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The Doctor : A Tale of the Rockies

by Ralph Connor · English · Gutenberg #3242 · 549,381 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Doctor : A Tale of the Rockies

Author: Ralph Connor


        
Release date: June 3, 2006 [eBook #3242]
                Most recently updated: March 5, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3242

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOCTOR : A TALE OF THE ROCKIES ***




Produced by Donald Lainson





THE DOCTOR

A TALE OF THE ROCKIES


By Ralph Connor



CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.     THE OLD STONE MILL

II.    THE DAUGHTER OF THE MANSE

III.   THE RAISING

IV.    THE DANCE

V.     THE NEW TEACHER

VI.    THE YOUNG DOCTOR

VII.   THE GOOD CHEER DEPARTMENT

VIII.  BEN'S GANG

IX.    LOVE'S TANGLED WAYS

X.     FOR A LADY'S HONOUR

XI.    IOLA'S CHOICE

XII.   HE THAT LOVETH HIS LIFE

XIII.  A MAN THAT IS AN HERETIC REJECT

XIV.   WHOSOEVER LOOKETH UPON A WOMAN

XV.    THE SUPERINTENDENT'S METHODS

XVI.   THE CHALLENGE OF DEATH

XVII.  THE FIGHT WITH DEATH

XVIII. THE MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENT OF THE CROW'S NEST

XIX.   THE LADY OF KUSKINOOK

XX.    UNTIL SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN

XXI.   TO WHOM HE FORGAVE MOST

XXII.  THE HEART'S REST

XXIII. THE LAST CALL

XXIV.  FOR LOVE'S SAKE




THE DOCTOR




I

THE OLD STONE MILL


There were two ways by which one could get to the Old Stone Mill. One,
from the sideroad by a lane which, edged with grassy, flower-decked
banks, wound between snake fences, along which straggled irregular
clumps of hazel and blue beech, dogwood and thorn bushes, and beyond
which stretched on one side fields of grain just heading out this bright
June morning, and on the other side a long strip of hay fields of mixed
timothy and red clover, generous of colour and perfume, which ran along
the snake fence till it came to a potato patch which, in turn, led to an
orchard where the lane began to drop down to the Mill valley.

At the crest of the hill travellers with even the merest embryonic
aesthetic taste were forced to pause. For there the valley with its
sweet loveliness lay in full view before them. Far away to the right,
out of an angle in the woods, ran the Mill Creek to fill the pond which
brimmed gleaming to the green bank of the dam. Beyond the pond a sloping
grassy sward showed green under an open beech and maple woods. On the
hither side of the pond an orchard ran down hill to the water's edge,
and at the nearer corner of the dam, among a clump of ancient willows,
stood the Old Stone Mill, with house attached, and across the mill yard
the shed and barn, all neat as a tidy housewife's kitchen. To the left
of the mill, with its green turf-clad dam and placid gleaming pond,
wandered off green fields of many shading colours, through which ran the
Mill Creek, foaming as if enraged that it should have been even for a
brief space paused in its flow to serve another's will. Then, beyond the
many-shaded fields, woods again, spruce and tamarack, where the stream
entered, and maple and beech on the higher levels. That was one way to
the mill, the way the farmers took with their grist or their oats for
old Charley Boyle to grind.

The other way came in by the McKenzies' lane from the Concession Line,
which ran at right angles to the sideroad. This was a mere foot path,
sometimes used by riders who came for a bag of flour or meal when the
barrel or bin had unawares run low. This path led through the beech
and maple woods to the farther end of the dam, where it divided, to the
right if one wished to go to the mill yard, and across the dam if one
wished to reach the house. From any point of view the Old Stone Mill,
with its dam and pond, its surrounding woods and fields and orchard,
made a picture of rare loveliness, and suggestive of deep fulness of
peace. At least, the woman standing at the dam, where the shade of the
willows fell, found it so. The beauty, the quiet of the scene, rested
her; the full sweet harmony of those many voices in which Nature pours
forth herself on a summer day, stole in upon her heart and comforted
her. She was a woman of striking appearance. Tall and straight she
stood, a figure full of strength; her dark face stamped with features
that bespoke her Highland ancestry, her black hair shot with silver
threads, parting in waves over her forehead; her eyes deep set, black
and sombre, glowing with that mystic light that shines only in eyes that
have for generations peered into the gloom of Highland glens.

“Ay, it's a bonny spot,” she sighed, her rugged face softening as she
gazed. “It's a bonny spot, and it would be a sore thing to part it.”

As she stood looking and listening her face changed. Through the hum of
the mill there pierced now and then the notes of a violin.

“Oh, that weary fiddle!” she said with an impatient shake of her head.
But in a few moments the impatience in her face passed into tender pity.
“Ah, well, well,” she sighed, “poor man, it is the kind heart he has,
whateffer.”

She passed down the bank into the house, then through the large
living-room, speckless in its thrifty order, into a longer room that
joined house to mill. She glanced at the tall clock that stood beside
the door. “Mercy me!” she cried, “it's time my own work was done. But
I'll just step in and see--” She opened the door leading to the mill and
stood silent. A neat little man with cheery, rosy face, clean-shaven,
and with a mass of curly hair tinged with grey hanging about his
forehead, was seated upon a chair tipped back against the wall, playing
a violin with great vigour and unmistakable delight.

“The mill's a-workin', mother,” he cried without stopping his flying
fingers, “and I'm keepin' my eye upon her.”

She shook her head reproachfully at her husband. “Ay, the mill is
workin' indeed, but it's not of the mill you're thinking.”

“Of what then?” he cried cheerily, still playing.

“It is of that raising and of the dancing, I'll be bound you.”

“Wrong, mother,” replied the little man exultant. “Sure you're wrong.
Listen to this. What is it now?”

“Nonsense,” cried the woman, “how do I know?”

“But listen, Elsie, darlin',” he cried, dropping into his Irish brogue.
“Don't you mind--” and on he played for a few minutes. “Now you mind,
don't you?”

“Of course, I mind, 'The Lass o' Gowrie.' But what of it?” she cried,
heroically struggling to maintain her stern appearance.

But even as she spoke her face, so amazing in its power of swiftly
changing expression, took on a softer look.

“Ah, there you are,” cried the little man in triumph, “now I know you
remember. And it's twenty-four years to-morrow, Elsie, darlin', since--”
 He suddenly dropped his violin on some meal bags at his side and sprang
toward her.

“Go away with you.” She closed the door quickly behind her. “Whisht now!
Be quate now, I'm sayin'. You're just as foolish as ever you were.”

“Foolish? No mother, not foolish, but wise yon time, although it's
foolish enough I've been often since. And,” he added with a sigh,
“it's not much luck I've brought you, except for the boys. They'll do,
perhaps, what I've not done.”

“Whisht now, lad,” said his wife, patting his shoulder gently, for a
great tenderness flowed over her eloquent face. “What has come to
you to-day? Go away now to your work,” she added in her former tone,
“there's the hay waiting, you know well. Go now and I'll watch the
grist.”

“And why would you watch the grist, mother?” said a voice from the
mill door, as a young man of eighteen years stepped inside. He was his
mother's son. The same swarthy, rugged face, the same deep-set, sombre
eyes, the same suggestion of strength in every line of his body, of
power in every move he made and of passion in every glance. “Indeed, you
will do no such thing. Dad'll watch the grist and I'll slash down the
hay in no time. And do you know, mother,” he continued in a tone of
suppressed excitement, “have you heard the big news?” His mother waited.
“He's coming home to-day. He's coming with the Murrays, and Alec will
bring him to the raising.”

A throb of light swept across the mother's face, but she only said in a
voice calm and steady, “Well, you'd better get that hay down. It'll be
late enough before it is in.”

“Listen to her, Barney,” cried her husband scornfully. “And she'll not
be going to the raising today, either. The boy'll be home by one in the
morning, and sure that's time enough.”

Barney stood looking at his mother with a quiet smile on his face. “We
will have dinner early,” he said, “and I'll just take a turn at the
hay.”

She turned and entered the house without a word, while he took down the
scythe from its peg, removed the blade from the snath and handed it to
his father.

“Give it a turn or two,” he said; “you're better than me at this.”

“Here then,” replied his father, handing him the violin, “and you're
better at this.”

“They would not say so to-night, Dad,” replied the lad as he took the
violin from his father's hands, looking it over reverently. In a very
few minutes his father came back with the scythe ready for work; and
Barney, fastening it to the snath, again set off up the lane.




II

THE DAUGHTER OF THE MANSE


Two hours later, down from the dusty sideroad, a girl swinging a milk
pail in her hand turned into the mill lane. As she stepped from the
glare and dust of the highroad into the lane, it seemed as if Nature had
been waiting to find in her the touch that makes perfect; so truly, in
all her fresh daintiness, did she seem a bit of that green shady lane
with its sweet fragrance and its fresh beauty.

It had taken sixteen years of wholesome country life to round that
supple form into its firm lines of grace, and to tint those moulded
cheeks with the dainty bloom that seemed a reflection from the thistle
heads that nodded at her through the snake fence. It had taken sixteen
years of pure-hearted, joyous living to lend those eyes, azure as
the sky above, their brave, clear glance; sixteen years of unsullied
maidenhood to endow her with that divine something of mystery which,
with its shy reserve and fearless trust, awakens reverence and rebukes
impurity as with the vision of God.

Her sunbonnet, fallen back from her yellow hair, shining golden in the
sun, revealed a face strong, brave and kind, with just a touch of
pride. The pride showed most, however, in the poise of her head and the
carriage of her shoulders. But when the mobile lips parted in a smile
over the straight rows of white teeth one forgot the pride and thought
only of the soft persuasive lips.

As she sprang up the green turf, she drew in deep breaths of
clover-scented air, and exclaimed aloud, “Oh, this is good!” She peeped
through the snake fence at the luscious rich masses of red clover. “What
a bed!” she cried; “I believe I'll try it.” Over the fence she sprang,
and in a thorn tree's shade, deep in the fragrant blossoms, she
stretched herself at full length upon her back. For some minutes she
lay in the luxury of that fragrant bed looking up through the spreading
thorn tree branches to the blue sky with its floating, fleecy clouds
far overhead. The lazy drone of the bees in the clover beside her, the
languorous summer airs swaying into gentle nodding the timothy stalks
just above her head, and all the soothing sounds of a summer morning,
that many-voiced choir that sings to the great God Nature's glad content
that all is so very good, rested and comforted the girl's heart and
body, making her know as she had not known before how very weary she had
been and how deep an ache her heart had held.

“Oh, it's good!” she cried again, stretching her hands at full length
above her head. “I wish I could stay for one whole day, just here in the
clover with the bees and the birds and the trees and the clouds and the
blue sky, no children, no dinner, no tidying up.”

As she lay there it seemed to her as if she had thrown off for the
moment the load she had been carrying for many months. For a year
she had tried to fill in the minister's household her mother's place.
Without a day's warning the burden had been laid upon her shoulders,
but with the fine courage that youth and love combine to give, denying
herself even the poor luxury of indulgence of the grief that had fallen
upon her young heart, she had given herself, without thought of anything
heroic in her giving, to the caring for the house and the household, and
the comforting as best she could of her father, suddenly bereft of her
who had been to him not wife alone, but comrade and counsellor as well.
Without a thought, she had at once surrendered all the bright plans that
she, with her mother, had cherished for the cultivation of her varied
talents, and had turned to the dull, monotonous routine of household
duties with never a thought but that she must do it. There was no one
else.

“I believe I am tired,” she said again aloud; then letting her heart
follow her eyes into and beyond the blue above her, she cried softly, “O
mother, how tired you must have been with it all, and how much you did
for me! For me, great, big lump that I am! Dear little mother. Oh, if
I had only known! Oh, we were all so thoughtless!” She stretched up
her hands again to the blue sky with its fleecy clouds. “For your sake,
mother dear,” she whispered. Not often had any seen those brave eyes dim
with tears. Not often since that day when they had carried her mother
out from the Manse and left her behind with the weeping, clinging
children, and even now she hastily wiped the tears away, chiding herself
the while. “I never saw HER cry,” she said to herself, “not once, except
for some of us. And I will try. I MUST try. It is hard to give up,” and
again the tears welled up in the brave blue eyes. “Nonsense,” she cried
impatiently, sitting up straight, “don't be a big, selfish baby. They're
just the dearest little darlings in the world, and I'll do my best for
them.”

Her moment of self-pity was gone in a flood of shamed indignation.
She locked her hands round her knees and looked about her. “It is a
beautiful world after all. And how near the beauty is to us; just over
the fence and you are in the thick of it. Oh, but this is great!” Once
more she rolled in an ecstasy of luxurious delight in the clover and lay
again supine, revelling in that riot of caressing sounds and scents.

“Kir-r-r-ink-a-chink, kir-r-r-ink-a-chink--”

She sprang up alert and listening. “That is old Charley, I suppose, or
Barney, perhaps, sharpening his scythe.” She climbed up the conveniently
jutting ends of the fence rails and looked over the field.

“It's Barney,” she said, shading her eyes with her hand; “I wonder he
does not cut his fingers.” She sat herself down upon the top rail and
leaned against the stake.

“My! what a sweep,” she said in admiring tones as the young man swayed
to and fro in all the rhythmic grace of the mower's stride, swinging
easily now backward the curving blade and then forward in a cutting
sweep, clean and swift, laying the even swath. Alas! the clattering
machine-knives have driven off from our hay-fields the mower's art with
all its rhythmic grace.

Those were days when men were famous according as they could “cut off
the heels of a rival mower.” There are that grieve that, one by one,
from field and from forest, are banished those ancient arts of daily
toil by which men were wont to prove their might, their skill of hand
and eye, their invincible endurance. But there still offer in life's
stern daily fight full opportunity to prove manhood in ways less
picturesque perhaps, but no less truly testing.

Down the swath came Barney, his sinewy body swinging in very poetry of
motion.

“Doesn't he do it well!” said the girl, following with admiring eyes
every movement of his well-poised frame. “How big he is! Why--” and her
blue eyes widened with startled surprise, “he's almost a man!” The tint
of the thistle bloom deepened in her cheek. She glanced down and made
as if to spring to the ground; then settling herself resolutely back
against her fence stake, she exclaimed, “Pshaw! I don't care. He is just
a boy. Anyway, I'm not going to mind Barney Boyle.”

On came the mower in mighty sweeps, cutting the swath clean out to the
end.

“Well done!” cried the girl. “You'll be cutting off Long John's heels in
a year or so.”

“A year or so! If I can't do it to-day I never can. But I don't want to
blow.”

“You needn't. They're all talking about you, with your binding and
pitching and cradling, and what not.”

“They are, are they? Who is good enough to waste breath on me?”

“Oh, everybody. The McKenzie girls were just telling me the other day.”

“Oh, pshaw! I ran away from their crowd, but that's nothing.”

“And I suppose you have not an idea how nice you look as you go swinging
along?”

“Do I? That's the only time then.”

“Oh, now you're fishing, and I'm not going to bite. Where did you learn
the scythe?”

“Where? Right here where we had to, Dick and I. By the way, he's coming
home to-day.” He glanced at her face quickly as he said this, but her
face showed only a frank pleasure.

“To-day? Good. Won't your mother be glad?”

“Yes. And some other people, too,” said Barney.

“And who, particularly?”

A sudden shyness seemed to seize the young man, but recovering himself,
“Well, I guess I will, myself, a little. This is the first time he has
ever been away. We never slept a night apart from each other as long
as I can mind till he went to college last year. He used to put his
arm just round me here,” touching his breast. “I'll tell you the first
nights after he went I used to feel for him in the dark and be sick to
find the place empty.”

“Well,” said the girl doubtfully, “I hope he won't be different. College
does make a difference, you know.”

“Different! Dick! He'd better not. I'll thrash the daylights out of him.
But he won't be different. Not to us, nor,” he added shyly, “to you.”

“Oh, to me?” She laughed lightly. “He had better not try any airs with
me.”

“What would you do?” inquired Barney. “You couldn't take it out of his
hide.”

“Oh, I'd fix him. I'd take him down,” she replied with a knowing shake
of her head.

“Poor Dick! He's in for a hard time,” replied Barney. “But nothing can
change Dick. And I am awful glad he's coming to-day, in time for the
raising, too.”

“The raising? Oh, yes. The McLeods'. Yes, I remember. And,” regretfully,
“a big supper and a big spree afterwards in the new barn.”

“Are not you going?” inquired Barney.

“I don't know. They want me to go to help, but I don't think I'll go. I
don't think father would like me to go, and,”--a pause--“anyway, I don't
think I can get away.”

“Oh, pshaw! Get Old Nancy in. She can take care of the children for
once. You would like the raising. It's great fun.”

“Oh! wouldn't I, though? It's fine to see them racing. They get so wild
and yell so.”

“Well, come on then. You must come. They'll all be disappointed, if you
don't. And Dick is coming that way, too. Alec Murray is to bring him on
his way home from town.” Again Barney glanced keenly at her face, but he
saw only puzzled uncertainty there.

“Well, I don't know. We'll see. At any rate, I must go now.”

“Wait,” cried Barney, “I'll go with you. We're having dinner early
to-day.” He hung up the scythe in the thorn tree and threw the stone at
the foot.

“I wish you would promise to come,” he said earnestly.

“Do you, really?” The blue eyes turned full upon him.

“Of course I do. It will be lots better fun if you are there.” The
frank, boyish honesty of his tone seemed to disappoint the blue eyes.
Together in silence they set off down the lane.

“Well,” she said, resuming their conversation, “I don't think I can go,
but I'll see. You'll be playing for the dancing, I suppose?”

“No. I won't play if Dan is around, and I guess he'll be there. I may
spell him a little perhaps.”

“Then you'll be dancing yourself. You're great at that, I know.”

“Me? Not much. It's Dick. Oh, he's a dandy! He's a bird! You ought to
see him! I'll make him do the Highland Fling.”

“Oh, Dick, Dick!” she cried impatiently, “everything is Dick with you.”

Barney glanced at her, and after a moment's pause said, “Yes. I guess
you're right. Everything is pretty much Dick with me. Next to my mother,
Dick is the finest in all the world.”

At the crest of the hill they stood looking silently upon the scene
spread out before them.

“There,” said Barney, “if I live to be a hundred years, I can't forget
that,” and he waved his hand over the valley. Then he continued, “I tell
you what, with the moon just over the pond there making a track of
light across the pond--” She glanced shyly at him. The sombre eyes were
looking far away.

“I know,” she said softly; “it must be lovely.”

Through the silence that followed there rose and fell with musical
cadence a call long and clear, “Who-o-o-hoo.”

“That's mother,” said Barney, answering the call with a quick shout.
“You'll be in time for dinner.”

“Dinner!” she cried with a gasp. “I'll have to get my buttermilk and
other things and hurry home.” And she ran at full speed down the hill
and into the mill yard, followed by Barney protesting that it was too
hot to run.

“How are you, Mrs. Boyle?” she panted. “I'm in an awful hurry. I'm after
father's buttermilk and that recipe, you know.”

Mrs. Boyle's eyes rested lovingly upon her flushed face.

“Indeed, there's no hurry, Margaret. Barney should not be letting you
run.”

“Letting me!” she laughed defiantly. “Indeed, he had all he could do to
keep up.”

“And that I had,” said Barney, “and, mother, tell her she must come to
the raising.”

“And are you not going?” said the older woman.

“I don't think so. You know father--well, he wouldn't care for me to be
at the dance.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” quickly replied Mrs. Boyle, “but you might just come
with me and look quietly on. And, indeed, the change will be doing
you good. I will just call for you, and speak to your father this
afternoon.”

“Oh, I don't know, Mrs. Boyle. I hardly think I ought.”

“Hoots, lassie! Come away, then, into the milk-house.”

Back among the overhanging willows stood the little whitewashed log
milkhouse, built over a little brook that gurgled clear and cool over
the gravelly floor.

“What a lovely place,” said Margaret, stepping along the foot stones.

“Ay, it's clean and sweet,” said Mrs. Boyle. “And that is what you most
need with the milk and butter.”

She took up an earthen jar from the gravelly bed and filled the girl's
pail with buttermilk.

“Thank you, Mrs. Boyle. And now for that recipe for the scones.”

“Och, yes!” said Mrs. Boyle. “There's no recipe at all. It is just this
way--” And she elucidated the mysteries of sconemaking.

“But they will not taste a bit like yours, I'm sure,” cried Margaret, in
despair.

“Never you fear, lassie. You hurry away home now and get your dinner
past, and we will call for you on our way.”

“Here, lassie,” she cried, “your father will like this. It is only
churned th' day.” She rolled a pat of butter in a clean linen cloth,
laid it between two rhubarb leaves and set it in a small basket.

“Good-bye,” said the girl as she kissed the dark cheek. “You're far too
kind to me.”

“Poor lassie, poor lassie, I would I could be kinder. It's a good girl
you are, and a brave one.”

“Not very brave, I fear,” replied the girl, as she quickly turned away
and ran up the hill and out of sight.

“Poor motherless lassie,” said Mrs. Boyle, looking after her with loving
eyes; “it's a heavy care she has, and the minister, poor man, he can't
see it. Well, well, she has the promise.”




III

THE RAISING


The building of a bank-barn was a watershed in farm chronology. Toward
that event or from it the years took their flight. For many summers the
big boulders were gathered from the fields and piled in a long heap at
the bottom of the lane on their way to their ultimate destination, the
foundation of the bank-barn. During the winter, previous the “timber was
got out.” From the forest trees, maple, beech or elm--for the pine was
long since gone--the main sills, the plates, the posts and cross-beams
were squared and hauled to the site of the new barn. Hither also the
sand from the pit at the big hill, and the stone from the heap at the
bottom of the lane, were drawn. And before the snow had quite gone
the lighter lumber--flooring, scantling, sheeting and shingles--were
marshalled to the scene of action. Then with the spring the masons and
framers appeared and began their work of organising from this mass of
material the structure that was to be at once the pride of the farm and
the symbol of its prosperity.

From the very first the enterprise was carried on under the
acknowledged, but none the less critical, observation of the immediate
neighbourhood. For instance, it had been a matter of free discussion
whether “them timbers of McLeod's new barn wasn't too blamed heavy,”
 and it was Jack McKenzie's openly expressed opinion that “one of them
'purline plates' was so all-fired crooked that it would do for both
sides at onct.” But the confidence of the community in Jack Murray,
framer, was sufficiently strong to allay serious forebodings. And by the
time the masons had set firm and solid the many-coloured boulders in
the foundation, the community at large had begun to take interest in the
undertaking.

The McLeod raising was to be an event of no ordinary importance. It
had the distinction of being, in the words of Jack Murray, framer,
“the biggest thing in buildin's ever seen in them parts.” Indeed, so
magnificent were its dimensions that Ben Fallows, who stood just five
feet in his stocking soles, and was, therefore, a man of considerable
importance in his estimation, was overheard to exclaim with an air of
finality, “What! two twenty-foot floors and two thirty-foot mows! It
cawn't be did.” Such was, therefore, the magnitude of the undertaking,
and such the far-famed hospitality of the McLeods, that no man within
the range of the family acquaintance who was not sick, or away from
home, or prevented by some special act of Providence, failed to appear
at the raising that day.

It was still the early afternoon, but most of the men invited were
already there when the mill people drove up in the family democrat. The
varied shouts of welcome that greeted them proclaimed their popularity.

“Hello, Barney! Good-day, Mrs. Boyle,” said Mr. McLeod, who stood at the
gate receiving his guests.

“Ye've brought the baby, I see, Charley, me boy,” shouted Tom Magee, a
big, good-natured son of Erin, the richness of whose brogue twenty years
of life in Canada had failed to impoverish.

“We could hardly leave the baby at home to-day,” replied the miller, as
with tender care he handed the green bag containing his precious violin
to his wife.

“No, indeed, Mr. Boyle,” replied Mr. McLeod. “The girls yonder would
hardly forgive us if Charley Boyle's fiddle were not to the fore. You'll
find some oats in the granary, Barney. Come along, Mrs. Boyle. The wife
will be glad of your help to keep those wild colts in order yonder, eh,
Margaret, lassie?”

“Indeed, it is not Margaret Robertson that will be needing to be kept in
order,” replied Mrs. Boyle.

“Don't you be too sure of that, Mrs. Boyle,” replied Mr. McLeod. “A girl
with an eye and a chin like that may break through any time, and then
woe betide you.”

“Then I warn you, don't try the curb on me,” said Margaret, springing
lightly over the wheel and turning away with Mrs. Boyle toward the
house, which was humming with that indescribable but altogether
bewitching medley of sounds that only a score or two of girls
overflowing with life can produce.

“Come along, Charley,” roared Magee. “We're waitin' to make ye the
boss.”

“All right, Tom,” replied the little man, with a quiet chuckle. “If you
make me the boss, here's my orders, Up you get yourself and take hold of
the gang. What do you say, men?”

“Ay, that's it.” “Tom it is.” “Jump in, Tom,” were the answering shouts.

“Aw now,” said Tom, “there's better than me here. Take Big Angus there.
He's the man fer ye! Or what's the matter wid me frind, Rory Ross? It's
the foine boss he'd make fer yez! Sure, he'll put the fire intil ye!”

There was a general laugh at this reference to the brilliant colour of
Rory's hair and face.

“Never you mind Rory Ross, Tom Magee,” said the fiery-headed,
fiery-hearted little Highlander. “When he's wanted, ye'll not find him
far away, I'se warrant ye.”

There was no love lost between the two men. Both were framers, both
famous captains, and more than once had they led the opposing forces at
raisings. The awkward silence following Rory's hot speech was relieved
by Charley Boyle's ready wit.

“We'll divide the work, boys,” he said. “Some men do the liftin' and
others the yellin'. Tom and me'll do the yellin'.”

A roar of laughter rose at Tom's expense, whose reputation as a worker
was none too brilliant.

“All right then, boys,” roared Tom. “Ye'll have to take it. Git togither
an' quit yer blowin'.” He cast an experienced eye over the ground where
the huge timbers were strewn about in what to the uninitiated would seem
wild confusion.

“Them's the sills,” he cried. “Where's the skids?”

“Right under yer nose, Tom,” said the framer quietly.

“Here they are, lads. Git up thim skids! Now thin, fer the sills.
Grab aholt, min, they're not hot! All togither-r-r--heave!
Togither-r-r--heave! Once more, heave! Walk her up, boys! Walk her up!
Come on, Angus! Where's yer porridge gone to? Move over, two av ye!
Don't take advantage av a little man loike that!” Angus was just six
feet four. “Now thin, yer pikes! Shove her along! Up she is! Steady!
Cant her over! How's that, framer? More to the east, is it? Climb up
on her, ye cats, an' dig in yer claws! Now thin, east wid her!
Togither-r-r--heave! Aw now, where are ye goin'? Don't be too
rambunctious! Ye'll be afther knockin' a hole in to-morrow mornin'. Back
a little now! Whoa! How's that, framer? Will that suit yer riverence?
All right. Now thin, the nixt! Look lively there! The gurls are comin'
down to pick the winners, an a small chance there'll be fer some of
yez.”

And so with this running fire of exhortation, more or less pungent, the
sills were got in place upon the walls, pinned and spliced.

“Now thin, min fer the bints!”

The “bents” were the cross sections of heavy square timbers which,
fastened together with cross ties, formed the framework of the barn.
Dividing his men into groups, the bents were put together on the barn
floor, and, one by one, raised into their places, each one being firmly
joined to the one previously erected.

“Mind yer braces, now, an' yer pins!” admonished Tom. “We don't want
no slitherin' timbers round here when we get into the ruction a little
later on!”

In spite of all Tom's tumultuous vocal energy, it was nearly five before
the last bent was reached. One by one they had fitted into their places,
but not without some few hitches, each of which was the occasion for
an outburst of exhortations on the part of the boss, more or less
sulphurous, although the presence of the ladies interfered very
considerably with Tom's fluency in this regard. He worked his men like
galley slaves, and rowed them unmercifully. But for the most part they
took it all with good humour, though some few who had the misfortune to
fall specially under his tongue began to show signs that the lash had
bitten into the raw. The timbers of the last bent were specially heavy,
and the men, more or less fagged with their hard driving, didn't spring
to their work with the alacrity that Tom deemed suitable.

“At it, min!” he roared. “Snatch it alive! Begob, ye'd think it
was plate glass ye're liftin', ye're so tinder about it! Now thin!
Togither-r-r--heave! Once again, heave! Ye didn't git it an inch that
time! Stidy there a minute! Here you min on that pike, what in the
blank, blank are ye bunchin' in one ind loike a swarm av bees on a cowld
day! Shift over there, will ye!”

In obedience to the word two pike-poles were withdrawn at the same
moment, leaving only a single pike with Big Angus and two others to
sustain the full weight of the heavy timbers. Immediately the bent
swayed backward as if to fall upon the throng below. Some of the men
sprang back from under the huge bent. It was a moment of supreme peril.

“Howld there, fer yer lives, ye divils!” howled Tom, “or the hull of
ye'll be in hell in two howly minutes.”

At the cry Barney and Rory sprang to Angus's side and threw themselves
upon the pike. Immediately they were followed by others, and the
calamity was averted.

“Up wid her now thin, me lads, God bliss ye!” cried Tom. But there was
a new note in Tom's voice, the note that is heard when men stand in the
presence of serious danger. There was no more pause. The bent was
walked up to its place, pinned and made secure. Tom sprang down from the
building, his face white, his voice shaking. “Give me yer hand, Barney
Boyle, an' yours, Rory Ross, for be all the saints an' the Blessid
Virgin, ye saved min's lives this day!”

Around the two crowded the men, shaking their hands and clapping them
on the back with varied exclamations. “You're the lads!” “Good boys!”
 “You're the stuff!” “Put it there!”

“What are ye doin' to us?” cried Rory at last; “I didn't see anything
happen. Did you, Barney?”

“We did, though,” answered the crowd.

For once Tom Magee was silent. He walked about among the crowd chewing
hard upon his quid of tobacco, fighting to recover his nerve. He had
seen as no other of the men the terrible catastrophe from which the men
had been saved. It was Charley Boyle that again relieved the strain.

“Did any of you hear the cowbell?” he said. “It strikes me it's not
quitting time yet. Better get your captains, hadn't you?”

“Rory and Tom for captains!” cried a voice.

“Not me, by the powers!” said Tom.

“Oh, come on, Tom. You'll be all right. Get your men.”

“All right, am I? Be jabbers, I couldn't hit a pin onct in the same
place, let alone twice. By me sowl, min, it's a splash of blood an'
brains I've jist been lookin' at, an' that's true fer ye. Take Barney
there. He's the man, I kin tell ye.”

This suggestion caught the crowd's fancy.

“Barney it is!” “Rory and Barney!” they yelled.

“Me!” cried Barney, seeking to escape through the crowd. “I have never
done anything but carry pins and braces at a raising all my life.”

There was a loud laugh of scorn, for no man in all the crowd had
Barney's reputation for agility, nerve and quickness.

“Carry pins, is it?” said Tom. “Ye can carry yer head level, me boy. So
at it ye go, an' ye'll bate Rory fer me, so ye will.”

“Well then,” cried Barney, “I will, if you give me first choice, and
I'll take Tom here.”

“Hooray!” yelled Tom, “I'm wid ye.” So it was agreed, and in a few
minutes the sides were chosen, little Ben Fallows falling to Rory as
last choice.

“We'll give ye Ben,” said Tom, whose nerve was coming back to him. “We
don't want to hog on ye too much.”

“Never you mind, Ben,” said Rory, as the little Englishman strutted to
his place among Rory's men. “You'll earn your supper to-day with the
best of them.”

“If I cawn't hearn it I can heat it, by Jove!” cried Ben, to the huge
delight of the crowd.

And now the thrilling moment had arrived, for from this point out there
was to be a life-and-death contest as to which side should complete each
its part of the structure first. The main plates, the “purline” plates,
posts and braces, the rafters and collar beams, must all be set securely
in position. The side whose last man was first down from the building
after its work was done claimed the victory. In two opposing lines a
hundred men stood, hats, coats, vests and, in case of those told off
to “ride” the plates, boots discarded. A brawny, sinewy lot they were,
quick of eye and steady of nerve, strong of hand and sure of foot, men
to be depended upon whether to raise a barn or to build an empire. The
choice of sides fell to Rory, who took the north, or bank, side.

“Niver fret, Barney,” cried Tom Magee, who in the near approach of
battle was his own man again. “Niver ye fret. It's birrds we are, an'
the more air for us the better.”

Between the sides stood the framer ready to give the word.

“Aren't they splendid!” said Margaret in a low tone to Mrs. Boyle, her
cheek pale and her blue eyes blazing with excitement. “Oh, if I were
only a boy!”

“Ay,” said Mrs. Boyle, “ye'd be riding the plate, I doubt.”

“Wouldn't I, though! My! they're fine!” answered the girl, with her eyes
upon Barney. And more eyes than hers were upon the young captain, whose
rugged face showed pale even at that distance.

“Now then, men,” cried the framer. “Mind your pins. Are you ready?”
 holding his hat high in the air.

“Ready,” answered Rory.

Barney nodded.

“Git then!” he cried, flinging his hat hard on the ground. Like hounds
after a hare in full sight, like racers springing from the tape,
they leaped at the timbers, every man to his place, yelling like men
possessed. At once the admiring female friends broke into rival camps,
wildly enthusiastic, fiercely partisan.

“Well done, Rory! He's up first!” cried a girl whose brilliant
complexion and still more brilliant locks proclaimed her relationship to
the captain of the north side.

“Huh! Barney'll soon catch him, you'll see,” cried Margaret. “Oh,
Barney, hurry! hurry!”

“Indeed, he will need to hurry,” cried Rory's sister, mercilessly
exultant. “He's up! He's up!”

Sure enough, Rory, riding the first half of his plate over the bent, had
just “broken it down,” and in half a minute, seized by the men detailed
for this duty, it was in its place upon the posts. Like cats, three men
with mauls were upon it driving the pins home just as the second half
was making its appearance over the bent, to be seized and placed and
pinned as its mate had been.

“He's won! He's won!” shrieked Rory's admiring faction.

“Barney! Barney!” screamed his contingent reproachfully.

“Well done, Rory! Keep at it! You've got them beaten!”

“Beaten, indeed!” was the scornful reply. “Just wait a minute.”

“They're at the 'purlines'!” shrieked Rory's sister, and her friends,
proceeding to scream wildly after the female method of expressing
emotion under such circumstances.

“My!” sniffed a contemptuous member of Barney's faction, suffering
unutterable pangs of humiliation. “Some people don't mind making a show
of themselves.”

“Oh, Barney! why don't you hurry?” cried Margaret, to whose eager spirit
Barney's movements seemed painfully and almost wilfully slow.

But Barney had laid his plans. Dividing his men into squads, he had been
carrying out the policy of simultaneous preparation, and while part of
his men had been getting the plates to their places, others had been
making ready the “purlines” and laying the rafters in order so that,
although beaten by Rory in the initial stages of the struggle, when once
his plates were in position, while Rory's men were rushing about in
more or less confusion after their rafters, Barney's purlins and rafters
moved to their positions as if by magic. Consequently, though when they
arrived at the rafters Barney was half a dozen behind, the rest of his
rafters were lifted almost as one into their places.

At once the ranks of Barney's faction, which up to this point had been
enduring the poignant pangs of what looked like humiliating defeat,
rose in a tumult of triumph to heights of bliss inexpressible, save by a
series of ear-piercing but altogether rapturous shrieks.

“They're down! They're down!” screamed Margaret, dancing in an ecstasy
of joy, while hand over hand down posts, catching at braces, slipping,
sliding, springing, the men of both sides kept dropping from incredible
distances to the ground. Suddenly through all the tumultuous shouts of
victory a heart-rending scream rang out, followed by a shuddering groan
and dead silence. One-half of Rory's purlin plate slipped from its
splicing, the pin having been neglected in the furious haste, and
swinging free, fell crashing through the timbers upon the scurrying,
scrambling men below. On its way it swept off the middle bent Rory, who
was madly entreating a laggard to drop to the earth, but who, flung by
good fortune against a brace, clung there. On the plate went in its path
of destruction, missing several men by hairs' breadths, but striking
at last with smashing cruel force across the ankle of poor little Ben
Fallows, in the act of sliding down a post to the ground. In a moment
two or three men were beside him. He was lifted up groaning and
screaming and carried to an open grassy spot. After some moments of
confusion Barney was seen to emerge from the crowd and hurry after his
horse. A stretcher was hastily knocked together, a mattress and pillow
placed thereon, to which Ben, still groaning piteously, was tenderly
lifted.

“I'll go wid ye,” said Tom Magee, throwing on his coat and hat.

Before they drove out of the yard the little Englishman pulled himself
together. “Stop a bit, Barney,” he said. He beckoned Rory to his side.
“Tell them,” he said between his gasps, “not to spoil their supper for
me. I cawn't heat my share, but I guess perhaps I hearned it.”

“And that you did, lad,” cried Rory. “No man better, and I'll tell
them.”

The men who were standing near and who had heard Ben's words broke out
into admiring expletives, “Good boy, Benny!” “Benny's the stuff!” till
finally someone swinging his hat in the air cried, “Three cheers
for Benny!” and the feelings of the crowd, held in check for so many
minutes, at length found expression in three times three, and with the
cheers ringing in his ears and with a smile upon his drawn face, poor
Ben, forgetting his agony for the time, was borne away on his three-mile
drive to the doctor.

The raising was over, but no man asked which side had won.




IV

THE DANCE


The dance was well on when Barney and Tom drove up to the McLeods' gate.
They were met by Margaret and Barney's mother, who, with a group of
girls and Mr. McLeod, had been waiting for them. As they drove into the
yard they were met at once with eager questions as to the condition and
fate of the unhappy Ben.

“Ben, is it?” said Tom. “Indeed, it's a hero we've discovered. He stud
it like a brick. An' I'm not sure but there are two av thim,” he said,
jerking his thumb toward Barney. “Ye ought to have seen him stand
there houldin' the light an' passin' the doctor sthrings, an' the blood
spoutin' like a stuck pig. What happened afther, it's mesilf can't tell
ye at all, for I was restin' quietly by mesilf on the floor on the broad
av me back, an' naither av thim takin' annythin' to do wid me except
to drown me wid watther betune times. Indeed, it's himsilf is the born
doctor, an' so he is,” continued Tom, warming to his theme, “for wid his
hands red wid blood an' his face as white as yer apron, ma'am, niver a
shiver did he give until the last knot was tied an' the last stitch was
sewed. Bedad! there's not a man in the county could do the same.”

There was no stopping Tom in his recital, and after many attempts Barney
finally gave it up, and began unhitching his horse. Meantime the sound
of the dancing had ceased, and suddenly up through the silence there
rose a voice in song to the accompaniment of some stringed instrument.
It was an arresting voice. The group about the horse stood perfectly
still as the voice rose and soared and sank and rose again in an old
familiar plantation air.

“Who in thunder is that?” cried Barney, turning to his mother.

But his mother shook her head. “Indeed, I know not, but it's likely yon
strange girl that came out from town with the Murrays.”

“I know,” cried Teenie Ross, Rory's sister, with a little toss of her
head, “Alec told me. She is the girl who has come to take the teacher's
place for a month. She is the niece of Sheriff Hossie. Her father was
a colonel in the Southern army, California or Virginia or some place, I
don't just remember. Oh! I know all about her, Alec told me,” continued
Teenie with a knowing shake of her ruddy curls. “And she'll have a
string of hearts dangling to her apron, if she wears one, before the
month is out, so you'd better mind out, Barney.”

But Barney was not heeding her. “Hush!” he said, holding up his hand,
for again the voice was rising up clear and full into the night silence.
Even Teenie's chatter was subdued and no one moved till the verse was
finished.

“She'll be needing a boarding house, Barney,” continued Teenie wickedly.
“You'll just need to take her with you to the Mill.”

“Indeed, and there will be no such lassie as yon in my house,” said the
mother, speaking sharply.

“She has no mother,” said Margaret softly, “and she will need a place.”

“Yes, that she will,” replied Mrs. Boyle, “and I know very well where
she will be going, too, and you with four little ones to do for, not to
speak of the minister, the hardest of the lot.” Mrs. Boyle was evidently
seriously angered.

“Man! What a voice!” breathed Barney, and, making fast the horse to the
waggon, he set off for the barn apparently oblivious of all about him.

“Begorra, ma'am, an' savin' yer prisince, there's nobody knows what's in
that lad. But he'll stir the world yit, an' so he will. An' that's what
the ould Doctor said, so it was.”

When Barney reached the barn floor the Southern girl had just finished
her song, and with her guitar still in her hands was idly strumming its
strings. The moonlight fell about her in a flood so bright as to reveal
the ivory pallor of her face and the lustrous depths of her dark eyes.
It was a face of rare and romantic beauty framed in soft, fluffy, dark
hair, brushed high off the forehead and gathered in a Greek knot at the
back of her head. But besides the beauty of face and eyes, there was
an air of gentle, appealing innocence that awakened the chivalrous
instincts latent in every masculine heart, and a lazy, languorous grace
that set her in striking contrast to the alert, vigorous country maids
so perfectly able to care for themselves, asking odds of no man. When
the singing ceased Barney came out of the shadow at his father's side,
and, reaching for the violin, said, “Let me spell you a bit, Dad.”

At his voice Dick, who was across the floor beside the singer, turned
quickly and, seeing Barney, sprang for him, shouting, “Hello! you
old whale, you!” The father hastily pulled his precious violin out of
danger.

“Let go, Dick! Let go, I tell you!” said Barney, struggling in his
brother's embrace; “stop it, now!”

With a mighty effort he threw Dick off from him and stood on guard with
an embarrassed, half-shamed, half-indignant laugh. The crowd gathered
near in delighted expectation. There was always something sure to happen
when Dick “got after” his older brother.

“He won't let me kiss him,” cried Dick pitifully, to the huge enjoyment
of the crowd.

“It's too bad, Dick,” they cried.

“So it is. But I'm not going to be put off. It's a shame!” replied Dick,
in a hurt tone. “And me just home, too.”

“It's a mean shame, Dick. Wouldn't stand it a minute,” cried his
sympathisers.

“I won't either,” cried Dick, preparing to make an attack.

“Look here, Dick,” cried Barney impatiently, “just quit your nonsense
or I'll throw you on the floor there and sit on you. Besides, you're
spoiling the music.”

“Well, well, that's so,” said Dick. “So on Miss Lane's account I'll
forbear, provided, that is, she sings again, as, of course, she will.”

It was Dick's custom to assume command in every company where he found
himself.

“What is it to be? 'Dixie'?”

“Yes! Yes!” cried the crowd. “'Dixie.' We'll give you the chorus.”

After a little protest the girl struck a few chords and dashed off into
that old plantation song full of mingling pathos and humour. Barney
picked up his father's violin, touched the strings softly till he found
her key and then followed in a subdued accompaniment of weird chords.
The girl turned herself toward him, her beautiful face lighting up as
if she had caught a glimpse of a kindred spirit, and with a new richness
and tenderness she poured forth the full flood of her song. The crowd
were entranced with delight. Even those who had been somewhat impatient
for the renewal of the dance joined in calls for another song. She
turned to Dick, who had resumed his place beside her. “Who is the man
you wanted so badly to kiss?” she asked quietly.

“Who?” he cried, so that everyone heard. “What! don't you know? That's
Barney, the one and only Barney, my brother. Here, Barney, drop your
fiddle and be introduced to Miss Iola Lane, late from Virginia, or is it
Maryland? Some of those heathen places beyond the Dixie line.”

Barney dropped the violin from his chin, came over the floor, and
awkwardly offered his hand. With easy, lazy grace she rose from the
block where she had been sitting.

“You accompany beautifully,” she said in her soft Southern drawl; “it's
in you, I can see. No one can ever be taught to accompany like that.”

“Oh, pshaw! That's nothing,” said Barney, eager to get back again to
his shadow, “but if you don't mind I'll try to follow you if you sing
again.”

“Certainly,” cried Dick, “she'll sing again. What will you give us now,
white or black?”

“Plantation, of course,” said Barney brusquely.

“All right. 'Kentucky home,' eh?” cried Dick.

The girl looked up at him with a saucy, defiant look. “Do they all obey
you here?”

“Ask them.”

“That's what,” cried Alec Murray, “especially the girls.”

She hesitated a few moments, evidently meditating rebellion, then
turning to Barney, who was playing softly the air that had been asked
for, “You, too, obey, I see,” she said.

“Generally--, always when I like,” he replied, continuing to play.

“Oh, well,” shrugging her shoulders, “I suppose I must then.” And she
began:


     “The sun shines bright on de old Kentucky home.”


Again that hush fell upon the crowd. The face of the singer, with its
dark, romantic beauty touched with the magic of the moonlight, the voice
soft, mellow, vibrant with passion, like the deeper notes of a 'cello,
supported by the weird chords of Barney's violin, held them breathless.
No voice joined in the chorus. As she sang, the subtle telepathic waves
came back from her audience to the girl, and with ever-deepening passion
and abandon she poured forth into the moonlit silence the full throbbing
tide of song. The old air, simple and time-worn, took on a new richness
of tone colour and a fulness of volume suggestive of springs of
unutterable depths. Even Dick's gay air of command surrendered to the
spell. As before, silence followed the song.

“But you did not do your part,” she said, smiling up at him with a very
pretty air of embarrassment.

“No,” said Dick solemnly, “we didn't dare.”

“Sing again,” said Barney abruptly. His voice sounded deep and hoarse,
and Dick, looking curiously at him, said apologetically, “Music, when
it's good, makes him quite batty.”

But Iola ignored him. “Did you ever hear this?” she said to Barney. She
strummed a few chords on her guitar. “It's only a little baby song, one
my old mammy used to sing.”


     “Sleep, ma baby, close youah lil winkahs fas',
      Loo-la, Loo-la, don' you gib me any sass.
      Youah mammy's ol', an' want you to de berry las',
      So, baby, honey, let dose mean ol' angels pass.

      CHORUS:

     “Sleep, ma baby, mammy can't let you go.
      Sleep, ma baby, de angels want you sho!
      De angels want you, guess I know,
      But mammy hol' you, hol' you tight jes' so.

     “Sleep, ma baby, close youah lil fingahs, Meah,
      Loo-la, Loo-la, tight about ma fingahs heah,
      De dawk come close, but baby don' you nebbeh feah,
      Youah mammy'll hol' you, hol' you till de mawn appeah.

     “Sleep, ma baby, why you lie so col', so col'?
      Loo-la, Loo-la, do Massa want you for His fol'?
      But, baby, honey, don' you know youah mammy's ol'
      An' want you, want you, oh, she want you jes' to hol'.”


A long silence followed the song. The girl laid her guitar down and sat
quietly looking straight before her, while Barney played the refrain
over and over. The simple pathos of the little song, its tender appeal
to the mother-chords that somehow vibrate in all human hearts, reached
the deep places in the honest hearts of her listeners and for some
moments they stood silent about her. It was with an obvious effort that
Dick released the tension by crying out, “Partners for four-hand reel.”
 Instantly the company resolved itself into groups of four and stood
waiting for the music.

“Strike up, Barney,” cried Dick impatiently, shuffling before Iola, whom
he had chosen for his partner. But Barney, handing the violin to his
father, slipped back into the shadow where his mother and Margaret were
standing. The boy's face was pale through its swarthy tan.

“Come away,” he said to his mother in a strained, unnatural voice.

“Isn't she beautiful?” cried Margaret impulsively.

“Is she? I didn't notice. But great goodness! What a voice!”

“Um, some will be thinking so, I doubt,” said Mrs. Boyle grimly, with a
sharp glance at her son.

But Barney had become oblivious to her words and glances. He moved away
as in a dream to make ready for the home going of his party, for soon
the dancers would be at Sir Roger's. Nor did he waken from his dream
mood during the drive home. He could hear Dick chattering gaily to
Margaret and his mother of his College experiences, but except for an
occasional word with his father he sat in silence, gazing not upon the
fields and woods that lay in all their moonlit glory about them, but
upon that new world, vast, unreal, yet vividly present, whose horizon
lay beyond the line of vision, the world of his imagination, where he
must henceforth live and where his work must lie. For the events of the
afternoon had summoned a new self into being, a self unfamiliar, but
real and terribly insistent, demanding recognition. He could not analyse
the change that had come to him, nor could he account for it. He did not
try to. He lived again those great moments when, having been thrust by
chance into the command of these fifty mighty men, he had swung them
to victory. He remembered the ease, the perfect harmony with which his
faculties had wrought through those few minutes of fierce struggle.
Again he passed through the awful ordeal of the operation, now holding
the light, now assisting with forceps or cord or needle, now sponging
away that ghastly red flow that could not be stemmed. He wondered now at
his self-mastery. He could see again his fingers, bloody, but unshaking,
handing the old doctor a needle and silk cord. He remembered his
surprise and pity, almost contempt, for big Tom Magee lying on the
floor unable to lift his head; remembered, too, the strange absence of
anything like elation at the doctor's words, “My boy, you have the nerve
and the fingers of a surgeon, and that's what your Maker intended you to
be.”

But he let his mind linger long and with thrilling joy through the
interlude in the dance. Every detail of that scene stood clearly limned
before his mind. The bare skeleton of the new harp, the crowding,
eager, tense faces of the listeners, his mother's and Margaret's in
the hindmost row, his brother standing in the centre foreground, the
upturned face of the singer with its pale romantic loveliness, all
in the mystery of the moonlight, and, soaring over all, that clear,
vibrant, yet softly passionate, glorious voice. That was the final magic
touch that rolled back the screen and set before him the new world which
must henceforth be his. He could not explain that touch. The songs were
the old simple airs worn threadbare by long use in the countryside. It
was certainly not the songs. Nor was it the singer. Curiously enough,
the girl, her personality, her character, worthy or unworthy, had only a
subordinate place in his thought. He was conscious of her presence there
as a subtle yet powerful influence, but as something detached from
the upturned face illumined in the soft moonlight and the stream of
heart-shaking song. She was to him thus far simply a vision and a voice,
to which all the psychic element in him made eager response. As he drove
into the quiet Mill yard it came upon him with a shock of pain that with
the old life he had done forever. He felt himself already detached
from it. The new self looking out upon its new world had shaken off his
boyhood as the bursting leaf shakes off the husks of spring.

As Dick's gay exclamation of delight at sight of the old home fell upon
his ear a deeper pain struck him, for he vaguely felt that while his
brother still held his place in the centre of the stage, that stage had
immeasurably extended and was now peopled with other figures, shadowy,
it is true, but there, and influential. His brother, who with his
mother, or, indeed, perhaps more than his mother, had absorbed his
boyish devotion, must henceforth share that devotion with others. Upon
this thought his brother's voice broke in.

“What's the matter, old chap? Is there anything wrong?”

The kindly tone stabbed like a knife.

“No, no. Nothing, Dick.”

“Yes, but there is. You're not the same.” At the anxious appeal in the
voice Barney stood for a moment steadily regarding his brother, for whom
he could easily give his life, with a troubled sense of change that he
could not analyse to himself, much less explain to his brother.

“I don't know, Dick--I can't tell you--I don't think I am the same.” A
look of startled dismay fell swiftly down upon the frank, handsome face
turned toward him.

“Have I done anything, Barney?” said the younger boy, his dismay showing
in his tone.

“No, no, Dick, boy, it has nothing to do with you.” He put his hands on
his brother's shoulders, the nearest thing to an embrace he ever allowed
himself. “It is in myself; but to you, my boy, I am the same.” His
speech came now hurriedly and with difficulty: “And whatever comes to
me or to you, Dick, remember I shall never change to you--remember
that, Dick, to you I shall never change.” His breath was coming in quick
gasps. The younger boy gazed at his usually so undemonstrative brother.
Suddenly he threw his arms about his neck, crying in a broken voice,
“You won't, Barney, I know you won't. If you ever do I don't want to
live.”

For a single moment Barney held the boy in his arms, patting his
shoulder gently, then, pushing him back, said impatiently, “Well, I am
a blamed old fool, anyway. What in the diggins is the matter with me,
I don't know. I guess I want supper, nothing to eat since noon. But all
the same, Dick,” he added in a steady, matter-of-fact tone, “we must
expect many changes from this out, but we'll stand by each other till
the world cracks.”

After Dick had gone upstairs with his father, Barney and his mother
sat together talking over the doings of the day after their invariable
custom.

“He is looking thin, I am thinking,” said the mother.

“Oh, he's right enough. A few days after the reaper and a few meals out
of your kitchen, mother, and he will be as fit as ever.”

“That was a fine work of yours with the doctor.” The indifferent tone
did not deceive her son for a moment.

“Oh, pshaw, that was nothing. At least it seemed nothing then. There
were things to be done, blood to be stopped, skin to be sewed up, and I
just did what I could.” The mother nodded slightly.

“You did no more than you ought, and that great Tom Magee might be doing
something better than lying on his back on the floor like a baby.”

“He couldn't help himself, mother. That's the way it struck him. But,
man, it was fine to see the doctor, so quick and so clever, and never a
slip or a stop.” He paused abruptly and stood upright looking far away
for some moments. “Yes, fine! Splendid!” he continued as in a dream.
“And he said I had the fingers and the nerve for a surgeon. That's it. I
see now--mother, I'm going to be a doctor.”

His mother stood and faced him. “A doctor? You?”

The sharp tone recalled her son.

“Yes, me. Why not?”

“And Richard?”

Her son understood her perfectly. His mind went back to a morning long
ago when his mother, putting his younger brother's hand in his as
they set forth to school for the first time, said, “Take care of your
brother, Bernard. I give him into your charge.” That very day and many
a day after he had stood by his brother, had fought for him, had pulled
him out of scraps into which the younger lad's fiery temper and reckless
spirit were frequently plunging him, but never once had he consciously
failed in the trust imposed on him. And as Dick developed exceptional
brilliance in his school work, together they planned for him, the mother
and the older brother, the mother painfully making and saving, the
brother accepting as his part the life of plodding obscurity in order
that the younger boy might have his full chance of what school and
college could do for him. True to the best traditions of her race, the
mother had fondly dreamed of a day when she should hear from her son's
lips the word of life. With never a thought of the sacrifice she was
demanding, she had drawn into this partnership her elder son. And thus
to the mother it seemed nothing less than an act of treachery, amounting
to sacrilege, that Barney for a single moment should cherish for himself
an ambition whose realisation might imperil his brother's future. Barney
needed, therefore, no explanation of his mother's cry of dismay, almost
of horror. He was quick with his answer.

“Dick? Oh, mother, do you think I was forgetting Dick? Of course nothing
must stop Dick. I can wait--but I am going to be a doctor.”

The mother looked into her son's rugged face, so like her own in its
firm lines, and replied almost grudgingly, “Ay, I doubt you will.” Then
she added hastily, as if conscious of her ungracious tone, “And what for
should you not?”

“Thank you, mother,” said her son humbly, “and never fear we'll stand by
Dick.”

Her eyes followed him out of the room and for some moments she stood
watching the door through which he had passed. Then, with a great sigh,
she said aloud: “Ay, it is the grand doctor he will make. He has the
nerve and the fingers whatever.” Then after a pause she added: “And he
will not fail the laddie, I warrant.”




V

THE NEW TEACHER


The new teacher was distinctly phenomenal from every point of view. Her
beauty was a type quite unusual where rosy-cheeked, deep-chested, sturdy
womanhood was the rule. Even the smallest child was sensible of the
fascination of her smile, which seemed to emanate from every feature of
her face, so much so that little Ruby Ross was heard to say: “And do you
know, mother, she smiles with her nose!” The almost timid appeal in her
gentle manner stirred the chivalry latent in every boy's heart. Back of
her appealing gentleness, however, there was a reserve of proud command
due to the strain in her blood of a regnant, haughty, slave-ruling race.
But in her discipline of the school she had rarely to fall back upon
sheer authority. She had a method unique, but undoubtedly effective,
based upon two fundamental principles: regard for public opinion, and
hope of reward. The daily tasks were prepared and rendered as if in
the presence of the great if somewhat vague public which at times she
individualized, as she became familiar with her pupils, in the person of
father or mother or trustee, as the case might be. And with marvellous
skill she played this string, albeit occasionally she struck a false
note.

“What would your father think, Lincoln?” she inquired reproachfully of
little Link Young. Link's father was a typical Down Easterner, by name
Jabez Young or, as he was more commonly known, “Maine Jabe,” for his
fondness of his reminiscence of his native State. “What would your
father think if he saw you act so rudely?”

“Dad wouldn't care a dang.”

Instantly conscious of her mistake, she hastened to recover.

“Well, Lincoln, what do you think I think?”

Link's Yankee assurance sank abashed before this direct personal appeal.
He hung his head in blushing silence.

“Do you know, Lincoln, you might come to be a right clever gentleman
if you tried hard.” A new idea lodged itself under Link's red thatch of
hair and a new motive stirred in his shrewd little soul. Here was one
visibly present whose good opinion he valued. At all costs that good
opinion he must win.

The whole school was being consciously trained for exhibition purposes.
The day would surely come when before the eyes of the public they would
parade for inspection. Therefore, it behooved them to be ready.

But more important in enforcing discipline was the hope of reward. This
principle was robbed of its more sordid elements by the nature of the
reward held forth. A day of good conduct and of faithful work invariably
closed with an hour devoted to histrionic and musical exercise. To
recite before the teacher and to hear the teacher recite was worth
considerable effort. To sing with the teacher was a joy, but to hear
the teacher sing to the accompaniment of her guitar was the supreme of
bliss. It was not only an hour of pleasure to the pupils, but an hour
of training as well. She initiated them into the mysteries of deep
breathing, chest tones, phrasing, and expression, and such was their
absorbing interest in and devotion to this study, that in a few weeks
truly remarkable results were obtained. The singing lesson invariably
concluded with a plantation song from the teacher; and with her
memory-gates wide open to the sunny South of her childhood, and with all
her soul in her voice, she gave them her best, holding them breathless,
laughterful, or tear-choked, according to her mood and song.

It was by such a song that Mr. Jabez Young, driving along the road on
his way to the store, was suddenly arrested and rendered incapable of
movement till the song was done. In amazed excitement he burst forth to
old Hector Ross, the Chairman of the Trustee Board, who happened to be
in the store:

“Gol dang my cats! What hev yeh got in the school up yonder? Say! I
couldn't git my team to move past that there door!”

“What's matter, Mr. Young?”

“Why, dang it all! I'll report to the Reeve. Fust thing yeh know
there'll be a string-a-teams from here to the next concession blockin'
that there road in front of the school!”

“Why, what's the matter with the school, Mr. Young?” inquired old
Hector, in anxious surprise.

“Why, ain't ye heard her? Say! down in Maine I paid a dollar one 'time
to hear a big singer, forgit her name, but she was 'lowed to be the
dangdest singer in all them parts. But, Gol dang my cats to cinders! she
ain't any more like that there teacher of yours than my old Tom cat's
like the angel that leads the choir in Abram's bosom!”

“That is very interesting, Mr. Young. And I suppose you won't mind
paying a little extra school rate now,” said Hector, with a shrewd
twinkle in his eye.

“Extra school rate! I tell yeh what, I'll charge up my lost time to the
trustees! But danged if I wouldn't give a day's pay to hear that song
again!”

In application of this principle of reward for merit, the teacher
introduced a subordinate principle which proved effective when all else
failed. The school was made corporately and jointly responsible for the
individual. The offence of one was the offence of all, the merit of
one the merit of all. Thus every pupil was associated with her in the
business of securing good lessons and exemplary conduct. As the day went
on each misdemeanour was gravely, and in full view of the school, marked
down upon the blackboard. The merits obtained by any pupil were in like
manner recorded. The day closing with an adverse balance knew no hour
of song. Woe to the boy who, dead to all other motives of good conduct,
persisted in robbing the school of its hour of delight. In the case of
Ab Maddock, big, impudent, and pachydermous, it took Dugald Robertson,
the minister's son, just half an hour's hard fighting to extract
a promise of good behaviour. Dugald was in the main a thoughtful,
peaceable boy, the most advanced pupil in the entrance class, and a
great mathematician. At first he was inclined to despise the teacher,
setting little store by her beautiful face and fascinating smile, for
on the very first day he discovered her woful mathematical inadequacy.
Arithmetic was her despair. With algebraic formulae and Euclid's
propositions her fine memory saved her. But with quick intuition she
threw herself frankly upon the boy's generosity, and in the evenings
together they, with Margaret's assistance, wrestled with the
bewildering intricacies of arithmetical problems. Her open confession
of helplessness, and her heroic attempts to overcome her defects, made
irresistible appeal to the chivalrous heart of the little Highland
gentleman. Thenceforth he was her champion for all that was in him.

But the teacher's weakness in mathematics was atoned for, if atonement
there be for such a weakness, by the ample strength of her endowments in
those branches of learning in which imagination and artistic sensibility
play any large part. And a far larger part, and far more important,
do these Divine gifts play than many wise educationists conceive. The
lessons in history, in geography, and in reading ceased to be mere
memory tasks and became instinct with life. The whole school would stay
its ordinary work to listen while the teacher told tales of the brave
days of old to the history class, or transformed the geography lessons
into excursions among people of strange tongues dwelling in far lands.
But it was in the reading lessons that her artistic talents had full
play. The mere pronouncing and spelling of words were but incidents
in the way of expression of thought and emotion. After a whole week of
drilling which she would give to a single lesson, she would arrest
the class with the question, “What is the author seeing?” and with the
further question, “How does he try to show it to us?” Reading, to her,
consisted in the ability to see what the author saw and the art of
telling it, and to set forth with grace that thing in the author's
words.

In the writing class her chief anxiety was to avoid blots. Every blot
might become an occasion of humiliation to teacher and pupils alike.
“Oh, this will never do! They must not see this!” she would cry, rubbing
out with infinite care and pains the blot, and rubbing in the horror
of such a defilement being paraded before the eyes of the vague but
terrible “they.”

Thus the pathway trodden in the school routine was, perchance, neither
wide nor far extended, but it was thoroughly well trodden. As a
consequence, when the day for the closing exercises came around both
teacher and pupils had become so thoroughly familiar with the path and
so accustomed to the vision of the onlooking public that they faced the
ordeal without dread, prepared to give forth whatever of knowledge or
accomplishment they might possess.

A fortunate rainy day, making the hauling of hay or the cutting of fall
wheat equally impossible, filled the school with the parents and friends
of the children. The minister and the trustees were dutifully present.
Of the mill people Dick and his mother appeared, Dick because his mother
insisted that a student should show interest in the school, his mother
because Dick refused to go a step without her. Barney came later, not
because of his interest in the school, but chiefly, he declared to
himself, conscious of the need of a reason, because there was nothing
much else to do. The presence of “Maine” Jabe might be taken as the high
water mark of the interest aroused throughout the section in the new
teacher and her methods.

The closing exercises were, with a single exception, a brilliantly
flawless exhibition. That exception appeared in the Euclid of the
entrance class. The mathematics were introduced early in the day. The
arithmetic, which dealt chiefly with problems of barter and sale of the
various products of the farm, was lightly and deftly passed over. The
algebra class was equally successful. In the Euclid class it seemed as
if the hitherto unbroken success would come to an unhappy end in the
bewilderment and confusion of Phoebe Ross, from whom the minister had
asked a demonstration of the pons asinorum. But the blame for poor
Phoebe's bewilderment clearly lay with the minister himself, for in
placing the figure upon the board with the letters designating the
isosceles triangle he made the fatal blunder of setting the letter B at
the right hand side of the base instead of at its proper place at the
left, as in the book. The result was that the unhappy Phoebe, ignoring
the figure upon the board and depending entirely upon her memory,
soon plunged both the minister and herself into confusion hopeless and
complete. But the quick eye of the teacher had detected the difficulty,
and, going to the board, she erased the unfamiliar figure, saying, as
she did so, in her gentle appealing voice, “Wait, Phoebe. You are quite
confused, I know. We shall wipe the board clean and begin all over.” She
placed the figure upon the board with the designating letters arranged
as in the book. “Now, take your time,” she said with deliberate
emphasis. “Let A, B, C be an isosceles triangle.” And thus, with her
feet set firmly upon the familiar path, little Phoebe slipped through
that desperate maze of angles and triangles with an ease, speed, and
dexterity that elicited the wonder and admiration of all present, the
minister, good man, included. Upon Barney, however, who understood
perfectly what had happened, the incident left a decidedly unpleasant
impression. Indeed, the superficiality of the mathematical exercises
as a whole awakened within him a feeling of pain which he could not
explain.

When the reading classes were under review the school passed from
the atmosphere of the superficial to that of the real. Never had such
reading been heard in that or in any other common school. The familiar
sing-song monotony of the reading lesson was gone and in its place a
real and vivid picturing of the scenes described or enacted. It was all
simple, natural, and effective.

The exercises attained an easy climax with the recitations and singing
which closed the day. Here the artistic gifts of the teacher had full
scope. There was an absence of all nervous dread in the performers. By
some marvellous power she caught hold and absorbed their attention so
that for her chiefly, if not entirely, they recited or sang. In the
singing, which terminated the proceedings, the triumph of the day
was complete. A single hymn, two or three kindergarten action songs,
hitherto unheard in that community, a rollicking negro chorus; and, at
the last, “for the children and the mothers,” the teacher said, one soft
lullaby in which for the first time the teacher's voice was heard, the
low, vibrant tones filling the room with music such as in all their
lives they had never listened to. It was a fine sense of artistic values
that cut out the speeches and dismissed the school in the ordinary way.
The full tide of their enthusiasm broke upon her as minister, trustees,
parents, and all crowded about her, offering congratulations. Her air
of shy grace with just a touch of nonchalant reserve served in no small
degree to heighten the whole effect of the day.

The mill people walked home with the minister and Margaret.

“Isn't she a wonder?” cried Dick. “What has she done to those little
blocks? Why, they don't seem the same children!”

“Yes, yes,” replied the minister, “it is quite surprising, indeed.”

“In their mathematics, though, there was some thin skating there for a
while,” continued Dick.

“Yes, yes, the little lassie became confused. But she recovered herself
cleverly.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Dick, with a slight laugh. “That was a clever bit of
work on the part of the teacher.”

“Oh, shut up, Dick!” said Barney sharply.

“Oh, well,” replied Dick, “no one expects mathematics from a girl,
anyway.”

“Do you hear the conceit of him?” said his mother indignantly, “and
Margaret there can show all of you the way.”

“Yes, that's true, mother, but Margaret is a wonder, too. But whatever
you say, the reciting and singing were good. Even little Link Young was
quite dramatic. They say that 'Maine' Jabe for the first time in his
life is quite reckless in regard to the school rates.”

“We will just wait a year,” said his mother. “It is a new broom that
sweeps clean.”

“Now, mother, you are too hard to please.”

“Perhaps,” she replied, grimly closing her lips.

As they reached the manse gate the minister, who had evidently
been pondering Dick's words, said, “Well, Mrs. Boyle, we have had a
delightful afternoon, whatever, a remarkable exhibition. Yes, yes. And
after all it is a great matter that the children should be taught to
read and recite well. And it was no wonder that the poor thing would
seek to make it easy for the little girl. And Margaret will need to take
Dugald over his mathematics, I fear, before he goes up to the entrance.”
 At which remark the painful feeling which the reciting and singing
had caused Barney to forget for the time, returned with even greater
poignancy.

But in all the section there was only one opinion, and that was that,
at all costs, the teacher's services must be retained. For once, the
trustees realised that no longer would they depend for popularity upon
the sole qualification of their ability to keep down the school rate. It
was, perhaps, not the most diplomatic moment they chose for the securing
of the teacher's services for another year. It might be that they were
moved to immediate action by the apparent willingness on her part
to leave the matter of re-engagement an open question. On all hands,
however, they were applauded as having done a good stroke of business
when, there and then, they closed their bargain with the teacher,
although at a higher salary, as it turned out, than had ever been paid
in the section before.




VI

THE YOUNG DOCTOR


Barney's jaw ran along the side of his face, ending abruptly in a
square-cut chin, the jaw and chin doing for his face what a ridge
and bluff of rock do for a landscape. They suggested the bed rock of
character, abiding, firm, indomitable. Having seen the goal at which
he would arrive, there remained only to find the path and press it. He
would be a doctor. The question was, how? His first step was to consult
the only authority available, old Doctor Ferguson. It was a stormy
interview, for the doctor was of a craggy sort like Barney himself,
with a jaw and a chin and all they suggested. The boy told his purpose
briefly, almost defiantly, as if expecting scornful opposition, and
asked guidance. The doctor flung difficulties at his head for half an
hour and ended by offering him money, cursing his Highland pride when
the boy refused it.

“What do I want with money?” cried the doctor. He had lost his only
son three years before. “There's only my wife. And she'll have plenty.
Money! Dirt, fit to walk on, to make a path with, that's all! Had my
boy lived, God knows I'd have made him a surgeon. But--” Here the doctor
snorted violently and coughed, trumpeting hard with his nose. “Confound
these foggy nights! I'll put you through.”

“I'll pay my way,” said Barney almost sullenly, “or I'll stay at home.”

“What are you doing here, then?” he roared at the boy.

“I came to find out how to start. Must a man go to college?”

“No,” shouted the doctor again; “he can be a confounded fool and work up
by himself, a terrible handicap, going up for the examinations till the
last year, when he must attend college.”

“I could do that,” said Barney, closing his jaws.

The doctor looked at his face. The shut jaws looked more than ever like
a ledge of granite and the chin like a cliff. “You can, eh? Hanged if I
don't believe you! And I'll help you. I'd like to, if you would let me.”
 The voice ended in a wistful tone. The boy was touched.

“Oh, you can!” he cried impulsively, “and I'll be awfully thankful. You
can tell me what books to get and sometimes explain, perhaps, if you
have time.” His face went suddenly crimson. He was conscious of asking a
favour.

The old doctor sat down, rejoicing greatly in him, and for the first
time treated him as an equal. He explained in detail the course of
study, making much of the difficulties in the way. When he had done he
waved his hand toward his library.

“Now, there are my books,” he cried; “use them and ask me what you will.
It will brush me up. And I'll take you to see my cases and, by God's
help, we'll make you a surgeon! A surgeon, sir! You've got the fingers
and the nerves. A surgeon! That's the only thing worth while. The
physician can't see further below the skin than anyone else. He guesses
and experiments, treats symptoms, trys one drug then another, guessing
and experimenting all along the line. But the knife, boy!” Here the
doctor rose and began to pace the floor. “There's no guess in the knife
point! The knife lays bare the evil, fights, eradicates it! Look at
that boy Kane, died three weeks ago. 'Inflammation,' said the
physician. Treated his symptoms properly enough. The boy died. At the
postmortem”--here the doctor paused in his walk, lowering his voice
almost to a whisper while he bent over the boy--“at the post-mortem the
knife discovered an abscess on the vermiform appendix. The discovery
was made too late.” These were the days before appendicitis became
fashionable. “Now, listen to me,” continued the doctor, even more
impressively, “I believe in my soul that the knife at the proper moment
might have saved that boy's life! A slight incision an inch or two long,
the removal of the diseased part, a few stitches, and in a couple of
weeks the boy is well! Ah, boy! God knows I'd give my life to be a great
surgeon! But He didn't give me the fingers. Look at these,” and he held
up a coarse, heavy hand; “I haven't the touch. And besides, He brought
me my wife, the best thing I've got in the world, and my baby, which
settled the surgeon business forever. Now listen, boy! You've got the
nerve--plenty of men have that--but you've also got the fingers, which
few men have. With your touch and your steady nerve and your mechanical
ingenuity--I've seen your machines, boy--you can be a great surgeon!
But you must know your subject. You must think, dream, sleep, eat, drink
bones and muscles and sinews and nerves. Push everything else aside!”
 he cried, waving his great hands. “And remember!”--here his voice took
a solemn tone--“let nothing share your heart with your knife! Leave the
women alone. A woman has no business in science. She distracts the mind,
disturbs the liver, absorbs the vital powers, besides paralysing the
finances. For you, let there be one woman, your mother, at least till
you are a surgeon. Now, then, there are my books and all my spare time
at your command.” At these words the boy's face, which had caught the
light and glow of the old man's enthusiasm, fell.

“Well, what now?” cried the doctor, reading his face like a book.

“I have no right to take your books or your time.”

The doctor sprang to his feet with an oath. The boy also rose and faced
him, almost as if expecting a blow. For a moment they stood steadfastly
regarding each other, then the doctor's old face relaxed, his eyes
softened. He put his big hand on the boy's shoulder.

“Now, by the Lord that made you and me!” he said, “we were meant for a
team, and a team we'll make. I'll help you and I'll make you pay.” The
boy's face brightened.

“How?” he cried eagerly.

“We'll change work.” The doctor's old eyes began to twinkle. “I want
fall ploughing done and my cordwood hauled.”

“I'll do it!” cried Barney. A light broke in his eyes and flooded his
face. At last he saw his path.

“Here,” said the doctor, taking down a book, “here's your Gray.” And
turning the leaves, “Here's what happened to Ben Fallows. Read this. And
here's the treatment,” pulling down another book and turning to a page,
“Read that. I'll make Ben your first patient. There's no money in it,
anyway, and you can't kill him. He only needs three things, cleanliness,
good cheer, and good food. By and by we'll get him a leg. Here's that
Buffalo doctor's catalogue. Take it along. Now, boy, I'll work you,
grind you, and you'll go for your first examination next spring.”

“Next spring!” cried Barney, aghast, “not for three years.”

“Three years!” snorted the doctor, “three fiddlesticks! You can do this
first examination by next spring.”

“Yes. I could do it,” said Barney slowly.

The doctor cast an admiring glance at the line of jaw on the boy's face.

“But there's the mortgage and there's Dick's college.”

“Dick's college? Why Dick's and not yours?”

The boy's rugged face changed. A tender light fell over it, filling in
its cracks and canyons.

“Because--well, because Dick must go through. Dick's clever. He's awful
clever.” Pride mingled with the tenderness in look and tone. “Mother
wants him to be a minister, and,” he added after a pause, “I do, too.”

The old doctor turned from him, stood looking out of the window a few
minutes, and then came back. He put his hands on the boy's shoulders. “I
understand, boy,” he said, his great voice vibrating in deep and tender
tones, “I, too, had a brother once. Make Dick a minister if you want,
but meantime we'll grind the surgeon's knife.”

The boy went home to his mother in high exultation.

“The doctor wants me to look after Ben for him,” he announced. “He is
going to show me the dressings, and he says all he wants is cleanliness,
good cheer, and good food. I can keep him clean. But how he is to get
good cheer in that house, and how he is to get good food, are more than
I can tell.”

“Good cheer!” cried Dick. “He'll not lack for company. How many has she
now, mother? A couple of dozen, more or less?”

“There are thirteen of them already, poor thing.”

“Thirteen! That's an unlucky stopping place. Let us hope she won't allow
the figure to remain at that.”

“Indeed, I am thinking it will not,” said his mother, speaking with the
confidence of intimate knowledge.

“Well,” replied Dick, with a judicial air, “it's a question whether it's
worse to defy the fate that lurks in that unlucky number, or to accept
the doubtful blessing of another twig to the already overburdened olive
tree.”

“Ay, it is a hard time she is having with the four babies and all.”

“Four, mother! Surely that's an unusual number even for the prolific
Mrs. Fallows!”

“Whisht, laddie!” said his mother, in a shocked tone, “don't talk
foolishly.”

“But you said four, mother.”

“Twins the last twice,” interjected Barney.

“Great snakes!” cried Dick, “let us hope she won't get the habit.”

“But, mother,” inquired Barney seriously, “what's to be done?”

“Indeed, I can't tell,” said his mother.

“Listen to me,” cried Dick, “I've got an inspiration. I'll undertake the
'good cheer.' I'll impress the young ladies into this worthy service.
Light conversation and song. And you can put up the food, mother, can't
you?”

“We will see,” said the mother quietly; “we will do our best.”

“In that case the 'food department' is secure,” said Dick; “already I
see Ben Fallows making rapid strides toward convalescence.”

It was characteristic of Barney that within a few days he had all three
departments in full operation. With great tact he succeeded in making
Mrs. Fallows thoroughly scour the woodwork and whitewash the walls in
Ben's little room, urging the doctor's orders and emphasizing the danger
of microbes, the dread of which was just beginning to obtain in popular
imagination.

“Microbes? What's them?” inquired Mrs. Fallows, suspiciously.

“Very small insects.”

“Insects? Is it bugs you mean?” Mrs. Fallows at once became fiercely
hostile. “I want to tell yeh, young sir, ther' hain't no bugs in this
'ouse. If ther's one thing I'm pertickler 'bout, it's bugs. John sez to
me, sez 'e, 'What's the hodds of a bug or two, Hianthy?' But I sez to
'im, sez I, 'No bugs fer me, John. I hain't been brought up with bugs,
an' bugs I cawn't an' won't 'ave.'”

It was only Barney's earnest assurance that the presence of microbes
was no impeachment of the most scrupulous housekeeping and, indeed, that
these mysterious creatures were to be found in the very highest circles,
that Mrs. Fallows was finally appeased. With equal skill he inaugurated
his “good food” department, soothing Mrs. Fallows' susceptibilities with
the diplomatic information that in surgical cases such as Ben's certain
articles of diet specially prepared were necessary to the best results.

Not the least successful part of the treatment prescribed was that
furnished by the “good cheer” department. This was left entirely
in Dick's charge, and he threw himself into its direction with the
enthusiasm of a devotee. Iola with her guitar was undoubtedly his
mainstay. But Dick was never quite satisfied unless he could persuade
Margaret, too, to assist in his department. But Margaret had other
duties, and, besides, she had associated herself more particularly
with Mrs. Boyle in the work of supplementing Mrs. Fallows' somewhat
unappetising though entirely substantial meals with delicacies more
suited to the sickroom. Dick, however, insisted that with all that Iola
and himself in the “good cheer” department and Barney in what he called
the “scavenging” department could achieve, there was still need of
Margaret's presence and Margaret's touch. Hence, before the busy harvest
time came upon them, he made a practice of calling at the manse, and,
relieving her of the duty of getting to sleep little five-year-old Tom,
with whom he was first favourite, he would carry her off to the Fallows
household, whither Barney and Iola had preceded them.

Altogether the “young doctor,” as Ben called him, had reason to be proud
of the success he was achieving with his first patient. The amputation
healed over and the bone knit at the first intention, and in a few
weeks Ben was far on the way to convalescence. He was never weary in
his praises of the “young doctor.” It was the “young doctor” who, by
changing the bandages, had eased him of the intolerable pain which
followed the first dressing. It was the “young doctor” who had changed
the splints, shaping them cunningly to fit the limb, bringing ease where
there had been chafing pain.

“Let 'em 'ave the old doctor if they want,” was Ben's final conclusion,
“but fer me, the young doctor, sez I.”




VII

THE GOOD CHEER DEPARTMENT


The “good cheer” department, while ostensibly for Ben's benefit, wrought
profit and cheer for others besides. What Dick got of it no one but
himself knew, for that young man, with all his apparent frankness, kept
the veil over his heart drawn close. To Barney, absorbed in his new
work, with its wealth of new ideas and his new ambitions, the “good
cheer” department was chiefly valued as an important factor in Ben's
progress. To Iola it brought what to her was the breath of life,
admiration, gratitude, affection. But Margaret perhaps more than any,
not even excepting Ben himself, gathered from this department what might
be called its by-products. The daily monotony of her household duties
bore hard upon her young heart. Ambitions long cherished, though
cheerfully laid aside at the sudden call of duty, could not be quite
abandoned without a sense of pain and loss. The break offered by the
work of the department in the monotony of her life, the companionship
of its members, and, as much as anything, the irresistible appeal to her
keen sense of humour by the genial, loquacious, dirty but irresistibly
cheery Mrs. Fallows, far more than compensated for the extra effort
which her membership in the department rendered necessary.

It was the evening following that of the school closing that Dick
with Margaret and Iola were making one of their customary calls at the
Fallows cottage. It would be for Iola the last visit for some weeks, as
she was about to depart to town for her holidays.

“I have come to say good-bye,” she announced as she shook hands with
Mrs. Fallows.

“Good-bye, dear 'eart,” said that lady, throwing up her hands aghast;
“art goin' to leave us fer good?”

“No, nothing so bad,” said Dick; “only for a few weeks, Mrs. Fallows.
The section couldn't do without her, and the trustees have decided that
they wouldn't let her out of sight till they had put a string on her.”

“Goin' to come back again, be yeh? I did 'ear as 'ow yeh was goin' to
leave. My little Joe was that broken-'earted, an' 'e declared to me as
'ow 'e wouldn't go to school no more.”

“I don't wonder,” said Dick. “Why, if the trustees hadn't engaged her,
as 'Maine Jabe' said, 'there'd be the dangdest kind of riot in the
section.'”

“Don't listen to him, Mrs. Fallows. I'm going in to sing to Ben, if I
may.”

“An' that yeh may, bless yer 'eart!” said Mrs. Fallows, picking up a
twin from the doorway to allow Iola and Dick to pass into the inner
room. “Ther' now,” she continued to Margaret, who was moving about
putting things to rights, “don't yeh go tirin' of yerself. I know things
is in a muss. Some'ow by Saturday night things piles up terr'ble, an'
I'm that tired I don't seem to 'ave no 'eart to straighten 'em up. Jest
look at that 'ouse! I sez to John, sez I, 'I cawn't do no 'ousekeepin'
with all 'em children 'bout my feet. An', bless their 'earts! it's all
I kin do to put the bread in their mouths an keep the rags on their
backs.' But John sez to me, sez 'e, 'Don't yeh worry, lass, 'bout the
rags. Keep 'em full,' sez 'e, 'a full belly never 'eeds a bare back,'
sez 'e. That's 'is way. 'E's halways a-comin' over somethin' cleverlike,
is John. Lard save us! will yeh listen to that, now!” she continued in
an awestruck undertone, as Iola's voice came in full rich melody from
the next room. “An' Ben is fair raptured with 'er. Poor Benny! it's a
sore calamity 'as overtaken 'im, a-breakin' of 'is leg an' a-mutilatin'
of 'isself. It does seem as if the Lard 'ad give me som'at more'n my
share. Listen to that ther'. Bless 'er dear 'eart; Benny fergits 'is
hamputation an' 'is splits.”

“His splints,” cried Margaret; “are they all right now?”

“Yes. Since the young doctor--that's w'at Benny calls 'im--change
'em. Oh, that's a clever young man! Benney, 'e sez, 'Give me the young
doctor,' sez 'e. Yeh see,” continued Mrs. Fallows confidentially, and
again lowering her voice impressively, “yeh see, 'is leg 'urt most orful
at first, an' Benny cried to me, 'It's in me toes, mother, it's in me
toes.' 'Why, Benny,' sez I to 'im, 'yeh hain't got no toes, Benny.'
'That's w'ere it 'urts,' sez 'e, 'toes or no toes.' An' father 'e wakes
right up an' 'erd w'at Benny was cryin', an' sez 'e, 'Benny's right
enough. 'Is toes'll 'urt till they're rotted away in the ground.' An' 'e
tells as 'ow 'is sister's holdest boy got 'is leg hamputated, poor soul!
an' 'ow 'is toes 'urted till they was took an' buried an' rotted away.
Some doctors don't bury 'em, an' they do say,” and here Mrs. Fallows'
voice dropped quite to a whisper, “as 'ow that keeps 'em sore all the
longer. Well, jest as father was speakin' in comes the doctor 'isself,
an' father 'e told 'im as 'ow Benny was feelin' the pain in 'is toes.
'In yer toes, Benny?' sez the doctor surprised-like. 'Tain't yer toes,
Ben.' 'Well, I guess it's me as is doin' the feelin',' sez Ben quite
sharp, 'an' it's in me toes the feelin' is.' Then father 'e spoke up.
'E's a terr'ble man fer hargument, is father. 'Doctor,' sez 'e, 'is them
toes buried, if I might be so bold?' 'Cawn't say,' sez the doctor quite
hindifferent, though 'e must 'a' knowed. 'Well, my opinion is,' sez
father, ''e'll feel them toes till they're took an' buried an'
rotted away in the ground.' An' then 'e tells 'bout 'is sister's boy.
'Nonsense,' sez the doctor, 'tain't 'is toes at all. 'Is toes 'as
nothin' to do with it.' 'W'at then?' asks father quite polite. 'It's the
feelin' of 'is toes 'e's feelin'.' ''Ow can 'e 'ave any feelin' of 'is
toes if 'e hain't got no toes?' 'Well,' sez the doctor, ''is feelin's
hain't in 'is toes at all.' 'Well, that's w'ere mine is,' sez father.
'W'en I 'urts my toes it's in my toes I feel 'em. W'en I 'urts my 'and,
it's my 'and.' 'My dear sir,' sez the doctor calm-like, 'it hain't in
yer 'and, nor yet in yer toes, but in yer brain, in yer mind, yeh feel
the pain.' 'P'raps,' sez Ben quite short again. My! 'e WAS short! 'But
the feelin' in my mind is that my toes is 'urtin' most orful, an' I'd
like to 'ave 'em buried if it's goin' to 'elp any.' 'Oh, come, Benny,
that's all nonsense, yeh know,' sez the doctor, puttin' 'im off. But
father is terr'ble persistent, an' 'e keeps on an' sez, 'Don't 'is mind
know 'e hain't got no toes, doctor? 'Ow can 'is mind feel 'is toes 'urt
w'en 'is mind knows 'e hain't got no toes to 'urt?' 'It hain't 'is toes,
I tell yeh,' sez the doctor quite short, 'jest the feelin' of 'is toes
in 'is mind.' 'The feelin' of 'is toes in 'is mind?' sez father. 'But
'e hain't got no toes to give 'im the feelin' of 'is toes in 'is mind
or henywheres else.' 'Dummed old fool!' sez the doctor, quite losin'
'is temper, fer father is terr'ble provokin'. 'It's the feelin' 'is toes
used to give 'im, an' that same feelin' of toes keeps up after 'is toes
is gone.' 'Well,' sez father, an' me tryin' to ketch 'is eye to make 'im
stop, 'I don't git no feelin' of toes till me toes is 'urt. If I don't
'urt 'em, I don't git no feelin' of toes. 'Ow are yeh goin' to start
that ther' toe feelin' 'thout no toes to start it?' 'Yeh don't need
no toes to start it,' sez the doctor, 'it's the old feelin' of toes
a-keepin' up.' 'Ther' hain't no--' 'Look 'ere,' sez 'e, 'I tell yeh it
hain't toes, it's the nerves of the toes reachin' up to the brain. Don't
yeh see? W'en the toes are 'urt the nerves sends word up to the brain
jest like the telegraph.' Then father 'e ponders aw'ile. 'W'ere's them
nerves, doctor?' sez 'e. 'In the toes.' 'In the toes? Then w'en them
toes is gone them nerves is gone, hain't they?' 'Yes.' 'But the nerve
feelin' is ther' still.' This puzzles father some. 'Then,' sez 'e, 'the
feelin's in the nerves, an' if ther's no nerves, no feelin's.' 'That's
so,' sez the doctor. 'W'en them toes is gone, doctor, the nerves is
gone. 'Ow could ther' be any feelin's?' 'Look 'ere,' sez the doctor, an'
I was feared 'e was gettin' real mad, 'jest quit it right now.' 'Well,
well. All right, doctor,' sez father quite polite, 'I've got a terr'ble
inquirin' mind, an' I jest wanted to know.' Then the doctor 'e did seem
a little ashamed of 'isself, an' 'e set right down an' sez 'e, 'Look
a-'ere, Mr. Fallows, I'll hexplain it to yeh. It's like the telegraph
wire. 'Ere's a station we'll call Bradford, an' 'ere's a station we'll
call London. Hevery station 'as 'is own call. Bradford station, we'll
say, 'as a call X Y Z, an' w'enever X Y Z sounds yeh know that's
Bradford a-speakin'. So if yeh 'eerd X Y Z in London yeh'd know
somethin' was wrong with Bradford.' 'But if ther' hain't any,' breaks in
father, who was gettin' impatient. 'Shut up! will yeh?' sez the doctor,
'till I git through. Well; all 'long that Bradford line yeh can give
that Bradford call. D'yeh see?' 'Can yeh make that Bradford call
houtside of Bradford?' sez father. 'Well,' sez the doctor, an' 'e seemed
quite puzzled, 'e did, 'I suppose yeh can. Any kind of a bang'll do
along the line. Now ther's Benny's toes, w'en they git 'urt they sounds
up to the brain, “Toes! Toes! Toes!” an' all 'long that toe line yeh can
git the same call to the brain.' This keeps father quiet a long time,
then sez 'e, 'I say, doctor, is ther' many of them nerves?' ''Undreds
of 'em.' 'Hevery part of the body got nerves?' 'Yes.' 'Hankles? calves?
shins?' 'Yes, all got nerves.' 'Well, doctor,' sez father, quite
triumphant, 'w'en yeh cut through hankles, shins, an' heverythin', all
them nerves begin to shout, don't they?' 'Yes,' sez the doctor, not
seein' w'ere father was at. 'Then,' sez 'e quick-like, 'w'at makes 'em
all shout “Toes?” W'y don't the brain 'ear “Hankle” or “'Eel”?' Then
the old doctor 'e did git mad an' 'e did swear at father most orful. But
father, 'e knows 'ow to conduct 'isself, an' sez 'e quite dignified, 'I
'ope as 'ow I know 'ow to treat a gentleman.' This pulls the old doctor
up an' 'e sez, 'I beg yer pardon, Mr. Fallows,' sez 'e. 'Don't mention
it,' sez father. Then the doctor went on quite nice, 'Yeh see, Mr.
Fallows, the truth is, we don't hunderstand these things very well,' sez
'e. 'Well, doctor,' sez father, 'it would 'a' saved a lot of trouble
if yeh'd said so at the first.' An' 'e said no more, but I seed 'im
thinkin' 'ard, an' w'en the doctor was goin' 'e speaks up sez, sez 'e,
'I think I know w'y it's the shoutin' of toes keeps up an' not 'eels
or hankles,' sez 'e. 'W'en my thirteen gits a-shoutin' in this little
'ouse, yeh cawn't 'ear the old woman or me. Ther's thirteen of 'em.
An' I suppose w'en them toes gits a-shoutin' yeh cawn't 'ear nothin' of
hankle, or 'eel, but it's all toes. Ther's five to one. But, doctor,'
'e sez, as 'e druv' away, 'if it's not too bold, would yeh mind buryin'
them toes?'”

“But,” said Mrs. Fallows, pulling herself up, “I do talk. But poor
Benny, 'e kep' a-cryin' with 'is toes till that ther' blessed young lady
come, the young doctor fetched 'er, an' the minit she begin to sing,
poor Benny 'e fergits 'is toes an' 'e soon falls off to sleep, the first
'e 'ad fer two days an' two nights. Poor dear! An 'e hain't ever done
talkin' 'bout that very young lady an' the young doctor. An' a lovely
pair they'd make, poor souls.”

Margaret was conscious of a sudden pang at this grouping of names by
Mrs. Fallows, but before she had time to analyse her feelings Iola
reappeared.

“Well, good-bye,” said Mrs. Fallows. “Yeh'll come agin w'en yeh git
back. Good-bye, Miss,” she said to Margaret. “It does seem to give me a
fresh start w'en yeh put things to rights.”

It was not till that night when she was in her own room preparing for
bed that Margaret had time to analyse that sudden pang.

“It can't be that I am jealous,” she said. “Of course, she is far more
attractive than I am and why shouldn't everyone like her better?” She
shook her fist at her reflection in the glass. “Do you know, you are as
mean as you can be,” she said viciously.

At that moment there came from Iola's room the sound of soft singing.

“It's no wonder,” said Margaret as she listened to the exquisite sound,
“it's no wonder that she could catch poor Ben and his mother with a
voice like that. Yes, and--and the rest of them, too.”

In a few minutes there was a tap at her door and Iola came in, her
hair hanging like a dusky curtain about her face. Margaret uttered an
involuntary exclamation of admiration.

“My! you are lovely!” she cried. “No wonder everyone loves you.” With a
sudden rush of penitent feeling for her “mean thoughts” she put her arms
about Iola and kissed her warmly.

“Lovely! Nonsense!” she exclaimed, surprised at this display of
affection so unusual for Margaret, “I am not half so lovely as you. When
I see you at home here with all the things to worry you and the children
to care for, I think you are just splendid and I feel myself cheap and
worthless.”

Margaret was conscious of a grateful glow in her heart.

“Indeed, my work doesn't amount to much, washing and dusting and
mending. Anybody could do it. No one would ever notice me. Wherever you
go the people just fall down and worship you.” As she spoke she let
down her hair preparatory to brushing it. It fell like a cloud,
a golden-yellow cloud, about her face and shoulders. Iola looked
critically at her.

“You are beautiful,” she said slowly. “Your hair is lovely, and your big
blue eyes, and your face has something, what is it? I can't tell you.
But I believe people would come to you in difficulty. Yes. That's it,”
 she continued, with her eyes on Margaret's face, “I can please them in
a way. I can sing. Yes, I can sing. Some day I shall make people listen.
But suppose I couldn't sing, suppose I lost my voice, people would
forget me. They wouldn't forget you.”

“What nonsense!” said Margaret brusquely. “It is not your voice alone;
it is your beauty and something I cannot describe, something in your
manner that is so fetching. At any rate, all the young fellows are daft
about you.”

“But the women don't care for me,” said Iola, with the same slow,
thoughtful voice. “If I wanted very much I believe I could make them.
But they don't. There's Mrs. Boyle, she doesn't like me.”

“Now you're talking nonsense,” said Margaret impatiently. “You ought to
have heard old Mrs. Fallows this evening.”

“Now,” continued Iola, ignoring her remark, “the women all like you, and
the men, too, in a way.”

“Don't talk nonsense,” said Margaret impatiently. “When you're around
the boys don't look at me.”

“Yes, they do,” said Iola, as if pondering the question. “Ben does.”

Margaret laughed scornfully. “Ben likes my jelly.”

“And Dick does,” continued Iola, “and Barney.” Here she shot a keen
glance at Margaret's face. Margaret caught the glance, and, though
enraged at herself, she could not prevent a warm flush spreading over
her fair cheek and down her bare neck.

“Pshaw!” she cried angrily, “those boys! Of course, they like me. I've
known them ever since I was a baby. Why, I used to go swimming with
them in the pond. They think of me just like--well--just like a boy, you
know.”

“Do you think so? They are nice boys, I think, that is, if they had a
chance to be anything.”

“Be anything!” cried Margaret hotly. “Why, Dick's going to be a minister
and--”

“Yes. Dick will do something, though he'll make a funny clergyman. But
Barney, what will he be? Just a miller?”

“Miller or whatever he is, he'll be a man, and that's good enough,”
 replied Margaret indignantly.

“Oh, yes, I suppose so. But it's a pity. You know in this pokey little
place no one will ever hear of him. I mean he'll never make any stir.”
 To Iola there was no crime so deadly as the “unheard of.” “And yet,” she
went on, “if he had a chance--”

But Margaret could bear this no longer. “What are you talking about?
There are plenty of good men who are never heard of.”

“Oh,” cried Iola quickly, “I didn't mean--of course your father. Well,
your father is a gentle man. But Barney--”

“Oh, go to bed! Come, get out of my room. Go to bed! I must get to
sleep. Seven o'clock comes mighty quick. Good-night.”

“Don't be cross, Margaret. I didn't mean to say anything offensive. And
I want you to love me. I think I want everyone to love me. I can't bear
to have people not love me. But more than anyone else I want you.” As
she spoke she turned impulsively toward Margaret and put her arms around
her neck. Margaret relented.

“Of course I love you,” she said. “There,” kissing her, “good-night. Go
to sleep or you'll lose your beauty.”

But Iola clung to her. “Good-night, dear Margaret,” she said, her lips
trembling pathetically. “You are the only girl friend I ever had. I
couldn't bear you to forget me or to give up loving me.”

“I never forget my friends,” cried Margaret gravely. “And I never cease
to love them.”

“Oh, Margaret!” said Iola, trembling and clinging fast to her, “don't
turn from me. No matter what comes, don't stop loving me.”

“You little goose,” cried Margaret, caressing her as if she were a
child, “of course I will always love you. Good-night now.” She kissed
Iola tenderly.

“Good-night,” said Iola. “You know this is my last night with you for a
long time.”

“Not the very last,” said Margaret. “We go to the Mill to-morrow night,
you remember, and you come back here with me. Barney is going to have
Ben there for nursing and feeding.”

Next day Barney had Ben down to the Mill, and that was the beginning of
a new life to Ben in more ways than one. The old mill became a place of
interest and delight to him. Perhaps his happiest hours were spent in
what was known as Barney's workroom, where were various labour-saving
machines for churning, washing, and apple-paring, which, by Barney's
invention, were run by the mill power. He offered to connect the sewing
machine with the same power, but his mother would have none of it.

Before many more weeks had gone Ben was hopping about by the aid of a
crutch, eager to make himself useful, and soon he was not only “paying
his board,” as Barney declared, but “earning good wages as well.”

The early afternoon found Margaret and Iola on their way to the Mill. It
was with great difficulty that Margaret had been persuaded to leave
her home for so long a time. The stern conscience law under which she
regulated her life made her suspect those things which gave her peculiar
pleasure, and among these was a visit to the Mill and the Mill people.
It was in vain that Dick set before her, with the completeness amounting
to demonstration, the reasons why she should make that visit. “Ben needs
you,” he argued. “And Iola will not come unless with you. Barney and I,
weary with our day's work, absolutely require the cheer and refreshment
of your presence. Mother wants you. I want you. We all want you.
You must come.” It was Mrs. Boyle's quiet invitation and her anxious
entreaty and command that she should throw off the burden at times, that
finally weighed with her.

The hours of that afternoon, spent partly in rowing about in the old
flat-bottomed boat seeking water lilies in the pond, and partly in
the shade of the big willows overlooking the dam, were full of restful
delight to Margaret. It was one of those rare summer evenings that fall
in harvest weather when, after the burning heat of the day, the cool
air is beginning to blow across the fields with long shadows. When their
work was done the boys hurried to join the little group under the big
willows. They were all there. Ben was set there in the big armchair,
Mrs. Boyle with her knitting, for there were no idle hours for her,
Margaret with a book which she pretended to read, old Charley smoking
in silent content, Iola lazily strumming her guitar and occasionally
singing in her low, rich voice some of her old Mammy's songs or
plantation hymns. Of these latter, however, Mrs. Boyle was none too
sure. To her they bordered dangerously on sacrilege; nor did she ever
quite fully abandon herself to delight in the guitar. It continued to be
a “foreign” and “feckless” sort of instrument. But in spite of her there
were times when the old lady paused in her knitting and sat with sombre
eyes looking far across the pond and into the shady isles of the woods
on the other side while Iola sang some of her quaint Southern “baby
songs.”

Under Dick's tuition the girl learned some of the Highland laments and
love songs of the North, to which his mother had hushed him to sleep
through his baby years. To Barney these songs took place with the Psalms
of David, if, indeed, they were not more sacred, and it was with a shock
at first that he heard the Southern girl with her “foreign instrument”
 try over these songs that none but his mother had ever sung to him.
Listening to Iola's soft, thrilling voice carrying these old Highland
airs, he was conscious of a strange incongruity. They undoubtedly took
on a new beauty, but they lost something as well.

“No one sings them like your mother, Barney,” said Margaret after Dick
had been drilling Iola on some of their finer shadings and cadences,
“and they are quite different with the guitar, too. They are not the
same a bit. They make me see different things and feel different things
when your mother sings.”

“Different how?” said Dick.

“I can't tell, but somehow they give me a different taste in my mouth,
just the difference between eating your mother's scones with rich creamy
milk and eating fruit cake and honey with tea to drink.”

“I know,” said Barney gravely. “They lose the Scotch with the guitar.
They are sweet and beautiful, wonderful, but they are a different kind
altogether. To me it's the difference between a wood violet and a garden
rose.”

“Listen to the poetry of him. Come, mother,” cried Dick, “sing us one
now.”

“Me sing!” cried the mother aghast. “After yon!” nodding toward Iola.
“You would not be shaming your mother, Richard.”

“Shaming you, indeed!” cried Margaret, indignantly.

“Do, Mrs. Boyle,” entreated Iola. “I have never heard you sing. Indeed,
I did not know you could sing.”

Something in her voice grated upon Barney's ear, but he spoke no word.

“Sing!” cried Dick. “You ought to hear her. Now, mother, for the honor
of the heather! Give us 'Can Ye Sew Cushions?' That's a 'baby song,'
too.”

“No,” said Barney quietly, “Sing 'The Mac'Intosh,' mother.” And he began
to play that exquisite Highland lament.

It was not her son's entreaty so much as something in the soft drawl
of the Southern girl that made Mrs. Boyle yield. Something in that tone
touched the pride in the old lady's Highland blood. When Barney reached
the end of the refrain his mother took up the verse with the violin
accompanying.

Her voice lacked fulness and power. It was worn and thin, but she had
the exquisite lilting note of the Highland maids at their milking or of
the fisher folk at the mending of their nets. Clear and sweet and with
a penetrating pathos indescribable, the voice rose and fell in all the
quaint turns and quavers and cadences that a tune takes on with age. As
she sang her song in the soft Gaelic tongue, with hands lying idly in
her lap, with eyes glowing in their gloomy depths, the spell of mountain
and glen and loch fell upon her sons and upon the girl seated at her
feet, while Iola's great lustrous eyes, fastened upon the stranger's
face, softened to tears.

“Oh, that is too lovely!” cried Iola, when the song was done, clapping
her hands. “No, not lovely. That is not the word. Sad, sad.” She hid her
face in her hands one impulsive moment, then said softly, “I could never
do that. Never! Never! What is it you put into the song? What is it?”
 she cried, turning to Barney.

“It's the moan of the sea,” said Barney gravely.

“It gives a feller a kind of holler pain inside,” said Ben Fallows.
“There hain't no words fer it.”

“Sing again,” entreated Iola, all the lazy indifference gone from her
voice. “Sing just one more.”

“This one, mother,” said Barney, playing the tune, “your mother used to
sing, you know, 'Fhir a Bhata'.”


     “How often haunting the highest hilltop,
      I scan the ocean thy sail to see;
      Wilt come to-night, Love? wilt come to-morrow?
      Wilt ever come, love, to comfort me?
               Fhir a bhata, na horo eile,
               Fhir a bhata, na horo eile,
               Fhir a bhata, na horo eile,
               O fare ye well, love, where'er ye be.”


For some moments they sat quiet with the spell of the dreamy, sad music
upon them.

“One more, mother,” entreated Dick.

“No, laddie. The night is falling. There's work to-morrow for you. Aye,
and for Margaret here.”

Iola rose and came timidly to Mrs. Boyle. “Thank you,” she said, lifting
up her great, dark eyes to the old woman's face, “you have given me
great pleasure to-night.”

“Indeed, and you're welcome, lassie,” said Mrs. Boyle, smitten with a
sudden pity for the motherless girl. “And we will be glad to see ye when
ye come back again.”

For this, too, it was that Iola as well as Margaret could never forget
that afternoon.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” cried Dick, striking an attitude,
“though the 'good cheer' department may seem to have accomplished the
purpose for which it was organised, it cannot be said to have outlived
its usefulness, in that it appears to have created for itself a sphere
of operations from which it cannot be withdrawn without injury to all
its members. I, therefore, respectfully suggest that the department be
organised upon a permanent basis with headquarters at the Mill and my
humble self at its head. All who agree will say 'Aye'.”

“Aye,” said Barney with prompt heartiness.

“Me, too,” cried Iola, holding up both hands.

“Mother, what do you say?”

“Aye, laddie. There's much need for good cheer in the world.”

“And you?” turning to Margaret, who stood with Mrs. Boyle's arm thrown
about her, “how do you vote?”

“This member needs it too much”--with a somewhat uncertain smile--“to
say anything but 'Aye'.”

“Then,” said Dick solemnly, “the 'good cheer' department is hereby and
henceforth organised as a permanent institution in the community here
represented, and we earnestly hope that its members will continue in
their faithful adherence thereto, believing, as we do, that loyalty to
this institution will be its highest reward.”

But none of them knew what potencies of joy and of pain lay wrapped up
for them all in that same department of “good cheer.”




VIII

BEN'S GANG


The harvest time in Ontario is ever a season of delightful rush and
bustle. The fall wheat follows hard upon the haying, and close upon the
fall wheat comes the barley, then the oats and the rest of the spring
grain.

It was this year to be a more than usually busy time for the Boyle
boys. They had a common purse, and out of that purse the payments on the
mortgage must be met, as well as Dick's college expenses. For the little
farm, with the profits from the mill, could do little more than provide
a living for the family. Ordinarily the lads worked for day's wages,
the farmers gladly paying the highest going, for the boys were famous
binders and good workers generally. This year, however, they had in mind
something more ambitious.

“Mother,” said Dick, “did you hear of the new harvesting gang?”

“And who might they be?” asked his mother, always on the lookout for
some nonsense from her younger son.

“Boyle and Fallows--or Fallows and Boyle, I guess it will be. Ben's
starting with us Monday morning.”

“Nonsense, laddie. There will be no reaping for Ben this year, I doubt,
poor fellow; and, besides, I will be needing him for myself.”

“Yes. But I am in earnest, mother. Ben is to drive the reaper for us.
He can sit on the reaper half a day, you know. At least, his doctor here
says so. And he will keep us busy.”

“If I cawn't keep the two of you a-humpin', though you are some pumpkins
at bindin', I hain't worth my feed.”

“But, Barney,” remonstrated his mother, “is he fit to go about that
machine? Something might happen the lad.”

“I don't think there is any danger, mother. And, besides, we will be at
hand all the time.”

“And what will two lads like you do following the machine all day? You
will only be hurting yourselves.”

“You watch us, mother,” cried Dick. “We'll be after Ben like a dog after
a coon.”

“Indeed,” said his mother. “I have heard that it takes four good men to
keep up to a machine. It was no later than yesterday that Mr. Morrison's
Sam was telling me that they had all they could do to follow up, the
whole four of them.”

“Huh!” grunted Dick scornfully, “I suppose so. Four like Fatty Morrison
and that gang of his!”

“Hush, laddie. It is not good to be speaking ill of your neighbours,”
 said his mother.

“It's not speaking ill to say that a man is fat. It's a very fine
compliment, mother. Only wish someone could say the same of me.”

“Indeed, and you would be the better of it,” replied his mother
compassionately, “with your bones sticking through your skin!”

It was with the spring crop that Ben Fallows began his labours; and much
elevated, indeed, was he at the prospect of entering into partnership
with the Boyle boys, who were renowned for the very virtues which poor
Ben consciously lacked and to which, in the new spirit that was waking
in him, he was beginning to aspire. For the weeks spent under Barney's
care and especially in the atmosphere of the Mill household had
quickened in Ben new motives and new ambitions. This Barney had noticed,
and it was for Ben's sake more than for their own that the boys
had associated him with them in their venture of taking harvesting
contracts. And as the summer went on they found no reason to regret the
new arrangement. But it was at the expense of long days and hard days
for the two boys following the reaper, and often when the day's work was
done they could with difficulty draw their legs home and to bed. Indeed,
there were nights when Dick, hardly the equal of his brother in weight
and strength, lay sleepless from sheer exhaustion, while Barney from
sympathy kept anxious vigil with him. Morning, however, found them stiff
and sore, it is true, but full of courage and ready for the renewal
of the long-drawn struggle which was winning for them not only very
substantial financial profits, but also high fame as workers. The end of
the harvest found them hard, tough, full of nerve and fit for any call
within the limit of their powers. It was Ben who furnished the occasion
of such a call being made upon them. A rainy day found him at the
blacksmith shop with the Mill team waiting to be shod. The shop was full
of horses and men. A rainy day was a harvest day for the blacksmith. All
odd jobs allowed to accumulate during the fine weather were on that day
brought to the shop.

Ben, with his crutch and his wooden leg, found himself the centre of a
new interest and sympathy. In spite of the sympathy, however, there was
a disposition to chaff poor Ben, whose temper was brittle, and whose
tongue took on a keener edge as his temper became more uncertain.
Withal, he had a little man's tendency to brag. To-day, however, though
conscious of the new interest centring in him, and though visibly
swollen with the importance of his new partnership with the Boyle boys,
he was exhibiting a dignity and self-control quite unusual, and was, for
that very reason, provocative of chaff more pungent than ordinary.

Chief among his tormenters was Sam Morrison, or “Fatty” Morrison, as
he was colloquially designated. Sam was one of four sons of “Old King”
 Morrison, the richest and altogether most important farmer in the
district. On this account Samuel was inclined to assume the blustering
manners of his portly, pompous, but altogether good-natured father, the
“Old King.” But while bluster in the old man, who had gained the respect
and esteem that success generally brings, was tolerated, in Sammy
it became ridiculous and at times offensive. The young man had been
entertaining the assembled group of farmers and farm lads with vivid
descriptions of various achievements in the harvest field on the part of
himself or some of the members of his distinguished family, the latest
and most notable achievement being the “slashing down and tying up” of
a ten-acre field of oats by the four of them, the “Old King” himself
driving the reaper.

“Yes, sir!” shouted Sammy. “And Joe, he took the last sheaf right off
that table! You bet!”

“How many of you?” asked Ben sharply.

“Just four,” replied Sammy, turning quickly at Ben's unexpected
question.

“How many shocking?” continued Ben, with a judicial air.

“Why, none, you blamed gander! An' kep' us humpin', too, you bet!”

“I guess so,” grunted Ben, “from what I've seed.”

Sam regarded him steadfastly. “And what have you 'seed,' Mr. Fallows,
may I ask?” he inquired with fine scorn.

“Seed? Seed you bindin', of course.”

“Well, what are ye hootin' about?” Sam was exceedingly wroth.

“I hain't been talking much for the last hour.” In moments of excitement
Ben became uncertain of his h's. “I used to talk more when I wasn't so
busy, but I hain't been talkin' so much this 'ere 'arvest. We hain't
had time. When we're on a job,” continued Ben, as the crowd drew near to
listen, “we hain't got time fer talkin', and when we're through we don't
feel like it. We don't need, to.”

A general laugh of approval followed Ben's words.

“You're right, Ben. You're a gang of hustlers,” said Alec Murray. “There
ain't much talkin' when you git a-goin'. But that's a pretty good day's
work, Ben, ten acres.”

Ben gave a snort. “Yes. Not a bad day's work fer two men.” He had no
love for any of the Morrisons, whose near neighbours he was and at whose
hands he had suffered many things.

“Two men!” shouted Sammy. “Your gang, I suppose you mean.”

Suddenly Ben's self-control vanished. “Yes, by the jumpin' Jemima!” he
cried, facing suddenly upon Sam. “Them's the two, if yeh want to know.
Them's binders! They don't stop, at hevery corner to swap lies an' to
see if it's goin' to ran. They keep a-workin', they do. They don't wait
to cool hoff before they drink fer fear they git foundered, as if they
was 'osses, like you fellers up on the west side line there.” Ben threw
his h's recklessly about. “You hain't no binders, you hain't. Yeh never
seed any.”

At this moment “King” Morrison himself entered the blacksmith shop.

“Hello, Ben! What's eatin' you?” he exclaimed.

Ben grew suddenly quiet. “Makin' a bloomin' hass of myself, I guess,” he
growled.

“What's up with Benny? He seems a little raised,” said the “Old King,”
 addressing the crowd generally.

“Oh, blowin' 'bout his harvestin' gang,” said his son Sam.

“Well, you can do a little blowin' yourself, Sammy.”

“Guess I came by it natcherly n'ough,” said Sam. He stood in no awe of
his father.

“Blowin's all right if you can back it up, Sammy. But what's the matter,
Benny, my boy? We're all glad to see you about, an' more'n that, we're
glad to hear of your good work this summer. But what are they doin' to
you?”

“Doin' nothin',” broke in Sam, a little nettled at the “Old King's”
 kindly tone toward Ben. “He's blowin' round here to beat the band 'bout
his gang.”

“Well, Sam, he's got a right to blow, for they're two good workers.”

“But they can't bind ten acres a day, as Ben blows about.”

“Well, that would be a little strong,” said the “Old King.” “Why, it
took my four boys a good day to tie up ten acres, Ben.”

“I'm talkin' 'bout binders,” said Ben, in what could hardly be called a
respectful tone.

“Look here, Ben, no two men can bind ten acres in a day, so just quit
yer blowin' an' talk sense.”

“I'm talkin' 'bout binders,” repeated Ben stubbornly.

“And I tell you, Ben,” replied the “Old King,” with emphasis, “your
boys--and they're good boys, too--can't tie no ten acres in a day.
They've got the chance of tryin' on that ten acres of wheat on my west
fifty. If they can do it in a day they can have it.”

“They wouldn't take it,” answered Ben regretfully. “They can do it, fast
enough.”

Then the “Old King” quite lost patience. “Now, Ben, shut up! You're a
blowhard! Why, I'd bet any man the whole field against $50 that it can't
be done.”

“I'll take you on that,” said Alec Murray.

“What?” The “Old King” was nonplussed for a moment.

“I'll take that. But I guess you don't mean it.”

But the “Old King” was too much of a sport to go back upon his offer.
“It's big odds,” he said. “But I'll stick to it. Though I want to tell
you, there's nearer twelve acres than ten.”

“I know the field,” said Alec. “But I'm willing to risk it. The winner
pays the wages. How long a day?” continued Alec.

“Quit at six.”

“The best part of the day is after that.”

“Make it eight, then,” said the “Old King.” “And we'll bring it off on
Monday. We're thrashing that day, but the more the merrier.”

“There's jest one thing,” interposed Ben, “an' that is, the boys mustn't
know about this.”

“Why not?” said Alec. “They're dead game.”

“Oh, Dick'd jump at it quick enough, but Barney wouldn't let 'im risk
it. He's right careful of that boy.”

After full discussion next Sabbath morning by those who were loitering,
after their custom, in the churchyard waiting for the service to begin,
it was generally agreed that the “Old King” with his usual shrewdness
had “put his money on the winning horse.” Even Alec Murray, though
he kept a bold face, confided to his bosom friend, Rory Ross, that he
“guessed his cake was dough, though they would make a pretty big stagger
at it.”

“If Dick only had Barney's weight,” said Rory, “they would stand a
better chance.”

“Yes. But Dick tires quicker. An' he'll die before he drops.”

“But ten acres, Alec! And there's more than ten acres in that field.”

“I know. But it's standing nice, an' it's lighter on the knoll in the
centre. If I can only get them goin' their best clip--I'll have to work
it some way. I'll have to get Barney moving. Dick's such an ambitious
little beggar he'd follow till he bust. The first thing,” continued
Alec, “is to get them a good early start. I'll have a talk with Ben.”

As a result of his conversation with Ben it was hardly daylight on
Monday morning when Mrs. Boyle, glancing at her clock, sprang at once
from her bed and called her sons.

“You're late, Barney. It's nearly six, and you have to go to Morrison's
to-day. Here's Ben with the horses fed.”

“Why, mother, it's only five o'clock by my watch.”

“No, it's six.”

Upon comparison Ben's watch corresponded with the clock. Barney
concluded something must be wrong and routed Dick up, and with such good
purpose did they hasten through breakfast that in an hour from the time
the boys were called they were standing in the field waiting for Ben to
begin the day's work.

After they had been binding an hour Alec Murray appeared on the field.
“I'm going to shock,” he announced. “They've got men enough up at
the thrashing, an' the 'Old King' wants to get this field in shock by
to-morrow afternoon so he can get it thrashed, if you hustlers can get
it down by then.” Alec was apparently in great spirits. He brought with
him into the field a breezy air of excitement.

“Here, Ben, don't take all day oiling up there. I guess I'm after you
to-day, remember.”

“Guess yeh'll wait till it's tied, won't yeh?” said Ben, who thoroughly
understood Alec's game.

“Don't know 'bout that. I may have to jump in an' tie a few myself.”

“Don't you fret yourself,” replied Dick. “If you shock all that's tied
to-day you'll need to hang your shirt on the fence at night.”

“Keep cool, Dick, or you'll be leavin' Barney too far behind. You tie
quicker than him, I hear.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Dick modestly, though quite convinced in his
own mind that he could.

“Dick's a little quicker, ain't he?” said Alec, turning to Barney.

“Oh, he's quick enough.”

“Did you never have a tussle?” inquired Alec, snatching up a couple of
sheaves in each arm and setting them in their places in the shock with a
quick swing, then stepping off briskly for others.

“No,” said Barney shortly.

“I guess he didn't want you to hurt yourself,” he suggested cunningly to
Dick. “When a fellow isn't very strong he's got to be careful.” This
was Dick's sensitive point. He was not content to do a man's work in the
field, but he was miserable unless he took first place.

“Oh, he needn't be afraid of hurting me,” he said, taking Alec's bait.
“I've worked with him all harvest and I'm alive yet.” Unconsciously
Dick's pace quickened, and for the next few minutes Barney was left
several sheaves behind.

“He's just foolin' with you, Dick,” jeered Alec. “He wouldn't hurt you
for the world.”

Unconsciously by his hustling manner and by his sly suggestion of
superiority now to one and again to the other, he put both boys upon
their mettle, and before they were aware they were going at a racing
pace, though neither would acknowledge that to the other. Alec kept
following them close, almost running for his sheaves, flinging a word of
encouragement now to one, now to the other, shouting at Ben as he turned
the corners, and by every means possible keeping the excitement at
the highest point. But he was careful not to overdrive his men. By a
previous arrangement and without serious difficulty he had persuaded
Teenie Ross, who had come to assist the Morrison girls at the threshing,
to bring out a lunch to the field at ten o'clock. For half an hour they
sat in the long grass in the shade of a maple tree eating the lunch
which Dick at least was beginning to feel in need of. But not a minute
more did Alec allow.

“I'm going to catch you fellows,” he said, “if I've to take off my shirt
to do it.”

Dick was quick to respond and again set off at full speed. But the
grain was heavier than Alec had counted upon, and when the noon hour had
arrived he estimated that the grain was not more than one-third down. A
full hour and a half he allowed his men for rest, cunningly drawing them
off from the crowd of threshers to a quiet place in the orchard where
they could lie down and sleep, waking them when time was up that there
should be no loss of a single precious moment. As they were going out to
the field Alec suggested that instead of coming back for supper at five,
according to the usual custom, they should have it brought to them in
the field.

“It's a long way up to the house,” he explained, “and the days are
getting short.” And though the boys didn't take very kindly to the
suggestion, neither would think of opposing it.

But in spite of all that Alec and Ben could do, when the threshers
knocked off work for the day and sauntered down to the field where the
reaping was going on, it looked as if the “Old King” were to win his
bet.

“Keep out of this field!” yelled Alec, as the men drew near; “you're
interferin' with our work. Come, get out!” For the boys had begun to
take it easy and chatting with some of them.

“Get away from here, I tell you!” cried Alec. “You line up along the
fence and we'll show you how this thing should be done!”

Realizing the fairness of his demand, the men retired from the field.
The long shadows of the evening were falling across the field. The boys
were both showing weariness at every step they took. Alec was at his
wit's end. The grain was all cut, but there was still a large part of it
to bind. He determined to take the boys into his confidence. He knew all
the risk there was in this step. Barney might refuse to risk an injury
to his brother. It was Alec's only chance, however, and walking over to
the boys, he told them the issue at stake.

“Boys,” he said, “I don't want you to hurt yourselves. I don't care a
dern about the money. I'd like to beat 'Old King' Morrison and I'd like
to see you make a record. You've done a big day's work already, and if
you want to quit I won't say a word.”

“Quit!” cried Dick in scorn, kindling at Alec's story. “What time have
we left?”

“We have till eight o'clock. It's now just seven.”

“Come on then, Barney!” cried Dick. “We're good for an hour, anyway.”

“I don't know, Dick,” said Barney, hesitating.

“Come along! I can stand it and I know you can.” And off he set again at
racing pace and making no attempt to hide it.

In half an hour there were still left them, taking two swaths apiece,
the two long sides and the two short ends.

“You can't do it, boys,” said Alec regretfully. “Let 'er go.”

“Yes, boys,” cried the “Old King,” who, with the crowd, had drawn near,
“you've done a big day's work. You'll hurt yourselves. You've earned
double pay and you'll get it.”

“Not yet,” cried Dick. “We'll put in the half hour at any rate. Come on,
Barney! Never mind your rake!”

His face looked pale and worn, but his eyes were ablaze with light, and
but for his pale face there was no sign of weariness about him. He
flung away his rake and, snatching up a band, kicked the sheaf together,
caught it up, drew, tied, and fastened it as with one single act.

“We'll show them waltz time, Barney,” he called, springing toward
the next sheaf. “One”--at the word he snatched up and made the band,
“two”--he passed the band around the sheaf, kicking it at the same time
into shape, “three”--he drew and knotted the band, shoving the end in
with his thumb. After him went Barney. One--two--three! and a sheaf was
done. One--two--three! and so from sheaf to sheaf. It took them fifteen
minutes to go down the long side. Dick, who had the inside, finished and
sprang to his place at the outer side.

“Get inside!” shouted Barney, “let me take that swath!”

“Come along!” replied Dick, tying his sheaf.

“Fifteen minutes left, boys! I believe you're going to do it!” At this
Ben gave a yell.

“They're goin' to do it!” he shouted, stumping around in great
excitement.

“Double up, Dick!” cried Barney, carrying one sheaf to the next and
tying them both together. Dick followed Barney's example, but here his
brother's extra strength told in the race. Close after them came the
crowd, Alec leading them, watch in hand, all yelling.

“Two minutes for that end, boys!” cried Alec, as they reached the
corner. “You're goin' to do it, my hearties! You're goin' to do it!”
 They had thirteen minutes in which to bind a side and an end.

“They can't do it, Alec,” said the “Old King.” “They'll hurt themselves.
Call them off!”

“Are you all right, Dick?” cried Barney, swinging on to the outer swath.

“All right,” panted his brother, striding in at his side.

“Come on! We'll do it, then!” replied Barney.

Side by side they rushed. Sheaf by sheaf they tied together, Barney
gradually gaining by the doubling process.

“Don't wait for me,” gasped Dick, “if you can go faster!”

“One minute and a half, boys, if you can stand it!” cried Alec, as they
reached the last corner. “One minute and a half, and we win!”

There remained five sheaves on the outer of Barney's two swaths, two on
the inner of Dick's. In all, nine for Barney, six for Dick. The sheaves
were comparatively small. Springing at this swath, Barney doubled the
first two, the second two, the third two, and putting the last three
together swung in upon Dick's swath where there were two sheaves left.

“Don't you touch it!” gasped Dick angrily.

“How's the time, Alec?” panted Barney.

“Half a minute.”

Before he spoke, Dick flung himself on his last two sheaves, crying,
“Out of the way there!” snatched his band, passing it around the sheaf,
tied it, flung it over his shoulder, and stood with his hands on his
knees, his breath coming in sobbing gasps.

For a few minutes the men went wild. Barney stepped to Dick's side, and
patting him on the shoulder, said, “Great man, Dick! But I was a fool to
let you!”

“That's what you were!” cried the “Old King,” slapping Dick on the
back, “but there's the greatest day's work ever done in these parts.
The wheat's yours,” he said, turning to Alec, “but begad! I wish it was
goin' to them that won it!”

“An' that's where it is going,” said Alec, “every blamed sheaf of it, to
Ben's gang.”

“We'll take what's coming to us,” said Barney shortly.

“I told yeh so,” said Ben regretfully.

“Why, don't you know it was for you I took the bet?” said Alec, angry
that he should be balked in his good intention to help the boys.

“We'll take our wages,” repeated Barney in a tone that settled the
controversy. “The wheat is not ours.”

“Then it ain't mine,” said Alec, disgusted, remembering in how great
peril his $50 had been.

“Well, boys,” said the “Old King,” “it ain't mine. We'll divide it in
three.”

“We'll take our wages,” said Barney again, in sullen determination.

“Confound the boy!” cried the “Old King.” “What'll we do with the wheat?
I say, we'll give it to Ben; he's had hard luck this year.”

“No, by the jumpin' Jemima Jebbs!” said Ben, stumping over to Barney's
side. “I stand with the boss. I take my wages.”

“Well, dog-gone you all! Will you take double pay, then? There's two
days' good work there. And the rest we'll give to the church. Good thing
the minister ain't here or he'd kick, too!”

“But,” added the “Old King,” turning to his son Sam, “after this you
crawl into your shell when there's any blowin' bein' done about Ben's
gang.”




IX

LOVE'S TANGLED WAYS


The mill lane was prinked with all the June flowers. Over the snake
fence massed the clover, red and white. Through the rails peeped the
thistle bloom, pink and purple, and higher up above the top rail the
white crest of the dogwood slowly nodded in the breeze this sweet summer
day. In the clover the bumblebees, the crickets, and the grasshoppers
boomed, chirped, crackled, shouting their joy to be alive in so good a
place and on so good a day. Above, the sky was blue, pure blue, and
all the bluer for the specks of cloud that hung, still-poised like
white-winged birds, white against the blue. Last evening's rain had
washed the world clean. The sky, the air, the flowers, the clover, red
and white, the kindly grass that ran green everywhere under foot, the
dusty road, all were washed clean. In the elm bunches by the fence, in
the maples and thorns, the birds, their summer preoccupations forgotten
at the bidding of this new washed day, recalled their spring songs and
poured them forth with fine careless courage.

In tune to this brave symphony of colour and song, and down this
flower-prinked, song-filled, clean washed, grassy lane stepped Dick this
summer morning, stepped with the spring and balance of the well-trained
athlete, stepped with the step of a man whose heart makes him merry
music. A clean-looking man was Dick, harmonious with the day and with
the lane down which he stepped. Against the grey of his suit his
hands, his face, and his neck, where the negligee shirt fell away wide,
revealing his strong, full curves spreading to the shoulders, all showed
ruddy brown. He was a man good to look upon, with his springy step, his
tan skin, his clear eye, but chiefly because out of his clear eye a
soul looked forth clean and unafraid upon God's good world of wholesome
growing things.

From his three years of 'varsity life he came back unspoiled to his
boyhood's love of the open sky and of all things under it. He had just
come through a great year in college, his third, the greatest in many
ways of the college course. His class had thrust him into a man's place
of leadership in that world where only manhood counts, and he had “made
good.” In the literary, in the gym, on the campus he had made and held
high place, and on the class lists, in spite of his many distractions,
he had ranked a double first. Best of all, it filled him with warm
gratitude to remember that none of his fellows had grudged him any of
his good things. What a decent lot they were! It humbled him to think of
their pride in him. He would not disappoint them. Noblesse oblige.

At the crest of the hill he paused to look back, and here the pain that
had been running below his consciousness, like the minor strain in rich
music, came to the top. This was Barney's spot. At this spot Barney
always made him pause to look back upon the old mill in its frame of
beauty. Poor Barney! Twice he had gone down to the exams, and twice he
had failed. Of all in the home circle only Dick could understand the
full bitterness of the cup of humiliation that his brother had put
silently to his lips and drained. To his mother, the failure brought no
surprise, and she would have been glad enough to have him give up “his
notion of being a doctor and be content with the mill.” She had no
ambitions for poor Barney, who was “a quiet lad and well-doing enough,”
 an encomium which stood for all the virtues removed from any touch
of genius. She was not hurt by his failure. Indeed, she could hardly
understand how deep the shame had gone into his proud, reserved heart.
His father did not talk about it, but carried him off to look at some
of the mill machinery which had gone wrong, and it was only by a gentler
tone in his voice that Barney knew that his father understood. But Dick,
with his fuller knowledge of college life, realized as none other of
them did the extent of Barney's miserable sense of defeat.

And now, as he looked back upon the mill, Barney's pain became his anew.
The causes of his failure were not far to seek. “He had no chance!” said
Dick aloud, leaning upon the top rail and looking with gloomy eyes upon
the scene of beauty before him. Things had changed since old Doctor
Ferguson's time. The scientific basis of medicine was coming to
its place in medical study, and the old doctor's contempt for these
new-fangled notions had wrought ill for Barney. Dick remembered how
he had gone, hot with indignation for his brother, to the new English
professor in chemistry, whose papers were the terror of all pass men
and, indeed, all honour men who stuck too closely to the text-book.
He remembered the Englishman's drawling contempt as, after looking up
Barney's name and papers, he dismissed the matter with the words, “He
knows nothing whatever about the subject, couldn't conduct the simplest
experiment, don't you know.” Poor Barney! the ancient and elementary
chemistry of Dr. Ferguson seemed to hold not even the remotest affinity
to that which Professor Fish expected. Dick was glad this morning that
he had had sense enough to hold his tongue in the professor's presence.
It comforted him to recall the generous enthusiasm with which Dr. Trent,
the most brilliant surgeon on the staff, had recalled Barney's name.

“Your brother, is he? Well, sir, he's a wonder!”

“Fish doesn't think so,” Dick had replied.

“Oh! Fish be hanged!” the doctor had answered, with the fine contempt of
a specialist in practical work for the theorist in medicine. “He has some
idiotic notions in his head that he plucks men for not knowing. I don't
say they are not necessary, but useful chiefly for examination purposes.
Send your brother down. Send him down. For if ever I saw an embryonic
surgeon, he's one! When he comes, bring him to me.”

“He'll come,” Dick had answered, his face hot to think that it was for
his sake Barney had remained grinding at home.

“And he's going this fall,” said Dick aloud, “or no 'varsity for me.”
 He pulled a letter out of his pocket. It was from his football comrade,
young Macdonald, offering, in his father's name, to Barney and himself
positions in one of the lumber mills far up the Ottawa, where, by
working overtime, there was a chance of making $100 a month and all
found. “And we'll make it go,” said Dick. “There's $300 apiece for
us, and that's more than we want. Poor old chap!” he continued, musing
aloud, “he'll get his chance at last. Besides, we'll get him away from
that girl, confound her! though I'm afraid it's no use now.”

A deeper pain surged up from the bottom of Dick's heart. “That girl” was
Iola. The night before, as they were driving home in the growing dark,
with halting words and with shamed face, as if he were doing his brother
a wrong, Barney had confided to him that Iola and he had come to an
understanding of their mutual love. Dick remembered this morning, and he
would remember to his dying day, the sense of loss, of being forsaken,
that had smitten him as he cried, “Oh, Barney! is it possible?” Then, as
Barney had gone on to explain how it had come about, almost apologizing,
as it seemed to Dick, for his weakness, Dick, seeing in the gloom a
gleam of hope, had cried, “We'll get you out of it, Barney. I'll help
you this summer.” And then again the inevitableness of what had taken
place had come over him at Barney's reply: “But, Dick, I don't want to
get out of it.” At that moment Dick's world changed. No longer was
he first with his brother. Iola had taken his place. In vain Barney,
guessing the thought in his heart, had protested with eager, almost
piteous, appeal that Dick would be the same to him as ever. In the first
acute moment of his pain he had cried out some quick word of bitter
reproach, but the look on Barney's face had checked him. He was glad now
that he had said nothing against the girl. And as he thought of her in
the saner light of the morning, he felt that he could not be quite fair
to her, and yet he wished it had been some other than Iola. “It's that
confounded voice of hers, and her eyes, and her whole get-up. She's got
something diabolically fetching about her.” Then, as if he had gone too
far, he continued, still musing aloud, “She's good enough, I guess, but
not for Barney.” That was one of the bitter things that had survived the
night. She was not good enough for his brother, his hero, his beau ideal
of high manhood ever since he could think. “But there is no one
good enough for Barney,” he continued, “except--yes--there is
one--Margaret--she is good enough--even for Barney.” As Barney among
men, so Margaret among women had stood with Dick, peerless. And all his
life he had put these two together. Even as a little fellow, when saying
his prayers to his mother, next in the list to Barney's name had always
come Margaret's. She was like Barney in so many ways; strong like Barney
in her relentless devotion to duty; she had Barney's fine sense of
honour, of righteousness, and Barney's superb courage, and, more than
anything else, the same unfathomable heart of love. One could never get
to the bottom of it. No matter what the drain, there would still be love
there.

It was the thought of Margaret that had set his heart singing within him
this morning. Even last night, after the first few moments of pain, the
thought of Margaret had come to him, bringing an odd sense of happiness,
and early this morning the first consciousness of loss, that had made
him tighten his arm hard about his brother, had been followed by that
feeling of happiness, indefinable at first, but soon traced to the
thought of Margaret. For the first time in his life he thought of her
unrelated to Barney. He had always loved Margaret, rejoiced in her high
spirit, her courage, her downright sincerity, her deep heart, but never
for himself, always for Barney. The first resentment that Barney should
have passed her by for one like Iola had given way to a timid fluttering
of heart that strengthened and deepened to a great joy that the way to
Margaret for him stood open. For himself, now, he might love her. With
such marvellous swiftness does love work that, when his mother bade him
go “pay his duty to the minister,” his heart responded with so great a
leap of joy that he found himself glancing quickly at the faces of those
about him, sure that they must have noticed.

And now he was on his way to Margaret. It was as if he had to make
acquaintance of her. He wondered how she would greet him and he wondered
what he should say to her. What would she be doing now? He glanced at
his watch. It was just ten o'clock. The morning work would be done. She
might come for a little stroll in the woods at the back of the manse,
but he would say nothing to her to-day. He would wait and watch to read
her heart. He sprang up the bank, that ran along beside the fence, to go
on his way. A gleam of white through the snake fence against the pink
of the clover caught his eye. Under the thorn tree--he knew the spot
well--and upon the grass, lay a girl. “By Jove!” he whispered, his heart
stopping, thumping, then rushing, “it is Margaret.” He would creep up
and surprise her. The deep grass deadened his footfalls. He was close
to her. He held his breath. She lay asleep, one arm under her head, the
other flung wide in an abandonment of weariness. He stood gazing down
upon her. Pale she looked to him, and thin and weary. The lines about
her mouth and eyes spoke of cares and of griefs, too. How much older she
was than he had thought! “Poor girl! she has been having a hard time!
It's a shame, a downright shame! And she's only a child yet!” At the
thought of her long sacrifice for those three past years a great pity
stole into his heart. At that touch of pity the love that had ever
filled his heart, dammed back for so long by his regard for his
brother's rights, suddenly finding its new channel, burst forth and
swept like a torrent through his being. He lost grip of himself and,
before he knew, he had bent over the sleeping girl and kissed her lips.
A long shivering sigh shook her. “Barney,” she murmured, a slight smile
playing about her lips. She opened her eyes. A moment she lay looking up
into Dick's face, then, suddenly wide awake, she sat upright.

“You! Dick!” she cried, surprise, indignation, shame, mingling in her
voice. “You--you dare to--”

“Yes, Margaret,” said Dick, aghast at what he had done, “I couldn't help
it. You looked so sweet and so sad, and--and I love you so much.”

“You,” cried the girl again, as if she could find no other word. “What
did you say?”

“I said, Margaret,” he replied, gathering his courage together, “that I
love you so much.”

“You love me?” she gasped.

“Yes, I love you. I never knew till last night.”

“Last night?” she echoed, with her eyes upon his face, now grown pale,
but illuminated with a light she had never seen there before.

“Yes, last night. It was always there, Margaret,” he hurried to say,
“but only last night I found out I might love you. I never let myself
go. I thought I had no right. I mean I thought Barney--” At the mention
of his brother's name, the face that had been white with a look almost
of horror flamed quickly with red. “Last night,” continued Dick,
wondering at the change in her, “I found out, and this morning,
Margaret, the whole world is just humming with joy because I know I may
love you all I want to. Oh, it's great! I never imagined a fellow could
hold so much love or so much joy. Do you understand me, Margaret? Do
you knew what I am talking about?” Margaret's face had grown pale and
haggard, as with pain, and her eyes were wide open with pity.

“Yes, Dick,” she said slowly, “I know. I have just been learning.” The
brave lips quivered, but she kept firm hold of herself. “I know all the
joy and--all the pain.” She stopped short at the look in Dick's face.
The buoyant, glad light flickered and went out. A look of perplexity,
of great fear, and then of desolation, like that on her own face, spread
over his. He knew her too well to misunderstand her meaning. She leaned
over to him, still kneeling in the grass. “Oh, Dick, dear!” she cried,
taking his hand in hers with a mother-touch and tone, “must you suffer,
too? Oh, don't say you must! Not with my pain, Dick! Not with my pain!”
 Her voice rose in a cry, broke into a sob, but still she held him with
her eyes.

“Do you say I must?” he answered in a hoarse tone. “I love you with all
my heart.”

“Oh, don't Dick, dear,” she pleaded, “don't say it!”

“Yes, I will,” he said, recovering his voice, “because it's true. And
I'm glad it's true. I'm glad that I can at last let myself love you. It
was only last night when Barney told me about Iola, you know.”

“Yes, yes,” she said hurriedly.

“I had always thought that it was you, and I was glad to think so for
Barney. But last night”--here a quick flash of joy came into his face at
the memory--“I found out, and this morning I could hardly help shouting
it as I came along to you.” He paused, and, leaning toward her, he took
her hand. “Don't you think, Margaret, you might perhaps some time.” The
piteous entreaty in his voice broke down the girl's proud courage.

“Oh, Dick! Oh, Dick!” she sobbed, “don't! Don't ask me!” Her sobs came
tempestuously.

He put his arms about her and, stroking her yellow hair, gently said,
“Never mind, little girl. Don't do that! I can't stand that, and--well,
I won't bother you a bit with my affair. Don't think about me. I'll get
hold of myself. There now--hush, hush, girlie. Don't cry like that!” He
held her close to him, caressing her till she grew quiet.

At length she drew away, saying, “I don't know why I should act like
this. I haven't cried for a year. I think I am tired. It has been a hard
winter, Dick. They used to play and sing together for hours. Oh, it
was wonderful music, but I could have shrieked aloud. Don't think me
horrid,” she went on hurriedly. “I wonder I am not ashamed to tell you.
But I never let anyone know, neither of them nor anyone else. Mind you
that, Dick, no one knows.” She sat up straight, her courage coming back.
“I never meant to tell you, Dick, but you know you took me unaware.”
 A little smile was struggling to the corners of her mouth and a faint
flush touched her pale cheek. “But I am glad you know. And, Dick, can't
we go back? Won't you forget what you have said?” Dick had been looking
at her, wondering at her courage and self-command, but in his eyes a
look of misery that went to the girl's heart.

“Forget!” he cried. “Tell me how.”

She shook her head, and then, reading his eyes, she cried aloud, “Oh,
Dick! must we go on and on like this?” She pressed her hands hard upon
her heart. “There's a sore, sore pain right here,” she said. “Is there
to be no rest, no relief from it? It's been there for two years.” She
was fast losing her grip of herself again. Once more he caught her in
his strong brown hands.

“Now, Margaret dear, don't do that! We'll help each other somehow.
God--yes, God will help us if He takes any interest in us at all. He
can't let us go on like this!”

The words steadied her.

“I know, Dick,” she said, a sudden quiet falling upon her, “there has
been no one else for all these months, and He has helped me. He will
help you, too. Come,” she continued, “let us go.”

“No, sit down and talk,” replied Dick. He looked at his watch. “A
quarter after ten,” he said, in surprise. “Can the whole world change in
one little quarter of an hour?” he asked, looking up at her, “it was ten
when I stopped at the hill.”

“Come, Dick,” she said again, “we'll talk another time, I can't trust
myself just now. I was going to your mother's.”

But Dick remained kneeling in the grass where he was. It seemed to him
as if he had been in some strange land remote from this common life, and
he shrank from contact with the ordinary day and its ordinary doings.

“I can't, Margaret,” he said. “You go. Let me fight it out.”

She knew too well where he was. “No, Dick, I will not leave you here.
Come, do.” She went quickly to him, kneeled down, put her arms about his
neck and kissed him. “Help me, Dick,” she whispered.

It was the word he needed. He threw his arms about her, kissed her once,
and then, as if seized with a frenzy of passion, he kissed, again and
again, her hair, her face, her hands, her lips, murmuring in hoarse,
passionate tones, “I love you! I love you!” For a few moments she
suffered him, and then gently pushed him back and drew apart from him.
Her action recalled him to himself.

“Forgive me, Margaret,” he cried brokenly, “I'm a great, selfish brute.
I think only of myself. Now I'm ready to go. And when I weaken again,
don't think me quite a cad.”

He sprang up, threw back his shoulders as if adjusting them to a load,
gave her his hand, and lifted her up, and together they set off down the
lane, the shadow a little lighter as each felt the other near.




X

FOR A LADY'S HONOUR


“Are you going to Trinity convocation tomorrow?” asked Dr. Bulling of
Iola.

They were sitting in what Iola called her studio. A poor little room it
was, but suggesting in every detail the artistic taste of its occupant.
Its adornments, the luxurious arrangement of cushions in the cosey
corner, the prints upon the walls, and the books on the little table,
spoke of a pathetic attempt to reproduce the surroundings of luxurious
art without the large outlay that art demands. At one side of the room
stood a piano with music lying carelessly about. In another corner was
Iola's guitar, which she seldom used now except when intimate friends
gathered for one of the little suppers she loved to give. Then she took
it up to sing the mammy songs of her childhood. On the side opposite
to that on which the piano stood was a little fireplace. It was the
fireplace that had determined the choice of the room.

As Dr. Bulling asked his question Iola's lace lit up with a sudden
splendour.

“Yes, of course,” she cried.

“And why 'of course'?” inquired the doctor.

“Why? Because a great friend of mine is to receive his degree and his
gold medal.”

“And who is that, pray?”

“Mr. Boyle.”

“Oh, you know him? Clever chap, they say. Can't say I know him. Have
seen him a few times in the hospital with Trent. Struck me as rather
crude. From the country, some place, isn't he?”

“Yes,” replied Iola, with ever so slight a hesitation, “he is from the
country, where I met him five--yes, it is actually five--years ago. So
you see he is quite an old friend. And as for being crude, I think
you can hardly call him that. Of course, he is not one of society's
darlings, a patron of art, and a rising member of his profession as
yet”--this with a little bow to her visitor--“but some day he will be
great. And, besides, he is very nice.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” said the doctor, “seeing he is a friend of
yours. But how are you going? Some friends of mine are to be there and
will be glad to call for you.” The doctor could hardly prevent a tone of
condescension, almost of patronage, in his voice.

“You are very kind,” said Iola, with just enough reserve in her manner
to make the doctor conscious of his tone, “but I am going with friends.”

“Friends?” inquired the doctor. “And who, may I ask?” There was an
almost rude familiarity in his tone, but Iola only smiled at him the
more sweetly.

“Oh, very dear friends, and very old friends, and friends of Mr. Boyle.
In fact, his brother, a theological student, and a Miss Robertson. I
think you have met her. She is a nurse in the General Hospital.”

“Nurse Robertson?” said Bulling. “Oh, yes, I know her. Pretty much of a
saint, isn't she?”

“A saint?” cried Iola, for the first time throwing energy into her
voice. “Yes, a saint. But the best and sweetest and kindest and jolliest
girl I know.”

“I should hardly have called her jolly,” said the doctor, with an air of
dismissing her.

“Oh, she is!” cried Iola, enthusiastically, her large eyes glowing eager
enthusiasm. “You ought to have seen her at home. Why, at sixteen years
she took charge of her father's manse and the children in the most
wonderful way. Looked after me, too.”

“Poor girl!” murmured the doctor. “She had a handful, sure enough.”

“Yes, you may say so. Then her father went on a trip to the old country,
and, to the surprise of everybody, brought back a new wife.”

“And put the girl's nose out of joint,” said the doctor.

“Well, hardly that. But there was no longer need for her at home, and,
on the whole, she felt better to be independent, and so here she has
been for the last two years. She shares my room when she is at home,
which is not often, and still takes care of me.”

“Most fortunate young lady she is,” murmured the doctor.

“So I am going with them,” continued Iola.

“Then I suppose nobody will see you.” The doctor's tone was quite
gloomy.

“Why, I love to see all my friends.”

“It will be the usual thing,” said the doctor, “the same circle crowding
you, the same impossibility of getting a word with you.”

“That depends on how much you--” cried Iola, throwing a swift smile at
him.

“How much I want to?” interrupted the doctor eagerly. “You know quite
well I--”

“How much time there is. You see, one can't be rude. One must speak to
all one's friends. But, of course, one can always plan one's time. How
ever,” she continued, “one can hardly expect to see much of the very
popular Dr. Bulling, whose attention is always so fully taken up.”

“Oh, rot!” said the doctor. “I say, can't we get off a little together?
There are nice quiet nooks about the old building.”

“Oh, doctor, how shocking!” But her eyes belied her voice, and
the doctor departed with the lively expectation of a very pleasant
convocation day at Trinity.

The convocation passed off with the usual uproar on the part of the
students and the usual long-suffering endurance on the part of the dean
and faculty and those who were fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to be
the orators of the day, the fervent enthusiasm of the undergraduate body
finding expression, now in college songs, whose chief characteristic was
the vigour with which they were rendered, personal remarks in the way
of encouragement, deprecation, pity, or gentle reproof to all who had
to take part in the public proceedings, and at intervals in wildly
uproarious applause and cheers at the mention of the name of some
favourite. At no point was the fervour greater than when Barney was
called to receive his medal. To the little group of friends at the left
of the desk, consisting of his brother, Margaret, and Iola, it seemed
as if the cheering that greeted Barney's name was almost worthy of the
occasion. Dr. Trent presented him, and as he spoke of the difficulties
he had to contend with in the early part of his course, of the
perseverance and indomitable courage the young man had shown, and the
singular, indeed the very remarkable, ability he had manifested in the
special line of study for which this medal was granted, the dead silence
that pervaded the room was even more eloquent than the tumult of cheers
that followed Dr. Trent's remarks and that continued until Barney had
taken his place again among the graduating class.

Then someone called out, “What's the matter with old Carbuncle?”
 eliciting the usual vociferous reply, “He's all right!”

“By Jove,” said Dick to Margaret, who sat next him, “isn't that great?
And the old boy deserves it every bit!” But Margaret made no reply. She
was sitting with her eyes cast down, pale except for a spot of red in
each cheek. At Dick's words she glanced at him for a moment, and he
noticed that the large blue eyes were full of tears.

“It's all right, little girl,” he whispered, giving her hand a little
pat. He dared say no more, for the sight of her face and the look in her
eyes set his own heart beating and gave him a choke in his throat.

On the other side of Margaret sat Iola, her face radiant with pride and
joy, and as Barney reached his seat, turning half around and in the
face of the whole company, she flashed him a look and a smile so full
of pride and love that it seemed to him at that moment as if all he had
endured for the last three years were quite worth while.

After the formal proceedings were over, Dr. Bulling made his way to the
little group about Barney.

“Congratulations, Boyle,” he said, in the somewhat patronizing manner of
a graduate of some years' standing to one who holds his parchment in his
hand and wears his still blushing honours as men wear new clothes, “that
was a remarkable fine reception you had to-day.”

Barney's brief word of acknowledgment showed his resentment of Bulling's
tone and his dislike of the man. It angered Barney to observe the
familiar, almost confidential, manner of Dr. Bulling with Iola, but it
made him more furious to notice that, instead of resenting, Iola seemed
to be pleased with his manner. Just now, however, she was giving herself
to Barney. Her pride in him, her joy in him, and her quiet appreciation
of him, were evident to all, so evident, indeed, that after a few words
Dr. Bulling took himself off.

“Brute!” said Barney as the doctor retired.

“Why, I am sure he seems very nice,” said Iola, raising her eyebrows in
surprise.

“Nice!” said Barney contemptuously. “If you knew how the men speak of
him about town you wouldn't call him nice. He has money, and he's in the
swim, but he's a beast, all the same.”

“Oh, Barney, you mustn't say so!” cried Iola, “for you know he's been a
great friend to me. He has been very kind. I am quite devoted to him.”
 Something in the tone of her voice, and more in the smile which she gave
Barney, took the sting out of her words.

Before many minutes had passed the little group was broken up, chiefly
because of the fact that Iola was soon surrounded by a circle of her own
admiring friends, and among them the most insistent was Dr. Bulling,
who finally, with bluff, good-natured but almost rude aggressiveness,
carried her off to the tearoom. It took all the joy out of the day for
Barney, and on his behalf, for Margaret and Dick, that for the rest of
the afternoon Iola's attention was entirely absorbed by Dr. Bulling and
his little coterie of friends.

And this feeling of disappointment in Iola and of resentment against
Dr. Bulling he carried with him to a little stag dinner by the hospital
staff at the Olympic that evening. The dinner was due chiefly to the
exertions of Dr. Trent, and was intended by him not only to bring into
closer touch with each other the members of the hospital staff, but also
to be a kind of introduction of Barney to the inner circle of medical
men in the city. For the past year Barney had acted as his clerk, almost
as his assistant, and, indeed, Dr. Trent had made the formal proposition
of an assistantship to him. Out of compliment to Barney, Dick had
been invited, and young Drake also, who owed his parchment that day
to Barney's merciless grinding in surgery, and perhaps more to his
steadying friendship. Dr. Bulling, who, more for his great wealth and
his large social connection than for his professional standing, had been
invited, was present with Foxmore, Smead, and others who followed him
about applauding his coarse jokes and accepting his favours. The dinner
was purely informal in character, the menu well chosen, the wines
abundant, and the drinking hard enough with some, with the result that
as the dinner neared its end the men, and especially the group about
Bulling, became more and more hilarious. Barney, who was drinking water
and keeping his hand upon Drake's wineglass, found his attention divided
between his conversation with Trent and the talk of Bulling, who, with
his friends, sat across the table. As this group became more boisterous,
they absorbed to themselves the attention of the whole company.
Conscious of the prestige his wealth and social position accorded him,
and inflamed by the wine he was drinking, Bulling became increasingly
offensive. The talk degenerated. The stories and songs became more and
more coarse in tone. It was Barney's first experience of a dinner of
this kind, and it filled him with disgust and horror. Even Trent, by no
means inexperienced in these matters, was disgusted with Bulling's tone.
Following Barney's glances and aware of his wandering attention, he was
about to propose a breakup of the party when he was arrested by a look
of rigid and eager attention upon the face of his friend.

“Disgusting brute!” said Trent, in a low voice.

But Barney heeded him not. His attention was concentrated upon Bulling.
He had his glass in his hand.

“Here's to the Lane!” he was saying, “the sweetest little Lane in all
the world!”

“She's divine!” replied Foxmore. “And what a voice! She'll make Canada
famous some day. Where did you discover her, Bulling?”

“In church,” replied Bulling solemnly, to the uproarious delight of his
followers. “That's right,” he continued, “heard her sing, set things in
motion, and now she's the leading voice in the cathedral. Introduced her
to a few people, and there she is, the finest thing in her line in the
city! Yes, and some day on the continent! A dear, sweet little lane it
is,” he continued in a tone of affectionate proprietorship that made
Barney grind his teeth in furious rage.

“That she is,” said Smead enthusiastically, “and thoroughly straight,
too!”

“Oh,” said Foxmore, “there's no lane but has a turning. And trust
Bulling,” he added coarsely, “for finding it out.”

“Well,” said Bulling, with a knowing smile, “this little Lane is
straight. Of course there may be a slight deflection. Nature's lines run
in curves, you know.” And again his wit provoked applauding laughter.
But before the laughter had quite faded out a voice was heard, clear and
cutting.

“Dr. Bulling, you are a base liar!” The words were plainly audible to
every man in the room. A dead silence fell upon the company.

“What?” said the doctor, sitting up straight, as if he had not heard
aright.

“I say you are a cowardly liar!”

“What the deuce do you mean?”

“You have just made an insinuation against the honour of a young lady. I
say again you are a mean and cowardly liar. I want you to say so.”

For a moment or two Bulling's surprise kept him silent.

“Quite right,” said Trent. “Beastly cad!”

Then Dr. Bulling broke forth. “You impertinent young cub! What do you
mean?”

For answer, Barney seized Drake's wineglass, half full of wine, and
flung glass and contents full in Bulling's face. In an instant every man
was on his feet. Above the din rose Foxmore's voice.

“Give it to him Bulling! Give it to the young prig!”

“No hurry about this, boys,” said Bulling quietly; “I'll make him eat
his words before he's half an hour older.”

Meantime Dick was entreating his brother. “Let me at him. He's a great
knocker. Held the 'varsity championship. You don't know anything about
it. Let me at him, Barney. I can do him up.” Dick had been 'varsity
champion in his own time. But Barney put Dick aside with quiet, stern
words.

“Don't interfere, Dick. No matter what happens, don't interfere
to-night. I won't have it, Dick, remember. It may take us an hour or it
may take all night, but he'll say he lied before I'm through with him.”

Meantime the men, and chief among them Trent, were seeking to appease
the doctor and to patch up the peace.

“If he apologizes I shall let the young cub off,” were the doctor's
terms.

“If he says he lied,” was Barney's condition.

“Don't disturb yourselves, gentlemen,” said Bulling; “it will not take
more than two minutes, and then we can finish our smoke.”

The moment they stood facing each other Barney rushed, only to receive
a heavy blow which hurled him backward. It was plain he knew nothing of
the game. It was equally plain that the doctor was entirely master of
it. Again and again Barney rushed in wildly, the doctor easily blocking,
avoiding and sending in killing blows, till at length bloody, dazed,
panting, Barney had to lean against his friends to recover his wind
and strength. Opposite him, cool, smiling, and untouched, stood his
adversary.

“This is easy, boys,” he smiled. “Now, you young whipper-snapper,” he
continued, addressing Barney, “perhaps you've had enough. Let me tell
you, it's time for you to quit fooling, or, by the Eternal, I'll send
you to sleep!” As he spoke he closed his teeth with a savage snap.

“Will you say you're a liar?” said Barney, facing his opponent again,
and disregarding Dick's entreaties and warnings.

“Ah, quit it!” said the doctor contemptuously, “Come along, you fool, if
you must have it!”

Once more Barney rushed. As he did so Bulling stopped him with a
heavy left-hander on the face which sent him reeling backward, quickly
following with his right and again with a last terrific blow upon the
jaw of his dazed and reeling victim. Barney fell with a crash upon the
floor, and lay quiet. With a cry Dick sprang at Bulling, but half a
dozen men pulled him off.

“Let him come,” said Bulling, with a laugh, “I've a very fine assortment
of the same kind. Families supplied on reasonable terms.”

Meantime, while the men were struggling with Dick, Dr. Trent and Drake
were trying to revive poor Barney, bathing his face and hands.

“Stand back! Don't crowd about, men! Bring me a little brandy, someone,”
 said Dr. Trent. “A more cowardly brute I've never seen. You're a
disgrace to the profession, Bulling.”

“Oh, thanks. I don't need your credentials, Trent,” said Bulling
cynically.

But Trent, ignoring him, devoted himself to Barney, who showed signs
of reviving. It was some minutes, however, before he could sit up.
Meanwhile Bulling with his friends retired to the lavatory.

“Here, Boyle,” said Treat, holding a glass to his lips as Barney sat up,
“a little more brandy and water.”

For a few moments after he drank the liquor Barney sat gazing stupidly
about. Then, as full consciousness returned, cried out, “Where is he?
He's not gone?” He seized the glass of brandy and water from Dr. Treat's
hands and drank it off. “Get me another,” he said. “Is he gone?” he
repeated, making an effort to rise.

“Never mind, Boyle, he's gone.”

“Wait till another day, Barney,” entreated Dick. “Never mind to-night.”

At this moment the sound of Dr. Bulling's voice, followed by loud
laughter, came from the lavatory. At once Barney stood up, walked to the
table, poured out a glass of brandy and drank it raw. For a minute he
stood stretching his arms.

“Ah, that's better,” he said, and started toward the lavatory, but Dick
clung to him.

“Barney, listen to me,” he entreated, his voice coming in broken sobs.
“He'll kill you. Let me take your place.”

“Dick, keep out of it,” said Barney. “Don't worry. He'll hurt me
no more, but he'll say it before I'm done.” And, throwing off the
restraining hands, he made his way into the lavatory. Dr. Bulling was
arranging his collar before a glass. As Barney entered he turned around.

“I'm sorry, Boyle,” he began, “but you brought it on yourself, you
know.”

Barney walked straight up to him.

“I didn't hear you say you are a liar.”

“Look here,” cried Bulling, “haven't you got enough. Be thankful you're
not killed. Go on! Get home! I don't run a butcher shop!”

“Will you say you're a liar and a cowardly liar?”

Barney's voice had in it the ring of cold steel.

“I say, boys,” said Bulling, appealing to the crowd, “keep this fool
off. I don't want to kill him.”

Foxmore, with some of the others, approached Barney.

“Now, Boyle, quit it,” said Foxmore. “There's no use, you see.” He laid
his hand on Barney's arm.

Barney put his hand against his breast, appearing to brush him aside,
but Foxmore touched nothing till he struck the wall ten feet away.

“Get back!” cried Barney, springing away from the men approaching him.
As he spoke, he seized a small oak dressing table by one of its legs,
swung it round his head, dashed it to pieces on the marble floor, and,
putting his foot upon the wreckage, with one mighty wrench had the leg
free in his hand.

“You men stand back,” he said in a low voice, “and don't any of you
interfere.”

Amazed at this exhibition of furious strength, the men started back to
their places, leaving a wide space about him.

“Good heavens!” said Bulling, his face turning a shade pale, “the man is
mad! Call a policeman, some of you.”

“Drake, lock that door and bring me the key,” said Barney.

As Barney put the key in his pocket and turned again toward Bulling,
the latter's pallor increased. “I take you men to witness,” he said,
appealing to the company, “if murder is done I'm not responsible. I'm
defending my life. Remember, I'll strike to kill.”

“No, Dr. Bulling,” said Barney, handing his club to Drake, “you won't
strike at all. I've had my lesson. You'll strike me no more. The boxing
exhibition is over. This is a fight till you can fight no more.”

The doctor's nerve was fast going. Barney stood cool, quiet, and
terrible.

“I'll give you your chance once again,” he said. “Will you say you are a
cowardly liar?”

Dr. Bulling glanced at the group back of him, read pain in their faces,
hesitated a moment, then, pulling himself together, said, with an
evident effort at bluster, “Not by a ---- sight! Come on! Take your
medicine!” But the lesson of the last half hour had not been lost on
Barney. Up and down the long room, circling about his man, feinting to
draw his attack, eluding, and again feinting, Barney kept his antagonist
in such rapid motion and so intensely on the alert that his wind began
to fail him, and it soon became evident that he could not stand the pace
for very long.

“You've got him!” cried Dick, in an ecstasy of expectation. “Keep it up,
Barney! That's the game! You'll have him in five minutes more!”

“Quite evident,” echoed Dr. Trent quietly, hugely enjoying the change in
the situation.

Dr. Bulling heard the words. His pallor deepened. Red blotches began to
appear on his cheek. The sweat stood out upon his forehead. His breath
came in short gasps. He knew he could not last much longer. His only
hope lay in immediate attack. He must finish off his man within the next
minute or accept defeat. Nature was now taking revenge upon him for his
long outraging of her laws. Barney, on the other hand, though bruised
and battered about the face, was stepping about easily and lightly,
without any sign of the terrible punishment he had suffered. Reading
his opponent's face he knew that the moment for a supreme effort had
arrived, and waited for his plan to develop. There was only one thing
for Bulling to do. Edging his opponent toward the corner and summoning
his fast failing strength for a final attack, he forced him hard back
into the angle of the wall. He had him now. One clean blow and all would
be over.

“Look out, Barney!” yelled Dick.

Suddenly, as if shot from a steel spring, Barney crouched low and
leaped at his man, and disregarding two heavy blows, thrust one long arm
forward and with his sinewy fingers gripped his enemy's throat. “Ha!” he
cried with savage exultation, holding off his foe at arm's length. “Now!
Now! Now!” As he uttered each word between his clenched teeth he shook
the gasping, choking wretch as a dog shakes a rat. In vain his victim
struggled to get free, now striking wild and futile blows, now clutching
and clawing at those terrible gripping fingers. His face grew purple;
his tongue protruded; his breath came in rasping gasps; his hands fell
to his side. “Keep your hands so,” hissed Barney, loosening his grip to
give him air. “Ha! would you? Don't you move!” gripping him hard again.
“There!” loosening once more, “now, are you a liar? Speak quick!” The
blue lips made an attempt at the affirmation of which the head made the
sign. “Say it again. Are you a liar?” Once more the head nodded and the
lips attempted to speak. “Yes,” said Barney, still through his clenched
teeth, “you are a cowardly liar!” The words came forth with terrible
deliberation. “I could kill you with my hands as you stand. But I won't,
you cur! I'll just do this.” As he spoke he once more tightened his grip
upon the throat and swung his open hand on the livid cheek.

“For God's sake, Boyle,” cried Foxmore, “let up! That's enough!”

“Yes, it's enough,” said Barney, flinging the semi-conscious man on
the floor, “it's enough for him. Foxmore, you laughed, I think, when
he uttered that lie,” he said in a voice smooth, almost sweet, but that
chilled the hearts of the hearers, “you laughed. You were a beastly cad,
weren't you? Speak!”

“What? I--I--” gasped Foxmore, backing into the corner.

“Quick, quick!” cried Barney, stepping lightly toward him on his toes,
“say it quick!” His fingers were working convulsively.

“Yes, yes, I was!” cried Foxmore, backing further away behind the
others.

“Yes,” cried Barney, his voice rising hoarse, “you would all of you
laugh at that brute ruin the name and honour of a lonely girl!” He
walked up and down before the group which stood huddled in the corner
in abject terror, more like a wild beast than a man. “You're not fit to
live! You're beasts of prey! No decent girl is safe from you!” His voice
rose loud and thin and harsh. He was fast losing hold of himself. His
ghastly face, bloody and horribly disfigured, made an appalling setting
for his blazing eyes. Nearer and nearer the crowd he walked, gnashing
and grinding his teeth till the foam fell from his lips. The wild fury
of his Highland ancestors was turning him into a wild beast with a
wild beast's lust of blood. Further and further back cowered the group
without a word, so utterly panic-stricken were they.

“Barney,” said Dick quietly, “come home.” He stopped short, with a
mighty effort recalling his reason. For a few moments he stood silent
looking at the floor, then, raising his eyes, he let them rest upon the
doctor, who was leaning against the wall, and, without a word, turned
and slowly passed out of the room.

“Gad!” said Foxmore, with a horrible gasp of relief, “if the devil looks
like that I never want to see him.”




XI

IOLA'S CHOICE


Iola was undoubtedly pleased; her lips parting in a half smile, her eyes
shining through half-closed lids, her whole face glowing with a warm
light proclaimed the joy in her heart. The morning letters lay on her
table. She sat some moments holding one which she had opened, while
she gazed dreamily out through the branches of the big elms that
overshadowed her window. She would not move lest the dream should break
and vanish. As she lay back in her chair looking out upon the moving
leaves and waving boughs, she allowed the past to come back to her. How
far away seemed the golden days of her Southern childhood. Almost her
first recollection of sorrow, certainly the first that made any deep
impression upon her heart, was when the men carried out her father in
a black box and when, leaving the big house with the wide pillared
veranda, she was taken to the chilly North. How terribly vivid was the
memory of her miserable girlhood, poverty pressed and loveless, her
soul beating like a caged bird against the bars of the cold and rigid
discipline of her aunt's well-ordered home. Then came the first glad
freedom from dependence when first she undertook to earn her own bread
as a teacher. Freedom and love came to her together, freedom and love
and friendship in the Manse and the Old Stone Mill. With the memory
of the Mill, there rose before her, clear-limned and vividly real, one
face, rugged, strong, and passionate, and the thought of him brought a
warmer light to her eyes and a stronger beat to her heart. Every feature
of the moonlight scene on the night of the barn-raising when first she
saw him stood out with startling distinctness, the new skeleton of the
barn gleaming bony and bare against the sky, the dusky forms crowding
about, and, sitting upon a barrel across the open moonlit space of the
barn floor, the dark-faced lad playing his violin and listening while
she sang. At that point it was that life for her began.

A new scene passed before her eyes. It was the Manse parlour, the music
professor with dirty, claw-like fingers but face alight with rapturous
delight playing for her while she sang her first great oratorio aria.
She could feel to-day that mysterious thrill in the dawning sense of new
powers as the old man, with his hands upon her shoulders, cried in his
trembling, broken voice, “My dear young lady, the world will listen to
you some day!” That was the beginning of her great ambition. That day
she began to look for the time when the world would come to listen.
Then followed weary days and weeks and months and years, weary with
self-denials new to her and with painful struggling with unmusical
pupils, for she needed bread; weary with heart-breaking strivings
and failings in the practice of her art, but, worst of all, weary to
heart-break with the patronage of the rich and flattering friends--how
she loathed it--of whom Dr. Bulling was the most insistent and the most
objectionable. And then this last campaign, with its plans and schemes
for a place in the great Philharmonic which would at once insure not
only her standing in the city, but a New York engagement as well. And
now the moment of triumph had arrived. The letter she held in her hand
was proof of it. She glanced once more at the written page, her eye
falling upon a phrase here and there, “We have succeeded at last--the
Duff Charringtons have surrendered--you only want a chance--here it
is--you can do the part well.” She smiled a little. Yes, she knew she
could do the part. “And now let nothing or nobody prevent you from
accepting Mrs. Duff Charrington's invitation for next Saturday. It is a
beautiful yacht and well found, and I am confident the great lady will
be gracious--bring your guitar with you, and if you will only be kind,
I foresee two golden days in store for me.” She allowed a smile slightly
sarcastic to curl her lips.

“The doctor is inclined to be poetical. Well, we shall see. Saturday?
That means Sunday spent on board the yacht. I wish they had it made
another day. Margaret won't like it, and Barney won't either.”

For a moment or two she allowed her mind to go back to the Sundays spent
in the Manse. She had never known the meaning of the day before. The
utter difference in feeling, in atmosphere, between that day and the
other days of the week, the subduing quiet, the soothing peace, and the
sense of sacredness that pervaded life on that day, made the Sabbaths
in the Manse like blessed isles of rest in the sea of time. Never, since
her two years spent there, had she been able to get quite away from the
sense of obligation to make the day differ from the ordinary days of the
week. No, she was sure Barney would not like it. Still, she could spend
its hours quietly enough upon the yacht.

She picked up another letter in a large square envelope, the address
written in bold characters. “This is the Duff Charrington invitation,
I suppose,” she said, opening the letter. “Well, she does it nicely,
at any rate, even if, as Dr. Bulling suggests, somewhat against her
inclination.”

Again she sat back in silent dreaming, her eyes looking far away down
the coming years of triumph. Surely enough, the big world was drawing
near to listen. All she had read of the great queens of song, Patti,
Nilsson, Rosa, Trebelli, Sterling, crowded in upon her mind, their
regal courts thronged by the great and rich of every land, their country
seats, their luxurious lives. At last her foot was in the path. It only
remained for her to press forward. Work? She well knew how hard must
be her daily lot. Yes, but that lesson she had learned, and thoroughly
well, during these past years, how to work long hours, to deny herself
the things her luxurious soul longed for, and, hardest of all, to bear
with and smile at those she detested. All these she would endure a
little longer. The days were coming when she would have her desire and
do her will.

She glanced at the other letters upon the table. “Barney,” she cried,
seizing one. An odd compunction struck into her heart. “Barney, poor old
boy!” A sudden thought stayed her hand from opening the letter. Where
had Barney been in this picture of the future years upon which she had
been feasting her soul? Aghast, she realized that, amid its splendid
triumphs, Barney had not appeared. “Of course, he'll be there,” she
murmured somewhat impatiently. But how and in what capacity she could
not quite see. Some prima donnas had husbands, mere shadowy appendages
to their courts. Others there were who found their husbands most useful
as financial agents, business managers, or upper servants. Iola smiled
a proud little smile. Barney would not do for any of these discreetly
shadowy, conveniently colourless or more useful husbands. Would he be
her husband? A warm glow came into her eyes and a flush upon her cheek.
Her husband? Yes, surely, but not for a time. For some years she must be
free to study, and--well, it was better to be free till she had made her
name and her place in the world. Then when she had settled down Barney
would come to her.

But how would Barney accept her programme? Sure as she was of his great
love, and with all her love for him, she was a little afraid of him. He
was so strong, so silently immovable. Often in the past three years she
had made trial of that immovable strength, seeking to draw him away
from his work to some social engagement, to her so important, to him so
incidental. She had always failed. His work absorbed him as her art had
her, but with a difference. With Barney, work was his reward; with her,
a means to it. To gain some further knowledge, to teach his fingers some
finer skill, that was enough for Barney. Iola wrought at her long tasks
and practised her unusual self-denials with her eye upon the public.
Her reward would come when she had brought the world, listening, to her
feet. Seized in the thrall of his work, Barney grimly held to it, come
what might. No such absorbing passion possessed Iola. And Iola, while
she was provoked by what she called his stubbornness, was yet secretly
proud of that silently resisting strength she could neither shake nor
break. No, Barney was not fitted for the role of the shadowy, pliant,
convenient husband.

What, then, in her plan of life would be his place? It startled her to
discover that her plan had been complete without him. Complete? Ah, no.
Her life without Barney would be like a house without its back wall.
During these years of study and toil, while Barney could only give her
snatches of his time, she had come to feel with increasing strength that
her life was built round about him. When others had been applauding her
successes, she waited for Barney's word; and though beside the clever,
brilliant men that moved in the circle into which her art had brought
her he might appear awkward and dull, yet it was Barney who continued
to be the standard by which she judged men. With all his need of polish,
his poverty of small talk, his hopeless ignorance of the conventions,
and his obvious disregard of them, the massive strength of him, his fine
sense of honour, his chivalrous bearing toward women, added a touch of
reverence to the love she bore him. But more than all, it was to Barney
her heart turned for its rest. She knew well that she held in all its
depth and strength his heart's love. He would never fail her. She could
not exhaust that deep well. But the question returned, where would
Barney be while she was being conducted by acclaiming multitudes along
her triumphal way? “Oh, he will wait--we will wait,” she corrected,
shrinking from the heartlessness of the former phrasing. How many years
she could not say. But deep in her heart was the determination that
nothing should stand in the way of the ambition she had so long
cherished and for which she had so greatly endured.

She opened the note with lingering deliberation as one dallies with an
approaching delight.


“MY DEAR IOLA: I have always told you the truth. I could not see you
last evening, nor can I to-day, and perhaps not for a day or two,
because my face is disfigured. These are the facts: At the dinner, night
before last, Dr. Bulling lied about you. I made him swallow his lie
and in the process got rather badly marked, though not at all hurt. The
doctor and his friends will, I think, guard their tongues in future, at
least in my hearing. Dr. Bulling is a man of vile mind and of unclean
life. He should not be allowed to appear with decent people. I have
written to forbid him ever approaching you in public. You will know how
to treat him if he attempts it. This will be a most disgusting business
to you. I hate to make you suffer, but it had to be done, and by no one
but me. Would I could bear it all for you, my darling. The patronage of
these people, I mean Dr. Bulling's set, cannot, surely, be necessary to
your success. Your great voice needs not their patronage; if so, failure
would be better. When I am fit for your presence I shall come to you.
Good-bye. It is hard not to see you. Ever yours,

“Barney.”


Alas! for her dreams. How rudely they were dispelled! Alas! for her
castle in Spain. Already it was tottering to ruin, and by Barney's hand.
She read the note hurriedly again.

“He wants me to break with Dr. Bulling.” She recalled a sentence in the
doctor's letter. “Let no one or nothing keep you from accepting this
invitation.” “He's afraid Barney will keep me back. Nonsense! How stupid
of Barney! He is so terribly particular! He doesn't understand these
things. There has been a horrid row of some kind and now he asks me to
cut Dr. Bulling!” She glanced at Barney's letter. “Well, he doesn't ask
me, but it's all the same--'you will know how to treat him.' He's
too proud to ask me, but he expects me to. It would be sheer madness!
Wouldn't the Duff Charrington's and Evelyn Redd be delighted! It is
preposterous! I must go! I shall go!”

Rarely did Iola allow herself the luxury of a downright burst of
passion. With her, it was hardly ever worth while to be seriously angry.
It was so much easier to avoid straight issues. But to-day there was
no avoiding. She surprised herself with a storm of indignant rage so
heart-shaking that after it had passed she was thankful she had been
alone.

“What's the matter with me?” she asked herself. She did not know that
the whole volume of her ambition, which had absorbed so great a part
of her life, had come, in all its might, against the massive rock of
Barney's will. He would never yield, she knew well. “What shall I do?”
 she cried aloud, beginning to pace the room. “Margaret will tell me. No,
she would be sure to side with Barney. She would think it was wicked to
go on Sunday, anyway, and, besides, she has Barney's rigid notions about
things. I wish I could see Dick. Dick will understand. He has seen more
of this life and--oh, he's not so terribly hidebound. And I'll get Dick
to see Barney.” She would not acknowledge that she was grateful that
Barney could not come to see her, but she could write him a note and
she could send Dick to him, and in the meantime she would accept the
invitation. “I will accept at once. I wish I had before I read Barney's
note. I really had accepted in my mind, and, besides, the arrangements
were all made. I'll write the letters now.” She hastened to burn her
bridges behind her so that retreat might be impossible. “There,” she
cried, as she sealed, addressed, and stamped the letters, “I wish they
were in the box. I'm awfully afraid I'll change. But I can't change! I
cannot let this chance go! I have worked too long and too hard! Barney
should not ask it!” A wave of self-pity swept over her, bringing her
temporary comfort. Surely Barney would not cause her pain, would not
force her to give up her great opportunity. She sought to prolong this
mood. She pictured herself a forlorn maiden in distress whom it was
Barney's duty and privilege to rescue. “I'll just go and post these
now,” she said. Hastily she put on her hat and ran down with the
letters, fearing lest the passing of her self-pity might leave her to
face again the thought of Barney's inevitable and immovable opposition.

“There, that's done,” she said to herself, as the lid of the post box
clicked upon her letters. “Oh, I wonder--I wish I hadn't!” What she
had feared had come to pass. She had committed herself, and now her
self-pity had evaporated and left her face to face with the inevitable
results. With terrible clearness she saw Barney's dark, rugged face with
the deep-seeing eyes. “He always makes you feel in the wrong,” she said
impatiently. “You can never think what to say. He always seems right,
and,” she added honestly, “he is right generally. Never mind, Dick will
help me.” She shook off her load and ran on. At her door she met Dr.
Foxmore.

“Ah, good-morning,” smiled the doctor, showing a double row of white
teeth under his waxed mustache. “And how does the fair Miss Lane find
herself this fine morning?”

It took the whole force of Iola's self-mastery to keep the disgust which
was swelling her heart from showing in her face. Here was one of Dr.
Bulling's friends, one of his toadies--and he had a number of them--who
represented to her all that was most loathsome in her life. The effort
to repress her disgust, however, only made her smile the sweeter.
Foxmore was greatly encouraged. It was one of his fixed ideas that his
manner was irresistible with “the sex.” Bulling might hold over him,
by reason of his wealth and social position, but give him a fair field
without handicap and see who would win out!

“I was about to do myself the honour and the pleasure of calling upon
you this morning.”

“Oh, indeed. Well--ah--come in.” Iola was fighting fiercely her loathing
of him. It was against this man and his friends that Barney had defended
her name. She led the way to her studio, ignoring the silly chatter
of the man following her upstairs, and by the time he had fairly got
himself seated she was coolly master of herself.

“Just ran in to give you the great news.”

“To wit?”

“Why, don't you know? The Philharmonic thing is settled. You've got it.”

Iola looked blank.

“Why, haven't you heard that the Duff Charringtons have surrendered?”
 Iola recognized Dr. Bulling's words.

“Surrendered? Just what, exactly?”

“Oh, d-dash it all! You know the big fight that has been going on, the
Duff Charringtons backing that little Redd girl.”

“Oh! So the Duff Charringtons 

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