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The Under Dog

by Francis Hopkinson Smith · English · Gutenberg #9463 · 411,634 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Under Dog

Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith


        
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9463]
                Most recently updated: August 5, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9463

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Thomas Cormode, Kevin Handy, David Widger
        and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNDER DOG ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Thomas Cormode, Kevin Handy,
and PG Distributed Proofreaders










[Illustration: During the trip he sat in the far corner of the car.]

THE UNDER DOG

BY

F. HOPKINSON SMITH

ILLUSTRATED

1903



_To my Readers_:

In the strife of life some men lose place through physical weakness or
lost opportunities or impaired abilities; struggle on as they may, they
must always be the Under Dog in the fight.

Others are misjudged--often by their fellows; sometimes by the law. If
you are one of the fellows, you pass the man with a nod. If you are the
law, you crush out his life with a sentence.

Still others lose place from being misunderstood; from being out of
touch with their surroundings; out of reach of those who, if they knew,
would help; men with hearts chilled by neglect, whose smouldering
coals--coals deep hidden in their nature--need only the warm breath of
some other man's sympathy to be fanned back into life.

Once in a while there can be met another kind, one whose poverty or
uncouthness makes us shun him at sight; and yet one, if we did but know
it, with a joyous melody in his heart, ofttimes in tune with our own
harmonies. This kind is rare, and when found adds another ripple to our
scanty stock of laughter.

These Under Dogs--grave and gay--have always appealed to me. Their
stories are printed here in the hope that they may also appeal to you.

F.H.S.

NEW YORK.

CONTENTS

_No Respecter of Persons
  I. The Crime of Samanthy North
  II. Bud Tilden, Mail-Thief
  III. "Eleven Months and Ten Days"
Cap'n Bob of the Screamer
A Procession of Umbrellas
"Doc" Shipman's Fee
Plain Fin--Paper-Hanger
Long Jim
Compartment Number Four--Cologne to Paris
Sammy
Marny's Shadow
Muffles--The Bar-Keep
His Last Cent_


ILLUSTRATIONS

_During the trip he sat in the far corner of the car

"I threw him in the bushes and got the letter"

"I git so tired, so tired; please let me go"

I saw the point of a tiny shoe

Everybody was excited and everybody was mad

I hardly knew him, he was so changed_



NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS


I

THE CRIME OF SAMANTHY NORTH

I have been requested to tell this story, and exactly as it happened.
The moral any man may draw for himself. I only want to ask my readers
the question I have been asking myself ever since I saw the girl: Why
should such things be among us?

       *       *       *       *       *

Marny's studio is over the Art Club.

He was at work on a picture of a cañon with some Sioux Indians in the
foreground, while I sat beside him, watching the play of his
masterly brush.

Dear old Aunt Chloe, in white apron and red bandanna, her round black
face dimpled with smiles, was busying herself about the room,
straightening the rugs, puffing up the cushions of the divan, pushing
back the easels to get at the burnt ends of abandoned cigarettes, doing
her best, indeed, to bring some kind of domestic order out of Marny's
Bohemian chaos.

Now and then she interpolated her efforts with such remarks as:

"No, doan' move. De Colonel"--her sobriquet for Marny--"doan' keer whar
he drap his seegars. But doan' you move, honey"--sobriquet for me. "I
kin git 'em." Or "Clar to goodness, you pillows look like a passel o'
hogs done tromple ye, yo're dat mussed." Critical remarks like these
last were given in a low tone, and, although addressed to the offending
articles themselves, accompanied by sundry cuffs of her big hand, were
really intended to convey Aunt Chloe's private opinion of the habits of
her master and his friends.

The talk had drifted from men of the old frontier to border scouts, and
then to the Kentucky mountaineers, whom Marny knows as thoroughly as he
does the red men.

"They are a great race, these mountaineers," he said to me, as he tossed
the end of another cigarette on Aunt Chloe's now clean-swept floor.
Marny spoke in crisp, detached sentences between the pats of his brush.
"Big, strong, whalebone-and-steel kind of fellows; rather fight than
eat. Quick as lightning with a gun; dead shots. Built just like our
border men. See that scout astride of his horse?"--and he pointed with
his mahl-stick to a sketch on the wall behind him--"looks like the real
thing, don't he? Well, I painted him from an up-country moonshiner.
Found him one morning across the river, leaning up against a telegraph
pole, dead broke. Been arrested on a false charge of making whiskey
without a license, and had just been discharged from the jail. Hadn't
money enough to cross the bridge, and was half-starved. So I braced him
up a little, and brought him here and painted him."

We all know with what heartiness Marny can "brace." It doubtless took
three cups of coffee, half a ham, and a loaf of bread to get him on his
feet, Marny watching him with the utmost satisfaction until the process
was complete.

"You ought to look these fellows over; they're worth it. Savage lot,
some of 'em. Remind me of the people who live about the foothills of the
Balkans. Mountaineers are the same the world over, anyway. But you don't
want to hunt for these Kentuckians in their own homes unless you send
word you are coming, or you may run up against the end of a rifle before
you know it. I don't blame them." Marny leaned back in his chair and
turned toward me. "The Government is always hunting them as if they were
wild beasts, instead of treating them as human beings. They can't
understand why they shouldn't get the best prices they can for their
corn. They work hard enough to get it to grow. Their theory is that the
Illinois farmer feeds the corn to his hogs and sells the product as
pork, while the mountaineer feeds it to his still and sells the product
to his neighbors as whiskey. That a lot of Congressmen who never hoed a
row of corn in their lives, nor ran a furrow, or knew what it was to
starve on the proceeds, should make laws sending a man to jail because
he wants to supply his friends with liquor, is what riles them, and I
don't blame them for that, either."

I arose from my chair and examined the sketch of the starving
mountaineer. It was a careful study of a man with clear-cut features,
slim and of wiry build, and was painted with that mastery of detail
which distinguishes Marny's work over that of every other figure-painter
of his time.

The painter squeezed a tube of white on his palette, relit his
cigarette, fumbled over his sheaf of brushes and continued:

"The first of every month--just about now, by the way--they bring twenty
or thirty of these poor devils down from the mountains and lock them up
in Covington jail. They pass Aunt Chloe's house. Oh, Aunt Chloe!"--and
he turned to the old woman--"did you see any of those 'wild people' the
last two or three days?--that's what she calls 'em," and he laughed.

"Dat I did, Colonel--hull drove on 'em. 'Nough to make a body sick to
see 'em. Two on 'em was chained together. Dat ain't no way to treat
people, if dey is ornery. I wouldn't treat a dog dat way."

Aunt Chloe, sole dependence of the Art Club below-stairs: day or night
nurse--every student in the place knows the touch of her hand when his
head splits with fever or his bones ache with cold; provider of buttons,
suspender loops and buckles; go-between in most secret and confidential
affairs; mail-carrier--the dainty note wrapped up in her handkerchief so
as not to "spile it!"--no, _she_ wouldn't treat a dog that way, nor
anything else that lives and breathes or has feeling, human or brute.

"If there's a new 'drove' of them, as Aunt Chloe says," remarked Marny,
tossing aside his brushes, "let's take a look at them. They are worth
your study. You may never have another chance."

This was why it happened that within the hour Marny and I crossed the
bridge and left his studio and the city behind us.

The river below was alive with boats, the clouds of steam from their
funnels wreathed about the spans. Street-cars blocked the roadway;
tugging horses, sweating under the lash of their drivers' whips,
strained under heavy loads. The air was heavy with coal-smoke. Through
the gloom of the haze, close to the opposite bank, rose a grim, square
building of granite and brick, its grimy windows blinking through iron
bars. Behind these, shut out from summer clouds and winter snows, bereft
of air and sunshine, deaf to the song of happy birds and the low hum of
wandering bees, languished the outcast and the innocent, the vicious and
the cruel. Hells like these are the infernos civilization builds in
which to hide its mistakes.

Marny turned toward me as we reached the prison. "Keep close," he
whispered. "I know the Warden and can get in without a permit," and he
mounted the steps and entered a big door opening into a cold, bare hall
with a sanded floor. To the right of the hall swung another door
labelled "Chief of Police." Behind this door was a high railing closed
with a wooden gate. Over this scowled an officer in uniform.

"My friend Sergeant Cram," said Marny, as he introduced us. The officer
and I shook hands. The hand was thick and hard, the knotted knuckles
leaving an unpleasant impression behind them as they fell from
my fingers.

A second door immediately behind this one was now reached, the Sergeant
acting as guide. This door was of solid wood, with a square panel cut
from its centre, the opening barred like a birdcage. Peering through
these bars was the face of another attendant. This third door, at a
mumbled word from the Sergeant, was opened wide enough to admit us into
a room in which half a dozen deputies were seated at cards. In the
opposite wall hung a fourth door, of steel and heavily barred, through
which, level with the eyes, was cut a peep-hole concealed by a swinging
steel disk.

The Sergeant moved rapidly across the room, pushed aside the disk and
brought to view the nose and eyes of a prison guard.

As our guide shot back a bolt, a click like the cocking of a gun sounded
through the room, followed by the jangle of a huge iron ring strung with
keys. Selecting one from the number, he pushed it into the key-hole and
threw his weight against the door. At its touch the mass of steel swung
inward noiselessly as the door of a bank-vault. With the swinging of the
door there reached us the hot, stuffy smell of unwashed bodies under
steam-heat--the unmistakable odor that one sometimes meets in a
court-room.

Marny and I stepped inside. The Sergeant closed the slab of steel,
locking us inside, and then, nodding to us through the peep-hole,
returned to his post in the office.

We stood now on the rim of the crater, looking straight into the
inferno. By means of the dull light that struggled through the grimy,
grated windows, I discovered that we were in a corridor having an iron
floor that sprang up and down under our feet. This was flanked by a line
of steel cages--huge beast-dens really--reaching to the ceiling. In each
of these cages was a small, double-barred gate.

These dens were filled with men and boys; some with faces thrust through
the bars, some with hands and arms stretched out as if for air; one hung
half-way up the bars, clinging with hands and feet apart, as if to get
a better hold and better view. I had seen dens like these before: the
man-eating Bengal tiger at the London Zoo lives in one of them.

The Warden, who was standing immediately behind the attendant, stepped
forward and shook Marny's hand. I discharged my obligations with a nod.
I had never been in a place like this before, and the horror of its
surroundings overcame me. I misjudged the Warden, no doubt. That this
man might have a wife who loved him and little children who clung to his
neck, and that underneath his hard, forbidding exterior a heart could
beat with any tenderness, never occurred to me. As I looked him over
with a half-shrinking glance, I became aware of a slash indenting his
pock-marked cheek that might have been made by a sabre cut--was,
probably, for it takes a brave man to be a warden; a massive head set on
big shoulders; a square chin, the jaw hinged like a burglar's jimmy; and
two keen, restless, elephant eyes.

But it was his right ear that absorbed my attention--or rather, what was
left of his right ear. Only the point of it stuck up; the rest was
clipped as clean as a rat-terrier's. Some fight to a finish, I thought;
some quick upper-cut of the razor of a frenzied negro writhing under the
viselike grasp of this man-gorilla with arms and hands of steel; or some
sudden whirl of a stiletto, perhaps, which had missed his heart and
taken his ear. I did not ask then, and I do not know now. It was a badge
of courage, whatever it was--a badge which thrilled and horrified me. As
I looked at the terrible mutilation, I could but recall the hideous
fascination that overcame Josiane, the heroine of Hugo's great novel,
"The Man Who Laughs," when she first caught sight of Gwynplaine's
mouth--slit from ear to ear by the Comprachicos. The outrage on the
Warden was not so grotesque, but the effect was the same.

I moved along the corridor and stood before the beasts. One, an old man
in a long white beard, leathery, sun-tanned face and hooked nose,
clasped the bars with both hands, gazing at us intently. I recognized
his kind the moment I looked at him. He was like my Jonathan Gordon, my
old fisherman who lived up in the Franconia Notch. His coarse, homespun
clothes, dyed brown with walnut-shells, slouch hat crowning his shock of
gray hair, and hickory shirt open at the throat, only heightened the
resemblance; especially the hat canted over one eye. Why he wore the hat
in such a place I could not understand, unless to be ready for departure
when his summons came.

There were eight other beasts besides this old man in the same cage, one
a boy of twenty, who leaned against the iron wall with his hands in his
pockets, his eyes following my every movement. I noticed a new blue
patch on one of his knees, which his mother, doubtless, had sewn with
her own hands, her big-rimmed spectacles on her nose, the tallow dip
lighting the log cabin. I recognized the touch. And the boy. I used to
go swimming with one just like him, forty years ago, in an old
swimming-hole in the back pasture, and hunt for honey that the
bumblebees had stored under the bank.

The old man with the beard and the canting hat looked into my eyes
keenly, but he did not speak. He had nothing to say, perhaps. Something
human had moved before him, that was all; something that could come and
go at its pleasure and break the monotony of endless hours.

"How long have you been here?" I asked, lowering my voice and stepping
closer to the bars.

Somehow I did not want the others to hear. It was almost as though I
were talking to Jonathan--my dear Jonathan--and he behind bars!

"Eleven months and three days. Reckon I be the oldest"--and he looked
about him as if for confirmation. "Yes, reckon I be."

"What for?"

"Sellin'."

The answer came without the slightest hesitation and without the
slightest trace in his voice of anything that betokened either sorrow
for his act or shame for the crime.

"Eleven months and three days of this!" I repeated to myself.
Instinctively my mind went back to all I had done, seen, and enjoyed in
these eleven months and three days. Certain individual incidents more
delightful than others stood out clear and distinct: that day under the
trees at Cookham, the Thames slipping past, the white-sailed clouds
above my tent of leaves; a morning at Dort, when Peter and I watched the
Dutch luggers anchor off the quay, and the big storm came up; a night
beyond San Giorgio, when Luigi steered the gondola in mid-air over a sea
of mirrored stars and beneath a million incandescent lamps.

I passed on to the next cage, Marny watching me but saying nothing. The
scout was in this one, the "type" in Marny's sketch. There were three of
them--tall, hickory-sapling sort of young fellows, with straight legs,
flat stomachs, and thin necks, like that of a race-horse. One had the
look of an eagle, with his beak-nose and deep-set, uncowed eyes. Another
wore his yellow hair long on his neck, Custer-fashion. The third sat on
the iron floor, his knees level with his chin, his head in his hand. He
had a sweetheart, perhaps, who loved him, or an old mother who was
wringing her hands at home. This one, I learned afterward, had come with
the last batch and was not yet accustomed to his surroundings; the
others had been awaiting trial for months. All of them wore homespun
clothes--not the ready-made clothes sold at the stores, but those that
some woman at home had cut, basted, and sewn.

Marny asked them what they were up for. Their answers differed slightly
from that of the old man, but the crime and its penalty were the same.

"Makin'," they severally replied.

There was no lowering of the eyelids when they confessed; no hangdog
look about the mouth. They would do it again when they got out, and they
intended to, only they would shoot the quicker next time. The earth was
theirs and the fulness thereof, that part of it which they owned. Their
grandfathers before them had turned their corn into whiskey and no man
had said nay, and so would they. Not the corn that they had stolen, but
the corn that they had ploughed and shucked. It was their corn, not the
Government's. Men who live in the wilderness, and feed and clothe
themselves on the things they raise with their own hands, have no
fine-spun theories about the laws that provide revenue for a Government
they never saw, don't want to see, and couldn't understand if they did.

Marny and I stood before the grating, looking each man over separately.
Strange to say, the artistic possibilities of my visit faded out of my
mind. The picturesqueness of their attire, the browns and grays
accentuated here and there by a dash of red around a hat-band or
shirt-collar--all material for my own or my friend's brush--made not
the slightest impression upon me. It was the close smell, the dim,
horrible light, the quick gleam of a pair of eyes looking out from under
shocks of matted hair--the eyes of a panther watching his prey; the dull
stare of some boyish face with all hope crushed out of it; these were
the things that possessed me.

As I stood there absorbed in the terrors before me, I was startled by
the click of the catch and the clink of keys, followed by the noiseless
swing of the steel door as it closed again.

I turned and looked down the corridor.

Into the gloom of this inferno, this foul-smelling cavern, this
assemblage of beasts, stepped a girl of twenty. A baby wrapped about
with a coarse shawl lay in her arms.

She passed me with eyes averted, and stood before the gate of the last
steel cage--the woman's end of the prison--the turnkey following slowly.
Cries of "Howdy, gal! What did ye git?" wore hurled after her, but she
made no answer. The ominous sound of drawn bolts and the click of a key,
and the girl and baby were inside the bars of the cage. These bars,
foreshortened from where I stood, looked like a row of gun-barrels in an
armory rack.

"That girl a prisoner?" I asked the Warden.

I didn't believe it. I knew, of course, that it couldn't be. I instantly
divined that she had come to comfort some brother or father, or lover,
perhaps, and had brought the baby with her because there was no place to
leave it at home. I only asked the question of the Warden so he could
deny it, and deny it, too, with some show of feeling--this man with the
sliced ear and the gorilla hands.

"Yes, she's been here some time. Judge suspended sentence a while ago.
She's gone after her things."

There was no joy over her release in his tones, nor pity for her
condition.

He spoke exactly, it seemed to me, as he would have done had he been in
charge of the iron-barred gate of the Colosseum two thousand years ago.
All that had saved the girl then from the jaws of his hungriest lion was
the twist of Nero's thumb. All that saved her now was the nod of the
Judge's head--both had the giving of life and death.

A thin mist swam before my eyes, and a great lump started from my heart
and stuck fast in my throat, but I did not answer him; it would have
done no good--might have enraged him, in fact. I walked straight to the
gate through which she had entered and peered in. I could see between
the gun-barrels now.

It was like the other cages, with barred walls and sheet-iron floors.
Built in one corner of the far end was a strong box of steel, six feet
by four by the height of the ceiling, fitted with a low door. This box
was lined with a row of bunks, one above the other. From one was thrust
a small foot covered with a stocking and part of a skirt; some woman
prisoner was ill, perhaps. Against the wall of this main cage sat two
negro women; one, I learned afterward, had stabbed a man the week
before; the other was charged with theft. The older--the murderess--came
forward when she caught sight of me, thrust out her hands between the
bars, and begged for tobacco.

In the corner of the same cage was another steel box. I saw the stooping
figure of the young girl come out of it as a dog comes out of a kennel.
She walked toward the centre of the cage--she still had the baby in her
arms--laid the child on the sheet-iron floor, where the light from the
grimy windows fell the clearer, and returned to the steel box. The child
wore but one garment--a short red-flannel shirt that held the stomach
tight and left the shrivelled legs and arms bare. It lay flat on its
back, its eyes gazing up at the ceiling, its pinched face in high light
against the dull background. Now and then it would fight the air with
its little fists or kick its toes above its head.

The girl took from the kennel a broken paper box and, returning with it,
knelt beside the child and began arranging its wardrobe, the two
negresses watching her listlessly. Not much of a wardrobe--only a
ragged shawl, some socks, a worsted cap, a pair of tiny shoes, and a
Canton-flannel wrapper, once white. This last had little arms and a
short waist. The skirt was long enough to tuck around her baby's feet
when she carried it.

I steadied myself by one of the musket-barrels, watched her while she
folded the few pitiful garments, waited until she had guided the
shrunken arms into the sleeves of the soiled wrapper and had buttoned it
over the baby's chest. Then, when the lump in my throat was about to
stop my breathing, I said:

"Will you come here, please, to the grating? I want to speak to you."

She raised her head slowly, looked at me in a tired, hopeless way, laid
her baby back on the sheet-iron floor, and walked toward me. As she came
into the glow of the overhead light, I saw that she was even younger
than I had first supposed--nearer seventeen than twenty--a girl with
something of the curious look of a young heifer in a face drawn and
lined but with anxiety. Parted over a low forehead, and tucked behind
her ears, streamed two braids of straight yellow hair in two unkempt
strands over her shoulders. Across her bosom and about her slender
figure was hooked a yellow-brown dress made in one piece. The hooks and
eyes showed wherever the strain came, disclosing the coarse chemise and
the brown of the neck beneath. This strain, the strain of an
ill-fitting garment, accentuated all the clearer, in the wrinkles about
the shoulders and around the hips, the fulness of her delicately
modelled lines; quite as would a jacket buttoned over the Milo. On the
third finger of one hand was a flat silver ring, such as is sold by the
country peddlers.

She stood quite close to the bars, patiently awaiting my next question.
She had obeyed my summons like a dog who remembered a former discipline.
No curiosity, not the slightest interest; nothing but blind obedience.
The tightened grasp of these four walls had taught her this.

"Where do you come from?" I asked.

I had to begin in some way.

"From Pineyville." The voice was that of a child, with a hard, dry note
in it.

"How old is the baby?"

"Three months and ten days." She had counted the child's age. She had
thought enough for that.

"How far is Pineyville?"

"I doan' know. It took mos' all night to git here." There was no change
in the listless monotone.

"Are you going out now?"

"Yes, soon's I kin git ready."

"How are you going to get home?"

"Walk, I reckon." There was no complaint in her tone, no sudden
exhibition of any suffering. She was only stating facts.

"Have you no money?"

"No." Same bald statement, and in the same hopeless tone. She had not
moved--not even to look at the child.

"What's the fare?"

"Six dollars and sixty-five cents." This was stated with great
exactness. It was the amount of this appalling sum that had, no doubt,
crushed out her last ray of hope.

"Did you sell any whiskey?"

"Yes, I tol' the Judge so." Still no break in her voice. It was only
another statement.

"Oh! you kept a saloon?"

"No."

"How did you sell it, then?"

"Jest out of a kag--in a cup."

"Had you ever sold any before?"

"No."

"Why did you sell it, then?"

She had been looking into my face all this time, one thin, begrimed
hand--the one with the ring on it--tight around the steel bar of the
gate that divided us. With the question, her eyes dropped until they
seemed to rest on this hand. The answer came slowly:

"The baby come, and the store wouldn't chalk nothin' for us no more."
Then she added, quickly, as if in defence of the humiliating position,
"Our corn-crib was sot afire last fall and we got behind."

For a brief instant she leaned heavily against the bars as if for
support, then her eyes sought her child. I waited until she had
reassured herself of its safety, and continued my questions, my
finger-nails sinking deeper all the time into the palms of my hands.

"Did you make the whiskey?"

"No, it was Martin Young's whiskey. My husband works for him. Martin
sent the kag down one day, and I sold it to the men. I give the money
all to Martin 'cept the dollar he was to gimme for sellin' it."

"How came you to be arrested?"

"One o' the men tol' on me 'cause I wouldn't trust him. Martin tol' me
not to let 'em have it 'thout they paid."

"How long have you been here?"

"Three months next Tuesday."

"That baby only two weeks old when they arrested you?" My blood ran hot
and cold, and my collar seemed five sizes too small, but I still held on
to myself.

"Yes." The answer was given in the same monotonous, listless voice--not
a trace of indignation over the outrage. Women with suckling babies had
no rights that anybody was bound to respect--not up in Pineyville;
certainly not the gentlemen with brass shields under the lapels of
their coats and Uncle Sam's commissions in their pockets. It was the
law of the land--why find fault with it?

I leaned closer so that I could touch her hand if need be.

"What's your name?"

"Samanthy North."

"What's your husband's name?"

"His name's North." There was a trace of surprise now in the general
monotone Then she added, as if to leave no doubt in my mind,
"Leslie North."

"Where is he?" I determined now to round up every fact.

"He's home. We've got another child, and he's takin' care of it till I
git back. He'd be to the railroad for me if he knowed I was coming; but
I couldn't tell him when to start 'cause I didn't know how long
they'd keep me."

"Is your home near the railroad?"

"No, it's thirty-six miles furder."

"How will you get from the railroad?"

"Ain't no way 'cept walkin'."

I had it now, the whole damnable, pitiful story, every fact clear-cut to
the bone. I could see it all: the look of terror when the deputy woke
her from her sleep and laid his hand upon her; the parting with the
other child; the fright of the helpless husband; the midnight ride, she
hardly able to stand, the pitiful scrap of her own flesh and blood
tight in her arms; the procession to the jail, the men in front chained
together, she bringing up the rear, walking beside the last guard; the
first horrible night in jail, the walls falling upon her, the darkness
overwhelming her, the puny infant resting on her breast; the staring,
brutal faces when the dawn came, followed by the coarse jest. No wonder
that she hung limp and hopeless to the bars of her cage, all the spring
and buoyancy, all the youth and lightness, crushed out of her.

I put my hand through the bars and laid it on her wrist.

"No, you won't walk; not if I can help it." This outburst got past the
lump slowly, one word at a time, each syllable exploding hot like balls
from a Roman candle. "You get your things together quick as you can, and
wait here until I come back," and I turned abruptly and motioned to the
turnkey to open the gate.

In the office of the Chief of Police outside I found Marny talking to
Sergeant Cram. He was waiting until I finished. It was all an old story
with Marny--every month a new batch came to Covington jail.

"What about that girl, Sergeant--the one with the baby?" I demanded, in
a tone that made them both turn quickly.

"Oh, she's all right. She told the Judge a straight story this morning,
and he let her go on 'spended sentence. They tried to make her plead
'Not guilty,' but she wouldn't lie about it, she said. She can go when
she gets ready. What are you drivin' at? Are you goin' to put up for
her?"--and a curious look overspread his face.

"I'm going to get her a ticket and give her some money to get home.
Locking up a seventeen-year-old girl, two hundred miles from home, in a
den like that, with a baby two weeks old, may be justice, but I call it
brutality! Our Government can pay its expenses without that kind of
revenue." The whole bundle of Roman candles was popping now.
Inconsequent, wholly illogical, utterly indefensible explosions. But
only my heart was working.

The Sergeant looked at Marny, relaxed the scowl about his eyebrows, and
smiled; such "softies" seemed rare to him.

"Well, if you're stuck on her--and I'm damned if I don't believe you
are--let me give you a piece of advice. Don't give her no money till she
gets on the train, and whatever you do, don't leave her here over night.
There's a gang around here"--and he jerked his thumb in the direction of
the door--"that might--" and he winked knowingly.

"You don't mean--" A cold chill suddenly developed near the roots of my
hair and trickled to my spine.

"Well, she's too good-lookin' to be wanderin' round huntin' for a
boardin'-house. You see her on the train, that's all. Starts at eight
to-night. That's the one they all go by--those who git out and can raise
the money. She ought to leave now, 'cordin' to the regulations, but as
long as you're a friend of Mr. Marny's I'll keep her here in the office
till I go home at seven o'clock. Then you'd better have someone to look
after her. No, you needn't go back and see her"--this in answer to a
movement I made toward the prison door. "I'll fix everything. Mr. Marny
knows me."

I thanked the Sergeant, and we started for the air outside--something we
could breathe, something with a sky overhead and the dear earth
underfoot, something the sun warmed and the free wind cooled.

Only one thing troubled me now. I could not take the girl to the train
myself, neither could Marny, for I had promised to lecture that same
night for the Art Club at eight o'clock, and Marny was to introduce me.
The railroad station was three miles away.

"I've got it!" cried Marny, when we touched the sidewalk, elbowing our
way among the crowd of loafers who always swarm about a place of this
kind. (He was as much absorbed in the girl's future, when he heard her
story, as I was.) "Aunt Chloe lives within two blocks of us--let's hunt
her up. She ought to be at home by this time."

The old woman was just entering her street door when she heard Marny's
voice, her basket on her arm, a rabbit-skin tippet about her neck.

"Dat I will, honey," she answered, positively, when the case was laid
before her. "_Dat I will_; 'deed an' double I will."

She stepped into the house, left her basket, joined us again on the
sidewalk, and walked with us back to the Sheriff's office.

"All right," said the Sergeant, when we brought her in. "Yes, I know the
old woman; the gal will be ready for her when she comes, but I guess I'd
better send one of my men along with 'em both far as the depot. Ain't no
use takin' no chances."

The dear old woman followed us again until we found a clerk in a branch
ticket-office, who picked out a long green slip from a library of
tickets, punched it with the greatest care with a pair of steel nippers,
and slipped it into an official envelope labelled: "K.C. Pineyville,
Ky. 8 P.M."

With this tightly grasped in her wrinkled brown hand, together with
another package of Marny's many times in excess of the stage fare of
thirty-six miles and which she slipped into her capacious bosom, Aunt
Chloe "made her manners" with the slightest dip of a courtesy and left
us with the remark:

"Sha'n't nothin' tech her, honey; gwinter stick right close to her till
de steam-cars git to movin', I'll be over early in de mawnin' an' let ye
know. Doan' worry, honey; ain't nothin' gwinter happen to her arter I
gits my han's on her."

When I came down to breakfast, Aunt Chloe was waiting for me in the
hall. She looked like the old woman in the fairy-tale in her short black
dress that came to her shoe-tops, snow-white apron and headkerchief,
covered by a close-fitting nun-like hood--only the edge of the
handkerchief showed--making her seem the old black saint that she was.
It not being one of her cleaning-days, she had "kind o' spruced herself
up a li'l mite," she said. She carried her basket, covered now with a
white starched napkin instead of the red-and-yellow bandanna of
work-days. No one ever knew what this basket contained. "Her luncheon,"
some of the art-students said; but if it did, no one had ever seen her
eat it. "Someone else's luncheon," Marny added; "some sick body whom she
looks after. There are dozens of them."

"Larrovers fur meddlins," Aunt Chloe invariably answered those whose
curiosity got the better of their discretion--an explanation which only
deepened the mystery, no one being able to translate it.

"She's safe, honey!" Aunt Chloe cried, when she caught sight of me. "I
toted de baby, an' she toted de box. Po' li'l chinkapin! Mos' break a
body's heart to see it! 'Clar to goodness, dat chile's leg warn't
bigger'n a drumstick picked to de bone. De man de Sheriff sent wid us
didn't go no furder dan de gate, an' when he lef us dey all sneaked in
an' did dere bes' ter git her from me. Wuss-lookin' harum-scarums you
ever see. Kep' a-tellin' her de ticket was good for ten days an' dey'd
go wid her back to town; an' dat if she'd stay dey'd take her 'cross de
ribber to see de city. I seed she wanted ter git home to her husban',
an' she tol' 'em so. Den dey tried to make her believe he was comin' for
her, an' dey pestered her so an' got her so mixed up wid deir lies dat I
was feared she was gwine to give in, arter all. She warn't nothin' but a
po' weak thing noways. Den I riz up an' tol' 'em dat I'd call a
pleeceman an' take dat ticket from her an' de money I gin her beside, if
she didn't stay on dat car. I didn't give her de 'velope; I had dat in
my han' to show de conductor when he come, so he could see whar she was
ter git off. Here it is"--and she handed me the ticket-seller's
envelope. "Warn't nothin' else saved me but _dat_. When dey see'd it,
dey knowed den somebody was a-lookin' arter her an' dey give in. Po'
critter! I reckon she's purty nigh home by dis time!"

The story is told. It is all true, every sickening detail. Other stories
just like it, some of them infinitely more pitiful, can be written daily
by anyone who will peer into the cages of Covington jail. There is
nothing to be done; nothing _can_ be done.

It is the law of the land--the just, holy, beneficent law, which is no
respecter of persons.



II


BUD TILDEN, MAIL-THIEF

"That's Bud Tilden, the worst of the bunch," said the jail Warden--the
warden with the sliced ear and the gorilla hands. "Reminds me of a
cat'mount I tried to tame once, only he's twice as ugly."

As he spoke, he pointed to a prisoner in a slouch hat clinging half-way
up the steel bars of his cage, his head thrust through as far as his
cheeks would permit, his legs spread apart like the letter A.

"What's he here for?" I asked.

"Bobbin' the U-nited States mail."

"Where?"

"Up in the Kentucky mountains, back o' Bug Holler. Laid for the carrier
one night, held him up with a gun, pulled him off his horse, slashed the
bottom out o' the mail-bag with his knife, took what letters he wanted,
and lit off in the woods, cool as a chunk o' ice. Oh! I tell ye, he's no
sardine; you kin see that without my tellin' ye. They'll railroad
him, sure."

"When was he arrested?"

"Last month--come down in the November batch. The dep'ties had a circus
'fore they got the irons on him. Caught him in a clearin' 'bout two
miles back o' the Holler. He was up in a corn-crib with a Winchester
when they opened on him. Nobody was hurted, but they would a-been if
they'd showed the top o' their heads, for he's strong as a bull and kin
scalp a squirrel at fifty yards. They never would a-got him if they
hadn't waited till dark and smoked him out, so one on 'em told me."
He spoke as if the prisoner had been a rattlesnake or a
sheep-stealing wolf.

The mail-thief evidently overheard, for he dropped, with a cat-like
movement, to the steel floor and stood looking at us through the bars
from under his knit eyebrows, his eyes watching our every movement.

There was no question about his strength. As he stood in the glare of
the overhead light I could trace the muscles through his rough
homespun--for he was a mountaineer, pure and simple, and not a city-bred
thief in ready-made clothes. I saw that the bulging muscles of his
calves had driven the wrinkles of his butternut trousers close up under
the knee-joint and that those of his thighs had rounded out the coarse
cloth from the knee to the hip. The spread of his shoulders had
performed a like service for his shirt, which was stretched out of shape
over the chest and back. This was crossed by but one suspender, and was
open at the throat--a tree-trunk of a throat, with all the cords
supporting the head firmly planted in the shoulders. The arms were long
and had the curved movement of the tentacles of a devil-fish. The hands
were big and bony, the fingers knotted together with knuckles of iron.
He wore no collar nor any coat; nor did he bring one with him, so the
Warden said.

I had begun my inventory at his feet as he stood gazing sullenly at us,
his great red hands tightly clasped around the bars. When in my
inspection I passed from his open collar up his tree-trunk of a throat
to his chin, and then to his face, half-shaded by a big slouch hat,
which rested on his flaring ears, and at last looked into his eyes, a
slight shock of surprise went through me. I had been examining this wild
beast with my judgment already warped by the Warden; that's why I began
at his feet and worked up. If I had started in on an unknown subject,
prepared to rely entirely upon my own judgment, I would have begun at
his eyes and worked down. My shock of surprise was the result of this
upward process of inspection. An awakening of this kind, the awakening
to an injustice done a man we have half-understood, often comes after
years of such prejudice and misunderstanding. With me this awakening
came with my first glimpse of his eyes.

There was nothing of the Warden's estimate in these eyes; nothing of
cruelty nor deceit nor greed. Those I looked into were a light blue--a
washed-out china blue; eyes that shone out of a good heart rather than
out of a bad brain; not very deep eyes; not very expressive eyes; dull,
perhaps, but kindly. The features were none the less attractive; the
mouth was large, well-shaped, and filled with big white teeth, not one
missing; the nose straight, with wide, well-turned nostrils; the brow
low, but not cunning nor revengeful; the chin strong and well-modelled,
the cheeks full and of good color. A boy of twenty I should have
said--perhaps twenty-five; abnormally strong, a big animal with small
brain-power, perfect digestion, and with every function of his body
working like a clock. Photograph his head and come upon it suddenly in a
collection of others, and you would have said: "A big country bumpkin
who ploughs all day and milks the cows at night." He might be the
bloodthirsty ruffian, the human wild beast, the Warden had described,
but he certainly did not look it. I would like to have had just such a
man on any one of my gangs with old Captain Joe over him. He would have
fought the sea with the best of them and made the work of the surf-men
twice as easy if he had taken a hand at the watch-tackles.

I turned to the Warden again. My own summing up differed materially from
his estimate, but I did not thrust mine upon him. He had had, of course,
a much wider experience among criminals--I, in fact, had had none at
all--and could not be deceived by outward appearances.

"You say they are going to try him to-day?" I asked.

"Yes, at two o'clock. Nearly that now," and he glanced at his watch.
"All the witnesses are down, I hear. They claim there's something else
mixed up in it besides robbing the mail, but I don't remember what. So
many of these cases comin' and goin' all the time! His old father was in
to see him yesterday, and a girl. Some o' the men said she was his
sweetheart, but he don't look like that kind. You oughter seen his
father, though. Greatest jay you ever see. Looked like a
fly-up-the-creek. Girl warn't much better lookin'. They make 'em out o'
brick-clay and ham fat up in them mountains. Ain't human, half on 'em.
Better go over and see the trial."

I waited in the Warden's office until the deputies came for the
prisoner. When they had formed in line on the sidewalk I followed behind
the posse, crossing the street with them to the Court-house. The
prisoner walked ahead, handcuffed to a deputy who was a head shorter
than he and half his size. A second officer walked behind; I kept close
to this rear deputy and could see every movement he made. I noticed that
his fingers never left his hip pocket and that his eye never wavered
from the slouch hat on the prisoner's head. He evidently intended to
take no chances with a man who could have made mince-meat of both of
them had his hands been free.

We parted at the main entrance, the prisoner, with head erect and a
certain fearless, uncowed look on his boyish face, preceding the
deputies down a short flight of stone steps, closely followed by
the officer.

The trial, I could see, had evidently excited unusual interest. When I
mounted the main flight to the corridor opening into the trial chamber
and entered the great hallway, it was crowded with mountaineers--wild,
shaggy, unkempt-looking fellows, most of them. All were dressed in the
garb of their locality: coarse, rawhide shoes, deerskin waistcoats,
rough, butternut-dyed trousers and coats, and a coon-skin or army slouch
hat worn over one eye. Many of them had their saddle-bags with them.
There being no benches, those who were not standing were squatting on
their haunches, their shoulders against the bare wall. Others were
huddled close to the radiators. The smell of escaping steam from these
radiators, mingling with the fumes of tobacco and the effluvia from so
many closely packed human bodies, made the air stifling.

I edged my way through the crowd and pushed through the court-room door.
The Judge was just taking his seat--a dull, heavy-looking man with a
bald head, a pair of flabby, clean-shaven cheeks, and two small eyes
that looked from under white eyebrows. Half-way up his forehead rested a
pair of gold spectacles. The jury had evidently been out for luncheon,
for they were picking their teeth and settling themselves comfortably in
their chairs.

The court-room--a new one--outraged, as usual, in its construction every
known law of proportion, the ceiling being twice too high for the walls,
and the big, uncurtained windows (they were all on one side) letting in
a glare of light that made silhouettes of every object seen against it.
Only by the closest attention could one hear or see in a room like this.

The seating of the Judge was the signal for the admission of the crowd
in the corridor, who filed in through the door, some forgetting to
remove their hats, others passing the doorkeeper in a defiant way. Each
man, as soon as his eyes became accustomed to the glare from the
windows, looked furtively toward the prisoners' box. Bud Tilden was
already in his seat between the two deputies, his hands unshackled, his
blue eyes searching the Judge's face, his big slouch hat on the floor at
his feet. What was yet in store for him would drop from the lips of
this face.

The crier of the court, a young negro, made his announcements.

I found a seat between the prisoner and the bench, so that I could hear
and see the better. The Government prosecutor occupied a seat at a table
to my right, between me and the three staring Gothic windows. When he
rose from his chair his body came in silhouette against their light.
With his goat-beard, beak-nose, heavy eyebrows, long, black hair
resting on the back of his coat-collar, bent body, loose-jointed arms,
his coat-tails swaying about his thin legs, he looked (I did not see him
in any other light) like a hungry buzzard flapping his wings before
taking flight.

He opened the case with a statement of facts. He would prove, he said,
that this mountain-ruffian was the terror of the neighborhood, in which
life was none too safe; that although this was the first time he had
been arrested, there were many other crimes which could be laid at his
door, had his neighbors not been afraid to inform upon him.

Warming up to the subject, flapping his arms aloft like a pair of wings,
he recounted, with some dramatic fervor, what he called the "lonely ride
of the tried servant of the Government over the rude passes of the
mountains," recounting the risks which these faithful men ran; then he
referred to the sanctity of the United States mails, reminding the jury
and the audience--particularly the audience--of the chaos which would
ensue if these sacred mail-bags were tampered with; "the stricken,
tear-stained face of the mother," for instance, who had been waiting for
days and weeks for news of her dying son, or "the anxious merchant
brought to ruin for want of a remittance which was to tide him over some
financial distress," neither of them knowing that at that very moment
some highwayman like the prisoner "was fattening off the result of his
theft." This last was uttered with a slapping of both hands on his
thighs, his coat-tails swaying in unison. He then went on in a graver
tone to recount the heavy penalties the Government imposed for
violations of the laws made to protect this service and its agents, and
wound up by assuring the jury of his entire confidence in their
intelligence and integrity, knowing, as he did, how just would be their
verdict, irrespective of the sympathy they might feel for one who had
preferred "the hidden walks of crime to the broad open highway of an
honest life." Altering his tone again and speaking in measured accents,
he admitted that, although the Government's witnesses had not been able
to identify the prisoner by his face, he having concealed himself in the
bushes while the rifling of the pouch was in progress, yet so full a
view was gotten of his enormous back and shoulders as to leave no doubt
in his mind that the prisoner before them had committed the assault,
since it would not be possible to find two such men, even in the
mountains of Kentucky. As his first witness he would call the
mail-carrier.

Bud had sat perfectly stolid during the harangue. Once he reached down
with one long arm and scratched his bare ankle with his forefinger, his
eyes, with the gentle light in them that had first attracted me,
glancing aimlessly about the room; then he settled back again in his
chair, its back creaking to the strain of his shoulders. Whenever he
looked at the speaker, which was seldom, a slight curl, expressing more
contempt than anxiety, crept along his lips. He was, no doubt, comparing
his own muscles to those of the buzzard and wondering what he would do
to him if he ever caught him out alone. Men of enormous strength
generally measure the abilities of others by their own standards.

"Mr. Bowditch will take the chair!" cried the prosecutor.

At the summons, a thin, wizen-faced, stubbly-bearded man of fifty, his
shirt-front stained with tobacco-juice, rose from his seat and took the
stand. The struggle for possession of the bag must have been a brief
one, for he was but a dwarf compared to the prisoner. In a low,
constrained voice--the awful hush of the court-room had evidently
impressed him--and in plain, simple words, in strong contrast to the
flowery opening of the prosecutor, he recounted the facts as he knew
them. He told of the sudden command to halt; of the attack in the rear
and the quick jerking of the mail-bags from beneath his saddle,
upsetting him into the road; of the disappearance of the robber in the
bushes, his head and shoulders only outlined against the dim light of
the stars; of the flight of the robber, and of his finding the bag a few
yards away from the place of assault with the bottom cut. None of the
letters was found opened; which ones were missing tie couldn't say. Of
one thing he was sure--none were left behind by him on the ground, when
he refilled the bag.

The bag, with a slash in the bottom as big as its mouth, was then passed
around the jury-box, each juror in his inspection of the cut seeming to
be more interested in the way in which the bag was manufactured (some of
them, I should judge, had never examined one before) than in the way in
which it was mutilated. The bag was then put in evidence and hung over
the back of a chair, mouth down, the gash in its bottom in full view of
the jury. This gash, from where I sat, looked like one inflicted on an
old-fashioned rubber football by a high kicker.

Hank Halliday, in a deerskin waistcoat and dust-stained slouch hat,
which he crumpled up in his hand and held under his chin, was the
next witness.

In a jerky, strained voice he told of his mailing a letter, from a
village within a short distance of Bug Hollow, to a girl friend of his
on the afternoon of the night of the robbery. He swore positively that
this letter was in this same mail-bag, because he had handed it to the
carrier himself before he got on his horse, and added, with equal
positiveness, that it had never reached its destination. The value or
purpose of this last testimony, the non-receipt of the letter, was not
clear to me, except upon the theory that the charge of robbery might
fail if it could be proved by the defence that no letter was missing.

Bud fastened his eyes on Halliday and smiled as he made this last
statement about the undelivered letter, the first smile I had seen
across his face, but gave no other sign indicating that Halliday's
testimony affected his chances in any way.

Then followed the usual bad-character witnesses--both friends of
Halliday, I could see; two this time--one charging Bud with all the
crimes in the decalogue, and the other, under the lead of the
prosecutor, launching forth into an account of a turkey-shoot in which
Bud had wrongfully claimed the turkey--an account which was at last cut
short by the Judge in the midst of its most interesting part, as having
no particular bearing on the case.

Up to this time no one had appeared for the accused, nor had any
objection been made to any part of the testimony except by the Judge.
Neither had any one of the prosecutor's witnesses been asked a single
question in rebuttal.

With the resting of the Government's case a dead silence fell upon the
room.

The Judge waited a few moments, the tap of his lead-pencil sounding
through the stillness, and then asked if the attorney for the defence
was ready.

No one answered. Again the Judge put the question, this time with some
impatience.

Then he addressed the prisoner.

"Is your lawyer present?"

Bud bent forward in his chair, put his hands on his knees, and answered
slowly, without a tremor in his voice:

"I ain't got none. One come yisterday to the jail, but he didn't like
what I tol' him and he ain't showed up since."

A spectator sitting by the door, between an old man and a young girl,
both evidently from the mountains, rose to his feet and walked briskly
to the open space before the Judge. He had sharp, restless eyes, wore
gloves, and carried a silk hat in one hand.

"In the absence of the prisoner's counsel, your Honor," he said, "I am
willing to go on with this case. I was here when it opened and have
heard all the testimony. I have also conferred with some of the
witnesses for the defence."

"Did I not appoint counsel in this case yesterday?" said the Judge,
turning to the clerk.

There was a hurried conference between the two, the Judge listening
wearily, cupping his ear with his hand and the clerk rising on his toes
so that he could reach his Honor's hearing the easier.

"It seems," said the Judge, resuming his position, and addressing the
room at large, "that the counsel already appointed has been called out
of town on urgent business. If the prisoner has no objection, and if
you, sir--" looking straight at the would-be attorney--"have heard all
the testimony so far offered, the Court sees no objection to your
acting in his place."

The deputy on the right side of the prisoner leaned over, whispered
something to Tilden, who stared at the Judge and shook his head. It was
evident that Bud had no objection to this nor to anything else, for that
matter. Of all the men in the room he seemed the least interested.

I turned in my seat and touched the arm of my neighbor.

"Who is that man who wants to go on with the case?"

"Oh, that's Bill Cartwright, one of the cheap, shyster lawyers always
hanging around here looking for a job. His boast is he never lost a
suit. Guess the other fellow skipped because he thought he had a better
scoop somewhere else. These poor devils from the mountains never have
any money to pay a lawyer. Court appoints 'em."

With the appointment of the prisoner's attorney the crowd in the
court-room craned their necks in closer attention, one man standing on
his chair for a better view until a deputy ordered him down. They knew
what the charge was. It was the defence they all wanted to hear. That
had been the topic of conversation around the tavern stoves of Bug
Hollow for months past.

Cartwright began by asking that the mail-carrier be recalled. The little
man again took the stand.

The methods of these police-court lawyers always interest me. They are
gamblers in evidence, most of them. They take their chances as the cases
go on; some of them know the jury--one or two is enough; some are
learned in the law--more learned, often, than the prosecutor, who is a
Government appointee with political backers, and now and then one of
them knows the Judge, who is also a political appointee and occasionally
has his party to care for. All are valuable in an election, and a few of
them are honest. This one, my neighbor told me, had held office as a
police justice and was a leader in his district.

Cartwright drew his gloves carefully from his hands, laid his silk hat
on a chair, dropped into it a package of legal papers tied with a red
string, and, adjusting his glasses, fixed his eyes on the mail-carrier.
The expression on his face was bland and seductive.

"At what hour do you say the attempted robbery took place, Mr.
Bowditch?"

"About eleven o'clock."

"Did you have a watch?"

"No."

"How do you know, then?" The question was asked in a mild way as if he
intended to help the carrier's memory.

"I don't know exactly; it may have been half-past ten or eleven."

"You, of course, saw the man's face?"

"No."

"Then you heard him speak?" Same tone as if trying his best to encourage
the witness in his statements.

"No." This was said with some positiveness. The mail-carrier evidently
intended to tell the truth.

Cartwright turned quickly with a snarl like that of a dog suddenly
goaded into a fight.

"How can you swear, then, that the prisoner made the assault?"

The little man changed color and stammered out in excuse:

"He was as big as him, anyway, and there ain't no other like him nowhere
in them parts."

"Oh, he was as _big_ as him, was he?" This retort came with undisguised
contempt. "And there are no others like him, eh? Do you know _everybody_
in Bell County, Mr. Bowditch?"

The mail-carrier did not answer.

Cartwright waited until the discomfiture of the witness could be felt by
the jury, dismissed him with a wave of his hand, and, looking over the
room, beckoned to an old man seated by a girl--the same couple he had
been talking to before his appointment by the Court--and said in a
loud voice:

"Will Mr. Perkins Tilden take-the stand?"

At the mention of his father's name, Bud, who had maintained throughout
his indifferent attitude, straightened himself erect in his chair with
so quick a movement that the deputy edged a foot nearer and
instinctively slid his hand to his hip-pocket.

A lean, cadaverous, painfully thin old man in answer to his name rose to
his feet and edged his way through the crowd to the witness-chair. He
was an inch taller than his son, though only half his weight, and was
dressed in a suit of cheap cloth of the fashion of long ago, the coat
too small for him, even for his shrunken shoulders, and the sleeves
reaching only to his wrists. As he took his seat, drawing in his long
legs toward his chair, his knee-bones, under the strain, seemed to be on
the point of coming through his trousers. His shoulders were bowed, the
incurve of his thin stomach following the line of his back. As he
settled back in his chair he passed his hand nervously over his mouth,
as if his lips were dry.

Cartwright's manner to this witness was the manner of a lackey who hangs
on every syllable that falls from his master's lips.

"At what time, Mr. Tilden, did your son Bud reach your house on the
night of the robbery?"

The old man cleared his throat and said, as if weighing each word:

"At ten minutes past ten o'clock."

"How do you fix the time?"

"I had just wound the clock when Bud come in."

"How, Mr. Tilden, how far is it to the cross-roads where the
mail-carrier says he was robbed?"

"About a mile and a half from my place."

"And how long would it take an able-bodied man to walk it?"

"'Bout fifteen minutes."

"Not more?"

"No, sir."

The Government's attorney had no questions to ask, and said so with a
certain assumed nonchalance.

Cartwright bowed smilingly, dismissed Bud's father with a satisfied
gesture of the hand, looked over the court-room with the air of a man
who was unable at the moment to find what he wanted, and in a low voice
called: "Jennetta Mooro!"

The girl, who sat within three feet of Cartwright, having followed the
old man almost to the witness-stand, rose timidly, drew her shawl closer
about her shoulders, and took the seat vacated by Bud's father. She had
that half-fed look in her face which one sometimes finds in the women of
the mountain-districts. She was frightened and very pale. As she pushed
her poke-bonnet back from her ears her unkempt brown hair fell about
her neck.

But Tilden, at mention of her name, half-started from his chair and
would have risen to his feet had not the officer laid his hand upon him.

He seemed on the point of making some protest which the action of the
officer alone restrained.

Cartwright, after the oath had been administered, began in a voice so
low that the jury stretched their necks to listen:

"Miss Moore, do you know the prisoner?"

"Yes, sir, I know Bud." She had one end of the shawl between her fingers
and was twisting it aimlessly. Every eye in the room was fastened
upon her.

"How long have you known him?"

There was a pause, and then she said in a faint voice:

"Ever since he and me growed up."

"Ever since you and he grew up, eh?" This repetition was in a loud
voice, so that any juryman dull of hearing might catch it. "Was he at
your house on the night of the robbery?"

"Yes, sir."

"At what time?"

"'Bout ten o'clock." This was again repeated.

"How long did he stay?"

"Not more'n ten minutes."

"Where did he go then?"

"He said he was goin' home."

"How far is it to his home from your house?"

"'Bout ten minutes' walk."

"That will do, Miss Moore," said Cartwright, and took his seat.

The Government prosecutor, who had sat with shoulders hunched up, his
wings pulled in, rose to his feet with the aid of a chair-back,
stretched his long arms above his head, and then, lowering one hand
level with the girl's face, said, as he thrust one sharp, skinny finger
toward her:

"Did anybody else come to see you the next night after the robbery?"

There was a pause, during which Cartwright busied himself with his
papers. One of his methods was never to seem interested in the
cross-examination of any one of his witnesses.

The girl's face flushed, and she began to fumble the shawl nervously
with her fingers.

"Yes, Hank Halliday," she murmured, in a low voice.

"Mr. Halliday, who has testified here?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did he want?"

"He wanted to know if I'd got a letter he'd writ me day before. And I
tol' him I hadn't. Then he 'lowed he'd a-brought it to me himself if
he'd knowed Bud was goin' to turn thief and hold up the mail-man. I
hadn't heard nothin' 'bout it and nobody else had till he began to talk.
I opened the door then and tol' him to walk out; that I wouldn't hear
nobody speak that way 'bout Bud Tilden. That was 'fore they'd
'rested Bud."

"Have you got that letter now?"

"No, sir."

"Did you ever get it?"

"No, sir."

"Did you ever see it?"

"No, and I don't think it was ever writ."

"But he _has_ written you letters before?"

"He used to; he don't now."

"That will do."

The girl took her place again behind the old man.

Cartwright rose to his feet with great dignity, walked to the chair on
which rested his hat, took from it the package of papers to serve as an
orator's roll--he did not open it, and they evidently had no bearing on
the case--and addressed the Judge, the package held aloft in his hand:

"Your Honor, there's not been a particle of evidence so far produced in
this court to convict this man of this crime. I have not conferred with
him, and therefore do not know what answers he has to make to this
infamous charge. I am convinced, however, that his own statement under
oath will clear up at once any doubt remaining in the minds of this
honorable jury of his innocence."

This was said with a certain ill-concealed triumph in his voice. I saw
now why he had taken the case, and saw, too, the drift of his
defence--everything thus far pointed to the old hackneyed plea of an
alibi. He had evidently determined on this course of action when he sat
listening to the stories Bud's father and the girl had told him as he
sat beside them on the bench near the door. Their testimony, taken in
connection with the uncertain testimony of the Government's principal
witness, the mail-carrier, as to the exact time of the assault, together
with the prisoner's testimony stoutly denying the crime, would insure
either an acquittal or a disagreement. The first would result in his
fees being paid by the court, the second would add to this amount
whatever Bud's friends could scrape together to induce him to go on with
the second trial. In either case his masterly defence was good for an
additional number of clients and perhaps--of votes. It is humiliating to
think that any successor of Choate, Webster, or Evarts should earn his
bread in this way, but it is true all the same.

"The prisoner will take the stand!" cried Cartwright, in a firm voice.

As the words left his mouth, the noise of shuffling feet and the
shifting of positions for a bettor view of the prisoner became so loud
that the Judge rapped for order, the clerk repeating it with the end of
his ruler.

Bud lifted himself to his feet slowly (his being called was evidently as
much of a surprise to him as it was to the crowded room), looked about
him carelessly, his glance resting first on the girl's face and then on
the deputy beside him. He stepped clumsily down from the raised platform
and shouldered his way to the witness-chair. The prosecuting attorney
had evidently been amazed at the flank movement of his opponent, for he
moved his position so he could look squarely in Bud's face. As the
prisoner sank into his seat, the room became hushed in silence.

Bud kissed the book mechanically, hooked his feet together and, clasping
his big hands across his waist-line, settled his great body between the
arms of the chair, with his chin resting on his shirt-front. Cartwright,
in his most impressive manner, stepped a foot closer to Bud's chair.

"Mr. Tilden, you have heard the testimony of the mail-carrier; now be
good enough to tell the jury where you were on the night of the
robbery--how many miles from this _mail-sack_?" and he waved his hand
contemptuously toward the bag. It was probably the first time in all his
life that Bud had heard any man dignify his personality with any
such title.

In recognition of the compliment, Bud raised his chin slightly and fixed
his eyes more intently on his questioner. Up to this time he had not
taken the slightest notice of him.

"'Bout as close's I could git to it--'bout three feet, I should
say--maybe less."

Cartwright gave a slight start and bit his lip. Evidently the prisoner
had misunderstood him. The silence continued.

"I don't mean _here_, Mr. Tilden;" and he pointed to the bag. "I mean
the night of the so-called robbery."

"That's what I said; 'bout as close's I could git."

"Well, did you rob the mail?" This was asked uneasily, but with a
half-concealed laugh in his voice as if the joke would appear in
a minute.

"No."

"No, of course not." The tone of relief was apparent.

"Well, do you know anything about the cutting of the bag?"

"Yes."

"Who did it?"

"Me."

"_You?"_ The surprise was now an angry one.

"Yes, me."

At this unexpected reply the Judge pushed his glasses high up on his
forehead with a quick motion and leaned over his bench, his eyes on the
prisoner. The jury looked at each other with amazement; such scenes were
rare in their experience. The prosecuting attorney smiled grimly.
Cartwright looked as if someone had struck him a sudden blow in
the face.

"What for?" he stammered. It was evidently the only question left for
him to ask. All his self-control was gone now, his face livid, an angry
look in his eyes. That any man with State's prison yawning before him
could make such a fool of himself seemed to astound him.

Bud turned slowly and, pointing his finger at Halliday, said between
his closed teeth:

"Ask Hank Halliday; he knows."

The buzzard sprang to his feet. There was the scent of carrion in the
air now; I saw it in his eyes.

"We don't want to ask Mr. Halliday; we want to ask you. Mr. Halliday is
not on trial, and we want the truth if you can tell it."

The irregularity of the proceeding was unnoticed in the tense
excitement.

Bud looked at him as a big mastiff looks at a snarling cur with a look
more of pity than contempt. Then he said slowly, accentuating each word:

"Keep yer shirt on. You'll git the truth--git the whole of it. Git what
you ain't lookin' for. There ain't no liars up in our mountains 'cept
them skunks in Gov'ment pay you fellers send up to us, and things like
Hank Halliday. He's wuss nor any skunk. A skunk's a varmint that don't
stink tell ye meddle with him, but Hank Halliday stinks all the time.
He's one o' them fellers that goes 'round with books in their pockets
with picters in 'em that no girl oughter see and no white man oughter
read. He gits 'em down to Louisville. There ain't a man in Pondville
won't tell ye it's true. He shoved one in my outside pocket over to
Pondville when I warn't lookin', the day 'fore I held up this man
Bowditch, and went and told the fellers 'round the tavern that I had
it. They come and pulled it out and had the laugh on me, and then he
began to talk and said he'd write to Jennetta and send her one o' the
picters by mail and tell her he'd got it out o' my coat, and he did. Sam
Kellers seen Halliday with the letter and told me after Bowditch had got
it in his bag. I laid for Bowditch at Pondville Corners, but he got past
somehow, and I struck in behind Bill Somers's mill, and crossed the
mountain and caught up with him as he was ridin' through the piece o'
woods near the clearin'. I didn't know but he'd try to shoot, and I
didn't want to hurt him, so I crep' up behind and threw him in the
bushes, cut a hole in the bag, and got the letter. That's the only one I
wanted and that's the only one I took. I didn't rob no mail, but I
warn't goin' to hev an honest, decent girl like Jennetta git that
letter, and there warn't no other way."

The stillness that followed was broken only by the Judge's voice.

"What became of that letter?"

"I got it. Want to see it?"

"Yes."

Bud felt in his pockets as if looking for something, and then, with an
expression as if he had suddenly remembered, remarked:

"No, I ain't got none. They stole my knife when they 'rested me." Then
facing the courtroom, he added: "Somebody lend me a knife, and pass me
my hat over there 'longside them sheriffs."

[Illustration: "I threw him in the bushes and got the letter."]

The court-crier took the hat from one of the deputies, and the clerk, in
answer to a nod of assent from the Judge, passed Bud an ink-eraser with
a steel blade in one end.

The audience now had the appearance of one watching a juggler perform a
trick. Bud grasped the hat in one hand, turned back the brim, inserted
the point of the knife between the hat lining and the hat itself and
drew out a yellow envelope stained with dirt and perspiration.

"Here it is. I ain't opened it, and what's more, they didn't find it
when they searched me;" and he looked again toward the deputies.

The Judge leaned forward in his seat and said:

"Hand me the letter."

The letter was passed up by the court-crier, every eye following it. His
Honor examined the envelope, and, beckoning to Halliday, said:

"Is this your letter?"

Halliday stepped to the side of the Judge, fingered the letter closely,
and said: "Looks like my writin'."

"Open it and see."

Halliday broke the seal with his thumb-nail, and took out half a sheet
of note-paper closely written on one side, wrapped about a small
picture-card.

"Yes, it's my letter;" and he glanced sheepishly around the room and
hung his head, his face scarlet.

The Judge leaned back in his chair, raised his hand impressively, and
said gravely:

"This case is adjourned until ten o'clock tomorrow."

Two days later I again met the Warden as he was entering the main door
of the jail. He had been over to the Court-house, he said, helping the
deputy along with a new "batch of moonshiners."

"What became of Bud Tilden?" I asked.

"Oh, he got it in the neck for robbin' the mails, just's I told you he
would. Peached on himself like a d---- fool and give everything dead
away. He left for Kansas this morning. Judge give him twenty years."

He is still in the lock-step at Leavenworth prison. He has kept it up
now for two years. His hair is short, his figure bent, his step
sluggish. The law is slowly making an animal of him--that wise,
righteous law which is no respecter of persons.



III


"ELEVEN MONTHS AND TEN DAYS"

It was a feeble old man of seventy-two this time who sat facing the
jury, an old man with bent back, scant gray hair, and wistful,
pleading eyes.

He had been arrested in the mountains of Kentucky and had been brought
to Covington for trial, chained to another outlaw, one of those
"moonshiners" who rob the great distilleries of part of their profits
and the richest and most humane Government on earth of part of
its revenue.

For eleven months and ten days he had been penned up in one of the steel
cages of Covington jail.

I recognized him the moment I saw him.

He was the old fellow who spoke to me from between the bars of his den
on my visit the week before to the inferno--the day I found Samanthy
North and her baby--and who told me then he was charged with "sellin'"
and that he "reckoned" he was the oldest of all the prisoners about him.
He had on the same suit of coarse, homespun clothes--the trousers hiked
up toward one shoulder from the strain of a single suspender; the
waistcoat held by one button; the shirt open at the neck, showing the
wrinkled throat, wrinkled as an old saddle-bag, and brown, hairy chest.

Pie still carried his big slouch hat, dust-begrimed and frayed at the
edges. It hung over one knee now, a red cotton handkerchief tucked under
its brim. He was superstitious about it, no doubt; he would wear it when
he walked out a free man, and wanted it always within reach. Hooked in
its band was a trout-fly, a red ibis, some souvenir, perhaps, of the
cool woods that he loved, and which brought back to him the clearer the
happy, careless days which might never be his again.

The trout-fly settled all doubts in my mind as to his origin and his
identity. He was not a "moonshiner"; he was my old trout fisherman,
Jonathan Gordon, come back to life, even to his streaming, unkempt
beard, leathery skin, thin, peaked nose, and deep, searching eyes. That
the daisies which Jonathan loved were at that very moment blooming over
his grave up in his New Hampshire hills, and had been for years back,
made no difference to me. I could not be mistaken. The feeble old man
sitting within ten feet of me, fidgeting about in his chair, the glare
of the big windows flooding his face with light, his long legs tucked
under him, his bony hands clasped together, the scanty gray hair adrift
over his forehead, his slouch hat hooked over his knee, was my own
Jonathan come back to life. His dog, George, too, was somewhere within
reach, and so were his fishing-pole and creel, with its leather
shoulder-band polished like a razor-strop. You who read this never saw
Jonathan, perhaps, but you can easily carry his picture in your mind by
remembering some one of the other old fellows you used to see on Sunday
mornings hitching their horses to the fence outside of the country
church, or sauntering through the woods with a fish-pole over their
shoulders and a creel by their sides, or with their heads together on
the porch of some cross-roads store, bartering eggs and butter for
cotton cloth and brown sugar. All these simple-minded, open-aired,
out-of-doors old fellows, with the bark on them, are very much alike.

The only difference between the two men lay in the expression of the two
faces. Jonathan always looked straight at you when he talked, so that
you could fathom his eyes as you would fathom a deep pool that mirrored
the stars. This old man's eyes wavered from one to another, lighting
first on the jury, then on the buzzard of a District Attorney, and then
on the Judge, with whom rested the freedom which meant life or which
meant imprisonment: at his age--death. This wavering look was the look
of a dog who had been an outcast for weeks, or who had been shut up with
a chain about his throat; one who had received only kicks and cuffs for
pats of tenderness--a cringing, pleading look ready to crouch beneath
some fresh cruelty.

This look, as the trial went on and the buzzard of an attorney flapped
out his denunciations, deepened to an expression of abject fear. In
trying to answer the questions hurled at him, he would stroke his
parched throat mechanically with his long fingers as if to help the
syllables free themselves. In listening to the witnesses he would curve
his body forward, one skinny hand cupped behind his ear, his jaw
dropping slowly, revealing the white line of the lips above the
straggling beard. Now and then as he searched the eyes of the jury there
would flash out from his own the same baffled, anxious look that comes
into dear old Joe Jefferson's face when he stops half-way up the
mountain and peers anxiously into the eyes of the gnomes who have stolen
out of the darkness and are grouping themselves silently about him--a
look expressing one moment his desire to please and the next his anxiety
to escape.

There was no doubt about the old man's crime, not the slightest. It had
been only the tweedledum and tweedledee of the law that had saved him
the first time. They would not serve him now. The evidence was too
conclusive, the facts too plain. The "deadwood," as such evidence is
called by the initiated, lay in heaps--more than enough to send him to
State prison for the balance of his natural life. The buzzard of a
District Attorney who had first scented out his body with an indictment,
and who all these eleven months and ten days had sat with folded wings
and hunched-up shoulders, waiting for his final meal--I had begun to
dislike him in the Bud Tilden trial, but I hated him now (a foolish,
illogical prejudice, for he was only doing his duty as he saw it)--had
full control of all the "deadwood"; had it with him, in fact. There were
not only some teaspoonfuls of the identical whiskey which this
law-breaker had sold, all in an eight-ounce vial properly corked and
labelled, but there was also the identical silver dime which had been
paid for it. One of the jury was smelling this whiskey when I entered
the court-room; another was fingering the dime. It was a good dime, and
bore the stamp of the best and greatest nation on the earth. On one side
was the head of the Goddess of Liberty and on the other was the wreath
of plenty: some stalks of corn and the bursting heads of wheat, with one
or two ivy leaves twisted together, suggesting honor and glory and
achievement. The "deadwood"--the evidence--was all right. All that
remained was for the buzzard to flap his wings once or twice in a
speech; then the jury would hold a short consultation, a few words would
follow from the presiding Judge, and the carcass would be ready for the
official undertaker, the prison Warden.

How wonderful the system, how mighty the results!

One is often filled with admiration and astonishment at the perfect
working of this mighty engine, the law. Properly adjusted, it rests on
the bedplate of equal rights to all men; is set in motion by the hot
breath of the people--superheated often by popular clamor; is kept safe
by the valve of a grand jury; is governed in its speed by the wise and
prudent Judge, and regulated in its output by a jury of twelve men.

Sometimes in the application of its force this machine, being man-made,
like all machines, and thus without a soul, gets out of order, loosens a
cog or bolt perhaps, throwing the mechanism "out of gear," as it is
called. When this happens, the engine resting on its bed-plate still
keeps its foundation, but some lesser part, the loom or lathe or
driving-wheel, which is another way of saying the arrest, the trial or
the conviction, goes awry. Sometimes the power-belt is purposely thrown
off, the machinery stopped, and a consultation takes place, resulting in
a disagreement or a new trial. When the machine is started again, it is
started more carefully, with the first experience remembered. Sometimes
the rightful material--the criminal, or the material from which the
criminal is made--to feed this loom or lathe or driving-wheel, is
replaced by some unsuitable material like the girl whose hair became
entangled in a flying-belt and whose body was snatched up and whirled
mercilessly about. Only then is the engine working on its bed-plate
brought to a standstill. The steam of the boiler, the breath of the
people, keeps up, but it is withheld from the engine until the mistake
can be rectified and the girl rescued. The law of mercy, the divine law,
now asserts itself. This law, being the law of God, is higher than the
law of man. Some of those who believe in the man-law and who stand over
the mangled body of the victim, or who sit beside her bed, bringing her
slowly back to life, affirm that the girl was careless and deserved her
fate. Others, who believe in the God-law, maintain that the engine is
run not to kill but to protect, not to maim but to educate, and that the
fault lies in the wrong application of the force, not in the
force itself.

So it was with this old man. Eleven months and ten days before this day
of his second trial (eleven months and three days when I first saw him),
a flying-belt set in motion up in his own mountain-home had caught and
crushed him. To-day he was still in the maw of the machinery, his
courage gone, his spirit broken, his heart torn. The group about his
body, not being a sympathetic group, were insisting that the engine
could do no wrong; that the victim was not a victim at all, but lawful
material to be ground up. This theory was sustained by the District
Attorney. Every day he must have fresh materials. The engine must run.
The machinery must be fed.

And his record?

Ah, how often is this so in the law!--his record must be kept good.

       *       *       *       *       *

After the whiskey had been held up to the light and the dime fingered,
the old man's attorney--a young lawyer from the old man's own town, a
smooth-faced young fellow who had the gentle look of a hospital nurse
and who was doing his best to bring the broken body back to life and
freedom--put the victim on the stand.

"Tell the jury exactly how it all happened," he said, "and in your own
way, just as you told it to me."

"I'll try, sir; I'll do my best." It was Rip's voice, only fainter. He
tugged at his collar as if to breathe the easier, cleared his throat and
began again. "I ain't never been in a place like this but once before,
and I hope you'll forgive me if I make any mistakes," and he looked
about the room, a flickering, half-burnt-out smile trembling on
his lips.

"Well, I got a piece of land 'bout two miles back of my place that
belongs to my wife, and I ain't never fenced it in, for I ain't never
had no time somehow to cut the timber to do it, she's been so sickly
lately. 'Bout a year ago I was goin' 'long toward Hi Stephens's mill
a-lookin' for muskrats when I heard some feller's axe a-workin' away,
and I says to Hi, 'Hi, ain't that choppin' goin' on on the wife's land?'
and he said it was, and that Luke Shanders and his boys had been
drawin' out cross-ties for the new railroad; thought I knowed it.

"Well, I kep' 'long up and come on Luke jes's he was throwin' the las'
stick onto his wagon. He kinder started when he see me, jumped on and
begin to drive off. I says to him, 'Luke,' I says, 'I ain't got no
objection to you havin' a load of wood; there's plenty of it; but it
don't seem right for you to take it 'thout askin', 'specially since the
wife's kind o' peaked and it's her land and not yourn.' He hauled the
team back on their hind legs, and he says:

"'When I see fit to ask you or your old woman's leave to cut timber on
my own land, I will. Me and Lawyer Fillmore has been a-lookin' into them
deeds, and this timber is mine;' and he driv off.

"I come along home and studied 'bout it a bit, and me and the wife
talked it over. We didn't want to make no fuss, but we knowed he was
alyin', but that ain't no unusual thing for Luke Shanders.

"Well, the nex' mornin' I got into Pondville 'bout eight o'clock and set
a-waitin' till Lawyer Fillmore come in. He looked kind o' shamefaced
when he see me, and I says, 'What's this Luke Shanders's been a-tellin'
me 'bout your sayin' my wife's timberland is hisn?'

"Then he began 'splainin' that the 'riginal lines was drawed wrong and
that old man Shanders's land, Luke's father, run to the brook and took
in all the white oak on the wife's lot and----"

The buzzard sprang to his feet and shrieked out:

"Your Honor, I object to this rigmarole. Tell the jury right away"--and
he faced the prisoner--"what you know about this glass of whiskey. Get
right down to the facts; we're not cutting cross-ties in this court."

The old man caught his breath, placed his fingers suddenly to his lips
as if to choke back the forbidden words, and, in an apologetic
voice, murmured:

"I'm gettin' there's fast's I kin, sir, 'deed I am; I ain't hidin'
nothin'."

He wasn't. Anyone could see it in his face.

"Better let him go on in his own way," remarked the Judge,
indifferently. His Honor was looking over some papers, and the
monotonous tones of the witness diverted attention. Most of the jury,
too, had already lost interest in the story. One of the younger members
had settled himself in his chair, thrust his hands into his pockets,
stretched out his legs, and had shut his eyes as if to take a nap.
Nothing so far had implicated either the whiskey or the dime; when it
did he would wake up.

The old man turned a grateful glance toward the Judge, leaned forward in
his chair, and with bent head looked about him on the floor as if trying
to pick up the lost end of his story. The young attorney, in an
encouraging tone, helped him find it with a question:

"When did you next see Mr. Fillmore and Luke Shanders?"

"When the trial come off," answered the old man, raising his head again.
"Course we couldn't lose the land. 'Twarn't worth much till the new
railroad come through; then the oak come handy for cross-ties. That's
what set Fillmore and Luke Shanders onto it.

"When the case was tried, the Judge seed they couldn't bring no 'riginal
deed 'cept one showin' that Luke Shanders and Fillmore was partners in
the steal, and the Judge 'lowed they'd have to pay for the timber they
cut and hauled away.

"They went round then a-sayin' they'd get even, though wife and I 'lowed
we'd take anything reasonable for what hurt they done us. And that went
on till one day 'bout a year ago Luke come into my place and said he and
Lawyer Fillmore would be over the next day; that they was tired o'
fightin', and that if I was willin' to settle they was.

"One o' the new Gov'ment dep'ties was sittin' in my room at the time. He
was goin' 'long up to town-court, he said, and had jest drapped in to
pass the time o' day. There he is sittin' over there," and he pointed to
his captor.

"I hadn't never seen him before, though I know a good many of 'em, but
he showed me his badge, and I knowed who he was.

"The nex' mornin' Lawyer Fillmore and Luke stopped outside and hollered
for me to come out. I wanted 'em to come in. Wife had baked some biscuit
and we was determined to be sociable-like, now that they was willin' to
do what was fair, and I 'lowed they must drive up and git out. They said
that that's what they come for, only that they had to go a piece down
the road, and they'd be back agin in a half-hour with the money.

"Then Luke Shanders 'lowed he was cold, and asked if I had a drap o'
whiskey."

At mention of the all-important word a visible stir took place in the
court-room. The young man with the closed eyes opened them and sat up in
his chair. The jury ceased whispering to one another; the Judge pushed
his spectacles back on his forehead and moved his papers aside; the
buzzard stretched his long neck an inch farther out of his shirt-collar
and lowered his head in attention. The spigot, which up to this time had
run only "emptyings," was now giving out the clear juice of the
wine-vat. Each man bent his tin cup of an ear to catch it. The old man
noticed the movement and looked about him anxiously, as if dreading
another rebuff. He started to speak, cleared his throat, pulled
nervously at his beard for a moment, glancing furtively about the room,
and in a lower tone repeated the words:

"Asked if I had a drap o' whiskey. Well, I always take a dram when I
want it, and I had some prime stuff my son Ned had sent me over from
Frankfort, so I went hack and poured out 'bout four fingers in a glass,
and took it out to him.

"After he drunk it he handed me back the glass and driv off, sayin' he'd
be round later. I took the glass into the house agin and sot it
'longside the bottle on the mantel, and when I turned round there sot
the Gov'ment dep'ty. He'd come in, wife said, while I was talkin' with
Luke in the road. When he see the glass he asked if I had a license, and
I told him I didn't sell no liquor, and he asked me what that was, and I
told him it was whiskey, and then he got the bottle and took a smell of
it, and then he held up the glass and turned it upside down and out
drapped a ten-cent piece. Then he 'rested me!"

The jury was all attention now; the several exhibits were coming into
view. One fat, red-faced juror, who had a dyed mustache and looked like
a sporting man, would have laughed outright had not the Judge checked
him with a stern look.

"You didn't put the dime there, did you?" the young attorney asked, in a
tone that implied a negative answer.

"No, sir; I don't take no money for what I give a man." This came with a
slight touch of indignation.

"Do you know who put it there?"

"Well, there warn't nobody but Luke Shanders could 'a' done it, 'cause
nobody had the glass but him. I heard since that it was all a put-up
job, that they had swore I kep' a roadside, and they had sot the dep'ty
onto me; but I don't like to think men kin be so mean, and I ain't
a-sayin' it now. If they knew what I've suffered for what they done to
me, they couldn't help but feel sorry for me if they're human."

He stopped and passed his hands wearily over his forehead. The jury sat
still, their eyes riveted on the speaker. Even the red-faced man was
listening now.

For an instant there was a pause. Then the old man reached forward in
his seat, his elbows on his knees, his hands held out as if in appeal,
and in a low, pleading tone addressed the jury. Strange to say, neither
the buzzard nor the Judge interrupted the unusual proceeding:

"Men, I hope you will let me go home now; won't you, please? I ain't
never been 'customed all my life to bein' shut up, and it comes purty
hard, not bein' so young as I was. I ain't findin' no fault, but it
don't seem to me I ever done anythin' to deserve all that's come to me
lately. I got 'long best way I could over there"--and he pointed in
the direction of the steel cages--"till las' week, when Sam Jelliff come
down to see his boy and told me the wife was took sick bad, worse than
she's been yet. She ain't used to bein' alone; you'd know that if you
could see her. The neighbors is purty good to her, I hear, but nobody
don't understand her like me, she and me bein' so long together--mos'
fifty years now. You'll let me go home, won't you, men? I git so tired,
so tired; please let me go."

[Illustration: "I git so tired, so tired; please let me go."]

The buzzard was on his feet now, his arms sawing the air, his strident
voice filling the courtroom.

He pleaded for the machine--for the safety of the community, for the
majesty of the law. He demanded instant conviction for this trickster,
this Fagin among men, this hoary-headed old scoundrel who had insulted
the intelligence of twelve of the most upright men he had ever seen in a
jury-box, insulted them with a tale that even a child would laugh at.
When at last he folded his wings, hunched up his shoulders and sat down,
and the echoes of his harsh voice had died away, it seemed to me that I
could hear vibrating through the room, as one hears the murmur of a
brook after a storm, the tender tones of the old man pleading as if
for his life.

The jury had listened to the buzzard's harangue, with their eyes, not
with their ears. Down in their hearts there still rang the piteous
words. The man-made machine was breaking down; its mechanism out of
"gear"; the law that governed it defective. The God-law, the law of
mercy, was being set in motion.

The voice of the Judge trembled a little as he delivered his charge, as
if somehow a stray tear had clogged the passage from his heart to his
lips. In low, earnest tones that every man strained his ear to catch, he
reviewed the testimony of the witnesses, those I had not heard; took up
the uncontradicted statement of the Deputy Marshal as evidenced by the
exhibits before them; passed to the motive behind the alleged
conspiracy; dwelt for a moment on the age and long confinement of the
accused, and ended with the remark that if they believed his story to be
an explanation of the facts, they must acquit him.

They never left their seats. Even the red-faced man voted out of turn in
his eagerness. The God-law had triumphed! The old man was free.

The throng in the court-room rose and made their way to the doors, the
old man going first, escorted by an officer to see him safely outside.
The Judge disappeared through a door; the clerk lifted the lid of his
desk and stowed beneath it the greasy, ragged Bible, stained with the
lies of a thousand lips. The buzzard crammed his hat over his eyes,
turned, and without a word to anyone, stalked out of the room.

I mingled with the motley throng, my ears alert for any spoken opinions.
I had seen the flying-belt thrown from the machine and the stoppage of
the engine. I wanted now to learn something of the hot breath of the
people who had set it in motion eleven months and ten days before.

"Reckon he'll cut a blue streak for home now," muttered a court-lounger,
buttoning up his coat; "that is, if he's got one. You'll never catch him
sellin' any more moonshine."

"Been me, I'd soaked him," blurted out a corner-loafer. "If you can't
convict one of these clay-eaters when you've got him dead to rights,
ain't no use havin' no justice."

"I thought Tom [the buzzard] would land him," said a stout,
gray-whiskered lawyer who was gathering up his papers. "First case Tom's
lost this week. Goes pretty hard with him, you know, when he loses
a case."

"It would have been an outrage, sir, if he had won it," broke in a
stranger. "The arrest of an old man like that on such a charge, and his
confinement for nearly a year in a hole like that one across the street,
is a disgrace. Something is rotten in the way the laws are administered
in the mountains of Kentucky, or outrages like this couldn't occur."

"He wouldn't thank you, sir, for interfering," remarked a bystander.
"Being shut up isn't to him what it is to you and me. He's been taken
care of for a year, hasn't he? Warmed and fed, and got his three meals a
day. That's a blamed sight more than he gets at home. They're only
half-human, these mountaineers, anyway. Don't worry; he's all right."

"You've struck it first time," retorted the Deputy Marshal who had
smelled the whiskey, found the dime, and slipped the handcuffs on the
old man's withered wrists. "Go slow, will you?" and he faced the
stranger. "We got to do our duty, ain't we? That's the law, and there
ain't no way gittin' round it. And if we make mistakes, what of it?
We've got to make mistakes sometimes, or we wouldn't catch half of 'em.
The old skeesiks ought to be glad to git free. See?"

Suddenly there came to my mind the realization of the days that were to
follow and all that they would bring to him of shame. I thought of the
cold glance of his neighbors, the frightened stare of the children ready
to run at the approach of the old jail-bird, the coarse familiarity of
the tavern lounger. Then the cruelty of it all rose before me. Who would
recompense him for the indignities he had suffered--the deadly chill of
the steel clamps; the long days of suspense; the bitterness of the first
disagreement; the foul air of the inferno, made doubly foul by close
crowding of filthy bodies, inexpressibly horrible to one who had
breathed all his life the cool, pure air of the open with only the big
clean trees for his comrades?

And if at last his neighbors should take pity upon him and drive out the
men who had wrecked his old age, and he should wander once more up the
brook with his rod over his shoulder, the faithful dog at his heels, and
a line of the old song still alive in his heart, what about those eleven
months and ten days of which the man-law had robbed him?

O mighty machine! O benign, munificent law! Law of a people who boast of
mercy and truth and equal rights and justice to all. Law of a land with
rivers of gold and mountains of silver, the sum of its wealth astounding
the world.

What's to be done about it?

Nothing.

Better drag a dozen helpless Samanthy Norths from their homes, their
suckling babes in their arms, and any number of gray-haired old men from
their cabins, than waive one jot or tittle of so just a code; and
lose--the tax on whiskey.



CAP'N BOB OF THE SCREAMER

Captain Bob Brandt dropped in to-day, looking brown and ruddy, and
filling my office with, a breeze and freshness that seemed to have
followed him all the way in from the sea.

"Just in, Captain?" I cried, springing to my feet, my fingers closing
round his--no more welcome visitor than Captain Bob ever pushes open my
office door.

"Yes--Teutonic."

"Where did you pick her up--Fire Island?"

"No; 'bout hundred miles off Montauk."

Captain Bob has been a Sandy Hook pilot for some years back.

"How was the weather?" I had a chair ready for him now and was lifting
the lid of my desk in search of a box of cigars.

"Pretty dirty. Nasty swell on, and so thick you could hack holes in it.
Come pretty nigh missin' her"--and the Captain opened his big
storm-coat, hooked his cloth cap with its ear-tabs on one prong of the
back of one office-chair, stretched his length in another, and, bending
forward, reached out his long, brawny arm for the cigar I was extending
toward him.

I have described this sea-dog before--as a younger sea-dog--twenty
years younger, in fact, he was in my employ then--he and his sloop
Screamer. Every big foundation stone that Caleb set in Shark Ledge
Light--the one off Keyport harbor--can tell you about them both.

In those light-house days this Captain Bob was "a tall, straight,
blue-eyed young fellow of twenty-two, with a face like an open book--one
of those perfectly simple, absolutely fearless, alert men found so often
on the New England coast, with legs and arms of steel, body of hickory,
and hands of whalebone; cabin boy at twelve, common sailor at sixteen,
first mate at twenty, and full captain the year he voted."

He is precisely the same kind of man to-day, plus twenty years of
experience. The figure is still the figure of his youth, the hickory a
little better seasoned, perhaps, and the steel and whalebone a little
harder, but they have lost none of their spring and vitality. The ratio
of promotion has also been kept up. That he should now rank as the most
expert pilot on the station was quite to be expected. He could have
filled as well a commander's place on the bridge, had he chosen to work
along those lines.

And the modesty of the man!

Nothing that he has done, or can still do, has ever stretched his hat
measure or swelled any part of his thinking apparatus. The old pilot-cap
is still number seven, and the sensible head beneath it number seven,
too. It could be number eight, or nine, or even ten, if it had expanded
in proportion to the heroic quality of many of his deeds. During the
light-house days, for instance, when some sudden, shift of wind would
churn the long rollers into bobbles and then into frenzied seas that
smothered the Ledge in white suds, if a life-boat was to be launched in
the boiling surf, the last man to jump aboard, after a mighty push with
his long hindmost leg, was sure to be this same bundle of whalebone and
hickory. And should this boat, a few minutes later, go whirling along in
the "Race," bottom side up, with every worker safe astride her keel,
principally because of Captain Bob's coolness and skill in hauling them
out of the water, again the last man to crawl beside the rescued crew
would be this same long-legged, long armed skipper.

Or should a guy-rope snap with a sound like a pistol-shot, and a great
stone swung to a boom and weighing tons should begin running amuck
through piles of cement, machinery, and men, and some one of the working
gang, seeing the danger, should, with the quickness and sureness of a
mountain-goat, spring straight for the stone, clutching the end of the
guy and bounding off again, twisting the bight round some improvised
snubbing-post thus checking its mad career, you would not have had to
ask his name twice.

"Cap'n Bob stopped it, sir," was sure to have been the proffered reply.

So, too, in his present occupation of pilot. It was only a few years ago
that I stood on the deck of an incoming steamer, straining my eyes
across a heaving sea, the horizon lost in the dull haze of countless
froth-caps; we had slowed for a pilot, so the word came down the deck.
Suddenly, against the murky sky-line, with mainsail double-reefed and
jib close-hauled, loomed a light craft plunging bows under at every
lurch. Then a chip the size of your hand broke away from the frail
vessel, and a big wave lying around for such prey, sprang upon it with
wide-open mouth. The tiny bit dodged and slipped out of sight into a
mighty ravine, then mounted high in air, upborne in the teeth of another
great monster, and again was lost to view. Soon the chip became a bit of
driftwood manned by two toy men working two toy oars like mad and
bearing at one end a yellow dot.

Then the first officer walked down the deck to where I stood, followed
by a huddle of seamen who began unrolling a rope ladder.

"You're right," I heard an officer answer a passenger. "It's no fit
weather to take a pilot. Captain wouldn't have stopped for any other
boat but No. 11. But those fellows out there don't know what
weather is."

The bit of driftwood now developed into a yawl. The yellow dot broadened
and lengthened to the semblance of a man standing erect and unbuttoning
his oil-skins as he looked straight at the steamer rolling port-holes
under, the rope ladder flopping against her side. Then came a quick
twist of the oars, a sudden lull as the yawl shot within a boat's length
of the rope ladder, and with the spring of a cat the man in oil-skins
landed with both feet on its lower rung, and the next instant he was
over the steamer's rail and on her deck beside me.

I thought I knew that spring, even before I saw his face or got hold of
his hand.

It was Captain Bob.

As I look at him now, sitting in my office-chair, the smoke of the cigar
curling about his bronzed, weather-tanned face, my eye taking in his
slim waist, slender thighs, and long, sinewy arms and hands that have
served him so well all his life, I can hardly believe that twenty years
have passed over his head since we worked together on Shark Ledge. But
for the marks chalked on his temples by the Old Man with the Hour-glass
and the few tally-scores of hard work crossing the corners of his mouth
and eyes, he has the same external appearance as in the old days. Even
these indexes of advancing years are lost when he throws his head up and
laughs one of his spontaneous, ringing laughs that fills my office full
of sunshine, illumining it for hours after he has gone.

"This pilotin' 's pretty rough sometimes," Captain Bob continued between
the puffs of smoke, "but it ain't nothin' to the old days. When I look
back on it all, seems to me as if we was out o' our heads most o' the
time. I didn't know it then, but 'twas true all the same. Think now o'
layin' the Screamer broadside on that stone pile at Shark Ledge,
unloadin' them stone with nothin' but a couple o' spar buoys to keep 'er
off. Wonder I didn't leave 'er bones there. Would if I hadn't knowed
every stick o' timber in 'er and jest what she could stagger under."

"But she was a good sea-boat," I interpolated. "The Screamer was always
the pride of the work."

"None better. You'd a-thought so if you'd been with us that night off
Hatteras; we layin' to, hatches battened down. I never see it blow wuss.
It came out o' the nor'west 'bout dark, and 'fore mornin' I tell ye it
was a-humpin' things. We started with a pretty decent set o' sails, new
eyelets rove in and new clew lines, but, Lord love ye, we hadn't taken
old Hatteras into consideration. Bill Nevins, my engineer, and a
landsman who was to work the h'istin' engine, looked kind 'er peaked
when what was left of the jib come rattlin' down on his fo'c's'le hatch,
but I says to him, 'the Screamer's all right, Billy, so she don't strike
nothin' and so long's we can keep the water out 'er. Can't sink 'er any
more'n an empty five-gallon ker'sene can with the cork in. We'll lay
'round here till mornin' and then set a signal. Something'll come along
pretty soon.' Sure 'nough, 'long come a coaler bound for Charleston.
She see us a-wallowin' in the trough and our mast thrashin' for all it
was worth.

"'What d'ye want?' the skipper says, when he got within hail.

"'Some sail-needles and a ball o' twine,' I hollered back; 'we got
everything else.' You should just a-heard him cuss--" and one of Captain
Bob's laughs rang through the room. "Them's two things I'd
forgot--didn't think o' them in fact till the mainsheet give 'way.

"Well, he chucked 'em aboard with another cuss. I hadn't no money to pay
no salvage. All we wanted was them needles and a little elbow-grease and
gumption. So we started in, and 'fore night, she still a-thrashin', I'd
fixed up the sails, patched the eyelets with a pair o' boot-legs, and
was off again."

"What were you doing off Hatteras, Captain Bob?" I asked. I was leading
him on, professing ignorance of minor details, so that I could again
enjoy the delight of hearing him tell it.

"Oh, that was another one o' them crazy jobs I used to take when I
didn't know no better. Why, I guess you remember 'bout that wreckin' job
off Hamilton, Bermuda?"

He was settled in his chair now, his legs crossed, his head down between
his shoulders.

"You see, after I quit work on the 'ledge,' I was put to 't for a job,
and there come along a feller by the name of Lamson--the agent of an
insurance company, who wanted me to go to Bermuda and git up some
forty-two pieces o' white I-talian marble that had been wrecked three
years before off the harbor of Hamilton. They ran from three to
twenty-one tons each, he said. So off I started with the Screamer. He
didn't say, though, that the wreck lay on a coral reef eight miles from
land, or I'd stayed to home in New Bedford.

"When I got to where the wreck lay you couldn't see a thing 'bove water.
So I got into an old divin' dress we had aboard--one we used on the
Ledge--oiled up the pump and went down to look her over, and by Jimmy
Criminy, not a scrap o' that wreck was left 'cept the rusty iron work
and that part o' the bottom plankin' of the vessel that lay under the
stones! Everything else was eaten up with the worms! Funniest-lookin'
place you ever see. The water was just as clear as air, and I could see
every one o' them stone plain as daylight--looked like so many big lumps
o' white sugar scattered 'round--and they _were_ big! One of 'em weighed
twenty-one tons, and none on 'em weighed less'n five. Of course I knew
how big they were 'fore I started, and I'd fitted up the Screamer
special to h'ist 'em, but I didn't know I'd have to handle 'em twice;
once from where they laid on that coral reef in twenty-eight feet o'
water and then unload 'em on the Navy Yard dock, above Hamilton, and
then pick 'em up agin, load 'em 'board the Screamer, and unload 'em
once more 'board a Boston brig they'd sent down for 'em--one o' them
high-waisted things 'bout sixteen feet from the water-line to the rail.
That was the wust part of it."

Captain Bob stopped, felt in his pocket for a match, found it empty,
rose from his chair, picked one from a match-safe on my desk, lighted
his cigar, and resumed his seat again. I have found it wisest to let him
have his own way in times like these. If I interrupt the flow of his
talk it may stop for the day, and I lose the best part of the enjoyment
of having him with me.

"Pretty decent chaps, them Englishmen"--puff-puff--the volume of smoke
was all right once more. "One Monday morning I ran out of the Navy Yard
dock within sight of the wreck. I had been layin' up over Sunday to get
out of the way of a norther, when I luffed a little too soon, and bang
went my bowsprit and scraped off about three feet of red paint from the
end of the dock. One of the watchmen was on the string-piece, and saw
the whole thing. 'Come ashore,' he says, 'and go and see the Admiral;
you can't scrape no paint off this dock with _my_ permission.'

"Well, I waited four hours for his nibs. When he come to his office
quarters he was 'bout up to my arms, red as a can-buoy, and white hair
stickin' up straight as a shoe-brush on his head. He looked cross enough
to bite a tenpenny nail in two.

"'Ran into the dock, did ye--ran into Her Majesty's dock, and ye had
room enough to turn a fleet in! Do you think we paint these docks for
the fun of havin' you lubbers scrape it off? You'll pay for paintin' it
over, sir--that's what you'll do, or I'll libel your boat, and send a
file of marines down and tie her up,' and away he went up the dock to
his office again.

"'Gosh!' I said to myself. 'Guess I'm in a fix,' The boys stood around
and heard every word, and I tell ye it warn't no joke. As to money,
there warn't a ten-dollar bill in the crew. I'd spent every cent I could
rake and scrape to fit the Screamer out, and the boys were workin' on
shares, and nobody was to get any money until the last stone--that big
twenty-one-ton feller--was 'board the brig. Then I could go to the
agents in Hamilton and draw two-thirds of my contract. That
twenty-one-ton chunk, I forgot to tell ye, I had picked up the day
before, and it was then aboard the Screamer, and we was on our way down
to Hamilton, where the brig lay, when her nose scraped off the
Admiral's paint.

"It did look kind o' nasty for us, and no mistake. One day more, and
we'd 'a' been through and had our money.

"'Go up and see him,' said the watchman. 'He gits cool sometimes as
sudden as he gits hot.' So Bill Nevins, my engineer, who was workin' the
h'ister, and I went up. The old feller was sittin' on the piazza in a
big rattan chair.

"'Come aboard,' he hollered, soon's he see Bill and me a-standin' in
the garden-path with our hats off, lookin' like two jailbirds about to
be sentenced. Well, we got up on the porch, and he looked us all
over, and said:

"'Have you got that money with you?' 'No,' I said, 'I haven't,' and I
ups and tells him just how we was fixed, and how we had worked, and how
short we was of grub and clothes and money, and then I said, 'an' now I
come to tell ye that I hit the dock fair and square, and it was all my
fault, and that I'll pay whatever you say is right when I put this stone
'board and get my pay.'

"He looked me all over--I tell you I was pretty ragged; nothin' but a
shirt and pants on, and they was almighty tore up, especially where most
everybody wants to be covered--and Bill was no better. We'd 'bout used
up our clo'es so that sail-needles nor nothin' else wouldn't a-done us
no good, and we had no time nor no spare cash to go ashore and
get others.

"While I was a-talkin', the old feller's eyes was a-borin' into
mine--then he roared out, 'No, sir; you won't!--you won't pay one d--d
shillin', sir. You'll go back to your work, and if there's anything you
want in the way of grub or supplies send here for it and you shall have
it. Good-day.' I tell ye he was a rum one."

"Was that the last time you saw him?" I asked.

"Not much. When we got 'longside the brig the next day, her Cap'n see
that twenty-one-ton stone settin' up on the deck of the Screamer,
lookin' like a big white church, and he got so scared he went ashore and
started a yarn that we couldn't lift that stone sixteen feet in the air,
and over her rail and down into the hold, and that we'd smash his brig,
and it got to the Admiral's ears, and down come two English engineers,
in cork helmets and white jackets and gold buttons, spic' an' span as if
they'd stepped out of the chart-room of a yacht. One was a colonel and
the other was a major. They were both just back from India, and
natty-lookin' chaps as you ever saw. And clear stuff all the way
through--you could tell that before they opened their mouths.

"I was on the deck of the Screamer, overhaulin' the fall, surrounded by
most of the crew, gettin' ready to h'ist the stone, when I first saw
'em. They and the Cap'n were away up above me, leanin' over the rail,
lookin' at the stone church that some o' the boys was puttin' the chains
'round. Bill Nevins was down in the fo'c's'le, firin' up, with the
safety-valve set at 125 pounds. He had half a keg o' rosin and a can o'
kerosene to help out with in case we wanted a few pounds extry in the
middle of the tea-party. Pretty soon I heard one of 'em holler:

"'Ahoy! Is the Captain aboard?'

"'He is,' I said, steppin' out. 'Who wants him?'

"'Colonel Throckmorton,' he says, 'and Major Severn.'

"'Come aboard, gentlemen,' I says.

"So down they come, the Colonel first, one foot at a time touchin' the
ladder, the Major following. When he reached the deck and wheeled around
to look at me you just ought to have seen his face.

"'Are you the Captain?' he says, and he looked me over 'bout as the
admiral had done.

"'I be,' I said, 'Captain Robert Brandt, of Pigeon Cove, Cape Ann,
master and owner of the sloop Screamer, at your service'--I kep' front
side to him. 'What can I do for you?'

"'Well, Captain,' he began, 'perhaps it is none of our business, but the
Captain of the brig here,' and he pointed up above him, 'has asked us to
look over your tackle and see whether it is safe enough to lift this
stone. He's afraid you'll drop it and smash his deck in. Since I've seen
it, and what you propose to lift it with, I've told him there's no
danger, for you'll never get it off the deck. We are both officers of
the Engineering Corps, and it is our business to know about
such things.'

"'What makes you think the Screamer won't lift it?' I asked.

"'Well,' says the Colonel, looking aloft, 'her boom ain't big enough,
and that Manila rope is too light. I should think it wasn't over three
and three-quarter-inch rope. We all know fifteen tons is enough weight
for that size rope, even with a fourfold purchase, and we understand
you say this stone weighs twenty-one.'

"'I'm sorry, gentlemen,' I said, 'and if you are worried about it you'd
better go 'board the brig, for I'm about ready to pick the stone up and
land her.'

"Well, the Major said he guessed he would, if I was determined to pull
the mast out of my sloop, but the Colonel said he'd stay by and see
it out.

"Just then Bill Nevins stuck his head out of the fo'c's'le. He was
blacker than I was; all smeared with grease and stripped to his waist.
It was hot enough anywhere, but it was sizzlin' down where he was.

"'All ready, Cap'n,' he says. 'She's got every pound she can carry.'

"I looked everything over--saw the butt of the boom was playin' free in
the wooden socket, chucked in a lot of tallow so it could move easy,
give an extra twist to the end of the guy, and hollered to Bill to go
ahead. She went chuckety-chuck, chuckety-chuck for half a dozen turns;
then she slowed down soon as she struck the full weight, and began to
pant like an old horse climbin' a hill. All this time the Colonel was
callin' out from where he stood near the tiller: 'She'll never lift it,
Captain--she'll never lift it.'

"Next come a scrapin' 'long the deck, and the big stone swung clear with
a foot o' daylight 'tween it and the deck. Then up she went, crawlin'
slowly inch by inch, till she reached the height of the brig's rail.

"Now come the wust part. I knew that when I gave orders to slack away
the guy-rope so as to swing the stone aboard the brig, the Screamer
would list over and dip her rail in the water. So I made a jump for the
rope ladder and shinned up the brig's side so as to take a hand in
landin' the stone properly on the brig's deck so as to save her beams
and break the jar when I lowered the stone down. I had one eye now on
the stone and the other on the water, which was curling over the
Screamer's rail and makin' for the fo'c's'le hatch. Should the water
pour down this hatch, out would go my fires and maybe up would come
her b'iler.

"'Ease away on that guy and lower away easy,' I hollered to Bill. The
stone dropped to within two feet of the brig's deck and swung back and
for'ards. Then I heard Bill yell. I was expectin' it.

"'Water's comin' in!'

"I leaned over the brig's rail and could see the slop of the sea combin'
over the Screamer's fo'c's'le hatch. Bill's fires _would_ be out the
next minute. There was just two feet now 'tween the stone and the deck
where I stood--too much to drop; but there was nothing else to do, and
I hollered:

"'All gone.'

"Down she come with a run, struck the big timbers on the deck, and by
Jiminy! ye could a-heard that old brig groan from stem to stern.

"I jumped on top of the stone and threw off the shackles, and the
Screamer came up on an even keel as easy as a duck ridin' the water.

"You just oughter seen the Colonel when the old boat righted herself,
and he had climbed up and stood 'longside the Major a-talkin' it over.

"Pretty soon he came up to where I was a-gettin' the tackle ready to
lower the stone in the hold, and he says:

"'Well, you made your word good, Cap'n, but I want to tell you that
nobody but an American could a-done it. It would cost me my commission
if I should try to do what you have done.'

"'Well, gentlemen,' I says, 'what was wrong about it? What's the matter
with the Screamer's rig?'

"'Well, the size of the rope for one thing,' says the Colonel, 'and the
boom.'

"'Well, p'haps you ain't looked it over,' I says, and I began
unravelling an end that stuck out near the shackle. 'If you'll look
close here'--and I held the end of the rope up--'you'll see that every
stran' of that rope is made of the best Manila yarn, and laid as smooth
as silk. I stood over that rope myself when it was put together. Old Sam
Hanson of New Bedford laid up that rope, and there ain't no better
nowhere. I knew what it had to do, and I warn't goin' to take no chances
of its not doin' it right. As to that boom, I want to tell ye that I
picked that boom out o' about two hundred sticks in Tom Carlin's
shipyard, in Stonington, and had it scraped and ironed just to please
me. There ain't a rotten knot in it from butt to finish, and mighty few
of any other kind. That stick's _growed right_--that's what's the matter
with it; and it bellies out in the middle, just where it ought to be
thickest.'

"Well, they didn't say nothin' for a while, 'cept to walk round the
stone once or twice and slap it with their hands, as if they wanted to
make sure it was all there. My men were all over it now, and we was
gettin' things in shape to finish up. I tell ye the boys were mighty
glad, and so was I. It had been a long pull of six months' work, and we
were out of most everything, and as soon as the big stone was down in
the brig's hold, and warped back and stowed with the others--and that
wouldn't take but a day or two more--we would clean up, get our money,
and light out for home.

"All this time the Colonel and the Major were buzzin' each other off by
the other rail. Pretty soon they both come over to where I stood, and
the Colonel reached out his hand.

"'Cap'n Brandt,' he says--and he had a look in his face as if he meant
it--and he did, every word of it--'it would give Major Severn and myself
great pleasure if you would dine with us to-night at the Canteen. The
Admiral is coming, and some brother officers who would be pleased to
know you.'

"Well, I was struck all of a heap for a minute, knowing what kind of
clo'es I had to go in, and so I says:

"'Well, gentlemen, that's very nice of you, and I see you mean it, and
if I had anything fittin' to wear there's nothin' I would like better;
but ye see how I'm fixed,' and I lifted my arms so he could see a few
holes that he might a-missed before, and I motioned to some other parts
of my get-up that needed repairs.

"'That don't make no difference, Cap'n, what kind of clo'es you come in.
We dine at eight o'clock.'

"Of course I knew I couldn't go, and I didn't want 'em to think I
intended to go when I didn't, so I says, rather positive-like:

"'Very much obliged, gentlemen, but I guess I'll have to get you to
count me out this time.' I knowed I warn't fittin' to sit at anybody's
table, especially if that old Admiral was comin'.

"The Colonel see I was in earnest, and he stepped up, quick-like, and
laid his hand on my shoulder.

"'Captain Brandt,' he says, 'we ain't worryin' 'bout your clo'es, and
don't you worry. You can come in your shirt, you can come in your socks,
or you can come without one damned rag--only come!'"

The Captain stopped, shook the ashes from his cigar, slowly raised
himself to his feet, and reached for his hat.

"Did you go, Captain?" I asked.

The Captain looked at me for a moment with one of those quizzical
glances which so often light up his face when something amuses him, and
said, as he blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling:

"Well, I didn't forget my manners. When it got dark--dark, mind ye--I
went up and sat on the piazza and had a smoke with 'em--Admiral and all.
But I didn't go to dinner--not in them pants."



A PROCESSION OF UMBRELLAS


I

This all happened on the banks of the Seine, above St. Cloud--above
Suresne, in fact, or rather its bridge--the new one that has pieced out
the old one with the quaint stone arches that we love.

A silver-gray haze, a pure French gray, hung over the river, softening
the sky-line of the near-by hills, and making ghosts of a row of
gendarme poplars guarding the opposite bank.

On my side of the stream wandered a path close to the water's edge--so
close that I could fill my water-cups without leaving my
sketching-stool. Over this path, striped with shadows, big trees
towered, their gnarled branches interlaced above my head. On my right,
rising out of a green sward cleared of all underbrush, towered other
trees, their black trunks sharp-cut against the haze. In the distance,
side by side with the path, wound the river, still asleep, save where it
flashed into waves of silver laughter at the touch of some frolicsome
puff of wind. Elsewhere, although the sun was now hours high, it dozed
away, nestling under the overhanging branches making their morning
toilet in its depths. But for these long, straight flashes of silver
light glinting between the tree-trunks, one could not tell where the
haze ended and the river began.

As I worked on, my white umbrella tilted at the exact angle so that my
palette, hand, and canvas would be hidden from the inquisitive sun, a
group of figures emerged from a clump of low trees, and made their way
across the green sward--the man in an ivory-black coat, evidently a
priest, even at that distance; the woman in a burnt-umber dress with a
dot of Chinese white for a head--probably a cap; and the third, a girl
of six or eight in a brown madder dress and yellow-ochre hat.

An out-door painter, while at work, tumbles everything that crosses his
path or comes within range of his vision into the crucible of his
palette. The most majestic of mountains and the softest of summer clouds
are to him but flat washes of cobalt, and the loveliest of dimples on
the fairest of cheeks but a shadow-tone, and a high light made real by
pats of indigo and vermilion.

So in the three figures went among my trees, the priest in the
background against a mass of yellow light--black against yellow is
always a safe contrast; the burnt-umber woman breaking the straight line
of a trunk, and the child--red on green--intensifying a slash of zinober
that illumined my own grassy sward.

Then my interest in the group ceased. The priest, no doubt, was taking
his sister, or his aunt, or his mother, with their own or somebody
else's little girl, out for an airing, and they had come at the precise
moment when I had begun to long for just such a collection of people;
and now they could take themselves off and out of my perspective,
particularly the reddish-brown girl who kept on dancing in the sunniest
places, running ahead of the priest and the woman, lighting up and
accentuating half a dozen other corners of the wood interior before me
in as many minutes, and making me regret before the paint was half dry
on her own little figure that I had not waited for a better composition.

Then she caught sight of my umbrella.

She came straight toward me with that slowing of pace as she approached
the nearer, her curiosity getting the better of her timidity--quite as a
fawn or a little calf would have done, attracted by some bit of color or
movement which was new to it. The brown madder dress I now saw was
dotted with little spots of red, like sprays of berries; the
yellow-ochre hat was wound with a blue ribbon, and tied with a bow on
one side. I could see, too, that she wore slippers, and that her hair
was platted in two pig-tails, and hung down her back, the ends fastened
with a ribbon that matched the one on her hat.

She stood quite still, her face perfectly impassive, her little hands
clasped together, the brim of her hat shading her eyes, which looked
straight at my canvas.

I gave no sign of her presence. It is dangerous to break down the
reserve of silence, which is often the only barrier between an out-door
painter and the crowds that surround him. Persisted in, it not only
compels their respect, even to the lowering of their voices and the
tip-toeing in and out of the circle about you, but shortens the time of
their visits, a consummation devoutly to be wished. So I worked on in
silence, never turning toward this embodiment of one of Boutet do
Monvel's drawings, whose absorbed face I could see out of one corner
of my eye.

Then a ripple of laughter broke the stillness, and a little finger was
thrust out, stopping within a hair's-breadth of the dot of Chinese
white, still wet, which topped my burnt-umber figure.

"Très drôle, Monsieur!"

The voice was sweeter than the laugh. One of those flute-like,
bird-throated voices that children often have who live in the open all
their lives, chasing butterflies or gathering wild flowers.

Then came a halloo from the greensward. The priest was coming toward us,
calling out, as he walked:

"Susette! Susette!"

He, too, underwent a change. The long, ivory-black cassock, so
unmistakable in the atmospheric perspective, became an ordinary
frock-coat; the white band of a collar developed into the regulation
secular pattern, and the silk hat, although of last year's shape,
conformed less closely in its lines to one belonging exclusively to the
clergy. The face, though, as I could see in my hurried glance, and even
at that distance, was the smooth, clean-shaven face of a priest--the
face of a man of fifty, I should think, who had spent all his life in
the service of others.

Again came the voice, this time quite near.

"Susette! Susette!"

The child, without turning her head, waved her hand in reply, looked
earnestly into my face, and with a quick bending of one knee in
courtesy, and a "Merci, M'sieu; merci," ran with all her speed toward
the priest, who stretched wide his arms, half-lifting her from the
ground in the embrace. Then a smile broke over his face, so joyous, so
full of love and tenderness, so much the unconscious index of the heart
that prompted it, that I laid down my palette to watch them.

I have known many priests in my time, and I have never ceased to marvel
at the beauty of the tie which binds them to the little ones of their
flocks. I have never been in a land where priests and children were not
companions. These long-frocked guardians sit beside their playgrounds,
with noses in their breviaries, or they head processions of boys and
girls on the way to chapel, or they follow, two by two, behind a long
string of blue-checked aprons and severe felt hats, the uniform of the
motherless; or they teach the little vagrants by the hour--often it is
the only schooling that these children get.

But I never remember one of them carrying such a waif about in his arms,
nor one irradiated by such a flash of heavenly joy when some child, in a
mad frolic, saw fit to scrape her muddy shoes down the front of his
clean, black cassock.

The beatific smile itself was not altogether new to me. Anyone else can
see it who wanders into the Gallery of the Prado. It irradiates the face
of an old saint by Ribera--a study for one of his large canvases, and is
hung above the line. I used to stand before it for hours, studying the
technique. The high lights on the face are cracked in places, and the
shadows are blackened by time, but the expression is that of one who
looks straight up into heaven. And there is another--a Correggio, in
the Hermitage, a St. Simon or St. Timothy, or some other old
fellow--whose eyes run tears of joy, and whose upturned face reflects
the light of the sun. Yet there was something in the face of the priest
before me that neither of the others had--a peculiar human quality,
which shone out of his eyes, as he stood bareheaded in the sunshine, the
little girl in his arms. If the child had been his daughter--his very
own and all he had, and if he had caught her safe from some danger that
threatened her life, it could not have expressed more clearly the
joyousness of gratitude or the bliss inspired by the sense of possessing
something so priceless that every other emotion was absorbed.

It was all over in a moment. He did not continue to beam irradiating
beatitudes, as the old Ribera and the older Correggio have done for
hundreds of years. He simply touched his hat to me, tucked the child's
hand into his own, and led her off to her mother.

I kept at my work. For me the incident, delightful as it was, was
closed. All I remembered, as I squeezed the contents of another tube on
to my palette, was the smile on the face of the priest.

The weather now began to take part in the general agitation. The lazy
haze, roused by the joyous sun, had gathered its skirts together and had
slipped over the hills. The sun in its turn had been effaced by a big
cloud with scalloped edges which had overspread the distant line of the
river, blotting out the flashes of silver laughter, and so frightening
the little waves that they scurried off to the banks, some even trying
to climb up the stone coping out of the way of the rising wind. A cool
gust of air, out on a lark, now swept down the path, and, with lance in
rest, toppled over my white umbrella. Big drops of rain fell about me,
spitting the dust like spent balls. Growls of thunder were heard
overhead. One of those rollicking, two-faced thunder-squalls, with the
sun on one side and the blackness of the night on the other, was
approaching.

The priest had seen it, for he had the child pickaback and was running
across the sward. The woman had seen it, too, for she was already
collecting her baskets, preparing to follow, and I was not far behind.
Before she had reached the edge of the woods I had overtaken her, my
traps under my arm, my white umbrella over my head.

"The Châlet Cycle is the nearest," she volunteered, grasping the
situation, and pointing to a path opening to the right as she spoke.

"Is that where he has taken the child?" I asked, hurriedly.

"No, Monsieur--Susette has gone home. It is only a little way."

I plunged on through the wet grass, my eyes on the opening through the
trees, the rain pouring from my umbrella. Before I had reached the end
of the path the rain ceased and the sun broke through, flooding the wet
leaves with dazzling light.

These two, the clouds and the sun, were evidently bent on mischief,
frightening little waves and painters and bright-eyed children and good
priests who loved them!



A PROCESSION OF UMBRELLAS


II

Do you happen to know the Châlet Cycle?

If you are a staid old painter who takes life as he finds it, and who
loves to watch the procession from the sidewalk without any desire to
carry one of the banners or to blow one of the horns--one of your
three-meals-a-day, no heel-taps, and go-to-bed-at-ten-o'clock kind of a
man, then make a note of the Cycle. The melons are excellent; the
omelets are wonders, and the salads something to be remembered. But, if
you are two-and-twenty, with the world in a sling and both ends of the
sling in your hand, and if this is your first real outing since your
college days, it would be just as well for you to pass it by and take
your coffee and rolls at the little restaurant over the bridge, or the
one farther down the street.

Believe me, a most seductive place is this Châlet Cycle, with its tables
set out under the trees!

A place, at night, all hanging lanterns and shaded candles on
_tête-à-tête_ tables, and close-drawn curtains about the kiosks. A
place, by day, where you lunch under giant red and white umbrellas, with
seats for two, and these half-hidden by Japanese screens, so high that
even the waiters cannot look over. A place with a great music-stand
smothered in palms and shady walks and cosey seats, out of sight of
anybody, and with deaf, dumb, and blind waiters. A place with a big
open gateway where everybody can enter and--ah! there is where the
danger lies--a little by-path all hedged about with lilac bushes, where
anybody can escape to the woods by the river--an ever-present refuge in
time of trouble and in constant use--more's the pity--for it is the
_unexpected_ that always happens at the Châlet Cycle.

The prettiest girls in Paris, in bewitching bicycle costumes, linger
about the music-stand, losing themselves in the arbors and shrubberies.
The kiosks are almost all occupied: charming little Chinese pagodas
these--eight-sided, with lattice screens on all sides--screens so
tightly woven that no curious idler can see in, and yet so loosely put
together that each hidden inmate can see out. Even the trees overhead
have a hand in the villany, spreading their leaves thickly, so that the
sun itself has a hard time to find out what is going on beneath their
branches. All this you become aware of as you enter the big, wide gate.

Of course, being quite alone, with only my battered old umbrella for
company, I did not want a whole kiosk to myself, or even half of a giant
umbrella. Any quiet corner would do for me, I told the Maître d'Hôtel,
who relieved me of my sketch-trap--anywhere out of the rain when it
should again break loose, which it was evidently about to do, judging
from the appearance of the clouds--anywhere, in fact, where I could eat
a filet smothered in mushrooms, and drink a pint of _vin ordinaire_
in peace.

"No, I expected no one." This in answer to a peculiar lifting of the
eyebrows and slight wave of his hand as he drew out a chair in an
unoccupied kiosk commanding a view of the grounds. Then, in rather a
positive tone, I added:

"Send me a waiter to take my order--orders for _one_, remember." I
wanted to put a stop to his insinuations at once. Nothing is so annoying
when one's hair is growing gray as being misunderstood--especially
by a waiter.

Affairs overhead now took a serious turn. The clouds evidently
disapproving of the hilarious goings-on of the sun--poking its head out
just as the cloud was raining its prettiest--had, in retaliation,
stopped up all the holes the sun could peer through, and had started in
to rain harder than ever. The waiters caught the angry frown on the
cloud's face, and took it at its spoken word--it had begun to thunder
again--and began piling up the chairs to protect their seats, covering
up the serving-tables, and getting every perishable article under
shelter. The huge mushroom-umbrellas were collapsed and rushed into the
kiosks--some of them into the one where I sat, it being the largest;
small tables were turned upside down, and tilted against the
tree-trunks, and the storm-curtains of all the little kiosks let down
and buttoned tight to the frames. Waiters ran hither and thither, with
napkins and aprons over their heads, carrying fresh courses for the
several tables or escaping with their empty dishes.

In the midst of this mêlée a cab dashed up to the next kiosk to mine,
the wheels cutting into the soft gravel; the curtains were quickly drawn
wide by a half-drowned waiter, and a young man with jet-black hair and
an Oriental type of face slipped in between them.

Another carriage now dashed up, following the grooves of the first
wheels--not a cab this time, but a perfectly appointed coupé, with two
men in livery on the box, and the front windows banked with white
chrysanthemums. I could not see her face from where I sat--she was too
quick for that--but I saw the point of a tiny shoe as it rested for an
instant on the carriage-step and a whirl of lace about a silk stocking.
I caught also the movement of four hands--two outstretched from the
curtains of the kiosk and two from the door of the coupé.

Of course, if I had been a very inquisitive and very censorious old
painter, with a tendency to poke my nose into and criticise other
people's business, I would at once have put two and two together and
asked myself innumerable questions. Why, for instance, the charming
couple did not arrive at the same moment, and in the same cab? or why
they came all the way out to Suresne in the rain, when there were so
many cosey little tables at Laurent's or at the Voisin, on the Rue
Cambon, or in the Café Anglais on the Boulevard. Whether, too, either
one were married, and if so which one, and if so again, what the other
fellow and the other woman would do if he or she found it all out; and
whether, after all, it was worth the candle when it did all come out,
which it was bound to do some day sooner or later. Or I could have
indulged in the customary homilies, and decried the tendencies of the
times, and said to myself how the world was going to the dogs because of
such goings-on; quite forgetting the days when I, too, had the world in
a sling, and was whirling it around my head with all the impetuosity and
abandon of youth.

[Illustration: I saw the point of a tiny shoe.]

But I did none of these things--that is, nothing Paul Pryish or
presuming. I merely beckoned to the Maître d'Hôtel, as he stood poised
on the edge of the couple's kiosk, with the order for their breakfast in
his hands, and, when he had reached my half-way station on his way
across the garden to the kitchen, stopped him with a question. Not with
my lips--that is quite unnecessary with an old-time Maître d'Hôtel--but
with my two eyebrows, one thumb, and a part of one shoulder.

"The nephew of the Sultan, Monsieur--" he answered, instantly.

"And the lady?"

"Ah, that is Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud of the Variété. She comes
quite often. For Monsieur, it is his first time this season."

He evidently took me for an old _habitué_. There are some
compensations, after all, in the life of a staid old painter.

With these solid facts in my possession I breathed a little easier.
Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud, from the little I had seen of her, was
quite capable of managing her own affairs without my own or anybody
else's advice, even if I had been disposed to give it. She no doubt
loved the lambent-eyed gentleman to distraction; the kiosk was their
only refuge, and the whole affair was being so discreetly managed that
neither the lambent-eyed gentleman nor his houri would be obliged to
escape by means of the lilac-bordered path in the rear on this or any
other morning.

And if they should, what did it matter to me? The little row in the
cloud overhead would soon end in further torrents of tears, as all such
rows do; the sun would have its way after all and dry every one of them
up; the hungry part of me would have its filet and pint of St. Julien,
and the painter part of me would go back to the little path by the river
and finish its sketch.

Again I tried to signal the Maître d'Hôtel as he dashed past on his way
to the kiosk. This time he was under one of the huge umbrellas which an
"omnibus" was holding over him, Rajah-fashion. He had a plump melon,
half-smothered in ice, in his hands, to protect it from the downpour,
the rain making gargoyles of the points of the ribs of the umbrella.
Evidently the breakfast was too important and the expected fee too large
to intrust it to an underling. He must serve it himself.

Up to this Moment no portion of my order had materialized. No cover for
one, nor filet, nor _vin ordinaire_, nor waiter had appeared. The
painter was growing impatient. The man inside was becoming hungry.

I waited until he emerged with an empty dish, watched him grasp the
giant umbrella, teeter on the edge of the kiosk for a moment, and plunge
through the gravel, now rivers of water, toward my kiosk, the "omnibus"
following as best he could.

"A thousand pardons, Monsieur--" he cried from beneath his shelter, as
he read my face. "It will not be long now. It is coming--here, you can
see for yourself--" and he pointed across the garden, and tramped on,
the water spattering his ankles.

I looked and saw a solemn procession of huge umbrellas, the ones used
over the _tête-à-tête_ tables beneath the trees, slowly wending its way
toward where I sat, with all the measured movement and dignity of a file
of Eastern potentates out for an airing.

Under each umbrella were two waiters, one carrying the umbrella and the
other a portion of my breakfast. The potentate under the first umbrella,
who carried the wine, proved to be a waiter-in-chief; the others
bearing the filet, plates, dishes, and glasses were ordinary
"omnibuses," pressed into service as palanquin-bearers by reason of
the storm.

The waiter-in-chief, with the bottle, dodged from under his bungalow,
leaving it outside and still open, like a stranded circus-tent, stepped
into my kiosk, mopped the rain from his coat-sleeves and hands with a
napkin, and, bowing solemnly, pointed to the label on the bottle. This
meeting my approval, he relieved the rear-guard of the dishes, arranged
the table, drew the cork of the St. Julien, filled my glass, dismissed
the assistants and took his place behind my chair.

The closeness of the quarters, the protection it afforded from the
raging elements, the perils my companion had gone through to serve me,
made possible a common level on which we could stand. We discussed the
storm, the prospect of its clearing, the number of unfortunates in the
adjacent Bois who were soaked to the skin, especially the poor little
bicycle-girls in their cotton bloomers, now collapsed and bedraggled. We
talked of the great six-day cross-country bicycle-race, and how the
winner, tired out, had wabbled over the Bridge that same morning, with
the whole pack behind him, having won by less than five minutes. We
talked of the people who came and went, and who they were, and how often
they dined, and what they spent, and ate and drank, and of the rich
American who had given the waiter a gold Louis for a silver franc, and
who was too proud to take it back when his attention was called to the
mistake (which my companion could not but admit was quite foolish of
him); and, finally, of the dark-skinned Oriental with the lambent eyes,
and the adorable Ernestine with the pointed shoes and open-work silk
stockings and fluffy skirts, who occupied the kiosk within ten feet of
where I sat and he stood.

During the conversation I was busy with my knife and fork, my eyes at
intervals taking in the scene before me; the comings and goings of the
huge umbrellas--one, two, or three, as the serving of the dishes
demanded, the rain streaming from their sides; now the fish, now the
salad, now a second bottle of wine in a cooler, and now the last course
of all on an empty plate, which my companion said was the bill, and
which he characterized as the most important part of the procession,
except the _pour boire_. Each time the procession came to a full stop
outside the kiosk until the sentinel waiter relieved them of their
burdens. My sympathies constantly went out to this man. There was no
room for him inside, and certainly no wish for his company, and so he
must, perforce, balance himself under his umbrella, first on one leg and
then on the other, in his effort to escape the spatter which now reached
his knees, quite as would a wet chicken seeking shelter under a
cart-body.

I say my companion and I "talked" of these several sights and incidents
as I ate my luncheon. And yet, really, up to this time I had not once
looked into his face, quite a necessary thing in conducting a
conversation of any duration. But then one rarely does in talking to a
waiter when he is serving you. My remarks had generally been addressed
to the dish in front of me, or to the door opposite, through which I
looked, and his rejoinders to the back of my shirt-collar. If he had sat
opposite, or had moved into the perspective, I might once in a while
have caught a glimpse, over my glass or spoon, of his smileless,
mask-like face, a thing impossible, of course, with him constantly
behind my chair.

When, however, in the course of his monotone, he mentioned the name of
Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud and that of the distinguished kinsman of
His Serene Highness, the Grand Pan-Jam of the Orient, I turned my head
in his direction.

"You know the Mademoiselle, then?"

My waiter shrugged his shoulders, his face still impenetrable.

"Monsieur, I know everybody in Paris. Why not? Twenty-three years a
waiter. Twenty years at the Café de la Paix in Paris, and three years
here. Do you wonder?"

There are in my experience but four kinds of waiters the world over.
First, the thin, nervous waiter, with a set smile, who is always
brushing away imaginary crumbs, adjusting the glasses--an inch this way,
an inch that way, and then back again to their first position, talking
all the time, whether spoken to or not, and losing interest the moment
you pay him his fee. Then the stolid, half-asleep waiter, fat and
perpetually moist, who considers his duties over when he has placed your
order on the cloth and moved the wine within reach of your hand. Next
the apprentice waiter, promoted from assistant cook or scullion-boy, who
carries on a conversation in signs behind your back with the waiter
opposite him, smothering his laughter at intervals in the same napkin
with which he wipes your plate, and who, when he changes a course,
slants the dishes up his sleeve, keeping the top one in place with his
chin, replacing the plates again with a wavy motion, as if they were so
many quoits, each one circling into its place--a trick of which he is
immensely proud.

And last--and this is by no means a large class--the grave, dignified,
self-possessed, well-mannered waiter; smooth-shaven, spotlessly clean,
noiseless, smug and attentive. He generally walks with a slight limp, an
infirmity due to his sedentary habits and his long acquaintance with his
several employers' decanters. He is never under fifty, is round of form,
short in the legs, broad of shoulder, and wears his gray hair cut close.
He has had a long and varied experience; he has been buttons, valet,
second man, first man, lord high butler, and then down the scale again
to plain waiter. This has not been his fault but his misfortune--the
settling of an estate, it may be, or the death of a master. He has, with
unerring judgment, summed you up in his mind before you have taken your
seat, and has gauged your intelligence and breeding with the first dish
you ordered. Intimate knowledge of the world and of men and of
women--especially the last--has developed in him a distrust of all
things human. He alone has seen the pressure of the jewelled hands as
they lay on the cloth or under it, the lawful partner opposite. He alone
has caught the last whispered word as the opera-cloak fell about her
shoulders, and knows just where they dined the next day, and who paid
for it and why. Being looked upon as part of the appointments of the
place, like the chandeliers or the mirrors or the electric bell that
answers when spoken to but never talks back, he has, unconsciously to
those he serves, become the custodian of their closest secrets. These he
keeps to himself. Were he to open his mouth he could not only break up a
score or more of highly respectable families, but might possibly upset
a ministry.

My waiter belonged to this last group.

I saw it in every deferential gesture of his body, and every modulated
tone of his voice. Whether his moral nature had become warped and
cracked and twisted out of all shape by constant daily and nightly
contact--especially the last--with the sort of life he had led, or
whether some of the old-time refinement of his better days still clung
to him, was a question I could not decide from the exhibits before
me--certainly not from the calm eyes which never wavered, nor the set
mouth which never for a moment relaxed, the only important features in
the face so far as character-reading is concerned.

I determined to draw him out; not that he interested me in any way, but
simply because such studies are instructive. Then, again, his account of
his experiences might be still more instructive. When should I have a
better opportunity? Here was a man steeped in the life of Paris up to
his very eyelids, one thoroughly conversant with the peccadilloes of
innumerable _viveurs_--peccadilloes interesting even to staid old
painters, simply as object-lessons, especially those committed by the
other gay Lothario: the fellow, for instance, who did not know she was
dangerous until his letter of credit collapsed; or the peccadilloes of
the beautiful moth who believed the candle lighting her path to be an
incandescent bulb of joy, until her scorched wings hung about her bare
shoulders: That kind of peccadillo.

So I pushed back my chair, opened my cigar-case, and proceeded to adjust
the end of my mental probe. There was really nothing better to do, even
if I had no such surgical operation in view. It was still raining, and
neither I nor the waiter could leave our Chinese-junk of an island until
the downpour ceased or we were rescued by a lifeboat or an umbrella.

"And this nephew of the Sultan," I began again between puffs, addressing
my remark to the match in my companion's hand, which was now burning
itself out at the extreme end of my cigar. "Is he a new admirer?"

"Quite new--only ten days or so, I think."

"And the one before--the old one--what does he think?" I asked this
question with one of those cold, hollow, heartless laughs, such as
croupiers are supposed to indulge in when they toss a five-franc piece
back to a poor devil who has just lost his last hundred Napoleons at
baccarat--I have never seen this done and have never heard the laugh,
but that is the way the storybooks put it--particularly the
blood-curdling part of the laugh.

"You mean Pierre Channet, the painter, Monsieur?"

I had, of course, never heard of Pierre Channet, the painter, in my
life, but I nodded as knowingly as if I had been on the most intimate
relations with him for years. Then, again, this was my only way of
getting down to his personal level, the only way I could draw him out
and get at his real character. By taking his side of the question, he
would unbosom himself the more freely, and, perhaps, incidentally, some
of the peccadilloes--some of the most wicked.

"He will _not think_, Monsieur. They pulled him out of the river last
month."

"Drowned?"

His answer gave me a little start, but I did not betray myself.

"So they said. The water trickled along his nose for two days as he lay
on the slab, before they found out who he was."

"In the morgue?" I inquired in a tone of surprise. I spoke as if this
part of the story had not reached me.

"In the morgue, Monsieur."

The repeated words came as cold and merciless as the drops of water that
fell on poor Channet as he lay under the gas-jets.

"Drowned himself for love of Mademoiselle Béraud, you say?"

"Quite true, Monsieur. He is not the only one. I know four."

"And she began to love another in a week?" My indignation nearly got the
better of me this time, but I do not think he noticed it.

"Why not, Monsieur? One must live."

As he spoke he moved an ash-tray deliberately within reach of my hand,
and poured the balance of the St. Julien into my glass without a quiver.

I smoked on in silence. Every spark of human feeling had evidently been
stifled in him. The Juggernaut of Paris, in rolling over him, had broken
every generous impulse, flattening him into a pulp of brutal
selfishness. That is why his face was so smooth and cold, his eyes so
dull and his voice so monotonous. I understood it all now. I changed the
subject. I did not know where it would lead if I kept on. Drowned lovers
were not what I was looking for.

"You say you have only been two years in Suresne?" I resumed,
carelessly, flicking the ashes from my cigar.

"But two years, Monsieur."

"Why did you leave Paris?"

"Ah, when one is over fifty it is quite done. Is it not so,
Monsieur?"--this made with a little deferential wave of his hand. I
noted the tribute to the staid painter, and nodded approvingly. He was
evidently climbing up to my level. Perhaps this plank, slender as it
was, might take him out of the slough and land him on higher and
better ground.

"Yes, you are right. And so you came to Suresne to be quiet."

"Not altogether, Monsieur. I came to be near--Well! we are never too old
for that--Is it not so?" He said it quite simply, quite as a matter of
course, the tones of his voice as monotonous as any he had yet
used--just as he had spoken of poor Channet in the morgue with the
water trickling over his dead face.

"Oh, then, even at fifty you have a sweetheart!" I blurted out with a
sudden twist of my probe. I felt now that I might as well follow the
iniquity to the end.

"It is true, Monsieur."

"Is she pretty?" As long as I was dissecting I might at least discover
the root of the disease. This remark, however, was not addressed to his
face, but to a crumb of ashes on the cloth, which I was trying to remove
with the point of a knife. He might not have answered, or liked it, had
I fired the question at him point-blank.

"Very pretty--" still the same monotone.

"And you love her!" It was up to the hilt now.

"She is the only thing I have left to love, Monsieur," he answered,
calmly.

Then, bending over me, he added:

"Monsieur, I do not think I am mistaken. Were you not painting along the
river this morning?"

"Yes."

"And a little child stood beside you while you worked?" Something in his
voice as he spoke made me raise my head. To my intense amazement the
listless eyes were alight with a tenderness that seemed to permeate his
whole being, and a smile of infinite sweetness was playing about his
mouth--the smile of the old saint--the Ribera of the Prado!

"Yes, of course; the one playing with the priest," I answered, quickly.
"But--"

"No; that was me, Monsieur. I have often been taken for a priest,
especially when I am off duty. It is the smooth face that misled you--"
and he passed his hand over his cheeks and chin.

"You the priest!" This came as a distinct surprise. "Ah, yes, I do see
the resemblance now. And so your sweetheart is the woman in the white
cap." At last I had reached his tender spot.

"No, you are wrong again, Monsieur. The woman in the white cap is my
sister. My sweetheart is the little girl--my granddaughter, Susette."

       *       *       *       *       *

I raised my own white umbrella over my head, picked up my sketch-trap,
and took the path back to the river. The rain had ceased, the sun was
shining--brilliant, radiant sunshine; all the leaves studded with
diamonds; all the grasses strung with opals, every stone beneath my
feet a gem.

I didn't know when I left what became of Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud,
with her last lover under the sod, and the new one shut up in the kiosk,
and I didn't care. I saw only a little girl--a little girl in a
brown-madder dress and yellow-ochre hat; with big, blue eyes, a tiny
pug-nose, a wee, kissable mouth, and two long pig-tails down her back.
Looking down into her bonny face from its place, high up on the walls of
the Prado, was an old cracked saint, his human eyes aglow with a light
that came straight from heaven.



"DOC" SHIPMAN'S FEE

It was in the Doctor's own office that he told me this story. He has
told me a dozen more, all pulled from the rag-bag of his experience,
like strands of worsted from an old-fashioned reticule. Some were
bright-colored, some were gray and dull--some black; most of them, in
fact, sombre in tone, for the Doctor has spent much of his life climbing
up the rickety stairs of gloomy tenements. Now and then there comes out
a thread of gold which he weaves into the mesh of his talk--some gleam
of pathos or heroism or unselfishness, lightening the whole fabric. This
kind of story he loves best to tell.

The Doctor is not one of your new-fashioned doctors quartered in a
brownstone house off the Avenue, with a butler opening the door; a pair
of bob-tailed grays; a coupé with a note-book tucked away in its pocket
bearing the names of various millionnaires; an office panelled in oak; a
waiting-room lined with patients reading last month's magazines until he
should send for them. He has no such abode nor belongings. He lives all
alone by himself in an old-fashioned house on Bedford Place--oh, Such a
queer, hunched-up old house and such a quaint old neighborhood poked
away behind Jefferson Market--and he opens the door himself and sees
everybody who comes--there are not a great many of them nowadays,
more's the pity.

There are only a few such houses left up the queer old-fashioned street
where he lives. The others were pulled down long ago, or pushed out to
the line of the sidewalk and three or four stories piled on top of them.
Some of these modern ones have big, carved marble porticos, made of
painted zinc and fastened to the new brickwork. Inside these portals are
a row of bronze bells and a line of speaking tubes with cards below
bearing the names of those who dwell above.

The Doctor's house is not like one of these. It would have been had it
not belonged to his old mother, who died long ago and who begged him
never to sell it while he lived. He was thirty years younger then, but
he is still there and so is the old house. It looks a little ashamed of
its shabbiness when you come upon it suddenly hiding behind its pushing
neighbors. First comes an iron fence with a gate never shut, and then a
flagged path dividing a grass-plot, and then an old-fashioned wooden
stoop with two steps, guarded by a wooden railing (many a day since
these were painted); and over these railings and up the supports which
carry the roof of the portico straggles a honeysuckle that does its best
to hide the shabbiness of the shingles and the old waterspout and
sagging gutter, and fails miserably when it gets to the farther cornice,
which has rotted away, showing under its dismal paint the black and
brown rust of decaying wood.

Then way in under the portico comes the door with the name-plate, and
next to it, level with the floor of the piazza or portico--either you
please, for it is a combination of both--are two long French windows,
always open in summer evenings and a-light on winter nights with the
reflection of the Doctor's soft-coal fire, telling of the warmth and
cheer within.

For it is a cheery place. It doesn't look like a doctor's office. There
are dingy haircloth sofas, it is true, and a row of shelves with
bottles, and funny-looking boxes on the mantel--one an electric
battery--and rows and rows of books on the walls. But there are no
dreadful instruments about. If there are, you don't see them.

The big chair he sits in would swallow up a smaller man. It is covered
with Turkey red and has a roll cushion for his head. There are two of
these chairs--one for you, or me; this last has big arms that come out
and catch you under the elbows, a mighty help to a man when he has just
learned that his liver or lungs or heart or some other part of him has
gone wrong and needs overhauling.

Then there is a canary that sings all the time, and a small dog--oh,
such a low-down, ill-bred, tousled dog; kind of a dog that might have
been raised around a lumber-yard--was, probably--one ear gone, half of
his tail missing; and there are some pots of flowers, and on the wall
near the window where everybody can see is a case of butterflies impaled
on pins and covered by a glass. No, you wouldn't think the Doctor's
office a grewsome place, and you certainly wouldn't think the Doctor was
a grewsome person--not when you come to know him.

If you met him out on Sunday afternoon in his black clothes, white
neck-cloth, and well-brushed hat, his gray hair straggling over his
coat-collar, pounding his cane on the pavement as he walked, you would
say he had a Sunday-school class somewhere. If you should come upon him
suddenly, seated before his fire, his gold spectacles clinging to his
finely chiselled nose, his thoughtful face bending over his book, you
would conclude that you had interrupted some savant, and bow
yourself out.

But you must ring his bell at night--say two o'clock A.M.; catch his
cheery voice calling through the tube from his bedroom in the
rear--"Yes; coming right away--be there soon as I get my clothes
on"--feel the strength and sympathy and readiness to help in the man,
and try to keep step with him as he hurries on, and then watch him when
he enters the sick-room, diffusing hope and cheer and confidence, and
listen to the soft, soothing tones of his voice, before you really get
at the inside lining of "Doc" Shipman.

All this brings me to the story. Of course, I could have told you the
bare facts without giving you an idea of the man and his surroundings,
but that wouldn't be fair to you, for you would have missed knowing the
Doctor, and I the opportunity of introducing him to you.

We were sitting in the old-fashioned office, then, one snowy night in
January, the Doctor leaning back in his chair, his meerschaum pipe in
his mouth--the one with the gold cap that a long-ago patient gave
him--when he straightened his back and tugged at his fob, bringing to
the surface a small gold watch--one I had not seen before.

"Where's the silver one?" I asked, referring to an old silver-backed
watch I had seen him wear.

The Doctor looked up and smiled.

"That's in the drawer. I don't wear it any more--not since I got this
one back."

"What happened? Was it broken?"

"No, stolen."

"When?"

"Oh, some time ago. Help yourself to a cigar and I'll tell you about it.

"One night last summer I came in late, took off my coat and vest, hung
them on a chair by the window and went to bed, leaving the sashes ajar,
for it was terribly hot and I wanted a draught of air through from
my bedroom."

(I must tell my reader here that the Doctor is a born story-teller and
something of an actor as well. He seldom explains his characters or
situations as he goes on by putting in "I said" and "he said" and
similar expressions. You know by the tones of his voice who is speaking,
and his gestures supply the rest.)

"I always carried this watch in my vest-pocket. I carry it now inside my
waistband so they will have to pull me to pieces to get it.

"Well, about three o'clock in the morning--I had just heard the old
clock in the tower strike, and was dozing off to sleep again--a footstep
awoke me to consciousness. I looked through these doors"--here the
Doctor was pointing to the folding doors of the office where we
sat--"and through my bedroom saw the dim outline of a man moving about
this room. He had my vest and trousers over his arm. I sprang up, but he
was too quick for me, and before I could reach him he had slipped
through the windows out on to the porch, down the yard, through the
gate, and was gone.

"With him went my mother's watch, which was in the upper vest-pocket,
and some fifty dollars in money. I didn't mind the money, but I did the
watch. It was my mother's, a present from my father when they were first
married, and had the initials '_E.M.S. from J.H.S_.' engraved on the
under side of the case. When she died I pasted the dear old lady's
photograph inside the upper lid. I know almost everybody around here,
and they all know me; they come in here with broken heads for me to sew
up, and stab wounds, and such-like misfortunes, and when they heard what
had happened to me they all did what they could.

"The Captain of the precinct came around, and everybody was very sorry,
and they hunted the pawnshops, and I offered a reward--in fact, did all
the foolish things you do when you have lost something you think a heap
of. But no trace of the watch could be found, and so I gave it up and
tried to forget it and couldn't. That's why I bought that cheap silver
one. My only clew to the thief was the glimpse I had of a scar on his
cheek and a slight dragging of his foot as he stepped about my room.

"One night last autumn there came a ring at the bell, and I let in a man
with a slouch hat pulled over his eyes and the collar of his coat turned
up. He was soaking wet, the water oozing from his shoes and slopping the
oilcloth in the hall where he stood. I had never seen him before.

"'Doc,' he said, 'I want you.' They all call me 'Doc' around
here--especially this kind of a man--and I saw right away where
he belonged.

"'What for?'

"'My pal's sick.'

"'What's the matter with him?'

"'Well, he's sick--took bad. He'll die if he don't git help.'

"'Where is he?'

"'Down in Washington Street.'

"'Queer,' I said to myself, 'his wanting me to go two miles from here,
when there are plenty of doctors nearer by,' and so I said to him:

"'You can get a doctor nearer than me. I'm waiting for a woman case and
may be sent for any minute. Try the Dispensary on Canal Street; they've
always a doctor there.'

"'No--we don't want no Dispensary sharp. We want you. Pal's sent me for
you--he knows you, but you mightn't remember him.'

"'I'll go.' These are the people I can never refuse. They are on the
hunted side of life and don't have many friends. I slipped on my rubbers
and coat, picked up my umbrella and my bag with my instruments in it;
hung a card in the window so the hall-light would strike it, marked
'Back in an hour'--in case the woman sent for me; locked my door and
started after him.

"It was an awful night. The streets were running rivers, the wind
rattling the shutters and flattening the umbrellas of everybody who
tried to carry one--one of those storms that drives straight at the
front of the house, drenching it from chimney to sidewalk. We waited
under the gas-lamp, boarded a Sixth Avenue car, and got out at a signal
from my companion. During the trip he sat in the far corner of the car,
his hat slouched over his eyes, his coat-collar covering his ears. He
evidently did not want to be recognized.

"If you know the neighborhood about Washington Street you know it's the
last resort of the hunted. When they want to hide, they burrow under one
of these rookeries. That's where the police look for them, only they've
got so many holes they can't stop them all. Captain Packett of the Ninth
Precinct told me the other day that he'd rather hunt a rattlesnake in a
tiger's cage than go open-handed into some of the rookeries around
Washington Street. I am never afraid in these places; a doctor's like a
Sister of Charity or a hospital nurse--they're safe anywhere. I don't
believe that other fellow would have stolen my watch if he had known I
was a doctor.

"When we left the car at Canal Street, my companion whispered to me to
follow him, no matter where he went. We kept along close to the houses,
past the dives--the streets, even here, were almost deserted; then I saw
him drop down a cellarway. I followed, through long passages, up a
creaking pair of stairs, along a deserted corridor--only one gas-jet
burning--up a second flight of stairs and into an empty room, the door
of which he opened with a key which he held in his hand. He waited until
I passed in, locked the door behind us, felt his way to a window, the
glow of some lights in the tenements opposite giving the only light in
the room, and raised the sash. Then down a fire-escape, across a wooden
bridge, which was evidently used to connect the two buildings; through
an open door, and up another stairs. At the end of this last corridor my
companion pushed open a door.

"'Here's the "Doc,"' I heard him say.

"I looked into a room about as big as this we sit in. It was filled with
men, most of them on the floor with their backs to the wall. There was a
cot in one corner, and a pine table on which stood a cheap kerosene
lamp, and one or two chairs. The only other furniture were a
flour-barrel and a dry-goods box. On top of the barrel was a tin
coffeepot, a china cup, and half a loaf of bread. Against the
window--there was but one--was tacked a ragged calico quilt, shutting
out air and light. Flat on the floor, where the light of the lamp fell
on his face, lay a man dressed only in his trousers and undershirt. The
shirt was clotted with blood; so were the mattress under him and
the floor.

"'Shot?' I asked of the man nearest me.

"'Yes.'

"I knelt down on the floor beside him and opened his shirt. The wound
was just above the heart; the bullet had struck a rib, missed the lungs,
and gone out at the back. Dangerows, but not necessarily fatal.

"The man turned his head and opened his eyes. He was a stockily built
fellow of thirty with a clean-shaven face.

"'Is that you, "Doc"?'

"'Yes, where does it hurt?'

"'"Doc" Shipman--who used to be at Bellevue five or six years ago?'

"'Yes--now tell me where the pain is.'

"'Let me look at you. Yes--that's him. That's the "Doc," boys. Where
does it hurt?--Oh, all around here--back worst'--and he passed his hand
over his side.

"I looked him over again, put in a few stitches, and fixed him up for
the night. When I had finished he said:

"'Come closer, "Doc"; am I going to die?'

"'No, not this time; you'll pull through. Close shave, but you'll
weather it. But you want some air. Here, you fellows'--and I motioned
to two men leaning against the quilt tacked over the window--'rip that
off and open that window. He's got to breathe--too many of you in
here, anyway,'

"One of the men moved the lidless dry-goods box against the wall, picked
up the kerosene lamp and placed it inside, smothering its light; the
other tore the lower end of the quilt from the sash, letting in the
fresh, wet night-air.

"I turned to the wounded man again.

"'You say you've seen me before?'

"'Yes, once. You sewed this up'--and he held up his arm showing a
healed scar. 'You've forgot it, but I haven't.'

"'Where?'

"'Bellevue. They took me in there. You treated me white. That's why my
pal hunted you up. Say, Bill'--and he called to my companion with the
slouch hat--'pay the "Doc."'

"Half a dozen men dove instantly into their pockets, but my companion
already had his roll of bills in his hand. He bent over so that the glow
of the half-smothered lamp could fall upon his hand, unrolled a
twenty-dollar bill and handed it to me.

"I passed it back to him. 'I don't want this. Five dollars is my fee. If
you haven't anything smaller, wait till I come to-morrow, then you can
give me a ten. I'm ready to go now; lead the way out.'

"Next morning I went to see him again. Bill, by arrangement, met me at
the corner of the street and took me to the wounded man's room, in and
out, by the same route we had taken the night before. I found he had
passed a good night, had no fever, and was all right. I left some
medicine and directions, got my ten dollars, and never went again.

"Last month, some two days before Christmas, I was sitting here
reading--it was after twelve o'clock--when I heard a tap on the
window-pane. I pushed aside the shade and looked out a thick-set man
motioned me to open the door. When he got inside the hall he said:

"'Ain't forgot me again, have you, "Doc"!'

"'No, you're the man I fixed up in Washington Street last fall.'

"'Yea, that's right, "Doc"; that's me. Can I come in? I got something
for you.'

"I brought him in and he sat down on that sofa. Then he pulled out a
package from his inside pocket.

"'"Doc,"' he began, 'I was thinking to-night of what you done for me and
how you did it, and how decent you've been about it always, and I
thought maybe you wouldn't feel offended if I brought you this bunch of
scarfpins to take your pick from'--and he unwrapped the bundle. 'There's
a pearl one--that might please you--and here's another that
sparkles--take your pick, "Doc." It would please me a heap if you
would'--and he handed me half a dozen scarfpins stuck in a flannel
rag--some of them of great value.

"I didn't know what to say at first. I couldn't get mad. I saw he was in
dead earnest, and I saw, too, that it was pure gratitude on his part
that prompted him to do it. That's a kind of human feeling you don't
want to crush out in a man. When he's got that, no matter what else he
lacks, you've got something to build on. I pulled out the pearl pin from
the others. I wanted to get time to make up my mind as to what I really
ought to do.

"'Very nice pin,' I said.

"'Yes, I thought so. I got it on a Sixth Avenue car. Maybe you'll like
the gold one better; take your pick, it's all the same to me. That one
you've got in your hand is a good one.' I was slowly looking them over,
making up my mind how I would refuse them and not hurt his feelings.

"'How did you get this one?' I asked, holding up the pearl pin.

"'I picked it up outside Cooper Union.'

"'On the sidewalk?'

"'No, from a feller's scarf. I held the cab door for him.' He spoke
exactly as if he had been a collector who had been roaming the world for
curios. 'Take 'em both, "Doc"--or all of 'em--I mean it.'

"I laid the bundle on the table and said: 'Well, that's very kind of you
and I don't want you to think I don't appreciate it--but you see I don't
wear scarfpins, and if I did I don't think I ought to take these. You
see we have two different professions--you've got yours and I've got
mine. I saw off men's legs, or I help them through a spell of sickness.
They pay me for it in money. You've got another way of making your
living. Your patients are whoever you happen to meet. I mightn't like
your way of doing, and you mightn't like mine. That's a matter of
opinion, or, perhaps, of education. You've got your risks to run, and
I've got mine. If I cut too deep and kill a man they can shut me
up--just as they can if you get into trouble. But I don't think we ought
to mix up the proceeds. You wouldn't want me to give you this
five-dollar Bill--and I held up a note a patient had just paid me--'and
therefore I don't see how I ought to take one of your pins. I may not
have made it plain to you--but it strikes me that way.'

"'Then you ain't mad 'cause I brought 'em?'--and he looked at me
searchingly from under his dark eyebrows, his lips firmly set.

"'No, I'm very grateful to you for wanting to give them to me--only I
don't see my way clear to take them.'

"He settled back on the sofa and began twirling his hat with his hand.
Then he rose from his seat, a shade of disappointment on his face, and
said, slowly:

"'Well, "Doc," ain't there something else I can do for you? Man like you
must have _something_ you want--something you can't get without
somebody's help. Think now--you mightn't see me again.'

"Instantly I thought of my mother's watch.

"'Yes, there is. Somebody came along one night when I was asleep and
borrowed my vest hanging over that chair by the window, and my
trousers, and my mother's watch was in the vest pocket. If you could
help me get that back you would do me a real service--one I
wouldn't forget.'

"'What kind of a watch?'

"I described it closely, its inscription, the portrait of my mother in
the case, and showed him a copy of her photograph--like the one here.
Then I gave him as close a description of the man as I could.

"When I had described the scar on his face he looked at me in surprise.
When I added that he had a slight limp, he said, quickly:

"'Short man--with close-cropped hair--and a swipe across his chin. Lost
a toe, and stumbles when he walks. I'll see what I can do. He ain't one
of our men. He comes from Chicago. He never stays more'n a day or two in
any town. Don't none of 'em know him round here. Leave it to me; may
take some time--see you in a day or two'--and he went out.

"I didn't see him for a month--not until two nights ago. He didn't ring
the bell this time. He came in through the window. I thought the catch
was down, but it wasn't. Funny how quick these fellows can see a thing.
As soon as he shut the glass sash behind him he drew the curtains close;
then he turned down the gas. All this, mind you, before he had opened
his mouth. Then he said:

"'Anybody here but you?'

"'No.'

"'Sure?'

"'Yee, very sure.'

"He spoke in a husky, rasping voice, like a man who had caught his
breath again after a long run.

"He turned his back to the window, slipped his hand in his hip-pocket
and pulled out my mother's watch.

"'Is that it, "Doc"?'

"The light was pretty low, but I'd have known it in the dark.

"'Yes, of course it is--' and I opened the lid in search of the old
lady's photo. 'Where did you get it?'

"'Look again. There ain't no likeness.'

"'No, but here are the marks where they scraped it off'--and I held it
close to his eyes. 'Where did you get it?'

"'Don't ask no questions, "Doc." I had some trouble gittin' next the
goods, and maybe it ain't over yet. I'll know in the morning. If anybody
asks you anything about it, you ain't lost no watch--see? Last time you
seen me I was goin' West, see--don't forget that. That's all, "Doc." If
you're pleased, I'm satisfied.'

"He held out his hand to say good-by, but I wouldn't take it. His
appearance, the tone of his voice, and his hunted look made me a
little nervous.

"'Sit down. You'll let me pay you for it, won't you? Wait until I go
back in my bedroom for some money.'

"'No, "Doc," you can't pay me a cent. I'm sorry they got the mother's
picture, but I couldn't catch up with the goods before. That would have
been the best part of it for me. Mothers is scarce now--kind you and me
had--dead or alive. You won't mind if I turn out the gas while I slip
out, do you, and you won't mind either if I ask you to sit still here.
Somebody might see you--' and he shook my hand and started for the
window. As his hand neared the latch I could see in the dim light that
his movements were unsteady. Once he stumbled and clutched at the
bookcase for support----

"'Hold on,' I said--and I walked rapidly toward him--'don't go yet--you
are not well.'

"He leaned against the bookcase and put his hand to his side.

"I was alongside of him now, my arm under his, guiding him into a chair.

"'Are you faint?'

"'Yes--got a drop of anything, "Doc"? That's all I want. It ain't
nothing.'

"I opened my closet, took out a bottle of brandy and poured some into a
measuring-glass. He drank it, leaned his head for an instant against my
arm and, with the help of my hand slipped under his armpit, again
struggled to his feet.

"When I withdrew my hand it was covered with blood. It was too dark to
see the color, but I knew from the sticky feeling of it just what
it was.

"'My God! man,' I cried; 'you are hurt, your shirt's all bloody. Come
back here until I can see what's the matter.'

"'No, "Doc"--_no!_ I tell you. It's stopped bleeding now. It would be
tough for you if they pinched me here. Keep away, I tell you--I ain't
got a minute to lose. I didn't want to hurt him even after he gave me
this one in my back, but his girl was wearing it and there warn't no
other way. Git behind them curtains, "Doc." So! Good-by.'

"And he was gone."



PLAIN FIN--PAPER-HANGER


I

The man was a little sawed-off, red-headed Irishman, with twinkling,
gimlet eyes, two up-curved lips always in a broad smile, and a pair of
thin, caliper-shaped legs.

His name was as brief as his stature.

"Fin, your honor, by the grace of God. F-i-n, Fin. There was a 'Mac' in
front of it once, and an 'n' to the tail of it in the old times, so me
mother says, but some of me ancisters--bad cess to 'em!--wiped 'em out.
Plain Fin, if you plase, sor."

The punt was the ordinary Thames boat: a long, narrow, flat-bottomed,
shallow craft with tapering ends decked over to serve as seats, the
whole propelled by a pole the size of a tight-rope dancer's and about as
difficult to handle.

Chartering the punt had been easy. All I had had to do was to stroll
down the path bordering the river, run my eye over a group of boats
lying side by side like a school of trout with their noses up-stream,
pick out the widest, flattest, and least upsettable craft in the fleet,
decorate it with a pair of Turkey-red cushions from a pile in the
boathouse, and a short mattress, also Turkey-red--a good thing at
luncheon-hour for a tired back is a mattress--slip the key of the
padlock of the mooring-chain in my pocket and stroll back again.

The hiring of the man for days after my arrival at Sonning-on-Thames,
was more difficult, well-nigh impossible, except at a price per diem
which no staid old painter--they are all an impecunious lot--could
afford. There were boys, of course, for the asking; sunburnt,
freckle-faced, tousle-headed, barefooted little devils who, when my back
was turned, would do handsprings over my cushions, landing on the
mattress, or break the pole the first day out, leaving me high and dry
on some island out of calling distance; but full-grown, sober-minded,
steady men, who could pole all day or sit beside me patiently while I
worked, hand me the right brush or tube of color, or palette, or open a
bottle of soda without spilling half of it--that kind of man was scarce.

Landlord Hull, of the White Hart Inn--what an ideal Boniface is this
same Hull, and what an ideal inn--promised a boatman to pole the punt
and look after my traps when the Henley regatta was over; and the owner
of my own craft, and of fifty other punts besides, went so far as to say
that he expected a man as soon as Lord Somebody-or-Other left for the
Continent, when His Lordship's waterman would be free, adding,
meaningly:

"Just at present, zur, when we do be 'avin' sich a mob lot from Lunnon,
'specially at week's-end, zur, we ain't got men enough to do our own
polin'. It's the war, zur, as has took 'em off. Maybe for a few day,
zur, ye might take a 'and yerself if ye didn't mind."

I waved the hand referred to--the forefinger part of it--in a
deprecating manner. I couldn't pole the lightest and most tractable punt
ten yards in a straight line to save my own or anybody else's life. Then
again, if I should impair the precision of my five fingers by any such
violent exercise, my brush would wabble as nervously over my canvas as a
recording needle across a steam-gauge. Poling a rudderless, keelless
skiff up a crooked stream by means of a fifteen-foot balancing pole is
an art only to be classed with that of rowing a gondola. Gondoliers and
punters, like poets, are born, not made. My own Luigi comes of a race of
gondoliers dating back two hundred years, and punters must spring from
just such ancestors. No, if I had to do the poling myself, I should
rather get out and walk.

Fin solved the problem--not from any special training (rowing in
regattas and the like), but rather from that universal adaptability of
the Irishman which fits him for filling any situation in life, from a
seat on a dirt-cart to a chair in an aldermanic chamber.

"I am a paper-hanger by trade, sor," he began, "but I was brought up on
the river and can put a punt wid the best. Try me, sor, at four bob a
day; I'm out of a job."

I looked him over, from his illuminated head down to his parenthetical
legs, caught the merry twinkle in his eyes, and a sigh of relief escaped
me. Here was not only a seafaring man, accustomed to battling with the
elements, skilled in the handling of poles, and acquainted with swift
and ofttimes dangerous currents, but a brother brush, a man conversant
with design and pigments; an artist, keenly sensitive to straight lines,
harmony of tints, and delicate manipulation of surfaces.

I handed him the key at once. Thenceforward I was simply a passenger
depending on his strong right arm for guidance, and at luncheon-hour
upon his alert and nimble, though slightly incurved, legs for
sustenance, the inn being often a mile away from my subject.

And the inns!--or rather my own particular inn--the White Hart at
Sonning.

There are others, of course--the Red Lion at Henley; the old Warboys
hostelry at Cookham; the Angler at Marlowe; the French Horn across the
black water and within rifle-shot of the White Hart--a most pretentious
place, designed for millionnaires and spendthrifts, where even chops and
tomato-sauce, English pickles, chowchow and the like, ales in the wood
and other like commodities and comforts, are dispensed at prices that
compel all impecunious, staid painters like myself to content themselves
with a sandwich and a pint of bitter--and a hundred other inns along the
river, good, bad, and indifferent. But yet with all their charms I am
still loyal to my own White Hart.

Mine is an inn that sets back from the river with a rose-garden in front
the like of which you never saw nor smelt of: millions of roses in a
never-ending bloom. An inn with low ceilings, a cubby-hole of a bar next
the side entrance on the village street; two barmaids--three on
holidays; old furniture; a big fireplace in the hall; red-shaded lamps
at night; plenty of easy-chairs and cushions. An inn all dimity and
cretonne and brass bedsteads upstairs and unlimited tubs--one fastened
to the wall painted white, and about eight feet long, to fit the largest
pattern of Englishman. Out under the portico facing the rose-garden and
the river stand tables for two or four, with snow-white cloths made gay
with field-flowers, and the whole shaded by big, movable Japanese
umbrellas, regular circus-tent umbrellas, their staffs stuck in the
ground wherever they are needed. Along the sides of this garden on the
gravel-walk loll go-to-sleep straw chairs, with little wicker tables
within reach of your hand for B.& S., or tea and toast, or a pint in a
mug, and down at the water's edge seafaring men like Fin and me find a
boathouse with half a score of punts, skiffs, and rowboats, together
with a steam-launch with fires banked ready for instant service.

And the people in and about this White Hart inn!

There are a bride and groom, of course. No well-regulated Thames inn can
exist a week without a bride and groom. He is a handsome, well-knit,
brown-skinned young fellow, who wears white flannel trousers, chalked
shoes, a shrimp-colored flannel jacket and a shrimp-colored cap
(Leander's colors) during the day, and a faultlessly cut dress-suit
at night.

She has a collection of hats, some as big as small tea-tables; fluffy
gowns for mornings; short frocks for boating; and a gold belt, two
shoulder-straps, and a bunch of roses for dinner. They have three dogs
between them--one four inches long--well, perhaps six, to be
exact--another a bull terrier, and a third a St. Bernard as big as a
Spanish burro. They have also a maid, a valet, and a dog-cart, besides
no end of blankets, whips, rugs, canes, umbrellas, golf-sticks, and
tennis-bats. They have stolen up here, no doubt, to get away from their
friends, and they are having the happiest hours of their lives.

"Them two, sor," volunteers Fin, as we pass them lying under the willows
near my morning subject, "is as chuck-full of happiness as a hive's full
of bees. They was out in their boat yisterday, sor, in all that pour,
and it rolled off 'em same as a duck sheds water, and they laughin' so
ye'd think they'd split. What's dresses to them, sor, and her father?
Why, sor, he could buy and sell half Sonnin'. He's jist home from Africa
that chap is--or he was the week he was married--wid more lead inside
him than would sink a corpse. You kin see for yerself that he's made for
fightin'. Look at the eye on him!"

Then there is the solitary Englishman, who breakfasts by himself, and
has the morning paper laid beside his plate the moment the post-cart
arrives. Fin and I find him half the time on a bench in a cool place on
the path to the Lock, his nose in his book, his tightly furled umbrella
by his side. No dogs nor punts nor spins up the river for him. He is
taking his holiday and doesn't want to be meddled with or spoken to.

There are, too, the customary maiden sisters--the unattended and
forlorn--up for a week; and the young fellow down from London, all
flannels and fishing-rods--three or four of them in fact, who sit round
in front of the little sliding wicket facing the row of bottles and
pump-handles--divining-rods for the beer below, these
pump-handles--chaffing the barmaids and getting as good as they send;
and always, at night, one or more of the country gentry in for their
papers, and who can be found in the cosey hall discussing the crops, the
coming regatta, the chance of Leander's winning the race, or the latest
reports of yesterday's cricket-match.

Now and then the village doctor or miller--quite an important man is the
miller--you would think so if you could see the mill--drops in, draws up
a chair, and ventures an opinion on the price of wheat in the States or
the coal strike or some kindred topic, the coming country fair, or
perhaps the sermon of the previous Sunday.

"I hope you 'eard our Vicar, sir--No? Sorry you didn't, sir. I tell yer
'e's a nailer."

And so much for the company at the White Hart Inn.


II

You perhaps think that you know the Thames. You have been at Henley, no
doubt, during regatta week, when both banks were flower-beds of
blossoming parasols and full-blown picture-hats, the river a stretch of
silver, crowded with boats, their occupants cheering like mad. Or you
know Marlowe with its wide stream bordered with stately trees and
statelier mansions, and Oxford with its grim buildings, and Windsor
dominated by its huge pile of stone, the flag of the Empires floating
from its top; and Maidenhead with its boats and launches, and lovely
Cookham with its back water and quaint mill and quainter lock. You have
rowed down beside them all in a shell, or have had glimpses of them
from the train, or sat under the awnings of the launch or regular packet
and watched the procession go by. All very charming and interesting,
and, if you had but forty-eight hours in which to see all England, a
profitable way of spending eight of them. And yet you have only skimmed
the beautiful river's surface as a swallow skims a lake.

Try a punt once.

Pole in and out of the little back waters, lying away from the river,
smothered in trees; float over the shallows dotted with pond-lilies;
creep under drooping branches swaying with the current; stop at any one
of a hundred landings, draw your boat up on the gravel, spring out and
plunge into the thickets, flushing the blackbirds from their nests, or
unpack your luncheon, spread your mattress, and watch the clouds sail
over your head. Don't be in a hurry. Keep up this idling day in and day
out, up and down, over and across, for a month or more, and you will get
some faint idea of how picturesque, how lovely, and how restful this
rarest of all the sylvan streams of England can be.

If, like me, you can't pole a punt its length without running into a
mud-bank or afoul of the bushes, then send for Fin. If he isn't at
Sonning you will hear of him at Cookham or Marlowe or London--but find
him wherever he is. He will prolong your life and loosen every button on
your waistcoat. Fin is the unexpected, the ever-bubbling, and the
ever-joyous; restless as a school-boy ten minutes before recess, quick
as a grasshopper and lively as a cricket. He is, besides, brimful and
spilling over with a quality of fun that is geyserlike in its
spontaneity and intermittent flow. When he laughs, which he does every
other minute, the man ploughing across the river, or the boy fishing, or
the girl driving the cow, turn their heads and smile. They can't help
it. In this respect he is better than a dozen farmers each with his two
blades of grass. Fin plants a whole acre of laughs at once.

On one of my joyous days--they were all joyous days, this one most of
all--I was up the backwater, the "Mud Lark" (Fin's name for the punt)
anchored in her element by two poles, one at each end, to keep her
steady, when Fin broke through a new aperture and became reminiscent.

I had dotted in the outlines of the old footpath with the meadows
beyond, the cotton-wool clouds sailing overhead--only in England do I
find these clouds--and was calling to the restless Irishman to sit still
or I would send him ashore ... wet, when he answered with one of his
bubbling outbreaks:

"I don't wonder yer hot, sor, but I git that fidgety. I been so long
doin' nothin'; two months now, sor, since I been on a box."

I worked on for a minute without answering. Hanging wall-paper by
standing on a box was probably the way they did it in the country, the
ceilings being low.

"No work?" I said, aimlessly. As long as he kept still I didn't care
what he talked or laughed about.

"Plinty, sor--an' summer's the time to do it. So many strangers comin'
an' goin', but they won't let me at it. I'm laid off for a month yet;
that's why your job come in handy, sor."

"Row with your Union?" I remarked, listlessly, my mind still intent on
watching a sky tint above the foreground trees.

"No--wid the perlice. A little bit of a scrimmage wan night in Trafalgar
Square. It was me own fault, sor, for I oughter a-knowed better. It was
about three o'clock in the mornin', sor, and I was outside one o' them
clubs just below Piccadilly, when one o' them young chaps come out wid
three or four others, all b'ilin' drunk--one was Lord Bentig--jumps into
a four-wheeler standin' by the steps an' hollers out to the rest of us:
'A guinea to the man that gits to Trafalgar Square fust; three minutes'
start,' and off he wint and we after him, leavin' wan of the others
behind wid his watch in his hand."

I laid down my palette and looked up. Paper-hanging evidently had its
lively side.

"Afoot?"

"All four of 'em, sor--lickety-split and hell's loose. I come near
runnin' over a bobbie as I turned into Pall Mall, but I dodged him and
kep' on and landed second, with the mare doubled up in a heap and the
rig a-top of her and one shaft broke. Lord Bentig and the other chaps
that was wid him was standin' waitin', and when we all fell in a heap he
nigh bu'st himself a-laughin'. He went bail for us, of course, and give
the three of us ten bob apiece, but I got laid off for three months, and
come up here, where me old mother lives and I kin pick up a job."

"Hanging paper?" I suggested with a smile.

"Yes, or anything else. Ye see, sor, I'm handy carpenterin', or puttin'
on locks, or the likes o' that, or paintin', or paper-hangin', or
mendin' stoves or tinware. So when they told me a painter chap wanted
me, I looked over me perfessions and picked out the wan I tho't would
suit him best. But it's drivin' a cab I'm good at; been on the box
fourteen year come next Christmas. Ye don't mind, do ye, sor, my not
tellin' ye before? Lord Bentig'll tell ye all about me next time ye see
him in Lunnon." This touch was truly Finian. "He's cousin, ye know, sor,
to this young chap what's here at the inn wid his bride. They wouldn't
know me, sor, nor don't, but I've driv her father many a time. My rank
used to be near his house on Bolton Terrace. I had a thing happen there
one night that--more water? Yes, sor--and the other brush--the big one?
Yes, sor--thank ye, sor. I don't shake, do I, sor?"

"No, Fin; go on."

"Well, I was tellin' ye about the night Sir Henry's man--that's the
lady's father, sor--come to the rank where I sat on me box. It was about
ten o'clock--rainin' hard and bad goin', it was that slippery.

"'His Lordship wants ye in a hurry, Fin,' and he jumped inside.

"When I got there I see something was goin' on--a party or
something--the lights was lit clear up to the roof.

"'His Lordship's waitin' in the hall for ye,' said his man, and I jumped
off me box and wint inside.

"'Fin,' said His Lordship, speakin' low, 'there's a lady dinin' wid me
and the wine's gone to her head, and she's that full that if she waits
until her own carriage comes for her she won't git home at all! Go back
and get on yer cab wid yer fingers to yer hat, and I'll bring her out
and put her in meself. It's dark and she won't know the difference. Take
her down to Cadogan Square--I don't know the number, but ye can't miss
it, for it's the fust white house wid geraniums in the winders. When ye
git there ye're to git down, help her up the steps, keepin' yer mouth
shut, unlock the door, and set her down on the sofa. You'll find the
sofa in the parlor on the right, and can't miss it. Then lay the key on
the mantel--here it is. After she's down, step out softly, close the
door behind ye, ring the bell, and some of her servants will come and
put her to bed. She's often took that way and they know what to do.'
Then he says, lookin' at me straight, 'I sent for you, Fin, for I know I
kin trust ye. Come here tomorrow and let me know how she got through and
I'll give ye five bob.'

"Well, sor, in a few minutes out she come, leanin' on His Lordship's
arm, steppin' loike she had spring-halt, and takin' half the sidewalk
to turn in.

"'Good-night, Your Ladyship,' says His Lordship.

"'Good-night, Sir Henry,' she called back, her head out of the winder,
and off I driv.

"I turned into the Square, found the white house wid the geraniums,
helps her out of me cab and steadied her up the steps, pulled the key
out, and was just goin' to put it in the lock when she fell up agin the
door and open it went. The gas was turned low in the hall, so that she
wouldn't know me if she looked at me.

"I found the parlor, but the lights were out; so widout lookin' for the
sofa--I was afraid somebody'd come and catch me--I slid her into a
rockin'-chair, laid the key on the hall-table, shut the door softlike,
rang the bell as if there was a fire next door, jumped on me box,
and driv off.

"The next mornin' I went to see His Lordship.

"'Did ye land her all right, Fin?'

"'I did, sor,' I says.

"'Had ye any trouble wid the key?'

"'No, sor,' I says, 'the door was open.'

"'That's queer,' he says; 'maybe her husband came in earlier and forgot
to shut it. And ye put her on the sofa----'

"'No, sor, in a big chair.'

"'In the parlor on the right?'

"'No, sor, in a little room on the left--down one step----'

"He stopped and looked at me.

"'Te're sure ye put her in the fust white house?'

"'I am, sor.'

"'Wid geraniums in the winder?'

"'Yes, sor.'

"'Red?' he says.

"'No, white,' I says.

"'On the north side of the

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