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Blacksheep! Blacksheep!

by Meredith Nicholson · English · Gutenberg #21887 · 553,474 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Blacksheep! Blacksheep!

Author: Meredith Nicholson


        
Release date: June 21, 2007 [eBook #21887]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21887

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKSHEEP! BLACKSHEEP! ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON

  BLACKSHEEP! BLACKSHEEP!
  LADY LARKSPUR
  THE MADNESS OF MAY
  THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration: Her "Very glad, I'm sure," was uttered with reservations]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLACKSHEEP! BLACKSHEEP!

BY

MEREDITH NICHOLSON

ILLUSTRATED BY

LESLIE L. BENSON

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1920

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe, in spite of their tameless days
  Of outcast liberty,
They're sick at heart for the homely ways
  Where their gathered brothers be.

Meanwhile, "Blacksheep! Blacksheep!" we cry,
  Safe in the inner fold;
And maybe they hear, and wonder why,
  And marvel, out in the cold.

--RICHARD BURTON.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


ILLUSTRATIONS

Her "Very glad, I'm sure," was uttered with reservations _Frontispiece_

                                                            FACING PAGE

At the crack of the gun the fugitive stopped short                   32

"It's all right about you, Governor, but the kid had better
shake the tree"                                                     112

"We must be in a hurry or that woman will catch you"                234

------------------------------------------------------------------------




BLACKSHEEP! BLACKSHEEP!

CHAPTER ONE

I


Mrs. Howard Featherstone spent much time thinking up things for her
brother Archibald Bennett to do, and as Archie was the ideal bachelor
brother, always remembering the children's birthdays and turning up
dutifully for Christmas dinners, he accepted her commissions in the most
amiable spirit and his services were unfailingly satisfactory. He knew
perfectly well that most of the jobs she imposed upon him had been
politely but firmly declined by her busy husband, but this made no
difference to Archie, who had all the time in the world, and infinite
patience, and he rather enjoyed tracing express packages and matching
ribbons.

"The agent who's been looking up a summer house for us says this is an
unusual opportunity, as there are few places to let at Bailey Harbor and
this one is unexpectedly on the market. The owner is obliged to leave
just after settling in it, so it's all in perfect condition and if it
meets our needs we can go right up. Howard's simply swamped with
work--he's conducting some sort of investigation with night meetings and
that sort of thing--and we'd all appreciate it if you could run up there
for us."

The many preoccupations of his brother-in-law, who held a seat in
Congress and took his job seriously, were well known to Archie.
Featherstone was an important cog in the governmental machinery while
Archie had nothing on earth to do, so it was eminently fitting that he,
as an unattached and unemployed brother-in-law, should assume some of
Featherstone's domestic burdens. Archie had planned to leave for the
Canadian Rockies two days later, but as no urgent business called him in
that direction, he obligingly agreed to take a look at the Bailey Harbor
house that had been placed so providentially within reach of his sister.

"The owner belongs to that old New England Congdon family," Mrs.
Featherstone explained; "they date from the beginning of time, and some
of them are a trifle eccentric. You remember one of them--he must be the
father or an uncle of the owner of this house--Eliphalet Congdon, who
lives in Boston and is horribly rich but is always doing weird things.
There was a perfectly killing article in the paper just the other day
telling of his latest exploit, which was getting arrested for refusing
to allow them to check his umbrella at the Metropolitan Museum. They
thought, of course, that he was a crank who wanted to poke holes through
the pictures, and he made such a fuss that they had to arrest him and he
wouldn't give bail but had his lawyer get him out on a writ of habeas
corpus."

"The same philanthropist who had a bus built just like the Fifth Avenue
busses and wanted to run it himself to pick up women and children the
regular busses wouldn't stop for," laughed Archie. "If you're renting a
house from that family it's just as well to look into it carefully. All
right, May; I'll inspect the premises for you."

In spite of his good-natured assent she continued to pile up excuses
for her husband and explained in great detail the rundown condition of
the children which made it necessary to get them out of Washington as
quickly as possible. Archie was already mentally planning the details of
his trip with his customary exactness. As he traveled constantly in the
interest of his health, which had been a cause of solicitude to himself
and all his relatives as far back as any one could remember, he knew
train schedules by heart, and by catching the Federal Express the next
night he would be able to connect with a train at Boston that would land
him at Bailey Harbor at two o'clock the same day.

With any sort of luck he could escape from the Harbor, reach New York
the following morning and proceed immediately westward. A few telegrams
would readjust matters so that he would lose only a day in setting out
for Banff, which his newest doctor had told him was an ideal spot for
him. Many other doctors had posted him off to numerous other places in
pursuit of the calm or stimulus or whatever it was he needed to make him
a sound man capable of taking some part in the world's affairs. Archie's
condition was always a grateful topic of conversation and now that his
sister had told him how many bedrooms her menage required, and warned
him particularly to be sure that there was a sleeping porch and a
garage, and not to forget to look carefully into the drainage system of
the entire Maine coast; having watched him make notes of these matters,
Mrs. Featherstone, in her most sisterly tone, broached the subject of
his health.

"Your troubles, Archie, are all due to the scarlet fever you had when
you were a child. I've thought that if you could ever get into some
active work it would cure you. These sanatoriums you live in most of the
time never do you any good. They just keep you thinking about yourself.
What you need is a complete upsetting,--something that would give a new
turn to your life. And, you know," she went on softly, "I'd hoped,
Archie, that the right girl would turn up one of these days and that
that would prove the panacea. But the girls I've picked out never
pleased you, and here you are, the finest brother in the world, and the
most conscientious man alive, always doing generous things for
people--you know you do, Archie--with nothing ahead of you but just one
sanatorium after another. I haven't much faith in this idea of your
going to the Rockies; you know you tried the Alps five years ago and the
altitude nearly killed you."

"I seem doomed to sit on the sidelines and watch the game," Archie
agreed gloomily.

"But sometimes, I think you yield too easily to discouragement. Please
don't think I mean to be unkind or unjust, but if at some turn of the
road you were obliged to put your back to the wall and fight for your
life! Really, dear, I think you would win the battle and be a very
different man afterward."

Archie smiled wanly. He had the lively imagination of the neurasthenic
and very often he had dreamed of vanquishing single-handed a dozen
enemies, or plunging into a burning house and staggering out half dead
bearing a helpless child in his arms. To look at him no one would
believe that he had a nerve in his tall frame. Once a friend carried him
off to a farm where an autocratic athletic trainer rejuvenated tired
business men; and Archie survived the heroic treatment and reappeared
bronzed and hardened and feeling better than he had ever felt in his
life. But a winter spent in an office and leisure to think of himself as
an invalid brought back the old apprehensions, and there being no one at
hand to drag him again to the trainer's, he renewed his acquaintance
with the waiting-rooms of specialists.

"There will be a few people in for dinner tonight," remarked Mrs.
Featherstone as he rose to go; "very simple, you know; and Howard just
telephoned that he can't possibly come, so if you can arrange it,
Archie--"

"All right, May. Weld and Coburn are in town and I was going to have
dinner with them at the Army and Navy, but if you really want me--"

"Oh, that's perfectly fine of you, Archie! You are splendid to break
your engagement with them when you three don't meet very often; but it
will be a real help to me to have you. It's so late now that I can't ask
any one else in Howard's place. And Isabel Perry will be here; you know
she's the dearest girl, and I always thought you really did like Isabel.
Her father lost all his money before he died and she's had a position as
gymnasium teacher in Miss Gordon's school. This summer she's to run a
girls' camp up in Michigan and she can't help making a splendid success
of it."

Archie did not at once detach Miss Perry from the innumerable host of
young women his sister had introduced him to; they were a hazy composite
in his memory, but when Mrs. Featherstone insisted that he couldn't have
forgotten Miss Perry's smile and merry laugh, he promptly declared that
he remembered her perfectly. When he found himself sitting beside her
later at Mrs. Featherstone's table, with a lady on his right who was
undoubtedly most distinguished in spite of the fact that he failed to
catch her name and understood very little of her rapid French, he was
very grateful for Miss Perry's propinquity. The smile and the laugh were
both better even than Mrs. Featherstone's specifications, and her
English had a refreshing Western tang and raciness that pleased him.

"I passed you on the street the other day and made frantic efforts to
attract your attention but you were in a trance and failed to see my
signals."

"I was taking my walk," he stammered.

"'_My_ walk!'" she repeated. "You speak as though you had a monopoly of
that form of exercise. I must say you didn't appear to be enjoying
yourself. Your aspect was wholly funereal and your demeanor that of a
man with a certain number of miles wished on him."

"Four a day," Archie confessed with an air of resignation; "two in the
morning and two before dinner."

"Then you were doing your morning lap when I passed you. Only four miles
a day?"

"By the doctor's orders," he assented with the wistful smile that
usually evoked sympathetic murmurs in feminine auditors.

"Oh, the doctors!" remarked the girl as though she had no great opinion
of doctors in general or of Mr. Bennett's medical advisers in
particular. He was used to a great deal of sympathy and he was convinced
that Miss Perry was an utterly unsympathetic person.

"What would you call a good walk?" he asked a little tartly.

"Oh, ten, twenty, thirty! I've done fifteen and gone to a dance at the
end of the tramp."

"But you haven't my handicap," he protested defensively. "You can't be
very gay about walking when you're warned that excessive fatigue may
have disastrous consequences!"

She was not wholly without feeling for her face grew grave for a moment
and she met his eyes searchingly, with something of the professional
scrutiny to which he had long been accustomed.

"Eyes clear; color very good; voice a trifle weak and suggesting
timidity and feeble initiative. Introspective; a little self-conscious,
and unimportant nervous symptoms indicated by the rolling of bread
crumbs."

"I've paid doctors large fees for telling me the same things," he said,
hastily hiding the bread crumbs under the edge of his plate. "I wish
you'd write those items down for me. I'm in earnest about that."

"When did you say you were leaving town?"

"Tomorrow evening. If you'll write out your diagnosis and any
suggestions you may have as to my habits, diet and general course of
life, I promise to put them into practice."

"Your case interests me and I'll consider this matter of advising you."

"I shall expect the document tomorrow afternoon!"

"I should want to be very sure," she laughed, "that you were really
leaving town and that I shouldn't see you for a long time--perhaps never
again!"

"That has an ominous sound, as though you were going to give me a death
sentence! Is my case as bad as that?"

"Not at all; but it calls for that disagreeable frankness we all dislike
in our friends and very properly resent in mere acquaintances. I should
be enormously embarrassed to meet you until after--"

She paused and surveyed him once more, questioningly. The French lady
was telling a story to the whole company, and they were obliged to give
heed to it; and as Archie failed to catch the point of it Miss Perry
very kindly gave him the clue. The talk was general for a few minutes
and then he begged her to finish the sentence that had been left in the
air.

"Oh, it doesn't matter! I think I was going to say that it would be
embarrassing to see you until after you had given my little hints a
trial. I'll say now that just the orderly course of your life, with four
miles a day, no more, no less, isn't a bit likely to get you anywhere.
My treatment for such a case as yours would be very drastic. I'd set you
some real stunts to do if you were my patient. May tells me that they
won't have you in the army, the navy, or the flying corps, but I believe
I could find some excitement for you," she ended musingly.

"As, for example--?" he asked, finding the French lady conspiring with
an attaché of the Italian embassy. "To meet the competition of the nerve
specialists, you'll have to be very explicit and tell me exactly what to
do."

"Right there is one of your troubles--living by fixed schedules. You've
never felt the world's rough hand; you don't know life! Clubs and
sanatoriums and week-ends in comfortable houses don't count. You're a
tremendously formal person, Mr. Bennett! What you really need is a good
hard jar! Every morning you know exactly what you're going to do every
hour of the day. It's routine that kills! Now just suppose when you're
out on one of your walks you were to overpower the chauffeur of, we will
say, the British ambassador, and drive the car bearing his Excellency
into some lonely fastness of the Virginia hills, and hold him for a
ransom, and collect the money in twenty-dollar gold pieces and escape
with it and then come back to Washington and spend it all on a big party
with the ambassador as the guest of honor. There would be a real
achievement--something that would make you famous in two hemispheres."

"And incidentally lock me up for life if I escaped being shot! Such an
escapade would very likely spoil our cordial relations with England and
cause no end of trouble."

"There you are!" she exclaimed, "thinking always of the cost, never of
the fun! Of course you would never do any such thing. Let me try again!
Suppose you were to hold up a bank messenger in Wall Street and skip
with a satchelful of negotiable securities and then, after the papers
were through ragging the police for their inefficiency, you would drive
up to the bank in a taxi, walk in and return the money, saying you had
found it in the old family pew at Trinity when you went in to say your
prayers! Here would be an opportunity to break the force of habit and
awaken your self-confidence."

"Am I to understand that you practice what you preach? I don't mean to
be impertinent, but really,--"

"Oh, I'm perfectly capable of doing anything I've suggested. I'm merely
biding my time. Parents are pardonably fussy about the sort of person
they turn their children over to, so I must have a care. I mean to dig
for buried treasure this summer, realizing the dream of a lifetime."

"That appeals to me strongly. Perhaps you'd let me assist in that
undertaking?"

"Impossible! I want all the glory and eke the gold if I find the hidden
chests. Talk about romance being dead! My grandfather was a planter in
Mississippi before the Civil War. In about 1860 he saw trouble ahead,
and as he was opposed to secession he turned everything he had into
gold, bought several tracts of land in Michigan and New York and
secretly planted his money. His wife and children refused to share his
lonely exile and he sent them to England but clung to America himself,
and died suddenly and alone the second year of the war on the very acres
my father inherited in Michigan. That's where I'm opening my camp."

"And the gold hasn't been found?" asked Archie deeply interested.

"Not a coin so far! You see grandfather made his will in war time and
only divided the land, being afraid to mention the buried treasure in a
document that would become a public record when he died."

"This is most exciting. It's only unfortunate that it's not pirate gold
to give zest to your enterprise."

"Oh, the pirate in the story is a cousin of mine, who inherited the land
up near the St. Lawrence and has dug all over it without results. My
father gave the Michigan scenery to me, but this cousin has been
digging on my land, most unwarrantably! He's rather a dashing young
person!"

Archie was so enthralled that he forgot the typewritten dietary he
always carried in his pocket and ate most of his portion of beef
tenderloin before he remembered that red meats were denied him. He laid
down his fork so abruptly that she asked him what was the matter.

"Nothing; only you've interested me so much that I've eaten a whole lot
of stuff that's positively forbidden. You've already scored a victory
over my specialists!"

"Splendid!" she cried. "Eat when you're hungry and never think about
your food. Don't let a mere piece of beef know that you're a coward.
Have you ever committed murder? You pale at the suggestion and yet a
pleasant little murder might be the very thing to set you on your feet
again!"

From time to time he caught Mrs. Featherstone's eyes fixed upon him
approvingly, and he knew that she was thinking that at last he had met a
girl who interested him. The impression that he was an invalid in
imminent peril of death caused his friends and acquaintances to talk to
him as though he were a sick child, and it was refreshing to find a girl
who openly chaffed him about his health and went the length of
prescribing a career of riotous crime as a cure for his ills. This was
enormously amusing for in prep school and college he had been guiltless
of the traditional pranks and in the six years that had elapsed since he
emerged into the world he had walked circumspectly in the eyes of all
men.

Isabel Perry was not afraid of him and she didn't treat him as girls
did who had an idea that if they talked to him very long he might faint
or even die on their hands. He noted her fine rounded arms and supple
fingers that spoke for strength, reflecting that very likely she could
pick him up and pitch him through the window. He had always disliked
athletic girls, fancying that they nodded to him patronizingly as they
passed him on country club verandas all aglow from golf or tennis. This
amiable Isabel was quite capable of making him dance through a set of
tennis and with her high spirits and strong will might even bring him
out alive. It was obvious that the sudden sweeping away of her father's
fortune had not troubled her in the least. He marveled at this, for he
had a great deal of money that had been conferred upon him in the cradle
and what he should do if he lost it was a depressing possibility that
had contributed not a little to his neurasthenia.

When it came time for Isabel to say good-night to her hostess Bennett
was hovering near to offer his services in calling her car.

"Nothing like that for me! I brought walking shoes and shall foot it
home, thank you. But--" she hesitated and said with mock gravity, "if
you're not afraid of the night air or the excessive fatigue, you might
take me home. That will add a mile to your prescription but you can ride
back!"

The other guests had gone when she reappeared, wrapped in a long cloak
and bearing a party-bag containing her slippers. She spoke of her plans
for the summer with charming candor as they set off at a brisk pace.
Little bits of autobiography she let fall interested him immensely. She
was born in Wyoming, where her father had been a ranchman, and she had
first known Mrs. Featherstone in college. She was enthusiastic about the
summer camp; if it succeeded she meant to conduct an outdoor school for
girls, moving it from Michigan to Florida with the changing seasons.

"People have been so kind to me! And I shall have a wonderful lot of
girls--just think of it,--one hundred dear young beings from all over
the country. It's a big responsibility but that land of my grandfather's
is a lovely site for the camp. It's on a bay, where the swimming will be
perfectly safe, and there's a wonderful forest, with Indian trails that
run back to Marquette's time. We shall have a doctor--a woman, of
course--and two trained nurses and some splendid young women to act, as
councilors."

There was no question of her making a success of it, he said, marveling
at her vitality, her exuberance, the confidence with which she viewed
the future.

"I wish you all good luck," he said when they reached the house of the
friend she was visiting. "The camp will be a great success,--I'm sure of
that."

"Oh, it's a case of sink or swim--I've got to make it go!" she replied
with her buoyant laugh. "If I don't succeed I can't emerge from the
woods next fall and face my creditors!"

"There's the buried treasure; you mustn't neglect that! I'm greatly your
debtor for all the interesting things you've told me. This has been the
happiest evening I've spent since----"

"Since you began taking everything so hard? Please quit looking on your
life as a burden; try to get some fun out of it!"

The door opened to the key she gave him and the light of the hall lamp
fell upon her face and glinted her brown hair as she put out her hand.

"Don't forget me in the rush of things! And particularly don't forget
that note of instructions. I'm counting on that!"

"Not really?" she exclaimed. "I was just in fun, you know."

"If I don't get it before I leave tomorrow evening, I shall be terribly
disappointed. I shall take it as a sign that you don't think me worth
bothering about!"

There was a pleading in his voice that held her for a moment; she
surveyed him gravely, then answered lightly,

"Oh, very well! You shall have it, sir!"


II

Archie didn't know that the note caused Isabel a great deal of trouble.
It was one thing to promise to tell a man who was all but a stranger
just how to alter his way of life with a view to a happier existence,
but to sit before a sheet of white paper and compose a letter on the
subject was a very different matter, as Isabel's waste-paper basket
could have testified. Her first experiments had been very serious, with
urgent recommendations of hard physical labor; but this proved
unsatisfactory. Then she attacked it from an ethical angle and suggested
social service as a means of destroying the selfishness which she
honestly believed to be one of his troubles.

She scribbled on a pad the titles of half a dozen hooks designed for
weary and disconsolate souls, but they hardly touched his case and
besides he had probably been deluged with just such literature.
Moreover, she must write a note that would not require an answer; this
she felt to be imperatively demanded by the circumstances. She thought
Archibald Bennett a nice fellow and she was sorry for him, but no more
and no less sorry than she would have been for any one else who failed
to find the world a pleasant place to live in. Something a little
cryptic, yet something that would discourage further confidences without
wounding him--this would solve the problem--and she spent an hour
turning over the pages of a book of quotations searching for some
stirring epigrammatic utterance. The wise of all the ages seemed to have
been strangely unmindful of the needs of neurasthenic young men, but
finally she hit upon these lines and copied them in her best hand:--

    He either fears his fate too much,
      Or his deserts are small,
    That dares not put it to the touch
      To gain or lose it all.

She wondered who the Marquis of Montrose was who had lived in the
seventeenth century and bequeathed this quatrain to posterity, but this
didn't matter, and after reading the lines aloud several times she
decided that they would serve her purpose admirably. If Mr. Bennett took
them seriously, well enough; and if he didn't like them it made no
difference as she would probably never meet him again.

She wrote on a calling card, "Best wishes and good luck," and put this
inside the note sheet, and as the hour was late she despatched it to Mr.
Bennett by special messenger.

The note reached Archie just as he was leaving his sister's house. When
he was seated in the train he drew it out and inspected the envelope
carefully, held it to the light and speculated fearfully as to the
nature of its contents. His thoughts had played about Isabel Perry most
of the day and he had listened to his sister's enthusiastic praise of
her with an unusual attention that had not been lost upon Mrs.
Featherstone. He had hoped for a long letter in the vein of the girl's
chaffing humor, and the size of the missive was a distinct
disappointment.

He opened it guardedly, and his face fell as he pondered the verse. It
was a neat, well-bred slap at him as a man without initiative or
courage. At the dinner table she had expressed much the same thought
that was condensed in the verse, but the quotation, unrelieved by her
smile, carried a sting. He read it over until the lines marched with a
nimble step through his memory. There was something oddly haunting in
them, and he experimented with a variety of emphases and pauses,
particularly as to the last line, which he found might be read in a
great number of ways. He decided finally that it was best interpreted by
a little pause after "gain," with the remaining words vanishing in a
despondent sigh. Perhaps this was the way Isabel Perry thought of him,
as a loser in the game of life; but he experienced a pleasant tingle in
the blood when he reflected that this may have been the wrong reading
and very different from the sense she meant to convey. His spirits
soared as he decided that the last line was intended to be read
unbrokenly and that it constituted a challenge, flung at him with a toss
of her head, a flash of the brown eyes.

This thought was wholly heartening and he dwelt upon it a long time. She
must have thought him capable of deeds of high emprise or she would not
have chosen this fragment as her last word to him. Her choice of a
message implied a certain faith that he might, if he chose, break the
shackles of fear and custom that bound him and do something that would
lift him out of himself. The card with the good wishes gave a soothing,
saving personal touch to the communication. She had drawn the pen across
a Chicago street number and supplied no other address; but after a dark
moment in which he accepted this as a delicate hint that the incident
was closed, he concluded that very likely she had deleted the address
hastily for the reason that she was to disappear into the woods for the
summer. Still, she might have substituted the camp address and he
fretted over this for an hour. She left him without excuse for a reply,
and he gravely reflected that the Marquis of Montrose was the only
person to whom he could protest, but as she had copied from the
quotation book the figures "1621-1640" and added them to the name for
his illumination, it was clearly impossible to ask the author for an
interpretation of his stanza.

Archie was lulled to sleep by the encouraging thought that what she had
done was to give him a commission to redeem himself by strange and
moving adventures, and he dreamed that he had climbed to the remote
fastnesses of the Rockies, and captured a mountain sheep alive and
walked into his sister's house with the animal under his arm and
presented it to Miss Perry at the tea table.

He changed trains at Boston and again at Portsmouth, where he checked
his bag. At two o'clock he reached Bailey Harbor, where he verified his
memorandum as to the return trip and found the telegram he expected from
the New York brokerage office in which he was a silent partner, saying
that his booking for Banff had been changed as requested. He never took
the chance of being stuffed into an upper berth, or riding in a day
coach, and he congratulated himself upon his forethought and the ease
with which he was proceeding upon his sister's errand.

He stepped into the only taxi in sight and drove to the village
druggist's for the key to the Congdon house.

"Just go in and take your time to it," said the man. "Lights and water
haven't been turned off and if you take the house your folks can step
right in. Mrs. Congdon left only yesterday. Suppose you'll be going on
the five eleven; it's your only chance of getting back to Boston
tonight. If you don't find it convenient to stop here again, just leave
the key under the door mat."

"I guess you'll find the place all shipshape," said the driver, as they
set off. "Folks came up early but didn't stay long. Left in a hurry;
kind o' funny, skippin' the way they did."

"There hadn't been sickness in the family?" asked Archie, apprehensively
thinking that he might be stumbling into infection.

"Lord no! Family troubles, I reckon! They been comin' here a long time
and usually came earlier and stayed later than anybody else. I don't
know nothin', mind ye, but there's talk she had trouble with her
husband."

"You mean Mr. and Mrs. Congdon have separated?"

"I'm sayin' nothin'! But the Congdons are all queer. His pap used to
have a house here and he was the worst ole crank on the shore. Young
Putney's a pretty decent fellow. Mighty fine woman, his wife. Ever'body
likes _her_."

The confidences of the weatherbeaten chauffeur only mildly interested
Archie, who was bent upon inspecting the house as quickly as possible
with a view to footing it back to the station, and thus crediting two
miles to the day's exercise account. It was unseasonably warm and the
air was lifeless and humid.

"Think it will rain?" asked Archie.

"Yep," replied the driver with a glance at the sea. "There's goin' to be
a lively kick-up before mornin'."

Archie eyed his top-coat and umbrella with the pardonable satisfaction
of a man who travels prepared for all weathers. To follow the shore path
in the teeth of a storm would do much toward establishing his
self-confidence and prove that he was not a mollycoddle. Isabel Perry
and her note were firmly imbedded in his subconsciousness and were
causing curious slips and shifts of his mental machinery. Certain of her
utterances at his sister's table rankled, and his thousandth conjecture
about the note was that it mocked his weaknesses and defied him to
prove that he was far from being the worthless social parasite she
believed him to be.


III

He discharged the driver and in a moment was standing in a big
living-room that exhaled an atmosphere of comfort and good taste. On
every hand were the evidences of a hasty abandonment of the house by its
recent occupants. A waste-paper basket by a writing table in one corner
overflowed with scraps of discarded letters; the family had evidently
snatched a hasty luncheon before leaving and the dining table had not
been cleared. A doll lay sprawled on the landing as he made his way
upstairs, and in the bed chambers empty chiffonier drawers gaped as
though from surprise at their hasty evacuation. He made a survey of the
whole premises and then went through again from cellar to garret
checking off his sister's queries. There was something disconcerting in
the intense silence of the place broken only by the periodic thump of
the sea at the base of the cliff.

The house would serve the Featherstones admirably. There was even the
sleeping porch opening from the nursery that his sister had expressly
stipulated and a tiny retreat back of the living-room with desk and
shelves that would meet the requirements of his congressman
brother-in-law at such times as he might find it possible to join his
family.

Fully satisfied with his investigations, Archie picked up a book with a
paper-cutter thrust through it to mark the place of its last reader,
became absorbed and read until he, was roused by a clap of thunder that
seemed to shake the world. Hurrying to the window he found that the
storm had already broken. There was a greenish light over the sea and
the waves had begun to smite the rocks with dismaying ferocity. To catch
the five eleven he would have to leave at once, and he seized his
belongings and opened the door, but upon stepping out upon the veranda
the walk he had contemplated along the shore path to the village seemed
a foolhardy thing to undertake. An unearthly darkness had fallen upon
the world and a misstep in the rough path over the rocks might pitch him
headlong into the sea. He had marked the presence of a telephone in the
house and decided to summon a taxi, but as he clapped the receiver to
his ear he was startled by a blinding glare and the crack of a mighty
whip overhead. He snatched the instrument again and bawled into it, but
it was buzzing queerly and he sprang away from it as another glare lit
up the room.

He turned on the lights and sat down to think. He might return by the
highway over which he had reached the house, but the driver had told him
it was the longer way. The roof and walls rang under the downpour and he
decided that after all to spend the night in an abandoned house would be
fully as heroic as to subject himself to the ruthless fury of the
hurricane. It would be a lark to camp in the Congdon villa, a break in
the deadly routine of his days which Isabel Perry had pointed out as a
possible cause of his invalidism. He made himself comfortable and
studied the sheaf of time tables he had brought with him, methodically
formulating the messages he would be obliged to despatch in the morning
to change his westward passage.

The storm showed no sign of abating and as nightfall deepened the gloom
he set the broad fireplace in the living-room glowing, drew the shades,
and feeling twinges of hunger explored the kitchen pantry. The Congdons
had left a well-stocked larder and, finding bacon, eggs and bread, he
decided that the cooking of a supper would be a jolly incident of the
adventure. He laid aside his coat and rolling up his sleeves soon had a
fire going in the range, which smoked hideously until he mastered the
dampers. He removed the dishes that had been left on the dining-room
table and carefully laid a cover for one. The roses in a bowl that
served as a centerpiece were still fresh and were a pathetic reminder of
the mistress of the house. In rearranging the table he found a telegram
under a plate at what he assumed to be Mrs. Congdon's place. To read a
message not intended for his eyes was decidedly against his strict code,
but his curiosity overcame his scruples and these words met his eyes:

  New York, June 10, 1917.
  Mrs. Alice B. Congdon,
  Bailey Harbor, Maine.

  Your letter has your characteristic touch of cruelty. We may as
  well part now and be done with it. But the children you cannot
  have. Remember that I relinquish none of my rights on this
  point. I demand that you surrender Edith at once and I will
  communicate with you later about the custody of Harold until such
  time as he is old enough to come to me.

                                                     Putney Congdon.

The cautious hint of the taxi driver that domestic difficulties were
responsible for the breaking up of the Congdon household found here a
painful corroboration. He chivalrously took sides at once with the
unhappy Alice; no matter how shrewish the absconding wife might be, only
a brute of a husband would fling such a message at her head. Archie
hated discord; the very thought of it was abhorrent. He had never had a
care in his life beyond his health, and quarrels of every sort he left
to underbred people with evil tempers. Here was a furious lunatic
telegraphing his wife of the severance of the most sacred of ties and
demanding the immediate transfer of one child to his possession and
relinquishing only temporarily the custody of the other, presumably
younger and the lawful owner of the doll he had picked up on the stair
landing.

He now visualized the whole scene that followed upon the receipt of the
telegram; the hurried, tearful packing, the bewildered children, the
panic-struck servants rushing about obeying the orders of a hysterical
mistress. The more he thought of it the warmer became his defensive
attitude toward the unknown Alice. She had met the situation like a
woman of quick decisions,--perhaps she was a little too unyielding and
this had caused the rupture; but no man worthy to be called a gentleman
would commit to the wires so heartless a message directed at the mother
of his children.

His attention had been arrested several times by a photograph of a young
girl, of eleven or twelve, set in a silver frame on the living-room
table, whom he assumed to be the Edith mentioned in the telegram. She
was a lovely child, with a wealth of hair falling about her shoulders,
and roguish eyes that looked at him teasingly. It was a thoroughly
feminine face with an unusual perfection of line. Very likely the child
was the reëmbodiment of her mother who must, he thought, be a very
handsome woman indeed. His resentment hardened against the husband and
father, the author of the brutal message that disposed of his marital
obligations as coolly as though he had been canceling an order for a
carload of merchandise, as he held up the picture for the joy of meeting
the gaze of the merry eyes.

Though the breaking of eggs into the skillet had proved a fearsome
matter and the bacon sizzled strangely, the cooking had proved much
simpler than he had believed possible. He burnt his fingers handling the
toaster, but after ruining a considerable quantity of bread he produced
three slices of toast that were the equal of any offered by his favorite
club. As usual when frustrated in his plans (something that had rarely
happened in his whole life) he made the most of the situation, eating
slowly while the rain poured in an unbroken sheet down the windows. He
wished Isabel could see him and know that for once the routine of his
life had been interrupted only to find him resourceful and the easy
master of his fate.

He made a point of washing the dishes and cooking utensils and putting
them carefully away. These matters attended to, he roamed over the house
which now had a new interest for him since the Congdon family skeleton
had come out of its closet and danced round the dinner table. In one way
and another he found it possible to make a fair acquaintance with the
late inmates of the house. In a bedroom adjoining the nursery there
were books in abundance, and very good books they were--essays, poetry,
a few of those novels that appeal only to sophisticated readers, and
children's books, including a volume of Bible stories retold for the
young. He could readily imagine Mrs. Congdon reading aloud from these
volumes to her youngsters as they stood beside the wicker rocker in the
bay-window. Only a few hours earlier the house had rung with the happy
laughter of children; he fancied he could hear them calling to their
mother up the stair. Mrs. Congdon was a blonde, he decided, from the
presence in a closet of a blue peignoir overlooked in her flight and a
bolt of blue ribbon that had rolled under the bed as though seeking
refuge from the general confusion.

In the adjoining room he sought traces of the hard-hearted husband, but
in his departure, presumably sometime earlier, Congdon had made a clean
sweep; there was nothing to afford a clue to his character beyond a
four-in-hand tie whose colors struck Archie as execrable. Below in the
snuggery fitted up for masculine use was a table, containing a humidor
half filled with dried-up cigars, and an ill-smelling pipe--Archie hated
pipes--and a box of cigarettes. A number of scientific magazines lay
about and a forbidding array of books on mechanics and chemistry
overflowed the shelves. He threw open a cabinet filled with blue prints
illustrating queer mechanical contrivances. They struck him as very
silly and he slammed the thing shut in disgust, convinced that Congdon
was a crank, or he wouldn't have indulged in such foolishness. In a
drawer of the desk was an automatic pistol and a box of cartridges. At
a country house where he once week-ended a burglar scare had inspired
feverish intensive pistol practice among the guests and Archie had
learned to load and fire and even developed some skill as a marksman.
There were three cartridges in the magazine and Archie thrust it into
his pocket thinking it not a bad idea to be prepared for invasion.

He was oppressed with a fleeting sense of his isolation as he drew back
a shade and pressed his face to the pane. The house stood at the edge of
the summer colony and a considerable distance from its nearest neighbor.
The landward horizon still brightened at intervals with a languid
mockery of lightning, dimmed by the fog that was dragging in from the
sea. The siren in the harbor had begun its mournful iterations, and he
caught the occasional flash of the revolving light that gleamed now and
then through breaks in the fog.

He switched off the lights in the lower rooms and established himself in
the guest chamber. The bed had been dismantled but he found blankets and
linen and addressed himself to the novel task of making a couch for
himself. If he had consulted his pleasure in advance he would have
shrunk from camping in a lonely seaside house for a night; but now that
the experience was forced upon him he was surprised to find that he was
not afraid. The revelation was an agreeable one. He, Archibald Bennett,
was a perfectly normal being, capable of rising to emergencies; and when
he saw Isabel Perry again, as he had every intention of doing at the end
of the summer, this little trip to Bailey Harbor would make a very
pretty story which could not fail to convince her of his fortitude and
courage.

Sleeping in his underwear was distasteful but this was only another
small item that proved his resolute fiber and ability to accept
conditions as he found them. He opened the windows and performed his
usual before-retiring calisthenics, tested the reading lamp beside the
bed, placed the pistol within easy reach and became absorbed in a volume
of short stories.

He read the book through, put out the light and was half asleep when he
was roused by footsteps on the veranda below.


IV

It was close upon midnight and the presence of a prowler on the premises
caused his heart to gallop wildly. He seized the pistol, crept to the
window and peered cautiously out. Between the crash of the breakers he
listened intently and had decided that the steps had been the illusion
of a dream when a sound in the room below renewed his alarm. He gained
the door in two jumps. He could hear the opening and closing of drawers
and see the flash of an electric lamp as the thief moved swiftly about,
apparently taking it for granted that he had the house to himself. The
swish of the swing-door between dining-room and pantry marked his
investigations in the rear of the house. He evidently found nothing
there, for he was back in the hall again in a moment. Then through the
vast silence of the big house the unknown gave voice to his anger and
disappointment:

"Well, I'll be damned!"

This, reaching Archie very clearly, added nothing to his comfort. He
debated making a dash for the switch and flooding the lower rooms with
light, but a burglar angrily damning himself for his stupidity in
entering a house where plated silver was the only booty in sight was not
a person to provoke unnecessarily. Then a series of quick flashes on the
wall of the stair gave warning of the intruder's invasion of the upper
rooms.

Archie drew back and waited. His thoughts and emotions in this hour of
danger interested him. He had always imagined that he would collapse in
any moment of peril. The fingers of his left hand sought the wrist of
his right that grasped the automatic and while his heart was still
beating quickly the pulse was regular. This was immensely gratifying and
he resolved to report the fact to his medical counselor at the first
opportunity.

The thief had become more cautious and was tiptoeing up the uncarpeted
treads of the stair, still sending occasionally a bar of light ahead.
All the doors of the bedrooms stood open, Archie remembered, and the
thief would not be long in discovering that the recent occupants had
left behind them nothing of the slightest value. His courage was
mounting; he was enormously surprised to find that his hands were quite
steady, and his mind had never functioned more perfectly. The burglar
was now in Mrs. Congdon's room, where he stumbled over a chair that
rocked furiously until stilled by the invader. He was now coming boldly
down the hall as though satisfied that the house was empty. A flash of
his lamp fell upon the door frame just above Archie's left hand.

He crawled hastily across the bed and swung round and waited with his
back against a chiffonier in the corner, sternly resolved that not
without a struggle would he be shot and his body left lying crumpled in
a corner with no one to tell the tale. He had the advantage of the
knowledge of the enemy's approach, and he raised the gun and covered the
door in readiness. A flash clipped the dark for an instant. Then a hand
groped along the wall seeking the switch. Archie could hear its soft
rasping over the wall. As the switch snapped the room flooded with
light. The bewildering glare leaping out of the darkness held the man in
the doorway and he raised his arm and passed his hand over his eyes to
shield them from the light.

Between the front windows stood a long mirror swung in a movable frame,
and as he measured distances and calculated chances Archie found himself
staring at the reflection of a tall man with a cap pulled low over his
head and with the collar of a yellowish raincoat turned up about his
face. The eyes of the two met, the gaze of each gripping and holding
that of the other.

The burglar's shoulders drooped as he gaped at the mirrored apparition.
Then swiftly he jerked a pistol from his pocket and fired point blank
into the mirror. The report crashed horribly in the room, followed by
the tinkle of fragments of glass. Archie aimed at the doorway, but his
shot seemed only to hasten the man's flight. A rug slipped and the
fugitive fell with a frightened yell that rang eerily through the house.

In the hall Archie turned on all the lights and gaining the landing
fired at the retreating figure as it plunged toward the front door. At
the crack of the gun the fugitive stopped short, clapped his hand to his
shoulder and groaned, then sprang through the front door and Bennett
heard immediately the quick patter of his feet on the walk.

The lock bore no evidence of having been forced. It was a curious
business and Archie closed the door, placed a heavy chair against it,
and feeling a little giddy he threw himself down on a davenport in the
living-room. He began thinking very hard. He had shot a man and for all
he knew the victim might be lying dead somewhere on the premises. To be
sure the shooting of an armed housebreaker was justifiable, but the
thought of coroner's inquests and dallyings with the police filled him
with horror. The newspapers would seize upon the case with avidity, and
his friends would never cease twitting him about his valor in firing a
bullet into the back of a fleeing burglar.

The frame of the photograph of the young girl that had so charmed him
lay on the floor face down. Bennett picked it up and found that the
picture had been removed. He wondered a little at this but dismissed the
subject from his mind to consider the graver business of how to avoid
the disagreeable consequences of his encounter. He must leave the house
and escape from Bailey Harbor before daybreak, and he went upstairs and
hurriedly began dressing.

[Illustration: At the crack of the gun the fugitive stopped short]

But for the tangible evidence of the smashed mirror (the bullet had
pierced the wooden back and was imbedded in the wall behind it) he might
have dismissed the whole thing as a nightmare. Instinctively he began
building up an alibi and planning his flight. The druggist who had given
him the key and the taxi driver both supposed that he had inspected the
house and taken the evening train for Boston. As he got into his clothes
he decided to make a wide detour of the town, perhaps tramping on to
Portsmouth, and there recover his bag and be off for the Rockies.

At one o'clock he was drinking coffee and munching toast and jam to
fortify himself for his journey. He had shot and perhaps killed a man,
and his mind surged now with self-accusations. He needn't have fired the
shot--the thief was running away and very likely would not have molested
him further. He was sorry for the fellow, wounded or dead; but in a
moment he was shuddering as he reflected that the bullet that splintered
the mirror had really been meant for him, and it had struck with great
precision just where the reflection of his head had presented a fair
target to the startled marksman.

He turned out the lights and placing the key under the door mat stole
through the garden. The man he had shot might even now be lying dead in
his path, and he lifted his feet high to avoid stumbling over the
corpse. But more appalling was the thought that the fugitive might be
lying in ambush, and he carried his pistol before him at arm's length
against such an emergency.

He gained the road, glanced toward the house and set off in the general
direction of the New Hampshire border.


V

There was neither star nor moon, and a chill wet wind bore in from the
sea. His immediate business was to get as far away from Bailey Harbor as
possible. He started with a long swinging stride that was quickly
arrested as he splashed through pools left by the rain or stumbled off
the road where it turned sharply. Once he wandered into a driveway and
seeking a way out crashed into a sunken garden. His feet were wet and
his trousers flapped heavily about his legs. The shrubbery pricked him
like barbed wire and a scratch along his cheek bled most disagreeably.
He hurriedly felt his way along a hedge to the highway, hating himself
with the greatest cordiality. If this was the adventurous life it was
not for him, and he solemnly resolved that if he didn't die of pneumonia
as the result of his indiscretions he would stick close to clubs and
comfortable hotels for the remainder of his life.

He had no way of keeping track of his progress, but on bumping into a
cross-roads sign-board he struck a match and read "Bailey Harbor 5 M.,"
and the discovery that only five miles lay between him and the Congdon
house filled him with rage and terror. A little later he caught the
first glimmer of dawn breaking over a gray world. This was heartening
but it brought also new dangers for he had no idea of where his tramp
had brought him and mud-splashed as he was and with the scratch across
his face stinging uncomfortably, he was in no haste to meet the
strangers who would soon be passing him in the road.

A curious whistle, a long pipe and then a short quick one, in the
roadside a little way ahead brought him to a halt. He drew the gun from
his overcoat pocket and stood perfectly quiet. In a few seconds the
whistle was repeated and Archie, grown suddenly bold, checked an impulse
to fly and imitated it.

A man rose from behind a stone wall on the right and walked toward him.

"That you, Hoky?" he called sharply, peering through the mist.

Seeing that it was not Hoky but a stranger with a pistol, he sprang
forward and wrenched the gun from Archie's hand.

"Stop squealing! Bad enough for you to fool me with that whistle without
pulling a gun. Now you get right over there by the fence where I'm
pointing and we'll consider matters a little!"

"I was just walking to Portsmouth," began Archie in a blithe tone he
hoped would prove convincing.

His captor laughed ironically, and throwing open Bennett's coat,
demanded:

"Where's your badge? Don't lie to me! You're one of these village
constables or a plainclothes man from Boston. Either way you'd better
show your hand."

"If you think I'm connected with the police," Archie faltered, "you were
never more mistaken in your life!"

The man clapped his hands over Archie's pockets and then struck a match
and surveyed his face with care. This done he stuck his nose close to
his captive's mouth and bade him breathe.

"You haven't the bouquet of an inebriate, son. You stepped along like
Hoky, my pal, and that's why I whistled; and you warbled the answer like
a mockingbird. Now listen to me! You've been up to something, so don't
tell me again that you're taking a little before breakfast stroll to
Portsmouth to work up an appetite. In the first place, have you seen a
man about your size along the road anywhere?"

"Not a soul!" declared Archie solemnly.

"Mighty queer Hoky doesn't turn up! I warned the beggar against these
seaside villas; they're all outfitted with fancy burglar alarms that
make a deuce of a row when you step on the wire. Electricity is the bane
of the craft; you light a wire that rings a gong loud enough to wake the
dead and then some chap jumps out of bed and turns on all the lights in
the house and very likely opens up with a gun before you can say
Jerusalem. But Hoky thought he knew better."

Archie clutched at the stone fence against which his captor had pushed
him and his breath came in long gasps.

"You mean," he faltered, "that you fear your friend has been shot!"

"That, my dear sir, is exactly what troubles me! Hoky didn't need to do
it; that's what rouses my indignation! He's been running free for two
years, and not a thing against him--wiped out all his indictments with
good time like an honest thief, and now very likely he's been potted by
some large prosperous householder as he was trying to lift a bit of
silver; and these country houses never have anything worth risking your
life for! My dear boy, can you blame me for being peeved, enormously
peeved, when I reflect that Hoky, one of the best pals in the world, is
probably lying as dead as a pickled mackerel somewhere back yonder? Or
if he has escaped death in his felonious enterprise he may have met the
constable and be awaiting the pleasure of a grand jury of righteous
farmers of the old commonwealth of Maine!"

Archie's tongue clung to the roof of his mouth as he tried to murmur
his sympathy for the stranger's sorrow. The thought that he was probably
talking to the accomplice of the man he had shot was terrifying; the
stranger seemed enormously fond of Hoky and if he knew that he had
within his grasp the person who was responsible for Hoky's failure to
return from his visit to Bailey Harbor he would very likely make haste
to avenge his friend's death. It seemed to Archie that the gods were
playing strange tricks upon him indeed. The man's speech was not the
argot he had assumed from his reading of crook stories to be the common
utterance of the underworld. There was something attractive in the
fellow. He carried himself jauntily, and his clean-shaven, rounded face
and fine gray eyes would not have suggested his connection with
burglary. He was an engaging sort of person, and overcoming his
discomfiture at having sent a bullet into the foolish Hoky, Archie
decided suddenly that the man might be of service to him. He was in
pressing need of a change of clothes but he was in no condition to
proceed to Portsmouth to redeem his suitcase; an impression that was
confirmed unexpectedly by his captor.

"You will pardon my candor, but you certainly look like the devil.
There's a rip in your trousers that needs explaining and that swipe on
your face reminds me of a map of the Mississippi done in red ink. Let me
introduce myself to you as the Governor. Among the powers that prey that
is my proud cognomen, not to say _alias_. Now please be frank--what
mischief brings you here at this pale hour?"

Archie gave serious thought to his answer. If he could convince this
singular person that he was a crook he would be less likely to suspect
that he had been the instrument of Hoky's undoing. And there was the
possibility that if he met the Governor's friendly advances in a
reciprocal spirit the man might help him out of his predicament. The
Governor was waiting for his answer, humming pleasantly as he surveyed
the heavens.

"I've got to make a getaway and be in a hurry about it," declared Archie
with a confidential air that caused a humorous light to play in the
Governor's eyes.

"A little trouble of some sort, eh? Perhaps fearing a collision with the
revised statutes of this or adjacent states?"

"Something like that," Archie answered huskily.

"It rather occurred to me that you were not promenading for mere
pleasure," replied the Governor, drawing his hand across his chin. "The
causes that lead people to travel have been enumerated by no less an
authority than Mr. Laurence Sterne as--

"Infirmity of body,

"Imbecility of mind, or

"Inevitable necessity.

"Unless my memory errs the same authority classifies travelers as the
idle, the inquisitive, the lying, the proud, the vain, the splenetic; to
which he added the delinquent and felonious traveler, the unfortunate
and innocent traveler, the traveler without aim and the wandering
sentimentalist. From the looks of your clothing I should judge that you
belong to the necessitous group, though from a certain uneasy expression
I might easily place you among the delinquent and criminal. A
fashionable defaulter perhaps? No. Then let it go at murder, though I
confess you don't look as though you'd have a stomach for homicide."

"I came damned near getting pinched!" asserted Archie stoutly. "The cops
back there in that town gave me a hard run for it."

Feeling that he was making an impression on the Governor he warmed to
his work.

"I was just crawling through the window of a drug store when here comes
a chap tiptoeing through the alley flashing a dark lantern, and I bolted
for the tall timber as hard as I could sprint. The fire bell rang and
the whole town woke up and I got lost running through a garden back of
one of those swell's houses on the shore. That's how I got this slash in
the face, and I'm in a pretty pickle now. There'll be a whole army
looking for me; and if your friend Hoky's been killed they'll be keen to
pinch me as another member of the gang."

The Governor listened patiently as Archie jerked this out, nervously
trying to conceal his Harvard training in the use of the English
language by resorting to such terms as he imagined bold bad men employ
in moments of mental stress.

"An amateur, I take it?" remarked the Governor with the humorous twinkle
that seemed to be habitual with him.

"Hell, no," grumbled Archie scornfully. "But I always play the game
alone; I never had any use for pals. They get in the way."

"Wrong, my boy; wrong! A good partner like me is essential to the
successful prosecution of the art or craft felonious. As for myself I
rarely venture to expose myself in these little affairs; but I advise
and counsel the brethren. I am their confidant and assist them in
innumerable ways purely for the joy of it, I assure you. Now Hoky and I
had been on the road all spring, and he made a good haul or two under my
direction; but he wouldn't let well enough alone. I warned him against
making an attempt back yonder last night. A stormy night always makes
honest householders wakeful. Take it from me, son, there couldn't be a
worse time for a burglary than a night melodious with rolling thunder.
You haven't the judgment of a month-old infant. I bought a toothbrush at
that drug store yesterday evening and there's a light right over the
safe at the end of the prescription counter. Your attempt, my son,
speaks for courage but not for discretion. You should always ask me
about such things."

"I'm sorry," replied Archie meekly, "that I didn't run into you sooner."

"The loss is mine!" cried the Governor heartily. "But let us be
practical. The coast will ring with this, particularly if Hoky is lying
cold at the undertaker's. He must be dead or pinched or he'd be here by
this time. We shall make a long jump, son, and ponder the future."

He walked off briskly with Archie close beside him.

"When Hoky persisted in his ill-chosen enterprise I felt a weariness
upon me and lifted a little roadster that I've tucked away down here in
a peaceful lane. Thought I'd be all ready to give the old boy a long
pull for freedom when he came back, but alas--!"

Sure enough the roadster was there; a very handy little car indeed, and
Archie was profoundly interested to know that it was in this fashion
that a man who from his own confession was counselor extraordinary to
thieves, toured the country. The Governor had become suddenly a man of
action. Kneeling down he detached a New York license tag from the
machine, drew from his pocket a Maine tag and attached it, humming
meanwhile.

"The rural police haven't learned this simple device," he explained, as
he sent the discarded tag skimming into a corn field. "I've got about
forty miles to run inland. The back roads only and Providence our
guide!"

He jumped in and bade Archie take the seat beside him. The car was soon
bumping merrily over a rough road that wound through a pine wood. As
near as Archie could reckon from the sun that was crawling into view
they were bound for Halifax, but to be going anywhere was an infinite
relief, and to be traveling with a man whose comrade he had shot and
probably killed only a few hours earlier, imparted a piquant flavor to
the journey. This astonishing person who called himself Governor might,
for all he knew, be hurrying him to some lonely place to murder him, but
if this was his plan he was most agreeable about it. He had taken off
the mackinaw coat in which he had first appeared in the road and the
brown coat underneath was of modish cut; and as his foot played upon the
brake Archie noted that he wore silk hose. He had never dreamed that
outlaws were so careful of their raiment. And the man's talk was that of
a cultivated gentleman who wore his learning lightly and was blessed
with an easy conscience; not at all like the philosopher and guide of
criminals.

"You seem to know this country well," Archie remarked as they penetrated
more deeply into the woods and followed a grass-grown trail that ended
abruptly at an abandoned lumber camp.

"Oh, I know most of the whole United States just as well," remarked the
Governor, steering the car slowly among the deep ruts. "We'll shoot the
car around behind that pyramid of sawdust and walk a bit to stretch our
legs."

There was no trace of a path where he struck off into the woods but he
strode along with the easy confidence of one who is sure of his
destination. They brought up presently beside a brook and in a moment
more reached a log hut planted on the edge of the high bank.

"What do you think of that, Sir Archibald?" inquired the Governor
carelessly.

Archie paused, wavering in the path. The man had called him by his right
name, throwing in the prefix with a tinge of insolence.

"Oh, your name?" remarked the Governor turning from a leisurely survey
of the dwelling. "Perfectly easy! Archibald Bennett was neatly sewed
into your coat pocket by your tailor as I observed when I rubbed my
hands over your waistcoat to see if you wore a badge. Your bill-fold is
there intact--it's rather indelicate of you to feel for it! If I'd meant
to rob you I'd have biffed you on the head long ago and thrown your
carcass to the buzzards."

"I got these duds out of a suitcase I sneaked from an auto in Boston,
and that's no name of mine," Archie explained hurriedly, still anxious
to convince the Governor that he was a thief.

"A deft hand, son; but very careless of you not to rip out the label.
Men have been hanged on slighter evidence. But Archibald is not a name
to sneeze at, and I rather like Archie; and Archie I shall continue to
call you. Now we'll see what we can do to shake up a breakfast."

He drew out a key and opened the door of the hut. On one side stood a
dilapidated cook stove of an obsolete pattern, surrounded by a few
kitchen utensils. In the far end were two bunks, one above the other,
and on a chair beside them a pile of blankets neatly folded. In the
middle of the room was a table littered with old magazines.

"Not a bad place, Archie! I stumbled upon it a couple of years ago quite
by accident and use it occasionally. The retreat of some artist who
probably starved to death. When I first found the shack it was full of
impressionistic studies that looked as though the poor boob stood on his
head to paint. I made a burnt offering of the whole lot to outraged
Nature." He opened a cupboard revealing a quantity of provisions. "Poor
old Hoky was a great lover of ham; I never saw such an appetite for
smoked pork, and he had just stocked us up with a few specimens he
lifted somewhere."

Besides three hams there were coffee, cartons of crackers and cans of
condensed milk.

"We fellows who live by our wits need the open air just as much as bank
presidents, for our business makes a heavier drain on the nerves,"
continued the Governor after they had prepared breakfast. "Your pallor
suggests that you may have emerged quite recently from one of those
institutions designed for the moral reconstruction of the weak and
erring."

Archie's eyes fell under the Governor's keen gaze. But he realized that
he must firmly establish himself in the man's confidence by palming
himself off as a crook with a prison record. In no other way could he be
sure of the assistance and protection which the Governor alone could
give him.

"Three months' jail sentence," he replied smoothly.

"Ah! A minor felony, I judge, from the brevity of your incarceration,"
replied the Governor, emptying the coffee pot into Archie's cup. "I have
never been in jail and to the best of my knowledge I have never been
indicted; or if I have the sheriff has never caught up with me! My heart
bleeds nevertheless for these poor devils who are always in the toils,
and in my poor weak fashion I try to help them. Really, my dear Archie,
thieves as a class are shockingly deficient in intelligence. Until I
dropped into the underworld they were a peculiarly helpless lot--like
dear old Hoky whose loss I shall mourn to my dying day."

Archie flinched, but he was beginning to feel at home in his new rôle of
a fugitive from justice, and murmured his sympathy without a quaver.

"My friend," said the Governor soberly as they rose from the table, "we
have dipped our hands in the same dish and broken bread together. I'm
strong for the old traditions of Arab hospitality and that sort of
thing. There's honor, you know, among thieves, and I'm rather keen for
the sentimental side of the business. You may trust me, telling me as
much or as little of yourself as you please. I don't mind saving that
you're a likable chap, but pathetically helpless in emergencies like
most of our brethren. It's well for you that you fell in with me, with
that little episode of the drug store hanging over you. I'll be a good
pal to you and I ask you to be straight with me. Are we friends or--"

He put out his hand questioningly. Archie grasped it, meeting the gaze
of the keen gray eyes squarely, but with something of an appeal in them.

"All right, Archie--for such you shall be to the end of the chapter,
whether you lied about it or not. And now let's deal with practical
affairs. I'm going to spend the afternoon on that stolen machine we've
got back there; you'll hardly know it when you see it again. I'll
paint'er white to symbolize our purity. There's an assortment of clothes
the boys have left here from time to time--all sizes and ready for any
emergency. You can pick'em over while I'm working on the car. I've got a
bag of my own stuff stuck around here somewhere." He filled and lighted
a pipe, walked toward the kitchen end of the room and kicked a long box.
"If you'll just push that aside you'll find a door in the floor--quite a
cellar underneath--made it myself. Candles on the shelf there. Don't
break your neck on the ladder."

He gathered up several cans of ready-to-use paint, and paused in the
doorway to deliver a final admonition.

"If Hoky _should_ turn up--tall chap, a little bent in the shoulders,
clean, sharp profile--call him Hoky and yell Governor before he shoots.
He's very sudden with the gun, that Hoky; a lamentable weakness; spoiled
him for delicate jobs, but I'm afraid that at last somebody's got the
drop on him."

The cellar was really a cave gouged into the earth and piled with trunks
and hand bags stuffed with all manner of loot. There was enough
silverware to equip a dozen households, and Archie amused himself by
studying the monograms, thinking that quite possibly he was handling
spoons that he had encountered on happier occasions in the homes of his
friends. The trunks contained clothing in great variety and most of it
was new and of good quality. He carried up an armful and found a gray
suit that fitted him very well. Another visit yielded shirts, socks and
underclothing, a slightly used traveling case with shaving materials and
other toilet articles.

He bathed in the brook, shaved, dressed and felt like a new being. Only
a few hours had elapsed since he walked uprightly in the eyes of all
men; now he was a fugitive, and for all he knew to the contrary a
murderer. He had accommodated himself with ease to lying and the
practice of deceit; and even the taking of human life seemed no longer a
monstrous thing. If he were caught in the Governor's company he would
have a pretty time of it satisfying a court of his innocence; but he
considered his plight tranquilly.

In doffing the clothing he had acquired honestly and substituting stolen
raiment, it was almost as though he were changing his character as well.
In transferring his effects from the old to the new pockets he came upon
Isabel Perry's note, and grinned as he re-read it. He wondered what
Isabel would say if she knew that he had already slipped the leash that
bound him to convention and performed even more reckless deeds than she
had prescribed for him.

"No callers? Well, I must say you're a credit to our gents' clothing
department!" the Governor remarked on his return. "That stuff was
accumulated early in the spring by a couple of the boys who had no more
sense. Silver, yes; you can melt it and sell it like pig iron; but how
absurd to risk your neck stealing mere raiment! Still the word's gone
down the line and any of the brethren who're in need of shelter and a
change of clothes will find what they want here. You've picked about the
best of the lot. What do you make of this? Found it in the car."

He extended a crumpled telegram which read:

  Bailey Harbor, Me.
  June 11, 1917.

  Putney Congdon,
  Thackeray Club, New York.

  I am offering the house for rent. Shall take every precaution
  to protect my children from your brutality.

                                                       A. B. C.

Archie felt the hut whirling round him. What he held was beyond question
the reply of Mrs. Congdon to her husband's telegram that had been left
lying on the dinner table. And if Congdon had left New York for Bailey
Harbor immediately to put into effect his threat to abduct his child, it
might have been Congdon he had shot--not Hoky! The Governor, scrubbing
the paint from his hands, called over his shoulder:

"An odd message! It had slipped under the seat. Good thing I found it."

"Where did you find that car?" asked Archie with an attempt at
indifference.

"Oh, the bloomin' thing was run up under a clump of trees on the back
road on the far side of Bailey. I thought maybe it was a stolen car.
Hoky and I separated there when the storm started. So I drove the
machine to the place you found me waiting for him. Mr. Congdon has
probably notified all the world of his sad loss." He held out his hands
for Archie's inspection. "This is certainly hard and fast paint, but it
did the work all right. The owner of that machine wouldn't know it now.
And not more than a spoonful of gas gone out of the tank; so we can make
a long jump, Archie."

No jump they could make would be long enough, Archie reflected. He was
afraid to ask further questions about the car and his senses were numbed
by the effort to determine whether it was Hoky he had shot or Mr. Putney
Congdon. If his bullet had impinged upon Congdon's person, the man would
undoubtedly believe his wife had ordered him murdered, and Archie found
no consolation in the conjecture that he had added to Mrs. Congdon's
distress. If Congdon wasn't dead he would be sure to make diligent
inquiries in the village as to his assailant and the stolen car. The
druggist would know who had taken the key and Archie had stated his
purpose to walk to the station and take the five eleven train. But
beyond Bailey Harbor he saw his alibi crumbling.

The Governor's ceaseless flow of talk fortunately diverted his thoughts
to more cheerful channels. He must stick to the Governor, who to be sure
showed no inclination to desert him. Indeed the Governor evinced a
sincere pleasure in his society, and if he behaved himself he might fill
the void created in the man's life by the loss of Hoky. He would remain
in hiding until the whole thing blew over, whether it was Hoky or Putney
Congdon he had shot in Congdon's house.

He obeyed with alacrity a hint that he prepare luncheon; and after this
had been consumed the Governor suggested a game of chess, produced a set
of ivory chessmen from a cupboard and soon proved himself a skilful
player.

"It's wonderful for sharpening the wits," he explained. "When I've got a
difficult job on hand I find a game stimulating to my faculties. Let me
see, who was that telegram addressed to? Congdon; yes, that's right.
Dropped into a chess club in Boston about a month ago and watched a chap
playing, highly nervous fellow but a pretty stiff player at that. They
called him Congdon all right and he may be the owner of that car. The
thought pleases me. Heard him asking for his father, Eliphalet Congdon,
who's a chess fiend, too, it appeared. Had heard of him before--the old
boy carries his will around in his umbrella just to tantalize his
relations, who are all crazy to know what he's going to do with his
money. Something pathetic in a man chasing his own father over the
country; doesn't gee with our old ideal of the patriarchal system with
father at the head of the table serving the whole family from one
miserable duck. Ever notice a queer streak of eccentricity in people who
toy with the chessmen? Of course you're thinking I'm no exception to the
rule, but the thought isn't displeasing to me. That was a neat
move--you're waking up, Archie! Well, sir, young Congdon was offering
something handsome to any one who'd steal the old man's umbrella so he
could get hold of the will. I've sunk pretty low, Archie, but stealing
umbrellas is distinctly not in my line!"

At the end of two hours the Governor declared that they must take a nap
before setting out and turned into one of the berths and was soon
snoring. Archie was glad of a chance to be alone with his thoughts, but
he found them poor company. After kicking about restlessly for a time he
slept but only to wander through a wild phantasmagoria of crime in which
Isabel Perry, dressed precisely as he had seen her at his sister's, led
him on from one wild scene to another, clapping her hands with delight
at each exploit.

"You are doing splendidly," she laughed, as he turned to her, pistol in
hand, after shooting a gigantic policeman with fiery red whiskers.
"Really you exceed my expectations. I am proud of you, Mr. Bennett," she
was saying when a vigorous shake brought him up standing.

"To gain or lose it all," he stammered rubbing his eyes. But it was not
Isabel he was addressing but his confederate, blandly smiling.

"The boy quotes poetry!" the Governor exclaimed. "Archie, you've come in
answer to my prayers! Together we shall drink of the fount of Castalia.
We shall chum with Apollo and the Muses Nine! But the gods call us
elsewhere! We'll snatch a bite and be off! And we've got a job all
waiting for us. One of the brotherhood has commissioned me to dig up
some boodle he's planted over in New Hampshire. You may recall the
incident. Red Leary, a rare boy, who pulled off some big enterprises in
Kansas and Missouri a dozen years ago, emerged from Leavenworth and
floated into good old conservative New England where he held up an
express messenger and sauntered off with fifty thousand dollars in new
bank notes fresh from the Treasury. I've been in touch with Red
lately--he's been up in Nova Scotia but doesn't like the climate, and he
wants his boodle. Do you follow me?"

"He hid it somewhere and wants your help in recovering it?"

"Right the first time! In the summer there's a lot of travel north and
south and Leary, who's had an honest job up there since he made the
haul, is even now wandering down Lake Champlain to meet me. No, Archie,
communication through the underworld is much less difficult than you
imagine. Regular post offices and that sort of thing. That cash is
tucked away in the cellar of a church and by this time tomorrow night
we'll have it, all ready for old Red and check the item from our
tablets."

"But the numbers of those notes are in every bank in the country,"
suggested Archie; "the police are only waiting for the bills to get into
circulation to pounce on the thief."

"I am more and more delighted with you, my son! That point had given me
no little worry. But something will turn up; there will be a way out of
the difficulty. Chuck your old duds into the creek and close the
windows. We'll hit the long trail!"




CHAPTER TWO

I


Out of the woods and once more on a smooth highway the stolen car sped
like a frightened ghost through the starry night. The Governor drove
with the assurance of a man who knows what he's about. Huddled in a long
ulster he had found in the cabin, Archie, whose ideas of motoring had
always been extremely conservative, yielded himself more and more to the
inevitable. He was no longer a free agent but a plaything of
circumstance. In no exaggerated sense he was a captive, a prisoner of
the man beside him, whose friendliness was flattering and alarming in a
breath!

At any moment they might be held up and subjected to scrutiny and
questioning, and Archie experienced a tingle at the prospect; but the
Governor had declared with apparent sincerity that he had never been in
jail and this in itself was reassuring, for presumably a man who so
keenly enjoyed his freedom was a skilled dodger of the law. The
Governor, who would have passed anywhere for a successful banker or
lawyer, had more of the spirit of the debonair swashbucklers of romance
than any other man Archie had known. He might be a great liar, and
Archie suspected that he was; and doubts of the man's sanity troubled
him not a little; but it sufficed for the moment that his comrade was
steering him rapidly away from Bailey Harbor, and so far had managed
the business with excellent judgment.

Occasionally the Governor lifted his voice in songs of unimpeachable
literary and musical quality that rang sonorously above the hum of the
engine.

    "Who is Sylvia? What is she?
    That all our swains commend her,"

he sang through to the end to the old familiar air; followed by "Drink
to Me Only with Thine Eyes."

They struck a stretch of road under repair and slowing up the Governor
remarked carelessly as he picked his way through a line of red lanterns:

"Speaking of women, my dear Archie, do you share the joy of the lyric
poets in the species?"

"Women?" gulped Archie, as surprised as though he had been asked
suddenly his opinion of the _gazella dorcas_.

"The same, Archie. It occurs to me that you have probably had many
affairs. A fellow of your coolness and dash couldn't fail to appeal to
the incomprehensible sex. I'm thirty-four but I've loved only one
woman--that's the solemn truth, Archie. Occasionally small
indiscretions, I confess; and I sometimes weakly yield to the temptation
to flirt, but with my hand on my heart I declare solemnly that only once
have I ever been swayed by the grand passion. And strange as it may seem
she's a bishop's daughter, though a saint in her own right! O wonderful!
O sublime!"

This confidence, vague as to the identity and habitat of the lady of the
Governor's adoration, nevertheless made it incumbent upon Archie to make
some sort of reply. The Governor would probably be disappointed in him
if he confessed the meagerness of his experiences, and he felt that it
would be a grave error to jeopardize his standing with his companion.

"Well, I'm in the same boat," he answered glibly. "There's only one girl
for me!"

"Magnificent!" cried the Governor. "I hope she's not beyond your reach
like my goddess?"

"Well, I'll hardly say that," Archie replied. "But there are
difficulties, embarrassments, you know."

"Possibly your choice of the open road as a career is a bar to marriage?
Such situations are always deplorable."

"It is quite the other way round with me," Archie protested. "It was she
who put me up to it!"

"What! Your inamorata wanted you to be a crook?" cried the Governor.
"She must be a wonderful girl! Shoplifter, perhaps? There are some jolly
girls in that business! Or, maybe she's one of these confidence women
who play a sure game and usually get by with it?"

"Nothing like that!" cried Archie hastily. "She just fancies the
life--thinks it offers me a good chance to prove my mettle. She hates
conventionality."

This reference to Isabel Perry, remote and guarded as it was, he
defended only on the ground that it was necessary in some way to meet
the Governor half-way in his confidences. And what he had said was
really true, though to be sure Isabel could hardly be held responsible
for the shooting at the Congdon house. He wondered what Isabel would say
if she could see him with a criminal beside him, joy-riding in a stolen
car. And it was no lie that he sincerely believed that he loved her. No
other girl had ever roused him so much, or given him so good reason for
standing off and taking a look at himself. His thoughts of her had led
him far afield when the Governor remarked ruminatively:

"Do you manage to see her? That's the devil of it in my case! The lady's
forbidden to recognize me in any way and the right reverend father is a
tart old party and keeps sharp watch of her. You'd think a girl of
twenty-two or thereabouts who spends her time in good works for the
heathen and runs a Sunday-school class in a slum would be indulged in
her admiration for a jolly rogue like me! But the facts are decidedly
otherwise. She's never quite brought her nerve to the point of breaking
home ties and bolting with me; but she's declined to marry all the
bachelor and widower dominies in the paternal diocese on my account. And
a young bishop of the brightest prospects. Actually, my dear Archie!
There's a steadfast soul for you! But I can't see her and the regular
mails are closed to us. Nevertheless we have an arrangement--highly
romantic, by which if she ever needs me or thinks I can serve her in any
way she's to leave a note in a certain place. It's her own idea and very
pretty. Savors of the good old times when bold knights went riding up to
the castle and yelled to the flinty-hearted duke inside to lower the
draw-bridge and send out his daughter to be married on the spot or he'd
be dropped in the moat with all his armor for a sinker."

Archie thought it would be a fine thing if he could make an arrangement
with Isabel by which he could hear from her on his travels and he
mustered courage to ask the Governor how he managed his line of
communication.

"The device is the simplest possible. In our jauntings we shall pass a
town where she visits a good deal--the home of an ancient aunt. It's a
jolly old place, big grounds, with elms and maples all round, and
there's a tea house with a tile floor, and there's a particular blue
tile under a bench that can be pried out with a pen knife. That's our
post-office, and much safer than registered mail. Of course my business
correspondence is a different matter. I pick that up in countless places
between here and California--reports of the boys, their hopes and
ambitions and hints of schemes for acquiring sudden wealth. If you'd
like to use some of these addresses and have mail forwarded I'll be glad
to oblige you. You know how fussy the government is about the use of the
mail for irregular purposes? Well, it rather tickled me to get some
envelopes with S. S. S. P. printed in the corner and the number of a
vacant lot in Sioux City as the address. A careless eye would think the
initials stood for some sort of learned society but the real translation
is Society for the Segregation of Stolen Property. I always use these in
communicating with the brotherhood."

"There's a good deal about the business I don't know," said Archie with
twinges of envy and admiration. "My bridges are all burned behind me and
I'm not getting mail anywhere; but I'll remember your offer."

Further conversation was ended by the swinging of a lantern across the
road.

"Ah!" exclaimed the Governor, with a curious rising inflexion. "I've
been looking for that."

He slowed up instantly and in a moment halted car. The headlights played
upon two men standing belligerently in front of the roadster.

"Good evening, gentlemen!" cried the Governor. "Short of gas or what's
the trouble?"

"We're from the Portsmouth police," answered one of the men while the
other ran to the rear of the car and swung a lantern over the license
tag.

"Maine tag," he shouted.

"Certainly a Maine license," replied the Governor. "We're deputy
sheriffs from Cumberland County looking for two crooks who've been
robbing houses up our way. Got blank warrants all ready to serve if we
catch the scoundrels."

Archie shuddered at the Governor's assurance. The Portsmouth officers
manifested the deepest professional interest and sympathy as the
Governor with an authoritative air flourished two documents.

"Burglar shot at Bailey Harbor last night," explained one of the
officers; "they found his body this morning and we're looking for his
accomplice. Guess he didn't come this way; we been on the road all
night."

"We've held up everybody that looked suspicious all the way down and
haven't seen a soul," the Governor replied in official tones. "Think the
chaps we're looking for skipped by train. What did the dead burglar look
like?"

"I talked with the Bailey mayor over the telephone and he said the dead
man was a big fellow, clean-shaven with the scar of an old knife wound
under his left arm. One of the cottagers shot him in his house, but he
got away--crawled down on the shore and died. Boston police
department's sending a man up to look at the body. Never knew so many
burglaries up this way. Must be a whole gang at work."

"Certainly looks like it," the Governor assented. "Well, if you see a
tall chap and a short thick-set fellow anywhere nail 'em for us. Old
criminals with long records. They've been enjoying themselves up our
way. The tall one doesn't say much, but the little chap is a smooth
talker--can talk himself right out of jail if you give him a chance."

"We'll shoot first and get an explanation afterward if we see 'em,"
declared the Portsmouth officer, as his companion buttoned up his coat
preparatory to getting back into the car.

"Glad to see you, boys!" exclaimed the Governor, backing the stolen
machine and then calling a cheery "Good luck!" as he passed their car.

Archie had been sitting pigeon-toed expecting that at any minute the two
officers would discover points in the stolen car to arouse their
suspicions; but the Governor's jaunty tone had evidently thrown them
entirely off guard. He had hoped that the Governor would press for
further details as to the killing of the burglar at the Harbor, but as
matters stood he had learned nothing except that a burglar had been shot
in one of the Harbor cottages and he was again torn with anxiety as to
the identity of the man he had fired at in the Congdon house.

The Governor began to chortle after a quick glance at the vanishing red
light of the Portsmouth car.

"Not the first time I've used warrants in that way! And they're good
warrants too. I plucked a bunch of such literature from a deputy sheriff
who got too inquisitive last summer and I had to grab and tie him to a
tree up near Moosehead where I'd gone for a conference with some of the
boys who were coming out of Canada. But I guess it's a sure thing those
Portsmouth chaps were looking for me! I'd been strolling round quite
freely with poor Hoky up the shore. If that chap had stuck his finger
into the paint this machine would have gone no further. We'll do well
to leave the main road for a while, then step briskly into a train
somewhere."

"Your nerve in describing us--you and me, sitting right there before
them--to those officers gave me a chill," confessed Archie. "If you'd
talked to them much more we'd have been pinched for sure."

"You flatter the intelligence of the police. There are not a half a
dozen detectives worthy of the name in the whole country. Possibly we
may have a contest of wits with some of them before we close the
season."

It had always been Archie's habit to greet courteously the policemen he
passed at night in the Avenue, little dreaming that the day would come
when he would view the policing of the world with contemptuous disdain.
The Governor spoke of policemen and detectives with pity; they were so
stupid, he said, though he admitted under Archie's cross-examination
that they could be a nuisance at times.

"Make yourself as conspicuous as possible and they're hardly likely to
bother you. There are times, of course, when one must hide, but the
mistake our boys make is in hiding in places where the police can call
them up by telephone and tell them to pay their own taxi fare to the
nearest police station. I call on police chiefs in a purely social way
now and then, and talk to them about the best way of reforming crooks.
It's their philosophy that no crook ever reforms; an absurd idea, of
course. But there's no surer way to ingratiate yourself with a big fat
detective than to ask how you can help poor repentant sinners, which
gives him a chance to discourage you. There's nothing in it, he warns
you. You thank him for his advice and ask him out to lunch. I've bought
expensive dinners for some of the highest priced crime-ferrets in the
game just for the joy of hearing their pessimism. They're all swollen up
with the idea of their superior knowledge of human nature. But it serves
a good purpose to cultivate them, for you're perfectly safe so long as
you listen and don't try to tell them anything."


II

Toward morning the Governor again had recourse to the Elizabethan bards,
then he lapsed suddenly into a meditative mood.

"It's always a bad sign when the season opens with the potting of some
of the comrades. When there's one such catastrophe there are bound to be
others. Now that Hoky's dead you'll hear of the killing of other
burglars. Every householder on the coast will buy himself a gun and wait
for a chance to shoot some misguided stranger he finds collecting
bric-a-brac in the dark watches of the night. But Hoky's death is a loss
to the underworld. At his best he could achieve the impossible. Once he
spent a week on the roof of police headquarters in Cincinnati; really he
did. Good weather and perfectly comfortable; used to stroll down through
the building and go out for food; then back again. Chatted with the
chief of detectives about his own crime, which was holding up the
paymaster of a big factory. Bless me if Hoky didn't bury the money in a
graveyard and hurry uptown and live right there with the whole police
system right under him. He was a dear fellow, Hoky! By the way, you're
mighty lucky that you didn't get a neat little chunk of lead right
through the midriff, fooling with that drug store!"

In the rush of his thoughts Archie had forgotten his imaginary exploit
at the Harbor drug store and realized that he must have his wits about
him if he expected to retain the Governor's regard and confidence. The
ease with which the supercrook rode around policemen vastly increased
his feeling of reliance in his strange companion, and his only misgiving
was that the daring resourceful rogue might abandon him.

As dawn broke the whistle and rumble of a train caused the Governor to
stop the car and dive into his pockets for time tables of which he
carried a large supply. He scanned one and hummed his satisfaction.

"We'll get rid of this machine right now as there's a station over there
a little way where we can pick up a local right into Portsmouth. Don't
be nervous. We'll pass for a couple of city men owning farms up here and
just riding into town on a little business.

    'Virtue is bold and goodness never fearful,'

as well said by old William of Avon. We shall be bold, Archie, but not
too bold."

He stopped, opened a gate and ran the car--thoroughly disreputable from
its nocturnal bath in mud--through a barnyard and into an empty shed.

"Now for a brisk walk! The owner of this place sleeps late--not a sign
of smoke from the kitchen chimney. And yet so many students of farm life
wonder at the meager earnings of the honest husbandman! However, we've
given that chap an excellent roadster and if he keeps his mouth shut he
can run it till it falls to pieces for all anybody will ever know it's a
stolen vehicle."

They crossed the railroad and were soon buying tickets from a sleepy
stationmaster. The Governor talked briskly through the window as the
agent stamped their tickets while Archie cowered at the door marveling
that any one could face the problems of a precarious existence so gaily.

They alighted at Portsmouth without mishap, and Archie, recalling the
primary object of his travels, stepped to the telegraph office and wired
his sister as follows:

   "Have been motoring with friend; hence delay in reporting. The
   house will not do. Plumbing in wretched condition, and house
   generally out of repair. Sorry but you will have to look further."

Then he wrote a telegram to his office in New York explaining that he
had been motoring, which accounted for his failure to call for his
passage to Banff, thoughtfully adding that the cost of his unused
sleeping car tickets should be charged to his personal account. After
composing these messages he redeemed his suitcase in the check room and
dropped it beside the Governor's battered kit bag on the platform.

"Ah! Burning the wires a little? I hope you are committing no
indiscretion, son. I was admiring your baggage; that suitcase of yours
would hold a king's wardrobe. We'll drive to the hotel, get a bath and a
solid, old-fashioned breakfast, a hearty meal such as old Ike Walton
recommended to fishermen eager for the early worm, and plan our further
travels."

The Governor commanded the best service of the inn, obtaining two
adjoining rooms with bath. He registered elaborately as Reginald Heber
Saulsbury and wrote Archie down as Ashton Comly, dashingly indicating
the residence of both as New York. In response to an inquiry for mail
for Mr. Saulsbury the clerk made search and threw out a letter which the
Governor opened indifferently and after a glance crumpled into his
pocket.

"A note from Red Leary," he explained when they had reached their rooms.
"He's slipping along slowly toward Brattleboro, where we're to deliver
that loot we've got to pick up. You will pardon my cheek in registering
for you; unwarrantable assumption. I choose Ashton Comly as a dignified
and distinctive _alias_; sounds a little southern; you may consider
yourself for the present a scion of an ancient house of the Carolinas.
As for me, Saulsbury's a name I saw chalked on a box-car in the Buffalo
yards and Reginald Heber is a fit handle to it. When I was in prep
school we had a lecture by an eminent divine on the life of Reginald
Heber, hymn writer, and that sort of thing. I'm rather ashamed of myself
for borrowing the name of a man of singularly pure life, but it's the
devil in me, lad! It's an awful thing to be born with a devil inside of
you, but it could hardly be said that my case is unique. Here you are,
also the possessor of a nasty little devil, and obviously, like me, a
man of good bringing up. That's why I've warmed to you. You tried
pulling rough talk on me at our first meeting, but you've got Harvard
written all over you. No, not a word! We are two brunette sheep far
astray from the home pastures and not apologizing for our color or
previous condition of servitude."

Archie had always enjoyed the ease of good inns, and being in a
comfortable house with his own effects at hand, he might have forgotten
that he was a fugitive if it hadn't been for the propinquity of his
companion, who was addressing himself with elaborate ceremonial to the
preparation of his bath. The Governor's bag contained an assortment of
silk shirts and underwear, a dress suit, a handsome set of toilet
articles, and as Archie scrutinized them approvingly the Governor
smiled, stepped to the door, and locked it.

"The property of a fastidious gentleman of breeding, you would say! You
would never dream that thing has a false bottom!"

Archie would not have dreamed it, but the Governor dumped the remaining
contents on the bed, fumbled in the bottom of the bag, lifted a
concealed flap, and drew out a long fold of leather.

"You might think it a surgeon's pocket-kit, son, but you would be
greatly in error. Drills, jimmies, even a light hammer--and here's a
little contrivance that has been known to pluck the secret from most
intricate combinations--my own invention. The common yegg habit of
pouring an explosive fluid into the cracks of a strong box is obsolete.
I hold that such a procedure is vulgar, besides being calculated to make
an ugly noise when not perfectly muffled. By George, Archie, it occurs
to me that you must have left your kit behind you in that absurd drug
store at the Harbor! It is just as well that you are no longer
encumbered with those playthings. Trust the Governor in future. I'm
yearning for a cool grapefruit, so bestir yourself."

"I want to learn all the modern improvements," said Archie, fingering
the burglar tools. "I've been playing the game wrong--decidedly wrong!"

"My favorite pupil!" cried the Governor, from the tub in which he was
already rolling and splashing. "You shall be my successor when I pass on
to other fields. Destiny has thrown you in my path for this very
purpose. You will rank high among the crooks of all history, the king of
the underworld, feared and loved by the great comradeship who prey upon
the world by night!"

Archie felt very humble under these promises and prophecies, and
wondered whether there was really deep down in his soul some moral
obliquity that the acute master crook had detected and responded to.
There had been clergymen and philanthropists among Archie's forebears,
but never murderer or thief, and he was half-persuaded that he was the
predestined black sheep that he had always heard gave a spot of color to
the whitest flock.

At the breakfast table the Governor scanned a local paper and with a
chirrup passed it to Archie, pointing to a double-column headline:

                  A CARNIVAL OF BURGLARY IN MAINE

Archie's eyes fell upon the bizarre photograph of a dead man with which
the page was illustrated, and he choked on a fragment of grapefruit as
he read the inscription: "Dead Thief, Identity Unknown."

It was a ghastly thing with which to be confronted; and his perturbation
increased as he read an account of the killing. It was in the house of
Mr. Waldo S. Cummings, a cottager, that the man had been shot, the
mortal wound being inflicted by the householder's son, after an exciting
battle. The dead body of the burglar had been found on the shore and the
whole coast was being searched for his accomplice.

"That's poor old Hoky all right," murmured the Governor, buttering a
piece of toast reflectively. "How indecent to prop up a corpse that way
and take a snapshot merely to satisfy the morbid curiosity of a silly
public! As you seem to be entranced with the literary style of our
Bailey Harbor correspondent, I shall take the liberty of helping you to
a fried egg."

However, Archie's appetite was pretty effectually spoiled by this
paragraph:

   An odd circumstance, more or less remotely connected with the
   killing of the burglar in the fashionable colony still remains to
   be explained. Officer Yerkes shortly before two o'clock, the hour
   at which the thief was shot in Mr. Cummings's home, saw a man
   hurrying through Water Street. He bore the appearance of a
   gentleman, and the officer did not accost him, thinking him a
   yachtsman from one of the boats in the harbor who had been visiting
   friends ashore. Yerkes says that the man walked oddly, pausing now
   and then as though in pain, and was carrying his right hand upon
   his left shoulder. Owing to the poor lighting of Water Street--a
   matter that has been a subject of frequent complaint to the city
   authorities--Yerkes was unable to catch a glimpse of the stranger's
   features. This morning drops of blood were found on the board walk
   crossed by the stranger where Officer Yerkes had seen him, and it
   is believed that this was another of the burglar-gang who was
   wounded in a struggle somewhere in the interior and was seeking the
   help of his confederate, presumably the man shot in the Cummings
   house.

As the paper fell from Archie's hand the Governor took it up.

"You seem agitated, Archie! You must learn to conceal your feelings!"

When he had read the paragraph he glanced quickly at Archie, whose fork
was beating a queer tattoo on his plate.

"Your work possibly?" murmured the Governor. "Compose yourself. That old
lady over there has her eye on you. I'm afraid you lied to me about the
drug store, for if you'd done any shooting in that neighborhood you
would never have got out of town alive! No!"--he held up his hand
warningly--"tell me nothing! But if we've got a murder behind us, we
shall certainly be most circumspect in our movements. That's all piffle
about Hoky having any confederate except me. And there's not a single
one of the great comradeship on this shore--I know that; no one who
knows the password of the inner door. You interest me more and more,
Archie! I congratulate you on your splendid nerve."

Archie's nerve was nothing he could admire himself, but a second cup of
coffee put warmth into his vitals and he recovered sufficiently to pay
the breakfast check. If it was Congdon he had shot there was still the
hope, encouraged by the newspaper, that the wounded man was in no haste
to report his injury to the police. But Archie found little comfort in
the thought that somewhere in the world there was a man he had shot and
perhaps fatally wounded.

He must conceal his anxious concern from the Governor; for more than
ever he must rely upon his strange friend for assistance in escaping
from the consequences of the duel in the Congdon cottage.


III

"I was thinking," remarked the Governor, after a long reverie, "that it
would be only decent for me to run back to Bailey Harbor and attend poor
Hoky's funeral."

Archie stared aghast.

"Hoky was my friend," the Governor continued. "The newspaper says he's
to be buried in the Potter's Field this afternoon, and it will only set
us back a day in our plans. I can imagine how desperately forlorn the
thing will be. Some parson will say a perfunctory prayer for a poor
devil he believes to have gone straight to the fiery pit and they'll
bury him in a pauper's grave. There will be the usual morbidly curious
crowd hanging round, wagging their heads and whispering. I shall go,
Archie, and you can wait for me. It will take only a few hours and we
can spend the night here and resume our journey tomorrow."

"But a stranger appearing there! It's dangerous!" Archie protested.
"I wouldn't go back there for a million dollars!"

"Hoky would have taken the chance for me," said the Governor, firmly.
"The whole shore teems with tourists, and I'll leave it to your judgment
whether any one would take me for a crook. Be careful of my feelings,
Archie; I'm just a little emotional today. Hoky and I have run before
the hounds too often for me to desert him now. The people up there may
think what they please and go to the devil! Hoky had ideals of a sort;
he never squealed on a pal; he was as loyal as the summer sun to
ripening corn."

The Governor's interest in Hoky's obsequies was chivalrous beyond
question, but Archie resented being left alone. The Governor's departure
struck him in all the circumstances as a base desertion, and forlorn and
frightened he locked himself in his room, expecting that any moment the
police would batter down the door. The waiting for this catastrophe
became intolerable and after an hour of it he went downstairs meditating
a walk to the wharves. A young woman stood at the desk talking to the
clerk, who scanned the pages of the register and shook his head.

"No Mrs. Congdon has registered here within a week, I'm sure. Will you
leave any message?"

She said no and asked about trains.

"Did you want something, Mr. Comly?" the clerk asked courteously.

Archie had paused by the desk, staring open-mouthed at the young woman,
who was asking the boy who held her bag to summon a taxi. If he was
still possessed of his senses the girl in the gray tailored suit was
Isabel Perry. The walls of the hotel office appeared to be tipping
toward him. Isabel might have come to Portsmouth in answer to the prayer
of his heart, but not Isabel asking for Mrs. Congdon. Isabel had glanced
carelessly in his direction as the clerk addressed him as Mr. Comly and
he had promptly raised his hat, only to be met with a reluctant nod and
a look of displeasure with connotations of alarm. Having dramatized
himself as appearing before her, a splendid heroic figure, to receive
her praise for his exploits, this reception was all but the last straw
to his spirit. Moreover, she was walking toward the door as though
anxious to escape from him.

He darted after her, resolved to risk another snub before allowing her
to slip away ignorant of the vast change that had been wrought in him
since their meeting in Washington. A taxi was not immediately
forthcoming and she frowned impatiently as he appeared beside her. A
frowning Isabel had not entered into his calculations at all; it was a
mirthful, light-hearted Isabel he was carrying in his heart. He would
affect gaiety; he would let her see that he was a dare-devil, the man
she would have him be.

"Really!" he exclaimed, twittering like an imbecile, "isn't it jolly
that we've met in this way?"

"I'm not so sure of that! May I ask just why you are here under an
assumed name?"

"Well, you know," he began, his lips twitching as he mopped his face,
"you told me to throw a brick at the world and I've been following your
advice." Under her stoical scrutiny his voice squeaked hysterically.
"It's perfectly jolly, the life I'm leading! You never heard of anything
so wild and devilish! Miss Perry, behold your handiwork!"

Perspiring, stuttering, with the glitter of madness in his eyes, he was
not on the whole an object to be proud of, and there was no pride or joy
manifest in Miss Isabel Perry as she observed him critically, with the
detachment of one who observes a wild animal in a menagerie. Her silence
moved him to further frantic efforts to impress her with the fact that
he was now a character molded to her hand.

"You were asking for Mrs. Congdon; Mrs. Putney Congdon, I suppose? Well,
I certainly could tell you a story if you would give me time! What I
don't know about the Congdon family wouldn't make a large book! Ha, ha!
But if I had known Mrs. Congdon was a friend of yours I should have
acted differently, very differently indeed."

He was attracting attention. The porter, the bell-boy supporting
Isabel's bag, and a few passers-by paused, amused by the spectacle of a
heated gentleman earnestly addressing a young woman who seemed greatly
annoyed by his attentions.

The taxi drew up and she stepped into it, but he landed beside her,
flinging a handful of silver on the walk and taking her suitcase on his
knees.

"This is unpardonable! If it hadn't been for making a scene I should
have told the porter to throw you out!"

His teeth chattered as he tried to throw a conciliatory tone into his
speech without losing his air of bravado.

"You know you're responsible for everything! I see life differently,
really I do! And this is so beautifully romantic, running into you here,
of all places!"

"I think," she said, sweeping him with a look of scorn, "that you've
been following me or were put here to watch me!"

"Oh, that's unkind, most unkind! Purely chance,--the usual way, you
know! How do you imagine I should be watching you with anything but the
noblest intentions?"

"You went to Bailey Harbor to look at a cottage for Mrs. Featherstone,
didn't you? Putney Congdon was there, wasn't he? And why are you
loitering here when you were so eager to get away to the Rockies?"

At the mention of Putney Congdon a laugh, the sharp concatenation of a
lunatic caused the driver to glance round apprehensively.

"That's the scream of it, you know!" Archie cried. "I don't know for the
life of me whether it was Putney Congdon I shot at the Congdon house or
Hoky, the burglar. They're burying Hoky today and my partner in
crime--wonderful chap--insisted on going to the funeral. You couldn't
beat that! And it's so deliciously funny that you should be looking for
Mrs. Congdon, who may be a widow for all I know!"

"A widow!" Isabel, with her hand clutching the door, swung upon him with
consternation and fear clearly depicted in her face.

Her astonishment moved him to greater hilarity. Seeing that he had at
last impressed her, he redoubled his efforts to be entertaining.

"Oh, that's the mystery just at present, whether poor old Putney is dead
or not! No great loss, I imagine! But where do you suppose Mrs. Congdon
went to hide her children from the brute?"

"That's exactly what I suspected!" she exclaimed furiously. "You are
waiting here to find that out! How can you play the spy for him! You
talk about shooting a man! Why, you haven't the moral courage to kill a
flea! The kindest interpretation I can put upon your actions is to
assume that you are hopelessly mad."

They had reached the station, and she jumped out and snatched her bag.
He gave the driver a five dollar bill and dashed across the platform
only to see her vanish into the vestibule of a Boston train just as it
was drawing out.

He walked to the water front firmly resolved to drown himself, but his
courage failing he yielded himself luxuriously to melancholy
reflections. Instead of expressing delight at finding him reveling in
villainy, Isabel had made it disagreeably clear that she not only was
not delighted but that she thought him a dreadful liar, a spy upon her
actions and possibly other things equally unflattering. Why she should
think him capable of spying upon her movements, he did not know, nor was
he likely to learn in the future that hung darkly before him. As he
pondered there was nothing more startling in the fact that he had not
hurried on to Banff than that she should be in Portsmouth when she had
told him she was leaving Washington immediately for the girls' camp in
Michigan.

Congdon was a name of evil omen. What business could Isabel have with
that unhappy lady that would cause her to delay her departure for the
West? His intimations that Putney Congdon might be dead had filled her
with horror, and yet she had hinted at his sister's dinner that the
taking of human life was a small matter. That a girl so wholly charming
and persuasive at a dinner table could be so stern and unreasonable at a
chance meeting afterward, shook his confidence in her sex, which that
memorable meeting had done much to establish upon firm ground. He had
been wholly stupid and tactless in pouncing upon her with what he
realized, under the calming influences of the brisk sea air, must have
struck her as the vaporings of a dangerous lunatic. He had never been
clever; he smarted now under the revelation that all things considered
he was an immitigable ass.

He went back to the hotel bitter but fortified by a resolution that
nothing should check him now in his desperate career. He had quarreled
with the inspiration of his new life, but in the end Isabel should have
reason to know how unjust she had been. It was something after all to
have seen her, perplexed, anxious and angry though she had been. She was
still the most wonderful girl he had ever met, the more remarkable for
the fact that now she had gone he had not the slightest idea of what had
brought her into the strange world inhabited by the quarreling and
fleeing Congdons. But men had suffered before for love of woman and he
would bear his martyrdom manfully, keeping the humiliating interview
carefully from the Governor.

The Governor returned from Hoky's funeral somewhat wistful, but he
described the burial with his accustomed enthusiasm.

"It will be one of the satisfactions of my life that I went," he
declared. "They didn't have the decency to bring in a minister--fancy
it! Blessed if I didn't step into the breach and make a few remarks
myself! I did, indeed, Archie, right there in the undertaker's joint,
with a lot of bumpkins staring! No man sinks so low that he hasn't got
some good in him; that was the burden of my argument. The sheriff came
up and wrung my hand when it was all over. He had heard my little
sermon and I suppose thought I was some rich and influential
philanthropist; so I let it go at that."


IV

The next morning he announced Cornford as their next stopping point, a
town, he explained, whose history thrust far back into colonial times.
When they were seated in the parlor car he tossed a bundle of magazines
into Archie's lap.

"It will amuse you to know that one of the policemen we met on the road
looking for Hoky's accomplice is standing on the platform. He's just
inspected the day coaches;--never occurs to him that knaves of our
degree travel de luxe."

He yawned as the train started and drew a small volume from his pocket.

"I shall lose myself in old Horatius Flaccus for an hour. It's odd but I
always do my best concentrating with a poet before me. And what you said
yesterday about those new bank notes Leary has hid up here disturbed me
just a little. You can't trust fellows of old Leary's type with a matter
so delicate as launching new money, where the numbers, as you so sagely
remarked, are being looked for by every bank teller in America. I have a
hunch that something unusual will happen before the summer's over, and
we must be primed for every emergency."

Archie saw that it was really a volume of the Horatian odes in which his
singular companion had become engrossed. The Governor was utterly beyond
him and he stared out moodily at the flying landscape, hating himself
cordially as he thought of Isabel Perry and living over again the
exciting moments in the Congdon house that preluded this strange
journeying with a scholarly criminal who evidently derived the deepest
satisfaction from the perusal of Latin poetry. The Governor broke in
upon his reflections occasionally to read him a favorite passage or to
ask questions, flattering to Archie's learning, as to possible
interpretations of the venerated text.

The Cornford Inn proved to be a quaint old tavern, modernized, and its
patrons, the Governor explained, were limited to cultivated people who
sought the peace and calm of the hills. After a leisurely luncheon they
took their coffee in a pleasant garden on one side of the house.

"One might be in France or Italy," remarked the Governor, lighting a
cigar. "An ideal place; socially most exclusive, and I trust we shall
have no reason to regret our visit."

"That depends," said Archie, inspecting the end of his cigarette, "on
whether we are transferred to the county jail or not."

"Your apprehensions are as absurd as they are groundless, my dear boy.
We could cash checks for any reasonable sum in this caravanserai merely
on our appearance as men of education and property. Even in stolen
clothes you look like a capitalist."

Two men came into the garden and seated themselves at a table on the
other side of a screen of shrubbery. They ordered coffee and one of them
remarked upon the recent prevalence of crime in New England.

"A thief was shot at Bailey Harbor night before last and there seems to
be a band of crooks operating all along the coast."

"We need a better type of men in Congress," said the Governor in a loud
tone, with a wink at Archie. "There's a steady deterioration in the
quality of our representatives in both houses."

"You are right," Archie responded, remembering with a twinge of
conscience his congressman brother-in-law.

The Governor nodded to Archie to keep on talking, while he played the
rôle of eavesdropper.

"You oughtn't to have carried that cash up here," came in a low tone
from the hedge. "The old man is a fool or he wouldn't have suggested
such a thing."

"Well, he wrote that he was coming here to spend a week and in his
characteristic fashion said if I wanted his stock I could bring the
currency here and close the transaction. The Congdons are all a lot of
cranks, you know. This old curmudgeon carries a small fortune around
with him all the time, and never accepts a check in any transaction."

The Governor grew more eloquent in his attempt to convince Archie of the
decadence of American statesmanship, while their unseen neighbors,
feeling themselves secure, continued their discussion of the errand that
had brought them to Cornford.

"You're paying the old skunk a big price for his shares!"

"Well, I've got to to keep them out of hostile hands," said the second
voice irritably. "I don't like the idea of carrying yellowbacks around
in a satchel just to humor a lunatic. And he's had the nerve to write
that he won't be here until tomorrow!"

"But the cash--"

"Oh, it's all safe enough. No one knows but that I'm here just for a
rest."

"Let's stroll about a little," said the Governor. "We're not getting our
usual amount of exercise and there's a good bit of colonial history
tucked away in Cornford."

He led the way through the garden to the street, and bade Archie proceed
slowly to the post office while he walked toward the main entrance of
the inn.

Archie was buying stamps for which he had no immediate use when the
Governor joined him.

"These chaps were quite providentially in the office calling for their
keys so I had no trouble in identifying them. Seebrook and Walters are
the names. Seebrook, the older chap, has his daughter with him. They
have rooms on the floor below us."

"You don't think they've got any considerable sum of money with them, do
you?" asked Archie breathlessly.

"That remains to be seen! Did you notice their reference to a man named
Congdon? Singular how I keep running into members of that tribe. I'm
beginning to think there's a fatality in the name!"

Archie glanced at him covertly. He too felt that there was something
decidedly strange in the way the name haunted him, but the Governor had
picked up a local guide book and was pointing out objects of interest as
they wended their way along the street. Archie's wits had never been so
taxed as since he had fired a pistol, more or less with intent to kill,
in the house of Putney Congdon, but it was incredible that the Governor
could know aught of that matter. The Governor, however, was manifesting
the greatest interest in Cornford history, halting citizens to propound
inquiries as to landmarks, and pausing before the town hall to make
elaborate notes of a tablet struck in memory of the first selectmen.

When they reached the green, which the town's growth had left to one
side, he sat down on a bench and directed attention to a church whose
history he read impressively from the book.

"That carries us back quite a way beyond the Revolution. No longer used
but reverently preserved for its associations. And in the cellar of that
simple edifice where the early colonists used to hide from predatory
Indians, is hidden fifty thousand dollars. A suitcase all ready to
snatch, thrust under the bin where the worshipers of old kept the Sunday
wood!"

"I suppose it might rot there and nobody be the wiser?" muttered Archie,
glancing at the venerable meeting house with awakened interest.

"Quite true! But it must be saved from destruction. We mustn't fail
Leary; he's put his trust in me. It's our job to recover the funds, and
if I never ask you to join me in anything more perilous you'll have
occasion to congratulate yourself. There are two automobiles at the
church door now--tourists, having a look at the relic, and their
presence will neatly cover our visit."

They found half a dozen visitors roaming through the church, opening and
closing the doors of the old pews. Archie was accosted by a stout lady
in quest of just the information he had gained from the guide book. He
courteously answered her questions and found the other sightseers
pressing round to share in his lecture on the Cornford meeting house.
When he had imparted everything he knew and added a few fanciful touches
to improve the story, he turned to look for the Governor.

"If you want to see the cellar, don't tumble down the steps as I did,"
called a cheery voice from the entry; "it's an abominable hole!"

Being an abominable hole the visitors laughingly surged toward the door
to explore it, and the Governor struck matches to light their descent.

He brushed the dust from his knees and mopped his face until the voices
below receded.

"All safe and sound! Stuck it out through a back window into a lilac
bush, and we'll pick it up at our leisure. You may not have noticed that
this old pile is built up against an abandoned mill. We shall loiter
back to the inn carrying the loot quite boldly with us. You might lug it
yourself as I'm a little warm from digging the thing up--Leary had
burrowed under the wood bin and hidden it for keeps."

To be sauntering in broad daylight through the principal thoroughfare of
a serene New England town carrying a suitcase filled with stolen money
was still another experience that made Archie feel that he had indeed
entered upon a new manner of life. The Governor with a spray of lilac in
his lapel had never been in better spirits.

"That's a very decent suitcase and you can hand it to a bell hop and
bid him fly with it to your room. You were a little short of linen and
made a few purchases--the thing explains itself. Who could challenge us,
Archie! We'd make a plausible front in Buckingham palace."

They followed the suitcase upstairs, where the Governor unlocked it
with an implement that looked like a nut pick. Archie's last vestige of
doubt as to the Governor's powers vanished when he saw that the bag was
filled with packages of bank notes in small denominations.

"One might object to so many of the little fellows," remarked the
Governor, "but on the whole we have no reason to complain of Leary's
work. The rascal is anxious to settle down in some strictly moral
community and open a confectionery shop--one of these little concerns
where the neighborhood children bring in their pennies for sodas and
chewing-gum, with a line of late magazines on the side. A kind, genial
man is Leary, and he swears he'll abandon the road for good."

Archie picked up several bundles of the bills and turned them over,
reflecting that to his other crimes he had now added the receipt and
concealment of stolen money.

"Dinner in an hour, Archie," said the Governor, who was drawing a
diagram of some sort on a sheet of inn paper. "The evening meal is
rather a ceremonial affair here and as I notice that you carry a dress
suit we shall follow the conventions. Meanwhile I wish you would look in
at Barclay & Pedding's garage, just around the comer, and ask if a car
has been left there for Mr. Reginald H. Saulsbury. You needn't be afraid
of getting pinched, for the machine was acquired by purchase and I'm
merely borrowing it from Abe Collins, _alias_ Slippery Abe, the king of
all con men. Abe only plays for suckers of financial prominence who'd
gladly pay a second time not to be exposed and he's grown so rich that
he's retiring this summer. He was to send a machine to me here so I
could avoid the petty annoyances of travel in a stolen car We'll leave
here like honest men, with the landlord bowing us away from the door."

That there should indeed be a handsome touring car at Barclay &
Pedding's, awaiting the pleasure of Mr. Saulsbury, increased enormously
Archie's respect and admiration for the Governor. It was a first-class
machine worth four or five thousand dollars as it stood, and Archie was
cheered by the thought that he enjoyed the friendship of a man who
satisfied all his needs with so little trouble.

When he returned the Governor was dressing and manifested no surprise
that the car awaited his pleasure.

"Yes, of course," he remarked absently. "You can always rely on Abe.
It's time for you to dress, and we must look our prettiest. I caught a
glimpse of Miss Seebrook strolling through the garden with her papa a
bit ago. It may be necessary for you to cultivate her a trifle. A little
flirting now and then is relished by the wisest men."

"If you think--" began Archie warily.

"Of course I think!" the Governor interrupted. "We've got fifty thousand
dollars of nice new bills here and we're not going to the trouble of
staining and mussing them up for safe circulation if we can dispose of
them _en bloc_, so to speak, in all their pristine freshness. There's to
be a dance in the dining hall as soon as dinner is over. The house is
quite full and we shall mingle freely in the merry throng. I'll go down
ahead of you and test the social atmosphere a little."

When Archie reached the parlors half an hour later he found the Governor
engaged in lively conversation with a gentleman he introduced
immediately as Mr. Seebrook.

"And Mr. Walters, Mr. Comly, and--"

"Mr. Saulsbury and Mr. Comly, my daughter, Miss Seebrook."

The girl had just joined her father and his friend. She acknowledged the
introduction with an inclusive smile and nod. Archie's spirits, which
drooped whenever he was deprived of the Governor's enlivening presence
for a few minutes, were revived by this fresh demonstration of the
rascal's daring effrontery. Seebrook and Walters were apparently
accepting him at face value in the fashion of socially inclined
travelers who meet in inns. To Archie's consternation the Governor began
describing Hoky's funeral, which he did without neglecting any of its
poignant features or neglecting to mention the few remarks he had
offered to relieve the bleakness of the burglar's obsequies.

"That was pretty fine, wasn't it?" Miss Seebrook remarked to Archie.
"Any one would know that Mr. Saulsbury is just the kind of man who would
do that."

"There's no limit to his kindness and generosity," Archie replied with
unfeigned sincerity.

"You are motoring?" asked the girl. "We drove through here last fall to
see the foliage,--it's perfectly wonderful, but I didn't know it could
be so sweet at this season. I adore summer; don't you adore summer, Mr.
Comly?"

Miss Seebrook was the most obvious of sentimentalists and Archie thought
instantly how different she was from Isabel. But being thrown in the
company of any girl made possible the concrete comparison of Isabel with
the rest of womankind very greatly to Isabel's advantage. Miss Seebrook
was about Isabel's age, but she spoke in a languid purring voice that
was wholly unlike Isabel's crisp, direct manner of speech. Her father
had come up on some tiresome business matter, bringing Mr. Walters, who,
it seemed, was his attorney, and she confessed that they talked business
a great deal, which bored her immensely.

"I judge, Mr. Comly, that you are one of those fortunate men who can
throw business to the winds and have a good time without being bothered
with telegrams from a hateful office."

Her assumption flattered Archie. As his immediate concern was to escape
the consequences of his folly in shooting a fellow mortal, he assured
her that he was always glad of an opportunity to fling business cares
aside. She explained that the inn was much affected by cottagers in
neighboring summer settlements and that many of the diners had motored
in for the dance. Seebrook and Walters were undoubtedly enjoying the
Governor, proof of which was immediately forthcoming when Seebrook
suggested that they should all dine together.

"You do us much honor," said the Governor. "Mr. Comly and I shall be
pleased, I'm sure."

Archie had often eaten alone in just such pleasant little inns from
sheer lack of courage to make acquaintances, but it seemed the most
natural thing in the world for the Governor to establish himself on
terms of intimacy with perfect strangers. Their party was the merriest
in the room, and Archie was aware of envious glances from other tables
that were not enlivened by a raconteur so affable and amusing as the
Governor.

"It's so nice to stumble into a place like this where every one may
speak to every one else and be _sure_, you know!" said Miss Seebrook.

"It does rather strengthen one's faith in the human race," Archie
agreed, reflecting that if she had known that upstairs in the amiable
Mr. Saulsbury's room reposed fifty thousand dollars of stolen money her
confidence in the exclusiveness of the Cornford Inn would have been
somewhat shaken. But the ironic humor of the whole thing overmastered
his sense of guilt and he managed to hold the table for a little while
without the Governor's assistance as he talked of the French chateaux
with honest knowledge. The Seebrooks had motored through the chateau
country the year before the war and as Archie had once made the
excursion with an architect he was on firm ground.

"There's a thorough man for you!" exclaimed the Governor proudly when
Archie supplied some dates in French history for which Miss Seebrook
fumbled.

They continued their talk over coffee served in the garden. When the
music began Seebrook and Walters recalled a bridge engagement and the
Governor announced that he must look up an old friend who lived in
Cornford. He produced a piece of paper on which he had scratched one of
the diagrams he was eternally sketching as though consulting a
memorandum of an address.

"I shall be back shortly," he said as they separated in the office.

Seebrook and Walters found their bridge partners and Archie and Miss
Seebrook joined the considerable company that were already dancing. Only
a few days earlier nothing could have persuaded Archie to dance, but now
that he was plunged into a life of adventure the fear of dropping dead
from excessive exercise no longer restrained him. Miss Seebrook
undoubtedly enjoyed dancing and after a one-step and a fox-trot she
declared that she would just love to dance all night. It had been a long
time since Archie had heard a girl make this highly unoriginal remark,
and in his own joy of the occasion he found it tinkling pleasantly in
remote recesses of his memory. As Miss Seebrook pouted when he suggested
that she might like him to introduce some of the other men and said that
she was perfectly satisfied, he hastened to assure her that the rôle of
monopolist was wholly agreeable to him. In this mad new life a
flirtation was only an incident of the day's work, and Miss Seebrook was
not at all averse to flirting with him.

She thought it would be fine to take a breath of air, and gathering up
her cloak they went into the garden for an ice. This refreshment ordered
he was conscious of new and pleasant thrills as he faced her across the
table. His youth stirred in him again. It was reassuring to have this
proof that one might be a lost sheep dyed to deepest black and yet
indulge in philandering under the June stars with a pretty girl--a
handsome stately girl she was!--unrestrained by the thought that she
would run away screaming for the police if she knew that he was a man
who shot people and consorted with thieves and very likely would die on
the gallows or be strapped in an electric chair before he got his
deserts. His mind had passed through innumerable phases since he left
his sister's house in Washington, and now as he shamelessly flirted with
Miss Seebrook he knew himself for an unmoral creature, a degenerate who
was all the more dangerous for being able to pass muster among decent
folk. He had always imagined that citizens of the underworld were
limited in their social indulgences to cautious meetings in the back
rooms of low saloons, but this he had found to be a serious mistake. It
was clear that the élite among the lawless might ride the high crest of
social success.

His only nervousness was due to the fear that he might betray himself.
It was wholly possible that Miss Seebrook knew some of his friends; in
fact she mentioned a family in Lenox that he knew very well. She was
expert in all the niceties of flirtation and he responded joyously, as
surprised and delighted as a child with a new toy at the ease with which
he conveyed to her the idea that his life had been an immeasurable dark
waste till she had dawned upon his enraptured vision. Her back was
toward the inn and across her shoulders he could see the swaying figures
in the ball room. The light from a garden lamp played upon her head and
brightened in her fair hair.

Miss Seebrook was speaking of music, and reciting the list of operas she
loved best when Archie's gaze was caught and held by a shadow that
flitted along an iron fire escape that zigzagged down from the fourth to
the first story of the long rambling inn.

"You seem very dreamy," remarked Miss Seebrook. "I know how that is for
I can dream for hours and hours."

"Yes; reverie; just floating on clouds, on and on," Archie replied,
though the shadow moving on and on along the side of the inn was
troubling him not a little.

"The stars were never so near as they are tonight," she said. "Was it
Shakspere or Longfellow who said, 'bright star, would I were steadfast
as thou art!'"

It was neither, Archie knew, but he said he thought the line occurred in
Hamlet.

"Do you think Hamlet was insane?" she asked.

"I sometimes think I am," replied Archie, watching the shadow on the inn
wall.

"Why, Mr. Comly, how absurd!"

It was really not so absurd at the moment, but he again had recourse to
the poets, devoutly praying that she would not look toward the inn. He
had surmised that the Governor's declared purpose to call on an old
friend in Cornford was merely to cover his withdrawal from the party;
but that he could have meditated a predatory excursion through the inn
had not entered into Archie's speculations as to his friend's absence.
There was no mistaking the figure that had moved swiftly down the
ladder. The Governor for a man of his compact build was amazingly agile
and quick of foot and hand. He was now creeping along the little balcony
at the third floor. He paused a moment and then vanished into an open
window. The Governor had said that the Seebrook party had rooms just
under their own; but--

"I have chosen a star for you," Miss Seebrook was murmuring.

Archie, in his preoccupation with the Governor's strange performance,
was so slow to respond that Miss Seebrook, thinking that he was
deliberating as to which star he should bestow upon her in return,
generously broadened the scope of her offer.

"You shall have Orion or Arcturus with his sons."

"I never could find Orion even with a sky map and a telescope," Archie
roused himself to protest.

Something very unlike a star but more like the glimmer of a match in a
room on the third floor held his fascinated gaze, and it was difficult
to be interested in the conversation of even so pretty a girl as Miss
Seebrook when an audacious thief was at work only a little way beyond
her. For all Archie knew it was her own room that the venturesome
Governor was ransacking and at that very moment he might be stuffing his
pockets with her belongings.

Venus, Archie gravely announced, had always been his favorite star; and
he set her to searching for it in the bright expanse while he watched
the Governor reappear, bending low as he crept out of the window and
ascended rapidly to the fourth floor. He had risked detection by a dozen
people who were idling about the garden. The intermission was over and
music floating through the open windows again invited to the dance.

"We must go back, I suppose," said Miss Seebrook with a sigh.

"I shall never forget this," declared Archie, hoping with all his heart
that there would be no occasion for regretting the hour spent in the
garden.

They danced again, and in the handclapping that followed the first
number he turned to find the Governor, calm and with no marks of his
escapade upon him, bowing before Miss Seebrook.

"Really, I must break in! Just a little fragment of this waltz! More
capricious and jazzy measures have their day but the waltz endures
forever! Don't frown at me that way, Comly! My old friend kept me longer
than I expected and the night grows old."

The Governor danced with smoothness and ease. Archie, his back to the
wall, saw the rogue laughing into his partner's face as lightheartedly
as though he had not, within a few minutes, imperiled his freedom in an
act of sheerest folly.

He brought the girl back to Archie, and then ingratiated himself with a
shy elderly woman who was having a difficult time finding partners for
her granddaughters. The Governor introduced himself with a charming
deference, a winning courtesy, that gained her heart at once. He not
only danced with her young charges but found other partners for them.
Archie marveled; a man of the Governor's intelligence and address could
hardly have failed to gain a high place in the world, yet his
performance on the fire escape proved all the man had said of himself as
an outlaw. The Governor was not one man but a dozen different men and in
despair Archie gave up trying to account for him.


V

At midnight Seebrook and Walters came in from their card game.

"We've certainly had the best of you, papa! It has been a wonderful
evening!" exclaimed Miss Seebrook.

"I knew it was going to be a good party," said the Governor warmly. "I
regretted every moment I had to spend with my friends in Putnam Street.
And yet should auld acquaintance be forgot, you know!"

"You were perfectly lovely to that nice old lady and her frightened
little granddaughters. They will never forget you as long as they live!
And I'm afraid Mr. Comly will always remember me as the girl who kept
him all to herself for a whole evening."

"I didn't make it a hard job for you," Archie protested. "I shall mark
the evening with a white stone on the long journey of life."

"I hope, papa, you will add a word to my invitation to these gentlemen
to come and see us at home."

"Certainly," Seebrook assented cordially, drawing out his card-case.

"We shall be ready for a little sociability," remarked the Governor,
"when we return from the West. We are motoring from Portland to
Portland, with a few little side trips like this, and we ought to have
some good yarns to tell when we get back."

"You are not running off immediately?" asked Walters. "Mr. Seebrook and
I are really here on business, but we've been delayed and may have
another day's time to kill. We'd be glad to play around with you."

"It's most lamentable," replied the Governor, "that we've got to run
away tomorrow. It's now the hour when ghosts walk but we shall see you
in the morning."

In Archie's room the Governor hummed one of his favorite ballads as he
slipped out of his coat and picked a speck from his snowy waistcoat.
Then he produced a tiny phial from his pocket and touched his upper lip
with a drop of the contents.

"It's a very curious thing about perfumes," he said meditatively. "I
carry an assortment of these little bottles. The psychology of the thing
is most interesting. Fragrances differ astonishingly as to their
reactions upon the nerves. Only two hours ago I fortified myself for a
little foolishness that required nevertheless a steady hand by sniffing
the bouquet of a rare perfume known only to a few connoisseurs,--a
compound based upon attar of roses. But this that I have just had
recourse to is soothing and sedative. It is made from a rare flower
found only in the most inaccessible fastnesses of the Andes, and is
believed by the natives to be a charm against death. At some time I
shall be glad to show you a treatise on the plant written by an eminent
Spanish botanist. Its effect upon me is instantaneous and yet it might
serve you quite differently, as our sensitiveness to these reactions of
the olfactory nerve are largely idiosyncratic. Let me tap your upper lip
with the cork--ah!"

There was nothing more repulsive to Archie than perfumes and he
impatiently jerked his head away. The odor proved, however, to be
exceedingly delicate and not the miserable chemical concoction he
dreaded. But he was not to be thwarted in his purpose to learn just what
the Governor meant by endangering their security so recklessly. He
slammed the transom tight and drew down the shades.

"Well?" he demanded sharply.

"It is evident," remarked the Governor good-humoredly, "that you do not
react to the soothing influences of the _rosa alta_. You seem perturbed,
anxious, with slight symptoms of _paralysis agitans_. Pray be seated and
I will do my best to restore your peace of mind."

"You needlessly exposed yourself to observation by sneaking down the
fire escape of this hotel--I know that!"

"My dear boy, I was merely gathering a few blossoms of the crimson
rambler from the ancient walls of the inn. You may have noted that I
wore a spray of buds in my lapel when I joined you in the ball room."

"You had no right to plunder the house without warning me! I don't
relish the idea of being jailed for your foolishness. And those people
were mighty decent to us! If they knew we were two crooks--!"

"They merely yielded to our charms! They feel themselves honored by our
acquaintance! Now seat yourself on the bed and I'll tell you the whole
story. When I left you I hastened into the village, bought a stick of
shaving soap in a drug store and a few cigars in a tobacconist's. In
each place I conversed with the clerk, thus laying ample ground for an
alibi. Hurrying back to the inn I avoided observation by entering by the
side door, skipped up to our rooms--and there you are! I did run a
chance, of course, in climbing down the ladder, but all's well that ends
well. I exchanged our new bank notes for sixty well-worn
one-thousand-dollar gold certificates negotiable in all parts of the
republic. That means a net gain in the Red Leary trust fund of ten
thousand dollars. Seebrook had the stuff in the collar tray of his
trunk. As the trunk was otherwise empty and the lock a special one that
gave me a bit of trouble he's not likely to bother with it until old man
Congdon turns up to close the stock transaction. When he opens it he
will find fifty thousand dollars of good bills neatly piled there and
if he has the imagination of a canary he will think the fairies have
played a trick on him!"

"My God!" moaned Archie. "You don't think you can get away with this!"

"I think," returned the Governor imperturbably, "that _we_ must and will
get away with it." His emphasis on the plural pronoun caused Archie to
cringe. "It strikes me as highly amusing that we have unloaded those
bills of Leary's on a good sport like Seebrook. As I locked that stuff
in his trunk I got to laughing--really, I did--and a chambermaid roaming
the hall must have heard me, for the key rattled in the lock just as I
slipped out of the window. There's Leary's suitcase and I've packed it
with our soiled linen and stuck in a pair of shoes for weight.
Seebrook's legal tender is neatly rolled up in my best silken hose in my
kit bag. Hark! There's Seebrook tumbling into his bed, which is just
beneath mine!"

"You're getting me in pretty deep," mumbled Archie dejectedly.

"How about those blood stains on the sidewalk at Bailey Harbor?" asked
the Governor in his blandest tones. "When you speak of getting in deep
you forget that some one besides Hoky was shot back yonder. You came to
me red-handed from a deed of violence, and I took you in and became your
protector, asking no questions. It's the basest ingratitude for you to
whimper over a small larceny when you have added assault or murder to
the liabilities of our partnership! But don't forget for a moment that
we're pals and pledged to see each other through."

The reference to the blood stains reported by the Bailey Harbor police
threw Archie back instantly upon the Governor's mercy. Complicity in
the robbery of Seebrook was as nothing compared with the haunting fear
that the man he had shot in the Congdon house had died from the wound.
Unable to determine this question he was floundering in a veritable sea
of crimes. The Governor was undressing with provoking indifference to
his companion's perturbation.

"Sleep, lad, sleep! You may be sure that nothing will harm us tonight,
and I have faith that more stirring adventures are ahead of us. I
forgive you your qualms and quavers, the pardonable manifestations of
youth and inexperience. We walk in slippery places but we shall not
stumble, at least not while the Governor keeps his head!"

Nothing appealed to Archie as of greater importance than the retention
by his companion of the head that now lay chastely upon a snowy pillow.
A handsome, well-formed head, a head suggestive of family and the pride
of race, though filled with the most complicated mental machinery with
which a human being had ever been endowed.

"Put out the lights and get you to your couch!" the Governor muttered
drowsily.

The man certainly wore his crimes lightly. He was sound asleep before
Archie had got into his pajamas.


VI

When they reached the dining-room at ten the next morning they found
Seebrook and Walters just finishing breakfast. Miss Seebrook was having
coffee in her room, her father explained in response to Archie's polite
inquiries.

"We're hoping to get away this afternoon," he continued. "It will take
only a few minutes to transact our business when the man I'm waiting for
appears; but he's an uncertain quantity, and there's no telling when
he'll show up. But we're having a good time and I shan't mind another
day or two. If only you gentlemen would bear us company!"

"Ah, you are very kind!" said the Governor; "but we must resume our
ramble toward the Pacific. We are more or less dated up for little
entertainments on the way."

"I certainly envy you," said Walters ruefully. "Seebrook and I belong to
the large class of men who work for a living."

"Well, Comly and I have our own small jobs," the Governor protested.
"We're interested in some water power schemes through the West and hope
to make our expenses."

Seebrook and Walters lingered in the office as Archie and the Governor
paid their account. As they waited for their car to be sent round from
the garage a machine drew up and discharged a short, wiry, elderly man
in a motor coat that was much too large for him. He was accompanied by
an enormous amount of luggage and from the steps of the inn gave orders
in a high piping voice as to the manner of its disposal. As the various
pieces were hustled into the office he enumerated them in an audible
tone as though inviting the cooperation of all the loungers in making an
inventory of his effects. When this had been concluded Seebrook stepped
up and accosted the newcomer.

"Mr. Congdon, I am very glad to see you. I hope you are not worn out by
your drive."

"Worn out!" snapped the little man. "Do you imagine a run of a hundred
miles would fatigue a man of my constitution? I assure you that you are
greatly mistaken if you think I am feeling my age. Seventy! And I don't
feel a day over fifty, not a day, sir. But I shall rest for a few hours
as a precaution, a mere precautionary measure and be able to meet you
for our little business at two-thirty sharp."

"That will suit me perfectly," replied Seebrook.

Archie hung about impatiently waiting for the Governor to make his
farewells to the old lady and her granddaughters on whom he had expended
his social talents at the dance. Mr. Congdon was quarreling with the
clerk over the location of the room he had reserved; he wanted no room
with a western exposure as such rooms were always so baked by the
afternoon sun that they were as hot as tropical jungles at night. Having
frightened the clerk into readjusting the entire registration to
accommodate him, he demanded to know whether his son, Mr. Putney
Congdon, was stopping in the house.

"Mind you, I have no reason to believe he _is_ here, but I've been
asking for him everywhere along the road."

Assured that Mr. Putney Congdon was not in the inn and hadn't been there
within the recollection of the office staff, the senior Congdon exploded
violently upon Seebrook and Walters.

"Things have come to a pretty pass in this topsy turvy world when a man
can't find his own son! For three days I've been wiring his clubs and
all other places he could possibly be without result. And I have learned
that his wife has left Bailey Harbor and the house there is closed.
Closed! How dare they close that house when I was about to pay them a
visit? I spent thirty-five dollars last night in telephoning trying to
find out what's become of my son and his family and I got nothing for my
money--nothing!"

Seebrook and Walters expressed their sympathy in mild tones that roused
the old gentleman to greater fury.

"Can a whole family be obliterated and no trace left behind? Is it
possible that they've been murdered in their beds, servants and all, and
the police not yet aware of it?"

At the mention of murder Archie began stealthily feeling his way along
the cigar counter to a water cooler. He drank two glasses of ice water
while he listened to Eliphalet's grievances against all things visible
and invisible. There seemed to be no escaping from the Congdons and here
was the father of Putney boldly publishing to the whole state of New
Hampshire his fear that his son had been murdered.

"I called up everybody I could think of at Bailey Harbor, that dismal
rotten hole, and got nothing for my trouble. Nothing! A fool druggist,
who pretended to know everything about the place, had the effrontery to
tell me Putney hadn't been there for a week and declared that his family
had left! Why should they leave? I ask you to tell me why my
daughter-in-law should leave a comfortable house at the shore at this
season and tell nobody her destination?"

As no member of his growing audience of guests, clerks and bell-hops
could answer his questions, Mr. Congdon swept the whole company with a
fierce, disdainful glare and began mobilizing the entire day watch of
porters and bell-boys to convey his luggage to his room. One of the
young gentlemen was engaged at the moment in winking at the girl
attendant at the cigar counter when the agitated traveler thrust the
point of an enormous umbrella into his ribs with a vigor that elicited a
yell of surprise and pain.

The concentration of the hotel staff upon the transfer of Mr. Congdon's
luggage to his room left the Governor and Archie to manage the removal
of their own effects to the waiting car. Seebrook and Walters obligingly
assisted, laughing at Congdon's eccentricities.

"The arrival of that enchanting old crank increases my grief at
leaving," declared the Governor. "A delightful person. The son he
mentioned with so much feeling was in Boston looking for _him_ a month
ago."

Seebrook seized the Governor's kit bag containing the sixty thousand
dollars and carried it out to the car. The sight of it in Seebrook's
hand gave Archie sensations of nausea that were not relieved by the grin
he detected on the Governor's face. Within an hour or two at most the
substitution and robbery would be discovered and the country would ring
with the demand for their detention. But the Governor was carrying off
the departure with his usual gaiety. It was clear that he had made the
most favorable impression upon Seebrook and Walters; and in the cordial
handshaking and expressions of hope for future meetings Archie joined
with the best spirit he could muster. A cheery good-by caused him to
look up. Miss Seebrook with a red rose in her hand waved to him from her
window.

As he lifted his cap she dropped the rose with a graceful sweep of the
arm.

"Like the old stage coach days!" cried the Governor, applauding Archie's
catch.

He jumped into the machine and Archie scrambled after him. Archie's last
impression of the inn was the blur of a waving handkerchief in Miss
Seebrook's window.

"We are a success, my boy! You bore yourself marvelously well," said the
Governor testing the gears. "As I remember we pass town hall on right
and cross railroad at bridge; then follow telephone poles. We don't need
the guide book; it's all in my head. Ah, that little touch of the rose
was worth all our perils; nothing in my experience was ever prettier
than that! A lovely girl; you might do worse if you were not already
plighted. If she had come down to say good-by it would have been much
less significant. But the rose, the red, red rose! It wouldn't be a bad
idea to stick it in an envelope and mail it to the girl you were telling
me about--the one who sent you forth to shatter kingdoms. I guess that
would jostle her a little, particularly if you were to enclose a line
telling her that it had fallen to your hand from a curtained lattice."

"I don't know her address," mumbled Archie, fastening the flower in his
buttonhole.

He still martyrized himself in his thoughts of Isabel. Her contumelious
treatment of him at Portsmouth rankled; but he had satisfied himself
that it was all his fault. In some way the curse of the Congdons lay
upon her as upon him. If he had not burst upon her so idiotically she
would probably have listened to his story with some interest if not
with admiration. He meant to be very loyal to Isabel in spite of the
disheartening contretemps at Portsmouth and he drew the rose from his
coat and cast it from him.

"So soon!" exclaimed the Governor. "I rejoice in your fidelity. Hope
rides a high horse and I'm confident that in due season we shall find
our two adorable ones. But it will do you no harm to indulge in a little
affair now and then on the way; merely practice at the approach shot,
you know, to keep your hand in. You are undoubtedly thinking of your
beloved with a new tenderness because you found Miss Seebrook kind.
Such, lad, is the way of love, true love, the love that never dies."

Love as a subject for discussion seemed wholly incongruous in view of
the fact that they were running off with Seebrook's money and pursuers
might already be hot on their trail. He suggested the dangers of their
situation, thinking that here at last was something that would sober the
Governor. But the Governor merely laughed as he swung the car round a
sharp corner.

"Don't you believe that I hadn't a care for our safe flight! You must
learn to use your eyes, son. There was one of the brotherhood of the
road right there in the office when we left. I gave him instructions
last night. He's a sneak thief of considerable intelligence who gave me
the sign as I was pretending to leave for that call on my old friend. I
smuggled him upstairs to keep watch for me and he proved himself a
fellow of decided merit. He'll be hanging round Cornford today and as
the absurd police will be obliged to make an arrest to save their
reputations he will put himself in their way and encourage the idea by
subtle means that he _might_ have been the malefactor who robbed
Seebrook's trunk and left Leary's bills behind. They will be unable to
make a case against him but he'll probably get thirty days for
loitering. Then he'll walk out and draw a thousand dollars from one of
our little private banks further along the road for so chivalrously
throwing himself into the breach! There are wheels within wheels in our
game, and these fellows who make sacrifice hits are highly useful. They
also serve who only go to jail, as John Milton almost said. Even the
police recognize the sacrificial artists; and encourage them--on the
quiet, of course. It calms public complaint of their inefficiency. I can
find you men who will do a year's time to save the men higher up. This
satisfies the public as to the zeal of its paid protectors and makes it
possible for men of genius like you and me to walk in high places
unmolested. A damnable system, Archie, but we learned it from the greedy
trust magnates. You take the wheel; it just occurs to me that you said
you were a fair driver."

Archie had always imagined that men slip gradually from the straight and
narrow path, but he felt himself plunging down a steep toboggan with all
the delirious joy of a speed maniac.

Of one thing he was confident: if he ever returned to his old orderly,
lawful life, he would be much more tolerant of sinners than he had been
in the old tranquil times. He had always found it easy to be good but
now he was finding it quite as easy to be naughty, very naughty indeed.
His speculations as to just how long he could be imprisoned for his
crimes and misdemeanors to date resolved themselves into a question
with which he interrupted the Governor in a sonorous recitation of
Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.

"If you shoot a man but don't kill him, and pile on top of that
receiving stolen goods and complicity in burglary, how much can they
hand you?"

The Governor answered with disconcerting promptness.

"Shooting with intent to commit murder--they always put it that way
whether you meant the shot as anything more than a little pleasantry or
really had murder in your heart--that would be a minimum of ten years in
many of the American states and a hard-hearted judge might soak you for
twenty. Then pile on that from one to five years for hiding stolen
property; and then a first-class burglary, might run you pretty high,
particularly if they landed you on all three charges and showed that you
were viciously hostile to the forces of society. But there's no cause
for worry. If you behaved yourself they'd knock off a generous allowance
and a fellow of your enlightenment and tact might be put to work in the
warden's office, or set to collecting potato bugs in the prison garden
patch. But it's highly unprofessional to bother about such trifles. We
haven't been nabbed yet, and if you and I are not smart enough to keep
out of trouble we ought to be locked up; that's my philosophy of the
situation. You must conquer that morbid strain in you that persists in
looking for trouble. I find it highly depressing."

He sang a bar of "Ben Bolt" to test his memory of the words and then
urged Archie to join him in the ballad, which he said was endeared to
him by the most sacred associations. Archie hadn't indulged in song
since he sang "Fair Harvard" at his last class reunion, but the Governor
praised his singing and carried him through "Robin Grey" and a few other
classics with growing animation.

"You respond to treatment splendidly! The sun and air are bringing a
fine color to your face until you don't even remotely suggest a doleful
jail bird. We'll soon be able to stroll along Fifth Avenue and pass for
members of the leisure class who live on the golf links. You need
hardening up and if you stick to me you'll lay up a store of health that
will last you forty years."

The Governor was amazingly muscular, and his shapely hands seemed
possessed of miraculous strength. When a tire went bad he changed it
with remarkable ease and dexterity, scorning Archie's offer of
assistance.

"No lost motion! The world spends half its time doing things twice that
could as well be done once. I am blessed with an orderly mind, Archie.
You will have noticed that virtue in me by the time the frost is on the
punkin and the fodder's in the shock, to quote the Hoosier Theocritus."

And so, to the merry accompaniment of old tunes and mellow rhymes, they
crossed the Connecticut.




CHAPTER THREE

I


With all his outward candor the Governor had, Archie found, reserves
that were quite unaccountable. He let fall allusions to his past in the
most natural fashion, with an incidental air that added to their
plausibility, without ever tearing aside the veil that concealed his
origin or the manner of his fall, if, indeed, a man who so jubilantly
boasted of his crimes and seemed to find an infinite satisfaction and
delight in his turpitude, could be said to have fallen. Having mentioned
Brattleboro as the point at which they were to foregather with Red
Leary, the Governor did not refer to the matter again, but chose routes
and made detours without explanation.

As a matter of fact they swung round Brattleboro and saw only the faint
blue of its smoke from the western side. It was on the second afternoon
out of Cornford that the Governor suddenly bade Archie, whom he
encouraged to drive much of the time, pause at a gate.

"We linger here, son. May I suggest that you take your cue from me? Bill
Walker is an honest dairyman to all intents and purposes, but really an
old crook who got tired of dodging sheriffs and bloodhounds and bought
this farm. A sober, industrious family man, you will find him, with a
wife and one daughter. This is one of the best stations of the
underground railroad; safe as a mother's arms, and you will never
believe you're not the favored guest of a week-end party. Walker's an
old chum of Leary's. They used to cut up in the most reprehensible
fashion out West in old times. You've probably wondered what becomes of
old crooks. Walker is of course an unusual specimen, for he knew when
the quitting was good, and having salted away a nice little fortune
accumulated in express hold-ups, he dwells here in peace and passes the
hat at the meeting house every Sunday. You may be dead sure that only
the aristocracy of our profession have the entrée at Walker's. His herd
on the hillside yonder makes a pretty picture of tranquillity. The house
is an old timer, but he's made a comfortable place of it, and the wife
and daughter set a wonderful table. Here's the old boy now."

A gray-bearded man with a pronounced stoop, clad in faded blue overalls,
was waiting for them at the barn.

"Just run the machine right in," he called.

The car disposed of, the Governor introduced Archie as one of his
dearest friends, and the hand Archie clasped was undeniably roughened by
toil. Walker mumbled a "glad-to-see-ye," and lazily looked him over.

"Always glad to meet any friend of Mr. Saulsbury's," he drawled with a
mournful twang. "We've got plenty o' bread and milk for strangers.
Somebody's spread the idea we run a hotel here and we're pestered a good
deal with folks that want to stop for a meal. We take care o' 'em
mostly. The wife and little gal sort o' like havin' folks stop; takes
away the lonesomeness."

There was nothing in his speech or manner to suggest that he had ever
been a road agent. He assisted them in carrying their traps to the
house, talking farmer fashion of the weather, crops and the state of the
roads. The house was connected with the barn in the usual New England
style. In the kitchen a girl sang cheerily and hearing her the Governor
paused and struck an attitude.

"O divinity! O Deity of the Green Hills! O Lovely Daughter of the Stars!
O Iphigenia!"

The girl appeared at a window, rested her bare arms on the sill and
smilingly saluted them with a cheery "Hello there!"

"Look upon that picture!" exclaimed the Governor, seizing Archie's arm.
"In old times upon Olympus she was cup-bearer to the gods, but here she
is Sally Walker, and never so charming as when she sits enthroned upon
the milking stool. Miss Walker, my old friend, Mr. Comly, or Achilles,
as you will!"

A very pretty picture Miss Walker made in the kitchen window, a vivid
portrait that immediately enhanced Archie's pleasurable sensations in
finding a haven that promised rest and security. Her black hair was
swept back smoothly from her forehead and there was the glow of perfect
health in her rounded cheeks. Archie noted her dimples and the white
even teeth that made something noteworthy and memorable of her smile.

"Well, Mr. Saulsbury, I've read all those books you sent me, and the
candy was the finest I ever tasted."

"She remembers! Amid all her domestic cares, she remembers! My dear lad,
the girl is one in a million!"

"You'd think Mr. Saulsbury was crazy about me!" she laughed. "But he
makes the same speeches to every girl he sees, doesn't he, Mr. Comly?"

"Indeed not," protested Archie, rallying bravely to the Governor's
support. "He's been raving about you for days and my only surprise is
that he so completely failed to give me the faintest idea--idea--"

"Of your charm, your ineffable beauty!" the Governor supplied. "You see,
Sally, my friend is shy with the shyness of youth and inexperience and
he is unable to utter the thoughts that do in him rise! I can see that
he is your captive, your meekest slave. By the way, will there be
cottage cheese prepared by your own adorable hand for supper? Are golden
waffles likely to confront us on the breakfast table tomorrow at the
hideous hour of five-thirty? Will there be maple syrup from yonder
hillside grove?"

"You have said it!" Sally answered. "But you'd better chase yourselves
into the house now or pop'll be peeved at having to wait for you."

On the veranda a tall elderly man rose from a hammock in which he had
been reading a newspaper and stretched himself. His tanned face was
deeply lined but he gave the impression of health and vigor.

"Leary," whispered the Governor in an aside and immediately introduced
him.

"The road has been smooth and the sky is high," said the Governor in
response to a quick anxious questioning of Leary's small restless eyes.

"Did you find peace in the churches by the way?" asked Leary.

"In one of the temples we found peace and plenty," answered the Governor
as though reciting from a ritual.

Leary nodded and gave a hitch to his trousers.

"You found the waters of Champlain tranquil, and no hawks followed the
landward passage?"

"The robin and the bluebird sang over all the road," he answered; then
with a glance at Archie: "You gave no warning of the second pilgrim."

"The brother is young and innocent, but I find him an apt pupil," the
Governor explained.

"The brother will learn first the wisdom of silence," remarked Leary,
and then as though by an afterthought he shook Archie warmly by the
hand.

They went into the house where Mrs. Walker, a stout middle-aged woman,
greeted them effusively.

"We've got to put you both in one room, if you don't mind," she
explained, "but there's two beds in it. I guess you can make out."

"Make out!" cried the Governor with a deprecatory wave of his hand. "We
should be proud to be permitted to sleep on the porch! You do us much
honor, my dear Mrs. Walker."

"Oh, you always cheer us up, Mr. Saulsbury. And Mr. Comly is just as
welcome."

The second floor room to which Walker led them was plainly but neatly
furnished and the windows looked out upon rolling pastures. The Governor
abandoned his high-flown talk and asked blunt questions as to recent
visitors, apparently referring to criminals who had lodged at the farm.
They talked quite openly while Archie unpacked his bag. The restless
activity of the folk of the underworld, their methods of communication
and points of rendezvous seemed part of a vast system and he was ashamed
of his enormous interest in all he saw and heard. The Governor's cool
fashion of talking of the world of crime and its denizens almost
legitimatized it, made it appear a recognized part of the accepted
scheme of things. Walker aroused the Governor's deepest interest by
telling of the visit of Pete Barney, a diamond thief, who had lately
made a big haul in Chicago, and had been passed along from one point of
refuge to another. The Governor asked particularly as to the man's
experiences and treatment on the road, and whether he had complained of
the hospitality extended by any of the agents of the underground.

"You needn't worry about him," said Walker, with a shrug. "He asks for
what he wants."

"Sorry if he made himself a nuisance. I'll give warning to chain the
gates toward the North. Is he carrying the sparks with him?"

"Lets 'em shine like a fool. I told 'im to clear out with 'em."

"You did right. The brothers in the West must be more careful about
handing out tickets. Now trot Red up here and we'll transact a little
business."

Leary appeared a moment later and Archie was about to leave the room,
but the Governor insisted stoutly that he remain.

"I'm anxious for you and Red to know that I trust both of you fully."

"What's the young brother,--a con?" asked Leary with a glance at Archie.

To be referred to as a confidence man by a gentleman of Leary's
professional eminence gave Archie a thrill. The Governor answered by
drawing up his sleeves and going through the motions of washing his
hands.

"Does the hawk follow fast?" Leary asked, as he proceeded to fill his
pipe.

"The shadow hasn't fallen, but we watch the sky," returned the Governor.

The brushing of the hands together Archie interpreted as a code sign
signifying murder and the subsequent interchange of words he took to be
inquiry and answer as to the danger of apprehension. He felt that
Leary's attitude toward him became friendlier from that moment. There
was something ghastly in the thought that as the slayer of a human being
he attained a certain dignity in the eyes of men like Leary. But he
became interested in the transaction that was now taking place between
the thief and the Governor. The Governor extracted the sixty
one-thousand-dollar bills from his bag, and laid them out on the bed. He
rapidly explained just how Leary's hidden booty had been recovered, and
the manner in which the smaller denominations had been converted into
bills that could be passed without arousing suspicion.

"Too big for one bite, but old Dan Sheedy will change 'em all for you in
Bean Center. You know his place? You see him alone and ask him to chop
some feed for your cattle. He makes a good front and stands well at his
bank."

Leary picked up ten of the bills and held them out to the Governor.

"If that ain't right we'll make it right," he said.

"Not a cent, Red! I haven't got to a point yet where I charge a fee for
my services. But our young brother here is entitled to anything he
wants."

Archie grasped with difficulty the idea that he was invited to share in
the loot. His insistence that he couldn't think for a moment of
accepting any of the money puzzled Leary.

"It's all right about you, Governor, but the kid had better shake the
tree. If his hands are wet he's likely to need a towel."

"Don't be an ass, Comly," said the Governor. "Leary's ahead of the game
ten thousand good plunks and what he offers is a ridiculously modest
honorarium. Recovering such property and getting it into shape for the
market is worth something handsome."

"Really," began Archie, and then as the "really" seemed an absurdly
banal beginning for a rejection of an offer of stolen money, he said
with a curl of the lip and a swagger, "Oh, hell! I'd feel pretty rotten
to take money from one of the good pals. And besides, I didn't do
anything anyhow."

The Governor passed his hand over his face to conceal a smile, but Leary
seemed sincerely grieved by Archie's conduct and remarked dolefully that
there must be something wrong with the money. The Governor hastily
vouched for its impeccable quality and excused Archie as a person hardly
second to himself for eccentricity.

[Illustration: "It's all right about you, Governor, but the kid better
shake the tree"]

"No hard feeling; most certainly not! My young friend is only proud to
serve a man of your standing in the profession. It is possible that
later on you may be able to render us a service. You never can tell, you
know, Red."

Leary philosophically stowed the bills in his clothing.

"You're done, are you?" asked the Governor; "out of the game?"

"I sure have quit the road," Leary answered. "The old girl has got a few
thousands tucked away and I'm goin' to pick her up and buy a motion
picture joint or a candy and soda shop somewhere in the big lakes--one
of those places that freeze up all winter, so I can have a chance to
rest. The old girl has a place in mind. The climate will be good for my
asthma. She knows how to run a fizz shop and I'll be the scenery and
just set round."

"On the whole it doesn't sound exciting," the Governor commented,
inspecting a clean shirt. "Did your admirable wife get rid of those
pearls she pinched last winter? They were a handsome string, as I
remember, too handsome to market readily. Mrs. Leary has a passion for
precious baubles, Archie," the Governor explained. "A brilliant career
in picking up such trifles; a star performer, Red, if you don't mind my
bragging of your wife."

Leary seemed not at all disturbed by this revelation of his wife's
larcenous affection for pearls. That a train robber's wife should be a
thief seemed perfectly natural; indeed it seemed quite fitting that
thieves should mate with thieves. Archie further gathered that Mrs.
Leary operated in Chicago, under the guise of a confectionery shop, one
of the stations of the underground railroad, and assisted the
brotherhood in disposing of their ill-gotten wares. A recent reform wave
in Chicago had caused a shake-up in the police department, most
disturbing to the preying powers.

"They're clean off me, I reckon," said Leary a little pathetically, the
reference being presumably to the pestiferous police. "That was a good
idea of yours for me to go up into Canada and work at a real job for a
while. Must a worked hard enough to change my finger prints. Some bloke
died in Kansas awhile back and got all the credit for being the old
original Red Leary."

This error of the press in recording Leary's death tickled the Governor
mightily, and Leary laughed until he was obliged to wipe the tears from
his eyes.

"I'm going to pull my freight after supper," he said. "Walker's goin' to
take me into town and I'll slip out to Detroit where the old girl's
waitin' for me."

The Governor mused upon this a moment, drew a small note-book from his
pocket and verified his recollection of the address of one of the
outposts of the underground which Leary mentioned.

"Avoid icy pavements!" he admonished. "There's danger in all those
border towns."

Walker called them to supper and they went down to a meal that met all
the expectations aroused by the Governor's boast of the Walker cuisine.
Not only were the fried chicken and hot biscuits excellent, but Archie
found Miss Walker's society highly agreeable and stimulating. She wore a
snowy white apron over a blue gingham dress, and rose from time to time
to replenish the platters. The Governor chaffed her familiarly, and
Archie edged into the talk with an ease that surprised him. His
speculative faculties, all but benumbed by the violent exercise to which
they had been subjected since he joined the army of the hunted, found
new employment in an attempt to determine just how much this cheery,
handsome girl knew of the history of the company that met at her
father's table. She was the daughter of a retired crook, and it had
never occurred to him that crooks had daughters, or if they were so
blessed he had assumed that they were defectives, turned over for
rearing to disagreeable public institutions.

The Governor had said that they were to spend a day or two at Walker's
but Archie was now hoping that he would prolong the visit. When next he
saw Isabel he would relate, quite calmly and incidentally, his meteoric
nights through the underworld, and Sally, the incomparable dairy maid,
should dance merrily in his narrative. In a pleasant drawing-room
somewhere or other he would meet Isabel and rehabilitate himself in her
eyes by the very modesty with which he would relate his amazing tale. It
pleased him to reflect that if she could see him at the Walker table
with Red Leary and the Governor, that most accomplished of villains,
eating hot biscuits which had been specially forbidden by his physician,
she would undoubtedly decide that he had made a pretty literal
interpretation of her injunction to throw a challenge in the teeth of
fate.

Walker ate greedily, shoveling his food into his mouth with his knife;
and Archie had never before sat at meat with a man who used this means
of urging food into his vitals. The Governor magnanimously ignored his
friend's social errors, praising the chicken and delivering so
beautiful an oration on the home-made pickled peaches that Sally must
needs dart into the pantry and bring back a fresh jar which she placed
with a spoon by the Governor's plate.

At the end of the meal Walker left for town to put Leary on a train for
Boston. The veteran train robber shook hands all round and waved a last
farewell from the gate. Archie was sorry to lose him, for Leary was an
appealing old fellow, and he had hoped for a chance to coax from him
some reminiscences of his experiences.

Leary vanished into the starlit dusk as placidly as though he hadn't
tucked away in his clothing sixty thousand dollars to which he had no
lawful right or title. There was something ludicrous in the whole
proceeding. While Archie had an income of fifty thousand dollars a year
from investments, he had always experienced a pleasurable thrill at
receiving the statement of his dividends from his personal clerk in the
broker's office, where he drew an additional ten thousand as a silent
partner. Leary's method of dipping into the world's capital seemed quite
as honorable as his own. Neither really did any work for the money. This
he reflected was both morally and economically unsound, and yet Archie
found himself envying Leary the callousness that made it possible for
him to pocket sixty thousand stolen dollars without the quiver of an
eyelash.


II

The Governor, smoking a pipe on the veranda and chatting with Mrs.
Walker, recalled him from his meditations to suggest that he show a
decent spirit of appreciation of the Walkers' hospitality by repairing
to the kitchen and helping Sally with the dishes. In his youth Archie
had been carefully instructed in the proper manner of entering a parlor,
but it was with the greatest embarrassment that he sought Sally in her
kitchen. She stood at the sink, her arms plunged into a steaming dish
pan, and saluted him with a cheery hello.

"I was just wondering whether you wouldn't show up! Not that you had to,
but it's a good deal more fun having somebody to keep you company in the
kitchen."

"I should think it would be," Archie admitted, recalling that his mother
used to express the greatest annoyance when the servants made her
kitchen a social center. "Give me a towel and I'll promise not to break
anything."

"You don't look as though you'd been used to work much," she said, "but
take off your coat and I'll hang an apron on you."

His investiture in Mrs. Walker's ample apron made it necessary for Sally
to stand quite close to him, and her manner of compressing her lips as
she pinned the bib to the collar of his waistcoat he found wholly
charming. His heart went pit-a-pat as her fingers, moist from the suds,
brushed his chin. She was quite tall; taller than Isabel, who had fixed
his standard of a proper height for girls. Sally did not giggle, but
acted as normal sensible girls should act when pinning aprons on young
men.

She tossed him a towel and bade him dry the plates as she placed them on
the drain board. She worked quickly, and it was evident that she was a
capable and efficient young woman who took an honest pride in her work.

"You've never stopped here before? I thought. I didn't remember you.
Well, we're always glad to see the Governor, he's so funny; but say,
some of the people who come along--!"

"I hope," said Archie, turning a dish to the light to be sure it was
thoroughly polished, "I hope my presence isn't offensive?"

"Cut it out!" she returned crisply. "Of course you're all right. I knew
you were a real gent the first squint I got of you. You can't fool me
much on human nature."

"You've always lived up here?" asked Archie, meek under her frank
approval.

"Certainly not. I was born in Missouri, a grand old state if I do say it
myself, and we came here when I was twelve. I went through high school
and took dairying and the domestic arts in college and I'm twenty-three
if you care to know."

He had known finishing-school girls and college girls and girls who had
been educated by traveling governesses, but Sally was different and
suffered in no whit by comparison. Her boasted knowledge of the human
race was negligible beside her familiarity with the mysterious
mechanisms of cream separators and incubators. Fate had certainly found
a strange way of completing his education! But for the shot he had fired
in the lonely house by the sea, he would never have known that girls
like Sally existed. As he assisted her to restore the dishes to the
pantry, she crossed the kitchen with queenly stride. Isabel hadn't a
finer swing from the hips or a nobler carriage. When he abandoned his
criminal life he would assemble somewhere all the girls he had met in
his pilgrimage. There should be a round table, but where Isabel sat
would be the head, and his sister should chaperone the party. When it
dispersed he would tell Isabel, very honestly, of his reaction to each
one, and if she took him to task for his susceptibility it would be a
good defense that she was responsible for sending him forth to wrestle
with temptation.

When the kitchen was in perfect order they reported the fact to Mrs.
Walker and Sally suggested that they stroll to a trout brook which was
her own particular property. The stream danced merrily from the hills, a
friendly little brook it was--just such a ribbon of water as a girl like
Sally would fancy for a chum.

"We must have a drink or you won't know how sweet and cool the water
is!" She cupped her hands and drank; but his own efforts to bring the
water to his lips were clumsy and ineffectual.

"Oh you!" she laughed. "Let me show you!"

Drinking from her hands was an experience that transcended for the
moment all other experiences. If this was a rural approach to a
flirtation, Miss Seebrook's methods were much safer, and the garden of
the Cornford tavern a far more circumspect stage than a Vermont
brookside shut off from all the world.

He had decided to avoid any reference to the secrets of the underground
trail, but his delicacy received a violent shock a moment later, when
they were seated on a bench beside the brook.

"Do you know," she said, "you are not like the others?"

"I don't understand," he faltered.

"Oh, cut it out! You needn't try to fool me! When I told you awhile ago
I thought you were nice, I meant more than that; I meant that you didn't
at all seem like the crooks that sneak through here and hide at our
house. You're more like the Governor, and I never understand about the
Governor. It doesn't seem possible that any one who isn't forced by
necessity into crime would ever follow the life. Now you're a gentleman,
any one could tell that, but I suppose you've really done something
pretty bad or you wouldn't be here! Now I'm going to hand it to you
straight; that's the only way."

"Certainly, Miss Walker; I want you to be perfectly frank with me."

"Well, my advice would be to give yourself up, do your time like a man
and then live straight. You're young enough to begin all over again and
you might make something of yourself. The Governor has romantic ideas
about the great game but that's no reason why you should walk the thorny
road. Now pop would kill me if he knew I was talking this way. It's a
funny thing about pop. All I know about him I just picked up a little at
a time, and he and ma never wanted me to know. Ma's awful nervous about
so many of the boys stopping here, for she hung on to pop all the time
he was shooting up trains out West, and having a husband in the
penitentiary isn't a pleasant thing to think about. Ma's father ran a
saloon down in Missouri; that's how she got acquainted with pop, but ma
was always on the square, and they both wanted me brought up right. It
was ma's idea that we should get clean away from pop's old life, and
she did all the brain work of wiping the slate clean and coming away off
here. We were a couple of years doing it, trying a lot of other places
all over the country before they struck this ranch and felt safe. Pop's
living straight; you needn't think he isn't, but he's got a queer
hankering to see the sort of men he used to train with. It's natural, I
suppose."

"I suppose it is. But you must have suffered; I can imagine how you
feel," said Archie, who had listened to her long speech with rapt
attention.

"Well, I don't know that I've suffered so much," she replied slowly,
"but I do feel queer sometimes when I'm around with young folks whose
fathers never had to duck the cops. Not that they've any suspicions, of
course; I guess pop stands well round here."

"I can understand perfectly how your father would like to see some of
the old comrades now and then and even give them shelter and help them
on their way. That speaks highly for his generosity. It's a big thing
for me right now to be put up here. I'm in a lot of trouble, and this
gives me a chance to get my bearings. I shall always remember your
father's aid. And you don't know how wonderful it is to be sitting
beside you here and talking to you just as though nothing had ever
happened to me; really as though I wasn't a lost sheep and a pretty
black one at that."

"I'm sorry," she answered. "When I told you you'd better go and do your
time and get done with it, I didn't mean to be nasty. But I was thinking
that a man as sensitive as I judge you to be would be happier in the
long run. Now pop had an old pal who drifted along here a couple of
years ago, and pop had it all figured out to shoot him right up into
Canada, but, would you believe it, that man simply wouldn't go! The very
idea of being in a safe place where he was reasonably certain of not
being bothered worried him. He simply couldn't stand it. He was so used
to being chased and shot at it didn't seem natural to be out of danger,
and pop had to give him money to take him to Oklahoma where he'd have
the fun of teasing the sheriffs along. And he had his wish and I suppose
he died happy, for we read in the papers a little while afterward that
he'd been shot and killed trying to hold up a bank."

Archie expressed his impatience of the gentleman who preferred death in
Oklahoma to a life of tranquillity in the Canadian wilds.

"Oh, they never learn anything," Sally declared. "I wouldn't be
surprised if pop didn't pull out some time and beat it for the West. It
must be awful tame for a man who's stuck pistols into the faces of
express messengers and made bank tellers hand out their cash to settle
down in a place like this where there's nothing much to do but go to
church and prayer meeting. I don't know how many men pop's killed in his
time but there must be quite a bunch. But pop doesn't seem to worry
much. It seems to me if I'd ever pumped a man full of lead I'd have a
bad case of insomnia."

"Well, I don't know," remarked Archie, weighing the point judicially. "I
suppose you get used to it in time. Your father seems very gentle. You
probably exaggerate the number of his--er--homicides."

He felt himself utterly unqualified to express with any adequacy his
sympathy for a girl whose father had flirted with the gallows so
shamelessly. Walker had courageously entered express cars and jumped
into locomotive cabs in the pursuit of his calling and this was much
nobler than shooting a man in the back. Sally would probably despise him
if she knew what he had done.

She demurred to his remark about her father's amiability.

"Well, pop can be pretty rough sometimes. He and I have our little
troubles."

"Nothing serious, I'm sure. I can't imagine any one being unkind to you,
Sally."

"It's nice of you to say that. But I'm not perfect and I don't pretend
to be!"

Sympathy and tenderness surged within him at this absurd suggestion that
any one could harbor a doubt of Sally's perfection. Her modesty, the
tone of her voice called for some more concrete expression of his
understanding than he could put into words. Her hand, dimly discernible
in the dusk of the June stars, was invitingly near. He clasped and held
it, warm and yielding. She drew it away in a moment but not rebukingly.
The contact with her hand had been inexpressibly thrilling. Not since
his prep school days had he held a girl's hand, and the brook and the
stars sang together in ineffable chorus. It was bewildering to find that
so trifling an act could afford sensations so charged with all the
felicity of forbidden delight.

"I wonder," she said presently; "I wonder whether you would--whether you
really would do something for me?"

"Anything in my power," he declared hoarsely.

"What time is it?" she asked with a jarring return to practical things.

She bent her head close as he held a match to his watch. It was half
past eight.

"We'll have to hurry," she said. "When I told you pop and I didn't
always agree about everything I was thinking--"

"Is it about a man?" he asked, surmising the worst and steeling himself
for the blow if it must fall. He would show her how generously
chivalrous a man could be toward a girl who honored him with her
confidence and appealed for his assistance.

"It would be a long story," she said sadly, "and there isn't time to
tell it, but the moment I saw you were so big and brave and strong, I
thought you might help."

To be called big and brave and strong by so charming a person, to enjoy
her confidence and be her chosen aid in an hour of need and perplexity
profoundly touched him. He wished that Isabel could have heard Sally's
tribute to his strength and courage--Isabel who had said only a few days
ago that he wouldn't kill a flea. He had always been too modest and too
timid, just as Isabel had said, but those days were passed and the man
Isabel knew was very different from the man who sat beside Bill Walker's
daughter under the glowing Vermont stars. Drums were beating and bugles
sounding across the hills as he waited for Sally to send him into the
lists with her colors flying from his spear.

"I wouldn't trust the Governor; he's too friendly with pop for that.
It's just this way," she went on dreamily. "There's a young man, Abijah
Strong, who owns a farm just a little way down the road. He and I have
been in love with each other ever since we went to school together,
really and truly lovers. He was at college when I was, so I know him
very well. But pop doesn't like him, and when he found how matters stood
he refused to allow me to see him any more. And he's been very hard
about it. We've been waiting for a chance to run away and get married. I
met him last night in the lane and everything's arranged for us to leave
tonight, run into Brattleboro and be married there and then go on to
Boston and wait till pop's disposed to be reasonable."

"He will be very angry, of course," said Archie, his ardor somewhat
chilled now that he knew the nature of the project in which she asked
his cooperation.

"Yes; pop will be perfectly crazy," she affirmed with a lingering
intonation that seemed to imply a certain joy in the prospective
disturbance of her parent's equilibrium. "He wants me to marry a
preacher at Saxby Center who's almost as old as pop, and has three grown
children. I thought maybe you could pretend to take me out for a little
ride in your car, and pick up Abijah and give us a lift. My things are
all packed and hid away in the garage; so all I need to do is to get my
hat."

"Of course I couldn't come back here," Archie suggested. "Your father
would be sure to vent his wrath on me."

"Oh, I'd thought of that!" she exclaimed. "But you could go on and wait
somewhere for the Governor to catch up with you."

"I'd have to make sure he _didn't_ catch up with me! He'll be mighty
sore about this."

"Well, if you're afraid of him--"

"Pooh! I certainly am not afraid of him," he declared contemptuously.
"He and I were bound to part sometime."

In the half hour they had spent together by the brook he had forgotten
his dependence upon the Governor and his earlier fears that the master
crook might desert him. Through the cajoleries of a girl he had known
only a few hours he was ready to break with his comrade by mischievously
upsetting the domestic affairs of a host who doubtless had not forgotten
how to kill men who incurred his displeasure. Sally had affected him
like a strong cordial and as they walked to the house he grew
increasingly keen for the proposed adventure. Sally, like Isabel, had
dared him to be brave, and he screwed his courage to the sticking point.

"If you don't mind I'll take Sally for a little run down the road," he
suggested casually when they found the Governor and Mrs. Walker still
gossiping on the veranda.

No objection was raised by Mrs. Walker beyond an injunction not to be
gone long and a warning not to go without her jacket. The permission was
given so readily that Archie was moved to make the polite suggestion
that they might all like to go and his heart sank when the Governor
promptly seconded the invitation. But to his immeasurable relief Mrs.
Walker professed weariness and quickly disposed of the matter.

"No joy riding," the Governor called after them. "Sally's a valuable
asset of this family and I'll hold you personally responsible, Comly,
for her safe return."

III

At the garage Sally produced a satchel which Archie tossed into the car,
and they were quickly humming through the lane and into the highway.

"Abijah expected me to walk down to meet him if I could get away
tonight, so he'll be surprised when I come in a machine," she said as
they emerged into the open road. "He was to wait for me every night
until I saw a good chance to skip. His car is only a little dinky thing
and he'll be tickled to death to see this fine machine."

A quick spurt of ten minutes and Sally bade him drive slowly.

"Run by the school house when we come to it and then stop. Abijah will
be there."

When the car stopped Sally jumped out and was immediately joined by a
young man to whom she spoke rapidly out of Archie's hearing. Her
explanations finished she brought him to the car and presented him as
Mr. Strong.

"Mr. Comly is going to the minister's with us and then give us a lift
toward Boston. That's ever so much better than anything we'd thought of,
'Bijah!"

"Whatever you say, little girl! I'll shut off the lights on my machine
and get my traps."

Archie, testing his searchlight, let its beam fall upon Abijah as though
by accident and found Sally's lover a very well-dressed, decent-looking
fellow. All his life he would be proud of his daring in saving Sally
Walker from marriage with the odious widower and mating her with the
youth of her choice. The bride and groom elect were established in the
back seat and he experienced a sharp jealous twinge, when, turning to
ask her a question about the road, he caught them in a rapturous kiss.
This was what it meant to be young and free, and youth and freedom were
things he had never until now appraised at their true worth. Having
captured and mounted destiny he would ride with a tight rein and
relentless spur. The immediate affair was much to his taste, and he
meditated making it his business in future to befriend lovers in
difficulties.

"How long do we stop at Brattleboro?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Only long enough to get the knot tied," Abijah answered. "I was in town
this afternoon and everything's set."

"I hope," said Sally, "you'll give the bride away; it would be just fine
of you, Mr. Comly."

"I was hoping you'd ask me," he flung back. "I want to be as prominent
in the wedding party as possible."

The last time he had figured in a wedding he had been best man for a
college friend who had been married at high noon in Grace Church, before
an audience notably distinguished in New York society. Sally's nuptials
were blest in a little parsonage, with the minister's wife and daughter
and Archie as the sole witnesses. The minister had only lately come to
town and therefore confined his inquiries to the strict requirements of
ecclesiastical and Vermont law. When he lifted his head to ask who
giveth this woman Archie bestowed Sally upon Abijah with just the touch
of grace and dignity he had long noted as the accepted manner of giving
a woman in marriage in the most exacting circles.

The groom sheepishly dug two one-dollar bills out of his trousers pocket
and the sum striking Archie as a pitifully inadequate fee he slipped a
ten-dollar bill into the minister's hand as the bride and groom were
hurrying from the house.

"Well, Sally," Archie remarked, as he joined them, "for better or worse
you are married. I certainly wish you all good luck."

"We'll be back in a week and everything will be smooth as butter," Sally
declared lightly.

The wedding journey from Brattleboro to Bennington was marred by tire
trouble and freakishness on the part of the engine, and as neither of
his passengers knew the roads Archie's good nature was severely tested
by the exigencies of the night drive.

Abijah helped with the tires but only stared helplessly while Archie
poked at the engine. Sally was far more resourceful and lent her
assistance with her usual good cheer, a cheer which Archie felt he wou

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