the freight pyramids.After that he had but one thought; to keep the two plain-clothes men busy until the negro had made his escape. Even this proved to be a forlorn hope, since the smaller of the two instantly broke away to give chase, while the other stepped back, spun his weapon in air, and levelled it.
Rage-blinded as he was, Griswold knew that the levelled pistol meant surrender or death. In the fine battle-frenzy of the moment he was on the verge of accepting the alternative. Life and the love of it were merged in a fierce desire to rush Berserk-mad upon the weapon and the man behind it, and his muscles were hardening for the spring when he chanced to look past the levelled weapon to theBelle Julie; to the saloon-deck guard where a solitary, gray-coated figure stood clinging to a stanchion and looking on with what agonies of soul none might know. Like a flash of revealing light it came to him that the death which would be the lesser of two evils for him would brim a life-long cup of trembling for the woman whose duty it had been to betray him, and he thrust out his wrists for the manacles.
Quite naturally, the upflash of self-abnegation gave birth to renewed hope; and when his captor had handcuffed him and was walking him toward a closed carriage drawn up before the nearest saloon in the river-fronting street, he ventured to ask what he was wanted for.
"You'll find that out soon enough," was the curt reply, and nothing more was said until the carriagewas reached and the door had been jerked open. "Get in!" commanded the majesty of the law, and when the door was slammed upon the captive, the plain-clothes man turned to the driver, a little wizened Irishman with a face like a shrivelled winter apple. "What time does that New Orleans fast train pull out?"
Griswold heard the reply: "Sivin-forty-five, sorr," and something in the thin, piping voice gave him fresh courage. Through the open window of the carriage he saw his captor glance at his watch and begin an impatient sentry-beat up and down under the electric transparency advertising the particular brand of whiskey specialized by the saloon. He was evidently waiting for his colleague to bring in the negro, and time pressed.
While he looked, Griswold was conscious of a curious change creeping into heart and brain. From typifying himself as an escaping criminal the psychological objective was slowly but surely becoming the subjective. Hewasa criminal. The conclusion brought no self-accusation, no prickings of conscience. On the contrary, it swept the ground clear of all the ethical obstructions, leaving only a vast subtlety and furtiveness, the sly ferocity of the trapped animal.
Through half of the sentry-beat the big man's back was turned: Griswold's eyes measured the distance, and the new subtlety weighed the chances of a cautious opening of the carriage door, a tiger spring to the pavement, and a battering out of the man'sbrains with the handcuffs. There were few passers: it might be done.
It was not because it was too cold-blooded that he put the suggestion aside. It was rather because the man-catcher himself suggested another expedient. The spring evening was raw and chilly, and the open doors of the saloon volleyed light and warmth and a beckoning invitation. Griswold's gift, prostituted to the service of the changed point of view, bade him read in the red face, the loose lip, and the bibulous eyes the temptation that was gripping the plain-clothes man. "Wait," whispered the colorless inner voice; "wait, and be ready when he goes in to get the drink he has promised himself he will never again be weak enough to take while he is on duty. It won't be long."
Griswold waited. By a careful contortion of the manacled hands, which seemed suddenly to have become endowed with the crafty deftness of the hands of a pickpocket, he found his working capital in a pocket of the short-sleeved coat. It had been diminished only by the hundred dollars put into John Gavitt's hands, and the twenty he had given the negro. He wished he might have had a glimpse of the little Irish cabman's face. Since he had not, he made two hundred dollars of the money into a compact roll and put the remainder back into the inner pocket.
It was only a minute or two after this that the red-faced man's impatience blossomed into the thirst that will not be denied, and he went into thesaloon to get a drink, first putting the cabman on guard.
"Get down here and keep an eye on this dicky-bird," he ordered. "Slug him if he tries to make a break."
But the cabman hung back.
"I'm no fightin' man, sorr; an', besides, I don't dare lave me harrses," he objected. But the officer broke in angrily.
"What the devil are you afraid of? He's got the clamps on, and couldn't hurt you if he wanted to. Come down here!"
The little Irishman clambered down from his box reluctantly, with the reins looped over his arm. When he peered in at the open window of the carriage the big man had passed beyond the swinging screens of the saloon entrance and Griswold seized his opportunity quickly.
"What's your job worth, my man?" he whispered.
The cabman snatched a swift glance over his shoulder before he ventured to answer.
"Don't yez be timptin' a poor man wid a wife an' sivin childer hangin' to um—don't yez do it, sorr!"
Griswold, the brother-keeping, would have thought twice before opening any door of temptation for a brother man. But the new Griswold had no compunctions.
"It's two hundred dollars to you if you can get me away from here before that red-faced drunkard comes back. Have a runaway—anything! Here's the money!"
For a single timorous instant the cabman hesitated. Then he took the roll of money and crammed it into his pocket without looking at it. Before Griswold could brace himself there was a quickwhishof the whip, a piping cry from the driver, and the horses sprang away at a reckless gallop, with the little Irishman hanging to the reins and shouting feebly like a faint-hearted Automedon.
Griswold caught a passing glimpse of the red-faced man wiping his lips in the doorway of the saloon as the carriage bounded forward; and when the critical instant came, he was careful to fall out on the riverward side of the vehicle. It was a desperate expedient, since he could not wait to choose the favorable moment, and the handcuffs made him practically helpless. Chance saved the clumsy escape from resulting in a speedy recapture. When he tumbled out of the lurching carriage he was hurled violently against something that figured as a wall of solid masonry and was half stunned by the concussion. None the less, he had wit enough to lie motionless in the shadow of the wall, and the hue and cry, augmented by this time to a yelling mob, swept past without discovering him.
When it was safe to do so, he sat up and felt for broken bones. There were none; and he looked about him. The wall of masonry resolved itself into a cargo of brick piled on the levee side of the street, and obeying the primary impulse of a fugitive, he quickly put the sheltering bulk of it between himself and the lighted thoroughfare.
The next step had to be resolutely thought out. How was he to get rid of the handcuffs? Any policeman would have a key, and there were doubtless plenty of locksmiths in St. Louis. But both of these sources of assistance were out of the question. Whom, then? The answer came in one word—M'Grath. On a day when the up-river voyage was no more than fairly begun, one of the negroes in the crew had procured a bottle of bad whiskey. To pacify him the mate had put him in irons, using two pairs of handcuffs for the purpose. Therefore, M'Grath must have a key.
But would M'Grath do it? That remained to be seen; and since hesitation was no part of Griswold's equipment, he covered the fetters as well as he could with a scrap of bagging, and walked boldly down the levee and aboard theBelle Julie, falling into line with the returning file of roustabouts.
The mate was at the heel of the foot-plank, and he saw at once what the scrap of sacking was meant to hide.
"Hello, there, Gavitt!" he called, not less gruffly than of yore, but without the customary imprecation; "What are ye doing with thim things on?"
Griswold told a straight story, concealing nothing: not even the detective's refusal to tell him what he was arrested for.
M'Grath was smiling grimly when the tale was finished. "And did he let ye come back to collect yer day-pay, then?" he asked, ironically.
"Hardly. He shoved me into a cab and then went into a saloon to get a drink. While he was gone, the horses ran away and I got out," said Griswold, still adhering to the exact facts.
"Ye'd ought to find that cabby and buy him a seegyar," was the mate's comment. "So ye legged it, did ye?"
"Yes; when I got a show. But I can't get these things off."
This time M'Grath's smile was a grin.
"I'll bet ye can't. They ain't made f'r to come off. Never mind; peg along afther me. You did be doing me a good turn wan black night, and I'm not forgetting it."
He led the way up to his quarters in the texas, and telling Griswold to wait, went down on his knees to rummage in the locker beneath the berth.
"I've got a couple o' pair av thim things in here, somewhere, and maybe the key to 'em will fit yours," he went on, adding: "What's become av Mose?"
Again Griswold told the exact truth.
"The last I saw of him he was making a run for it up the levee, with one of the plain-clothes men chasing him."
M'Grath found his handcuffs and tried the key in those upon Griswold's wrists. It fitted.
"Now ye're fut- and hand-loose, I'll say to ye what I wouldn't say to a cripple. If ye've been telling me the truth, 'tis only the half av it. What have ye been doing, Gavitt?"
Griswold smiled. "Toting cargo on theBelle Julie,since you've known me. You'd swear to that, wouldn't you?"
"But before that?"
"Loafing around New Orleans for a month or two."
The big mate pushed him to a seat on the after berth and sat down opposite.
"Because ye fished me out o' the river whin ye had good cause to lave me be, I'll tell ye a thing or two for the good av yer soul. Thing number wan is that ye're not Gavitt; ye're no more like him than I am. Let that go, an' come to thing number two; ye've been up to some deviltry. How do I know? Because, at the last landing below this a little man comes aboard an' spots you. Is that all? It is not. Whin theBelle Julieswings in, he's the first man off, making a clane jump av a good tin feet from the engine-room guards. I saw 'im."
Griswold nodded and said, "I was wondering how they came to place me so easily. This fellow knew I would be one of the two to carry out the spring line?"
"He did, f'r I told him."
"Meaning to get me pulled?"
"Meaning nothing but wanting to be rid av the bothering little man. He said he was a friend av yours, and didn't care to be speaking to ye while ye was mixing with the naygurs. But that's all over and gone. What'll ye be doing next?"
Griswold took a leaf out of the past. Safety in a former peril had grown out of a breakfast deliberatelyeaten in a café next door to the Bayou State Security.
"What would I do but finish my job on theJulie?" he said, pushing the theory to its logical conclusion.
The mate shook his head. "Ye needn't do that; the cops might be coming down here and running you in again. How much pay have ye drawn?"
"Not any."
M'Grath took a greasy wallet from his pocket and counted out a deck-hand's wages for the trip.
"Take this, and I'll be getting it back from the clerk. It might not be good f'r ye to show up at the office. Where's yer hat?"
"It was lost in the shuffle out yonder at the mooring-ring."
The mate found an old one of his own, together with a long-tailed coat, much the worse for wear.
"Do you be taking these. They'll not be so likely to pick you up before ye can get up-town if ye look a little less like a hobo."
Griswold suffered a sudden return to the meliorating humanities.
"I've been calling you all the hard names I could lay tongue to, M'Grath, and there have been times when I would have given the price of a good farm for the privilege of standing up to you on a bit of green grass with nobody looking on. I take it all back. You say you haven't forgotten: neither will I forget, and maybe my turn will come again, some day."
"Go along with you," growled the rough-tonguedIrishman, whose very kindness had a tang of brutality in it. "If you're coming across the naygur, Mose, anywhere, sind him back and tell him I'll see that he gets real money f'r helping us unload. Off with ye, now, whilst they're catching up with yer runaway cab."
Griswold went leisurely, as befitted his theory, and upon reaching the levee, turned aside among the freight pyramids in search of his confederate. Now that there was time to recall the facts he feared that the negro had been taken. He had secured but a few yards' start in the race, and his pursuer was a white man, able to back speed with intelligence. Griswold had a sickening fit of despair when he contemplated the possibility of failure with the goal almost in sight; and the reaction, when he stumbled upon the negro skulking in the shadows of a lumber cargo, was sharp enough to make him faint and dizzy.
The negro did not recognize him at first and was about to run away when Griswold shook off the benumbing weakness and called out.
"T'ank de good Lawd! is dat you-all, Cap'm Gravitt? I's dat shuck up I couldn' recconize my ol' mammy! Tek dishyer cunjah-bag o' yourn 'fo' I gwine drap hit. Hit's des beenbu'nin'my han's ev' sense I done tuk out wid it!"
Griswold took the handkerchief bundle, and the mere touch of it put new life into him.
"Where is the fellow who was chasing you, Mose?" he asked.
"I's nev' gwine tell you dat; no, suh. Las' time I seed him, he's des t'arin' off strips up de levee after turrer fellah."
"What other fellow?"
The negro laughed and did a double shuffle at the mere recollection of it.
"Hi-yah! Turrer fellah is de fellah what done tuk my job. Hit was des dis-a-way: when I t'ink dat white man gwine catch me, sholy, I des drap down in de darkes' cawneh I kin fin'; dat's what I done, yas, suh. He des keep on agoin',spat, spat, spat, an' when he come out front deGineral Jacksonover yondeh, one dem boys what's wukkin' on her,hetuk out, an' dat white man des tu'n hisself loose an' mek his laigs go lak he gwine shek 'um plum off; yas, sah!"
Griswold suffered another lapse into the humanities when he saw the list of participants in his act growing steadily with each fresh complication, and he said, "I'm sorry for that, Mose."
"Nev' you min' 'bout dat, Cap'm. Dat boy he been doin' somepin to mek him touchous, 'less'n he nev' tuk out dat-a-way, no, suh!"
"Maybe so. Well, we can't help it now. Here is the other twenty I promised you."
"T'ank you, suh; t'ank you kin'ly Cap'm. You-all's des de whites' white man ev' I knowned. You sholy is."
"What are you going to do with yourself, now?" Griswold inquired.
"Who, me? I's gwine up yondeh to dat resterawan' git me de bigges' mess o' fried fish I kin hol'—dat's me; yas, suh."
"M'Grath says he'll pay you levee wages if you'll come back to the boat and help get the cargo out of her."
"Reckon I ain't gwine back to deJulie: no, suh. Dat'd be gittin' rich too fas' for dis niggeh. Good-night, Cap'm Gravitt; an' t'ank you kin'ly, suh."
Griswold went his way musing upon the little object-lesson afforded by the negro's determination. Here was a fellow man who was one of the feeblest of the under dogs in the great social fight; and with money enough in hand to give him at least a breathing interval, his highest ambition was a mess of fried fish.
The object-lesson was suggestive, if not specially encouraging, and Griswold made a mental note of it for further study when the question of present safety should be more satisfactorily answered.
Half an hour or such a matter after the hue-and-cry runaway from the curb in front of the saloon two doors above, Mr. Abram Sonneschein, dealer in second-hand clothing and sweat-shop bargains, saw a possible customer drifting across the street, and made ready the grappling hooks of commercial enterprise.
The drifter was apparently a passenger from some lately arrived steamboat; but even to the trained eye of so acute an observer as Mr. Sonneschein he presented difficulties in the way of classification. Only temporarily, however. The long-tailed coat and the wide-brimmed, soft felt hat were the insignia of the down-river, back-country planter, and the merchant drew his conclusions accordingly.
"My, my! Rachel," he remarked to his helpmate behind the counter. "See dis chay from de backvoods across der street coming! Maype ve could sell him some odder t'ings to go vit dot coat, ain'd it? Come right in,meinfrient; dis is der blace you vas looking for," this last to the drifter, with a detaining finger hooked persuasively into a buttonhole of the long-tailed coat.
So much for the grappling. But the possible customerwas not to be landed so easily. Twice and yet once again he broke away from the detaining finger; and when at last he finally allowed himself to be drawn into the garish, ill-smelling little shop, he proved to be discouragingly indifferent and hard to please in the matter of prices, hanging back and taking refuge in countrified reticence when Mr. Sonneschein's eloquence grew pathetically pressing.
"I did think maybe I'd buy me a suit of clothes," he admitted, finally, drawling the words to make his speech fit the countrified rôle, "but there isn't any hurry. I reckon I'll wait a spell and look around and see what kind of fashions they're wearing now."
This was a tacit acknowledgment that he had money to spend, and the eager merchant redoubled his efforts. His perseverance was rewarded, at length, and when the ship of bargain and sale was bowling merrily along before a fair breeze of suggestion, Mr. Sonneschein interlarded his solicitations with an account of the recent miscarriage of justice in front of the near-at-hand saloon.
The customer listened with apparent incuriosity, as one whom these doings in the city world touched but remotely; but the two or three questions he asked were nicely calculated to bring out the more important facts. The detectives had cautiously kept their own counsel as to the details of their quest. Mr. Sonneschein had gossiped with the policeman on the beat, and the policeman had talked with the red-faced man who had come alone in the cab, and had taken an unofficial drink with the roundsman beforegoing down to the steamboat landing. He and his "partner" were from New Orleans, and they were after a man who was wanted for big money: that was all he would tell the roundsman.
"I suppose they've caught him again long before this," said the hesitant customer, trying on a coat which might have been modelled upon a man twice his size, and surveying himself in the shop looking-glass while Mr. Sonneschein lovingly smoothed the lapels into place and gathered a generous handful of the surplus material at the back.
"I don't know if dey have—ain'd dot der elegantist fit in der vorld, now. See, Rachel; ain'd dot schplendit?"
"They didn't happen to mention the fellow's name, did they?" asked the prospective purchaser.
"Not much dey didn't! Dem dedectifs iss too schmart for dot. Dey don't give it avay when somepody else might got der rewards. How you like dot schplendit coat, now?"
"Seems tolerable big, doesn't it?" said the customer, whose speech still fitted his part to the final drawl. "Suppose we try something else. So there is a reward, is there?"
Mr. Sonneschein took the reward for granted and expressed a devout wish that he might be able to finger it. Whereupon the customer said he wishedhemight; and here the topic died a natural death and the business of buying and selling went on without further interruption.
There was little suggestion of the tramp roustabout,and still less, perhaps, of the gentleman, about the person who presently emerged from the Sonneschein emporium. Nevertheless, he appeared to be well satisfied with his acquisitions, bearing himself as a purchaser who has by no means had the worse in the bargaining. At the first street corner he inquired his way of a policeman and was directed cityward. A square farther on he selected a barber's shop of cleanly promise, went in, tossed his newly acquired hand-bag to the porter, and took the first vacant chair.
"A hair-cut, a clean shave—not too close, and a bath afterward," was his laconic order; and a modest tip facilitated things and provided the little luxuries.
An hour later no one who had known him bearded and unkempt would have recognized the clean-shaven, athletic-looking young man who ran down the steps of the barber's shop and went swinging along on his way up-town. But the transformation was still incomplete. Reaching the retail district, he strolled purposefully up one street and down another, passing many brilliantly lighted shops until he found one exactly to his liking. A courteous salesman caught him up at the door, and led the way to the designated departments.
By this time Mr. Sonneschein's hesitant and countrified customer had undergone a complete metamorphosis. No longer reluctant and hard to please, he passed rapidly from counter to counter, making his selections with man-like celerity and certainty and bargaining not at all. When he was quitethrough, there was enough to furnish a generous travelling wardrobe; a head-to-foot change of garmentings with a surplus to fill two lordly suit-cases; so he bought the suit-cases also, and had them taken with his other purchases, to the dressing-room.
Here, in quiet and great comfort, he made his second change of clothing, first carefully removing from each garment all the little tags and trademarks which declared it St. Louis-bought. These tags, together with the Gavitt and the Sonneschein costumes, were crowded into the Sonneschein hand-bag, with the soiled red handkerchief to keep them company; and he was carrying this hand-bag when he reappeared to the waiting salesman.
"I see you have steam heat," he remarked. "Is your boiler-room accessible?"
"Yes, sir; it's in the basement," was the reply, and the courteous clerk wondered if his liberal customer were thinking of adding the heating plant to his purchases.
Griswold saw the wonder and smiled. "No; I don't want to buy it," he explained, with the exact touch of familiarity which bridges all chasms. "But I'm just up from the coast, where they have a good bit of fever the year round, and it's as well to be on the safe side. May I trouble you to show me the way?"
"Certainly," said the salesman, wondering no more; and when he had led the way to the boiler-room, and had seen his customer thrust the hand-bag well back among the coals in the furnace, hethought it a worthy precaution and one which, if generally practiced, would considerably accelerate the clothing trade.
All traces of the deck-hand Gavitt, and of the Sonneschein planter-customer having been thus obliterated, there remained only the paying of his bill and the summoning of a cab. Oddly enough, the cab, when it came, proved to be a four-wheeler driven by a little, wizen-faced man whose thin, high-pitched voice was singularly familiar.
"The Hotel Chouteau?—yis, sorr. Will you plaze hand me thim grips? I can't lave me harrses."
The driver's excuse instantly tied the knot of recognition, and the man who had just cremated his former identities swore softly.
"Beg your pardon, sorr; was ye spakin' to me?"
"No; I was merely remarking that the world isn't as big as it might be."
"Faith, then, it's full big enough for a man wid a wife and sivin childer hangin' to um. Get in, sorr, and I'll have you at the Chouteau in t'ree shakes av a dead lamb's tail."
The little cabman was better than his word, but on the short drive to the hotel he found time to work out a small problem, not entirely to his satisfaction, but to at least a partial conclusion.
"'Tis the divil's own self he is, and there's nothing left av him but thim eyes and that scar on his forrud, and his manner of spakin'. But thim I'd swear to if I'd live to be as old as Father M'Guinness—rest his sowl."
All things considered, it was the Griswold of the college-graduate days—the days of the slender patrimony which had capitalized the literary beginning—who presented himself at the counter of the Hotel Chouteau at half-past nine o'clock on the evening of theBelle Julie'sarrival at St. Louis, wrote his name in the guest-book, and permitted an attentive bell-boy to relieve him of his two suit-cases.
The clerk, a rotund little man with a promising bald spot and a permanent smile, had appraised his latest guest in the moment of book-signing, and the result was a small triumph for the Olive Street furnishing house. Next to the genuinely tailor-made stands the quality of verisimilitude; and the keynote of the clerk's greeting was respectful affability.
"Glad to have you with us, Mr. Griswold. Would you like a room, or a suite?"
Griswold was sufficiently human to roll the long-submerged courtesy prefix as a sweet morsel under his tongue. With a day to spare he might have clinched the clerk's respect by taking a suite; the more luxurious, the better. But St. Louis, with at least two men in it who would sweep the corners intheir search for him, was only a place to put behind him. So he said: "Neither; if I have time to get my supper and catch a train. Have you a railway guide?"
"There is one in the writing-room. But possibly I can tell you what you wish to know. Which way are you going?"
Without stopping to think of the critical happenings which had intervened since the forming of the impulsive resolution fixing his destination, Griswold named the chosen field for the hazard of fresh fortunes, and its direction.
"North; to a town in Minnesota called Wahaska. Do you happen to know the place?"
"I know it very well, indeed; southern Minnesota is my old stamping-ground. Are you acquainted in Wahaska?—but I know you are not, or you wouldn't pronounce it 'Wayhaska'."
"You are quite right; I know next to nothing about the town. But I have been given the impression that it is a quiet little place out of the beaten track, where a man might spend a summer without having to share it with a lot of other city runaways of his kind."
The clerk smiled and shook his head.
"You might have done that a few years ago, but there's a fine lake, you know, and some New Orleans people have built a resort house. I understand it does a pretty fair business in the season."
Having assured himself that the New Orleans leaf in his book of experience was safely turned andsecurely pasted down, Griswold was nettled to find that the mere mention of the name sent creeping little chills of apprehension trickling up and down his spine. But innate stubbornness scoffed at the warning; derided and craved further details.
"How large a place is it?"
"Oh, four or five thousand, I should say; possibly more: big enough and busy enough so that a hundred-room resort house doesn't make it a souvenir town. It's a nice little city; modern, progressive, and business-like; trolleys, electric lights, and some manufacturing. Good people, too.Front!Check the gentleman's grips and show him the café. I'm sorry we can't give you dinner, but the dining-room closes at nine."
"Plenty of time, is there?" Griswold asked.
"Oh, yes; didn't I tell you? Your train leaves the Terminal at eleven-thirty; but you can get into the sleeper any time after eight o'clock."
The guest had crossed the lobby to the café, and the clerk was still dallying with the memories stirred up by the mention of his boyhood home, when a little man with weak eyes and a face that out-caricatured all the caricatures of the Irish, sidled up to the registry desk. The round-bodied clerk knew him and spoke in terms of accommodation.
"What is it, Patsy?"
"The young gentleman ye was spakin' to: is he gone?"
"He is in the café, getting his supper. What did you want of him?"
The weak-eyed little man was running a slow finger down the list of names on the guest-book, blinking as if the writing or the glare of the lights on the page dazzled him.
"I drove him, and he did be overpaying me, I think. What was ye saying his name would be?"
"It's right there, under your finger: Kenneth Griswold, New York."
"Um. And I wondher, now, where does he be living, whin he's at home?"
"I don't know; New York, I suppose, since he registers from there."
"And does he be staying here f'r awhile?"
"No; he is on his way to Minnesota."
"Um." A long pause followed in which the cabman appeared to be counting the coins in his pocket by the sense of touch. Then: "Would yez be writing that down for me on a bit av paper, Misther Edwards?—his name, and the name av the place where he does be going, I mane?"
"So you can write to him and refund the over-payment after you've been to confession?" laughed the clerk. Nevertheless, he wrote the name and address on a card for the petitioner.
"Thank ye, sorr; thank ye kindly. Whin a man has a wife and sivin childer hangin' to um—" but here the singsong voice of the porter calling the Burlington westbound silenced all other sounds and the clerk heard no more.
Seated at a well-appointed table in the Chouteau café, Griswold had ample time to overtake himselfin the race reconstructive, and for the moment the point of view became frankly Philistine. The luxurious hotel, with its air of invincible respectability; the snowy napery, the cut glass, the shaded lights, the deferential service; all these appealed irresistibly to the epicurean in him. It was as if he had come suddenly to his own again after an undeserved season of deprivation, and the effect of it was to push the hardships and perils of the preceding weeks and months into a far-away past.
He ordered his supper deliberately, and while he waited for its serving, imagination cleared the stage and set the scenes for the drama of the future. That future, with all its opportunities for the realizing of ideals, was now safely assured. He could go whither he pleased and do what seemed right in his own eyes, and there was none to say him nay.
It was good to be able to pick and choose in a whole worldful of possibilities, and he gave himself a broad credit mark for persevering in the resolution which held him steadfastly to the modest, workaday plan struck out in the beginning. Apart from Miss Farnham's recognition of him on theBelle Julie—a recognition which, he persuaded himself, would never carry over from Gavitt the deck-hand to Griswold the student and benefactor of his kind—there was nothing to fear; no reason why he should not make Wahaska his workshop.
In this minor city of the clerk's describing he would find the environment most favorable for a re-writing of his book and for a renewal of his studies.Here, too, he might hope to become by unostentatious degrees the beneficent god-in-the-car of his worthier ambition, raising the fallen, succoring the helpless, and fighting the battles of the oppressed.
Farther along, when she should have quite forgotten theBelle Julie'sdeck-hand, he would meet Miss Farnham on an equal social footing; and the conclusion of the whole matter should be a triumphant demonstration to her by their refutable logic of good deeds and a life well-lived that in his case, at least, the end justified the means.
Just here, however, there was an unresolved discord in the imaginative theme. It was struck by the reflection that since he could never take her fully into his confidence her approval would always lack the seal of completeness. She knew the masquerading deck-hand, and what he had done; and she would know Griswold the benefactor, and what he meant to do. But until she could link the two together, there could be no demonstration. Though he should build the bastion of good deeds mountain high, it could never figure as a bastion to her unless she might come to know what it was designed to defend.
Having a sensitive ear for the imaginative harmonies, the unresolved discord annoyed him. The effort to eliminate it brought him face to face with a blunt demand, a query that was almost psychic in its clear-cut distinctness. Why did these forecastings of the future always lead him up to the closed door of this young woman's approval and leave him there?
For one whose experience had all been bought on a rising market, Griswold was singularly heart-whole and normal in his attitude toward women. Beautiful women he had met before, among them a few who had lent themselves facilely to the idealizing process; but in each instance it was the artistic temperament, and not the heart, that was touched and inspired. Was Charlotte Farnham going to prove the exception? Since he could ask the question calmly and with no perceptible quickening of the pulses, he concluded that she was not. Nevertheless——
The train of reflective thought was broken abruptly by the seating of two other supper guests at his table; a big-framed man in the grizzled fifties, and a young woman who looked as if she might have stepped the moment before out of the fitting-rooms of the most famous of Parisian dressmakers.
Griswold's supper was served, and for a time he made shift to ignore the couple at the other end of the table. Then an overheard word, the name of the town which he had chosen as his future abiding place, made him suddenly observant.
It was the young woman who had named Wahaska, and he saw now that his first impression had been at fault; she was not overdressed. Also he saw that she was piquantly pretty; a bravura type, slightly suggesting the Rialto at its best, perhaps, but equally suggestive of sophistication, travel, and a serene disregard of chaperonage.
The young woman's companion was undeniablyher father. Gray, heavy-browed, and with a face that was a life-mask of crude strength and elemental shrewdness, the man had bequeathed no single feature to the alertly beautiful daughter; yet the resemblance was unmistakable. Griswold did not listen designedly, but he could not help overhearing much of the talk at the other end of the table. From it he gathered that the young woman was lately returned from some Florida winter resort; that her father had met her by appointment in St. Louis; and that the two were going on together; perhaps to Wahaska, since that was the place-name oftenest on the lips of the daughter.
Griswold was only moderately interested. The deliberately ordered supper, enticing in anticipation, had fallen short of the zestful promise in the fact. It came to him with a little shock that at least one part of him, the civilized appetite, had become debased by the plunge into the deck-hand depths, and he fought the suggestion fiercely. It was an article in his creed that environment is always subjective, and when one opens the door to an exception a host of ominous shapes may be ready to crowd in. He was fighting off the evil shapes while he listened; otherwise his interest might have been more acute.
It was at this point that the apex of Philistine contentment was passed and the reaction set in. He had been spending strength and vitality recklessly and the accounting was at hand. The descent began when he took himself sharply to task for thehigh-priced supper. What right had he to order costly food that he could not eat when the price of this single meal would feed a family for a week?
After that, nothing that the obsequious and attentive waiter could bring proved tempting enough to recall the vanished appetite. Never having known what it was to be sick, Griswold disregarded the warning, drank a cup of strong coffee, and went out to the lobby to get a cigar, leaving his table companions in the midst of their meal. To his surprise and chagrin the carefully selected "perfecto" made him dizzy and faint, bringing a disquieting recurrence of the vertigo which had seized him while he was searching for his negro treasure-bearer on the levee.
"I've had an overdose of excitement, I guess," he said to himself, flinging the cigar away. "The best thing for me to do is to go down to the train and get to bed."
He went about it listlessly, with a curious buzzing in his ears and a certain dimness of sight which was quite disconcerting; and when a cab was summoned he was glad enough to let a respectfully sympathetic porter lend him a shoulder to the sidewalk.
The drive in the open air was sufficiently tonic to help him through the details of ticket-buying and embarkation; and afterward sleep came so quickly that he did not know when the Pullman porter drew the curtains to adjust the screen in the window at his feet, though he did awake drowsily later on at the sound of voices in the aisle, awoke to realizevaguely that his two table companions of the Hotel Chouteau café were to be his fellow travellers in the Pullman.
The train was made up ready to leave, and the locomotive was filling the great train-shed with stertorous hissings, when a red-faced man slipped through the gates to saunter over to the Pullman and to peck inquisitively at the porter.
"Much of a load to-night, George?"
"No, sah; mighty light: four young ladies goin' up to de school in Faribault, Mistah Grierson and his daughter, and a gentleman from de Chouteau."
"A gentleman from the Chouteau? When did he come down?"
The porter knew the calling of the red-faced man only by intuition; but Griswold's tip was warming in his pocket and he lied at random and on general principles.
"Been heah all de evenin'; come down right early afte' suppeh, and went to baid like he was sick or tarr'd or somethin'."
"What sort of a looking man is he?"
"Little, smooth-faced, narr'-chisted gentleman; look like he might be——"
But the train was moving out and the red-faced man had turned away. Whereupon the porter broke his simile in the midst, picked up his carpet-covered step, and climbed aboard.
In the day of its beginnings, Wahaska was a minor trading-post on the north-western frontier, and an outfitting station for the hunters and trappers of the upper Mississippi and Minnesota lake region.
Later, it became the market town of a wheat-growing district, and a foundation of modest prosperity was laid by well-to-do farmers gravitating to their county seat to give their children the benefit of a graded school. Later still came the passing of the wheat, a re-peopling of the farms by a fresh influx of home-seekers from the Old World, and the birth, in Wahaska and elsewhere, of the industrial era.
Jasper Grierson was a product of the wheat-growing period. The son of one of the earliest of the New-York-State homesteaders in the wheat belt, he came of age in the year of the Civil War draft, and was unpatriotic enough, some said, to dodge conscription, or the chance of it, by throwing up his hostler's job in a Wahaska livery stable and vanishing into the dim limbo of the Farther West. Also, tradition added that he was well-spared by most; that he was ill-spared, indeed, by only one, and that one a woman.
After the westward vanishing, Wahaska saw him no more until he returned in his vigorous prime, a veteran soldier of fortune upon whom the goddess had poured a golden shower out of some cornucopia of the Colorado mines. Although rumor, occasionally naming him during the years of absence, had never mentioned a wife, he was accompanied by a daughter, a dark-eyed, red-lipped young woman, a rather striking beauty of a type unfamiliar to Wahaska and owing nothing, it would seem, to the grim, gray-wolf Jasper.
With the return to his birthplace, Jasper Grierson began a campaign, the planning of which had tided him over many an obstacle in the road to fortune. It had given him the keenest thrill of joy of which a frankly sordid nature is capable to descend upon his native town rich enough to buy and sell any round dozen of the well-to-do farmers; and when he had looked about him he settled down to the attainment of his heart's desire, which was to have the casting vote in the business affairs of the community which had once known him as a helper in a livery stable.
Losing sight of the irresistible energy and momentum of wealth as wealth, men said that fortune favored him from the outset. It was only a half-truth, but it sufficed to account for what was really a campaign of conquest. Grierson's touch was Midas-like, turning all things to gold; and even in Wahaska there were Mammon worshippers enough to hail him as a public benefactor whose wealth andenterprise would shortly make of the overgrown village a town, and of the town a thriving city.
Since the time was ripe, Wahaska did presently burst its swaddling-bands. Commercial enterprise is sheep-like; where one leads, others will follow; and the mere following breeds success, if only by the sheer impetus of the massed forward movement. Jasper Grierson was the man of the hour, but the price paid for leadership by the led is apt to be high. When Wahaska became a city, with a charter and a bonded debt, electric lights, water-works, and a trolley system, Grierson's interest predominated in every considerable business venture in it, save and excepting the Raymer Foundry and Machine Works.
He was the president of one bank, and the principal stockholder in the other, which was practically an allied institution; he was the sole owner of the grain elevator, the saw- and planing-mills, the box factory, and a dozen smaller industries in which his name did not appear. Also, it was his money, or rather his skill as a promoter, which had transformed the Wahaska & Pineboro Railroad from a logging switch, built to serve the saw-mill, into an important and independent connecting link in the great lake region system.
In each of these commercial or industrial chariots the returned native sat in the driver's seat; and those who remembered him as a loutish young farmhand overlooked the educative results of continued success and marvelled at his gifts, wondering how and where he had acquired them.
While the father was thus gratifying a purely Gothic lust for conquest, the daughter figured, in at least one small circle, as a beautiful young Vandal, with a passion for overturning all the well-settled traditions. At first her attitude toward Wahaska and the Wahaskans had been serenely tolerant; the tolerance of the barbarian who neither understands, nor sympathizes with, the homely virtues and the customs which have grown out of them. Then resentment awoke, and with it a soaring ambition to reconstruct the social fabric of the countrified town upon a model of her own devising.
In this charitable undertaking she was aided and abetted by her father, who indulgently paid the bills. At her instigation he built an imposing red brick mansion on the sloping shore of Lake Minnedaska, named it—or suffered her to name it—"Mereside," had an artist of parts up from Chicago to design the decorations and superintend the furnishings, had a landscape gardener from Philadelphia to lay out the grounds, and, when all was in readiness, gave a house-warming to which the invitations were in some sense mandatory, since by that time he had a finger in nearly every commercial and industrial pie in Wahaska.
After the house-warming, which was a social event quite without precedent in Wahaskan annals, Miss Grierson's leadership was tacitly acknowledged by a majority of the ex-farmers' wives and daughters, though they still discussed her with more or less frankness in the sewing-circles and at neighborhoodtea-drinkings. Crystallized into accusation, there was little to be urged against her save that she was pretty and rich, and that her leaning toward modernity was sometimes a little startling. But being human, the missionary seamstresses and the tea-drinkers made the most of these drawbacks, whetting criticism to a cutting edge now and then with curious speculations about Margery's mother, and wondering why Jasper Grierson or the daughter never mentioned her.
Meanwhile, the big house on the lake front continued to set the social pace. Afternoon teas began to supersede the sewing-circles; not a few of the imitators attained to the formal dignity of visiting cards with "Wednesdays" or "Thursdays" appearing in neat script in the lower left-hand corner; and in some of the more advanced households the principal meal of the day drifted from its noontide anchorage to unwonted moorings among the evening hours—greatly to the distress of the men, for whom even hot weather was no longer an excuse for appearing in shirt-sleeves.
For these innovations Miss Grierson was indirectly, though not less intentionally, responsible; and her satisfaction was in just proportion to the results attained. But in spite of these successes there were still obstacles to be surmounted. From the first there had been a perverse minority refusing stubbornly to bow the head in the house of—Grierson. The Farnhams were of it, and the Raymers, with a following of a few of the families called "old" asage is reckoned in the Middle West. The men of this minority were slow to admit the omnipotence of Jasper Grierson's money, and the women were still slower to accept Miss Grierson on terms of social equality.
At the house-warming this minority had been represented only by variously worded regrets. At a reception, given to mark the closing of Mereside, socially, on the eve of Miss Margery's departure for the winter in Florida, the regrets were still polite and still unanimous. Miss Margery laughed defiantly and set her white teeth on a determined resolution to reduce this inner citadel of conservatism at all costs. Accordingly, she opened the campaign on the morning after the reception; began it at the breakfast-table when she was pouring her father's coffee.
"You know everybody, and everybody's business, poppa: who is the treasurer of St. John's?" she inquired.
"How should I know?" grumbled the magnate, whose familiarity with church affairs was limited to certain writings of a legal nature concerning the Presbyterian house of worship upon which he held a mortgage.
"You ought to know," asserted Miss Margery, with some asperity. "Isn't it Mr. Edward Raymer?"
Jasper Grierson frowned thoughtfully into space. "Why, yes; come to think of it, I guess he is the man. Anyway, he's one of their—what do you call 'em—trustees?"
"Wardens," corrected Margery.
"Yes, that's it; I knew it was something connected with a penitentiary. What do you want of him?"
"Nothing much of him: but I want a check for five hundred dollars payable to his order."
Jasper Grierson's laugh was suggestive of the noise made by a rusty door-hinge. The tilting of the golden cornucopia had made him a ruthless money-grubber, but he never questioned his daughter's demands.
"Going in for the real old simon-pure, blue-ribbon brand of respectability this time, ain't you Madgie?" he chuckled; but he wrote the check on the spot.
Two hours later, Miss Grierson's cutter, driven by herself, paraded in Main Street to the delight of any eye æsthetic. The clean-limbed, high-bred Kentuckian, the steel-shod, tulip-bodied vehicle, and the faultlessly arrayed young woman tucked in among the costly fur lap robes were three parts of a harmonious whole; and more than one pair of eyes looked, and turned to look again; with envy if they were young eyes and feminine; with frank admiration if they were any age and masculine. For Miss Grierson, panoplied for conquest, was the latest reincarnation of the woman who has been turning men's heads and quickening the blood in their veins since that antediluvian morning when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.
Miss Margery drove daily in good weather, but on this crisp January morning her outing had an objective other than the spectacular. When the clean-limbedKentuckian had measured the length of Main Street, he was sent on across the railroad tracks into the industrial half of the town, and was finally halted in front of the Raymer Foundry and Machine Works.
Raymer was at his desk when the smart equipage drew up before the office door; and a moment later he was at the curb, bareheaded, offering to help the daughter of men out of the robe wrappings.
"Perhaps I'd better not get out," she said. "Duke doesn't stand well. Can I see Mr. Edward Raymer for a minute or two?"
Raymer bowed and blushed a little. He knew her so well, by eye-intimacy at least, that he had been sure she knew him in the same way—as indeed she did.
"I—that is my name. What can I do for you, Miss Grierson?"
"Oh,thankyou," she burst out, with exactly the proper shade of impulsiveness. "Do you know, I was really afraid I might have to introduce myself? I——"
The interruption was of Raymer's making. One of his employees appearing opportunely, he sent the man to the horse's head, and once more held out his hands to Miss Grierson.
"You must come in and get warm," he insisted. "I am sure you have found it very cold driving this morning. Let me help you."
She made a driver's hitch in the reins and let him lift her to the sidewalk. The ease with which hedid it gave her a pleasant little thrill of the sort that comes with the realization of a thing hoped for. When she was not too busy with the social triumphs, strength, manly strength, was a passion with Miss Grierson.
Raymer held the office door open for her, and in the grimy little den which had been his father's before him, placed a chair for her at the desk-end.
"Now you can tell me in comfort what I can do for you," he said, bridging the interruption.
"Oh, it's only a little thing. I came to see you about renting a pew in St. John's; that is our church, you know."
Raymer did not know, but he was politic enough not to say so.
"I am quite at your service," he hastened to say. "Shall I show you a plan of the sittings?"
She protested prettily that it wasn't at all necessary; that any assignment agreeable to him and least subversive of the rights and preferences of others would be quite satisfactory. But he got out the blue-print plan and dusted it, and in the putting together of heads over it many miles in the gap of unacquaintance were safely and swiftly flung to the rear.
When the sittings were finally decided upon she opened her purse.
"It is so good of you to take time from your business to wait on me," she told him; and then, in naïve confusion: "I—I asked poppa to make out a check, but I don't know whether it is big enough."
Raymer took the order to pay, glanced at the amount, and from that to the velvety eyes with the half-abashed query in them. Miss Grierson's eyes were her most effective weapon. With them she could look anything, from daggers drawn to kisses. Just now the look was of child-like beseeching, but Raymer withstood it—or thought he did.
"It is more than twice as much as we get for the best locations," he demurred. "Wait a minute and I'll write you a check for the difference and give you a receipt."
But at the word she was on her feet in an eager flutter of protest.
"Oh, please don't!" she pleaded. "If it is really too much, can't you put the difference in the missionary box, or in the—in the rector's salary?—as a little donation from us, you know?"
Then Edward Raymer found that he had not withstood the eye-attack and he surrendered at discretion, compromising on a receipt for the pew-rent. Thus the small matter of business was concluded; but Miss Margery was not yet ready to go. From St. John's and its affairs official she passed deftly to the junior warden of St. John's and his affairs personal. Was the machine works the place where they made steam-engines and things? And did the sign, "No Admittance," on the doors mean that no visitors were allowed? If not, she would so much like to——
Raymer smiled and put himself once more at her service, this time as guide and megaphonist. It wasall very noisy and grimy, but if she cared to go through the works he would be glad to go with her.
He did not know how glad he was going to be until they had passed through the clamorous machine-shop and had reached the comparatively quiet foundry. One of Miss Margery's gifts was the ability to become for the moment an active and sympathetic sharer in any one's enthusiasms. In the foundry she looked and listened, and was unsophisticated only to the degree that invites explanation. It was a master-stroke of finesse. A man is never so transparent as when he forgets himself in his own trade-talk; and Raymer was unrolling himself as a scroll for Miss Grierson to read as she ran.
"And you say that is one of the columns for poppa's new block?" she asked, while they stood to watch the workmen drawing a pattern out of the sand of the mould.
"No; that is the pattern: that is wood, and it is used to make the print in the sand into which the melted iron is poured. This part of the mould they are lifting with the crane is called the 'cope,' and the lower half is the 'drag.' When they have drawn the patterns, they will lock the two halves together and the mould will be ready for the pouring. You ought to come some afternoon while we are pouring; it would interest you if you've never seen it."
"Oh, may I? I shall remember that, when I come back from Florida."
"You are going away?" he said quickly.
"Yes; for a few weeks."
"Wahaska will miss you."
"Will it? I wish I could believe that, Mr. Raymer. But I don't know. Sometimes——"
"You mustn't doubt it for a moment. When you drove up a few minutes ago I was thinking that you were the one bit of redeeming color in our rather commonplace picture."
She let him look into what she wished him to believe were the very ultimate depths of the velvety eyes when she said: "You shouldn't flatter, Mr. Raymer. For one thing, you don't do it easily; and for another, it's disappointing."
They were passing out of the foundry on their way back to the office and he held the weighted door open for her.
"A bit of honest praise isn't flattery," he protested. "But supposing it were a mere compliment—why should you find it disappointing?"
"Because one has to have anchors of some sort; anchors in sincerity and straightforwardness, in the honesty of purpose that will say, 'No-no!' and slap the best-beloved baby's hands, if that's what is needed. That is your proper rôle, Mr. Raymer, and you must never hesitate to take it."
It was the one small lapse from the strict conventionalities, but it sufficed to cut out all the middle distances. The tour of the works which had begun in passing acquaintance ended in friendship, precisely as Miss Grierson had meant it should; and when Raymer was tucking her into the cutter and wrapping her in the fur robes, she added the finishingtouch, or rather the touch for which all the other touches had been the preliminaries.
"I'm so glad I had the courage to come and see you this morning. We have been dreadfully remiss in church matters, but I am going to try to make up for it in the future. I'm sorry you couldn't come to us last evening. Please tell your mother and sister that Idohope we'll meet, sometime. I should so dearly love to know them. Thank you so much for everything. Good-by."
Raymer watched her as she drove away, noted her skilful handling of the fiery Kentuckian and her straight seat in the flying cutter, and the smile which a day or two earlier might have been mildly satirical was now openly approbative.
"She is a shrewd little strategist," was his comment; "but all the same she is a mighty pretty girl, and as good and sensible as she is shrewd. I wonder why mother and Gertrude haven't called on her?"
Having thus mined the Raymer outworks, Miss Grierson next turned her batteries upon the Farnhams. They were Methodists, and having learned that the doctor's hobby was a struggling mission work in Pottery Flat, Margery called the paternal check-book again into service, and the cutter drew up before the doctor's office in Main Street.
"Good-morning, doctor," she began cheerfully, bursting in upon the head of the First-Church board of administrators as a charming embodiment of youthful enthusiasm, "I'm running errands for poppa this morning. Mr. Rodney was telling us aboutthat little First-Church mission in Pottery Flat, and poppa wanted to help. But we are not Methodists, you know, and he was afraid—that is, he didn't quite know how you might——"