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THE HILLS OF DESIRE




[Illustration]

  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
  ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

  MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
  LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
  TORONTO




THE HILLS OF DESIRE


  BY
  RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER

  AUTHOR OF "THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH," "GOLD MUST
  BE TRIED BY FIRE," ETC.


  NEW YORK
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  1925


  _All rights reserved_




  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


  COPYRIGHT, 1919,
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1919. Reprinted
  February, 1925.




  TO
  ROSE AND CHARLES HIGGINS




THE HILLS OF DESIRE




I


"Well, I was wan. The two Maddens was two. Eddie Carey was three. Jim
Powers was four. And--and--But there was five of us, an' I know it.
Wait. I'll count fresh.

"I was wan. The two Maddens was two. Eddie Carey was three. Jim Powers
was four----"

"Shtop it, Casey! I say, Shtop it! I'll be as crazy as you next.
Altogether, I say, altogether how many of you was on the picnic?
_All_-together!"

"Five, I repeat. On me honor as a bricklayer! Five, I will have it. But
I cannot, for the life of me, recollect the fifth. I'll count again----

"I was wan. The two Maddens was two----"

Augusta opened the door to announce tearfully:

"Mister Jimmie, the boarders are saying that they can't stand it!"

"To arms!" cried Jimmie Wardwell, leaping up from the table and
typewriter where he had been laboriously pounding out Casey's count of
the picnic, "to arms to repel boarders!"

And he caught the wholly unready and dignified Augusta full in his arms
and kissed her fairly.

Now Augusta is somewhat incredible. I suppose I can hardly make you
understand her--as much of her, I mean, as I could ever understand.
But, having a whole book before me in which to deal with her, I am
going to try to explain to you the things about her which may be
explained.

There was, for instance, Augusta's look of seraphic innocence. Women
looked at her the first time and she looked back at them with her
friendly, ready-to-wear--"Good morning, I hope you are as happy as I
am," look.

Then they drew away from her with a defensive pursing of backs, saying:

"She _can't_ be so good as that! Or so innocent!"

But then, as they continued to study her, they saw that she was just
the gold that she showed. Then they took her suddenly to their hearts
and wanted to mother her.

Here it must be explained that Augusta had never till this moment been
kissed by a man. She knew that there was no harm in Jimmie Wardwell's
kiss. To know innocence and harmlessness, when one meets them, is as
great a part of wisdom as to know their opposites when met. Augusta
had this large division of wisdom. Yet she was unaccountably hurt by
Jimmie's act.

She was angry, but not with the anger that would prompt her to box his
ears; as would have been adequate in a smaller matter. She would not
let it go as a boy-and-girl tilt.

Jimmie Wardwell, looking into the dry, pained depths of the girl's
gray-blue eyes, saw that she was not going to be angry in any ordinary
way. He had hurt her. And he was going to be punished. He stood,
suddenly quiet and sober, awaiting his verdict.

"You will have to leave the house, Mr. Wardwell," she said at last,
very quietly. "You must make your own reason. I do not wish to be
obliged to tell mother."

She had spoken with a grave, settled finality which left Jimmie
Wardwell silent and without defense.

The girl dropped the matter where she had finished it. Nor did she
return to the other matter about which she had come to the room. She
crossed to the typewriter and stood looking down reading the story
that showed half written there.

"I thought you were going to begin on your own work," she said,
ignoring everything that had passed.

Wardwell knew that he had been ordered out of his boarding house as
definitely as if his trunk had been deposited on Eighteenth Street. But
he was willing to forget that for the instant and to answer on the new
ground that she had chosen.

"I did do something on the book," he said. "But what's the use! I
can't put the time on it. I'd never finish it. I have to live. And
that"----he pointed angrily at the paper on the machine----"that's the
only kind of stuff that anybody'll pay me for! I couldn't sell that if
it wasn't ancient and bearded!"

"You couldn't sell that," the grave critic answered judiciously, "if it
wasn't good of it's kind. But you don't love it. So you always hate to
have to do it, and you must get away from it."

"Yes," said Wardwell, "I must." But it was plain that he was not
thinking of her wise counsel about himself and his work. He was
thinking of this child--She was no more in time, just a year out of
Julia Richman High School. Yet it was a woman's personality that looked
out of her child's dancing eyes.

He did think of returning to the question of his leaving. But he
remembered that there was no question. It was not a matter of appeasing
her anger, of explaining. She knew. She understood. And she had spoken
her decision.

"I wonder," the girl said, crossing to look down into the street.
"Mother is very long in coming. And she never delays. Could anything
happen to her between here and Sixteenth Street. But, of course, what
_could_ happen! She goes and comes every morning. And everybody knows
her."

"I don't know," said Jimmie darkly, peering doubtfully down into the
street. "This great city is full of designing men. I've often wondered
how you let her go about the streets in broad day unchaperoned. A
lovely woman, an altogether delectable woman!" he proceeded, warming up
to his nonsense. "Why, she's not safe a minute!"

"In fact," he announced cheerfully, "I've often thought of running away
with her myself."

Augusta's laugh broke through the gathering cloud of anxiety on her
face, and her eyes danced as she thought of her mother, Rose Wilding,
Rose the strong, the capable, the wise, the mother of all the street,
being carried off--Her white hair, her broad, stately person, her two
hundred pounds of active woman!

"You're right, of course; I know you are. It's silly to think of
anything happening to her. But sometimes, you know, before things
happen a feeling of dread comes over me. And I just _know_ that
something is wrong. I don't know where it comes from, or how. Did you
ever feel yourself waiting for a loud shock to come before you hear it?"

Wardwell looked sharply at the girl for an instant. He had heard
some strange things from women in the boarding house. They certainly
believed that Augusta had some insight or foresight, or something. She
had told them things about themselves. But when he spoke he was blandly
didactic.

"That, you know," he explained, "is just the first quiver of the shock,
felt by the ganglia, the nerve knots; before the rude noise gets to the
brain."

"_There was a man in our town_," Augusta chanted, skipping to the door,
"_And he was wondrous wise_----"

Wardwell listened to the receding hum of her voice as it died down in
the well of the stairs. Then he turned and with a vicious yank tore
the offending story of Casey's picnic from the machine and ground the
paper into the floor with his heel.

An hour later he was sitting on the floor with half a novel of loose
sheets of paper scattered all about him. He had found the table too
small for the work, had transferred his operations to the bed--he
was cutting madly at page after page of the type-written stuff--but,
finding that he was jabbing the pencil through the paper, he had swept
the whole business to the floor and gone at it with vengeance.

He had spent eight months on the book, and it was still a formless
wad of words. There was an idea in it, a live, working idea. But "The
Feet of the Plodders," as he was calling the book, would neither plod
nor jig. They strutted along, he complained, stiff as wooden horses,
fatuous as roosters.

"You talk like a hatful of wood," he said contemptuously to Gerald
Straight, his hero, who, on the paper, was giving out some pet ideas of
Wardwell's own on the dignity of labor. Down came the pencil and the
whole paragraph was condemned as, "Rot!"

He did not notice Augusta coming back into the room. He looked up as he
grunted his disapproval of what he had thought very fine while writing
it.

The girl stood in the doorway, swaying and clutching desperately at the
door frame for support. She must have run madly up the stairs, for it
was plain that she was breathless from physical exertion, as well as
speechless from some strange, uncanny fright.

"She's gone!" she gasped, as Wardwell jumped from the floor and hurried
to her. "I can almost see it! It almost seems that I did see it," she
went on, fighting with herself to tell a plain story.

"The apple woman at the corner saw her fall. Her head struck on the
curb. The apple woman ran to her. But she got to her feet and walked
away without looking back.

"Right past her own doorway she went, without looking up--the apple
woman saw her--and straight over toward Broadway.

"I ran all the way, asking, begging people to say they'd seen her. But
not one would say it!"

"But," said Wardwell, "it doesn't prove anything. She was a little
dazed. She didn't want to come in to frighten you. She just walked
around a little and went, maybe, to a doctor. That's what she'd do,
can't you see?"

"I wish I could, Jimmie. But it isn't what she'd do at all. She'd just
walk quietly into the house, and I'd never know that anything had
happened.

"I'm going out again! I can't stay, she may be wandering farther and
farther from me every minute!"

There was a fierce, mothering eagerness in the girl's voice, as though
she already saw the tragedy of the months to come, and had already
taken up the burden of being mother to her mother.

Wardwell laid a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder, saying:

"I think you could better let me go. I can go farther than you."

"She went toward Broadway," the girl said slowly. "But it's no use
trying to save me that way. I must find her _myself_. I _know_ that."

Jimmie had already pushed past her through the door and started for the
stairs. He saw that she was in such a state that unless she saw someone
doing something she would herself start out again.

"Thank you," she said simply. "But I cannot promise to stay in."

"I think you must. You know we're both foolish. We don't either of us
really believe that anything's happened to her. But you must stay in.
She's sure to come in any minute."

Arguing her into a kind of silent promise that she would not go out
and would not worry, Wardwell left the house and started east through
Eighteenth Street.

In the open, quiet street, away from the urge of Augusta's excitement,
Wardwell felt entirely foolish. He expected to see the strong-willed,
self-reliant woman who was Augusta's mother coming along the street at
any moment, and he wondered what he should say to her.

Nothing ever did happen, anyway. Rose Wilding had just walked into a
drug store or a doctor's, maybe, and had had to wait. That was it, of
course.

He walked toward Broadway, taking, without any conscious notion of
following a trace, the direction which the old apple woman had given.

Coming out of the quiet cross street he stepped thoughtlessly into the
rush of traffic that sweeps through Union Square. An automobile brushed
carelessly by within inches of him. A great lumbering truck came
charging down upon him. A motorcycle screamed at his ear. He leaped
back to the curb, muttering at the grinning fiend in goggles who shot
past.

Wardwell stood on the curb looking out over the shifting lines and
tides of trucks, handcarts, automobiles, horses and people. He was
looking for one person out of the hundreds and hundreds that moved
within range of his eye. As well, he thought, look for a particular
stone in the paving.

A few men have stepped into the wilderness and never been seen again.
But how many, many men, and women, have stepped off a curb into a
stream like that and never been seen again.

There's Flynn, the cop, across the street. He knows me by sight. He
could say he saw me step off the curb. And that's all he could say. I
could lose myself from anybody that ever saw me. The string that holds
us where we are is so thin that--Why it's a wonder that anybody stays
where he is! It's so easy to walk out, completely out!

And then some of Augusta's excited worry came upon him. Rose Wilding
_might_ have been stunned by the fall. She _might_ have walked, dazed,
right past her own door, right off this curb and into that sea of
moving life!

"Is it kiddin' me you are?" snorted officer Flynn. "Lookin' for your
boarding mistress! More like, she's lookin' for you."

"No, I'm not," said Jimmie quietly. "I'm right in earnest. Her daughter
has it that she fell and struck her head on the curb, and lost--"

"Sure. There'd have to be a daughter in it."

"Oh, go to Blazes!" snapped Jimmie, turning on his heel.

"I might have known better," he growled as he walked away. "They never
do anything unless you show them a corpse. And then they'd like to club
you for giving them trouble."

He turned south, looking to the only other resource he knew. He was
a New Yorker with all of a New Yorker's entire dependence on the two
forces that govern his town--the police and the newspapers.

At Astor Place he ran across Jim Ray, a dark little crank of a man, a
man who looked as old as the first thing that ever happened, and seemed
to have been present at every happening since the first. He was coming
from a stormy, snapping interview with an irate, bullying financier,
and he was on his way to get the personal story of an interesting
adventuress who had gotten herself into jail.

But he listened to Wardwell. In fact, he always listened to
everything, until he was sure it was not worth listening to.

He had known Wardwell during the latter's sporadic incursions into
newspaper work, and had shown a grudging, contrary sort of liking for
him.

"Which do you want to go on," Ray questioned noncommittally, "the
facts, or the daughter's imagination?"

"Both," said Wardwell stubbornly.

"All right," Ray admitted. "But, if you don't want to be guyed, stick
to the facts. Go on down to the office, Grayson will be just about
coming in. Tell him I sent you. He'll give the word to the boys as
they're going out on their assignments. If anything has happened to the
woman, they'll get the thread somewhere."

Wardwell was more or less at home in Newspaper Row, and he thoroughly
believed that no accident happening in the city could slip through the
net of active intelligence centered there. When he had gotten assurance
that the word would be passed to all the reporters going out for their
rounds, that every newspaper in the city would be informed, that every
police blotter and hospital record would be scanned, he started back to
the house with the sure feeling that he had done all that was possible.

Augusta listened, dry-eyed, almost listless, it seemed. She did not say
anything. It was plain that she had expected nothing from his search.
And Wardwell was chilled by the obvious fact, that he had really
accomplished nothing.

Augusta sat a little while, not seeming to notice that Wardwell had
stopped speaking. Her soft blue eyes took on a deep, dark blue in
which there was no visible expression. Her features were strained and
sharp, as though she reached somewhere to another medium of knowledge,
outside the common senses. After a little she said vaguely:

"She is not hurt. Not that way. She cannot be found that way. She has
lost her thought. I've never yet called to her without getting an
answer."

"Eh, what's that?" questioned Jimmie sharply.

The girl seemed to be awakened by his voice. She shivered and suddenly
jumped up from her chair.

"What was I saying--? I don't remember."

"You were saying something about calling her and always getting an
answer. I don't think you ought to worry so," he soothed. "We haven't
the least reason to think that anything's happened her. It couldn't be
anything bad, or we'd know of it before now."

Augusta moved quietly out of the common parlor where she had been
sitting by the window, and stood at the glass in the hall, putting on
her coat. She had been in street dress and had evidently only been
waiting for Wardwell to come in before she should go out.

"What have you eaten today?" Wardwell asked, trying to interpose the
commonplace, for he was frightened at the strange suppressed quiet of
the girl.

"I had my breakfast," she said, without turning.

"Yes, but it's 'long in the afternoon now. You mustn't think of going
out without something. Come into the kitchen and we'll see if Ann
hasn't some tea, or something."

"Will you make her eat, Misther Jimmie!" Ann appealed. "She's beyond
me. Her worritin' about Rose Wildin' that's as safe in the sthreet as a
blessed child! Sure, she stepped into a neighbor's somewhere an' had a
bite an' a chat. An' now, I'll bet ye what ye dare, she's calyin' over
about Jimmie Hearn's, askin' the price o' things she don't want."

The big gaunt Irishwoman who ruled the kitchen of the boarding house
set them down at her own white table, while she drew tea and scolded:

"You're worse nor she is, Misther Jimmie, humorin' her."

But, with all her stout talk, it was plain to Wardwell that Ann had
been listening to Augusta. She kept up a rattle of cheery scolding. She
even hinted that the whole affair, for all they knew, might be some of
Jimmie's own doing. She "wouldn't put it past him!" But, under it all,
Wardwell saw that she was nervous.

Augusta, with a kind of forced obedience, was munching at a piece of
bread when that straining, listening look came to her face again.
Wardwell caught himself turning unconsciously to follow her gaze. He
pulled himself back sharply, confused and half angry. But Augusta had
not noticed.

With that same expectant, baffled look in her eyes, she rose quickly
from the table and hurried out through the dark hall to the door, as
though she followed a call which she could not quite hear or understand.

When Wardwell caught up with her on the street, except that she tacitly
allowed him to fall into step beside her, she gave no sign of being
aware of him.

He had a curious feeling, as they hurried through the street, of
walking with a somnambulist. Yet the girl seemed entirely able to care
for herself. He saw that she knew just where she was going, that she
was aware of everything moving about her. Only, there was that strange,
in-seeing, strained detachment about her, as though she were trying to
look or listen into another world of sight and sound.

Here began those incredible nightmare days, and nights, when it seemed
that they were forever in the street, hurrying, the girl leading,
Wardwell a wholly useless body-guard following, from house to house
of all the people who had known Rose Wilding. Then came the fearful,
timid questionings, at hospitals, at emergency wards, at police
stations. And all the while Wardwell kept every newspaper office
in town in a constant bad temper with his persistent prodding, by
telephone.

Augusta did not go to the newspaper offices, either because she
believed that Wardwell's acquaintance would get more attention than she
could, or because she believed, as she had said in the beginning, that
she herself must find her mother.

Then there were the worse times, when Wardwell, leaving Augusta
peremptorily in the hands of Ann, went by himself on the last,
gruesome, hopeless round. He did not tell Augusta that he was going to
the morgue. He said nothing when he came back, gray of face and deathly
quiet in spite of his every effort to hold up cheer. But Augusta knew
where he had been, and what he had seen--and what he had not found.

As the days went on Jim Ray put his wits to the matter. It began to be
baffling, and as a thing became puzzling just so Jim Ray's interest in
it grew in proportion.

But in the end, he gave his verdict:

"She is not in this city, Wardwell. She must have left it by her own
will, and in an ordinary way. Nothing else could have happened, I'd
stake thirty years of work on it."

"But that's just what she wouldn't do! What she couldn't do! Why, she
couldn't in her right mind walk off and leave her daughter!"

"Well," said Ray imperturbably, "that's just what fills
newspapers--people doing what they couldn't and wouldn't."

So Wardwell saw that Jim Ray was ready to give up. And he knew that
when Ray gave up a matter it meant that the resources of newspaper
tracing had been exhausted. To himself, he was willing to admit that
Ray must be right. Rose Wilding, it seemed, must have gone out of the
city in a quiet, commonplace way. But, walking the streets at Augusta's
side, watching that tense, listening look upon her face, seeing her
evidently straining for a sight or a voice that she could not quite
get, he was again ready to believe with Augusta that Rose Wilding was
near, that Augusta would find her.

There were days now when Augusta walked, as it seemed, aimlessly. There
were no more definite places to be visited. She walked, Wardwell, with
a dull pain of helplessness, dogged and uncomplaining at her side,
through lower Fifth Avenue and University Place at the noon time when
the thousands of women and girls spilled out from loft buildings and
swarmed the sidewalks. Evening found her watching the cross streets
from Broome to Fourteenth Street, searching excitedly the myriad faces
of the crowds that move eastward to that world wonder of human hives,
the great East Side.

One half of working Manhattan rides jammed, complaining, but
submissive, to its wide flung homes. The other half walks, hurrying,
stooping away from the setting sun, into that unexplored, uncounted
medley of crowded tenements which lies beyond Second Avenue. It was
the faces of these hurrying, jostling thousands that Augusta scanned
desperately in the falling darkness of the cold November evenings.
Until it was long past dark and the streams of people had begun to
fail, they walked and watched.

But Wardwell, watching the girl, the weary, sharply cut look in her
face, the pinched, thinning lines of her slender body as she walked
home beside him, decided that this must stop. There could be but one
end of it for the high strung, over-sensitized mind of the girl.

There was no one to whom he could appeal as having authority. So far as
he had learned in the year which he had lived in Mrs. Wilding's house,
she had no relatives. But some one must soon take a way of stopping
Augusta from this hopeless, unending search.

"We both know it's doing no good, Augusta. And you're breaking yourself
down," he reasoned with her one morning, when three weeks of looking
had given not the slightest clue to the whereabouts of her mother. "She
will come back somehow, I am sure. And she mustn't come to find you a
wreck. She'll be needing your care. Don't you think I'm right, little
girl?"

"Of course, you're right, Mr. Jimmie. You're always right, now. And
you've been so good to me. But I can't stop. I can't stop! She's
getting farther and farther from me all the time, I must follow until I
find her."

"But, child dear, you've done all that's within human power. Now we
can only wait and hope." Jimmie was now the sobered gentleman, the
tried and patient servitor always at her side. Neither of them knew
how close to each other in sympathy and understanding they had come in
these weeks. They had, in truth, been living in a world almost all by
themselves with their search. The girl was ready to listen, to believe,
to trust; but she could not promise obedience. "I'll stay in today, if
I can," she promised. "But, if I hear her calling--"

With this he had to be content. And leaving her with Ann he went to his
room, hoping to get some work done. His money was about gone. He must
get some of the hated skits ready for the Sunday paper from which he
drew a hand-to-mouth living.

In the middle of the forenoon he heard Ann's step pounding heavily up
the stairs of the quiet house.

"She's away out again, Misther Jimmie!" the big woman panted. "I but
shtepped out the alley to the corner for an onion. An' I'm just back
this blessed minute. An' she's away!"

Wardwell started for the door, but came back. "There's no use going
out now," he said. "I wouldn't know where to look. Probably she has
started off on some new thought. But about noon I'll know where to look
for her. Don't worry, Ann; she's not in the least danger." But it was
a confidence he was far from feeling, whatever his common sense might
tell him.

Long before noon he was walking Fifth Avenue expecting to see Augusta
upon her quest among the working women. But Augusta did not come. He
went home, not knowing what else to do, and sat stupid and useless
through the entire afternoon, waiting until it should be time to go to
look for her in the places they had been haunting in the evenings of
the last week or so.

Just as the dusk was gathering he heard her key in the door and ran
down the stairs. She staggered into his arms in the hall and began to
cry fearfully. They were the first tears that he had seen her cry in
these weeks, and he did not know whether it was good or bad.

"Oh Jimmie, Jimmie," she cried, with the first direct appeal that she
had made to him, "they wouldn't let me have her! They wouldn't let her
come with me! I wanted to take her by the hand and bring her home. And
they wouldn't--She wanted to come!--They wouldn't let me! Oh, Jimmie,
they said she was a crazy woman! My darling good mamma! She isn't
crazy, she just forgot.

"She said she was Rosie Dale--that was her name before she was
married--and that she was eighteen. They had it in the book! And the
man laughed!"

"Yes, yes, dear. No, no, of course not," Wardwell repeated soothingly
as he carried her up to her mother's room. When Ann had brought her
something to drink he sat down beside the lounge on which Augusta lay
and began to question quietly.

"Tell Ann and me," he prompted, "just where you went first."

"To Bellevue. It came to my mind so strong. I just had to go there. And
I begged and begged with the man who had the book, and then another man
came, and at last they let me see the book myself. And there it was,
Rosie Dale. You see she'd just forgotten. And I asked the man, and he
laughed. He said she was sixty if she was a day! And she thought she
was eighteen! They brought her there from a hat factory. She used to
make hats when she first came to New York, a young girl. I know it all
now."

"And then?" questioned Wardwell quietly.

"Oh, Jimmie, that was more than a week ago. They took her there for
'observation.' Nobody knew anything about her. And they sent her to
Ward's Island.

"I went there over the cold, black water. Oh! it was so cold and so
black. But I didn't care, I was going to get my darling mother.

"But they wouldn't let me go to her. They said it wasn't the day. And
one man was so cruel. He said people ought to take better care of their
folks. And, oh, it wasn't my fault! Was it, Jimmie?"

"No, no, child, of course not."

"And then they did let me into the place. And I waited and waited. And
then I saw a door open, and I looked in.

"Oh Jimmie, a great big room! And all the most terrible people, looking
so queer, and talking to themselves! And, Jimmie, I said: That's _Hell_
in there!

"And then, Oh! Over in a far corner, my poor darling mamma, crouching,
her back turned to the rest!

"Oh Jimmie, Jimmie! She didn't know me at all! But she isn't crazy! You
_know_ she isn't! She's just forgotten.

"They took me away. They said I couldn't have her. They said I was
only a little girl. Where was my father? Didn't I have any brothers?

"And so they said--It was the head doctor now--He said I couldn't have
her, I wasn't of age, I couldn't make a home for her.

"Then they--He said if I was married and had a husband and a home I
could have her. That was the only way.

"Can that be so, Jimmie? Can that be so? Is that the only way I can
take her out of that place and have her? Have I got to be married to
have her with me? Have I got to be married?"

"Why, no," said Jimmie, rising sharply and striding across the room.
"Why no, certainly, of--of--course not--_of course not!_"

Then he turned to meet the brilliant, half hysterical, pleading eyes of
the girl fixed full upon him.

"Of course not. Of course--" he murmured, sitting down again.




II


Augusta's question was still ringing in Wardwell's ears the next
morning, as they stood near the bow of the "Thomas J. Brennan"
shivering in the driving spray of the East River. He had gone out late
last night to look up a lawyer friend. He had learned that what had
been told Augusta yesterday was practically correct. Short of having
a good deal of money, there was no way in which she could have her
mother's "commitment" set aside except by having a husband and the
surety of a home.

He had not told Augusta what he had learned, and he knew that she was
bringing him over here today in the hope that he, or they combined,
could induce the hospital people to let her mother go home with her.
He knew that it was impossible, that they could do nothing. But he had
come because Augusta would have come anyway, and he could not see her
facing it alone.

At the Island dock "Johnnie the Horse" met them, and prancing up to
Augusta motioned her to get into the little wagon to which he had
himself hitched. Wardwell had heard of this harmless lunatic, had heard
the reporters laughing over his antics. But now when he looked at him
gambolling about, a great horse's tail bobbing from his coat to carry
out the crazy delusion that he was a horse, he suddenly hated him. And
he cringed inwardly, thinking of Augusta having to come and go through
this. Why did they not keep such things out of sight? He pushed roughly
past the big gangling lunatic and hurried Augusta along. But the fellow
pranced grotesquely along beside them, saying:

"You needn't mind me. I'm only Johnnie the Horse. See me! I'm a horse!
Look at me!"

Some one called to him and he turned back. But Wardwell, feeling the
tremor in Augusta's arm, swore that she must not be allowed to go
through this. He did not know what he would do. There seemed to be
nothing that he could do.

They brought the patient out to where Wardwell and Augusta sat. They
had not been able to find clothes to fit the large woman. The sight
of her, untidy, forlorn, the great hopeless wreck of her shapely,
competent self, brought a fresh shudder to Wardwell. He dared not look
at Augusta.

"You know me this morning, don't you, mamma?"

"Oh yes, daughter, of course, of course." The big Woman gently
disengaged herself from Augusta's clinging embrace and turned to where
she had caught a glimpse of Wardwell.

"Oh, Mr. Jimmie, is it you? I thought of you when they didn't come to
find me. But I couldn't think of the place. I got lost, it seems. My
memory's not as good as it was. And every day I was looking for a sight
of my little daughter Augusta coming to look for me. But I wouldn't
like her to see me here."

"Why, mamma darling," the girl broke in, "I'm your Augusta! I'm your
daughter. You called me daughter yesterday. Don't you know me today?"

"Yes, daughter, hush; yes, to be sure."

Rose Wilding drew quietly away, leaving Augusta dazed and heart sick. A
fear more terrible than all--that her mother did not know her at all,
would never know her--fell black upon her. True, her mother had called
her "daughter." But she remembered that Rose Wilding had always had a
habit of calling every girl daughter. Every girl in the neighborhood
had been daughter with her.

The big woman took Wardwell by the hand and led him aside into a corner
of the room.

"They're all like that here," she explained in a cautious whisper.
"Every one of them thinks she's somebody else. I suppose the poor thing
heard me speak of my daughter, and it wandered into her head that she
was the one. And you might as well humor them. It does them no harm.
You never can tell what they'll think of next. God help all that's
afflicted!"

"But, that _is_ your Augusta," said Wardwell.

"Now, Mr. Jimmie, you know you're always at you nonsense!" Rose Wilding
answered, smiling slowly at him.

Now, curiously enough, it was that smile that brought the perspiration
to Wardwell's forehead. It was the sane, deep, slowbreaking smile
of Rose Wilding herself, the smile that had won the heart and the
confidence of every child in every poor family of the parish. They
knew her all, the big woman, the big woman of the smiling eyes, the
mother heart, the never empty hand. There was Rose Wilding herself,
in that smile. And yet, and yet--Wardwell reached at his tightening
collar--there was a something else, a something deeper, farther away,
elusive. And there was poor little stricken Augusta, standing alone in
the middle of the room. He could see the sharp pink tips of her nails
cutting into the palms of her hands as she fought back the bursting
tears.

The blood rushed back into his heart and he felt himself gasping as a
man does when he takes the leap in a desperate, cold dive. He did not
know whether he was a good man or not. He did not know whether he was
kind or cruel. But he knew that he had the answer to Augusta's question
of the night before.

He loved Augusta with a love which had deepened in these weeks from a
boy's harum-scarum affection into the deep, tender, protecting love
of a man. He loved her, and would have given his life to save her the
anguish of having to leave her mother in this place. Yet, he knew
that it was unfair, wrong, unnatural. For her mother's sake, Augusta
would sacrifice herself and marry any man. Wardwell knew it. Being
Augusta, there was no choice for her. It was cruel, an outrage on her
brave girlhood. But--So help him God!--he'd try to see that she never
suffered from it.

Thus Wardwell of the funny sheet.

He nodded quietly to Augusta to leave the room. She went, strangely
obedient to the look in his eyes. Then he turned to Rose Wilding.

"Now, Mrs. Wilding," he said easily, "Augusta and I are going to be
married right away so that you can come home and live with us."

Rose Wilding sat down easily, smiling broadly. She seemed at ease once
Augusta had left the room. "It wouldn't do for you to be in this place
long, Mr. Jimmie," she said, "if it acts that way on you."

She was so like herself in her answer, so sane, so unruffled and ready,
that Wardwell forgot the place where they were, and why they were
there, and began to argue earnestly.

"Sounds funny, doesn't it? But then, it needn't. I don't have to play
the fool always. And if Augusta cared enough for me--"

Rose Wilding sat up with a sharp movement. Wardwell could see the
jealous, protecting mother-light in her eyes, as she questioned sternly:

"Just what has been going on?"

"Nothing," said Jimmie honestly. "I have not spoken a word to Augusta."

"Then it is just one other bit of your nonsense," she said with an air
that dropped the matter altogether.

And Wardwell let it stand so. For a moment he had thought that
he ought to try to make her understand. But he suddenly felt the
hopelessness of it. It would not do any good. If she could understand,
she would never give her consent. And it might do her great harm to let
her be bothered and excited at this time. He and Augusta would have
to face the problem out for themselves. A sudden wave of overpowering
tenderness came breaking over him, so that he never knew what he said
at leaving Rose Wilding.

He found Augusta out in a long, black corridor, looking from a window
down across the dreary face of the water. She was so pathetically
little, so tender, so sensitive, so delicately fashioned for pain! With
a queer mingling of emotions, he found himself praying that she might
be spared; and at the same time almost cursing himself because he was
not a better man, more worthy of her.

On the boat they were practically alone. And as they stood out near the
open prow, watching the cold drift of the spray as it broke over the
bow, they saw the busy slits of streets sliding by, saw men and women
how they hurried about their own business, saw that no one had time
for thought of anything but that which concerned himself in the way of
living.

And I think it came to both these two, at the same moment, how really
alone they were out of all the world. Their doings or their thoughts
were of no account to anyone. And in the weeks a common thought, an
anxiety shared, had drawn them together, had almost made them forget
that there was a world around them.

Suddenly Augusta shivered and cowered against Wardwell's arm.

"I can't," she moaned brokenly. "I can never stand it! I shall go mad
so they'll have to put me in there too! And I know that if they'd only
let me have Mamma she'd get all better and know me. If she was only at
home, she'd remember everything!"

Wardwell put his arm gently around her shoulder.

"I didn't mean to say it this way, dear," he said softly. "But I
think you know what I feel. I probably wouldn't be much good, but I'd
_serve_."

Augusta turned to look gravely up at him. It was a new and strange
Wardwell this, serious and humble. He was so downright and simple, so
clear in his boyish honesty; she had not the slightest question. He
meant just what he said. He wanted her.

She reached up quietly and, taking his big blond face in her little
hands, kissed him deliberately on the lips.

Wardwell was astonished, frightened almost, by the steady, instant
decision of the girl's way. He had expected to plead, to reason, to
argue her into giving way to him--while all the time he would be
doubting whether it was right. But she had taken decision out of her
own wise heart. And Jimmy Wardwell had never again a thought but that
it was the right decision.

They stood a little while clinging to each other, entirely untroubled
by any part of the world that might be looking on or interesting itself.

Then Wardwell began to count the practical things.

"We'll have to see your priest, I suppose that's the first thing."

"Yes, Fr. Davis. But he will know that I am right," she answered
easily. "Maybe he will have to go to the Cardinal's. But he will know
that it's for Mamma. He knows her so well, and how good she's always
been to everybody. He would do anything for her, I know he will."

At the ferry house Wardwell announced that they would ride across town
in a taxicab.

"I'm on my way to be married," he proclaimed to the general world.
"I've got to start right."

The strain of the weeks seemed to have lifted from him. And although he
knew that there were difficulties ahead, he was in the mood to consider
them all met and vanquished. He was, in fact, Wardwell himself again.
Augusta saw the mood, knew that his feeling was largely intended to
make a hard place easy for her, and she was willing to fall in with it,
to a certain extent.

"You musn't spend all of your two dollars, Jimmie. You know you'll have
a lot of expenses."

"Who said two dollars? I've got more than two dollars. I've got
investments, mining stocks, real wealth. I've got friends--I can
borrow, potential wealth. I've got a headful of jokes, and jokes
without heads, or tails; all wealth. And, if all these will not
suffice, I've got--_a dress suit!_" he wound up in a hoarse dramatic
whisper, looking warily around to see that his admission was not caught
by any who might have avaricious designs toward the suit.

"Yes, but you'll need the dress suit."

"Not at all," he contended furiously. "We'll be married early in the
morning, when I couldn't possibly wear the thing. I wouldn't feel
respectable."

"I insist on the dress suit," Augusta said firmly. "So, come,"--she was
leading him towards the cross-town car--, "I'll pay the fares, so you
can save the whole two dollars for some mighty extravagance."

"I suppose you're beginning the tyranny. But I haven't got the will to
resist. This is married life, I suppose," he grumbled as he followed
her to the car.

"I wonder who teaches them to begin right from the beginning? Anyhow,
it's going to be a success," he groaned as he sat down beside her.
"I can feel it right from the start. Already I'm subdued, tamed,
tractable!"

"You are a kind, dear gentleman," said Augusta with a sudden gentle
look up at him. And Wardwell went strangely silent.

At home, they found opposition where they had least looked for it. Ann
set herself vigorously against the whole plan. She denounced Wardwell
as a scheming villain taking advantage of Augusta's youth and ignorance.

"Not one foot further," she asserted stoutly, "will the scheme go. I'll
stop it myself. I'll not stand by and see you profit from the poor
lamb's trouble." She stood in her kitchen, where her will was the law
of the land, and defied Wardwell foot and horse. "I always misdoubted
your right sense, with your skylarking. But now I know you were only
playing the fool to cover your villainy. Any man that would think of
such a thing!"

"But he didn't think of it, Ann," said Augusta quickly, "I--"

"I think we'd better wait to know what the priest says, Ann," Wardwell
cut in quickly. "Surely you won't go against what he says is right."

To this Ann had no answer, except to mutter that no priest in his right
mind would have anything to do with such a thing.

In the sombre old parish house in Sixteenth Street an austere and quiet
man listened with sympathy to Augusta, and studied Wardwell. He knew
Rose Wilding. He knew that there was no other way in which she could
be brought home to the love and care which she would need. But the
responsibility of asking a dispensation for the immediate marriage of
these two children, as they seemed to him, was one that he did not care
to undertake.

In the end, in answer to Augusta's pleading, he said slowly:

"I do not know. I feel that I am not wise enough to advise. But I will
send you to the Chancellor himself. He can give you an instant answer,
which I could not."

"Serves me right," said Wardwell, when they were in the street again.
"If I could have told him that I had a regular job, he'd have listened
to me. The best I could say was that I was trying to write. And he was
too polite to tell me that all the people in the United States that
have ever been in high school, and plenty that haven't, are trying
that--or have tried it."

"You _can_ write, Jimmie," said Augusta sincerely. And then she smiled.
"But you look so cherubically young!"

"I'm twenty-four!" he exploded.

"And look nineteen, and, sometimes--"

"Act fourteen, eh? That's right, let's fight. That'll soon bring the
wrinkles to my alabaster brow. And then you'll be satisfied."

"We wont fight ever, Jimmie," said Augusta gently as she took his arm
and fell into step with him.

The Chancellor received them promptly when he had read the note of
introduction and explanation which they had brought from the priest. He
was an extremely busy man whose work it was, day after day, year after
year, to give quick decisions which he knew must affect the lives and
happiness of individual men and women. But in most of these decisions
he had no discretion. He had but to have the facts, and state the
inflexible law that governed him.

This, however, was a matter in which no law tied his hands. Neither was
there any law to direct his action. He had only his own human judgment
to tell him whether what these two young people wished to do was wise
and right, or whether a sacrifice was not being made by one or both of
them which was not justifiable. They were free, of course; but he was
convinced from Augusta's manner that if the Church would not sanction
the marriage, then Augusta would not be married.

He listened until Augusta had told her full story. He asked Wardwell
a question or two. He sat awhile in thought. Then he arose quickly and
walked into another room.

Wardwell's trained reporter's ears noted that the Chancellor was
telephoning. When they had repeated to him the word Eminence twice or
three times, his mind recorded mechanically that the Chancellor was
talking to the Cardinal. But he was not thinking of it. He was watching
the look in Augusta's eyes. For a little time back, while they had been
talking, he had noticed that she was troubled and perplexed. He felt
that the difficulties and doubts that were being put in their way were
worrying her, perhaps making her less sure than she had been that they
were doing right. And he felt himself wishing that they could have
gone straight to the license clerk, like other couples. But he knew
something of how Augusta felt about the matter, and he would not think
of asking her to do anything that would hurt her.

Now she was sitting leaning forward in that listening, straining
attitude, with that same deep, unconscious yearning in her eyes which
he had seen in the weeks of torturing search. As well as if she had
told him, he knew that she had forgotten him and the place where she
was, to listen to the call of her mother.

When they heard the priest's step coming back into the room, Wardwell
saw the look in her eyes turn suddenly to one of quick, happy
assurance. She looked up at the Chancellor as he came toward them, and
Wardwell could see that there was not the slightest doubt or fear in
her mind but that everything was right for them.

"I have spoken with the Cardinal," the Chancellor said quickly. "He
wishes to see you both. He is the young lady's pastor, the Parish
Priest of New York. It is just a step around to the Avenue. You will
go there, please," he said as they got to their feet. To Wardwell, as
he took his hand at parting, he added:

"Because you are strange to us, young man, you may be thinking
that unusual difficulties are being put in your way. But, you are
intelligent, you know that we are thinking of just one thing, the life
happiness of this young girl and of you."

"I know that," said Wardwell simply, shaking hands.

In a little room, as simple and unadorned as the quiet grace of his
own bearing, the Parish Priest of New York received them and began to
question Augusta.

Wardwell, listening, found himself forgetting somewhat of the business
in hand and absorbed suddenly in his own particular business. He was a
born writer and novelist, in spite of his own jibes. And, just as the
true artist finds himself forever reaching for a brush, he could never
be in the presence of character without trying to grasp at the one
vital element which was the spring of it.

He had seen and studied power in many men, preachers, demagogues,
statesmen, men of the business that is called big. He knew that there
was but one individual in the world who could speak an authorative word
to more people than could this quiet-spoken, ageing man before him. But
a sense of power was not the dominating impression which he got. There
was something fuller, more complete than mere power. There was a sense
of ripeness, of comprehension, of--of _understanding_. He had the word
at last. The Parish Priest of New York--that was it. If this man were
the pastor of a little country place he would know and understand every
man, woman and child in it. Here, he was as near to every soul of the
millions that looked to him as he was to the little girl who now sat
before him telling him why she wanted to be married.

"I think you have realized already, child, that marriage must not be
undertaken for any but the one motive. That you should wish to marry in
order to care for your mother is very good in you, but it is not enough
either for you or for the man whom you would marry."

"Yes, but it is right for me to marry Jimmie, I know it is right, Your
Eminence."

"Could you tell me how you know?" the Cardinal probed gently.

Augusta did not answer. She looked straight towards the Cardinal, but
he realized at once that she did not see him, that her vision went
beyond him to someone or something to which she was evidently appealing
for her answer. He saw her look change from one of pleading, bewildered
question to one of instant, calmed assurance. The great man, watching
the girl's face, was struck with the conviction that some one had
spoken to the girl. He almost caught himself listening, as though the
words might be escaping him.

When she spoke there was a matter-of-fact directness in her strange
words that was so simple as to be startling.

"My mother's spirit," she said quietly, "is not bound by that body, by
that place. She speaks to me. She tells me that it is right. I know."

The Parish Priest of New York looked gravely at the girl for a moment.
Then he turned to look up through the unshaded window into the clear
breadth of sky that showed so high above the city's walls. From bedside
to confessional he had gone his round these many years past. And he had
learned that there is more of the spirit in the teeming streets, in the
crowded tenements, of the city than ever was in the open places, if
one but had the vision and the ear for it. He had seen and heard many
things for which he had not accounted.

Suddenly he turned to Wardwell, saying:

"Why do you wish to marry the young lady?"

"Because I love her," Wardwell answered so promptly and bluntly that
the Cardinal smiled.

"Were you ever baptized in any church?" the latter asked, after a
little pause.

"I do not think so."

"Have you heard, perhaps, that I have personally very strong objection
to my people marrying those who are not Catholics?"

"I have heard you say it. Your Eminence must understand," Wardwell
explained, "that some reporter hears nearly everything that you say in
public."

"I am glad to know that that is your business," the Cardinal said
briefly. "Some of my best friends through long years have been
newspaper men of this town. They are men of wide and sympathetic
understanding. Now," he went on, "has it occurred to you that I have
probably good reasons for opposing such marriages as the one for which
you ask?"

"I do not doubt you have good reasons, your Eminence."

"What might you think to be one of them?"

"I suppose there's enough to fight about," said Wardwell promptly--so
promptly that he saw the Cardinal smiling, and felt himself blushing
furiously under the boyish white skin.

"You seem to have acquired a working knowledge," said the aged man with
his smile, "of--But let us hope that it is not so bad as you have been
led to believe. There are other reasons, several of them," he continued
in a different tone. "You will find them all good. But back of them all
there is a very human, very practical one. It is this. The Catholic
party considers himself bound until death by a divine law. The other
party, in practice, hardly ever considers himself bound by anything but
the law of the land, and a certain vague sense of justice. It is never
fair," he ended gravely. "Never a fair partnership."

Wardwell was silent, thinking of the matter in a light in which it had
not, as a fact, ever occurred to him. He knew well enough that the
average man in his position would not and did not think that he bound
himself to anything beyond that which was the custom of the society in
which he lived.

"I will only ask you to remember and think of this, Mr. Wardwell. To a
man of just mind it is well worth thinking of always. My secretary,"
he went on, as he touched a button, "will prepare the papers. You can
then go to the city clerk and to your priest. If you should need help,"
he added to Augusta in parting, "in the matter of bringing your mother
home, I hope that you will command me."

The secretary, a young priest with the face of a big, solemn eyed boy,
came and conducted them to an outer office.

When they were again in the street, Wardwell faced Augusta and asked:

"Did you ever think of that, what the Cardinal said at the last?"

"No, I did not," she answered. "It wouldn't affect us at all, Jimmie?"

She had spoken so quickly and confidently that Wardwell thought that
she had not understood what the Cardinal had said. But the next moment
he knew that he was entirely mistaken. Augusta understood and accepted
everything with steady, unflinching eyes.

She said:

"I'd never wish to keep even a kitten that wanted to go away from me."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the evening of the day that they were married, Rose Wilding came
home with them.

Augusta had managed to dress her into the outward semblance of her
old self. And in everything but the subject of Augusta she seemed
reasonable. That subject they did not press upon her. And when she
wondered why her little daughter had not come to bring her, they merely
said that Augusta would be waiting for her at home.

Augusta had made absolutely no changes in the house, trusting that the
presence in its own place of every remembered thing would awaken in
her mother the sense of security and home. And for a little time, as
she watched her mother walking slowly about her own room, touching a
curtain here, a pillow there, as had been always her busy way, the girl
felt sure that it was going to have just that effect.

But she observed that her mother soon became restless. She kept
glancing over her shoulder and sidewise at Augusta who sat in her own
little low chair which from childhood had been her favorite seat, just
below the big red post of her mother's bed. She was remembering now
how it used to be the greatest glory of her day to sit and watch with
adoring eyes the combing out of her mother great waves of wonderful
dark brown hair. It was snow white now, but still abundant and
strangely beautiful.

"Mamma," she said suddenly, "let me take your hair down and run it
through my fingers. Remember, you used to say it always took away a
headache."

Rose Wilding looked suspiciously over her shoulder. What was running
in the poor disordered mind it is hard to say. But when she turned she
spoke kindly and quietly.

"Don't you think it's time you were going back, child? Wont they be
missing you--there?"

Poor Augusta's heart turned sick with failure. She threw herself down
kneeling at her mother's feet, begging and crying:

"Mamma, mamma darling can't you remember! Try to remember. I'm
your Augusta! Your little daughter! Augusta! _Augusta!_" she cried
hysterically, trying in pitiful futility to pierce the cloud of her
mother's mind by sheer loudness.

But Rose Wilding only smiled with a gentle patience, and lifted her up,
petting her.

"There there, daughter, hush now, hush. I'll let you stay here. Though
I wonder that they'd allow it."

Augusta ran out of the room and came down the long hall to the common
sitting room, where she found Wardwell at the table reading. She fell
into a chair at his side and dropped her head upon his arm where it lay
extended on the table.

"Jimmie, Jimmie," she cried miserably, "it's no use! I've failed,
failed!"

"No you haven't either," said Jimmie quickly, as he raised her head
and lifted her face up to him. "Of course there's always a fly in the
icebox, kid. But no one has ever failed when he's done all his part
as you have. And at least you have her here where you can make her
comfortable and can know what's happening to her."

"I know, Jimmie, I'm happy even for that. But I was so sure, so sure
that she'd know me and be better right away."

"She is better," said Jimmie stoutly. "Her mind is at rest, except
about you. She is not able to place you. There is something about you
that she has never seen before. She does not know you."

He stopped short, struck by a sudden thought as he looked down with
quick intensity upon the golden shot circle of Augusta's head and into
the deep, pain clouded eyes.

When he spoke it was in the slow, rising voice of one who struggles
toward a new and amazing conviction.

"She is right," he said in a low voice. "You are not her Augusta."

"Why Jimmie, Jimmie," the girl cried in a trembling voice. "Are
you----? What can you mean?"

Wardwell seeing the quick leap of anguish in her eyes hurried to say
lightly:

"Nothing at all, as per usual. Only, you see, when she went away, you
were a little girl with a little curl. And now--she can't understand
it--the little girl is a--woman."

Augusta put her hand softly into Wardwell's palm and said gently,
soberly:

"Your woman."

Wardwell started as though a hot iron had touched him. The homely
expression, in the way she had put it, and meant it, the gentle dignity
of her complete surrender, went to his heart, and flashed up into his
brain the revelation of the heart holiness that this little girl had
brought today to the ceremony which, after all, had meant so little to
him.

He closed his hand blindly over the little hand that lay in his, and
bowed his head.

A slight rustling noise came from the hall, and Augusta leaping from
her chair ran hastily from the room and down the hall.

She was in time to look through the railing of the stairs and see her
mother disappearing down the stairs. She saw her mother look back in a
frightened, furtive way; saw that she recognized her; and then saw that
she turned to flee from her.

Augusta put her arm out blindly to the wall and leaned against it.

"Go, Jimmie, quick," she moaned. "She'd never come back for me. She'd
only run faster and farther. She's running away--Running away from
_me_."

Wardwell hurried down the stairs, and Augusta leaning over the railing
heard him as he caught up with her mother on the lower landing.

"Surely," she heard him arguing genially, "you're not going out this
kind of a night! It's going to rain cats and dogs in another five
minutes."

"I can't stay here." The girl heard the hurried whisper. "It's that
girl. They've set her here to watch me."

"No such thing!" Wardwell contended. "She's here--" His voice suddenly
dropped to a whisper which Augusta could not understand. She listened
with painful tenseness, but she could distinguish no words. After a
little, however, she knew that Jimmie's talk was more steady--almost
continuous; while her mother's whispers became hesitating and
infrequent. Jimmie was winning. Augusta knew just what he was doing.
He was telling one prodigous and consequential lie after another,
until the poor fumbling mind with which he was contending should be
completely turned around and would give in to his bidding like a
bewildered child. She choked and almost cried aloud, for the pity of
it, though she knew that Jimmie was doing the only thing possible. Then
her mind wandered for a moment to another thought, and for an instant
she trembled in a cold grip of fear. Would Jimmie ever, for any reason,
find it necessary to use his--facility--upon herself.

At last she heard her mother laugh. Jimmie had won!

She ran quickly into her mother's sitting room and into the bedroom,
shutting the door softly behind her. Then she went on into her own
little room, which was fitted into a jutting corner of the building,
and threw herself down on the bed. She did not know what she was going
to do, but ever since Jimmie had said that, about her mother going away
and leaving her a little girl, an idea had been crowding into her mind.

She heard her mother and Wardwell at the hall door and heard her
mother inviting Jimmie into the sitting room for a little chat.
Wardwell had always been a favorite with her mother, and she spoke in
just the friendly, kindly way she would have spoken in the old days.

Then she heard her mother come into the big bedroom, probably to put
down her hat and shawl. When Rose Wilding had gone out and shut the
bedroom door, Augusta thought and acted quickly.

She drew from under her own bed the little old cot on which she had
slept until she was a big girl. Carrying it out into the big room she
carefully set it up at the foot of her mother's bed, where it had stood
until Augusta had come to the dignity of a room of her own. Then,
bringing bedding for it and fixing it in the old way, she undressed
quickly and curled herself into it.

Through the closed door, in the silence of the house, for it was the
time when nearly all the boarders were out, she could hear plainly
nearly every word said in the outer room.

The rain--it had actually begun to rain a little--was on Wardwell's
mind apparently, for he began a fresh story with:

"Do you remember the time of the Flood, Mrs. Wilding?"

"Well--not quite, Mr. Jimmie." And Augusta could almost feel her
mother's amused chuckle through the dark. She had always loved fun. And
although she herself did not talk a great deal she had always liked to
hear the laughter and nonsense of young folks around her.

"Well, you know, that time, McCarty was up a tree. And along comes
Noah, sailing, decks awash, and the rain pouring down in gutters.

"'Are ye takin' anny Irish this trip, Sor?' says McCarty.

"Noah looks at him with a weary eye. Says he, sorrowfully:

"'I am a sea-faring man, by preoccupation. I have on board two
thousand, three hundred eighty one married couples. The name of this
ship is TROUBLE. Irish--' he muttered '--Irish?'

"'Oh, have a heart, Noah,' says McCarty. 'Sure wan more can do little
harm. Take me on.'

"'I wont,' says Noah.

"'You oant?' says McCarty.

"'I wont,' says Noah.

"'Well, ye can go to Blazes--It's only a shower, anyway.'"

Augusta, hysterically stuffing the bed clothes against her mouth, heard
her mother's hearty, pleasant laugh ring out. And for an instant she
thought that her own little play was real; that she was, indeed, the
little girl of other years lying in her cot and listening to the grown
folks in the other room.

Then her own laughter turned, as laughter will, to hot, choking tears
of fear and trepidation that burned her throat.

The talk outside ran on pleasantly, naturally; just such an hour as
Wardwell and one or two others of the boarders had often spent with her
mother. Wardwell loved to tell stories, to run on about himself, about
his lack of money--it was a tradition of the house, founded probably
on his own authority, that he had but three socks, one of which he
washed every night--about the scrapes which he was constantly getting
into and getting out of. He never laughed at the end of one of his own
tales, but always before beginning one he would break out with a short,
provoking laugh to himself, as though he had just heard a good thing.

It was all so natural, so real, that Augusta, her mind unconsciously
relaxing from the strains of the day, caught herself almost falling
asleep. She heard one after another of the boarders come up the stairs
and stop for a moment, at the door of the room where the two chatted,
for a rather timid and curious word or two with the mistress of the
house. But with Rose Wilding there was nothing except the usual and the
ordinary. She was in her own house, her own room, doing as she had done
on any other evening. Her house was making its orderly, routine way to
bed.

Finally Wardwell rose, saying:

"Well, Mrs. Wilding, it's time honest folk were in bed, and all rogues
were turned out. I'm going before I'm turned out."

"Oh, Mr. Jimmie, there's worse than you in the world. But I suppose
it's late. I _am_ tired."

Augusta heard the door close behind Wardwell, and her mother came
straight to the bedroom door and pushed it wide open. The full light
from the door fell straight across the cot where Augusta lay.

She did not stir, pretending to be asleep. She heard her mother's
startled gasp of joy. Then she heard her hurry to the outer door and
call to Wardwell:

"Oh, Mr. Jimmie, Mr. Jimmie, come back! Come back!"

Wardwell came running back, and Rose Wilding in a choking whisper told
him:

"My little darling! My little Pigeon-pie! She's here! She's here, just
where I left her! Oh, Dear Heart of God, how I missed her! Come and
see, she's sleeping," she whispered.

Wardwell came quietly with her to the door and looked in rather
timidly. He did not know quite what to expect.

He saw a little cot, and curled up in it there was what seemed a little
girl sleeping. Her loose, tumbling hair had fallen all about the face,
and one little hand--a hand upon which there was no ring--held a
strand of it, as though the little girl had been playing with her hair
when she fell asleep.

He knew it was his wife. But, remembering his own first startled
impression, he did not wonder that Rose Wilding, her mind straying in
its pain, had gone back through the years to the little Augusta that
had been.

Rose Wilding went gently over to the cot and knelt beside it whispering
softly. Wardwell stole out of the room and closed the outer door
quietly behind him.

Augusta scarcely dared breathe while her mother knelt bending over her.
Her little play had succeeded, so far as to set her mother's heart at
ease for the moment, but she was in mortal terror of what the effect
would be if her mother should realize that she was being deceived.

After what seemed an eternity of anxiety, she heard her mother rise, go
out quietly, lock the hall door, and turn out the light. Then she came
back and moved about quietly in the dark, preparing for bed.

She did not come to the cot again but got quietly into bed, and in a
few minutes Augusta listening to her breathing knew that she had fallen
asleep almost instantly like a tired, contented child.

When she was sure that her mother was sleeping soundly, Augusta rose,
found a dressing robe and slippers, and stole like a thief out into the
hall.

Wardwell was in the common sitting room, alone. He did not hear her
coming. He was reading, and she stood a moment in the doorway looking
at him, before she said:

"Jimmie."

He looked up and said, as though he had the words all ready studied and
framed:

"That was nothing less than inspiration, dear."

"I do not know," said Augusta hesitatingly. "I was very frightened. Is
it--right?"

"Yes," said Wardwell simply. "It's right. However it is in the daytime,
when you're dressed, she'll never leave this house so long as she hopes
to find you there, like that, at night."

"Then--Good night, Jimmie."

"Good night, dear."

She turned away a step or two. Then she turned quickly back to the door
and said:

"Jimmie."

"Yes, dear."

"Sometime, when you need it badly, God is going to be _very_ good to
you."

And she was gone.




III


Rose Wilding did not rise from her bed the next day, nor, in the
daytime, for many days. When she had come home in the evening she had
looked, to the casual eye, as robust as ever. But in the morning it was
plain that she had fallen into a complete mental and physical collapse.

It seemed that she must have gone on upon the sheer strength of terror
and worry, until, once finding the little girl, as she thought, the
stimulus was gone; and her strength and her interest in life had gone
with it. She lay all day like one in a partial doze, evidently not
asleep, but paying no attention to anybody or anything about her.
Augusta she noticed not at all, except to take from her the food
that she brought and to submit passively to her tidying and washing.
Wardwell she recognized with a brief, passing glimmer of her old
flashing smile, but not even he could arouse her more than momentarily.
To her own doctor, whom Augusta had called in, she answered quietly,
and without seeming to think that any other explanation was necessary,
that she was resting and that she did not think that she would get up.

At night when the house had settled into its bedtime quiet, Augusta
stole into the little cot at the foot of her mother's bed, and waited.

After a little she heard her mother stir softly in the bed, and then
heard her get stealthily out to the floor. She came straight to the
little cot, and, as she knelt by it, Augusta could feel her warm breath
upon her own tumbled hair. Then, satisfied, she stole softly back into
bed and went sound asleep.

This was the first day of the new life for Augusta. And every day that
followed through the fall and winter was exactly like it. It seemed
that Rose Wilding lived through the day just waiting for the night
to come, that she might steal from her bed to find her little girl.
She never spoke to Augusta except to answer a direct question. She
submitted in a gentle, kindly way to Augusta's every ministration. She
smiled at Wardwell and always knew him. But when he would time and
again, indicating Augusta, ask who this girl was, she always answered
with a deprecating "Hush!" and a pitying glance at Augusta which said
plainly that he should not ask, that he knew well enough where the girl
had come from and he ought to know better than to hurt her feelings by
bringing it up. He asked the question often in a good-hearted effort
to make her realize that this was Augusta. But, one day, after he had
asked it, he saw Augusta's face as she caught her mother's sidelong
look. He did not ask the question again.

Gradually the three settled to an acceptance of the state of affairs as
they existed in the mind of Rose Wilding. By day, Augusta was the girl
that had followed Rose Wilding from "that place." At night, the little
Augusta came from somewhere and slept in her place at the foot of her
mother's bed.

The change that came over Rose Wilding was one that to the outer eye
was wholly inexplicable. Though that there was a change was plain to
the most casual look. Probably it was to the casual, unconcerned eye
that the change was most startling.

One day, when Rose Wilding had been some weeks at home, a new boarder,
a Mrs. Barron, a nervous, high-strung, over-worked woman, head of
department in one of the great retail stores, came into the sitting
room to speak to Augusta. She glanced accidentally into the bedroom
and straight into the eyes of Rose Wilding whom she had never before
seen.

Mrs. Barron fainted.

Augusta and Wardwell, accustomed to seeing Rose Wilding day by day,
could not realize the extent of the change that had come over her. To
them she was today practically as she had been yesterday. But to a
stranger the picture of the large handsome woman, her face blanched now
by hidden disease to a transparent pearl white, the skin smooth and
unlined as a growing baby's, her pallor doubled by the white of the
bed and the enamel that covered every object in the room, was in all
a sight to arouse a nameless, creeping dread of something present but
unseen.

Augusta had taken a few months of hospital training during the year
past, and her care of her mother became not only a cult and a religion
but almost a fanatical passion. She had turned the room into her ideal
of a hospital room. She had painted and enamelled everything so that
all could be scrubbed and washed down with disinfectants. She would
have nothing in the room that was not a pure white. She dressed the bed
and her mother in the snowiest things she could lay hand to.

The effect was not at all what she had had in mind. To herself, living
as she did so close to her mother, the room was just the cheeriest
and sweetest abode that could be made for a beloved sick one. But her
mother's wondering, childlike eyes, as they looked out unseeing from
under the circle of completely blanched hair above them upon the room
that was now her world, did not have the look familiar to the sick
room. They were eyes that looking, and seeing not, yet dealt with
strange thing that showed through a curtain.

Augusta, from long watching, from unending longing and perpetual
defeat, had worn thin the coarser material covering that held the
living, burning spirit within her. As her mother seemed to remove day
by day into deeper and deeper places of the soul's isolation, Augusta
seemed ever to follow her.

Wardwell, standing by his wife with the feeling of a strange man
watching over a girl baby left suddenly and unaccountably to his
care and at the same time with the hunger of a young lover for his
sweetheart's first kisses, thought, and thought often, that she was
going away from him.

She was unfailingly dear and thoughtful. The moments which she could
snatch for him from the ever increasing care of her mother she filled
with anxious and touching tenderness. Every day brought him a new and
revealing sense of the depth of her spirit and affection. But the
feeling of being separated from her came pressing upon him with a
twofold weight.

In the day time she played her part as the girl who had come from "that
place" with Rose Wilding, while Wardwell looked on heart sick with
sympathy for the pain that he knew she carried and with a withering
sense of his own uselessness. She played a part. But she played the
part so well in her self-effacing patience that he was finding it
necessary to remind himself that she was playing a part. It came to the
point where he at times caught himself walking rapidly up and down his
room and arguing with himself whether this was really his Augusta, or
whether he, too, was losing his grip on reality.

At night, when she was away from his sight and he knew that she had
gone back into the little Augusta of Rose Wilding's memory, it was,
if anything, worse. Here he knew she played a willing part, trying to
make the part a reality. For Wardwell knew the daring of her mind and
the greatness of her desire; knew that she would stop at nothing, would
grasp at every thread of memory that could possibly draw her mother's
mind across the vacant wilderness between the present and the past.

But even this double barrier of outward isolation from the Augusta who
was his was not the great thing that he feared. The look which he had
seen in Augusta's face in the days when they were hunting the city for
her mother, that strained, listening look that took her away from him
and from everything about them, was often in her eyes now. Somehow he
knew that in it she spoke to the spirit of Rose Wilding that wandered
in the unknown places.

He did not resent the state of things. But he found himself
unaccountably peevish and unwontedly tempted to self pity.

He did not know what was coming upon him. Would not have believed it if
he had been told. He knew that they were bad days for him. They were
days in which he sat pounding out useless hours at the typewriter, only
to destroy the work as soon as he had done it. They were nights when he
worked feverishly, bitterly at the jokes and skits that were at once
his bread and butter and the bane of his soul.

He came to hate the mere thought of writing at all. He was a failure.
Even the things that he could do, the hated jokes that until now had
brought him enough for a living, were now failing him. He was not
making enough to afford to take Augusta and her mother away from this
big house. And the thought that Augusta in the face of all her burdens
was obliged to keep it to support her mother and herself, while he
barely paid his board drove him frantic.

One day in the middle of the winter he climbed to the coop in the
fourth story of the old building in Bleecker street where the presses
were complaining over the last edition of the afternoon. He had been
walking nearly all day, climbing stairs in increasing discouragement
and going down them again with a certain sickly relief. He was, in
short, looking for work.

Six months before he would have sworn that he would never again have to
go back to the treadmill of routine work. He had been so sure that he
could sit his whole life, if necessary, and turn out stories and scraps
enough to give him the money he needed. He had deliberately planned for
himself a life in which he would earn just enough to live in his own
way, giving himself the time to think and work upon the books that he
wanted to write.

His marriage had changed his plan of life. He did not propose that
Augusta and her mother should be dependent upon the girl's work and the
house. It did not occur to him that Augusta was not, and did not intend
to be, dependent upon him for a living. There was, of course, a living
in the house for herself and her mother, as there had always been. But
that was not Wardwell's way of looking at the matter. Augusta was his
wife. And it was his immediate business to begin earning enough money
for all three of them.

At once he had begun to crowd himself. For a few weeks he had found
himself earning more money than he had ever thought possible from his
daily work. But it took him only a short time to flood the market of
Sunday papers which he had built up for himself. He had not known how
thin was the vein which he had been working. In a certain foolish
contempt for the thing which he did easily he had thought that he could
turn it out mechanically, without heart in it, and in any quantity. He
was sharply undeceived.

The first few batches of stories that came back did no more than annoy
him. But as the refusals became more and more perfunctory, and more
carefully polite, Wardwell knew, with sickening insight, that his
stories were not even being read by the editors who used to welcome
them.

He knew that he had lost his power through despising it. He had writhed
on in ugly despair, cursing the facility with which he could still
write; for he knew that it was that very facility which was now his
undoing. He had not hoped, but he had kept on trying. Now his money was
gone and he must find something.

Jim Ray was sympathetic, and heartily sceptical.

"All rot!" he growled. "Stop bitting your finger ends and ease up a
little. Your face looks like a rat's with the ferret about three jumps
behind. Quit it. Borrow some money. Here, I'm as poor as my own devil
but I can get you some. There's lots of the stuff around somewhere.
Borrow a hundred and go up on a farm somewhere for a few weeks, and
sleep."

"You're all wrong," said Wardwell, still breathing hard, "there's
nothing the matter with me. It's the confounded stairs here. They're so
steep they lean over backward."

"You need to go easy, I tell you, Jimmie. What you need is a rest."

"Rest! I haven't done a stroke for six weeks!"

"Probably not. But you've been bending over a typewriter till the back
ribs are sticking into your lungs."

"What in blazes are you talking about?" said Wardwell bluffly. "If you
want to stall me off, why don't you give me the usual thing--'office
all full just now, leave your name and address, we'll call you up if we
need, and so forth?' Was I so useless as that when I was here?"

"Jimmie," said Ray quietly, "there's plenty of work here for a man as
good as you. But you're not able just now to do it, and it would kill
you to try. Go home and go to bed, and let your wife take care of you."

Wardwell stared at his friend, trying to outface him, to bluff the
thing down by sheer stubbornness. But there was a sickening, cold
weakness at the bottom of his stomach. He knew that Ray was seeing
through him and finding him out as he had not been able to see himself.

With an odd feeling of curiosity and detachment he walked over to a
little square of mirror that hung on a pillar at just the right height
for Ray to comb his bald head by. Wardwell took it off the nail and
shoved it up the post about a foot and a half.

He was curious to know what it was in him that Ray had seen. But there
was nothing to be seen, except, perhaps, a sort of hunted look about
the eyes and a kind of pinched drawing of the nostrils. He did not look
at all like a sick man.

"You're all wrong," he repeated stubbornly. "And besides, my wife's got
something else to do."

Ray only answered quietly:

"How much are you coughing, Jimmie?"

Wardwell looked around sharply, in a turn of sudden worry. But in a
moment he laughed out:

"What the deuce are you doing? Second story work, along with your other
little activities? Of course I--I cough a little. But that's just the
smoking and the irritation. Confound you, you'd be coughing bricks if
you'd been sitting at a machine for six weeks without being able to
knock out a good line!"

"I suppose so. But, Jimmie, you'll have to give up this other idea. You
don't look well. You'd never stand cold and wet and long waiting. You
know the dog's life of a reporter. One good cold would do for you."

"But, I tell you--"

"Jimmie, be sensible for once. Go home and let that good little girl of
yours get a good look at you. If she doesn't tell you to pack off out
of the city for a while, I'll admit that I'm wrong."

Wardwell stayed a while, arguing mulishly, but Jim Ray did not move
from his position. He would not agree to help Jimmie to a job because
the latter was not able to work.

At home, he found Augusta tearfully trying to coax and lift her mother
back into bed. As he stood in the sitting room he could hear the girl
pleading:

"Please, please, mamma dear, can't you help just one little step! I
can't lift any more--Just one little step!"

Then he heard the sagging of the bed under the heavy body and he knew
that Augusta had accomplished her task.

Now he remembered what Doctor Gardner had told him, that this phase
of Mrs. Wilding's malady would come--not long before the end. She
would rouse herself out of the torpor into which she had settled. Some
vague, unformed fear would probably stir her, and she would have to
be watched. If it was coming now Augusta must not be left to do this
alone. He would have to find a good strong nurse. He must see Gardner
about it right away. That he had no money did not occur to him now. In
the face of Augusta's need he did not think of that fact.

Augusta came out suddenly and walked straight into Jimmie's arms where
he stood in the middle of the room.

"Oh, Jimmie," she said, resting tiredly against him, "I needed you so!
Where have you been?"

"Oh, just around."

"She had crawled under the bed, Jimmie," said Augusta choking, "just
like some poor wild thing, and when she looked out at me, _Oh!_ Why,
why does she seem to fear me, to almost _hate_ me sometimes?"

"No, dearest, no," said Jimmie, holding her quiet. "No, it isn't that
at all. There's something we don't understand. She's in the dark and
so are we. Her mind is struggling to break through, and we cannot help
because we are in the dark too. Outwardly she doesn't know you. But she
does know you, dear, she feels you, in another way. She knows that her
little Augusta is around her, caring for her. The flesh and the senses
are playing a cruel trick on her poor spirit, dear. But she does know
that you are about her."

"Oh, Jimmie, do you really believe it? I'm so tired trying to believe!"

"Yes, dear, I'm as sure as that we are standing here that she does in
some way--I don't know how--she does really feel you. But I'm afraid,
dearest that there is a change coming now. You know Gardner told us to
expect it. And it's going to be cruel hard upon you, dear. You must
not try to do all alone. I'll see Gardner tonight and we'll get a good
strong nurse."

At the word he felt Augusta stiffen resistingly in his arms and he knew
that a struggle was coming.

"Oh, Jimmie, don't ask me to do that! I couldn't--I couldn't give up
one little bit of her, not one little minute to anyone."

"But, dear, you are not able. You are too little for it."

"I can't help it, Jimmie. You know I can't. You know how I've waited,
every hour of every day, waited and prayed, for a moment when my
darling would know me--when she would know that I hadn't left her,
that she hadn't been left to strange, careless people. And think,
Jimmie, think what it would mean to me if the moment came, even one
little flash, and I wasn't there for her to know me! Jimmie," she said
quietly, turning slowly upon him with that strange, unseeing light in
her eyes, "I think, if my moment should slip away from me that way--I
think that I should die."

And Wardwell, bewildered, silenced, half believing, knew that he was
beaten.

But he did go to see the doctor.

Doctor Gardner's little eyes twinkled behind a cloud of smoke from a
big cigar as Wardwell expounded the situation at home and told what
must be done and what Augusta must not be allowed to do. When Jimmie
had quite finished the doctor asked with an elaborate diffidence:

"Ah--Do I understand that you are intending to do something that
Augusta does not want?"

"Well--of course--" Jimmie started to explain.

"I was only going to remark," the doctor went on serenely, "that, to my
personal knowledge, Augusta began doing things after her own plan on
the day she was born. And, so far as I know, nobody has been able to
change that. You see, the trouble has been that she has always turned
out to be right."

"Yes, of course she's always right," Wardwell hastened to agree, "but,
in this--"

"And, unless you have found a way," the doctor proceeded, "of changing
Augusta, we'll just have to let her go her own way in this. To be sure,
though, we must try to see that she does not kill herself with the hard
work.

"But how's the book coming on?" he asked suddenly, sitting up and
fixing Wardwell with a sharp, steady appraisal that Jimmie could almost
feel physically.

"Rotten!" said Jimmie, annoyed and sullen, though he did not know why.
"But how did you know--?"

"Oh, Augusta was telling me something the other day, about your walking
the floor, and--one thing and another. Come inside here a moment," the
doctor commanded, rising brusquely and walking to the door of his inner
office.

As Wardwell closed the double baize-lined, sound-proof doors of the
little consulting room behind him he felt a sickening assurance that he
was going to hear bad news. But he was mainly irritated and angry with
himself because he now knew that he had been giving Augusta additional
worry.

A half hour later he was listening restlessly to Doctor Gardner's
explanations about 'filtration in the upper right lobe' and 'weakening
of the walls' and gathering in a general way that he was well on the
way to being a consumptive. He was telling himself quietly that he did
not believe a word of it, that if he could just once strike his stride
on a good little story he would be all right in a week.

Finally the doctor prescribed. "You will have to get out of the city
at once. Just walk out, don't fuss about it, and go south somewhere,
where you can stay out in the open and just lie around and eat and
sleep. Don't take work with you, and don't let it follow you. Just walk
out and drop everything but the business of saving your life. That's
just what I mean, young man. I have not concealed anything from you.
And--I'm not exaggerating anything. You must do this _now_, tomorrow."

Saying nothing, Wardwell rose to go. Inwardly he was grumbling to
himself that it was always easy for the other fellow to tell you
to drop everything and walk away. But he knew that he could not be
churlish. The doctor was probably right and certainly he was honest and
friendly. They shook hands in silence, and the doctor, used to seeing
people take their news in all sorts of ways, let him go without another
word.

Augusta had once said that Jimmie sometimes was not quite grown up.
Outside in the street he proved it. He turned deliberately and looking
up at Doctor Gardner's window, much after the manner of a boy sticking
out his tongue in defiance, he said aloud:

"You can go to the devil. I wouldn't leave Augusta now, not to save ten
lives."

As an afterthought, before reaching home, he went into a drug store and
called the doctor on the telephone. He warned him truculently:

"Tell her my nerves are bad, that's true enough. Tell her any tale
you like. But don't tell her--what you've just told me. I won't have
Augusta worried now."

He would not expect to hide it long from Augusta, if there was anything
seriously wrong with him. She always knew the truth, somehow. But he
did not believe literally what the doctor had told him, and he was
confident that things could drift on as they were.

"In fact," he said to himself as he walked along in the face of the
sharp night wind, "I feel better this minute than I have for a long
time. That's just natural contrariness, I suppose."

Augusta was waiting for him, sitting wrapped in a heavy dressing robe
reading under the lamp in her mother's sitting room. She was so like a
tired little girl that as his glance momentarily followed the stream of
the light into the mother's room and fell upon the little cot drawn up
and ready at the side of the mother's bed, Wardwell for an instant lost
his grip on reality. The fiction at which Rose Wilding's poor wandering
mind had grasped seemed to be actually the truth. And Wardwell found
that he had to struggle with himself before he could remember that
Augusta was truly his wife and that she and he had an existence for
each other which did not depend on that fiction. But when he looked
again at Augusta and saw the woman in her, the steady, self-contained,
gentle strength that shone in the beauty of her tired eyes, he knew
that Augusta was really his. And now for the first time he weakened,
his knees bent under him, he felt and was the sick man. He wanted to
tell her, to confide, to lean upon her. Angrily he shook the feeling
off and came quickly over to sit on the arm of her chair.

"You had him all fixed!" he began accusingly, thinking to head off with
banter the question in her eyes. "The first thing he said was that you
got up and rearranged the parlor furniture and fired the cook and fixed
the furnace the very day you were born--well, I couldn't swear that
he mentioned the furnace in so many words. But that was the general
idea. You've always had your own way, and everybody else's way. And you
always will. And he turned me out, laughing at me for thinking that I
could change things."

"What else did he say, dear?" she asked with a quiet smile of full
understanding. "About you?"

"Oh, it was just like the fellow that went to the doctor and said he
was sick.

"'Stop smoking.'

"'But, doctor, I never smoked in my life.'

"'Oh, I see. Then that's just what you need. Start smoking. My usual
fee is ten dollars--but--ah--considering--'"

"_Jimmie!_"

"Honest! Cross my heart! Hope to die of a broken leg! It was just like
that.

"He told me that I had to take a rest. I told him I hadn't worked for
weeks. Then he told me that whatever I was doing I should stop it."

"You are not telling me what he really said," Augusta commented.

"Oh, big words, all big long ones, that might have meant polygamy or
liver trouble for all I knew. But the upshot of it was just what I
knew before. I'm nervous and my temper is bad. And he must have known
that I didn't have any money, for he really didn't ask me for any," he
confessed gracelessly as an afterthought.

"But it's just as I told him. If I could only rap out a decent few
lines I'd be all--"

A sharp fit of coughing came up, choking him. He rose and hurried out
into the hall. Augusta started to follow him, but a movement in the
bedroom caught her ear and she turned back. She wanted to follow him,
to make him tell her just what was the trouble. But the fear of what
her mother might do was too strong upon her.

For the time, Wardwell had escaped. In his own room, he sat down at
the desk, gasping between spells of coughing and trying to smother the
noise with his handkerchief. The coughing stopped after a little, and
he was surprised to feel a sensation of pleasant warm moisture in his
irritated throat.

He cocked one ear up in a funny way he had, as though to listen. Then
put his handkerchief to his lips and held it there a moment. When he
drawn it away and looked meditatively for a little while at the red
blotch on it, he nodded his head.

He did not take this fresh piece of news argumentatively, defiantly,
as he had met the words of the doctor. This was definite, conclusive.
He must deliberate. He decided that he would deliberate. That was the
thing. This matter must be thought out carefully.

He looked at the typewriter in front of him, for counsel. Then suddenly
his arms shot out grabbing the rusted iron frame of the typewriter and
hugging it, while his head sank down upon it and he whispered to it in
agony:

"God! Never another good line on you!"

This has to be told. In that moment, that battered old contraption of
cast iron and rattling keys was more to Jimmie Wardwell than woman,
man or child could be. It was dearer to him, it was nearer to where
he thought and really lived. And he loved it and hugged it to him,
as though already they were trying to take part of his soul from him.
For men of Wardwell's kind are like that. When the passion of creating
has once gotten fire in their souls, they are damned to live this life
alone. No articulate being can come near. And in their loneliness they
fasten on something connected with their passion. There have been men
who have loved to the death a rickety old table at which they have
worked, or even a corner of a garret room.

After a while Jimmie lurched up out of his chair and fumblingly got
ready to crawl into bed. It was the first time that he had missed going
down to say good night, but he dared not face Augusta tonight.

The idea of dying, physically, meant little or nothing to him. He had
never thought of it. He did not think of it now. But the failures of
the past months and this last sure sign of physical failure, of the end
in fact, threw him into blind panic; not a panic in fear of pain, or
darkness, still less of punishment. No, it was the fear that the spirit
fire, burning pent up and mad within him, was to be smothered. He was
afraid, afraid that he, Jimmie Wardwell, would be snuffed out before he
could form and bring out the things that burned within him and craved
for expression.

Shivering under the bed clothes, he moaned over and over like a hurt
child: "Never another good line!" Until, again like a child in pain, he
fell into a sort of sleep.

He did not hear, probably he had forgotten, the girl who came with
trembling steps and beating heart to listen at his door for this
breathing and then hurried back in anxious fear to her own endless
vigil.

A Wardwell debonair and blithe as the early spring morning came into
Augusta's sitting room after breakfast. He had swept from him all
traces of the storm of the night, and Augusta knew from the first
glance that she would learn nothing from him in this mood.

  "The glory of the morning,
  "The beauty of the dawning,
  "The joy of the skies,
  "Lies in her eyes--and lies--and lies--and--Oh,
  "Well, maybe it only fibs,"

He chanted impudently.

Augusta was standing at the table fixing fruit for her mother. As
Jimmie came up behind her she lifted up her face to be kissed. But as
Jimmie stooped she quickly lifted the peeled peach she held in her hand
and stuck it full into his mouth.

"Aawa--yab yab--yak!" Jimmie expostulated. Then, when he was articulate:

"Peaches is peaches, I'll admit. But some peaches is witches, you'll
admit. Anyhow, I _won't_ be kissed now till I've had a bath," he wound
up defiantly.

"Come in to see mother," said Augusta serenely.

Rose Wilding lay propped among the snowy pillows and took no notice
whatever of them as they came in. Her rounded face and beautiful,
long, capable hands were as white as were the masses of lovely white
hair that flowed down past her temples. Only her great dark blue eyes
showed a bit of color. They looked straight ahead, alive, and full of
knowledge, but a knowledge that seemed to have nothing to do with this
present business of living. Wardwell was struck this morning more than
ever by the look of complete detachment and absorption in the eyes.
He had never thought much of souls as apart from bodies. But with
the writing man's unconscious trick of always trying to put even the
vaguest, most fugitive thoughts into words, he found himself trying
to word the nameless idea. Here was a soul, he thought, living quite
detached and almost independent in a beautiful and almost useless body.
And he saw no reason at all why this soul, so independent, so complete
to itself, could not at will leave the unnecessary body and go on
about its own absorbing business.

Meanwhile he was urging:

"She made me eat half of your fruit already, Mrs. Wilding, and if you
don't hurry and eat the other half, why, she'll make me eat it all,
just to save it."

"Yes, eat up good, darling," Augusta urged gently, with the way that
was now growing upon her of petting a child. "And don't mind him. You
know I wouldn't give him even a little tiny bit of your fruit."

"Oh, good morning, Mister Jimmie," said Rose Wilding, in the quick
apologetic way of one who has momentarily forgotten a politeness. "I
hope the book is coming on well."

She had not spoken before for weeks. Wardwell was startled completely
off his guard and the sudden mention of the book caught him on the raw
and brought back the hideous, shamed cowardice of the night.

Augusta, looking quickly up at him in her own surprise, saw the agony
and bitterness in his face, and wondered. Jimmie was never bitter. Then
she saw his face clear, and she knew that whatever it was he had fought
it down.

"Fine and dandy," he lied glibly, "only"--he paused a moment with one
ear turned up whimsically, as though considering how best to place the
difficulty before her--"only there's a Scotchman in it and he's the
contrariest man I ever had to deal with. He's Scotch and he insists on
talking a great deal, which is all wrong for a Scotchman. But, what's
worse, he will talk with a North of Ireland accent. You see, the two
brogues are so much alike, and I can't get him to stick to his own."

Rose Wilding reached daintily for a quarter of a peach and commented
helpfully:

"I mind I knew an Eyetalian once that talked with the softest Kerry
brogue you ever heard. I guess they caught him young somewhere."

Wardwell shouted uproariously, and Augusta laughed out in quick
surprised happiness. Never since the very first had her mother spoken
so naturally and like her dear self of other days.

While Augusta turned away a moment, Wardwell was watching her mother.
She was smiling with the contagion of their laughter, but she had her
eye fixed calculatingly upon Augusta. When she seemed to be convinced
that it was safe, that Augusta would not turn immediately to see her,
she reached out hastily and snatching a banana from the tray hid it
under a pillow beside her. Then she looked up furtively, to see if
Wardwell had seen her.

He winked and smiled at her, as one who compounds the felony of a
friend and brother. She laughed a little confused, deprecating laugh,
like a child caught in some new delinquency. Augusta looked around,
glancing from her mother to Wardwell, but she saw nothing. And Jimmie
never told her. He understood. Rose Wilding had always had a good
appetite. And she loved fruit. She had spent some time in that place on
the Island, where it was said that the attendants took all of the best
that was intended for the patients. Hunger, or at least the fear of
hunger had taught her to do that.

When he looked again he saw that the curtain had fallen. It was as
though the spirit of Rose Wilding which for a few minutes had stirred
the body and the senses to life had now gone. Only the eyes remained
alive, looking, looking not at Wardwell, not at the wall, but at some
problem, some question of another existence.

Augusta, understanding instantly, did not try to arouse her mother
again. Resignedly, she took up the tray and went silently from the
room. And Wardwell followed without a word.

Not again, until the very last, did Rose Wilding open her lips to speak.

Day by day her response to the promptings of life grew less and less.
With what seemed a deliberate purpose her spirit refused to know
anything of what went on about her. It was as though she definitely
turned her back upon life. She did not suffer. She had left all that
behind and was going her own way, unmolested by the useless body.

To Wardwell the sight of the helpless, almost deserted body was
sometimes uncanny. To Augusta, however, living as she did and had
always done so close to the soul of her mother, these things did not
greatly matter. That her mother did not speak to her, did not even
look at her, was not now so hard to bear. Though she loved the big
beautiful, baby-like body and petted it as she would have fondled a
baby, yet she was able to realize that she must soon give it up. So
that, by degrees and without consciousness of it, she dropped the
mediums of the senses and found herself slipping easily and naturally
over into that strange border land where her mother lived.

Wardwell was not fighting any longer. He had accepted what he thought
was fate. He did not argue. He did not look farther for work.

"I shall now," he said, sitting down deliberately at his machine,
"'proceed,' as they say aboard-ship--I wonder why does a navy man
always say he 'proceeded' to the deck and 'proceeded' to the bottom of
the ammunition well? He just ran out on deck, and he probably fell down
the stairs in the other case, but he 'proceeded'--I shall, therefore,
proceed to write jokes till I choke.

"The suffering public? Well, the public always suffers. What do I care
for them, or it, or him--whichever it is. Must be him, I guess. The
women only read the corn cure ads and the hair tonic miracles with
which the advertising editor garnishes the funny page. Hang it! I never
appreciated that fellow. I thought he was a low commercial bounder on
that page. Nothing of the kind. He belongs there. His ads are just as
old and reliable and well thumbed as any of the other jokes."

With a grin on his face he went to work, humming:

  "Rip Van Winkle was a piker,
  "There are some folks sleeping yet."

And because he had put off the worry that had been harping at him he
found the work coming true and easy. He forgot the book and his big
dreams, half way happy if he could earn enough to prevent his being
an added burden to Augusta. And because he now did not greatly care,
because he left the whole business on the knees of whatever gods had
cared to meddle with his affairs, the work began to pay well.

Three separate eddies of life moved quietly about their round in the
house. Ann the cook had taken the reins of authority from Augusta's
hands and was now ruling the boarding house with a competent and
jealous care. The boarders did not like her, but they knew that she
was honest and remorselessly fair and that there was no appeal from
her judgments. There were no complaints and the outward business of
the house went on smoothly and decorously as always. In the two rooms
that were now the world of Augusta and her mother everything circled
about the dim little pale flame of life in her mother which Augusta was
feeding with her love. And in his own room Wardwell worked craftily on,
going softly, husbanding his strength from day to day, paying it out
painfully, like a miser bit by bit, at the machine, making every bit
count for some work done, and jealously guarding his growing weakness
from Augusta's eyes. She must know before very long, he realized. But,
well, who could tell what might happen? And in the meantime there was
a little work to be done each day. Each line of it would be a help to
her in the end.

So the three eddies of life went quietly around, touching each other
and lapping a little upon each other, but each one a world by itself.
Spring came and slipped well along into May, the street cries changed,
the glistening pavements began to throw the heat back up into the
house, and the threat of a blistering summer came upon the air. The
three little worlds in the house went on so quietly, so unobtrusively,
that it seemed that they might have been forgotten, that they might go
on indefinitely, that they had been left out of any scheme of change.

But the change came, swift and disturbing as though it had never been
expected.

Wardwell heard the cry come up in the still night from the room below
him. He had been sitting in the dark, thinking of nothing, his mind
at loose ends, but he knew Augusta's cry and recognized in it the
trembling, very human fear of death.

As he came to the door of Rose Wilding's room he saw Augusta half
kneeling on the bed holding fast to her mother's hands. To Wardwell
it seemed that Rose Wilding was making a quivering, feeble struggle
to rise. But Augusta evidently knew different. She was pleading in a
desperate, pitiful whisper:

"Don't go! Please, darling mamma, don't go till you've known me, just
for one little minute! I wont try to keep you, darling, I know you want
to go. But just look at me once, so that I can see that you know your
own Augusta, please darling."

The hands that Augusta held stopped their quivering struggle and Rose
Wilding lay quiet, as though listening. Then slowly, naturally, she
opened her eyes with the sweet clear light of perfect reason shining
gently in them. And she said in a tender, confiding whisper:

"Augusta, my own. Stay close to me. It's--it's lonely--going." With
a sigh as of a tired child she closed her eyes and seemed to try to
cuddle to the warmth of the young body that was close to her. Then she
lay quite still.

After a little Wardwell gently lifted Augusta away. She did not resist,
nor did she break out weeping as he had been almost hoping that she
would do. Instead, she leaned against him, begging for full assurance:

"She _did_ know me, didn't she, Jimmie!"

"Of course, dear, of course she did."

Then Augusta went slowly over to the little cot which had been her
partner in the play of the weary pitiful months and began folding it
away.

Through the two days that followed Wardwell did all the necessary
things with a calculated care that showed how well he had schooled
himself. He saw to everything, anticipated everything, exerting himself
more than he had done for weeks, yet always carefully holding himself
within the limits of his strength lest a sudden breakdown should come
to frighten Augusta.

It was only on the lonely ride back from the cemetery, through the sand
pitted lots and broken streets of Greenpoint and across the ferry, that
Jimmie began to go to pieces. He was tired, tired of the struggle to
keep up, tired of the silly pretense of being a normal, cheery, good
hearted fellow. Besides, Augusta did not seem to have needed him. She
had not broken down. She would, he thought, have done just as well
without him. And he began to pity himself inordinately.

Now he was sure that Augusta was looking at him in a thoughtful,
speculative sort of way. Although he knew well enough that Augusta was
not aware of his condition, yet it took only a few minutes of this bent
of thought to convince him fully that she was wondering what in the
world she could do with a hopelessly sick husband on her hands.

The foolish, overweaning egotism of a sick mind in a sick body took
sway over him, making him forget everything but his own morbid line
of thoughts. Augusta did not need him. He was of no use to her, or to
anybody. He never would, in fact, be of any use. It would be better
to let it end now. He had never really been Augusta's husband. He had
served her as well as he could. But that was over now. She did not
need him now. He pressed his self inflicted hurt home and took a sort
of miserable pleasure from the pain. She at least could be happy. Why
should he drag her down the long dark path with himself. He might live
on and on for a deuce of a while--people did, you know. No, he was not
going to let the poor girl in for anything like that.

The heady, self-centred resolution took shape rapidly, and he began to
fill it in with all sorts of reasonable and thoughtful advantages.

He would drop out now, today, while things were still in their
present state. If he waited at all, Augusta would at once find out
his condition and she would--he knew her--immediately break up her
house and pack off with him to wherever the doctors told her to take
him. And he would be unable to resist once she took hold. Then, in the
inevitable end, she would have spent on him whatever money she had--he
had never thought to wonder whether it was much or little, or any--her
home and her way of living would be gone. He would be gone. And she
would be alone, among strangers, with no way of making a living,
probably broken down from nursing him--He drew the whole picture and
elaborated upon it.

Yes he must drop out today, quietly, without a word, and just
drift--drift on over towards oblivion. Augusta would miss him, but she
would not really need him. It would be all very simple. A short time,
maybe only a few days, of knocking around and he would be completely
down sick. Then some hospital or other would pick him up, under any
name he happened to be able to think of, and--and everything would
settle itself without fuss. He particularly did not want any fuss. He
was tired and he had found a way to avoid all bother.

He turned smiling cheerily to Augusta. He found her looking at him,
studying him with a grave, and, somehow, a different, interest.

Augusta had found herself face to face with a problem of her own.

She had known for a long time that there was something pressing on
Jimmie's mind. She knew, of course, that he was not altogether well.
But, with her own wonderful health and soundness, she could not think
of mere illness as the cause of his trouble. She was sure that the
trouble was in his heart. He had not been the same since they had known
definitely that her mother must so go.

Was that his trouble? He was, in a way, free now.

He had been kind and dear. He had done all that she had asked him--Yes,
she remembered now with confusion, she had literally _asked_ him.
And he had done everything that she had needed and more than he had
promised.

Did he want to go now?

If he did, she must make him go. For she knew well enough, she thought,
that Jimmie would never let her know that he wanted to go. He would
just stay on and be kind and say nothing. But she must not let him do
that.

Yet, with all her reasoning and searching, Augusta was first a woman.
There was just one question, and she knew it. With the simple, terrible
directness of a child she put it to herself.

Did he love her? She had never known, really. He was so kind, and so
good an actor.

They were alone now, for the first time. There was now no one, nothing
that they had to think of but themselves.

Fearless and direct as she was, Augusta quivered with the dread
of parting, for she had come to love the very thought of Jimmie's
nearness. But she knew that they were now facing the elementary facts
of life. Childlike, she had not anticipated this hour. She saw now with
a startling and vivid reality that, for the sake of both their lives,
she must _know_, before another day, whether Jimmie loved her as a man
must love a woman.

A forgotten and unbidden memory came to her in that instant, and
although she did not imagine that it had any bearing upon her problem
she grasped it and brought it out into the light, never thinking where
the consequences might lead.

"Jimmie," she said, turning quickly, "maybe you won't remember, but one
day last September I saw you in the Square talking to a lady. She had
been driving along in an automobile, and she saw you and called to you.
Then she drove the machine up to the curb and stopped, and you came and
stood with your foot on the running board. While you talked she seemed
to be pleading with you about something. Who was she?"

"Ah-ha!" said Jimmie gaily. "At last! I am now an accredited and
confirmed husband. My wife has begun to delve into my dark past. I am
now a married man! Listen, my dear, and I will unfold unto thee a tale:

"That lady--and she was a tall dark lady, mind you--was actually trying
to pay me back borrowed money! Did you ever hear the like?"

"She'd borrowed money from _you_?" said Augusta, with thoughtless
emphasis.

"Does sound like a joke, doesn't it," Jimmie admitted, with just a
tinge of bitterness in his voice. Augusta had unwittingly touched the
sore spot which he himself had just been prodding. "But--"

"Oh, I didn't mean that! Please forgive me, Jimmie, I didn't mean it
that way at all!"

"It's all right," said Jimmie lightly. "I can explain. There had been a
time when she was not as prosperous as she appeared that day. And there
also had been times--short and fleeting as they were--times when I had
plenty of money. Therefore." He turned his hands out before him in a
sort of Latin way, as though nothing could be plainer.

Augusta sat back, saying nothing. She was sorry that she had spoken
now, and about this. Jimmie, she felt, had told the literal truth. And
the incident seemed to make it more difficult to lead up to the things
which she must say today.

They rode to the door in silence, both subdued by the nearness of a
crisis which each foresaw in a different way. As the lugubrious coach
drove away they stood on the sidewalk looking after it, both half
conscious that it was the last vestige of an existence with which they
were now finished. When it had trundled around the nearest corner and
disappeared they turned to each other and, instinctively, like two
solemn, slightly frightened children, took hands and went stealing up
the steps.

Augusta did not miss Wardwell until evening. When he did not appear
for supper, she ran up the stairs to bring him, thinking that he
had perhaps fallen asleep. She had been busying herself through the
afternoon, putting off the inevitable. And now she decided that it
could be put off for still a little longer. She need not speak just yet.

His door stood open, but Jimmie was not there. She wondered that he
should have gone out today, for she knew he was tired. But, maybe, he
had just gone down to the street, and perhaps he would be coming in any
minute. She lingered a little, looking around at the signs of Jimmie's
ways--a pair of shoes in the middle of the floor, a coat draped
perilously from the arm of a chair, a necktie festooning a doorknob,
for Jimmie, while he was always wholesomely clean, was certainly not
orderly. And then the loose, scrambled piles of papers all over his
desk. She had often wanted to fuss among them, to straighten them out
and make neat piles of them. But she had learned that this was one of
the points on which Jimmie would fight. Anyone might hide his shoes
away or hang up his coat or take his neckties away to press, but touch
that desk and he would roar. And she had always understood and loved
the little boyish jealousy with which he guarded everything he wrote
until it was printed.

She went over on tiptoe, to take just a peep at what was on the
typewriter.

As if he had known that she would do just this, the words flashed
cruelly up at her from the middle of the white paper:

"I am going away, on urgent business--I am very tired."

Augusta sank down into the chair, covering the words with her arm,
sobbing:

"Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, did you have to hurt me this way! I wouldn't have
tried to hold you. I would have let you go, and blessed you for the
dear good boy you've been to me. I know you were tired. But you didn't
need to hurt me!"

After a little she sat up and forced herself to look at the line of
words as they stared up at her. And as she studied them she found
herself listening for the sound of Jimmie's voice saying them. Then she
knew why Jimmie had written the words instead of saying them to her.

_She would not have believed him._ And Jimmie had known that.

Word by word and tone by tone, she made him say it over to her mind's
ear and eye, even to the little lift in his shoulder with which he
would have ended--And she knew!

Jimmie did not mean that at all. He did not want to go away from her!

"Urgent business!" Love laughed up in her heart. Jimmie and urgent
business!

And then the quiet, thinking Augusta came back. This was no caprice,
no mere whim of Jimmie's. He had tried to make her believe that he was
tired and only wanted escape. He had deliberately tried to hurt her
so that she would believe. Jimmie would not have done that without a
powerful reason.

And he was gone. Nothing could be more definite than that. If she had
seen him packing trunks for a week his going could not have been so
convincing. He had simply changed into his everyday street suit and
walked out, humming:

  "The Priest of the Parish,
  "The Clerk and his man
  "Went 'round the church yard
  "With a red hot brick in his han'."

Augusta rose and stole to the door to peer down the stairs, half
frightened by the distinctness of her image of him. The impression that
she had gotten, of Jimmie walking down the stairs, hands in pockets,
humming that tuneless old rhyme of his, had been so vivid that for the
moment she had thought it real, had believed that she was hearing and
seeing Jimmie go down the stairs.

The blank unconcern of the stairway looking back at her chilled her.
Jimmie was gone.

A sudden feeling of physical weakness that came over her now brought
up to her one thing that she had overlooked. She remembered that she
had never really found out what Dr. Gardner had said to Jimmie that
night when he had gone to see him. Jimmie had baffled her with many
words, both wise and foolish. And the doctor had not told her anything
definite. They had both treated her as they would have answered a
child. But that was different, then she had been living only for her
mother.

Now the conviction came to her that the key to Jimmie's action was to
be found in his talk that evening with the doctor. He had never really
been the same since. So it was a quiet, determined Augusta who faced
the doctor that evening.

"I told him that he was in very bad shape and that he would be worse
if he didn't get out of the city at once. That was some weeks ago. But
I imagine he went away laughing at me a little. He seemed to have some
absurd notion that you needed him, that he was helping you by staying."
Doctor Gardner wasted no words, for he did not feel that he was any
longer bound by the promise of silence that he had made to Wardwell.

"I needed him every moment," said Augusta slowly; "and he stayed until
he had done everything."

"Stayed? Has he gone now?"

"No no," said Augusta quickly. "I was just thinking--That was all."
Suddenly it seemed to her that she must not on any account admit that
Jimmie had gone away. She must find him now, tonight. She must not let
it become established that he had gone at all.

"Of course, you should have let me know," she went on hurriedly. "But
then, I know Jimmie. He just talked you into keeping it from me. He can
talk anybody into anything if he sets his mind to it. Now I must get
home right away."

She was already on her way to the door, and the doctor, although he had
helpful advice ready to offer her, did not try to detain her. He saw
that, just now, she wanted nothing but to get away. So he followed her
resignedly to the street door, only saying:

"You know that if you need me in any way--"

From the steps she turned and, not trusting herself to speak, grasped
his hand impulsively. Then she was gone.

As he stood looking down into the dusk after her, he wondered why she
turned west, away from her home. He cleared his throat, to call after
her.

But, well, she had always done things herself, in her own way. And she
was always right.

Augusta did not know that Wardwell a few hours earlier had sauntered
just this way that she was hurrying. She did not know as she crossed
West street, now silent and deserted as a country road, that Jimmie had
walked recklessly through its roaring traffic, weakly half hoping that
something would happen to him. She did not know that he had stood just
where she came to stand, looking down over the railing into the slip
between two docks, asking questions of the lapping water.

A dock watchman who stood within a few feet of her put his lantern out
of his hand, merely as a precaution. She did not look like any of the
many kinds that he had seen coming to look too curiously at the water.
But, she was in trouble. Happy people do not come peering down into
rivers. He cautiously moved a little closer to her.

Then she turned and, without so much as a look back, crossed the street
again and turned north.

"Whatever she was lookin' for," the watchman grumbled, "it wasn't here."

Augusta was not thinking or reasoning, or consciously searching for
Jimmie. She had loosened her mind, as it were, and was letting herself
drift in his wake. She understood him now. She knew now what he had
been going through. She was following every thought of his as it had
worked through his brain and had turned out into action. She was
feeling with him and suffering the hurt that he had felt. But she was
not following him now because she pitied him. It was not because she
wished to care for him, to mother him, to make good her debt to him.

She was following him now because she loved him. Up to now she had
needed him, his protection, his kindness, his dear thoughtfulness
and his cheer. Now she needed him because she had found out, in this
last half hour, that she loved him with a desperation that would have
frightened her if she had been able to think of it. She did not care
whether he was sick or well. She did not care whether he wanted to
stay or go. She would find him. She would hold him. She would not stop
walking until she had found him. And then she would put her arms around
him. And not any other woman, nor even death itself would get him from
her.

Now she knew that she was on the right way. Her start towards the river
had been a false one, just as Jimmie's had been. Jimmie had had no more
real thought of harming himself than she had had of finding the end of
her search in the river.

He had just set himself adrift aimlessly, and unconsciously she seemed
to know that mere physical weariness would bring him to where all the
drifting logs of the city's stream sooner or later come to rest, the
park benches.

Through the endless night she trudged, scanning the thousand figures
that weariness and misery and failure take when they finally slump down
to the friendly darkness of a shaded bench.

Policemen looked sharply after her. Good men looked wonderingly after
her. Bad men looked discriminatingly after her. Her soul was sick with
the misery and the sordidness that she searched among. But her heart
was not afraid. She was right, and love was at the end of her search.

In the gray, haggard dawn she saw him at a little distance, sitting
jauntily erect, his hand extended resting lightly on his cane, peering
interestedly up into the coming light of the new day--as though he had
that moment sat down to enjoy the fresh morning and to wonder at the
miracle of dawn.

Augusta trembled in every aching nerve, but her heart laughed as she
stole toward him. It was so like him, sitting up making a play at
interest, when, as she knew, he probably didn't care whether the day
dawned or not.

Then with a little desperate run she was kneeling on the bench beside
him and had fairly dragged his head into her arms and was kissing him
wildly, passionately.

Now Wardwell said not a word. He did not at first seem surprised. It is
doubtful if, knowing Augusta and remembering her actions in those days
when her mother had been lost, he really had thought that he could lose
himself from her in the way he had taken.

But when he found Augusta's arms tight around him something within him
awoke with a start. Augusta had kissed him before this--But--

Jimmie Wardwell knew as little of women's love and the ways of it as
most men do. But he suddenly straightened up and deliberately pulled
one of Augusta's arms away and caught her little face in his hand and
looked boldly, hungrily down into her eyes.

For a little while, unashamed and fearless, her eyes gave him back his
answer. Then her lashes dropped in surrender, and Wardwell, as though
life and strength had suddenly been poured into him, caught her up
bodily to him and hugging her tight started to carry her to the nearest
street.




IV


"Donahue," said Jimmie earnestly, "you may be frank. We do not
invite criticism, but we can stand observation. What, then,
after two thoughtful days, is your fairly honest opinion of
this--ah--institution, of which you are an ornament?"

"Jimmie, you shall not make fun of Donahue. I know he's not pretty. But
his eyes are kind, and he is good. He is not for ornament," Augusta
defended.

Jimmie laughed wickedly. "All the homely people I ever knew have had
that said about them. They are not pretty, but their eyes are good,
and they are useful. And they _do_ love to hear it! Yes! The men swear
great deep oaths under their breath. And what the women do I was never
able even to guess." And he shook his head in utter inability to deal
with the matter.

"But, pardon me, you are divinely right--as always--about Donahue. Not
only is he useful and good; he is more. He is essential, and virtuous.
I would defend his morals in open court. And when I think of his
temptations, of the wild free and frisky gypsy life that he has led,
and then contemplate the shining nobility of his stern virtues, I am
positively ashamed of myself. At such times I even resolve to lead a
better life.

"He is a thief, of course," he continued reflectively, "but then,
stealing is a gypsy virtue, so--"

"He isn't any such thing," Augusta said, again drawn out to the
defense. "I know he ate the bag of apples, bag and all. But he thought
they were--"

"Woman, you interrupt. You digress. You trifle. You dissipate and
confuse the issue. Let us get on. We are not discussing Donahue. _He_
is considering _us_. Does he approve, or does he merely tolerate? That
is the point."

Augusta was at the instant fearfully engaged in the perilous strategy
of turning a good sized steak on a very small pan, and was not paying
the slightest attention to what he said.

"Again I say, Donahue, let us have your decently reserved opinion. I
do not ask for brutal frankness. No rough work, you understand. You
have now, for the afore-mentioned two thoughtful days, listened to
my uplifting conversation. You have been blessed with the vision of
Augusta's beauty. You have eaten her apples. What then? It is time for
you to speak."

Thus adjured, Donahue turned his head slightly and sniffed delicately
of the mingled tang of Augusta's wood fire and the savor of the cooking
steak. His head was close to the ground. He wriggled one ear in a
deliberate and patent pretense that a fly was bothering him. Then, as
though realizing that that subterfuge would not serve, he calmly and
meditatively lifted his off fore leg and deliberatively scratched the
prominence back of his ear, with the soft side of his hock.

"Aha! A diplomat! Did you see that, Augusta? He has that rarest
combination of all--outstanding virtue coupled with tact and good
manners. How many very good people are there who could have refrained
from giving us their honest opinion? Their duty would have forced
them to it. But Donahue, no. He scratches his ear, and refrains. How
beautiful it is to be able to refrain!

"All right, Donahue. All in your own good time. Either you do not care
to hurt our feelings, or you are not yet sure that you have made us
out. Scratch on, oh gentle minded philosopher, and--"

"Jimmie, get the big plate. You might as well help as sit on that rock
and talk. He isn't listening anyway."

Leaving Donahue to his own thoughts, Jimmie went obediently over to the
wagon and stepping up on the cross-bar reached a long arm in back of
the seat to a swinging rack and deftly brought forth a heavy platter.

"We'll dine out to-night," said Augusta, nodding at the little folding
table that she had set out on the grass.

"Oh hear ye, Donahue, our beloved Lady cracketh a pun!"

"Don't jiggle the plate. And _don't drop_ it!"

Craftily, his eye on the shifting level of the gravy, his feet feeling
for the uneven places of the ground, Jimmie made his perilous journey,
with the combined manner of a sleep walker and of a priest of some
terrible temple of sacrifice, from the stove to the table.

Then, when Augusta had followed with other things, they sat down
on little camp stools close together. A sudden timid, half-fearful
reverence and diffidence came over them, as of a perfect moment that
could not be held nor ever fully repeated. A fleeting, intangible
joy in each other caught them, joy in their very aloneness, in their
oneness of thought and heart and soul. And they knew, almost fearfully,
that such moments are rare in even the very happiest of all lives. A
little tear glistened in the sunlight on Augusta's lashes.

But Jimmie knew better than to let the moment fade out trying to
prolong it. Better break it while the beauty of it was yet in the glow.

"I am dying, Egypt, dying, for the half of that steak! Is it any
concern of yours, Madam, that your husband has had no food for the last
four and twenty hours?"

"You've had six egg's and three quarts of milk, and you fought--"

"Food! I said. Didn't I, Donahue? I repeat, I've had nothing to eat
since this time last night. And I am ravening. If you don't cut, I
shall tear!"

"Hold the table steady, then."

They ate with happy hunger, laughing at the untried makeshifts with
which they tried to bridge over the distance between sacred table
manners and the bird-in-hand necessities of the rickety little board,
spatting a little now and then as each insisted on giving the other the
choicest bits of the food.

Once Jimmie spilled over the salt in a moment of forgetfulness, and he
watched curiously as he saw Augusta furtively pick up a tiny pinch of
it and pretend to look at it and then, just naturally, throw it over
her shoulder. Strangely enough, he had nothing to say on the matter.
This little girl woman of his made him think a great deal.

Augusta had brought him home that other morning, out of the park, and
sent him to bed. Then she had gone rapidly and ruthlessly to work as
though she had been planning just what she was to do.

She saw the boarders of the house at breakfast and told them that she
must close the house at once. Some of them had been friends and it
pained her to give them any inconvenience. But she told them just why
she was forced to do what she was doing. And, before she had finished,
there was not one of them who would not have agreed to move his or her
trunk out to the sidewalk on the instant, if it would help her.

Then she went to renting agents. And before another day she had sublet
the house for the remainder of the term of her mother's lease.

The next part of her work was the worst. She had to bring into the
house dirty, pock-marked men whose business it was to paw around
with grimy hands and shake the furniture and try to bluff her into
discouragement. But she had fixed upon a certain sum of cash money
that she must have from the sale of the furniture. And from that
determination she was not to be moved. One after another, Ann joyfully
drove these men from the house, and Augusta waited.

The dealers had, of course, run around and seen each other and had
agreed among themselves to force her to sell for very little cash. Her
husband was sick. She had to go away with him. What could she do? It
did not so much matter, they told each other, which of them got the
furniture. That could be all fixed up. The thing was to protect the
business, so that people shouldn't think that they ought to get new
prices in cash for old stuff.

But finally Augusta's steady insistence on one price convinced one
dealer that she would never sell for less. He talked with her over the
phone. Then he came hurrying to the house, not because he wished to
beat his brothers with whom he had agreed, but because he was afraid
some one of them would beat him.

He offered Augusta half what she had demanded. Augusta did not argue.
She called Ann to do her duty. The wordy battle raged down the stairs
and out through the front hall to the door. On the doorstep, with Ann
jamming the door on his foot where he had stuck it to prevent her
shutting the door, he came to within ten dollars of the sum which
Augusta had fixed. With another bang at his foot, Ann relented and let
him come back to the foot of the stairs.

Augusta was standing at the head of the stairs. She did not feel any
of the zest of battle which inspired Ann. Jimmie was worse that day
than she had dreamed of his being. She was keeping him to his room and,
as far as possible, hiding from him the things that were taking place
in the house. She dreaded now to have him hear any of this argument,
and she was sickened with the thought that the ten dollars over which
they were haggling might some day be just the price of the difference
between life and death for her Jimmie. Who could tell? The day might
come when just for that ten dollars he might be denied the some one
thing that would mean life for him. A wild, unknown anger flamed up in
her and she took a step down the stairs, threatening in a tense, bitter
voice:

"If you do not give me all, I will take everything out into the street
and burn it."

The man took one look up into her flaming eyes, and--his hands dropped
from the argument which they had been preparing. He turned quickly,
grabbed a bill from his pocket and handed it over to Ann, to bind the
contract.

Augusta left the two of them to quarrel out the details, for there were
some things which she had stipulated that Ann must have. For herself
she had reserved only some cooking things and plenty of blankets.

In the meantime she had accomplished the most ambitious part of the
whole enterprise. She had bought a horse. She owned Donahue.

Back in her not distant school days Augusta had known Mary Donahue.
Old Greenwich village, which nowadays harbors its thousands of
intellectual gypsies and free riders of every shade and hobby, used
to, and does still, furnish a winter home for a circle--they were not
a tribe--of Irish gypsies. They did not form a community, nor did they
travel the country in caravans. Each family went out by itself in the
spring, through the northern part of the state, sold its own laces,
told its own fortunes, swapped its own horses. But by what seemed an
unspoken agreement they all returned late in the fall to the same
neighborhood. With the instinct for places, which is strong in even the
most unreliable of migratory birds, they came to refuge in the rickety
jumbles of houses between Washington Square and West Fourteenth street,
where one street blunders into another, and gets nowhere, and turns
back, until, in desperation, West Fourth street crosses West Twelfth
street and ties the whole business up in a knot.

Patrick Sarsfield Donahue was one of these gypsies, coming honestly
and anciently into his way of living and having no intention of
leaving it for any other. But Mary Donahue, his daughter, was untrue
to the traditions of her kind in that she had insisted on going to
school every day of the time they were in New York. Augusta had been
interested in her. Augusta _would_ be.

Now Augusta went down across Fourteenth street to find Mary Donahue. If
Mary Donahue could, and she did, manage, cook for, boss and generally
hold together on the road, an enterprise that consisted of a father,
six horses--more or less according to the balance of trade, four
growing sisters, two wagons, two small healthy brothers, and uncounted,
and wholly unaccountable, dogs; if Mary Donahue could manage this, and
drive a team of horses, then Augusta could drive one horse and keep
Jimmie out in the air and free from worry until he should be cured.

The idea was so simple and so much to her own liking that Augusta was
almost ashamed to think of the fun she was going to have with it. And
she hugged it jealously to herself so that Jimmie should not know until
the wagon was at the door for him.

She knew how he would loathe and fret at the thought of going to any
sort of a sanitarium or a resort. And she had a terrible dread that
her money would not be enough for that. Now this way, once the horse
and wagon were paid for, they would not need any money except for the
things they actually ate, they and the horse. She was necessarily a
little vague about the latter item. But Mary Donahue could give her the
facts as an expert.

Mary Donahue, red haired, quick, a woman where Augusta was a child,
understood and glowed with sympathy. But she could not entirely
suppress the little smile of the professional at the ardent amateur.
Mentally she gave them about three days to stay out on the road.

But then Augusta talked to her. And Mary Donahue came and saw the
business-like way in which Augusta had dismantled the house. And she
saw Jimmie. And Augusta talked to her more.

The result was that Patrick Donahue sold Augusta a gypsy horse and a
gypsy wagon. And Mary Donahue drove the spectacle to Augusta's door one
morning early and announced that she herself would pilot the expedition
out of the perils of New York.

She drove the length of Broadway, until that thoroughfare became a
country road well beyond the sacred, constable haunted terraces of
Yonkers. All the while she discoursed valuable information and wise
counsel. Augusta listened greedily, cramming mental notes until her
head swam. Wardwell listened too, half asleep, lying most of the day in
a bunk that stretched along the side of the wagon, not really believing
that this thing was going on as it seemed to be, but not interested
enough, and really too sick, to bother about a protest.

Before sun-down Mary Donahue helped them with their first camping and
cooking. And Augusta, meekly submitting to the rulings of her mentor,
was filled with the secret inner triumph of the dreamer who sees his
dream come true under the last commonplace test of practicability. She
could do it! Her plan would work!

Wardwell, standing around, easing the soreness out of his joints, and
sniffing with water in his mouth at the cooking meat--. He had at this
time an almost animal craving for red meat, and Augusta's diet would
not allow it until night--Wardwell, too, knew with a sudden conviction
that Augusta's plan was going to work.

By the time the busy gypsy girl had shown how to stow the things away
for the night she had become so interested in the project that she
began to feel a certain responsibility for it.

"What would you do," she asked, eyeing Augusta speculatively as the
latter sat on a low stump with a red framing of low sumach bushes
hanging about her shoulders, "what could you do if you lost your money
on the road, or went broke, or--?"

"Oh, but," Augusta broke in quickly, "Jimmie's going to be all right in
no time. And he'll be writing lots and lots. And since it won't cost us
hardly anything to live, why we'll be getting rich--rich!"

She did not want the financial outcome of their venture discussed in
Jimmie's hearing. She herself had no more thought or fear of the future
than have the birds when they start to follow the spring into the
north. But she knew that Jimmie's mind was raw on just this, and she
wanted it plain that he was the man and the provider.

"Of course," said Mary Donahue, not listening. "But--with eyes like
yours"--she was studying Augusta out loud--"and with the look that
comes in them at times--why, it'd be a shame not to--" She wheeled
quickly and jumped up into the wagon.

She came back with a bundle which she dropped on Augusta's lap. Out
of it she shook a long flaming red veil which she wound quickly and
bewilderingly around Augusta's head and shoulders.

Wardwell looked on, a benign and philosophical spectator. It seemed
that the gypsy girl had packed the wagon. Jimmie was wondering mildly
if she had, perhaps, packed in a witch's cauldron, and a package or
two of forked lightning, and a few snail's teeth. If so, he would look
forward to an interesting summer.

"Your hair's all wrong for a fortune teller, of course," Mary Donahue
admitted. "But that don't make any difference--mine's worse, and I can
make as much as the best of them. If it does you no good, it'll do you
no harm," she grumbled as she felt Augusta's rising resistance.

"You don't have to keep the money, you know. But always make them pay
some money, anyway. Do you hear? Never tell a fortune without money to
pay."

She gave Augusta no time to answer but dove at the bundle again,
unfolding a red board and breaking out on it a pack of cards.

"You are a 'heart' woman," she said, continuing aloud her study of
Augusta. "You are almost too light now, but you'll get darker, and
you're married; that makes a difference."

She laid the cards at Augusta's hand, commanding:

"With your left hand, cut three piles towards your heart."

Augusta gingerly lifted the cards as she was told. She was just a
little frightened, but she would not protest or let Jimmie see that she
felt it to be anything more than a joke.

The gypsy gravely inspected the cards, top and bottom, of the three
piles, and said nothing. Then she put them together and began dealing
out from top and bottom into eight piles, a single card to each pile as
she went.

"To your house"--she named the piles as she laid down each card--"to
yourself--to the one you love best--what you do expect--what you do not
expect--sure to come true--this night--your wish."

When she had dealt out all the cards in this way, she turned up the
first pile and began to read:

"_To your house_: there is love and good times, lots of fun making.
You'll both still be laughing and taking fun out of it no matter what
comes. It is all good, good!" She was kneeling at Augusta's side now.
There was none of the air of mystery of the professional card reader.
She had forgotten that she was giving Augusta a lesson. She was poring
eagerly over the cards reading them swiftly as they came up to her,
with all of a child's abandon in a game.

"_To yourself_: there is shortness of money. You will be worried about
money, not right away, maybe, but some time before very long. And a
horse, a horse will be in a part of the worry.

"_To the one you love best_: a dark--!" She stopped and turned about
with a swift, tigerish twist of her lithe body. Wardwell, who had
been gangling about, amused, and yet feeling somewhat left out of the
picture, suddenly found himself pierced by the angriest pair of blue
eyes he had ever seen. He did not know what it was about. But from the
look the girl gave him he would not have been surprised if she had
leapt upon him and buried claws in him.

"What--what is it?" Augusta asked wonderingly.

"Nothing," said the gypsy girl shortly. And she turned back to the
cards.

"_What you do expect_: there is sickness and long journeying, and black
and white all mixed together.

"_What you do not expect_: deceit. Deceit will break your life."
Again the girl turned sharply to eye Wardwell. Evidently he stood the
scrutiny well, for she turned back and said quite gently:

"I mustn't do this. You didn't ask me. And you didn't pay me. And I'm
only giving you a lesson, anyway. Now just watch and listen." She
mixed the cards all up together and began pulling out combinations at
random, reading them in hasty rhymes as she showed them to Augusta.

"Back to back says speedy meeting--Three eights, change of states--Two
jacks and a king, a constable bring--Two kings and a jack, an old
friend back--" And so on through twenty flying combinations, while
Augusta watched the quick brown fingers and listened to the broken
rhyming, fascinated, yet feeling that she would very much rather not
touch the cards at all. She knew, of course, that she would never think
of using them in the way the gypsy girl had suggested. Nevertheless,
she was afraid of them. She was sharply conscious that the girl had
stopped telling what she saw in the reading because she had thought
that she saw something unpleasant, and something connected with Jimmie.

Augusta knew that she could never believe in any of this. It was just
the patter of a trade. The combinations suggested the rhymes that went
with them. That was all. But, just the same, and although she was very
grateful for the help that the girl had given her, Augusta was wishing
that Mary Donahue would take her cards and go home.

"Now shuffle the cards and see it for yourself," Mary Donahue wheedled.
"You've got it in you--I can see it in your eyes. And when you have
that, you can see things even if you don't know the names of the cards.
And if you haven't got it, you could study them all your life--I've
known people that did--and never know boo."

Augusta took the cards with evident reluctance, but began to shuffle
them with an ease and sureness that caught Wardwell's attention
instantly. He remembered that Rose Wilding had had an unexplained
horror of cards. She had never permitted even the most innocent game of
cards in her house. It had been a difficult and, at times, an irksome
restriction. He knew that more than once she had lost good boarders on
account of it. But Rose Wilding had persisted in her strong way, with
few words, giving neither excuse nor explanation. So he was fairly
certain that Augusta had never before held in her hands a pack of cards.

Now he watched with sharp interest Augusta's deft, natural handling of
the cards, and, somehow, he did not like it.

With a feeling of growing excitement Augusta laid out the piles as she
had seen the other girl do, and without wishing to do so found herself
naming over the piles as she went around. She had not thought that she
would remember how they ran. But she found that she could not forget if
she tried. And it seemed that she did not want to try.

Augusta turned up the first of the piles and looked blankly at them.
Her hands were cool and firm, but she felt herself trembling inwardly
with a queer, creeping surge of blood. And she drew a quick breath of
relief when she saw that the cards meant nothing to her. They were
just a jumble of red and black and white, just pictures and spots. She
wondered at herself for being excited about it.

"Don't try to read anything from them," the gypsy voice at her ear
commanded. "Just don't think of anything, and just keep staring steady
and steady until your eyes cross."

Wardwell, watching, felt an irritated impulse to interfere. He hated
to see Augusta's delicately sensitized mind submitted to these gypsy
tricks. But, man-like, he was afraid of appearing ridiculous if he made
any kind of a fuss. For, after all, it was only a little bit of fooling.

Augusta sat limp and stared indifferently down at the cards as she had
been told to do. Her eyes fell out of focus and she continued to stare
while the spots and pictures moved about in a soothing, restful sort
of blur that lured her mind farther and farther away from the grip of
conscious thought.

Without any wish to do so, and without any thought, she began to speak.

"_To my house_: there is laughter and fear, coming together and in
pairs. I must never, never share my house with any third one. There is
water laughing by it all the day long in the sunshine, and a bleak wind
whistling past in the night.

"_To myself_: I am starting upon a long, long journey. I shall not rest
and my feet will be hurrying always, always. For the end of my journey
is hidden in the heart of The Hills of Desire.

"_To the one I love best_: there is a dark woman, tall and straight,
and--"

A quick, visible tremor ran over her, and as though it had touched a
spring in her body she sprang into the air like a wounded animal. As
she came to her feet, groping and tottering, her head cleared and she
saw Wardwell and ran to him.

"What was it, dear?" he said soothingly, petting her head as she hid
her face against his breast. "Don't think of it, darling. We both know
that it's nothing but nonsense. We won't tell our fortunes, sweetheart.
We'll just live them."

Augusta did not say anything. But after a little, feeling the
security of Jimmie's arms about her, she turned and looked defiantly,
resentfully at Mary Donahue who was unconcernedly picking up the cards
and the board from the ground where Augusta's sudden move had scattered
them. Then Augusta was aware of the gypsy veil about her head. She tore
it off and threw it at the stooping girl.

She was instantly sorry and apologetic. She ran over and picking it up
she handed it to Mary Donahue, who had pretended, very plausibly, not
to notice.

Mary Donahue took it and wrapped up the bundle as she had brought it
from the wagon. Then she went to put the bundle back where it belonged,
at the same time announcing that she must be getting home.

With a final admonition to them not to poke holes in the roof of the
wagon, she shook hands with Wardwell, kissed Augusta, and stepped away
across the fields toward a trolley line that would take her to New York.

They never saw her again.

In the morning Jimmie saw Augusta struggling with the harness which
Mary Donahue had so easily slung under the wagon. He was minded to let
her wrestle with it for a while. For, with a sick man's querulousness
he was sometimes irritated by the ease and capability with which
Augusta got things done. It was a constant challenge to his own
frequent periods of helplessness. But he could not be unkind. He came
dutifully over to help her.

"We'll have to do this thing in the orthodox way, Augusta, or that
horse will laugh himself to death at us."

"I know what goes on first," Augusta defended herself against his
implications. "But I don't know the name of it."

"Never mind," said Jimmie. "Go over and get the horse by the mane. Talk
to him. Divert his attention. I'm nervous while he watches me fooling
about with his necktie and suspenders. What the deuce is his name,
anyhow? In another minute I'll be calling him 'it,' like a baby."

"Why, Jimmie, I forgot to ask!" Augusta confessed blankly, feeling
herself convicted of a serious neglect. "Whatever shall we do?"

"Christen him."

"But what good will that do? He won't know that it's his name."

"Tell him."

"But, how?"

"How did he find out his name in the first place?"

"I don't know--Oh yes," Augusta brightened, "You just shake the oats
at him, or whatever it is for little horses, and you say Dan, Dan, or
whatever it is. And that's his name!"

"But suppose it was Alice? Nonsense!" Jimmie argued contrarily. "He'd
think it was the name of the oats. Just as if you said Bran, Bran! or
Force, Force! or Shredded--"

"Now Jimmie, please stop. And be serious and think. You _know_ we've
got to call him _something_. Why just think! If anyone should stop us
and ask us what was our horse's name. And we'd have to say that we
didn't know. And then they'd tell somebody else. And somebody else
would stop us and ask us. And then we'd be stopped and suspected and
arrested and maybe put in a jail somewhere."

"_I_ wouldn't," said Jimmie basely. "_I_ didn't steal the horse."

He stooped quickly as though he expected something to be thrown at his
head. But as his eye caught something on the collar he straightened up
exultantly.

"It's all right!" he exclaimed eagerly. "We're safe! Here's his name on
the collar."

"Oh, on his collar! I didn't know they did that for horses. Let me see."

"There it is, plain as his nose."

"Donahue," Augusta read. "But that isn't _his_ name. That's his
father's name--I mean, Mary's father's name--I mean, his owner's name."

"No," said Jimmie gravely. "I'm afraid you don't understand at all.
You see, gypsies are that way. The oldest horse--You will admit that
this is the oldest horse--the oldest horse is always called by the
family name. You understand, it's just like in England. You know they
never think of calling the son and heir by any boy's name. He is not
Billie or Teddy or anything like that. He's simply called by the name
of the house. He's Kingsmead, or Duncastle, or Ravenwood--So strong,
you know, and effective."

"So," he waved his hand by way of introduction, "we have with us,
'Donahue.'"

Augusta crinkled up her little nose. She knew that Jimmie was quite
capable of cooking up the whole explanation on the instant. But, as she
had no way of convicting him just now, she accepted the introduction
and called out sweetly to the horse who was grazing unconcernedly at
the end of his tie-rope:

"Donahue!"

He lifted his head. So it was settled. His name was Donahue.

Jimmie glowed with virtuous triumph as he led "Donahue" over to the
wagon, slung on the harness and backed him between the shafts.

But as Augusta finally climbed into the wagon she noticed a name
painted on the front boxing under their seat. While Jimmie went
through the wholly superlative business of guiding Donahue out to the
open road--the horse would have done much better if let have his own
head--Augusta wriggled skilfully back into the body of the wagon, to
search for further proofs of Jimmie's duplicity. Evidently she found
plenty of them, for when she got back into her place her face was red
with exertion and suppressed anger. Jimmie gave his entire attention
to the road ahead, driving ostentatiously with both hands as though he
were in the finish of a crowded race--Donahue would not have left his
sober, middle-of-the-road walk for anything less than a roaring motor
truck.

Augusta broke out laughing hysterically. Jimmie preserved a dignified,
inquiring silence, while Donahue almost broke into a trot.

"The wagon's name is Donahue!" Augusta wailed shrilly between peals of
laughter. "Just like the first son in England! And the cook stove is
named Donahue. And they call the skillet Donahue. And the name of your
bunk is Donahue!"

"'Bunk?'" Jimmie queried dejectedly. "Was it all bunk? It sounded all
right while I--"

"I don't mean slang. I mean the thing you slept on."

"I didn't sleep," said Jimmie, springing nimbly to a diversion of the
attack. "I only touched the thing in three spots. And I've got corns in
all three places."

"Well, you snored," said Augusta cruelly.

"Never!" Jimmie averred with solemn unction. "I never snore."

"Very good," Augusta agreed pleasantly. "I suppose you'll say it was
Donahue."

"This comes of being married," Jimmie remarked warningly to the Hudson
river. "Never before did any lady tell me to my blushing face that I
snored like a horse."

So they bickered happily through the June morning, careless of where
the end of the road might be, the feeling of dependence upon each other
and of utter independence of all other things wrapping them together in
a nearness that was so sweet and so friendly tender that it almost hurt.

And here at the end of their beautiful first day alone Wardwell sat
watching his little lady furtively toss a pinch of the spilled salt
over her shoulder. He knew the superstition about spilled salt. Augusta
was taking no chances. But he was wondering--as he probably would
continue to wonder during the length of his life--at how little he knew
of the real thoughts that went on back of the beautiful blue eyes that
looked out so open and unafraid at him and at all the world.

Was she a child that had not learned to know fear? Or was she a woman
full grown, so wise in love and strength that she could look down all
fear? He guessed that she was both of these things. For she threw salt
over her shoulder. And she looked out of those deep blue eyes into the
blood-red sunset on the opposite hills across the wide river, and he
saw that there was in those eyes a light as brave and unafraid as fire
itself. The light is never afraid of the darkness, for while the light
lives there is no dark.

The day had been quite unseasonably hot and there were storm clouds
piling up like boulders on the tops of the lower Catskills, away to the
northwest. The river lay below them, dry-eyed, still, mistless, with a
great, terrifying gash of red shot across its bosom where lay the path
to the dying sun.

A breathless, heavy hush lay over the valley. Shutting their eyes to
the motion of the distant boats, they could have believed that the
world had suddenly died around them, leaving them alone and forgotten.
There was not a sound, not a ripple of air, not even the whirring of a
bat or the cheep of a bird. Wardwell, over sensitive and craving for
the homely cheery noises of things moving, stirred uneasily.

But Augusta, child though she was of shut in city walls, had in her
enough of the primitive to know that there was a physical cause for the
hush that had fallen upon nature. She could feel a storm coming.

How would Jimmie stand it? She had thought of this when she was
planning--if indeed she had really done any planning--to make this
adventure. But it was a fact that she had thought only vaguely of
warm rain beating harmlessly against the tight roof of the wagon, of
falling dreamily off to sleep in the dark listening to the soft patter
and drip of rain among the trees.

Now she looked fearfully at Jimmie, and at the frail walls of their
home. And she trembled as she thought of the security and comfort
from which she had brought him to this, where she had but a bit of
dripping canvas to put between him and exposure. Already in the process
of mothering him she had come to think of him as a helpless child.
And vague, terrifying memories played upon her, of things heard and
imagined, of great trees crashing down in forests, of roaring winds
and furious, driving rain beating down to death the little wild things
of the woods. Now she realized, for the first time it seemed, that
Jimmie's life hung perilously on the care that she could give him, that
even a wetting, such as, for herself, she could laugh at, would perhaps
cost him more than he could gain by days and days in the open.

With a determined shrug she threw off the impression and rising began
to rattle the dishes.

"Jimmie," she said lightly "take the pail from under the wagon and go
out to the spring for water. I've let the fire die down and now I'll
have to build it up again, for nothing but boiling water will take the
fat off these dishes."

"You should have camped near a hot water spring."

"There isn't any such thing."

"Sure there is; there's Arkansas Hot Springs--Why didn't you camp
there?--And Virginia Hot Spring, and San Antone, and--"

"Take Donahue with you, if you must talk. He'll listen, if you give him
a drink."

"Donahue," he said sadly as he unhooked the pail from under the wagon,
"we be brothers in calumny. She blackens your character. She belittles
my powers of charming converse. Let us retire to the unfrequented
spring and there we shall mingle our bitter tears with the sweet
waters."

Donahue saw the pail being taken from its place, knew that the pail was
going where there was water, and followed without comment.

Mary Donahue had indicated for Augusta the spring and the camping
place. A high wall of hill stood up above the road on the right and out
of the hill came the spring. On the river side of the road a fringe of
trees screened the little flat promontory in the centre of which the
wagon stood. Occasionally the purring of a swiftly driven automobile
on the hard road within a few yards of them told them that the world
still ran its hustling way, but they were as effectually hidden and
private as if they had been securely housed in the middle of some vast
estate of their own. And when the dishes were washed and everything put
in shape for the night, Augusta brought blankets and they sat perched
out on the very edge of the cliff looking down to where the "Central"
trains thundered along some two hundred feet directly below them, and
out across the broad, dark expanse of the river.

The Albany boat came gliding up the silent path of the river, her
tiered, warmly lighted decks looking like a series of summer porches,
the steady, even motion of the boat giving to the watchers on the hill
the pleasant feeling that she was standing and that they were being
gently carried past her.

The searchlight from the boat playing along the hill bank caught the
figures of the boy and girl struck out in enormous silhouettes above
the rim of the cliff and a merry cheer came up from the boat.

"Go on and mind your own business," scolded Jimmie. "We are no mooning
young couple. And we are no subject for flash-light pictures. We are
sober married folks, with our home in the background and a respectable
horse in the middle distance."

The flashlight held them for a moment and then swung off overhead and
went to peer into the windows of a moving train on the "West Shore."
The band on the now receding boat broke into an old fashioned waltz
tune which, sweetened and mellowed by the distance and the echoing
chording of the hills, came up to them with the softness of a gentle,
kindly dream of forgotten people.

The breaking contour of the river soon hid the lights of the boat, and
Jimmie and Augusta were left to the great, solemn thinking silences
about them, and to themselves, very content.

In the stark blackness of the closed wagon, in the middle of the night,
Augusta found herself standing on the floor. She did not know how, or
why, she had gotten out of the little string hammock that was her bed.
But now she was shocked into full wakefulness. The wagon seemed to be
moving and she gave a little scream of terror as she thought of the
cliff and the terrible broken fall to the tracks below.

But the roar of the wind and swish of driven rain drowned her scream
and she realized that what she thought was movement was just the
swaying of the wagon body on its springs.

Reassured, and recovering quickly from her first fright, she stood
swaying in the middle of the floor, her hand clutching the wooden side
of Jimmie's bunk. He was sleeping quietly, very quietly it seemed, and
Augusta had to lean her ear down almost to his lips to catch the stir
of his breathing.

The chill of the water laden air caught her lightly clad body and she
shivered as her hands went groping over Jimmie's bedding to see that
he was all covered and dry. The tugging of the wind at the canvas
threatened her now, not with the fear that it might overturn the wagon
or drive it over the cliff but that it might rip a hole somewhere and
drench Jimmie.

Again she thought with trembling of the safe refuge of solid walls, of
the friendly comfort of feeling that people were near at hand to help
if there were need, and a wave of homesick loneliness, a sickening fear
of destitution and homelessness, swept over her.

The storm driving high across the chasm of the river struck full and
mercilessly at the wagon exposed on the tip of the cliff. Sheets of
rain came whipping down the wind, tearing at the canvas and threatening
every instant to strip it from the frames. The wind went snapping and
howling by like some hungry, angry animal, defeated and driven off
for the moment, but sure to come and threaten again. Peals of thunder
rolled and reverberated against the rocks, coming every moment nearer
and more terrifying as the centre of the storm swept down the river.
Augusta straightened up and stood there, it seemed for hours, her
eyes staring wide and fascinated, waiting for and cringing under each
successive stroke of lighting as it came ripping down through the
storm, lighting the black interior of the wagon with a ghastly glow.
At last, when it seemed that if she faced another flash of the horrid
light she must surely go mad, she sank down to her knees upon the cold
floor and buried her eyes deep in the pillow beside Jimmie's head. She
wanted to wake him, to creep into his arms and be held, for she was
horribly frightened. But he was warm and safe as he was and she felt
that she must not disturb him.

After a little she remembered that she must not do things like this.
She must be sensible and get back into the warmth of her blankets. She
was shivering and chattering with cold and fright. And she knew that
she must take no risks of making herself ill. She rose obediently to
the telling of her own good sense and went groping for her hammock. But
she felt that she must look outside. If she could only once see the
solid world outside and know with her eyes that it was standing still
and unmoved while her own crazy shelter rocked and swayed she could
feel safer.

She poked a little hole between the curtains at the back of the wagon,
for the wind was driving dead at the front, and peeped out. A flash of
lightning showed her Donahue, the mis-named, the sturdy, the patient,
standing unmoved and uncomplaining in the lee of the wagon. Her heart
gave a bound of pity and compunction. She had forgotten him entirely.
She had not even thought of his being out there in the storm. He might
have walked away, she thought, and found some shed or shelter for
himself. Instead, he stood there, dumb and faithful. Impulsively she
put her hand out into the rain towards him, and she was thrilled with a
sudden feeling of comfort and help as she felt a cold wet nose come up
and nuzzle in her palm.

She did not know that the love which came to her in that moment for the
big, ungainly, faithful horse would one day spring the trap of life for
her and Jimmie. But even if she had known, I think she would still have
preferred to love him.

She crept contentedly back into bed. And although the wind howled and
the rain lashed mercilessly and she watched nervously all through the
night, yet she had none of the panic fear of her early fright. That
figure of patient, dumb strength and dependableness standing out there
in the storm had given her a courage that would not be easily shaken
again.

Towards morning the wind went down, but the rain continued to fall in a
steady drizzling mist that ushered in a gray, cold, depressing morning.
To Augusta it seemed interminable hours before it was time to get up
and feed Donahue. She thought seriously of making hot coffee for him,
but gave up the idea, not because she was afraid of Jimmie's ridicule
but because she was not sure that Donahue would understand.

Jimmie slept heavily and awoke feverish and coughing horribly. Augusta
could think of nothing to do but to get away from this place. It
would have seemed more reasonable to stay quiet at least until the
rain stopped, for here standing still she could keep the wagon tight
and dry inside. But she could not help feeling that they would be
better anywhere than here. Besides, the commissariat was in trouble.
When she opened the little chest in the side of the wagon she found
that the four bottles of milk which she had bought the evening before
for Jimmie's ration of today had all been curdled by the storm. That
settled the matter. Jimmie could not have his breakfast until she had
found a farmhouse or a country store where she could buy milk. They
must move on in the rain.

She bundled out cheerily in rain coat and rubbers to assay the doubtful
business of hitching the horse alone, for she would not think of
letting Jimmie out in the rain.

"I suppose, Donahue," she apologized, "it isn't proper for a gypsy to
wear rubbers. Probably I ought to go barefoot, but you won't please
expect that, for a little while anyway. Now I hate to hurry your
breakfast," she explained as she brought the bridle, "but you know
Jimmie hasn't had any yet, and doesn't know where he's going to get
any. And I strongly suspect that you're only pretending anyhow. I'm
almost sure," she said peering sharply down into the bucket where
Donahue was making a hurried business of snuffing up imaginary oats,
"that you finished the last of your oats five minutes ago. Hold up your
head, sir."

Donahue did not understand the spoken word. Mary Donahue had a way of
slapping him sharply under the jaw at this juncture. But out of the
corner of his eye he saw the bridle and raised his head cheerfully.

The harness was mean and sticky with the rain and the mildew of the
night's dampness, and Jimmie had been none to expert in hanging it away
so that it would come out right and convenient. But with much tugging
and careful study and brave whistling in the rain, and more tugging,
Donahue was finally backed into the shafts and the traces made fast.
When all was ready and Augusta was about to climb into the wagon she
noticed what seemed to be some entirely superfluous straps hanging down
towards Donahue's hind feet.

They were, of course, the "hold-back" straps, to keep the wagon from
bumping the horse's legs going down hill. Augusta could see no earthly
use for them, but she knew they were out of place dangling down there.
They gave Donahue a half dressed effect which she did not like. She
wondered if she ought to consult Jimmie, but after more study she
remembered triumphantly that they went around the shafts. She wound
them around the shafts and buckled them up neatly. Knowing nothing of
their importance or their purpose, she could not know that the proper
fastening home of a hold-back strap to the shaft is a thing that must
be learned, and learned young. Everything now looked right and neat, so
she climbed up and fixed the driving curtain as Mary Donahue had shown
her how to do.

"Do you think you'd better start," Jimmie objected through the inner
curtain at the last minute. "I'd rather go hungry all day than to see
you out there in the rain. I'm not hungry anyway."

"Why, who cares for a little rain. Giddap, Donahue," she sang out
tightening up the reins.

Donahue picked his way soberly out through the trees and in spite
of Augusta's tugging on the left hand rein to turn him up the road
deliberately crossed to the spring.

"I didn't think you'd ever want water again," Augusta explained her
oversight, "after last night."

Donahue took his accustomed morning draught, and, blowing the water
from his nostrils, turned sedately and started up the road.

Jimmie sat upon his bunk, fully dressed, shivering miserably and
trying to choke down the sound of his coughing. The wagon swayed along
creaking and complaining as they climbed the grade. He rose to look
out through the rear curtain at the gray, sodden day. He wished that
Augusta could not hear his cough. He knew that it hurt her really more
than it did him. And he wished, he wished, well--several things. As
he stood there, thinking vaguely, dejectedly, he felt the wagon slip
forward gently, and then there was a slight bump.

The wagon was yanked forward so roughly that he nearly fell out through
the curtain. He caught himself and swaying back was pitched into his
bunk. He scrambled up again and clutching desperately at the side
of his bunk managed to get forward to the back of the driving seat.
Tearing apart the curtain he tumbled into the seat and understood what
was happening.

The hold-back straps had slipped loose, the wagon was bumping cruelly
on Donahue's legs at every jump, and he was running away madly down a
long hill.

The driving curtain had broken down in front of Augusta. She was down
on her knees in the wet, her hair flying wildly about her, tugging
despairingly at the reins over the dashboard, and praying:

"Oh, please, please, Donahue! What is it? What is it? Please, whoa.
I don't care, but you'll hurt Jimmie Oh, please stop and don't hurt
Jimmie!"

Then she turned to another quarter:

"Dear, dear God, and Mary Mother, please don't let Jimmie get hurt.
It's my fault! You know I took him out this way. You know he didn't
want to come," she appealed. "And I'll be so good. Oh, please don't let
Jimmie be hurt!"

Wardwell slipped cautiously down and gathering her up braced her in the
seat.

"Hold tight, dear," he commanded. "We'll be all right." And he braced
himself to saw on the reins.

But Donahue by this time had the bit in his teeth, and so far as any
effect of the reins was concerned Jimmie might as well have been
pulling at the dashboard. The horse had no check rein. His head was
down, his back flattened out, and he was running like a frightened dog,
the wagon jolting down wickedly on his legs at every few jumps.

Jimmie knew that he was as frightened and as powerless as the girl
crouching beside him. If he jumped with her, they would be hurt or
killed. If they stayed and hung on the horse would surely stumble or
the wagon would slew off the road--he looked down the winding stretch
of the road and counted the curves and wondered at which one of them
they would be thrown over the bank--or they would meet some heavy truck
and be crushed.

The crazed fright of the horse came back to the hearts of the two
behind him. The mad Rap-a-rap, Rap-a-rap of his frantic feet on the
hard road, the wild careening of the wagon, the loud pumping of blood
in their throats took from them all sense and thought as the rain
beat unfelt upon their faces and trees and rocks and fences whirled
drunkenly by.

Augusta was hugging closely now while Jimmie sawed mechanically at the
reins, and he heard her praying quietly. His heart stopped beating as
he looked down a sudden dip of the road below them and saw a country
railroad crossing.

Beyond the tracks the road ran up a hill again. If he could only cross
safely, he could stop the horse there where the incline of the hill
would hold the wagon back from hitting him.

But because this was all an ordered nightmare, Wardwell heard, just
where in a nightmare he would expect to hear it, the whistle of a
train. He tried to drag the powerful crazed horse to the side of the
road, to overturn the wagon if he must. But he might as well have tried
to turn the oncoming engine.

Augusta saw the train coming toward the crossing, as they were coming.
She did not cry out, only snuggled a little closer and waited. Then
with one last mad dip the horse struck the tracks, and the wagon leaped
across in front of the grinding engine.

A gray faced man leaning out of the cab of the engine yelled crazily
at them, but they did not hear. Donahue ran on up the hill, until he
seemed to miss something. The wagon was not hitting him any more. Then
he became conscious of the tugging at his jaw. He slowed down to a
weak-kneed stumbling trot, then to a walk, and stopped, shaking and
panting.

Wardwell sat a while holding Augusta tight, for now she was crying
bitterly in great gasping sobs.

When he had petted and quieted her back to something like herself,
he started to get down to fix the hold-backs. He was shaking weakly
himself and as he reached his foot down to the step his hand caught
something for support. It was the handle of the brake.

He stumbled to his feet on the ground, and turning back, his hand still
on the handle of the brake, he broke out into a hysterical laugh.

"Oh Jimmie, don't!" said Augusta, frightened anew.

"Augusta," he said solemnly, "don't ever marry a fool again."

"What--what--?"

"This," he explained, "is a brake, to stop the wagon. If I hadn't been
a fool and lost my head I'd have thought of that brake and stopped us
right at the start.

"But, anyhow, I think this is enough. We had better go back to the
city, where people are paid to take care of us."

Augusta sat a little while thinking, while Jimmie fixed the hold-backs.

"Jimmie," she said simply, "do you think we'll ever go through anything
worse than that?"

"No, my dear, we will not."

"Then we've passed the worst, already," she announced calmly. "Let us
go and find your breakfast."




V


In the pearl dawn of a lovely July morning Augusta lay in her hammock,
happily lazy and wide awake looking up at the line of the hills,
watching the rosy light from the sun as it flushed color up into
the pale eastern sky. Were these the hills of desire, she wondered,
thinking vaguely of the words that had come to her while she studied
the cards at the gypsy girl's bidding. The long, sun-drenched, dusty
days upon the road, the sudden violent storms, the meetings with people
who thought her so queer a gypsy, all had swept into a distant past
the impression of that evening a month ago. A happy, busy month it had
been, full of new things to be learned, of old, half forgotten things
to be remembered, of careful explanations to people who did not listen;
and three black, fearful days when Jimmie had been so bad that they
could not move, days and especially nights when she had sat crouching
beside him and had felt her faith and her dear high hope slipping from
her and had frankly feared that he was dying.

Those nights of sinking fear seemed very far off this morning as she
lay and looked at Jimmie stretched out along the length of the wagon
on the other side, sleeping as smoothly and easily as a child. She
could see that the skin still stretched drum tight over his temple
hollows and she knew that there were still hollows under his big bony
shoulders into which her two hands would fit. But she no longer feared
these things, for she could see the vital tan of sun and wind creeping
up across his face and driving away the hated pallor and she knew that
this was the sign of life for him.

She smiled as she thought of the efforts she had wasted in trying
to tell people the truth of why they were on the road in this way.
She loved the freedom of the road, but she did not want to be taken
too literally for a gypsy. So she was careful to explain to the
farmer's wives to whom she went to buy eggs and milk and in the little
village stores where she stopped for meat and bread that she had
nothing to trade in the gypsy way, that she was just like anybody's
wife travelling in this way for her husband's health. They believed
her--everybody always believed Augusta on sight. But on returning to
the wagon it was often to find Jimmie eloquently discoursing from the
step of the wagon to a moderate sized crowd of people--Where _did_ they
come from? She would wonder horrified--upon the universal merits of a
certain gypsy remedy which had come down to him through a wonderful
and ever varying procession of lineal antecedents, and which he was
presently going to bestow, at a nominal price, upon this distinguished
and intelligent audience.

Humiliated and angry, afraid that she would laugh and yet wanting to
cry, Augusta would jump up into her seat and drive brusquely off,
Jimmie swaying on the step and waving apologies for his untimely
departure. To her shame, he actually did sell three bottles of cod
liver oil, which he had himself refused to take. When, however, she
caught him dressing up as hair restorer the bottle of harness oil which
Mary Donahue's care had provided, Augusta asserted genuine authority
and this outlet of his genius was stopped.

But in the matter of horse trading she found that she had no influence
whatever. With a cheery hail and a wave of the arm he would stop
anybody who drove a horse and proceed to ask pertinent and leading
questions about the horse which the other person drove. And if he could
but awaken in his listener's eye the faintest gleam of our American
rural passion he would be down on the ground instantly, walking around
the stranger's horse, squinting severely at him, cataloguing his points
in technical terms wonderfully misplaced, with a dispassionate, steady
flow of bewildering language, until his listener in sheer self defense
turned the inquiry upon Donahue.

Jimmie would then throw up his head, one ear cocked in the air in that
way he had, as though some new and interesting fact had been brought to
his attention. Then he would talk of Donahue.

On ordinary days, when Jimmie was in no more than his usual good strain
of talk, Donahue was only a pure blooded Arabian bay from a race of
desert horses, whose breed and pedigree had been guarded jealously
through a thousand years by Jimmie's own forbears. But when Jimmie was
having a good day Donahue was apotheosized. He, Donahue, was in fact a
lineal descendant of the fay white horses that used to run wild under
the lakes in Ireland in the days of the giants. Jimmie reminded his
listener truculently that Colonel Roosevelt had written all about these
things in his studies of the Irish Sagas, and he dared him to admit
that he had not read anything of it. Our rural people do not like to
admit complete ignorance of any given thing. They generally agreed that
they "had heard something about it."

That was enough for Jimmie's case. Donahue's rusty color proved the
matter--Those horses would certainly have turned rusty after all that
water.

It was in vain that Augusta explained to Jimmie that these people
really thought him crazy, and that they only listened to him and
humored him because they were afraid that he would turn violent. Not
argument, nor ridicule, nor even tears could break him from his mania
of proposing to trade Donahue to every person who drove a horse and who
could be persuaded to stop and listen to him. And Augusta could only
sit in her place, smothering her laughter and her anger until he was
willing to break off his farce and drive on.

She remembered one awful day in the Mohawk Valley between Little Falls
and Herkimer when he had stopped in succession, and labored with, a
candidate for Congress, who foolishly tried to sow the good political
seed which was quickly blown away in the breeze of Jimmie's zeal, with
a butcher, with a jolly old farmer who declared that if he had Jimmie's
tongue he would go on the road himself, with a capable spinster who
drove a smart horse and plainly showed that she would have liked to
crack her whip at Jimmie's ear, with a veterinary surgeon--with whom he
nearly came to blows, and with a minister of the Gospel.

Now their way was quieter, for they had left the main travelled roads
at Remsen and were faring straight into the heart of the hills. "You
can follow the M. & M. from Remsen," Mary Donahue had told Augusta. "We
never go that way, for there's no people much and the roads are rough.
But that's where the sick people all go. And you'll be all right. Just
keep somewhere not too far from the railroad. There's always some kind
of a road, and you can't get lost when you're not going anywhere in
particular anyway."

Augusta had as yet no definite plans. She had not indeed thought of the
need of any plans. Never had two birds set forth on flight into the
northland with less thought of the end of the summer than Augusta and
Jimmie had taken of where they might be when the nip of chilly nights
should come to warn them that the summer was over. Augusta had thought
only of a long, long summer of happy drifting before the end of which
Jimmie would somehow be wonderfully cured. And beyond that point her
thought had not gone.

With the sight of the solid hills before her, into which they had been
slowly climbing for some days, it seemed that the future was suddenly
drawing up to them with a sharpened, stiffened outline. The hills
looked so definite and decided that it seemed almost an impertinence
to go wandering at will among them without object or settled purpose.
Their very stillness and the steady, ordered lines of them as they
tiered up, hill behind hill, to meet the rising sun, reminded Augusta
that even here the rule of order of the world held good. People must
not go on too long trusting to the future just because the future is a
vague thing and far away.

The days along the road had taught her many things, and here where they
were almost in the big woods her eyes and ears were being sharpened in
the silences to learn and to understand the life of the little wild
things that rustled and scuttled through the grass and twittered in the
tree-tops and called sleepily to each other in the twilight.

Last night at dusk she had walked out on a bridge over a swampy creek
and had seen a muskrat jump from the tall grass of the bank into the
water and swim in a straight line, only the tip of his nose showing
above the water, right to his house. Then she had thought only of how
swiftly and quietly he had slipped away. Now she remembered that the
largest part of his wild wisdom was that he had a home to get into and
that he knew just where it was.

And yesterday she had seen a dog chasing another dog--Jimmie said it
was a woodchuck, but she had no great faith in Jimmie's wood lore.
It was too universal, too impromptu and, alas! too agreeable and
accomodating. The woodchuck--if Jimmie was right--had vanished suddenly
in the middle of a bare, open field. He had a place to go to and he
knew just where it was.

Even the melancholy owls who spread pessimism through the night were
probably hooting each on his own doorstep.

She and Jimmie were not fitted with the instincts of these little wild
things, to have a refuge always at hand against the storm that was sure
to come.

And she had noticed that the smaller these wild things were the better
they were equipped, in their apparent helplessness, to escape danger.
The little meadow bird building her nest in the open field was the very
color of the grass that stood up above her. And the busy woodpecker was
invisible against the bark of the tree where he worked for his living.

Looking up at the suggestive strength of the hills Augusta thought how
little and how unready people were in this great world that knew so
well its own laws and how to take care of itself. And of all people she
was sure that she and Jimmie were the least equipped, the least ready
for the test of life in the swift sweeping changes that nature's order
brings.

A little worried frown came clouding down over the morning light in
Augusta's face and a sharp little crease of trouble set itself straight
down in the middle of her forehead.

A new sound came now striking persistently at her attention and lifting
finally, by a fresh interest, the worried frown. For many minutes
she had been listening intermittently and subconsciously to what was
evidently a connubial argument in a tree-top. Two birds were talking
about her, or at least Augusta took the argument to herself and had
been translating it idly into unconscious words while her thoughts were
busy elsewhere.

An energetic, housewifely voice had been complaining insistently:

  "Why _don't_ she get _up_-ee?
  "Why _don't_ she get _up_-ee?"

And a somewhat sleepy, tolerant, patently male, voice answered back
good naturedly:

  "Let'er _sleep_, let'er _sleep_."

The colloquy had rambled intermittently into other matters, but Augusta
felt guiltily sure that the energetic housewife in the treetop had an
eye upon her, for every little while she brought the dialogue back to

  "Why _don't_ she get _up_-ee?
  "Why _don't_ she get _up_-ee?"

And male laziness answered comfortably:

  "Let'er _sleep_, let'er _sleep_."

The sound that now broke off her half listening reverie was a short,
plunking noise of something dropping into the little pond near which
the wagon stood. Could it be that some boy on the hill at the other
side was throwing stones into the pond.

She turned on her shoulder to watch the surface of the pond. Certainly
there were the ripples spreading out in gentle waving circles from
a centre at which something must have fallen into the pond. As her
eye followed the waving circle toward the farther bank, right in the
line of her vision there sprang straight out of the mirrored water
a beautiful, tapering, black, silver and green body, that seemed to
hang suspended an instant in a glistening arch and then dropped like a
silver knife, without a splash, and was gone.

Augusta lay for a moment staring bewildered at the spot where the
vision had disappeared.

Then she sprang for her dressing curtain and began to scuffle into her
clothes. "If that fish would only wait!"

Jimmie had bought fish lines at a country store the other day and had
rigged a pole after the manner that he had learned during boyhood
summers in the country. Yesterday he had persisted in stopping to fish
this stream lower down at a place that looked promising. And Augusta
had jeered good-naturedly at him, and even Donahue had kicked, when the
only result had been that they were all horridly bitten by great black
flies.

Now yesterday's scepticism was forgotten. Jimmie should have fish for
breakfast!--she knew how he sometimes loathed the milk and eggs that
she forced upon him. But even this was an afterthought. She had seen
her prey, and the fever of the hunt was tingling in her fingers as she
tore the pole loose from its fastenings on the top of the wagon and
grabbed a bit of pork rind for bait, jabbing it on to the hook as she
ran down to the pond and around to the side where she had seen the bass.

Probably she expected him to be there waiting for her, for when she had
looked sharply at the place where he had disappeared, and could see
nothing, she did not know what to do.

She remembered that Jimmie had just dropped the bait to the surface
and drawn it up again slowly, here and there at random without knowing
whether there was a fish near or not. Obviously, Jimmie's way had been
wrong, for he had caught nothing; and how could he expect to catch a
fish if he didn't know where the fish was?

She decided to wait and see if he would not come up again. He did. Away
at the farthest bend of the pond she heard the swish of his body as he
leaped and was in time to see the silver flash of him shooting down
into the water.

She started to run around the bank, but an instinct of primitive
wiliness caught her and, instead, she dropped down flat and motionless
in the grass at the very edge of the bank. That fish was hers. She knew
it with a sudden fierceness of possession which if she had been able
to think of herself would have shocked her. She would have fought the
world with teeth and nails for him. But she knew that she would not
get him by running after him. She would wait and make him come to her.
Slowly and carefully she let the pole out over the water, the bait
swinging gently just above the surface.

The sun was shining down past her shoulders as she lay there watching
fiercely, and she was surprised to see the bottom of the pond clearly
outlined in rocks and sand. It was her first real sight of sun-shot
water in the hills, and to her whose city experience had told her that
all ponds were dark and bottomless it would, at any other time, have
been wonderful. Now it only meant that she would have that fish if
she had to go into the pond after him. There was only one fish, she
thought; so the contest was narrowed down to the personal bitterness of
a duel.

She saw a thin dark line shoot across a bed of white sand. Could that
be merely a fish swimming, that streak of playing lightning that had
crossed again, under her fascinated eyes?

He had seen the shadow of the bait moving on the surface of the water,
and he was, for a reason about which Augusta knew nothing, even more
excited than the tensely nerved girl who watched for him, her head now
leaning out over the bank, the weight of half her body resting on one
elbow that dug a socket for itself in the dirt at the extreme edge of
the bank.

Again he came shooting across over the bed of sand where she could see
him clearly, and again, before she had time to do more than edge a
little farther out over the bank in her excitement, he flew back across
the line of her vision.

Now she was sure that he had seen the bait, for he came shooting past
more swiftly, if it could be, and with shorter and shorter dashes, each
time swimming closer to where the shadow fell upon the water. Swifter
and shorter came his rushes, now almost underneath the shadow of the
bait. Augusta trembled in her eagerness to drop the bait to the water.
But a cunning instinct told her that he was not ready, that her prey
was not yet worked up to the point of striking.

Hard as it was, she must still wait, fearing every instant that he
would rise and miss the hook, but not yet daring to drop the bait upon
the water.

Finally, when she was grinding her teeth to keep her hold upon her
trembling muscles, she saw him coming; this time from a longer dash
than he had been taking, and swifter, and straight at the shadow.

She plumped the bait down on the water.

In the little ripple of the surface she lost sight of him, thought
that she had frightened him away, had lost him. And the reaction, the
feeling of failure turned her weak and nerveless.

She had no time to be conscious of the violent yank upon the pole, for
with it she was toppled over the edge of the bank and found herself
rolling down into the water.

She was horribly, sickeningly frightened as she struck the water and
she did cry out Jimmie's name. But when she felt the pole being drawn
from the hand that still held it she gripped it fiercely with both
hands and began to fight.

She was on her knees now and struggling to her feet in the water, while
the fish shooting about in narrow circles drew the line through the
water like a flashing knife. It was battle now, her strength against
his strength and cunning. She did not know what to do, except to pull
and try to lift him out of the water. And she found that she could do
neither, for it was taking every ounce of her strength merely to keep
from being jerked from her slippery footing down into the deeper water.

She must somehow get back upon the bank for she had no strength here
where her feet had nothing to brace upon. Back and forth along the
shifting bank she struggled, fighting for a foothold, falling and
stumbling up again, but never loosening the death grip of her hands on
the pole. Her knuckles were bruised and stinging and she knew that her
knee was cut where she had fallen, but she had no thought of giving up
or even of calling for Jimmie.

There was no joy of battle now, nor was it a game that she played. It
was a desperate, racking struggle merely to hold her own, and she was
fighting blindly, without plan and without cunning.

Once the pull on the line suddenly slackened and she almost fell over
backwards, ready to cry, because she thought the line had broken.

Then straight out of the water and leaping towards her came the
fish. Augusta leaped back up the bank, and it was her fright at
this point--she actually thought that the fish was coming to attack
her--that changed the luck of the battle.

Here, on her feet on the firm ground, she felt that she was the
stronger, and while her strength was with her she was going to make one
mighty try at lifting him out of the water.

She braced herself, craftily waiting until the fish in his rushes
should give her a little slack in the line. Then she threw her whole
body into a straining heave at the pole.

At that instant the fish struck downward desperately. The two forces
met midway of the pole. Augusta heard a loud crack and found herself
tumbling backward, still holding the useless end of the broken pole.

When she looked and saw the other half of the pole shooting across the
pond she screamed for Jimmie and gave chase.

As she ran around the edge of the pond Augusta was fighting mad. She
was angry now at herself for calling to Jimmie. And at the very first
chance she was going right into the pond and put an end to that fish.

She came around to the side nearest the wagon and here, because it
seemed like her own ground, and the sand shelved gently out into the
water, she ran boldly in half way to the centre of the pond and grabbed
at the pole as it went shooting by.

The first time she missed it in her eagerness and nearly fell into deep
water. But she got her footing again and waited. Once the pole sailed
by well out of her reach, but the next time as the fish circled he
swerved sharply after he had passed Augusta and his quick turn slewed
the broken end of the pole around almost to her hand. She grabbed it
and ran, literally ran, out of the pond and up the bank, dragging after
her by main strength the pole, the line and the fish.

It was a most unsportsmanlike and unfair procedure. The fish could have
had her haled before any angler's court and condemned by all the laws
and canons of the sport. But Augusta ruthlessly dragged him up through
the sand and the dust to the grass.

When she thought that he was safely far enough from the water, she
turned to look at her prize.

Donahue, too, sniffing interestedly came ambling along for a view of
the happenings.

The sight of the fish did not please Augusta. He was black and dirty
and he squirmed disgustingly. And he had covered himself with a
loathesome coating of muddied dust.

Her idea of a fish in captivity was of one frozen restfully in colors
into the middle of a block of ice in a butcher's window.

When she looked closer at the fish she saw that he was bleeding dirtily
from the gills. She turned weakly sick and remorseful.

"I'm sorry!" she cried. "Oh, I'm so sorry! Please go back. Please! And
I'll never fish again!" She dropped limply down to the ground and began
to cry bitterly.

The fish was flopping his blind way back to the pond, when Donahue,
with every appearance of studied intention, dropped a blundering foot
upon the dragging line, and stood still contemplating affairs--thereby
saving Jimmie's breakfast.

So Jimmie, getting sleepily down from the wagon to investigate the
commotion, found his wife sitting disconsolate and soggy on the grass,
her face streaked with muddy tears, the accomplished Donahue standing
foolishly ruminative in the middle of the picture, and a very dirty
fish fighting for liberty at the end of the line.

Jimmie hurried Augusta to the wagon for repairs, and took charge of the
fish.

He cooked it and had to eat it all himself while Augusta sipped
remorsefully at the milk and eggs which Jimmie hated.

Now if Augusta had known the reason why her bass had struck so quickly,
and so viciously, at her baited hook she would have been much more
disturbed and remorseful than she actually was.

The truth is that among river and brook fish the black bass is the only
true and proper father of family. The males of the other brook tribes,
once their young have been hatched, exhibit only the most casual and
meandering attention toward their welfare. They seem to think that they
have done enough when they have seen their offspring born in water. Let
them swim, then, is their attitude.

The black bass is, on the extreme other hand, a most worried and
fretsome pater familias. In the period while his young are dependent
and helpless his responsibilities weigh upon him severely. He is
worried by trifles, and even by non-existent things, and the business
of being a new father is with him a matter of all-absorbing agitation.

Take a stout man, preferably somewhat bald, just under the line of
forty, say, and consider him in the days when his first child has just
come into the stages of breath holding and threatened spasms. Regard
him as he tip-toes about the house in under-shirt and trousers and
worried ferocity. Study him as he walks the floor through the hours of
the night warding off imaginary dangers with agitated anger and gentle
hearted ignorance. Cross this man at this time in anything that in the
remotest way touches the future of his family and you will rouse a
deadly enemy.

So your black bass. At all other times he is cautious, wary, worldly
wise. But at this time of his family's helplessness he is rash,
careless and blind in his hot anger at anything that threatens them.
He will strike madly at anything that comes near the surface of his
pond. He will snap rashly at a fly, at a twig dropped on the water, at
a shadow, at a bare hook, even, if he can see it.

He lives in a constant ramp of shifting, hurrying, belligerent,
aggressive defense. He is not hungry or greedy as he seems to act. He
is whole-heartedly and defiantly defending his own and his home against
what he is convinced is a jealous and a hostile world.

Augusta, mercifully, knew none of these things. She had blundered into
tragedy as unknowingly as Donahue's wandering foot had chanced to rest
upon the line and save Jimmie a welcome breakfast of fish.




VI


All through a long, drowsy, dreamy afternoon while Donahue had taken
very much his own way and gait, Augusta had watched the unfolding of
the hills before them. They had passed Old Forge and the Divide where
the water-sheds drop off to north and west, and were deep in the bosom
of the hills. At times, for a little while, they seemed to be on the
very top of all the hills, for they could see north, east, south and
west, a broken picture of jutting rocks and dipping green, and the blue
haze of distance running like a ribbon around it all. Then, for hours,
they would be plodding noiselessly along, shut securely in a pocket,
with only a few rods of the winding road showing before them and the
walls of the hills closed in about them on all sides.

Somehow Augusta knew that they were soon going to find the home for
which they were both longing. She knew that Jimmie was weary of the
road. He did not say so. He never complained, she had learned that. It
was useless to try to know what he felt from what he said. But when he
was too quiet she knew that he was either feeling worse again--and it
was not that--or he was weary of what they were doing and wanted to be
doing something else.

Augusta did not blame him. Indeed she would have been sorry if he
had taken too easily to the useless, idle drifting of the road. His
restlessness now proved that he was not content to drift towards
whatever lay before them. It was the one thing of which she had been
afraid when she had taken responsibility away from him and had bundled
him off on the road as she had done.

Now she saw that the danger which she had imagined was not
threatening. Jimmie was fretting to get back his grip on life. He
wanted to be putting his hand to something, to be doing something, to
be getting somewhere. With all his surface nonsense and his ways of
an ungrown boy, Augusta knew the hot rage of ambition that had burned
within him. And she knew that with returning strength it would come to
flame again. It must not be allowed to eat hopelessly at him while they
drifted aimlessly along a seemingly endless road.

In the late afternoon they came dropping down from a ridge into Smedley
village. Augusta read the name on a white sign over the post office
door. It seemed to be the end of the highway, for the road which they
had been following appeared just to stumble on weakly, between the six
houses on the one side and the four houses and little white school on
the other, out into a rising field and to lose itself there.

Augusta went into the post office to buy bread, bacon, matches and
soap. While the postmaster filled her order she inquired:

"Where does the road go from here?"

The stout old man beamed benignly on Augusta's happy, browned,
open-eyed face. Then he squinted cautiously out through the door at the
wagon which was unmistakably gypsy. He could not place her.

"Where was you calc'latin' to go, missy?" he evaded with the usual
rural unwillingness to give any information until he had first received
some.

"Oh, nowhere," Augusta confessed. "My husband--"

"Then you're right there. You don't need to go another step. This
is nowhere. The last place you stopped at was next to nowhere, and
Smedley, here, is it itself," he grumbled, without any ill humor. "I
been waitin' here forty year for that road to go somewhere. But it
aint gone and it aint goin', not so it appears. There aint no place
for it to go to. That bacon's been around here a good while, too," he
interpolated thoughtfully. "But the soap's prime--staple as old cheese.
No sir, there aint no other place beyond this. This is nowhere. When
you get here you have to stay or go back."

"But people do stay here," said Augusta a little thoughtfully, "and
live and keep well," she added, eyeing the ruddy, well nourished, well
preserved face of the old man.

"Of course they do," he admitted. "What else is there for 'em to
do. There's no doctors here, so they can't get sick. And there's no
preachers to make 'em think about dyin'. So they just hang 'round."

"But it seems a nice place to stay around in," said Augusta as she
stood on the little porch of the post office and looked around at the
comfort and security of the solid little houses with the strength of
the hills behind them.

"Any place is nice, if you don't _have_ to stay there," the old man
grumbled, following Augusta out to the wagon. He took a sharp look up
at Jimmie, and seemed to like him instantly.

"If you folks," he remarked pleasantly as Augusta climbed lightly into
the wagon, "didn't look so much like a pair of runaway children, I'd
say you was looking for a place to make a nest."

Augusta and Jimmie looked quickly at each other and then they both
laughed in sudden mutual understanding. They had each been thinking
the same thought all day, but neither had said anything of it. Jimmie
laughed.

"Do you do a little mind reading on the side?" he inquired, "besides
holding up a wing of the United States government and supplying the
countryside with dry goods and groceries."

"Well, you know," the old man winked genially, "or you soon will know,
married men has to make a good many shifts in order to scrape 'round."

"You are profoundly right," said Jimmie solemnly, "Mr.--Gamblin? Is
that the name I see on the window?"

"Jethniah Gamblin, that's me. Just like a post in the mud. Been here
for forty year and sorry for it every minute."

"But you stay."

"It's a habit."

"Yes," said Jimmie thoughtfully, "it's an old habit that people have of
staying in places. The fact is my wife and I are just now both tired of
wandering, though we hadn't thought to tell each other about it until
you mentioned it."

"You see," Augusta took up the explanations, while Mr. Gamblin settled
a heavy foot on the hub of the wheel and went into conference with
them, "Jimmie hasn't been well. Not really sick, you know, but just--he
coughed a good deal. And we came out like gypsies, you know we're not
really gypsies at all," she elucidated carefully. "And now I'm sure
he's tired of it. It's so easy to tire of a thing that isn't after all
quite natural."

"Well now," Mr. Gamblin began helpfully, "there's as much room right in
sight here as you'll find most anywheres. And there's a balsam ridge
right over that shoulder of hill there that when the wind is right is
better for a cough than anything that ever came out of a doctor's shop."

Jimmie, whose eyes still had their trick of watching for the details
of every picture, noticed an angry twitching of the vine that screened
a window in the wing of the post office building, where, probably,
Mr. Gamblin lived. He deduced that there was a woman behind that vine
listening. And the woman was getting angry.

"Oh, that sounds so good!" Augusta enthused immediately. "You know,
we've only got a little money. And it has to last. You know if we had a
plenty we wouldn't have to think or worry at all. But then, if we had
money it would be something else."

"Golly! You're right," the old man agreed with a hearty slap on his
knee. "And the fryin' pan can't be quite so hot as the fire anyway. So
if you can only just--"

"Jeth-_nye_-yah! You left the 'lasses runnin'!"

Mr. Gamblin jumped into the air as though at the crack of a whip.

He came down nimbly on his feet and started a bolt for the door of
the post office. He took, however, only a few hurried steps. Then
he stopped short with a thud and an angry grunt. He shook himself
viciously like an enraged and baffled bull, and it seemed that he was
about to roar.

Jimmie knew at once that the woman behind the screen of vines had
played a ruse--probably an old one--upon the old gentleman, to make him
break off an interesting conversation.

Augusta, not understanding at all, and wishing to go on with the
discussion, said helpfully:

"But I'm sure you didn't touch the molasses at all."

Jimmie put his hand warningly upon her arm.

Mr. Gamblin did not appear to hear her. He was standing with his legs
braced wide apart. His mild mannered spectacles which seemed to have no
relations whatever with his eyes stood out at a truculent angle near
the end of his nose. His face and neck were very red and he had the
look of a man fighting for breath.

"Forty year!" he muttered belligerently, "just like a post in the mud!
An' sorry every minute!"

Then he shook himself and strode stubbornly back to the wagon, placed
his foot solidly where it had before rested on the hub of the wheel,
and renewed his conversation in a loud and defiant tone.

"Yessum, there's as good air right 'round here as there is anywhere,
and more of it than there is in most places."

Jimmie wondered sympathetically how many times in the forty years the
old man had been called away from some interesting doing by that false
alarm about the molasses.

"And what's a little cough anyway?" the old man boomed on resonantly.
"Why I had a tarnation mean cough one time, my own self, long about
twenty years ago, I figure it was, or twenty-five. Come on in hayin'
time and hung 'round till the first frost. That's the cure. The first
nip of the dry frost just picks it right out. And there you are, sound
as a trivet. Just like a post in the mud!"

"I'm sure you are right," said Augusta. "And I know that Jimmie and I
are both tired of drifting. I don't think we will go much farther."

"Well, just mosey 'round and see for yourselves. Maybe you'll find just
the place you want. And if anybody asks, tell 'em Jeth--"

"Jethniah Gamblin," the voice from behind the vines rasped out
spitefully, "don't you dare go bringin' no lung folks to stoppin' here.
You know well enough what happened up at Fenton Lake. The sick folks
come there and got well, and the well folks took it and got sick. And--"

They did not hear any more, for Augusta had grabbed the whip and
brought it down wickedly on the unoffending back of Donahue. The
astonished animal started with a leap that threw Jimmie and Augusta
backwards in a huddle and nearly knocked Mr. Gamblin flat to the ground.

When Jimmie had recovered himself and gotten hold of the reins he
looked back. The old man was standing almost where they had left him,
and although Jimmie could see that he was now white with anger yet
there was a droop of humiliation and shame on the kindly, sturdy old
figure that made Wardwell genuinely sorry for him.

Augusta was now sobbing hysterically:

"Please, please, Donahue, forgive me! I didn't mean to hurt you! You
know I didn't mean it!" She could see the line in the dusty hair of his
back where she had struck him and to her eyes it seemed a livid welt.
"Oh, how could she be so hard?" she wailed. "I could go back and tear
her eyes out! I don't see why God doesn't choke people when they say
things like that!"

"There, there, dear," said Jimmie soothingly, putting one arm around
her while he steadied Donahue with the other, "we musn't mind that.
People say things like that without thinking."

"But she hurt you! And she hadn't even seen you! And I hurt Donahue!
And she doesn't get hurt at all! Oh, it isn't right, it isn't right!"
she wailed.

"Of course not, dear. But see," Jimmie began, gathering himself to
talk Augusta out of her feeling, for it always worried him to see her
under a strong emotion, "you know she didn't really mean what she said
at all. She wasn't thinking of that, not a minute. She meant something
else, entirely different. Do you want to know what she really meant
when she said that?"

Augusta stopped tentatively and looked up miserably through her tears.

"Well, what she meant was this," said Jimmie blandly. "She meant that
friend Jethniah was philandering too much time over the affairs of a
very attractive gypsy. _I_ did not matter, and Donahue was just like
any ordinary horse so far as she was concerned. The point was that the
bold Jethniah was dallying with a fair female.

"What know we," he declaimed, getting into his stride, while Donahue,
comforted and reassured by the well known sound of the harangue,
steadied himself down to a walk, "of the restless nights and the heavy
days that yonder virtuous woman has suffered from the meanderings of
Jethniah? He is a personable, plausible man with a roving eye. He has
a gift for conversation and an eye for beauty. Even his references to
a post in the mud show a discontented, restless disposition. You heard
him mention the post in the mud? It is proof patent that his thoughts
are wanderers.

"Then, too, he is a man of consequence and of travel. I saw the stage
back of the house. It proves that he himself journeys daily down to the
railroad to get the mail, to carry the passengers, if any there be--You
notice that I stick to the bare facts, there may not be any passengers,
but if any there be--and to mingle with the gay world that whirls by.

"Fifthly and sixthly; he is the postmaster. We can only vaguely
appreciate what that means. He has the first read at every postal
card that comes into these hills. He knows everybody's secrets. Do
you realize the hold that gives him on the imaginations of the female
portion of this high and wide community?

"He knows the ins and the outs. The devious ways of the female mind
are to him an open book. He pats the shoulder of widowed sorrow. He
consoles the lovelorn maiden and invents all too welcome excuses for
the letter that does not come. He is even capable of writing letters
himself to take the place of the missing ones. Given the man, the
temptation, and the immunity of his position, and there are no heights
of rascality that he might not scale."

"I don't care," said Augusta hotly. "I'm sure he is a good kind man."

And that's all right! thought Jimmie, pleased and proud to have drawn
Augusta out to argue, and flushed for further triumphs.

"There you have it! He is kind," he echoed. "You have touched the very
key spring of his villainy. What man was ever kind but to beguile?
From our ancient friend Leander at the swimming bee down to young
John W. Lothario himself they all had kind hearts and were willing to
share them with any and every lady within the horizon line. And here
is our Jethniah the very prize dandler of them all. For forty years he
has gone up and down these hills and has ranged far and wide, even as
far as the railroad, interesting himself in the trials of beauty in
distress, while his own lawful wife and spouse languished behind the
vines.

"Think of the tale of these doings that she could tell! And she _would_
tell them, too. In fact I'd wager that she _has_ told them, numerously,
circumstantially, and in detail, for a good many hours out of the forty
years," he concluded with a grin.

Augusta was quiet now. She had nestled in close under Jimmie's shoulder
and seemed to have forgotten Jethniah and his wife.

"Jimmie."

"Yes, dear."

"Well--Oh--Do you think I hurt Donahue very much?"

Jimmie considered, squinting thoughtfully along Donahue's dusty back.
He was sure that Augusta had intended, and had tried, to say something
entirely different.

"Well," he answered critically and judicially, "he _does_ seem to be
unusually sleepy. But whether it is from the effects of your blow or
from the soporific influence of my discourse would be hard to say."

Donahue ambled on up a gently winding track--it was not quite a
road--which was entirely of his own choosing.

"Jimmie."

"Yes, dear."

She nestled closer, and Jimmie waited.

"I'm afraid."

"What is it, dear?"

"You."

"Me?" Jimmie inquired blankly, wondering what he had been doing now.

"I'm afraid of the time when you get all well and yourself again.
You'll want to wander."

"Like Jethniah, eh? There now, what did I tell you? That's what comes
of listening to him. You think that, like him, the whole male world is
uncertain, coy and hard to please."

"Please, Jimmie, don't head me off. I'm afraid. I suppose love makes
cowards of us all. Do you remember a time when I said that I wouldn't
want to keep even a kitten that didn't want to stay?"

"Oh, but that was before we were married!" he explained airily. "We all
talk turkey at a time like that. It's the last chance we get. And we
spend the rest of our lives trying to pay the bets."

"Jimmie."

"Yes, dear?"

"Do you remember the lady I saw you talking with that day in the
Square?"

"Sure," said Jimmie lightly, "Jean Bradley"--They were far away now, it
seemed to him, and the name meant nothing to either of them--, "what
about her?"

"And the woman in the cards, do you remember?"

"You mean the one the gypsy girl wanted to claw me about? Oh yes."

"They were the same woman."

"Same woman?" asked Jimmie, mentally pawing about for firm ground.

"It was the same dark, handsome woman, in the cards, I saw her."

"Saw----?" For one rare and breathless moment Jimmie was completely
dumbfounded. He could not find a word anywhere. But he reacted bravely.

"Well if you saw her," he exclaimed eagerly, "why the deuce didn't you
tell her that you'd collect the money she owes us?"

"Please, Jimmie, don't joke. I'm trying to say something that's hard to
say. You know when we stood before the priest I promised, in my heart,
that if I ever thought you wanted to go away from me I would not only
let you go but I would force you to be free, by going away and hiding
myself."

Jimmie said nothing. He sat looking stupidly at Donahue's ear, his
hands clutching the reins so that they were cutting into his flesh.
There was nothing to be said. Better let her talk this out for herself.

"And now," she went on fearfully, "I'm afraid, afraid of that woman.
And I'm going to do a cowardly thing. I'm afraid of the test, afraid of
myself. Jimmie, I'm going to ask you to promise something. I know it's
going back on my own heart promise, but I can't help it--I can't help
it!"

Jimmie saw that she was suffering, and trembling with fear and self
reproach, and he did the best he could. He said:

"Let's drive back, and I'll choke Jethniah's wife to death with the
soap. She's to blame for all this."

"But will you promise, Jimmie?"

"Of course, I'll promise! What is it, dear?" He was ready to promise
her the setting sun.

"Will you promise me never to have anything to do with that woman?"

"Jean Bradley? Why, yes, sure I promise, if you wish it. That's easy,
and all settled. We'll probably never see her again anyway. But I do
wish you had put in something about Jethniah's wife. If ever a woman
deserved choking, and with soap--I insist on the soap, it is certainly
that woman."

But Augusta was not to be turned aside by his diversion.

"I'm afraid," she confessed, shrinking in closer to him so that she
seemed so little and so forlorn that Jimmie instinctively put his hand
on hers to stop her, "afraid that I would be coward enough to want
you to stay even if I knew you wanted to go. And then you'd begin to
talk. And you'd be so kind and so bright and jolly that I'd begin to
let myself be fooled. You know how you can talk. You can make anybody
almost believe anything. Please, darling," she pleaded, "promise you
won't ever use it to deceive me!"

Wardwell silently cursed the gift of his glib and ready tongue, while
he tried to find the right words for this. After a little he said
humbly:

"Augusta, to your knowledge I'm a good many kinds of a fool. But let me
tell you something that I know about you, and me. If I should ever be
that particular kind of fool, do you know what would happen? Well, in
the first place, you'd know it before I knew it myself. And before I'd
get around to know it, you'd snap me loose and send me spinning so fast
that I'd never know just what happened."

"Oh, Jimmie, don't let me think of it! I could not bear it, and live."

"There are other, more immediate, things to be thought of. Our patient
Donahue is thinking hard on some of them this minute. In the first
place, he is wondering if he is expected to work nights."

Donahue, who was by now accustomed to the name which had been thrust
upon him, stopped and looked around at Augusta.

"I'm sorry, Donahue," she apologized cheerfully. "I know you are hungry
and so is Jimmie. And it's all my fault. But really we can't stop right
here. This is just the middle of a field. We'll just go on up to the
edge of that little woods. And there we'll stop all day tomorrow, if
you like, and think about things."

Jimmie tightened up on the rein, and Donahue plodded on obediently.

The track which they followed came again to the edge of a brook which
they had been crossing and re-crossing now for two days. And they knew
from the limpid clearness of the water and the slight thread of its
rapid flow that they must be near its headwaters. Across its little
valley, straight in front of them, stood a thin wall of tall, handsome
maple trees, which thickened and deepened into a heavy green bank of
solid forest as either end of the line ran up to the enclosing heights
above the valley.

The cool, sharp breath of a hidden mountain lake came down to them, and
Donahue smartened up his gait.

As they came up to where they could see through the fringe of trees,
Augusta looked one long moment and drew in a deep breath of delight and
pure joy in beauty.

A quick grasp of her hand on Jimmie's arm made him stop the horse.
But before he could say a word she was out over the wheel and running
through the trees, crying:

"It's ours, Jimmie! All alone ours! Nobody told us about it! We found
it all for ourselves. It is all our own!"

When Jimmie caught up to her on the bank of the little lake, she hugged
him excitedly and then waved her arm out over the water.

"Oh, isn't it the darling! A beautiful white diamond lying deep in its
cushion of green velvet!"

Jimmie admitted quietly that the little five-pointed lake, lying like a
precious white jewel embedded in the deep green setting of the wooded
hills, was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen.

The mantle of ready speech seemed to have dropped from him. He had no
words with which to answer Augusta's enthusiasm. He stood holding her
arm, silent so long that Augusta wondered and looked up at him, with a
question.

"This is the end," he answered quietly, "of our wanderings. Here are
your Hills of Desire."

Augusta nodded, but she did not answer in words. And Wardwell,
watching, saw that strange, strained, listening look come into her
eyes--the look that used to frighten him in the days of her trial.
The look did not trouble him now, for he could place against it the
healthy, rugged browned beauty of Augusta's supple body. Her hold upon
earth and the things of life did not seem at all so slender as it had
in those days when he had almost feared that she would slip away from
him into that strange border land into which she peered and from which
she certainly brought back knowledge.

Now as he held her arm, firm and warm and strong with the weeks of
sunshine and wind and freedom, he smiled at his fears of those other
days and nights. But when she spoke she startled him more thoroughly
with the quiet certainty of her fore-knowledge than she had ever done
in those other days by her strained and timid glances into the future.

"We shall stay here through the winter," she said, in the even voice of
a dream, "for I can see the snow on the hillsides and the lake lying
wrapped in ice. But then we will be driven away. I do not know why."

She paused a moment, hesitating, and then hurried on desperately, as
though the vision was slipping from her:

"We will both be killed, a long, long way from here. But we won't
care!" A little ring, like the sound of defiant laughter, broke up
through the monotone of her speech, and it alarmed Wardwell so that he
took her forcibly in his arms and almost shook her, to make her stop.
But she went on quickly to the end of her knowledge:

"I shall be here waiting for you, and you will come. And we will go on
together into the Hills of All Desire!"

She stopped, trembling against him. Jimmie chose not to answer or to
make any comment on what she had said. From experience he knew that she
probably would not remember just what she had been saying. He wanted
to ignore it altogether. He preferred to believe that her nerves had
merely become over taut from her excitement of the afternoon and that
the sudden surprise of the beautiful little mountain-locked lake had
played tricks upon them. He looked about for a diversion, and found one.

Not twenty yards from where they stood, in plain view, though flanked
heavily with trees on both sides, and some little distance from the
water, there was a small wooden house with an open door. And before the
open door sat a man calmly whittling shavings for a fire. As Jimmie
stared open-mouthed--he was almost ready to take oath that neither
the house nor the man had been there before, that they had both been
moved into place there by some stage trick while his back had been
turned--the man leaned over from the low stump on which he sat and
heaped the shavings into a neat pile. Then he looked up, and though he
certainly saw Wardwell standing there holding Augusta he gave no sign
whatever that he was aware of them.

Good manners, anyhow! Jimmie commented to himself.

Then he turned Augusta around to see what he saw, and said quietly:

"I'm awfully sorry, dear. But it seems that someone is here ahead of
us."

Augusta looked and saw. But, to Wardwell's relief, she did not seem to
be disturbed or deeply disappointed.

"Well, let's talk to him anyway. Maybe he doesn't belong here," she
whispered. "Maybe he just happened to stop."

He led her back to where Donahue was patiently nibbling at some sweet
maple shoots and wondering when this day was going to end, and taking
Donahue by the bridle and Augusta by the arm Wardwell went forward
by the track which he now saw led up to the open door and presented
himself and his retinue to the leisurely gentleman who seemed to be in
possession.

"We didn't mean to come breaking into your camp. Fact is," Jimmie
explained, "we just followed our horse. And when we saw the lake we
just wanted to stay."

As they had approached the man had thrown some dry sticks on top of the
shavings which he had lighted, and he now straightened and stood up
regarding them whimsically.

He had seen the wagon through the trees long before they had seen him
and had wondered what gypsies were doing here so far from the ways
of their trade. Now he saw that they were not of any of the kinds
of gypsies that he had ever known. They looked, as Mr. Gamblin had
remarked, exactly like a pair of runaway children.

"I couldn't but see the two of you at the lake," he said in a rich,
soft, South of Ireland brogue that made Jimmie gasp--he would as soon
have expected to be stopped here among the trees by a Broadway traffic
policeman as to have heard a voice like that here--"and I saw the faces
of you when you saw me. You were two blessed childer runnin' to the end
of your rainbow, an' when you got there, when you got there, here was
an ould dodherin Dimmick sittin' with his hand already in the pot o'
gold."

"But we really hadn't any right to expect to find such a beautiful
place untaken," said Augusta easily.

The man nudged the sticks of the fire gently with his foot and looked
down at Augusta out of a pair of great, soft blue eyes. He was an
enormous man of powerfully rounded build, as tall as Wardwell but so
broad and solid of stature that, at a little distance he would have
seemed just a well-knit man of medium height.

Wardwell had nothing to say. That wonderful brogue had silenced him
completely. And the man's face was one which would have drawn attention
in any crowd or setting.

It was a large, clean, unlined face as clear and chubby as the face of
a rugged healthy boy. Yet it had in it the same quiet power which the
man's giant limbs and torso concealed under their perfect proportions.

Wardwell, on the instant, remembered that he had seen three faces
strikingly like this. One was the face of a United States senator.
Another belonged to a powerful Anglican bishop. The third was the face
of a noted downtown New York politician who was said now to be confined
in a madhouse. A fantastic suspicion connected with that third face
flashed across Jimmie's brain and probably showed for an instant in his
eyes. But he almost laughed in the big man's face at the absurdity of
the idea.

This man was different. His loose gray shirt and broad overalls
revealed a body that fairly pulsed with the clean health of years of
out of doors, while a gentle, fine light of sadness and of wholesome
humor played almost imperceptibly in the soft blue eyes. The gray hair,
cut down close and crisp, told of probably sixty years lightly and
soundly lived.

"I'll be moving along early in the morning," he was saying to Augusta,
though he was watching Wardwell with a gleam in his eyes. He had seen
the flash of a question on Jimmie's face.

"Oh, but you mustn't do anything of the kind!" Augusta objected warmly.
"Why, we'd just feel that we had driven you out of your beautiful camp."

"The camp's here all the year, for anybody. 'Tis a sugar bush, don't
you see. Nobody comes here only very late in the fall, to cut wood for
the sugar boiling, and then again when the winter's breaking up. But
for them two little times, a man might stay here the year round and
nobody be a whit the wiser."

Again Wardwell's instinct for news and for mystery was roused. He set
himself to watch and to listen.

"Our horse is tired," said Augusta, "and it's night now, so if you
really don't mind we'll stay by the lake till tomorrow."

"You may stay on in welcome, the whole year if it suits you. The truth
of the whole is, I--"

Evidently he was going to tell something of himself, but in that
instant he caught Wardwell watching him and he stopped short.

He hesitated, looking sharply at Wardwell, as though wondering whether
he could trust him.

"You may as well stay on," he said finally, with what seemed a sigh of
tired, baffled resignation. "For I have to be moving on. The truth is,
I--I'm _wanted_."

The effect of the last two words on the listeners was peculiar.

Wardwell, whose mind had been vaguely working toward some such thought
as this announcement implied and who might have been expected to be
somewhat prepared for it, started sharply and caught Augusta's arm.

Augusta, on the other hand, who had not anticipated the man's
announcement by the smallest suspicion and who might reasonably have
been expected to be shocked, spoke interestedly and as though in answer
to what the big man had admitted.

And this is what she said.

"Did you ever know what it is to go six long whole weeks on stuff
that's just been half stewed on a stove that doesn't hold fire enough
to really cook anything? We've been doing that until there's just one
conglomerate taste in our mouths and we don't know whether we're eating
fish or meat. And all because I haven't learned to cook with an open
fire. I'm going to borrow your fire right now and beg you to teach me."

The big blue eyes of the old Irishman beamed down upon her in wonder
and appreciation. He was about to speak, but Augusta was too quick
for him. She had taken her attitude--it was that they were going to
consider those last two words of his as never having been spoken--and
she was not to be moved from it.

"I have bacon," she rattled on, "that the storekeeper said was as
staple as old cheese. No, that was the soap," she remembered, laughing,
"and new potatoes, and eggs that were laid this morning, if we want
them, and--Come, I'll show you what we have, and we'll make a picnic
feast."

She turned away and led the big man towards the step of the wagon.

"My name is Smith," the big man asserted with an effort as he followed
her.

"How stupid of me!" Augusta apologized from the step of the wagon.
"But, out gypsying like this, it's so easy to get careless in one's
manners. We are the Wardwells. My husband is a writer," she catalogued
carefully. "And I am his wife. And our horse Donahue once lived under a
lake in Ireland."

The big man turned for a look at Donahue. "Them horses was white," he
argued, "I know all about them. He's a rusty red."

"Of course," said Augusta cheerfully as she dived into her stores and
handed forth potatoes and bacon, "that's rust, from the dampness."

The big man exploded into a roaring laugh. "God bless the handy liar
that made that up for you! I don't think you did it yourself."

"No," Augusta admitted, "it's my husband. You see, inventing is his
business. I only quote. And Donahue, who is truly wise, he only
listens."

Jimmie was dutifully unhitching Donahue.

"Donahue," he grumbled as he tugged at the girth buckle, "_what_ do you
know about that?

"Now, not as between master and servant but as horse to man, give me
your plain opinion. Are women born into the world full armed with all
the weapons of diplomacy, tact and happy deceit? And if they are not so
born, Donahue, I put it to you, who teaches them?

"Augusta is fully convinced that the man is a desperate criminal. And
she waves the whole matter aside, as though he had merely apologized
for being without a dress suit, and makes him the long lost uncle.

"I am a stupid man and you are not a particularly brilliant horse. We
are stumped, and we know it.

"Come and have a drink."

He led the way down to where there was a little shingle of pebbles
running from the grass bank out into the lake and Donahue walked into
the water so as to cover all four feet, for he was old and road wise
and he knew the comfort of a cool foot bath after a long blistering day.

"Good idea," Jimmie commented, "cool your feet and clear your mind. We
need clear minds around here. Come on now, this is the only lake in the
neighborhood. Don't try to drink it all. You'll spoil your appetite and
ruin your digestion which is already impaired by sugar bags and other
surreptitious gobblings.

"About our Mr. Smith, now," he inquired as he dragged Donahue away
from the water, "what do you think? What particular branch of high
crime does he favor. He is a specialist, of course. He is far too
clever a man to scatter himself on general practitioning in this age of
specialists. What do you suggest?

"He is a large round man with a kind eye. He could sell mining stocks.
But, somehow, I rather feel that he'd be above preying on widows and
school teachers and innocent clergymen. I think he'd prefer some
excitement in his.

"He might be a head waiter, of course. But no law has yet been invented
to make those gentlemen flee to the woods.

"I'll have to give it up, if you have nothing to suggest," he concluded
lamely.

When he had filled Donahue's measure of oats he left him feeding at the
wagon and came to the fire.

Augusta was hanging a pot of potatoes over the fire from a long crooked
iron hook that was sunk into the ground. The big man had gone down to
the brook where, it appeared, he had a string of live fish in captivity.

"Do you think we are wise?" said Jimmie cautiously. "We can't tell,
you know. People might be looking for him. And suppose he had taken
things and brought them here. And if we were found here," he worried
on, "why, we simply haven't any credentials at all. And we're a deuce
of a long ways from anybody that knows us. It might be very mean for
you--these country sheriffs, you know, they might bundle the whole of
us off to the nearest county jail, wherever it is."

"I don't care," said Augusta warmly, flushing over the fire. "Just look
at the man. I _know_ he didn't do anything really wrong."

"That's the woman of it," Jimmie argued meanly, "just because a man
looks like a well preserved and benevolent Greek god and talks with a
soft brogue, then the law of the land must be wrong."

"Well, the law _is_ wrong lots of times," Augusta answered evenly. And
Jimmie wondered whether women, with all the terrible discipline which
nature and human society put upon them, were not essentially more
lawless than men; or was it that they had gotten a larger share of the
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and actually did know good from evil.

He had no time for any remarks on the subject, for the big man was
coming back from the brook carrying a big fish, cleaned and split, on a
toaster that was fashioned out of two bent pieces of wire.

"If ye'll just rub in the salt," he said, holding out the fish to
Augusta. "It'll not need a deal of it for we'll lash the bacon in with
the fish."

"Our table is very little," said Augusta, regarding her folding table
as she took the salt from it. "But you and Jimmie can sit and I'll wait
on you like an Indian woman."

For some reason Augusta was supremely happy. It was not merely the
exciting effect of the feeling that she was flouting the law. And she
was deeply touched by the big man's plight as she understood it. But
there was about her to-night what Jimmie sometimes called a mist of
happiness, as though she trod on dew rays and moved in a cloud.

"Faith'n I know a trick worth two o' that," said the big man
positively. "If you'll just turn the fish against the fire, mam--not
over the fire, mind you, but just against it--I'll find a table."

He disappeared into the darkness of the little house, and presently
came out carrying a good sized table.

"McQuade's a queer duck enough. But I'll say for him that he does keep
his things clean."

"Who's McQuade?" Jimmie inquired with a show of interest. He was
nervous. He did not like the position at all. He was, in fact, out of
his element. He was a man of city streets, where certain people are
paid to take care of every sort of situation. Here he would not know
what to do. This man was, beyond doubt, a criminal at large. It was
entirely possible that a posse was even at this moment searching the
vicinity for him. He would certainly have fire arms about. Wardwell
shuddered as he thought of Augusta being senselessly exposed in a
desperate affair of this kind. But, since Augusta had set the tone for
the party, there was nothing for him to do but to follow her lead as
best he could.

"McQuade's a nut," said the big man, placing the table judiciously
under a tree to windward of the fire. "He owns this place. He has a
fine farm fifty miles down the Parishville road. He has plenty to do,
and everything to do it with. And he has a grand energetic Yankee wife
to see that he does it. But, an' there's the thrapin' contrary Irish of
him, he'd far rather come up here an' sit on the step o' the door an'
look out at the lake than to put in the finest harvest that ever was."

"I think he's just right," Augusta argued, glad that a neutral subject
had been introduced. For even she, in the heating test of holding the
baking fish to the fire and watching the boiling potatoes, was not
sure how long their thoughts and conversation could be kept away
from forbidden ground. There were so many things which it would be
unfortunate to mention to a strayed criminal.

"'John McQuade o' the sunny shade an' the woodbine cottage' he calls
himself, and he thinks, because he'd a long sight rather loaf and
fish than work his honest farm, that he must surely be some sort of a
character. I'm not sure but he half thinks he's a poet, or at the very
least a philosopher. In five minutes he can give you more good reasons
for vagabondin' than you could argue down in a long day's talk."

"This must be a man worth knowing," said Jimmie.

"He's jealous right away!" Augusta laughed. "He's afraid that
somebody's been discovered who can talk more nonsense than he can."

"Nonsense," said the big man sententiously as he picked the potato pot
off the fire and turned to drain off the water, "nonsense is the salt
o' creation. The maxims of the unwise," he pronounced, hanging the pot
back over the fire again, to dry for a moment, "are the gatherings of
fools' experience. But, ye'll mind, the fools get far more experience
than the wise folk. So, there you are."

He brought the potatoes from the fire and deftly turned them into the
dish that Augusta had waiting. Augusta brought the baked fish, and he
showed her how to slip it from the toaster, without disturbing the
bacon which was cooked right into the fish.

Jimmie, seeing the dusk which seemed to be gathering in upon them from
the shadows of the trees, brought the lantern from the wagon and was
going to hang it lighted from a tree. But the big man would not hear
of this. He would have no smelly lanterns around a sylvan feast, he
said. And since he was seconded by Augusta he had his way. From under
the house he dragged out a fire cradle, a wire basket on the end of
an iron rod, which is used in the prow of a boat for spearing fish at
night. This he drove fast into the top of a stump and filled it with
knots of resinous wood.

The strong reddish light had the effect of drawing the darkness down
upon them immediately, so that they could not see a thing beyond the
radius of its rays. It gave them a feeling of complete isolation from
all the world, such as only a campfire at night can give, and, in a
way, a sense of security. But Wardwell could not help thinking, and
only with difficulty refrained from saying, that it was a foolish thing
for a hunted man to so advertise his whereabouts with a light that
could attract attention for miles in the hills.

The big Irishman, however, seemed the most unworried fugitive at large.

"No," he declared, as though continuing an argument, "you couldn't do a
thing in the world better than to stop right here till the snow flies."
It was plain that Augusta had talked plans with him while Jimmie and
Donahue were down at the lake. "Or if there is one thing better it'd be
to stop right here through the winter."

"But, Lord Alive man!" said Jimmie, appalled at the idea, "we'd freeze
to death! You don't know, and I don't want to know, what the cold is
like here."

"I know it well. But I never knew anybody yet that froze to death in
it."

"Yes, but we're city folks," Jimmie argued. "We wouldn't know how to
keep ourselves alive. Don't forget that we've been brought up to hug
radiators."

"An' that's the very thing that you must forget. The way to keep warm
is not to get cold. Get an ax, there's a good one inside there, and go
at the windfall wood here. Agen the time comes when ye'll want the wood
for big rousing fires ye'll have a fire up inside of you shootin blood
through your veins in a way that'll let you laugh at cold."

"I'm not sure that I'd have the nerve to try it," said Jimmie
doubtfully. "But even if I had there are two things that seem to be
objections."

"What two things?"

"Well, first, there's--my wife," Jimmie explained a little stiffly,
"she couldn't chop wood, so she'd just naturally have to freeze."

"Leave it to a woman to face any dare," said the big man easily.
"She'll come through and laugh, when you'll be fit to cry."

"I know that," Jimmie admitted. "But, besides, there's Mr. McQuade to
be thought of. He hasn't yet given us any invitation to move into his
camp and use his ax."

"Be easy, then," said the big man promptly. "I'll give me word for
McQuade. He'll never miss any bit you use. And I'll warrant that he'll
be only too glad to have someone gettin' good o' the camp. There's the
big sugar house itself stuck in the hill back of us. The boilin' pans
are out and the brick furnace is topped over with sheet iron. The very
thing. When the real cold comes ye'll just move in there an' lay your
open fire in the very door o' the furnace, an' there ye have a camp
snug an' dry an' as warm as ever ye'll want to make it. An' there's
full an' plenty of blankets there stowed away for the boys."

He went on expatiating at large and generously on the resources of
the sugar cabin, while Augusta listened eagerly and dreamed of the
snowbound winter nights with the big fire blazing. Jimmie with his eye
fixed firmly on his plate was fighting back a grin. If he could have
had Donahue's ear for a moment he would have pointed out to him that
this making so free of other people's property was good philosophy but
that it was rather discouraged by the laws of the state.

He did not, however, say any of these things, for, in spite of all, he
found himself liking the big man, it was impossible to do otherwise,
and Jimmie would have felt it a very ugly thing indeed to have hurt him
by any smart reference to his unfortunate position.

"You'll need to get rid of the horse," the big man was advising
Augusta, who, it seemed, was already in charge of the practical
operations for the winter.

"Horse?" said Augusta vaguely. She was utterly unable to grasp the idea.

"Your horse, yes. It'd take all he's worth to feed him through the
winter, and he'd be no use to you at all. In the spring you can buy
another if you're wantin' one."

"But you mean--You mean _sell Donahue_!"

"Who else?" said the big man unconcernedly.

"Never, never! You don't understand at all. Why, Donahue is one of
ourselves! We could never think of such a thing." And Augusta looked
her indignation at Jimmie, as though he had offered the proposal.

"I suppose it would be the practical thing to do," said Jimmie without
thinking. "But, of course, we needn't think of it. We haven't come that
far yet, you know."

"Well, I don't think we _will_ think of it," Augusta returned warmly.
"I don't see how you can suggest such a thing, Jimmie, when you know
well enough we wouldn't be here at all if Donahue hadn't pulled us
every step of the way!"

"Oh well, mam," the big man put in softly, "you see I was only saying
what I'd do meself. You'll do whatever you think best, of course. But
for your husband, now, as I was saying," he switched skillfully back to
safe ground, "put the ax in his hand, an' don't let him hurt himself
with it at first, an' agen the snow flies you'll see him a man as hard
as nails an' twice as important, for, say what you will about the pride
of brains, there's nothing that makes a man quite so sure proud of
himself as to feel the strength bulgin' up in him."

Supper over, the two men helped Augusta with the dishes while the big
Irishman dealt out sage counsels to provide for every emergency that
might confront the two people who were to stay on here. He seemed to
leave no room at all for doubt that they would stay. He refused to hear
that they had no right to stay here and use Mr. McQuade's property. In
the first place, he argued that McQuade was a rich old curmudgeon who
would never know how much or how little of his property they might use.
And in the next breath he represented McQuade to be a man of a heart of
gold who would gladly move out of his own house and home to leave it to
some one who had more need of it.

Jimmie reflected that the arguments were hopelessly contradictory, but
as the whole manner of their evening's entertainment had been fantastic
and more or less unbelievable he decided to leave study and decision
over until the morning.

Augusta was not looking for logic. She had fallen under the spell of
the big man's promises for Jimmie's health and she was willing to take
Mr. McQuade's complacence for granted.

When they had settled down about the fire and the early evening noises
of the woods were dying down to the occasional, lonely cheepings of a
restless bird or the far distant, creepy baying of a hound somewhere in
the hills, the talk became fitful and desultory.

Jimmie was keenly sorry for the big breezy man who was so cheerfully
proposing to leave this place which apparently had been a safe haven
and take the lonely, hopeless trail of a hunted man. And Augusta,
always sensitive to Jimmie's moods and thoughts, was depressed and
nervous with him. Every happy start of conversation which they tried to
make seemed inevitably to turn back to something which must be avoided.
They could not ask where "Mr. Smith" intended going, or hope that they
might see him soon again, or even offer him provisions out of their own
store, without bringing themselves upon the dismal question of what he
had done and why he was "wanted."

"Can you shoot?" the big man asked in one of the pauses.

"I can hit things in a gallery, but I never hunted much," Jimmie
explained.

"It's not the same thing at all. But if you've the eyes and the nerve
you'll very soon learn. And you'll be wanting fresh meat. There'll be
plenty of it hereabout in another month, birds and rabbits and later
on deer. Get a good rifle and learn the times for shooting. Have your
license right and see that you keep the law. You might think you
wouldn't be bothered here. But the game people would spot you out in no
time, and you being a stranger with a gypsy wagon you'd get no shrift
at all." Jimmie commented to himself on the stranger's respect for what
he himself in common with most people had always thought of as merely a
formal law.

"You'll want to hunt, to kill things," the big man stated. "I don't
know why it is, but it's a fact. No sooner does a man feel his own
life and strength swellin' up in him than rightabout he wants to kill
things. And, would you believe it, he thrives on it. Killing, do you
know, is one of the healthiest occupations--"

A startling, ear-splitting noise broke out of the silence of the night
and moved towards them with frightening rapidity.

Wardwell sprang to his feet and placed himself in front of Augusta. He
did not know what he expected to see come driving upon them out of the
dark. But the noise, to his city ears, had just one meaning. It was a
sharp, staccato, drumming sound on a rising note, and it was apparently
coming straight at them. In a way, Wardwell might be said to have been
prepared for this. The noise, as he understood it, was quite familiar
to him. He was certain that a badly firing motorcycle had been started
just a little way off and was now dashing straight for their fire. He
quite forgot the trees and rocks, for he could not see them, and stood
peering defiantly out into the darkness that fell black and formless
beyond the circle of the flare of light. He was convinced that a
motorcycle policeman was bearing down upon them. But his only emotion
seemed to be indignation at the fellow for driving without a light.

Around to the right another drumming, driving sound broke out and beat
and purred upon the same note as the first. This sound also came toward
them.

"Surrounded!" said Jimmie bravely, reaching back for Augusta's hand to
pull her closer to him--one could never tell, there might be shooting
here.

Augusta had risen and was standing right behind Jimmie. She did not
understand, but she was frightened because Jimmie seemed to know what
the danger was and would not tell her.

The whole action was a matter of seconds. Jimmie turned for a quick
look at the big man whose doom was coming thus swiftly upon him. He sat
on the stump where they had first seen him, his hands clutching tightly
at his knees, his big face red in the glare of the light and plainly
working with some strong emotion.

The noise ceased suddenly as the two partridges who had made it got
wing in air at last and came flying over the fire. It took Jimmie some
time to believe that these birds, beating with their wide bare wings
like flat boards on the ground and underbrush as they ran along the
ground until they had momentum enough to take the air, had caused all
that noise. But when he did realize it and turned to try to explain to
Augusta, he felt extremely foolish.

The big man did not wait for the explanation. He rose hastily from the
stump and lurched toward the house, saying in a choking voice:

"I'm goin' in."

Jimmie's explanation, while he took down the flare light and buried the
flaming knots in the ashes of the fire, was entirely true and fairly
accurate. But it was wasted. Augusta was convinced that someone was
trying to hide something from her. She listened patiently, but she had
her own argument, which she kept to herself. Jimmie _might_ have been
fooled that way by two birds. _But_, the other man had been visibly
affected, too!

When Jimmie thought she was settled in her hammock for the night, he
was surprised to hear her rustle out again and come to his side.

"What _do_ you think he can have done?" she worried as she cuddled down
to his pillow. "And isn't there anything we can do for him?"

"Oh, don't be troubled, dear. He'll probably be able to take care of
himself. I don't hardly think he's done anything himself. Maybe he's
just keeping out of the way from something. You know there's always an
investigation or some blamed thing going on. Maybe it's only that," he
suggested reassuringly. "Get into bed and sleep. You're tired to death."

Augusta gave him a hit-or-miss kiss in the dark, climbed into her bed
and went obediently to sleep like a child.

Jimmie listened gratefully to the gentle, even breathing that told
him that she had forgotten everything. There was a curious feeling of
worry upon him. The alarm which he had gotten from the strange noise
had turned out ridiculously, of course, but the possibilities which his
imagination had seen in it stayed about, to suggest new pictures of
trouble and possible danger for Augusta.

He fell asleep, heartily wishing that they had never seen this man,
whoever he was.

He awoke in the bright morning light, to find Augusta standing over
him, fully dressed, shaking him with one hand and with the other waving
a bit of paper accusingly at him.

"He's gone! He's gone, I tell you!" she was crying at Jimmie, as though
he had spirited the big man away in the dark.

Jimmie sat up like a jacknife.

"Is the family silver safe?" he inquired anxiously.

"Stop your nonsense and listen." Augusta gave him another excited
shake. "I tell you he's a fraud and a cheater. I said double prayers
for him last night, and he isn't any criminal at all! I could be angry
at him!"

Now at any other time Jimmie would have gleefully picked flaws in this
bit of Augusta's theology. Instead he took the paper quite humbly and
read:

  "Dear Nice Folks, whoever you are:

  "It was a shame of me to take you in like that. But I couldn't help
  it. It was the suspicious way you looked at me." (Jimmie took this as
  directed to himself alone.)

  "I _am_ wanted. The wife wants me home to start the harvest. That was
  in my mind when I said the thing first. And I kept it up because I
  wanted to see what'd happen.

  "But you will not be angry, I hope. This place is yours in welcome if
  you care to stay. I'll be up to see you in the Fall.

                      John McQuade o' the Sunny Shade."

Jimmie laid the paper down on his bunk and looked at it solemnly and
stupidly. After a little he said softly:

"Yes, John, you did everlastingly put one over on me."

Augusta broke all her rules as she announced gravely:

"He had us kidded to death." Then she dropped laughing into Jimmie's
arms.

"Augusta," Jimmie howled, between spasms of laughing, "do you remember
how I stood nobly in the dense forest while the gatling guns were
charging down upon us and announced in a dying whisper:

"'Surrounded!'"

"And I," Augusta cried through tears of laughing, "I was behind your
back all the time motioning the man to take Donahue and fly for
liberty!"

"It's a good thing we're married to each other," roared Jimmie. "It'd
be a pity to spoil two houses with us."

Augusta got up suddenly. She had made a discovery.

"Do you know," she inquired indignantly, "why that man went away from
the fire so suddenly like that. He went away some place to laugh at us!"

"He's laughing yet," said Wardwell, and he went off into another roar.
"But, we'll be game, dear. We won't run away. We'll stay right here
till John McQuade comes back and has his laugh out."

Augusta went out of the wagon and Jimmie began to dress. With one
shoe on and the other in his hand he thought of something. He pulled
the curtain of the wagon door about him and called Augusta in a bated
whisper.

"For heavens' sake," he appealed, "don't let Donahue hear of this! I
never could face him."




VII


Jimmie was coming down through the woods in triumph. All day he had
tramped and hunted over the crests of the hills and he was returning
with the spoil. His rifle was slung with just a little angle of
careless swagger across the crook of his arm and from the same arm
hung two pairs of fat partridges. He knew a great deal more now about
partridges than he had known that night, weeks ago, when two of them
had given him such a start.

He knew, in fact, a great deal more about many things than he had known
that night. And he was a vastly different man. He was still thin, but
it was not the pale thinness of before. He was lean and brown, his
frame was filling slowly but evenly, and his one care was the procuring
of food. For he had the perpetual hunger of the gaunt young animal
whose growing cells are ever demanding more and more building materials.

His step had none of the nervous hurry of those who tread city streets.
In his rough tramping boots he swung down through brush and over rocks
with a long, sure, loping stride which showed that he had forgotten
that he had such things as nerves, and though he was physically tired
his face shone with the zest of a boy in the game and of the hunter
hurrying to his mate with the kill.

As he came down behind the long sugar house he heard Augusta singing.
She sang a wonderfully sweet natural contralto, but Jimmie had learned
that she hardly ever sang except when she felt lonely--and he knew
that there must be times when she was indeed very lonesome, for this
was a life which might well have tested the constant cheerfulness of
a staid woman, while Augusta was indeed, in many things, only a highly
sensitive and impressionable child. He started to hurry, thinking of
the many long hours he left her alone in this lonesome place. But
the song arrested him--he had not heard it before--and he loitered a
little, not wishing to break in until he had heard it through.

She was singing:

      "Gyp, Gyp, me little horse?"
      "_Gyp-Gyp_, again sir."
      "How many miles to Dublin?"
      "Four score an' ten, sir."

      "Gyp, Gyp, me little horse?"
      "_Gyp-Gyp_, again sir."
      "Can I get there by candle-light?"
      "Troth an' back again, sir."

      "Gallopy, gallopy, gallopy
      "Trot!
      "I sold my buttermilk every drop.
      "_Ev-er-y_ drop."

It was a happy lilting little song that trotted merrily up and down
an easy range of sweet and saucy notes, and Jimmie could see "Me
Little Horse" dancing blithely along in front of a cart and answering
back his part of the dialogue. From the song he knew that Augusta was
not singing this time because she was lonely. She was happy. And it
followed, therefore, that she was busy at something that her heart
was proud of. Jimmie wondered if she had, perhaps, found some new
and wonderfully neater way of turning a patch on his clothes. This
he had found was one of Augusta's most thrilling and soul satisfying
achievements. But there was another sound that came hammering into
the song as he came nearer. It was a jerky, clicking, amateurish sort
of noise, but it was unmistakable. Jimmie's head went up and one ear
turned up into the air, listening with unbelief. But there came the
stroke of the little bell near the end of the line, and he plainly
heard the sound of the carriage being shifted.

"By the Poker of Moses!" said Jimmie to himself. "She's found a
typewriter growing under a toadstool somewhere, and she's at it. It
won't surprise me if she's got a couple of books written by now. I
_knew_ she'd get loose sometime."

Sure enough, as he came softly around the corner of the camp house in
which they were living, there sat Augusta in front of John McQuade's
table, and, strangest of all, she was working on Jimmie's own old
machine! The sight of that battered old machine brought Wardwell up
stock still with a lump in his throat, for he went back on the instant
to a black night, now long ago, when he had laid down such things as
work and ambition and courage, and thought that he was done with them
forever.

Augusta felt him standing there, though he had made no sound. She
turned, laughing.

"I didn't want you to catch me yet," she confessed. "But, I don't care.
I can do some whole lines without a mistake. And I just got pounding
away at that old song--my Daddy used to trot me on his foot to it--and
I was so happy that I didn't care whether you came or not."

"I'll smash the old fraud," said Jimmie looking with pretended savagery
at the machine that he loved, "if it makes you feel that way about me."

"Oh, I didn't mean that way at all! Of course I wanted you to come
every minute."

"But, how did the blamed thing get here?" Jimmie growled, still
hunting for a pretended grievance. "It wasn't in the wagon."

"It was! It was!" shouted Augusta jumping up in glee. "Remember how you
jeered at my hat box, the day we moved from the wagon into the house.
When I wouldn't let you touch it, or let you see me move it, you swore
that I had another man hidden in it. You said you'd get a divorce."

"But, honestly," she said, coming to lay her hand on his arm, "didn't
you miss it, sometimes? I think I've seen you walking around at times
and looking through your pockets."

Jimmie laughed. He remembered his nervous trick, when something was
wanting to him, of walking about and rummaging unconsciously through
one pocket after another.

"People that live in glass houses, shouldn't come home to roost--at
least not near you, Augusta. I'm getting afraid of you. You see through
me too completely."

"And you know I cleaned out your room at the last moment. I saved and
brought every last scrap of your book, even the things that you had
thrown away. If you're good, some day, when you've gotten thoroughly
sick and tired of chopping wood and hunting, and when I've had some
more practice, I'll let you have it all. And then you can start it
again, dictating to me. I'll never let you sit over a typewriter again.
I'm sure it was that sitting stooped over, and fretting, that made all
your trouble before."

At last Jimmie understood the whole significance of the scheme.
Augusta, serene and sure in her beautiful faith, had held the breaking
bridges of life for him, and, while he had been weakly content to drift
down into the depths of unhoping uselessness, she had looked calmly and
surely ahead and had already seen him safely across and moving up the
heights beyond.

Once he had loved Augusta as a big brother adores and guards a little
sister. Again, in another time, their positions had become reversed
and he had loved her and leaned upon her and taken strength from her,
almost as a child takes strength from a fondling mother. Now in the
light of the nobler, mating partnership that he began to understand, he
was conscious of another and more wonderful love.

His gun and his game slid quietly to the ground and he took her gently
into his arms with a new light of adoring tenderness in his eyes.

When they came, however, to putting Augusta's plans into actual
operation Jimmie had his misgivings. He knew himself. And he knew
that, with all of his ready tongue and his genial effrontery in
talking himself into and out of a situation, he was at bottom shy and
diffident. He had never been able to do good, sincere work with anybody
watching him. He had always loved to hug and hide his work until it
was actually in print. He had never in his life been guilty of reading
or even showing a manuscript to a friend. And he was shy now, even of
Augusta's quick sympathy and understanding.

What was worse, he found that his mind was sluggish and lazy. After the
months, in which he had thought only of rest and sleep and the feeding
of his body, he found it almost impossible to spur his mind up to the
point of nervous tension where he could create with any sequence. The
fires of his brain were banked and choked with the accumulations which
the greedy body was piling up for itself. He felt stupid, and yet he
found that he could not even get irritated with himself over the fact.

To please Augusta, he kept on trying, for he knew how she must have set
her heart on this plan of hers and he would have given everything that
was in him to make it a success. Never in his life had he tried so
hard and so consciously to write good lines. But the good lines would
not come, even though he sat for hours dictating painfully and slowly
while Augusta wrote. He knew that the work was not good, but he would
say nothing, secretly hoping that she would soon tire of the drudgery
and let him get at the machine, as he was now hungry to do, in his own
way.

Augusta did not tire. But in the end she pronounced fatal judgment. One
day in the middle of a long paragraph she dropped her hands from the
keyboard and looked Jimmie squarely in the eye.

"Nothing but the truth, Jimmie," she demanded, "do I get in your way?
This is not your good work."

"Had you noticed?" said Jimmie dryly.

"It is not bad," Augusta explained, springing loyally to the defence of
anything that Jimmie had done. "For anybody else it would be perfectly
all right. But it isn't just you, Jimmie. It's not just alive, you see.
It's--It's--"

"Wooden," said Jimmie shortly and without stress.

Much as she hated to, Augusta let the criticism stand. She threw the
cover over the machine without a word. That was the end of a dream
which Augusta had been hugging to her heart for months. Now Augusta,
as we know, was a high hearted, high handed little lady, and she
always knew that her way was right. Remembering this, we may arrive at
some idea of what it cost her to drop, without a whimper, even as she
dropped the cover over the machine, her dearest, deepest laid little
plan, and to say blithely:

"Come on for a run around the lake! Tomorrow you can have a pad and
pencil and sit on the back of your neck with your feet up in the window
and scribble your own way."

Wardwell knew the cost of it.

The next day was rainy and Jimmie was forced to sit about the house all
day. He was still near enough to his recent sickness to feel peevish
and irritable when it rained, he hated wind and rain. He grudgingly
envied Augusta for the carelessness with which she could run out into
the rain. He noticed that she made wholly unnecessary trips out to the
stable, away beyond the end of the sugar cabin, to see if Donahue was
all right. Donahue was perfectly all right, Jimmie was sure. He did not
see that lumps of sugar did the old fool any good, anyhow.

In short, Jimmie was working himself into a thorough stew of working
fever, ripping and tearing viciously at the work which he and Augusta
had been so faithfully laboring on, and incidentally scrapping down
some very good paragraphs which he knew, with a growl of satisfaction
for each one, would stand the test.

He did not know that Augusta was having a little cry every time she
went to the stable. Neither did he know that the lumps of sugar, which
he denounced as being wholly unsuited to Donahue's digestion, were
in reality the "thirty pieces of silver," with which, in Augusta's
imagination, Donahue was being betrayed. So Jimmie could not know that
Augusta, too, was developing a temperament. He was entirely unprepared
for its demonstration.

"Rot!" he grunted, jabbing his pencil through something he had just
written and beginning to write again furiously, meanwhile trying to sit
on his left shoulder blade in the chair with his feet piled up in the
window.

The room was small. The stove was smoking a little. It was only three
o'clock. There were, for Augusta, interminable hours to be gone through
before she could even pretend to busy herself with getting supper. And
a certain matter was working vividly upon her conscience.

"Shucks!" she remarked. "I could write a book myself with less fuss,
and not lose my temper about it, either."

"Of course, dear." Jimmie answered dutifully. He had not the remotest
idea of what she had said.

After an interval of alternate cutting and hurried, excited writing,
during which the room might have been moved out into the rain for
all Jimmie would have known or cared, so long as he was not forcibly
disturbed, it was slowly forced upon his attention that something was
going on in the room. He was aware while he worked that Augusta had
seated herself at the machine and was clicking away fitfully at it.

That fact in itself would not have been sufficient to draw his
attention. He might well have supposed that she was merely practicing,
to fill in a dull and rainy afternoon. But there was something dynamic
in the air about Augusta. She clicked nervously and tentatively at
intervals, and then hammered on viciously and desperately, as though
she feared that the thought would escape her before she had time to
nail it down in words.

Jimmie's jaw dropped and he sat staring at her in stupid amazement.
He could see the delicate lines of her figure drawn tense and sharp
like the body of some very beautiful animal straining before a leap.
He could see that her whole mind and heart were being thrown into the
words that she was driving down upon the paper, and it was not merely
his loyalty, his faith in everything that Augusta did, which told
him that what she was doing was fine. He knew that she was creating
something worthy, by the very power that he saw straining in her
effort. She was putting will and soul and a wonderful, untrammelled
native intelligence into it, and it could be nothing less than good.

He waited excitedly for the end of the page, to see what she would
do. Augusta was orderly above all other things. Jimmie was making
hasty bets with himself as to whether her little god of order would
prevail and make her take the paper out carefully and look at it before
starting another, as a sane person would do, or would she throw it down
and race on with another without looking at what she had done. If she
did the latter, then the fever had indeed taken her and she was lost.

He gave a mental whoop of sympathy as Augusta, coming with a bang
to the end of the sheet, fairly tore it from the machine and threw
it down without looking to see whether it fell on the table or the
floor. With the same motion of her swift hands she had swept down upon
another sheet of paper and without even waiting to straighten it had
jammed it into the machine and was banging away for dear life upon the
over-lapping sentence.

"Another good cook and honest citizen lost!" Jimmie groaned to himself.
"Once that fever has bitten her she won't care which side the fish
is burned on." Nevertheless, with the eagerness and adroitness of a
thieving cat, he stole across the floor and picked up the paper from
where it had fallen, without disturbing Augusta.

He read the page that Augusta had written, without comment of any kind.
Then with a sort of stupid solemnity he gathered up the pages at which
he himself had been scribbling and examined them gravely, as though his
reading of Augusta's page had put them in an entirely new light. He
laid down his own work on his knees and beside it he laid the page that
Augusta had written, and read wonderingly from one and from the other.

In his own work he had gone back to the point where he had left the
story months ago. He had not used a single one of the ideas which
he had so laboriously dictated to Augusta, but had struck into an
entirely new turn. Augusta could not have known what he was doing or
thinking today. Yet she had taken his idea just where he had left it
and she was carrying it through the very drift which he had just today
thought of.

He reached into an inner pocket for a fountain pen and examined it
carefully. Then he cleared his pad and began to write slowly and
precisely. He was not now inventing. He was a critic, a just judge, a
man having authority; in short, an editor. He took impartially, with
cold and fearless discrimination, from Augusta's paper and from his
own. And it was an astonishing fact that he was hardly obliged to
add even connectives. A paragraph of hers fitted in after one of his
so neatly that there was not a seam of divergence between. And there
were even sentences which he could begin in Augusta's words, and end
with his own. He was not now excited. He was working with the cool and
certain precision of the trained man who has his tools right and is
finding perfect materials ready to his hand.

He did not care where the materials came from. He had no compunction
that Augusta's thoughts were sacredly her own and that he had no right
to use them so. Neither, on the other hand, did he feel the smallest
resentment when he found himself bound to drop one of his own best
regarded lines and replace it with one from Augusta's. He cared for
nothing but what he saw was the excellence of the finished product.

When Augusta had finished her second sheet he rescued it from the floor
where it, too, had fallen disregarded, and went on with his editing.

By the time when Augusta's third and fourth sheets came from her
hurrying fingers he found that she was reaching far beyond the point to
which he had come in nearly a whole day's work. She was going, straight
and true, with far less words than he had found necessary, swiftly
towards the conclusion for which he had been merely groping. Now he was
really put to it to keep his pace with Augusta's flying thought, to
anticipate the hurrying turn of her fancy, to drive in with the thrust
of his own quick, excited words.

It was a crazy, disorderly method of work, but Jimmie knew that they
were both working on the very edge of inspiration and he knew that
it was all good. For two solid hours they worked madly, Augusta all
unconscious of the fact that she was taking part in a desperate race.
Finally Jimmie saw that she was trembling with fatigue and strain.

He went over quickly and swooped her up bodily into his arms and
carried her, protesting, over to his chair. When he had brought cold
water and bathed her forehead and eyes, for he knew how they must be
smarting and dancing with fever and strain, he said:

"Rest a little, dear; and then I am going to show you something."

"Have you been looking at what I did?" she asked quickly, seeing her
pages where he had laid them.

"I have, Augusta, and they're great. And on top of that I've taken the
most impudent liberty. But you shall be judge."

"Why? What have you been doing?"

"Well, read this first, will you please, dear," he evaded, giving her
the stuff that he himself had scribbled at all day.

"But, it's just like," she said, when half way through it. "I had no
idea what you were thinking of."

"I know you didn't," said Jimmie with a grin. "I didn't myself. Now
read your own."

She glanced eagerly over it, and for a moment Jimmie was sorry, sorry
that the will to write had come to her. For Augusta would be a terrible
critic upon herself. Immediately he saw the frown of the artist's
discontent with her work clouding her face. Augusta was too clever not
to see the raw and badly tooled places in her own work just as she
saw them in his work. And Jimmie thought of several men whom he knew,
fairly successful as writers, too, who never knew this discontent, who
could sit down and gloat over everything they wrote, fatuously thinking
it all good merely because it was theirs. Augusta had gone farther in
this afternoon than those men had progressed in years. He counted the
cost for her and knew what she would suffer from her own sensitive and
merciless judgment. Nevertheless, he knew, with a sort of helpless
fatalism, that he would not now try to stop her.

"Now," he said, handing her the finished product which he had made from
her work and his, "here is the impudence. It's for you to tear it up or
let it stand."

She took it without a question and began to read carefully, while
Jimmie stood by waiting for the verdict. He felt that Augusta had every
right to be hurt by his ruthlessly grabbing and mutilating to his own
purposes her first little heart-wrung work. But he soon saw from her
hurrying breath and shining eyes that he had not done wrong.

At the end, she jumped up and hugged him, crying:

"It's fine, Jimmie! And it's yours and mine! _Ours!_"

After a little Jimmie said:

"Yes, the spiteful relatives may say that it has its great uncle's red
hair and that they can't imagine where it gets its good looks from
anyway, but it's _ours_."

Augusta hid her face in the general region of Jimmie's vest pocket, and
when she finally looked up the change of subject was complete.

"I'll have to sell Donahue," she said quietly. And her face was set and
steady, as though she had been thinking of nothing but this decision.

Now here Jimmie failed. He should have been ready with argument,
balderdash, or discussion of some sort. He knew that Augusta would
rather sell her last pair of shoes than sell Donahue. But he was
curiously and fatally tongue-tied. He had never, since they had started
out upon the road, been able to speak of money with Augusta. He had not
at any time formed the slightest idea as to how much, or how little,
she might have on which to go through with this venture on which she
had staked everything. And he knew, a little guiltily, that it was
not altogether delicacy that kept him from asking out and facing the
details with her.

He was ashamedly conscious of a little lingering, subtle, unworthy
resentment of the way that he had been bundled into this thing without
being consulted. And, perhaps because he knew that it was altogether
wrong and base, he could not speak, but had gone on weakly leaving all
thought and worry upon Augusta. It would have been a simple matter, and
he knew it, to have asked her just how real was the need of money. But
he could not, or would not, do it.

When he did not answer, Augusta explained.

"We cannot afford to buy feed for him through the winter," she stated,
with a matter-of-fact coolness which did not at all deceive Jimmie.
"And neither he nor the wagon would be of any use to us in the deep
snow."

"But, isn't there some other way? Couldn't I rake up some old stories,
or something?"

"_No!_" And Augusta stamped her foot. "I wouldn't have you stop a
minute from the book now for anything in the world."

That was the end of the discussion.

That afternoon was the beginning of a new and bewildering life for the
two of them. Jimmie did honestly try to limit the amount of Augusta's
work. But he soon recognized the uselessness of the attempt. She
worked furiously when the work came to her, writing pages sometimes
while he sweated and growled over a few scratched lines. They were both
madly happy, asking nothing of life, or of the world; caring not a
thought for the success that might come to them.

They never talked over the work that lay ahead. They did no concerted
planning. Each of them began a chapter in his or her own way, without
the slightest thought of how or where that chapter was to end. They
were independent of plans, these two; for out of their own lives they
had learned that the spinning wheel of truth takes no account of plans.
One could only start, and keep on to see what the next turning would
bring. So it was with the story that came turning swiftly out of their
imaginations. It ran its own way with each of them, rushing along
smoothly, stumbling, stopping, flashing on again.

Then at intervals Jimmie would stop and take just and unswerving
measure of what they had done. At the first, in building the finished
story out of the materials which they both had furnished, Jimmie had
tried to make Augusta sit in judgment with him, had tried to consult
with her as to what should go in and what should be left out. But
Augusta would have none of this office. Jimmie was trained in the
craft, and he must take the responsibility of selection and rejection.
That was the way she put it. And Jimmie answered:

"You're a bigger man than I am, Augusta. Without at least a howl, I
couldn't let William Shakespeare--and he's had time to learn some
things, if he's been reading the things the critics say about his
work--but I couldn't let even him maul my stuff the way I do yours."

"Well, _I_ wouldn't let William Shakespeare do it, either." And Jimmie
answered:

"Oh."

So Augusta copied, faithfully and without comment or question, the
story as Jimmie edited it.

In this time they were curiously detached and tolerant. They did not
demand so much of each other. And, though neither of them would have
admitted it, this was a relief. They were very far from being tired of
each other. But, it is humanly impossible for two normal, independent
willed people to live through the hours of every day and night for
months in the exclusive society of each other without feeling a strain.
Good nature, good sense, and even gentle, thoughtful love will fail
sometime. And two people are, after all, just two human beings.

Now, when the mind of each of them was busy during waking hours with
the doings of other people whom it was creating and trying to manage,
Jimmie and Augusta each found that the other was delightfully easy to
get along with. They came and went, worked or played, and Jimmie hunted
and Augusta fished, when Jimmie wanted to hunt and when Augusta wanted
to fish. Which arrangement they found to be immeasurably better, after
all, than the one in which each had been laboriously trying to do only
the things that the other wanted.

Jimmie had not forgotten that the problem of Donahue was before them.
Augusta had spoken of it only that once, but he knew that she felt
bound to sell the horse and that neither argument nor heart-break
would deter her from what she conceived to be duty. He had, however,
a hope--which he did not mention--that perhaps Augusta would not be
able to sell Donahue, for any amount that would be worth considering,
and that, finally, she would allow him to try to get some money out
of scraps of stories. He was sure that he could hatch up some fairly
good ones now. So he said nothing, and waited. For them, and for what
they had needed, Donahue was the ideal horse. There was none to equal
him. But as an article of commerce in the open and unprejudiced market
Jimmie did not believe that Donahue would bring very much money. It was
probable that most of the farmers in the hills had already more cattle
and horses than they cared to feed through the winter. And it did not
seem likely that any of them would pay a high price for the privilege
of feeding Donahue through five or six months of idleness.

Of course, he underestimated Augusta's perseverance and business force.

On a gray October morning when there was already a threat of snow
in the air Jimmie went rabbit hunting over the bowl of hills that
encircled their little lake. He took no lunch, for he intended to
be home before midday. But rabbits are not to be depended on in any
weather. Besides, Jimmie followed a fox for two useless, scrambling
hours. Therefore it was the middle of the short afternoon when Jimmie
came home. The one big bare room which was the house they lived in, and
which Augusta's warming, coloring personality alone had made into a
home, was cold and dreary even after the brown bleakness of the hills.
The fire must have been out for hours. Jimmie was tired and hungry, and
he missed Augusta discontentedly.

Where could she have gone for all this time? She would not be fishing.
It was too cold to sit holding a pole. Then where could she be, and why?

He lighted the fire and thought of cooking some bacon. But even the
warmth of the fire did not drive away his discontent about Augusta.
Suddenly he did not care for bacon. He put it back, and, just to prove
that he was miserable, he beat up a bowl of the hated milk and eggs and
forced himself to drink it.

He went out to the barn to see Donahue. The horse was not there.
Augusta must have hitched up and gone down to Jethniah Gamblin's for
provisions. Strange that she should not have told him. He had not
heard that they were needing things. He went around to the shed, for
confirmation of the obvious. Yes, the wagon was gone.

The utter desolation of the place fell upon him like a physical chill.
Everything that was his was gone. He felt depressed and deserted. And
there came upon him a cold foreboding that some day, through his own
fault, Augusta would go and leave him thus alone, his lips dry and
cracking with the caking ashes of dreams.

"Hills of Desire!" he growled, looking around in mockery at the bare
trees and the rocky, storm gashed hillsides.

He got the axe and went at his woodpile, not with enthusiasm but with
hatred. He had some good sized limbs of trees which had been broken off
in a recent heavy storm, and it would have been less wasteful and far
more easy to have cut them into proper lengths with a saw. But that
would by no means have fitted the frame of his temper at that time. He
wanted to hack and hew and destroy. And the vicious, swinging axe spoke
his mind, while he grumblingly wondered what Augusta could be talking
to Jethniah Gamblin about all this time, anyway. And it was a wonder
that that bitter tongued old woman in the window had not put a stop to
it before now.

Several times he dropped the axe to go out through the fringe of trees
to watch for the wagon returning along the track that came up by the
brook. Finally when the early dusk was beginning to fall, he gave up
the pretense at the wood pile and went out and watched eagerly and
frankly for Augusta. Could anything have happened to her? In fact, he
would long ago have started down the track to meet her, but he knew
how Augusta hated even the appearance of being followed. She had made
a point of pride of her independence and her ability to take care of
herself and to do things in her own way, and he knew it would only
hurt her if he made any show of anxiety. So he waited, watching and
nervously pacing about along the edge of the trees.

When, at last, she did come into sight over a rise in the path Jimmie
could scarcely recognize her.

There was no wagon, nor did Donahue appear ambling along intent upon
his own thoughts. Instead, there was just the lonely figure of a little
girl, unbelievably little and pitifully alone in the dusk and the big
stretches of the darkening hills, trudging uncertainly along a twisting
path.

Jimmie could hardly persuade himself that it was really Augusta, for
the little figure walked heavily and was disguised with an ugly, oddly
hanging bundle that threw it out of all likeness to his Augusta with
her free swinging, high hearted step. Altogether there was a look of
defeat, of heartbreak about the little figure that caught Wardwell by
the throat. For he knew that it was Augusta. And he guessed at what she
had done and what she was feeling.

He halloed loudly to her and started running down the path to meet her.

Then Augusta, after she had waved in answer to his call, did an odd
thing. She dropped her pack, which had been slung front and back over
her shoulder, and went down from the path to the brook. From where he
ran Jimmie could not see her, but he knew what she was doing. She was
washing her face, to hide things.

She was back in the path and had taken up her pack when Jimmie reached
her.

"I sold Donahue," she announced. "I got a hundred dollars for him. Of
course, I had to _give_ the wagon away with him. But it would really
have been absurd of us to try to feed him through the winter when he
wouldn't be of any use to us at all."

Her voice was cool and so matter of fact that for the instant Jimmie
wondered. Was it possible that she did not care? That she really was
thinking of the money? He took the bag of bundles away from her and
stretching his arm about her they fell into step together. But, for the
first time within his memory, he felt Augusta stiffen away from him.

He was surprised and a little inclined to resent her coolness.
Unaccountably he found himself in a very bad temper and with no
possible excuse for it. If he spoke he felt certain that they would
quarrel and that he would be wholly and shamefully to blame. He did
not speak, but there was a muttering resentment of something stirring
up in him. It persisted, until he thought of Augusta as he had seen
her coming trudging out of the dusk like some deserted, forlorn little
squaw upon the trail. Then his natural insight came to him, and he
knew, as well as if he had walked with her, that Augusta had cried
bitterly all the way, and that she was now hardening herself against
his sympathy lest she should break down and let him see what her day's
work had cost her.

He understood now. And the thought of Augusta facing the dreary winter
here without her pet and friend made him feel very bitterly the having
to accept the sacrifice from her. Surely Augusta must know how he
appreciated the sacrifice. But he could not tell her. He could not say
a word, for all the time his mind was biting in upon itself and he was
mumbling, "Wouldn't it be nice now if I were to speak up and say just
what's the simple truth--'I'm awfully sorry, Augusta, but of course
you had to have the money to feed me all winter.' That _would_ sound
pretty, and comforting, wouldn't it!"

Because he was as ignorant of Augusta as all fairly good men will
always be of women, he did not know that Augusta wanted him to say
nothing of the kind. What she did want him to do was to take her
forcibly in his arms and _tell_ her that he understood all that it
meant to her. Like all men who think quickly and deeply he did not know
the value of the spoken word, to a woman. He did not know that, while
intuition and understanding are very well within certain limits, there
are certain things which to a woman are never true until she hears them
spoken in so many words.

They walked on in a silence that grew every moment more painful, until
Wardwell knew that he could bear it no longer. He must say something.
At random he said the very worst thing, naturally.

"I had no idea," he ventured, "that anybody would be wanting to buy
horses at this time of year."

"Nobody did want to buy. Mr. Gamblin was sorry for me, I guess, and
bought him, for speculation, he said. I'll feel obliged to give back
the money if he isn't able to sell him again."

"Oh, it was Gamblin, was it?" said Jimmie grumpily. He was not
concerned with Augusta's problem in ethics. He had somebody to blame
now, and he was furiously angry with Jethniah Gamblin. What business
had that old schemer to take Augusta at her word in that way?

They came to the house in silence and prepared and ate a meal that was
the most cheerless and dreary that these two had ever eaten together.
When it was over and the things were cleared away Jimmie settled into
his chair by the table lamp, took up pad and pencil and pretended to
believe that he was going to work.

Augusta busied herself for a little while, doing unnecessary things
about the fire, and then stole miserably away to the little curtained
corner where her hammock hung.

She had started out in the morning with the glow of sacrifice burning
clear and sweet in her heart. And now it was night, dark night. Her
sturdy friend, her faithful confidante was gone. She had basely sold
him because she was afraid he would eat too much. Men would pass him
from one hard hand to another, and he would be beaten for the sin of
being old. Meanwhile, she would save lumps of sugar and quarts of oats.
And Jimmie did not care.

The glow of her sacrifice was cold and dead and the ashes of it were in
her hair.

In the morning Jimmie awakened to the fact that he was alone in the
room. He had not heard Augusta go out. Or was it that she had just this
instant gone and that her going had stirred him out of deep sleep. He
dressed hastily, wondering at his excitement. She had run out to see
Donahue. She often did that the very first thing in the morning. But
there was no Donahue out there any more, he remembered. And he hurried
still more.

Although there was obviously no reason for her going to the empty
stable, he still expected to find her there. The door of the stable was
shut, but as he came nearer he heard the sound of singing. It was the
same little song that Augusta was singing that day when he came home
and found her practicing on the typewriter, but there was another sound
mingling with the song now. It was like nothing but the rythmic, rapid
tapping of little feet upon a bare floor. Could Augusta be in a mood
for singing and dancing after last night?

Jimmie turned cautious and stole away from the door of the stable,
around to the side where there were seams in the stable wall. He would
not have thought of spying upon Augusta. But he was worried now. There
was something almost hysterical in the sound of the merry little song
and the patter of the dancing feet. He knew that she had been deeply
hurt last night and that she had been too quiet about it. And there had
been a time when he was very much afraid of the effect upon her of any
strong suppressed emotion.

  "Gyp, Gyp me little horse?
  "_Gyp-Gyp_, again sir."--

The song broke freshly upon him as he gained a view of the interior of
the barn. To his eyes, blinking in the bright morning light, it was
almost dark within. But a single bar of strong sunlight from a little
window right over where Jimmie stood went in and fell directly upon the
little figure of his wife dancing in the middle of the floor.

The effect was as though she had thought of an audience and had staged
a spotlight on herself as she sang and danced. But Jimmie knew that she
had not thought of any such thing. Her little face was as white as a
hunted banshee's. Though her feet pattered lightly as summer raindrops
on a roof, yet there was pain in them; as though she danced upon the
grave of something dear to her. Her song was not loud, but the happy
little lilt in it was a lie. For, to Wardwell who partly understood and
partly guessed, it was nothing but a wail and a heart-break. And he was
dimly aware that he was not likely, either in this life or anywhere
else, to suffer anything more bitter than those moments standing there
watching and listening.

The dance broke off suddenly, not because it was finished but because
Augusta could no longer keep up the pretence.

She ran over to Donahue's stall and leaning her arms on the partition
she buried her face in them and began to cry wildly. But it was only
for a moment. Then she raised her head with a brave, challenging shake
and said steadily:

"That's all. That's the last, Donahue. Jimmie doesn't care. And I'll
never, never let him see how much I cared!"

Wardwell understood now, to the full.

He knew that he should go to her now and try to tell her how much he
did care. But just then something sneered within him and laughed at the
idea of his "going to her and mumbling about how much he cared, and yet
accepting her sacrifice all the time." No, he could not talk to her
about it. He must do something to show that he did care, that could not
mawkishly take this from her. He must get her pet back for her before
he could talk to her. He hurried back into the house and lighted the
fire.

When Augusta came in it was evident that she had again visited the
brook. She was clear eyed and smiling and her face gave no sign that it
had been swept by anything harsher than the sweet cool breath of the
morning.

"I was down by the brook," she said, truthfully, "and I saw your fire.
From the looks of the smoke, I thought you were trying to burn the
house."

"Where there's smoke there's fire. The more smoke the more fire," he
said cheerfully, opening a window to let out some of the smoke.

"It doesn't follow," Augusta argued.

"Besides, I'm going hunting."

"Again? Didn't you hunt all day yesterday?"

"No. I followed a fox. It wasn't hunting. It was gambling. But I've
got a system worked out to beat him. I figured it out during the night
that, at the rate he was going when I saw him last, he will in about
three quarters of an hour from now be just turning on his first lap
around the world. I shall be at the turn waiting for him."

"I hope he shows a proper sense of his engagements," said Augusta
politely. "It would be annoying if he stopped for a drink or anything
on the way. But I wish you had timed the meeting to come off before you
filled the house quite so full of smoke. I like to smell the tang of
wood smoke. But I don't like to eat it."

They ate a hearty and a cheerful breakfast, and Jimmie prepared for
instant departure.

"I may be gone all day," he announced, "It'd be just like the scalawag
to fool me and go around the other way."

"It's probably a stray dog, anyway," she teased after him as he started
up the hill.

Jimmie went over the brow of the hill out of sight of the house. When
he was safe from observation he hid his gun securely in the hollow
hole of a tree, and, skirting away around the hills out of sight of
the sugar camp and the road, he made his way as fast as his legs could
carry him toward Jethniah Gamblin's place of business.

He found the United States post office closed and locked at nine
o'clock in the morning, and there was no one in sight. He banged and
rattled roughly at the door, for in the course of his morning's walk
he had worked up a grievance against Jethniah and by this time he was
blaming him for everything that had happened. There was a cautious
movement within the store and Jimmie saw a head appear near the window
from an ambuscade of flour sacks. The door was slowly opened, a matter
of inches, and Jimmie squeezed his way in.

"What kind of a--?" Jimmie began upon his argument. But Jethniah shut
and bolted the door and retreated to an inner citadel behind the
barricade of post office boxes.

"What's the idea?" Jimmie inquired. "Have you been tapping the postal
revenues, or is it merely the county sheriff that's coming for you."

But Mr. Gamblin had no heart for badinage. He sat down heavily and
groaned:

"Just like a post in the mud!"

Jimmie, looking around, saw that the door which led from the store into
Mr. Gamblin's living establishment was shut and barred. He guessed,
correctly, that the store was a fortress under close siege. There was
an old overcoat and a store blanket over the back of Jethniah's chair.
It was fairly deducible that Mr. Gamblin had spent the night in that
chair. The old man's face bore out the conclusion.

Wardwell suddenly found that his indignation at the old man over
yesterday's bargain had disappeared. He was convinced that the buying
of the horse from Augusta had brought down vengeance on Jethniah's
head, from "that bitter voiced old woman," as he recalled her.
Certainly Mr. Gamblin did look punished.

"I came down about the horse," he said, as Jethniah offered no
explanation of the situation. "I don't believe you were very keen on
the bargain, anyway. And the fact is that my wife misses the horse a
whole lot. Of course, a deal's a deal. But if I put it that my wife
didn't know how badly she was going to miss her pet, and if I offer you
ten dollars over what you paid for him I thought maybe you might let me
have the horse back."

Mr. Gamblin struggled to his feet and ejaculated:

"Damn ten dollars! But if you'll only take your cross-eyed,
knock-kneed, horn-swoggled shin plaster of a horse, and that calico
travellin' house of a wagon away where my wife'll never see them
again, why maybe I can get into my own house again!"

Jimmie laughed. He knew that the old man's anger was not really against
Donahue. It was probably the first chance he had had for a good many
hours to say a few words, and Wardwell sympathised with him.

Just then the door leading into the house was rattled violently. It was
plain that the old gentleman's raised voice had penetrated the door.

"Well," said Jimmie hastily, "I haven't got the money with me now, but
I think I can get it before night. And you'll let me have the horse?"

"Any whang-doodled thing you like!" said the old man devoutly, as he
reconnoitred towards the door and opened it for Wardwell. "Only get the
things away from here before I get violent!"

Wardwell started for the railroad station and telegraph office. It was
mid-afternoon before he had an answer to the wire which he sent. And it
was later still before the unwilling and suspicious operator grudgingly
counted out to him the money for which the message called. But before
dark he was back at Jethniah Gamblin's and had handed the latter his
money, out in the open yard where a certain unmentioned person might
see that this was a bona fide transaction.

Donahue clattered contentedly up the track along by the brook, while
Jimmie glowed with the triumph of achievement.

If he had known anything of women, he would have known that he had
that day committed the one sin which a woman never forgives a man. And
he would already have begun to tremble against the day when he would
inevitably be found out. But he did not know anything about women.

Augusta, worried and lonesome, had left the light burning in the house,
for it was now dark, and had wandered up toward the hill over which
Jimmie had gone in the morning. She heard the well remembered rattle of
the wagon coming up through the trees and came running down, wondering.

She met Donahue squarely in the light from the open door and rushed at
him with a little whimper of joy. The old horse reached his head down
over her shoulder and actually hugged her to him.

Wardwell came down from the wagon, and was kissed without questions.
The questions would come later.




VIII


"This was the time the Divil was goin' through Athlone," John McQuade
announced, giving the explanation before the fact.

"I remember," Wardwell agreed politely. "He went through 'in standing
leaps.'"

McQuade and Jimmie were telling lies in a corner of the sugar house.

It was the first "sugaring off" of the season. McQuade's three sons
and two hired men had been in the camp ten days now, breaking roads
through the settling snow, scalding out sap buckets and boiling pans,
and tapping trees. Jimmie and Augusta, in wonder and ignorance, had
watched the men going from tree to tree with augers, boring out a hole
in each, into which they drove the wooden spout, and hung the tin
bucket beneath. They stood among the bare trees on a southerly slope of
the hills where the late March sun of a lovely morning beat warm and
strong, and they saw a miracle.

Neither of them had more than half believed that sap would actually run
from trees that stood stark and apparently dead. But, as they stood
there feeling the drawing warmth of the sun in their own veins, it
happened. In the breathless hush of the morning a single drop from a
tree near them struck upon the resounding bottom of the dry bucket like
the stroke of a little bell. It was a signal.

Up and down the sunny slope another and another and a hundred other
echoes of the little bell rang out until the many sounds merged
themselves into a single tinkling chorus, and the sap of earth was
running free!

Mother nature was not dead. She had slept, and now she was stirring to
feed the hungry world. Jimmie and Augusta looked at each other half
shyly, as though they had spied upon a Mystery.

That was four days ago, and since then, all day long, the deliberate,
unworried oxen had wallowed belly deep through the melting snow, only
approximately responsive to excited shouts of "jee" and "haw," dragging
on the rough low sledges the hogsheads into which the men emptied the
buckets of sap from the trees. Night and day the great brick furnace
that ran full length down the middle of the sugar house had roared.
Jimmie and Augusta had kept open fire in the front of it during the
bitterest of the winter, and Jimmie had many times complained that
his back was broken carrying wood for it. But where he had carried
armfuls, the furnace now demanded cords. It raced and danced and
panted in a furious race with the running sap, for the sap must be
boiled down to syrup almost as fast as it ran.

Already they had seen the dark, thick syrup poured into the cans and
sealed. And having eaten of it, Jimmie and Augusta, used to the article
that is sold in bottles in our cities as pure maple syrup, wondered
what must become of this kind which they had now tasted. For certainly
nobody that they had ever known had been rich enough to buy any of it.

But they had seen what they were told were the best batches of the
syrup put aside for the "sugaring off." The term meant nothing to
either of them, for they had never heard of it before. But the constant
reference to it and the careful timing of everything that went on in
the camp with a sole regard for this event soon made them look towards
it as eagerly as if they had been a sugar hungry boy and girl in the
camp waiting for nothing but the great day.

Today McQuade had come for the event. And with him had come Fan
McQuade, his wife. She was a tall, slender woman, unmistakably a
daughter of women who a hundred years ago and more trailed from Vermont
over into our North Country. There was strength and unspent beauty in
her face, and in spite of the argument of her three mighty sons she
seemed entirely too young to be a mate for John McQuade. Her face was
grave and there was a thrifty tidiness about her person and her speech
that made you wonder how she had ever come to marry a man like McQuade.

Of course, twenty years after the fact, you have the same wonder as to
why almost any woman married her particular man. And most of them will
tell you, in what they think are moments of truth telling, that they
quarreled with the right man, and just took this one for spite. All
of which is probably just as true--and no more so--as it is true that
distant fields are greener than the ones we are treading now.

But Augusta did wonder, on sight, how this grave faced woman had
given herself to the happy-go-lucky young greenhorn that John McQuade
probably had been twenty-five years ago. She wondered, until she heard
Fan McQuade laugh. It was a surprised, and surprising, burst of pure
merriment, beginning with a startled chuckle and ringing out into a
clear peal of sheer joy in fun. Then Augusta understood it all. This
girl of a sober race was not herself a fun maker, but she loved to
be made laugh. McQuade had made her laugh. And he had then blarneyed
his way into her heart, past religious and racial and temperamental
differences and barriers that would have stopped a thoughtful man.

However, Augusta reflected, it must have been well with them, for
McQuade was still able to make his Fan laugh. She laughed now as she
overheard the unfolding of McQuade's tale to Jimmie.

"The Divil was lookin' for a man by the name of Barney McGonigle,"
McQuade stated gravely, while Wardwell listened with the professional
interest and envy of a brother artist.

"Now, this man McGonigle, as I understand it, was a man with a
weakness. 'Twas known that he tasted spirits. He had been drunk for two
weeks. At the latter end of that time, as luck would have it, he was a
little bit wide of his bearings. He wandered into an Orange Lodge.

"The stairway going up to the Lodge room was guarded with a drawn
sword, of course. But McGonigle came _down_. He'd been resting on the
roof of the place.

"When McGonigle came in the Lodge was on its feet and they were in the
solemn act of repeating three times: 'To hell with the Pope.'

"There was some little excitement when McGonigle came in without
knockin', and he was fairly on his way to being thrown through the
window before the Grand Master could rap for order.

"There was but one of two things to be done. Either McGonigle must be
killed outright. Or he must repeat: 'To hell with the Pope,' as they
did.

"McGonigle bein' an agreeable man be nature, an' his principles bein'
far demoralized in drink, agreed to say it.

"Had they watched him closer they might have seen that he stopped a
little before the last word.

"But, after all, McGonigle was a good neighbor, and, barrin' the
Seventeenth of March an' the Twelvth of July, a good friend. Along with
that, he was the only journeyman farrier in the town. I misdoubt they
were only too glad to have him say it any way at all, and be rid of him.

"When McGonigle came down past the drawn sword into the sunshine he was
thirsty, for water. He went down to the lough, thinkin' to drink at
least the half of it.

"In the middle of the first dhrink, the Divil leapt down to the brink
of the lough and stood forninst McGonigle.

"'A word with you, Misther McGonigle,' says the Divil, polite, but firm.

"McGonigle lifted one eye from his dhrinkin' and saw the Divil
confrontin him in the shape of a big black horse with saddle and
stirrups on him, but no bridle.

"'I need me breath for me dhrinkin',' says McGonigle.

"'Nevertheless,' says the Divil.

"'Gluggle, gluggle, gluggle,' says McGonigle, taking another pull at
the lough.

"With that, the Divil lost his temper, an' he stamped an' he lepped
till he shook the whole town, an' he shook all the impudence out of
poor McGonigle.

"'Get on me back,' commands the Divil.

"An' poor McGonigle, with the courage of the whiskey dead in him, an
his belly squishin' full o' lake water, had no more gumption than to do
as he was bid.

"Then it was that the Divil went bumping through Athlone in standin'
lepps, as you've heard. He was tryin' to frighten McGonigle, for he was
not sure whether he had him truly in his power.

"'Ye said it,' accused the Divil, boundin' high around a sharp corner.

"'I said what?' demands McGonigle circumstantial. He knew right well
that the Divil would never dare repeat the Orangemen's invocation.
For McGonigle in his sober moments was a well read man, and, with a
moderate amount of dhrink in him, he was a theologian.

"'Come now, Barney me boy,' says the Divil, wheedlin' snarefully, 'ye
said it, an' ye know ye said it, an' I know ye said it. So where's the
use o' denyin'?'

"'I said,' says McGonigle, speakin' careful an' precise--'To be sure I
said part of it under me breath, but I said it--I said: 'To hell with
the _Anti_-pope'.'

"Now the Anti-pope, as you must know," McQuade explained, "the
Anti-pope was the Divil himself.

"Then there _was_ a too-ru! The Divil was that mad that he stood still
and lepped straight up an' down. An' he was so enraged at McGonigle
that he got his foot up into the stirrup beside McGonigle's, as though
he was tryin' to come up at him.

"'Glory be!' says McGonigle, lookin' down between prayers. 'Look at the
Omadhon tryin' to get on his own back!'

"But, as McGonigle looked down he saw things. He was an expert farrier,
an' he knew that that was no proper foot for a right horse. And, at
this point, he was enough of a theologian to remember that once a man
sees the Divil's cloven hoof he is not lost yet.

"An still the Divil raged, an' stamped, an' struggled with his foot up
in the stirrup.

"'That'll do,' says McGonigle, polite but hasty, as he threw his leg
free over the saddle, to jump. 'There's no room here for two. If
_you're_ goin' to get _on_, _I'm_ goin' to get _off_!'"

The youngest of the McQuade boys came and laid a pan of clean
packed snow on the table in front of his mother. This was part of
the essential rites of the sugaring off. The boys had, of course,
barometers and modern polarization tests which told them scientifically
when the heavy syrup, the concentration of many boilings of sap, was
sufficiently boiled down so that when allowed to cool rapidly it
would solidify into a clear brittle cake with a polarization of over
ninety-five. Fan McQuade believed in all these things as fully as did
her sons. She lived with her boys and never allowed anything in their
business, or in new ways of doing old work, to get beyond her. But
she--and they too--still trusted her own test as to when a boiling of
sugar was ready to set properly.

So, when their thermometer and barometer showed them that the proper
point of condensation had been reached, the boys came with a dipper
and poured the boiling sugar before her on the smooth surface of the
pan of snow. Then they stood gravely around and watched while the long
criss-crossed tendrills of sugar which had been made in the pouring
hardened over the face of the snow.

Fan McQuade took a little white paddle of polished maple, as hard
almost as a piece of steel, and began tapping gently at the hardening,
waxy bars of sugar. As the thin tendrils of sugar stiffened into long
crystals she struck harder, and they could hear a ringing from them
like the twang of distant skates on ice. Then, as the sugar hardened to
full brittleness the bars began to break stiffly under her sharp blows,
and then to crack and snap and fly apart like live things.

Fan McQuade and her three sons nodded together in solemn appreciation.
Science and tradition were for once agreed. They had caught the perfect
boiling off point. And the boys rushed away to pour off the contents of
the huge boiling pan into the cooling tins.

Now it was McQuade's time to bestir himself as host.

From the dark outside he brought in other pans of clean frozen snow,
which he had carefully prepared against this moment. He laid the pans
and paddles about the table and inviting everybody to choose a pan of
snow he went to bring the wax syrup. To the unitiated it looked like a
bare banquet, a pan of snow and a paddle. But the eating of "wax" is
the one feast that requires neither condiment nor foil.

"This," said McQuade, settling himself behind a huge pan of wax, "is
the one time when I can understand this making of sugar. All the rest
of the year I think of these groves of idle trees,--there's nothing
in the world so idle as a maple tree--and every one of them worth a
pocketful of money, and I wonder at Fan's lack of business sense. Why
doesn't she cut the timber down?"

He spoke of her impersonally, as though she might have been, perhaps, a
neighbor at home in the next county.

"But," he concluded, "when I sit down with a pan of wax in me arms
I can understand it all. She keeps the trees doing nothing the year
'round just to furnish her her pan of wax. And, like the good Yankee
that she is, she has all the better of the bargain, at that."

"Hear him!" his wife retorted. "And if I dared to have as much as
one live tree of these groves cut down he'd go crazy. I think he's a
heathen pagan. I think he comes up in the summer to worship in the
groves like the old people did in the Bible."

"They were high thinkin' people, I take it," said McQuade, ready for
contention. "But the times were against them."

"I wonder," said Fan McQuade slyly. "Or were they leaving behind a good
hard job of haying or something when they ran off up into the groves
for their sacrifices?"

"That's right!" complained McQuade. "Go on and tell all the neighbors
about me and disgrace me! These two young people don't think bad enough
about me. The first time they laid eyes on me they thought I was a bank
robber, at the very politest."

Augusta and Jimmie laughed happily over the memory of that amazing
evening when they had first seen McQuade, and Augusta was starting
to tell Mrs. McQuade about their awakening the morning after, while
at the same time she was mechanically prodding about in the snow
with her paddle to pick up more wax. She looked down, surprised and
disbelieving. McQuade had given her a helping of wax so big that she
had not believed that she could eat a quarter of it. And, without
thinking or stopping, she had eaten up every bit of it. _And she was
hungry for more._

She looked up in horror, and exclaimed confusedly:

"I beg everybody's pardon. I never piggied anything up so in my life!"

"Don't apologize, dear," said Fan McQuade, smiling down into Augusta's
burning face. "We'd've been disappointed if you hadn't done just as you
did. I always distrust people who don't forget themselves when they
first eat sugar wax. I think there must be something wrong with them."

Wardwell, who had done exactly as his wife had done, had not even the
grace to look guilty. With deliberate optimism, he was making a hopeful
estimate on how many times he could repeat the performance.

McQuade was in no wise perturbed.

"Take breath, and we'll begin again fair. It's the one thing," he
explained, as he started away to bring more, "that you can take too
much of to-night, and wake up wantin' more in the mornin'."

On his way to the fire he was stopped by the sound of singing from
outside. A loud, defiant voice broke in above the panting of the
furnace, inquiring lustily:

"_Where, Oh, where, are the vi-shuns of morning?_"

A determined knocking on the door punctuated the song. And then the
voice answered its own question laconically:

"_Gone like the flow-ers that bloom in the Spring time._"

"Jethniah Gamblin's warble!" exclaimed McQuade gleefully, skipping
to the door. The door had to be kept bolted on account of the heavy
draught of the furnace, so, when McQuade opened it quickly, the stout
figure of the postmaster was fairly propelled toward the middle of the
floor, while his hat, blown from his head by the force of the draught,
made a bee line for the bottom door of the furnace. Wardwell sprang to
the rescue, but the old man, with a whoop and a most surprising show of
agility, swooped down on the hat as it was about disappearing into the
furnace and came up jamming it triumphantly upon his head.

"Just like a post in the mud!" he announced.

McQuade came back from his struggle with the door, and made him welcome.

"Sit in, Jethniah, sit in. Ye know the folks here, and yer as welcome
as the flowers ye were sing-songin' about."

Jethniah said "How-dye-do" to everybody and found a place for himself
beside Wardwell.

He said nothing, nor was anyone tactless enough to ask him, as to what
desperate or devious means he had used in accomplishing his liberty for
the evening. But, as he settled his short, fat arms around the pan of
snow which McQuade had brought him, there was apparent around his mouth
a fine cat-and-canary smile that had its own meaning for every one of
his observers.

"I just smelt the sugaring, and invited myself," he explained
officially to Fan McQuade.

"I'm sure we would have missed you sincerely," said the hostess
earnestly. "But I think John trusted your instincts, for I'm pretty
sure he was expecting you to-night."

McQuade came back and criss-crossed everybody's pan of snow with a
generous helping of wax, providing a double portion for Jethniah that
he might overtake the others.

In the midst of his busy eating, Jethniah was seen to stop and reach
hastily into an inner pocket.

"Never tell us you've forgot it!" said McQuade in evident alarm.

"Safe as a hollow tooth!" proclaimed Jethniah, withdrawing his hand,
reassured, and beginning afresh at his wax. "Just like a post in the
mud!"

Augusta and Wardwell looked at each other, guessing what it might be
that was as safe as if hidden in a hollow tooth. But they did not ask,
knowing that, whatever it was, it would be better to wait and find out
at the proper time.

The fact in the matter was not that Jethniah had feared that he had
forgotten something. He was afraid that he had been robbed.

Jethniah Gamblin had a vice. It was not a secret vice. But it was the
more persuasive, insidious and devastating in that it was encouraged
and abetted by the entire community.

During official hours Jethniah was a faithful servant of the People of
the United States, and during the same hours he was an honest weigher
of sugar and sundries. But when, at eight o'clock in the evening, he
had put out the lights and had, in the dark, taken the postage stamps
from their place in the drawer and hidden them in an old rubber boot
that stood in a corner, Jethniah reverted to the pursuit of his vice.

Jethniah, to say the worst at once, was a leader in song. Wherever
there was a gathering of any sort, within possible walking distance,
there was Mr. Gamblin to be found in the midst of it. It had to be
within walking distance, for many ignominious failures had taught
Jethniah that he could not hitch up a horse and drive out of the
barn without arousing deadly and effective opposition to his going.
So, Jethniah's goings were on foot, with celerity, and without
announcement. But go he did, usually. And he was always welcome,
because, at the very first hand, the event of his coming or not coming
gave an immediate sporting interest to the party. Where people in other
less favored communities had to get through the early, dragging moments
of every social function talking about the weather and fussing awkardly
until the crowd came, the gatherings within Jethniah's range were put
at ease immediately by the common interest in the question of whether
or not the Postmaster would be able to make his escape from home, and
attend. Wagers on the matter were posted freely, with the prevailing
odds in Jethniah's favor, this partly through sympathy but largely
through faith based on Jethniah's past performances.

Then, when he did appear, he was questioned anxiously as to whether he
had brought his tuning fork safe with him. For there had been occasions
in local history when Jethniah had arrived at a party without this
badge of his calling and authority. On these occasions Mr. Gamblin had
explained that he had "somehow missed" the tuning fork. But everybody
knew better. Mr. Gamblin had been robbed, temporarily.

In the winter evenings of his young manhood Jethniah had taught
singing school in school-houses among the hills. But he had long since
given up the professional side of his art, and now devoted himself
whole-heartedly to the cultivation and encouragement of song, for
song's pure sake.

So, whether it was a wedding anniversary or the aftermath of a quilting
or a husking bee or an honest country dance with no excuse whatever,
Jethniah and his tuning fork were in demand. For when the riotous edge
of the merry-making was dulled people wanted to sing. The songs were
mostly sad ones, for people generally get more enjoyment out of sad
songs, and there are more of them; but when Jethniah stood up and drew
forth his tuning fork, carefully and critically testing it by snapping
it with his finger nail, his face grave as that of a very priest of
music, his stout old body swaying to the tune that was already humming
in his head, he was in those moments a great man.

That men and women loved Jethniah and encouraged him heartily in his
weakness is not to be wondered at. For it is a singular fact that,
whereas few persons can persuade themselves that they are beautiful, or
profoundly wise, or inordinately brave, and only a very few extremely
happy folks can delude themselves into believing that they are all
three, yet practically all people in their secret hearts believe that
they can sing, or, what is the same thing, that they _could_ sing if
they were encouraged.

Thus Jethniah, who in the long years had given up the exacting and
critical attitude of the teacher and had developed a broad charity in
art which looked only to the spirit and good will of the performance,
encouraged and gave license to the craving that lies deep in all men's
souls, to lift up their heads and howl. Men and women, who, left to
themselves, would no more have dared try to sing than they would have
attempted to walk a tight rope, shouted themselves hoarse and happy
under Jethniah's all-condoning tuning fork.

When McQuade had hoped devoutly that Mr. Gamblin had not forgotten it,
he referred, of course, to the justly celebrated tuning fork. Now when
Jethniah had eaten all the wax that McQuade could press upon him, and
when everyone else had stopped from sheer inability to proceed, McQuade
was anxious for further festivities.

But Jethniah was unwontedly reluctant about starting a singing match.
He felt half afraid to get upon his feet for he was aware that the
centre of gravity in his short, round body had been shifted by the
quantities of sugar which he had eaten so that, standing, he would
have been in the state which Physics calls _unstable equilibrium_, and
his stomach was so full that, for certain physiological reasons, he was
afraid to strain his diaphragm with the effort of singing. He had had a
brisk walk against a stiff, cold wind, and the warm, full condition of
his stomach and the heated air of the cabin combined to throw a heavy
lethargy over him. Jethniah at that point would have given a great deal
to be allowed to take a short nap. But McQuade was for immediate action.

"Never tell us ye left your music at home on the piano rack! Ye did
not, for ye couldn't, unless ye were to leave your head there too. For
it's in that round head o' yours that ye carry the finest ripertor of
good tunes and words with them of any man in the country. There's not a
postmaster in all these great United States that has the songs an' the
music in him that ye have," McQuade cajoled.

"It's right hard on the voice," complained Jethniah, standing on
professional grounds, "to sing after heavy eatin'."

"Eatin'?" said McQuade contemptuously. "I don't call that eatin' at
all. We'll _eat_ after we've had a song or two. You'll sing, an' I'll
sing, an' we'll all sing. Out with the tunin' fork!"

"Can't you tell a few lies, till we get our breath?" Jethniah suggested
weakly.

"No. We'll have all the night to tell stories in after the girls are in
bed. Now we'll sing," McQuade announced mercilessly.

Jethniah brought out the tuning fork reluctantly, snapping it
critically and holding it up to his ear and listening doubtfully to the
tone. He seemed to be artistically dissatisfied with the instrument and
to be very hopeless as to the success of the whole project of singing.
The truth was that he knew he was not in good fettle for singing and he
was nervous about Wardwell and Augusta because they were, after all,
strangers, and they might laugh.

But when McQuade had cleared away the pans of snow, Jethniah stretched
himself as far as he dared and began to take an interest. He struck the
tuning fork on the table several times, and as he listened his face
became each time a little more hopeful.

Finally he caught the tone satisfactorily and announced, with a rising
sweep of his free hand:

"_Oh He Hum Ha-a-a-ah_," crescendo, and holding the last note while he
beamed and nodded hopefully around his audience.

"We will sing 'John Brown's Body' first," Jethniah announced. He arose
manfully and smote the tuning fork sharply on the table. And again he
gave the key note, this time with authority and confidence.

"All sing!"

It was rather a straggling performance, for the boys and men working
around the fires came along two or three notes behind the leaders, and
McQuade and Wardwell were so full of sugar that they could hardly do
more than grunt. But when Jethniah heard Augusta's voice with him he
took mighty heart and together they carried it through to a triumph.

Jethniah now awoke to the possibilities of the occasion. He had come
here primarily to eat sugar. But in the prospect of a brilliant singing
affair he was willing to forget even the first sugar eating of the
season. If only he had not eaten quite so much already!

He next called for "Annie Laurie," and when that went through to a
decided success, Jethniah was so carried that he insisted on rendering
the "Kerry Dancers," which he had learned on Sundays spent fishing with
McQuade.

And McQuade returned the compliment in a way that went to Mr. Gamblin's
heart.

"Jethniah," he reminisced, in the pause that followed their latest
effort, "d' ye mind the day we were fishin' the Racquette away below
Forked Lake, and ye made a little song all out of your own head and
sang it for me?"

"Does seem to me now," said Jethniah hesitating. McQuade was the best
of friends, but he was an inveterate joker and Jethniah was always a
little afraid of his humor when there was company. "But I can't just
think right now. What about it?" he inquired cautiously. He remembered
the little song very well. He had been humming it to himself ever since
that day last summer when he had sung it for McQuade, but he had never
had the hardihood to bring it out and teach it to people as his own
composition. Jethniah was a kindly man, and easily hurt; and in this
matter he had all of the fledgling author's fear of ridicule.

"Then it's me that remembers," said McQuade, triumphantly pulling
a wallet from his hip pocket. From the wallet he drew out a little
account book and found in it the page for which he looked. He handed
it, open, to Jethniah, saying:

"There it's for you now. I copied it fair that day an' told you it
ought to be in print. Let's hear it now, Jethniah, and we'll all learn
it and give it a rousin' send off. Sing up, man! Sing up!"

Mr. Gamblin took the little book and began adjusting his spectacles
to his kindling eyes. He was so proud and so pleased with McQuade's
graceful thought that his hand shook as he held the little book up to
the light of a lantern. Of course he knew the words by heart, but not
for worlds would he have foregone the heady delight of reading his own
work as it had been copied by some one who had thought well of it. It
was almost as good as if he had actually seen it in print.

Finally he turned to McQuade and looked up at him over the rims of the
spectacles. There was a misty dimness in the kindly, honest old eyes as
he silently thanked his friend.

"Sing up, man. Sing up--Or I'll howl it meself!" blustered McQuade.

Jethniah began to hum, and then to sing tentatively. But his enthusiasm
quickly mounted above his shyness, and grasping the tuning fork in a
stout hand he brought it down sharply on the table. Then taking the
fresh tone boldly and beating time with McQuade's little book in one
hand and the tuning fork in the other, he struck bravely into his
little song.

Sang Jethniah:

     "Get up with the sun in the _morn_-ing,
      Now _that's_ a beautiful thing.
      Lie low in your bed till the _noon_-time,
      Now _that's_ a beautiful thing.

     "Work hard till the end like a _good_ man,
      Now _that's_ a beautiful thing.
      Come fishing and sing till the _sun_-down,
      Now _that's_ a beautiful thing.

     "Who picks out my work for the _Long_ Day,
      Tell Him I want to do _both_ things.
      Tell Him I want to do _both_ things."

Never did poet and songster have a happier audience for his maiden
effort, for before he had gotten to the second verse they were joining
him in the refrain and assuring him _that_ that was a beautiful thing.
And when it was finished McQuade led round after round of applause,
while the boys roared and cheered around the fires.

"Again!" shouted McQuade. "Let us hear it again, till we learn it, an'
we'll sing the roof off with it."

Again Jethniah smote the table with the tuning fork and sang now as
though he would burst his stout old heart. And then they all stood
about him, the boys towering and blackened like young Vulcans from
their work among the fires, and Jethniah led a triumph that roared
above the panting of the fires and shook the rafters of the solid old
cabin. It was the supreme moment of Jethniah's life. And McQuade, whose
heart was big for his friend's glory--and who dearly loved a racket
anyway--wanted to fill that moment to the very brim. Again and again
they had to sing through the song, until, in very pity for Jethniah,
Fan McQuade put a partial stop upon the performance.

"Are you trying to save sugar by making your guests sing all night,"
she said pointedly to her husband.

McQuade apologized loudly and ran for the snow pans. They sat down
again, and, to Wardwell's astonished delight and to Augusta's dismay,
they found that their appetite for wax was practically undulled.

But Augusta soon saw that Fan McQuade was very tired--she and McQuade,
since sun-rise, had driven fifty miles over the most frightful of
roads--and Augusta herself was glad to have this as an excuse for
pleading that she and Mrs. McQuade be allowed to retire to their beds
in the little camp house, for she knew that as long as she stayed she
would inevitably eat more sugar, and, in spite of McQuade's assurances,
she was afraid of the consequences.

As McQuade had predicted, they told lies after the "girls" were gone to
bed. But it was evident that the singing was not neglected. For, ever
and again during the night, Augusta, dozing lightly in her hammock,
was awakened to listen sleepily to Jethniah's pleasant philosophy of a
future in which he would like to be up and doing and be dozing abed,
be working and loafing, all at the same time.

Augusta and Wardwell long remembered this night. It was not that it
was marked by any occurrence vital to themselves. It was merely the
first night since they had come out upon the road that they had been
separated. But it was full of new experiences for them, and somehow
it seemed to mark an epoch, to put an end to one thing and to begin
another.

McQuade and his Fan left the next day, already anxious to be at home,
for Spring on the big dairy farm that was their home was a busy and
important time.

Other parties, invited by the McQuade boys, and some that were not
invited, came to eat sugar. But Jimmie and Augusta did not join in any
of these festivities. Augusta knew that few people had Mr. Gamblin's
ready sympathy or McQuade's big, hearty understanding. She did not care
to be stared at and questioned as the curiosity that had come into
the country in a gypsy wagon and had lived so strangely all winter
in the sugar camp. She had learned that a sparsely settled country
neighborhood is the most inquisitive and imaginative community in the
world. And while she had laughed with Wardwell over the strange stories
that were told, and believed, to account for their presence here, yet
she did not propose to put herself upon exhibition.

The sugar season was over quickly, for the sap runs only in the brief
period while the frost is actually leaving the ground, and it was a
matter only of days until the men were hurriedly gathering the buckets
and scalding them out and scouring the boiling pans to be stored away
for the year under the rafters of the big cabin. Then they loaded
their ox carts with the golden garnering of their hard work and drove
shouting away down roads that were mere wallows of soft snow and mud.

Augusta and Jimmie turned gladly back to the freedom and the quiet
of their work. It had been a most wonderful winter for them. There
must, in the actual constitution of human nature, have been times
when they were both horribly lonesome, when they must have longed for
something to happen or for the sight of a new face. But there was very
little that was petty or unforgiving in either of them, and love,
which came deeper and sweeter to them with every turning day, with
growing understanding of each other, with little unthought, unstudied
kindnesses, love blessed them with a happiness that was almost fearful.

Their work, too,--for they squabbled desperately over it at
times--furnished a ready ground wire to conduct off the too high
tension of living so closely and solely with each other. That
amazing book, which had been written by a method that had nothing
but originality to commend it, had come along so surprisingly that
Wardwell, always a grudging critic of his own work, had walked around
in violent alternations of feeling. At one moment he was confident that
the work was fine, and ten minutes later he would be attacked by a
sickening distrust that, after all, they must be "kidding themselves."

Augusta's faith had never wavered. She knew that the book was at all
times as good as Jimmie's best, and she wanted nothing more than that.
Measured in written words, her own part in it was not great. But
Wardwell knew that, from the moment she had come into it, the soul of
the book was Augusta's own spirit in it.

When it was finished and Jimmie had waded down through breast-deep
January drifts to the railroad station to mail the manuscript, and had
come back with empty hands, Augusta sat down and cried bitterly. She
had gotten to so love the book that, toward the end, every physical
touch that she gave it was a caress. And now that it was gone it seemed
almost as though a little fledgling boy of theirs had been driven out
into a cold, blustering world to make his way alone.

But Jimmie was crafty in waiting, and wise in ways to disappoint
disappointment.

"Don't let them see that we're anxious, darling," he counselled warily.
"Let's just keep saying that we don't care a rap, and that we expect
it to be rejected anyway. Then maybe it'll get by." He had all of an
Ethiopian's superstition that the little gods of mischief were always
watching around to snatch away the thing on which one set his heart too
openly.

"We'll get right to work on something else," he said, holding Augusta
curled up in his lap and petting her, "and pretend that we've forgotten
all about it." He remembered grim, waiting days in the past when he had
listened to the postman's whistle and had not dared to go down like a
man to see what the mail had brought him, but had peeped shame-faced
down the stairs at the hall table where the letters were piled, always
expecting to see the thick neat packet of manuscript that meant another
hope rejected.

Now it was all different, for he had another to think of. And his
anxiety was not for the outcome itself so much as it was to save
Augusta from the bitterness of a first crushing disappointment. The
best that they could expect--he tried to tell her--was that the book
might be considered, and, perhaps, if they could make the changes that
the publisher would be sure to want, might be finally accepted. But, in
any case, it would be at least a year before the book would bring them
anything, either advertising or reputation or money, or anything else.

In the very first place they must begin to write some things that might
be quickly turned into money. They must do some short stories at once.
He had some, Jimmie said, which had been bumping around in his head all
the time while he had been busy with the book. Now he would round them
up and put them to work. They must make some money right away.

If Augusta wondered at his sudden anxiety about money, she did not ask
questions. She was not incurious, but she never pried. She knew that he
was sensitive about money, and that he was becoming more so. But she
did not know of any new reason for his hurry to make money. She had
known vaguely that he must have borrowed money that time when he had
bought Donahue back for her, but she knew that he would not wish to be
questioned on the matter, and she had refrained from speculating on it.

Wardwell was beginning to know that, in that time, he had done
something that in the nature of things was altogether wrong. He did not
know just why it was so very wrong. But he knew that it was beginning
to bother him a great deal. And, in a man's foolish way of only seeing
one thing, he believed that if he could only get money now it would set
the whole thing right.

They had gone to work then, gravely pretending to have forgotten all
about the ship that had gone to sea. And, to an extent, they did forget
it. For Jimmie had some very good ideas for short stories and he fell
to work upon them with an energy that surprised himself. And Augusta
at first pecking diffidently at the typewriter, and then striking
boldly for herself into untried waters, found herself at the end of
three days almost hopelessly bewildered and drifting. Her story, which
had seemed so easy and simple in the starting, would not go forward.
And for three days more she sat futilely writing pages which she knew
she would presently tear up. Jimmie sat by and at times he grinned
sympathetically, but he offered no help, except to threaten to take
Augusta out and roll her in the snow if she persisted in sitting too
long and closely at the typewriter. Then, when she was almost ready to
cry in despair, the story began somehow to move, and almost before she
knew what was happening it ran out to a triumphant conclusion that she
had hardly dreamed of.

It was a beautiful little story, wind bitten, sun sweet, like Augusta's
own self. And Jimmie knew that it was true work. Though she begged him
to re-write it for her as he had done with what she had composed for
the book, Jimmie would not touch it. He showed her a few places where
her lack of training to the trade had left defects in construction.
And when she had copied in her own corrections he took the story and
addressed it and carried it proudly down to the railroad station.

After that their waiting and anxiety was all for the fate of Augusta's
little story. And when, a full week before there was any reasonable
hope for an answer from it, Wardwell went down to the station and
actually brought home an acceptance and a check for it, they forgot
everything and danced and capered about the fire in Indian glee.

"I shall now," said Jimmie comfortably, sitting down as the excitement
subsided a little, "devote myself to the instruction of an appreciative
future generation. I'll write for posterity, while my wife writes for
bread and bacon."

But Augusta was not there to hear. She had taken the check and run out
through the snow, to show it to Donahue.

From that time on through the winter Jimmie's weekly journeyings
down to the station were an event. They had agreed to avoid the use
of Jethniah's much nearer post office, not because they had anything
to conceal from their old friend but because they did not wish to be
discussed by the inevitable winter gossips who sat on Jethniah's nail
kegs and pilfered his soda crackers, so they had mail only once in the
week. And every week now there was something to be hoped for, some
manuscript to be heard from which they both said aloud would probably
come back rejected, but which in their secret hearts they both thought
"might stick," as Jimmie sometimes diffidently phrased it. For Augusta
had fallen into Jimmie's way of never voicing the highest hope, lest
a jealous power should hear and blast it. And they were for all the
world like a pair of old fashioned New England parents who would never
dare boast about their offspring, for that would mean that the children
would surely come to some bad end.

They were so busy, and so happy in the varying ups and downs of hopes,
disappointments and realizations, that when the letter came saying that
the publishers were pleased with Wardwell's book and that, if agreeable
to him, they would forward him a contract for its publication on the
usual royalty basis, it hardly caused any more than the usual weekly
excitement. It did not, in fact, reach up to half the importance of
Augusta's first little check.

Wardwell was not disappointed, for he had not expected any other
proposal than this one that had been made for the book. But he was not
exactly satisfied. He would have much preferred to try to get a cash
offer for the manuscript. For he was still sensitive to the thought
that Augusta had spent on account of him all the little money that had
been left from her mother, and that she was now, even though they had
both begun to earn some money, practically penniless. He thought that
he could not feel right again until he had been able to put into her
hands at least the amount of money which she had had in the beginning.
It was a little, unworthy way of looking at the matter, compared
with the unthought, whole-hearted way in which Augusta had done the
thing--and Wardwell knew this. But Jimmie was not, in these days,
seeing things with his usual clear vision.

There was another matter--a matter that had been hanging over him since
the day when he had telegraphed for money to buy back Donahue--which
was hanging over him and spoiling his imagination and his insight.
However, there was nothing that he could do except to work on as
rapidly as he could.

Now that the noisy interruption of the sugaring had passed they turned
back happily to the habits of their work--if indeed their ways of doing
things could be called habits, for they worked or played or ate, or did
none of these things, very much as the spirit of the moment suggested.

They had been obliged to take Mr. Gamblin into their confidence, for
the checks which had been coming were of no practical use to them here,
and it was necessary to have a banker.

"Checks" said Jethniah, when Jimmie had shown him the first of their
earnings and had asked him to deposit them. "I thought all checks had
Boynton & Bailey's name on 'em, and was to pay the farmers for milk."

"You needn't cash them now you know, Mr. Gamblin. If you'll just let
them go through your bank down in Tupper, why, you can give us the
money any time after they've gone through and so you can't be taking
any risk at all."

"Risk!" Jethniah grumbled. "Who said risk? I wouldn't know this here
Eagle Publishing Coe from Adam's pet hyena if I met them both face to
face, an' this here Bank of Manhattan may be an ingrowin' hole in the
ground for all I know. But you've writ your name on the back of one
of these checks and your wife's writ hers on t'other. An' that says
they're good. So they're good.

"That's me, every time. Just like a post in the mud."

He gave his trousers a premonitory heave, as if to advise them of what
was going to happen. And striking down deep into the right fore pocket
he pulled forth a good roll of bills and began to count.

"But say?" he queried, in a gentle, wondering tone that invited
confidence. "Don't you honestly have to do _any_ work at all--just
write down things--and have them send you checks?"

"Not another thing," Jimmie asserted stoutly.

"Gosh all Fish 'ooks!" Jethniah exploded admiringly. "Why don't
everybody do it!"

"I don't know," said Wardwell solemnly. "I've always wondered."

As the weeks drew on into the opening Spring, Augusta, sensitive always
as a poplar leaf, began to feel that from somewhere a crisis was
impending upon them. There was no tangible thing that could be a source
of apprehension to them. The question of money, which had once been
terrible for them, was now happily resolving itself into the simplest
incidental of their work. Jimmie, she was at last sure, could for the
rest of his life laugh at the threat of the disease which had driven
them out upon the road. The Winter, which had indeed been formidable
for them, was past; and for the Summer, which would be coming before
very long, they would be as comfortable and as nicely situated as they
could wish. They were welcome to stay on here. Or, if they were tired
of the solitude and the closeness of the life, they knew that they
could now easily earn as much as they needed to live nicely in almost
any place.

Materially, it was plain, nothing could threaten them. For they were
now as independent as it is possible for two people to be on this
earth, where the price of living must always be paid in some kind.
Even what is called independent wealth could not have made them more
free than they were, because, with that, they would have more things to
fear than they now had.

But Augusta well knew that this presentiment, which came treacherously
stealing upon her in the dreaming moments when her spirit was wandering
alone and unguarded in that border land where dreams and good stories
come from, was not warning her against any material happening.

With a prescience as cruel as eye-sight could have been, she knew that
this thing would strike at her heart. And, her heart could only be hurt
through Jimmie.

Long ago she had foreseen and trembled at this day when love would make
a coward of her. And although many times in the year past she had been
able to believe that Jimmie loved her truly, the way a man chooses
his girl and wants her, and not from any prompting of duty or mere
affection, yet the fact remained, unescapable and unanswerable: _they
had not started fair_.

She had taken Jimmie at his word, when pity, and probably affection,
and a pretty childish attractiveness, had prompted him to ask her to
marry him. But, even then, she had known that it was not fair, for,
even then, though neither of them would have believed this, she had
been a woman while he was an impulsive boy.

It was true that even in that time she had loved him with a love which
he would not have believed her capable of even guessing at. But that
made no difference. Jimmie had not been free. Nothing that had since
passed had altered that fact. And Augusta had cruelly whipped herself
into believing, that even if Jimmie had not cared for her in any way,
his quick heart and his kindness for her mother and herself would have
made him do just what he had done in the circumstances. (She was able
to believe this because she knew that she herself, at that time, would
have married the most repulsive man in the world if it had been a
necessary condition for getting her mother out of the madhouse.)

All this had lain away covered in her mind through the months of
happiness and well being and hopeful, heart-filling work. But it was
inevitable, as she had always known, that it would one day come forth
and stalk upon her.

The outward signs that the peace of her mind and the safety of her love
were being threatened were indeed very slight. Jimmie was restless.
Something was troubling him, that much she knew. Once or twice she
had felt that he was on the point of speaking out, but the moment had
passed and had left her with the dizzy, sinking feeling of a threat
suspended.

Sometimes she was able to lull the feeling of foreboding evil by the
thought that it was merely the Spring. Everything about them was
restless and stirring and shooting forth buds and blades, and all the
little rivers of life were running full. It was only to be expected
that they themselves, coming out of the close, storm bound life of the
Winter, should feel a stirring of unrest, an urge of discontent and
energy, towards something new.

Also, she knew that their reading of the war in Europe had been having
an unsettling effect upon both of them. In the days of last Summer and
Fall, when Jimmie's health was her single thought and when he himself
was still subject to recurrent days of feverishness during which the
doings of the world lost their interest for him, the first news of
the world's tragedy had come dribbling to them through occasional old
newspapers borrowed from Mr. Gamblin's store, and it had hardly aroused
in them anything more than a puzzled and only half believing wonder.
Belgium was mutilated--But Jimmie's temperature must be watched.

Later, however, when the shadow was definitely lifted from Wardwell's
life, they began to follow the war with an avidity that was
proportional to their detachment from the diversions and worries which
took up the thoughts of other people more normally situated. They
subscribed for a New York daily paper, and when Jimmie came home from
the station with a week's papers in a bundle they sat down and devoured
them eagerly.

Augusta, all pity and eager partisanship for the innocent and for the
right, was disappointed in Jimmie. He, being half boy and whole writing
man, thought only of the noise and the whole whaling wonder of the
thing, and she wondered that he could take it all so impartially. But
now there came a May day when Jimmie came home with his bundle of mail
and tramped heavily into the room, without speaking.

He walked over to where she sat at the typewriter. Before her, over the
machine, he spread a paper and laid his hand on the broad headlines.
They told of the Lusitania horror.

After a little he leaned over her shoulder, as she read in silence, and
pointed down a column of the known dead to the name of a man--a writing
man--whom he had loved.

He walked slowly over to the table in the corner and dropped the mail
quietly. Augusta stole a look at him as he stood there, leaning over
slightly, brooding, his big hands, rough and red from work and wind,
knuckled down hard on the bare table.

She was struck by a sense of something missing. The boyishness was gone
from Jimmie's face. And, with a little shiver, she knew that she would
never see it again. Her playboy had vanished. She was looking at a man
who had hardened into a mold within the hour.

She had never seen Jimmie angry, for he had practically no temper. And
he was not angry now, in any ordinary sense of the word. His face was
no study. It was plain, and ugly with a single emotion. The emotion was
as plain, and as old, as blood--revenge.

But Augusta knew that it was not the restlessness of Spring that
threatened her. And she knew that not even the sullen restiveness of a
call of blood could hurt in the way that she was going to be hurt.

She was a woman. And she knew that only through a woman could she be
wounded to her heart's depth. That strange prescience, that border land
insight which had come to her in other times, and had sometimes been
kind to her and sometimes cruel, had lately been turning up pictures
to her mind. And although she had not admitted them to her ordinary,
self-controlled consciousness, yet fragments of them always remained,
and in spite of her will to dissolve them she found them becoming more
and more clearly parts of a composite picture of a woman--the tall,
black woman whom she had seen that day when the Irish gypsy girl had
forced the cards into her hands.

Now this was all in spite of her will. Her good sense, as she called
it, fought these things down again and again. She would not let herself
be morbid. And yet, all the time, her soul was summoning courage
against the blow. When she should know that Jimmie wanted to go from
her, she must make him free. That had been in the bond from the
beginning. She herself had put it in the vow of her marriage.

On a morning just beyond the middle of May when the plum trees were all
in white blossom, which, as all the world knows, is the one elect time
for brook fishing, Jimmie went fishing.

Augusta stayed at home with the avowed, and honest, intention of fixing
a dress. Their clothes had stood the rough wear remarkably well. But,
as good clothes will do, now that they were beginning to go they
seemed to give out everywhere at once.

But Augusta never took any pleasure in fixing her own clothes. So by
the time she had taken down her good dress and looked it over, and had
poked tentatively at several slightly worn places in it, she decided
that it was Jimmie's wardrobe that really needed attention.

His one fair coat was not at all what it should be. And she knew there
was a rip under the right armhole. She must do that first. She would
give it a thorough beating and cleaning and let it hang a while in
the sweetening sun. The first thing was to clean out the pockets and
turn them wrong side out. He always carried such truck in his pockets!
Cigarette papers, loose matches--it was a miracle that he didn't burn
himself up, improvised lead sinkers, stubs of lead pencils, a few loose
cartridges, letters from publishers, scraps and pieces that had once
been white paper and had had parts of stories written on them. She
shucked them all out on the table and stood looking down at them with
some of the consternation and wonder with which a young mother looks at
the amazing contents of her boy's trouser pockets.

Long afterwards it came to Augusta as one of the bitterest things of
all that her blow should have come upon her in what might have been the
way of cheap and tawdry melodrama. She might have been a snooping wife
going jealously through her husband's pockets.

She stood there a long time staring down at a letter that, of its own
power it seemed, stood out apart and separated from all the rest. She
did not touch the letter. There was no power in her, nor no wish, to
turn a page of it. It had no envelope. And it had, with insensate
malice, spread out the whole of its front page to her eye.

It was a love letter, one link of a chain of established correspondence
between a woman and Jimmie Wardwell.

After the first, heart-withering look at the page which gave her this
complete, all-embracing intelligence, Augusta did not read. She stood
staring dumbly, and then, still keeping her eyes helplessly on the
page, she began to back, step by step, cowering away from it.

Creeping backward still, she came against the chair on which she had
thrown her dress. Her hand went out mechanically and she grasped the
dress, just where she had stuck the forgotten needle in it.

The pain of the piercing needle mercifully took her eyes away from that
letter. She pulled the needle from where it had stuck in the palm of
her hand, and mechanically brought the hurt up to her lips.

Then she looked at the dress. What was it doing there?

Oh yes! She remembered. She was going away. She had always known that
she was going away. Now it was the time.

She took the dress and carried it over behind the little curtain of her
hammock bed.

When she was ready to go, she sat down at the typewriter and wrote a
line in the middle of a clean sheet of paper.

She was not herself, of course; and we do not know just what was
passing in her mind. But she wrote:

_We may not live together. We shall not die apart._

As she rose from the typewriter she looked again, because she could not
help it, at the letter, and in the lower part of the page that lay open
before her she saw clearly the words "your Jean."

She did not need these words to tell her what she already knew, that
the letter was from the woman with whom Jimmie had promised to have
nothing to do. For she had already seen, in the first moment, a flash
of the woman's dark, handsome, discontented face.

But the written words, the written claim, roused in her a swelling,
choking anger.

She would not go away! She would stay and _fight_ that women to the
death for her love!

Yet all the time she knew that she would go. It was inevitable, as her
heart had always somehow told her that this hour would inevitably come.

Except for his broken promise--That was unanswerable--she had no heart
to blame Jimmie. She would not go in anger. In her heart she had sworn
that, if this day should come, she would free him completely, and
without bitterness.

She was going.

Her love was spoiled, tarnished; another had touched it. She could
never again have the glory of it. Dear heart of life, how beautiful it
had been! And she must go, lest in her weakness she should grovel and
bring that one beautiful thing of life down into dust with her.

As she passed the stable, Donahue whinnied lovingly at the sound of her
step. But she dared not stop. For she knew that if she stopped now,
and broke down and cried with her pet and friend, the miserable end
would be that she would run to where Jimmie was and throw herself on
her knees to him and beg weakly for his love. And--the shame of it!--he
would talk, and talk, and talk, and in the end she would live on with
him, to hate herself and him.

So her eyes were dry and her little shoulders bravely set as she
trudged on down through the fringe of trees and into the brook path.

She did not know the cross-cuts by which Jimmie went to the station
every week--Oh yes, Jimmie went to the station every week!--but she
knew the direction fairly well. She would find it. She did not know
how many trains there were in the day, but she was quite sure that
there would be one before she could be missed and overtaken. Jimmie had
gone fishing for the day.

Now this last thing one would rather not tell. Studied design could
not have found anything quite so cruel to have done to her. It is, in
fact, left for accident and blind, silly coincidence to furnish the
most terrible thrusts of life. When Augusta came, still dry-eyed and
hurrying, down the dusty road to the little station, she saw a man
going away from the station and starting across the fields. He did not
see her.

It was Jimmie. He had not gone fishing.




IX


"Charles of Burgundy Comes, Thirteen Fifty-Eight--"

"He's a boob if he comes here!"

"That don't mean comes, you nut," some scholar elucidated. "_Comes_
means Duke. Charles, Duke of Burgundy. He built the bridge."

"Wish t'ell he'd built it straight east and west." Don Mallet threw
down the thin stone tablet in disgust. It had landed a moment before in
the pit of his stomach. A German shell exploding a little distance on
the other side of the bridge coping had gently lobbed the stone plate
out of the wall where it had rested four and a half centuries and shied
it playfully at Mallet where he sat on the ground.

When Charles of Burgundy had his name cut in that stone tablet and
had it set in the bridge he did not foresee Mallet, nor the need of a
bridge running east and west.

But Mallet was here, and fifteen others, all heartily approving his
wish for a slight change in the alignment of the bridge, all except a
German machine gunner and an American corporal who lay head to head
close under the coping of the wall, with the body of a "pup" tent
stretched impartially over their heads, and who did not care.

This party, with a lieutenant in command, had crossed the river to the
north side before dawn. Behind them from the hills beyond the river the
American artillery, as fast as it could come up to the river brow, was
getting to work, firing high above this party and a score of other
parties that had crossed the river in the dark under orders to find
cover and stay.

In the dark they had stumbled into a machine gun position on this
little bridge over the dry bed of a creek. They had gone over the
five-foot coping on their bellies, their rifles with bayonets fixed
swinging free in their hands.

Of the five Germans who had been on the bridge only the man now lying
here unconscious had seen the dawn come down the valley a few minutes
later. For, as Patsy Murtha had remarked:

"That Kamerad stuff's all right when you can see what their hands are
doin'. But, in the dark--!"

With the coming of the light five of the men had put on the tunics and
helmets of those who had lately held the place and had stood about the
guns, to show enemy watchers on the slopes and in the gullies to the
north that things were quite as they should be, while the remainder of
the men hid themselves under the coping of the bridge.

But the ruse did not avail them long. And this was why Don Mallet was
dissatisfied with the direction of the bridge. If it had run more
nearly east and west they would have been invisible from a certain
wooded gully that cut down through the hill beyond the bridge and
which, as happened, lay directly in line with the bridge.

The full light had revealed the men in American uniforms strung along
under the coping of the bridge. What the German machine gunners in the
gully thought is not pertinent. A driving blast of wind swept across
the bridge propelled by a rain of machine gun bullets which cleaned the
bridge as swiftly as if a giant broom were sweeping ants off it.

The five men on the bridge came tumbling over the coping rolling the
machine guns with them and falling in grunting heaps among their
friends. It seemed that they were quite miraculously unscathed from the
blast which had driven them from the bridge. For when they had gotten
to sitting postures, the five, in prompt concert, ripped off the German
jackets, wadded them into the helmets and shied the whole over the bank
down into the dry bed of the creek below the bridge. That this action
was not merely a matter of sentiment was proven by the fact that the
five immediately pulled off their own clean American shirts and began
to shake and search them severely. These men had not now for weeks
lived in an established trench or dugout. From away beyond the Ourcq
to here, above the Vesle, they had come foot by foot, always in the
open, drifting and seeping, drifting and seeping, in and out among the
rear lines of a foe who always retreated yet who always kicked back
murderously. Sometimes they had fought as part of a battalion, creeping
in a long thin Indian file around a nest of machine guns, dragging
themselves prone through the grass or the standing grain, until the
line was near enough to spring yelling upon the surrounded foe. They
had fought and drifted, singly, in squads, going forward sometimes in
dozens, dribbling back through in twos and threes. They had learned to
sleep behind a fallen tree trunk with machine gun bullets sifting above
their noses. But for three blessed weeks they had lived in the open,
crossing running water every day--and they were body clean! The five
men were at that moment more afraid of German lice than they were of
the wind of death that was driving over their heads. All values are, of
course, relative.

Sergeant Jimmie Wardwell, his body well hidden by the deep foliage of
the tree in which he had taken his post, poked a long-nosed rifle out
across a limb. It was a hunting rifle that he had borrowed one day two
years ago from a Canadian named Bray Stewart, a long-limbed fellow with
a friendly grin, a gentle gray eye, and an unconquerable obsession that
this war was a deer hunt. Stewart was irrevocably convinced that if
"they" really wanted to win the war they had only to put enough North
Ontario farmer boys up in convenient trees and pot all the Germans on
earth, up to five hundred yards. He had a scheme for making salt licks
in No Man's Land.

But Stewart, Jock as they called him--all Stewarts are called Jock,
had been sent into the mud flats of the upper Lys, where there were no
trees, and where the best possible shelter was a ditch two thirds full
of water. And Jock, on the very day when in mere discouragement he had
lent the long hunting rifle to Wardwell--for what conceivable purpose
the rifle had either been borrowed or lent will never be known--Jock
that day inhaled some of the first poison gas which the progressive Hun
had used and Jock had lain face down in his ditch and drowned.

Wardwell had taken this as a personal and gratuitous injury. He had not
known Jock very much, for Wardwell had just come over from a training
camp in England and been filtered into Jock's company, while Stewart
had come over with the Canadian regiment almost in the beginning. Jock
was a veteran soldier of nineteen, while Jimmie was green and a Yank to
boot. But Wardwell had listened respectfully to Jock's lies about the
hunting in the hills far up on the road to Cobalt, where they saw snow
ten months of every year. And Jimmie had lied moderately and with good
judgment about the hunting in his own hills. They had respected each
other.

Since then Wardwell had kept the rifle by him, in violation of the
Articles of War, in more or less secret defiance of barrack sergeants,
against the expressed wishes of high and low command, and to the death
of many individual Germans who never saw him.

A tall German under officer strutted out from the woody shelter of the
gully between the hills and stood boldly out on the slope. Evidently he
thought that he was out of effective range and he saw that his own guns
were not reaching the men strung under the coping of the bridge. He
must get a gun out on the slope here where it could sweep the Americans
where they lay. His problem was as plain to his intended victims as it
was to himself. The boys were already swinging their captured machine
guns into line.

"Hold your cannon, till you need them," said the lieutenant, speaking
quietly from where he lay out in the grass half way between the men and
Wardwell's tree. "If Heine'll just hold that pose for another couple of
seconds, Wardwell will--"

Wardwell did. Jock's long rifle grunted once. The German put his hand
up sharply to his throat, turned half around, then gave a funny little
attempt at a jump sidewise, as though something had suddenly risen in
the path before him, and slid bumping down into the grass.

Two German privates came out of the cover and stood over the body of
the fallen man. Wardwell held his hand, while his companions below
waited, understanding. If these two had come out risking their lives to
drag a wounded officer to shelter he would not shoot.

One of the men leaned down examining the prone figure in the grass. He
straightened up almost immediately and made a deliberate kick at the
body. That officer was dead.

Not one man of those watching by the bridge offered a word of comment.
They had been daily, hourly, learning strange things about this enemy
as they fought and followed him. But they had come to no conclusions
except the one safe one that Wardwell presently punctuated.

The man who had taken a kick at the dead man now stood with his legs
straddled wide apart looking down at the bridge. He did not seem to
expect any danger, and since Wardwell was using smokeless powder and
there was plainly no firing from the men who could be seen it is quite
possible that the German thought the officer had been killed by a stray
bullet from his own side. When Wardwell fired again it seemed to the
boys in their eagerness that they could almost follow the bullet in its
course.

They could, in fact, only see that the man dropped vertically like a
stone dropping, but some one said excitedly:

"Eight hundred feet and over, and a clean drill between the eyes! that
aint luck, that's hate."

"You've got good eyes if you can see all that," drawled a Yankee boy
from northern New York. "But he does seem to have a kind of a prejudice
against the Beerheads, at that."

"He aint like us here," explained a philosopher from Glens Falls. "We
come here to fight 'cause the fightin's good here. But this Wardwell
gent, he's seen too much. He aint fightin' Germans now. He's executin'
them. He uses a rifle 'cause he can't get to 'em with a rope."

The remaining German had started running for the shelter of the ravine,
but Wardwell's chance shot at the moving target caught him in the hip
and he tumbled headlong down out of sight.

Wardwell had come far since a day long ago upon the hills above the
lake when he had drawn what he thought was a perfect sight on a
chipmunk's eyes at fifty feet and had ruined a perfectly good sap
bucket which hung forgotten a good six feet below where the chipmunk
had been.

Developments soon showed what the officer had had in mind when he came
out on the slope of the hill. Sand bags and stones began flying up out
of the ravine until they formed a respectable pile on the edge of the
hill. Behind these came loose dirt hastily shovelled over and beginning
to mark the line of a trench. The Germans were burrowing into the side
of the hill. They would quickly run a shallow trench out along the
slope of the hill to a point fifty feet or so in the open, from which
point, when they had dragged a heavy machine gun to it, they could
sweep the Americans from where they lay under the wall of the little
bridge.

The boys quickly trained the captured guns upon the moving line of
dirt where it seemed as though a big mole was nosing his way along the
face of the hill. But the elevation was sharply against them, and the
lieutenant saw that they were hitting nothing for there was no mark
above the dirt.

"Save your ammunition," he commanded, "and cover up the guns. They
might be handy if we had to come back this way in a hurry.

"Put the two wounded men under the bridge and take cover in the creek
bed."

The two men were quickly eased down into the dry water course under the
bridge and left as comfortable as was possible, while the lieutenant
called up to Wardwell:

"We'll have to depend on you for a lookout, Wardwell. They might try
to rush the creek from above or below. Though I don't think the outfit
across there is anxious to rush anything this way. Stay where you are
while you can. But if you think they've spotted you, make your rush for
the creek bed. Don't stay if it should become--useless."

"'Right, Sir,'" said Wardwell, smiling to himself among the leaves.
He knew that the young officer had started to say: "Don't stay if it
should become too hot for you." But he was getting used to the way
they thought of him and spoke to him. It had started with the boys.
They were Irish descent, most of these with whom he had been through
these weeks, and, what was worse, they had been brigaded in with an
old Irish regiment in the British army early in the summer. What their
own ready working imagination had not taught them, about war and its
superstitions and its queer and unreadable chances, the Irish had
supplied to them. One thing which the Irish had taught them came under
the category 'important, if true.' It was founded on the well known
fact that a man born to be hanged will never be drowned. Every man, it
appeared, had a certain number fixed to him by fate. It represented the
number of chances which were his against death, the number of times
that he might face death front to front and escape. Some men had only a
few chances, and a man might lose out on even the first of his chances.
Others had many. But every time a man went through a desperate action
he used one of his chances of escape. But there were certain men who
had used up all of their chances, who had reached the very last number.
And then, in this their last moment, by some queer stumble of fate,
they had been missed. After that they were not merely safe, they were
isolated. Death fled from them. They could hunt death, and some of them
did--so the Irish said, but they could not achieve it from human hands.

Wardwell, it was whispered among the boys with wise nodding of heads,
Wardwell was one of these. And they counted the tale of the numbered
chances that he had used, until he had, somehow, missed the last
unfailing one.

After that, they said, he had no chance. And they told of places where
he had put himself in the path of death, of how men had died in front
of him and behind him, how he had been shot through so many times that
now he hardly bled when wounded. This last was untrue, of course. Many
things that they told were over drawn, as they would be. Most of the
tales were inaccurate. And, again as would happen, many of the things
were only half told.

So Wardwell understood, and smiled when he felt his officer hesitate
about naming the word danger to him.

He was partly Irish himself, and he knew that some of the times when
he had escaped death it had been hardly short of miraculous. Also he
knew that there were other men in the armies who like himself had lived
through almost unbelievable numbers of chances and that these were
marked men who did not seem to be able to die in battle.

For himself, however, he had no need of the theory of chances which
explained these things to the men. He knew.

When the time should come, he would get his wound. And the wound would
bring death. But before death could come he would see Augusta.

It was all simple, and as it had been ordained from the beginning.

The trench along the face of the hill was all but complete now, and
at the end of it there grew a considerable rounded pile of sand bags.
There they were going to set the gun. He saw signs of a movement along
through the trench, and knew that they were dragging a heavy machine
gun out to its place. A head and part of a shoulder came up momentarily
above the line of dirt. Wardwell had his sight upon it but he did not
try the difficult shot. He must give them time to get busy with the
gun, and to grow careless.

No, there was nothing left to chance, or to any number of chances.
Everything that had happened, and that was happening and going to
happen, moved into place as the result of something that had gone
before, as inevitably as one pebble is moved by the pressure of another
pebble.

In his ignorance--it is only in ignorance that the fatal things
are done, malice is not cunning enough--he had committed the one
unforgivable sin. He had taken money from one woman to give to another.

He had not known at the time that it was the unpardonable sin. He had
not, as he remembered it now, thought of anything except that he could
not stand Augusta's grief for the loss of her horse. To get her pet
back for her at that time he would have taken money from anybody.

It was true enough that the other woman had owed him the money in an
entirely business-like way. He had loaned her the money at a time when
she needed it.

Afterwards she had married a wealthy man. Several times when they had
met she had laughingly tried to pay him back his loan, but he had
always talked her around the matter, and later he had dropped out of
her sight into the seclusion of Rose Wilding's house to make his fight
for his book and a reputation.

That morning when he had seen Augusta grieving in the empty stable, and
after he had talked with Jethniah, he had gone down to the station and
sent the telegram to the woman saying simply that he needed the money
and asking for it.

He had had no misgiving that he was doing anything that would ever
hurt Augusta. He had thought no more of the matter than if he had been
asking any man for the return of a loan at need.

The trouble was that the woman was discontented in marriage--as she
would have been discontented in singleness, or discontented in jail,
or discontented in what was her idea of heaven. She was looking for
diversion, and her discontent took the form of imagining herself to be
sadly and irretrievably in love with Wardwell. (If she had been obliged
to live two weeks in a cabin with him she would have come to the point
of murdering him.)

Not long after he had sent the telegram and received his money Jimmie
had begun to be troubled with a sharp premonition of something wrong.
Something was brewing up for him somewhere. He was quick to understand
that the one contact which he had established with the world without
was probably the source of his worry. He mooned around for a day or so,
waiting for something to drop, as he put it to himself. Then he went
fearfully down to the station.

There were six letters waiting for him.

He read the last first. It seemed that the woman had somehow learned
that Wardwell had gone away sick. From the last of the letters he
gathered that she had pictured him to herself as lying penniless and
alone, and at the point of death, somewhere in the woods, and that she
was about to fly to him. She was capable of doing it, he knew.

With the choking, hopeless feeling of a man being drowned, he wondered
if she had already started. In his panic he telegraphed:

_Do not come. Am leaving here._

No sooner was the wire gone than he repented the last words of it. Why
had he lied? He should not have lied, for it would only lead to other
lies. The woman was one to revel in mysteries, and his evading her now
would merely determine her to come and search him out. He was not going
away from here, and he should not have lied to say so. Now he would
have to write, at once, and take back the lie.

Then and there he borrowed paper and wrote. He told her,
circumstantially, that he was in perfect health. He explained that he
and his wife--the woman evidently had not thought of the possibility of
his being married--were living away up here in the woods in order that
they might be able to go on with their writing without interruptions.
He apologized abjectly for having annoyed her. He hoped that she would
remember that only a temporary and acute crisis had made him trouble
her, and at the same time he hoped that she would forget the whole
matter.

The letter was so unlike his usual clear handed methods that he felt
sure the lady would either think him deranged or that she would
disbelieve the whole of it. But he sent the letter. At any rate he must
try to keep her from coming here.

Then he started home to Augusta, dragging with him a weight of hang-dog
misery that increased at every step.

Never had Augusta's sweetness and the dear simple beauty of her faith
in him been so precious to him as in those minutes. He hated the other
woman unreasoningly, viciously; and yet more he hated himself, because,
somehow, he seemed to have thrown a slur upon Augusta. That day, when
her heart was high and sweet with its sacrifice for him, he had forced
her, in some shameful way it seemed, to take something--money in
fact--which he had taken from another woman.

He knew, even in that walk home, that he had done a fatal thing. And
the anxieties and the nightmares of the winter that followed came upon
him inexorably and without surprise.

In alternate letters, and often alternately in the same letter, the
other woman upbraided him for having deceived her, in being married,
and being well, and on the other hand vowed that she did not believe a
word of what he told her but was sure that he was there sick and alone
and that she must come to see.

Through all that winter and into the spring he lived under the constant
dread that the woman might come, and he was obliged to answer every
letter, profusely and carefully, lest something which he omitted to
answer might give her the impulse that would bring her flying to find
him. That the whole business was melodramatic, and entirely foolish,
did not lighten the matter in the least. And at all times he was
convinced with a miserable dull certainty that all he did was useless.
Augusta would inevitably come to know, anyhow. He had never expected
to be able to hide anything from her. He had sworn that he never would
have anything to hide from her. He was certain that she would come to
know of this, and in the most shameful and pitiless way. He had no hope
that it would be otherwise.

Even now, as he watched the German gun being poked into its place
above the line of the dirt on the far hillside, he shuddered at the
humiliation and the ignominy of that winter. Augusta had known that
there was something wrong. She had, of course, seen it in his eyes
and sensed it in the air about him, from the very beginning. But he
had never been able to tell her. He knew Augusta's peculiar jealousy.
It was not the usual property-holding interest by which the average
woman clings to her rights in a man, because she is afraid of the
consequences of letting him slip away from her.

Augusta was in this, as in so many things, different from any woman
whom Wardwell had ever known or imagined. Like all people that live a
great deal within themselves, the things that were her own, even the
little things, had a sacred and a touching value to Augusta. If a thing
was not entirely her own she did not care for it at all. She wanted
nothing near her that she had to share in any way with another person.
Wardwell remembered that she had once given away her best coat because
another girl had put it on herself just for a moment to see how she
would look in it. And as for the loaf of her love, so far from being
able to think of sharing it with anyone, he knew that the thought that
another had even looked at it would be enough to spoil it for Augusta.

And he, with this full knowledge of her fiercely proud little heart,
had brought another woman in to despoil the sacred shrine of Augusta's
love. He knew that she had thanked him for getting her pet back for her
as the dearest thing he had ever done for her. And now when she should
come to know the truth--as she would--it would embitter her to know
that she owed it to another woman.

As the letters continued to come and the worry and humiliation of
keeping up what seemed like an intrigue grew upon him he moodily wished
that Augusta might learn the truth.

He could not tell her, for the very fact that must be his excuse, that
he had done what he did for the love of her, would be the very reason
why Augusta would resent his going to another woman. Explanations were
always useless to Augusta. She cared not at all for the details. She
would understand instantly, he thought, and understand more justly than
he could tell her. But she would be mortally hurt.

It did not occur to him that Augusta would be just like every other
woman. He never thought that Augusta in the supreme test when her love
was threatened, would lose her almost inspired insight and go blind to
everything except the one condemning fact--that he was corresponding
secretly with another woman.

When the end came, when he came home that day to learn that Augusta
had left him, and to read her note with its stark and yet prophetic
finality, he was stunned by this thing which he had expected least of
all.

The first emotion that he remembered was a furious anger with Augusta.
It seemed that she had read but a part of one of the letters and had
immediately jumped to the worst of conclusions. He was angry with
Augusta, he remembered now, not because she had gone, but because she
had allowed herself to be stupid.

How could she have misunderstood? Why should she have misjudged him
so? She must have been deliberately blind, for Augusta had not only an
unerring instinct for truth she had also a keenness of judgment such as
he had hardly ever seen in man or woman.

But that was all very, very long ago, and he scarcely remembered now
the boyish rage in which he had raved and had torn the hated letters
and stamped them into the floor of the cabin.

He had chased feverishly to New York after her, and he had walked the
city, without a starting point and without direction, looking for
her, as he and she together had once walked the streets looking for
Rose Wilding. Then, when at last he had become convinced that it was
useless, that he would never find Augusta until the time that she
should choose, he had gone back to the lake, to the Hills of Desire, to
wait for her.

He found Donahue browsing contentedly among the trees much as he had
left him, and a world mockingly unchanged.

Of course, he could not stay there. The haunting, whispering sweetness
of Augusta's presence was there at every turn of his eyes, in the
breath of every breeze that brushed his cheek, in the song of every
bird that piped. There memories choked him, of the nights when she
had fought the fever with him, of days when their hearts had danced
together in the joy of work. There he had learned why the human race
continues to wish to live--he had learned to know a sweet woman's
heart.

On the morning of the fourth day he went down to the station and bought
a ticket for Montreal. The station agent-postmistress told him with a
simper that there were letters for him.

"Will you please keep them," Wardwell requested politely, "until I call
on my way back. I--I might lose them."

The next day he was a member of a Canadian infantry regiment, on his
way to an assembling camp.

Through two years he had lived and fought, as other men lived and
fought. He had lain sick and had thirsted and despaired, as other men
did; and he had seen how other men died. About the last matter he was
not surprised, except at the unwinking simplicity of it.

A man stood beside you and asked for a chew of tobacco. The next time
you looked at him he was a corpse, to be buried at once--if there
was time. A man ran shouting by your side, and passed you, perhaps,
and when you caught up with him he was dead. And they went out so
untragically true to their ruling habit and disposition. A talkative
man died talking. A quiet man turned his head from you and died his own
way.

They had been sickening years, those two years when the claws of the
Beast were at the throat of the world. And there had been many times
when Wardwell, in the spirit weariness which every good man felt sooner
or later, would have been willing to lie down and ask for death, saying
that he had done his share. But death had not come for him, and his
mind had turned definitely back and rested with conviction on the
sentence which Augusta had written for him. They were not to have this
life together, but he would not go from here until he had seen her.

The sense of injury and misunderstanding which he had at first nursed
had drifted away. Neither did he feel any of the self blame with which
he had loaded himself in the beginning. Augusta had not done this thing
to them. Neither had his foolish doing effected it. Destiny working
with its dull tool, chance, was fashioning out their lives. He did not
understand. But it seemed that Augusta understood. So, then, he should
not go until he heard her voice calling him.

Then there had come the long looked for call of his own country. He
had gone gladly back across the ocean and they had at once given him
work in the training of student officers. He gave no thought to the
commission which might have been his for the asking. He was not looking
for the high adventure of war as these boys and men strained toward it.
He was heartily sick of war and all that went with it. He had come back
to help raise the posse which would put the ramping Beast in pound.
When that should be done, and he knew that it would be done quickly and
properly, his work would be finished. But first he would see Augusta.

He had submitted to his loss of Augusta much as a maimed man submits to
the loss of a member. He could undoubtedly live on without Augusta. But
it is years before a man, who has, for instance, lost a right arm, can
remember that the arm is no longer there. He was forever turning to her
mentally, and in every crowded street he saw the sweet girlish figure
of Augusta just slipping from sight away from him. He had submitted
passively to the decree of fate, or whatever it was that had taken her
from him, but the living delight of her presence never left him. It was
not memory, nor, in any sense, imagination. It was a fact. In those
wonderful months which they had had together, Augusta had not merely
lived with him. She had so lived herself into his life that she had
become an indefinable, but vital, part of the being that was called
Jimmy Wardwell. Without her this Wardwell did not exist.

It was out of this feeling of Augusta's persisting presence with him
that there grew up in him a conviction.

Sometimes it seemed mere impudence. Again it seemed entirely
reasonable--reasonable and possible only, of course, in connection with
Augusta.

He remembered the night when he had lain out alone in a shell hole at
Messines. He was wounded in the chest and there was no hope of help
coming to him. He could feel the life running out of him, as one after
another of the conscious and unconscious grips of life slipped away
from him. He was dying, so it was plain. But even as he was coming to
that point where he finally surrendered consciousness, he was aware of
a force of life within him which was not being dimmed. That part of him
which he had come to think of as being of Augusta, that much of him was
still living and untouched by death. It was not that he dreamed Augusta
there with him. Nor did his groping senses conjure up for him a vision
of her. She was there, in him, a living part of him, which did not and
would not die.

From that night he had known that he would not die so long as Augusta
lived.

But his thought sometimes went further than this. At the oddest
moments, often when hands and body and brain were busiest with the
surface of things, more than once when he was actually fighting for
his life, there had come to him a flash of something--he did not know
whether it was of foreknowledge or of crazy presumption. But it came to
him.

Might it not be that Augusta and he were actually coming to the
adventure of death together--to _survive_ it!--to hold to each other
_beyond_ it!

If he had believed that the thought was his own, he would have given it
no heed. But he was sure that it was not his own. Augusta had given it
to him. Of that much he was sure. And in that much he did not reject it.

For himself, out of his own experiences, he had seen the chemistry of
death setting to work upon the cooling bodies of men in so many ways,
in such varied circumstances, and yet always with such unfailing method
and matter-of-factness, that he had never seen any reason to believe in
the survival of anything beyond it.

Nevertheless, Augusta had given him the thought.

In the days which he had spent in New York he had looked every moment
for Augusta. But when he had stood one day upon the Avenue and had
scanned the marching of five thousand girl nurses who were preparing
for their work in the train of war, and had not seen Augusta among
them, he was convinced that she was not in the country. He was right,
for Augusta was already in France.

Since he had come back now to what he felt was the business of
concluding the war, he was sure that Augusta was nearer to him than she
had been since that day when she left him in the hills. Day and night,
whether in fighting or in dead sleep, he could feel her presence with
him.

Sometimes she was as poignantly real to him, and as reassuring, as on
the long-ago nights in the wagon and in the sugar hut when he used to
wake up and listen for her breathing. But there was no illusion in this
feeling of her nearness. He knew that Augusta was not really there with
him. She was, he had no doubt, though he had not so much as heard her
name mentioned, behind these lines somewhere doing the work that came
to her. Yet there were times when his head would go up, one ear cocked
up in the old way, and a quick little grin would run across his face,
as though he had just thought of something to tell her that would make
her laugh.

In the last three weeks Jimmy's feeling that Augusta was living in his
life, in every moment of the day's work, had been growing so strong
that he knew it could not go on. The end must be near. He would soon
see Augusta. He began to look for it hourly.

It was peculiar that he now no longer thought of the original cause of
his losing Augusta. War and life had ground all that away. He knew that
he would find Augusta looking only to the future. They would keep only
the memory of those months of dear love that they had lived together.
Their work which they had loved with their souls, the dreams which they
had had together, even these things were of the past, and done with.

Wardwell knew that, left to himself, his mind would have thought only
of going back--when this was over--and, with Augusta, trying to rebuild
and live in the home of dreams that had been their house of love in the
Hills of Desire. But Augusta never went back. She was too vital. She
was too much like life itself.

If he was to have Augusta, to be with her, he must go on.

He was coming swift to the Great Adventure. He could feel the pulse of
his being rising to it.

He did not fear, for he believed that now Augusta wanted him. And if
her eyes saw a light through the dropping darkness, then it was a true
light. He had only to stumble after.

So he smiled contentedly at the young officer's hesitation in speaking
to him of danger, and at the foolish theories of the men regarding his
life.

Augusta had always had her will.

Then he happened to remember--for the first time in many months--that
book which had once seemed more to him than life or death. In New York
the publishers had told him that it had done well, considering war
times and all other things it had done very well. The royalties, they
said, they were still holding, because up to that time they had not
been able to locate Augusta, to whom he had assigned the ownership of
the book three years ago. He had merely told them to keep on looking
for her.

Still smiling, he wished that he and Augusta might have just one good
picnic on those spoiling royalties.

From behind the little mound of dirt on the hillside the machine gun
was dripping a line of bullets along the wall where the Americans
had been. There was nobody there, but the German gunner was not yet
convinced of that. A gentle, steady breeze was coming down from the
slope, clearing the light smoke from the machine gun nests and rolling
it slowly down toward the dry creek bed and the bridge. Wardwell thus
had a perfect view of the ravine.

But the enemy was cautious. Not a head nor even a hand showed above the
line of dirt along the face of the hill. Wardwell searched the ravine
itself. A bush in the midst of the dark green centre of the ravine
seemed to be moving about grotesquely. Wardwell, over his sights,
watched it sharply, until his eyes and his imagination working together
resolved it into its component parts. It was a man with green branches
tied all about him, and he was tugging a heavy machine gun into a new
position.

The effect of his shot gave Wardwell a thorough surprise. Not only did
the man with the branches tied about him disappear, but what had seemed
to be an almost solid hedge of green shrubs across the mouth of the
ravine fell away instantly, revealing some bare rocks and two guns.
Wardwell mentally rubbed his eyes and stared. There must, before, have
been at least three or four men standing about the guns and all draped
in heavy bushes.

As he watched, one of the guns began to fire again, though he could not
see the hands that managed it, and a sudden flutter of twigs and leaves
came pattering down upon his head. They had guessed him out in his tree.

He shifted his position to get the full protection of the body of the
tree, and gave his attention to the lone gun out on the hill. He would
like to put that gun out of working, not because it was doing any harm
just now, but because of what might have to be done later. He watched
patiently for several minutes, while the gun in the ravine continued
to trim the little branches from his tree, but it did not seem that he
would get a chance. The fellow in the ditch was keeping entirely under
cover and working his gun with a stubborn fixity of idea against the
line of the bridge wall.

The sputtering explosion of a soft shell on the bridge startled
Wardwell. Now if the Germans had found the creek bed with gas--and, of
course, they had every range studied down to a matter of feet--then
there was a bad time ahead. He waited while another shell fell into the
creek bed below the bridge and another dropped down in front of him
right near where the two wounded men had been placed. The foul poison
was practically colorless, but, immediately, he could see the little
green tufts of grass in the creek bed withering to death.

He slid to the ground and made a low running dive down the bank of the
creek. The lieutenant was already giving orders to get the two men up
from the bed of the creek and to make holes for them in the top of the
bank on the north side. Wardwell saw that the lieutenant had taken his
decision. They could not stay here. The creek bed would soon fill with
gas. If they were to go back, they must go at once, across the half
mile of open field between them and the river. They must carry at least
one wounded man, and, from the elevation, those machine guns could
follow them every inch of the way. What was worse, the gas would soon
fill the creek bed and then the wind coming down from the hill would
carry it back so that it would follow them to the river.

Well, they were not going back. Or at least, Wardwell judged from the
lieutenant's dispositions, they were not going back until they had made
a try for those machine guns.

Three minutes later they were all strung out just on the edge of the
upper bank, with intervals of about fifty feet between them, their
bodies curled up tight for a spring, their eyes fixed on the spitting
guns up the hill before them. The two hundred and fifty yards of
sloping hillside looked as smooth and bare as the top of a slightly
tilted table. There did not seem to be a hollow anywhere in it, not as
much as the suggestion of a furrow, into which a man might drop for
breath and an instant's respite in his rush up toward those guns.

They were stripped of everything except their rifles and the one or
two bombs that each man could carry in his rush. They had not needed
details of instruction. They had done this thing before.

A man rose silently from the edge of the bank. It was the young
lieutenant himself. He did not stand poised, or look at his men. He
came up running, and shot forward with that peculiar, side-wheeling
motion that many men acquire from running with a foot ball under one
arm while warding off tacklers with the other arm stiff. He ran with
his pistol clutched stiffly in his right hand, his other arm curled in
against his side. Fifty, sixty, seventy feet he drove on, running low
and pigeon-toed, always with that wheeling motion, while the machine
guns dropped their other marks and turned their blazing eyes on him.

Before the lieutenant had dropped safe into a little depression of the
slope, another man was shooting forward away out on the right. Then
another, below the bridge, scooted ahead, dodging along in a way that
was his own. Man after man rose running, dove forward for about the
length of five seconds--a hundred feet maybe--then dropped flat into
anything that looked like a slight protection.

There were no signals, no commands, no noise. It was a game which each
man played in his own way. A simple game with only two rules: First,
they must not bunch together; second, no man should be last--there must
not be any last man.

Saving these two rules, they went forward, each in his own way, each
playing out his own hand with death.

Some ran straight, their heads down, their eyes half shut, thinking
only of speed. Others ran zig-zagging and dodging as though they were
picking their way, although there was no cover at all and no choice of
a way.

To the watching foe, who did not even now dare to raise his head above
the ground line, there seemed to be not more than three or four men
coming up the slope. Of course it was puzzling that those three or
four should be able to be continuously popping up at so many different
places of a long line. There must be more than that number of men. But
there was no way of telling how many. And that, of course, was the
reason for the apparently haphazard manner of the rush.

Wardwell, at the extreme right of the uneven line, ran forward with
longer sprints than was possible for the men near the middle of the
line. In comparison with those others he was reasonably safe out here.
His part would come later when, having gotten beyond the line of the
machine guns, he must circle down upon them shooting and bombing and
yelling while the men in front made the final rush.

He was not often excited now in this business, which had come to be to
him merely the day's work. But, running up the hill, he felt a strange
and wonderful tingle of excitation of spirit. Something was waiting for
him at the end of this run. He was suddenly as sure as he had ever in
his life been sure of anything that this was his last fight.

He felt the breath of bullets driving by near his head and dropped,
mechanically obedient to his training. But he was up again in a moment
and running madly.

Now he was up to the line of the single gun that had been placed out
on the hill. But his business was not with that gun. He must run clear
over the brow of the hill and get down into the ravine before the boys
in front were ready to run straight upon the guns.

He was running wildly now, his body and his spirit strangely lifted
with the sense that the Great Adventure was right ahead. It was not the
eagerness of battle nor the fever of fighting that ran in his blood. He
knew that he was coming to the break in the wall, beyond which lay the
Undiscovered Country--so Augusta was whispering to him.

From the edge of the ravine he saw below him ten or a dozen men lying
and working at the three machine guns. Out in the open he saw the
broken line of his own fellows. There was the young lieutenant lying
flat, wriggling along the ground by inches, and digging impatiently
with his toe. They were ready.

Across the space, on the other side of the ravine, there came running
a youngster whom the boys called "Watertown"--he was forever talking
about the place. He came running to the farther edge of the ravine,
swinging his bomb.

Wardwell flung his first bomb down into the cluster of guns and men,
and leaped sliding, stumbling, falling down the crumbling bank.

Half way down he caught his balance, lay back a little, and steadied
himself to throw the other bomb. Then without looking to see the effect
he gripped his rifle, and yelling madly leaped down towards the guns.

Five seconds later he was lying quietly against the gravel of the bank.
There was a hideous commotion going on about him, but he did not mind
it. There was a sharp pain--it felt like a burn--in his throat, and he
seemed to have trouble breathing. But it did not seem to matter. He was
going to sleep anyway.

And then, presently, he would see Augusta. And then he smiled to
himself. Augusta had always had her will.




X


When Wardwell awoke he was petulantly disappointed. He was not quite
clear as to what he had expected, but that he should be awakened by the
old hated smell of anesthetics was a distinct injury.

He did not feel any immediate physical discomfort, but he knew that
this was only because his body had not yet begun to wake up. There were
even now vague nerve stirrings in various scattered places through his
body, though not connected with each other nor, directly, with him. He
knew that these sensations would soon begin to link up with each other,
and then they would connect up with him. Presently torture would begin.
He knew the whole business. He had watched the process before, and he
cringed at its advance.

He felt like a boy who has been cheated of some wonderful promised
adventure which he had been just about to begin. He was lonely, and
he had been cheated, and if he tried to make the slightest move now
somebody would come and begin to poke at him. Why couldn't they leave
him alone? He wanted to cry.

And yet there was a sort of elusive contentment about this place--he
did not know where or what the place was, and did not care--some kind
of a pleasant memory, as though some one had been here. He thought he
could dream here--if only they would not come poking at him. Maybe he
had been dreaming. He could not remember.

There had once been a little white room somewhere. He could not
remember where, but it did not matter. Augusta was in the little white
room. In fact the little white room and Augusta were much the same
thing. You could not seem to see one without the other.

Why should he think of that little white room and Augusta here? Had
Augusta been here? Somehow it seemed like a place where Augusta had
just been. That was a funny thing to think of, but that was true about
Augusta. He remembered how she had only to be a moment in a room, or
any place, and when she went away you could know that Augusta had been
there. There was a blessedness, some sort of a happy sweetness, that
always came with her and which you could feel after she was gone.

It was strange that he should feel that haunting, ethereal presence of
her here. It had never deceived him before. Could it be coming here to
mock him now? That would be too much!

If he could only get back to sleep before they came to poke at him,
maybe they would leave him alone, and--maybe he could dream. He must
have been dreaming of Augusta.

As a matter of fact, Augusta had been in that place, in that room but
a moment or two before. Perhaps some tone of her voice had touched
something in Wardwell's numb brain and had waked him slowly.

She had not seen him. There was no good reason why she should go near
him or see him. He was just one of twenty-five or thirty variously
wrapped bundles that had just come down from the field stations, each
containing a man. So long as the man slept after the jolting and the
fainting fatigue of the journey, he need not be disturbed.

So Augusta had gone on about her affairs. For she was a very busy woman
in a very busy place.

Now she was slowly following a surgeon as he worked his way down a
long line of cots, stopping at each one to inspect the bandages which
had been loosened by a nurse going before, giving instruction for
the washing of a wound where he found that necessary, placing a few
swift stitches where the condition of a cut or an open wound demanded,
probing sharply and directly with never an unnecessary touch, a man
who did three days' work in every one of his days, and often as much
more in one of his nights, with a steady temper and a will that
procreated discipline and swift service in those about him. He was a
middle sized man with Scotch gray eyes, a short gray mustache, very
small feet, and excessively large hands whose bones had been overdrawn
by hard, grubbing work in his youth on a Maine farm. He was short and
blunt of word as most strong men will be when they are putting the
best of their lives into the strokes of their day's work. But he was
sensitive as a cat or a bird to anything unusual in the air about him.
He repeated with unvarying distinctness the few clear orders at the
end of each examination, assuming as bluntly as if Augusta had been an
echo, or an adding machine, that she heard correctly, that she wrote
the instructions properly and that she took each page from her pad and
stuck it on the chart at the head of each bed. She was there for that
purpose, just like the rest of his instruments. But there was something
about this girl today that seemed to be speaking. It was not speaking
to him particularly, but to all the world that had the sense to
understand. There was a persistent breath of happiness about her that
was as patent as sunshine yet as elusive as a perfume in a dream.

After he had finished with the last of the row of men, he stopped
in the act of drying his hands and looked quizzically at her. He
remembered that yesterday and the day before he had seen in this
girl's eyes a peculiar, strained, listening look, as though she were
trying to see something or maybe hear something outside the range of
ordinary senses. He had seen that the girl had been laboring under
some terrifying anxiety, but, as it had not affected the mechanical
perfection of her work, and certainly was not connected with the work,
he had said nothing. Now as he saw the quiet loveliness of some assured
happiness in her face, he said:

"Young lady, what wonderful thing have you been seeing, since
yesterday?"

Augusta looked up at him in startled wonder, but she did not evade or
ask him what he meant. She told him the simple truth, so that he might
make what he would of it.

"It isn't anything that I've _seen_. It's just something that I _know_."

"Um-hum," agreed the doctor cordially. "Very satisfactory, I'm sure.
And very illuminating."

He turned and went out of the ward door into the sunshine of the hot
afternoon. Crossing the wide open court where the great red cross was
painted on the hard whitewashed surface of the ground, he reflected
that, whereas most women would have smiled and evaded and offered some
subterfuge and he could then have guessed the facts to a practical
certainty, this girl had probably spoken the precise truth--leaving him
exactly as wise as he had been before asking.

Augusta, walking slowly back to the head of the line, wondered,
smiling, just what the doctor would have said if she had really told
him what she meant. She had spoken the literal truth, but it was very
far from being what he would have thought truth.

Two days before she had caught a glimpse of Jimmie Wardwell lying with
his head thrown back against a bank of stones and earth. And she had
seen a great, gaping wound at the base of his throat where his shirt
had been torn open. It was but an instant flash of vision that had come
to her while she was in the act of writing a letter for a wounded man.
The man had stopped for a moment, waiting to think of the next thing to
be said in the letter. And while she sat waiting with her writing hand
suspended over the paper she had looked straight at the dirty, streaked
side of a ravine, and there was Jimmie lying there with a trace of a
tired but triumphant little laugh on his face. Even in the instant she
was sure that she saw him tremble and quiver back against the bank, as
though death were striking.

Then the voice of the man on the cot beside her went on slowly--the
letter was to his younger brother at home:

"Tell Mom not to bother any more with sweaters, we'll all be home for
Christmas anyway."

Augusta's poised hand fell mechanically to the paper and began to write.

She had seen no more. All that day and yesterday she had strained at
the windows of her soul, praying and striving to catch again a sight of
her loved one. But there had come to her nothing but a cold, terrifying
conviction that Jimmie was dead. It must be that he was dead, for if
he were alive she was sure that she could make him know that she was
crying to him, and she would be able to see him.

Through two days of heart agony she had walked and worked, her body
and her outward mind responding capably to the demands of each minute,
while her own inner being struggled with the desperation of death, to
free itself from the limitations of the senses, so that it might find
its mate. But, though her soul had cried and fought and suffered until
it seemed that she herself must die, there had come to her vision
nothing but the black wall of death.

Jimmie was dead. There was a corpse lying out somewhere under a
bank--maybe the dirt had rolled down over it now--and that was the end.
There was nothing more. The black conviction of despair, of hope dead
and buried, settled down upon her. Her love was dead. This world was
empty, and there was no other.

Late at night, lying alone in her little wood-walled room over in the
nurses' pavilion, writhing in her pain, Augusta had spoken aloud.

"You fooled me, God," she said bitterly. "You taught me to believe. And
there is nothing--_nothing_."

But the sound of her own voice in the uninterested darkness had turned
her thought back to her self. She had only herself to blame. She had
cheated herself. She had built up for herself a dream. How could she
complain that she should not find it to be only a dream?

Three years ago, on that hideous last day in the little house among
the trees in the Hills of Desire, she had stood looking at a scattered
bundle of letters, and she had seen a glimpse of a woman's face, a
dark, discontented, attractive face.

At that moment there had come into her mind, full formed, the thought
that had been the key to her action and to the words that she had
written on the typewriter for Jimmie.

She did not know whether Jimmie loved this woman. She did not greatly
believe that he did. But it had come to her that her love was spoiled
even by the thought that that other woman had looked at it. There was
not room for her love in the same world where that other woman lived.
Augusta could not share her love loaf even so much as to have it in the
same world where there was another who thought greedily upon it.

Out of that thought had grown the conviction which she had written in
the line to Jimmie. For this life their love had been spoiled. They
were not to have it.

But as she still stood there a whisper had come to her--she had never
thought to question whence it came--a clear, flashing, fearful hope had
come to her. Jimmie and she might not live this life together. But one
day--the sweet hope sang high to her heart--Jimmie and she, they two,
would take the road together, the road that led through the Curtain to
the Great Adventure in the Hills of All Desire.

She had lived through the years on the breath of that whisper which had
come to her. She had believed in it as a promise. She had kept it in
her heart. Only in the very secretest of her communings with the Jimmie
to whom her heart constantly talked had she told it to him.

She had hardly put her thought into words, but it was a part of her
faith in love. She would not believe that love like hers could die. She
did not know how, or in what terms, but she was sure that, somehow, she
and Jimmie would find the broken line of love and go on with it.

It had seemed so simple, when it was not near. She had all the time
been sure that when Jimmie was ready to go--she had not thought that it
would be very long--then she would know it, and she would be ready to
go with him.

Many times in the three years she had known when Jimmie was in danger.
Twice she had seen his name among Americans wounded with the Canadians.
But she had not needed that outward evidence. She had often been able
to call him and to feel his response. Though she had never before been
able to see him, she had at all times known that he was living and
going on.

And lately she had become almost bold. She had felt the coming of what
was to be the great moment. She thought that she had felt the shadow of
the wings of death--and she was not afraid. She believed that Jimmie
would soon be taking the road into the Beyond--and she grew almost
openly confident that she was going with him.

She had lived on the very tip of every moment. With a strange defiance
of reality, she, a soundly healthy young woman--not knowingly exposed
to any more danger than twenty million other inhabitants of France,
went into every action of her waking hours with a sort of provisional
apology. It might be that she should not have time to finish that
action. If so, would some one please see to it.

She had forgotten completely that other woman. She remembered only the
dear and perfect love of those months alone with Jimmie; the joy of
the irresponsible hours upon the road; the fearful sweetness of their
utter seclusion in the hills and their complete dependence one upon the
other. She seemed to see now that they had, in those months, realized
all the very best that this world gives in love.

She had even come to think that she was glad that their perfect days
of love had ended in a sharp crash. How pitiful it would have been to
have seen that love, which was all beauty and tenderness and sacrifice
on both sides, dribble down into the commonplace of discontent, or, at
best, a kindly tolerance! She was glad that it had come to an end while
it was yet a perfect, beautiful thing; glad that she could link those
months of wonder love directly with the wonder and mystery of what was
to come to them.

The three years of separation had not kept them apart. It seemed that
they had at first been thrown violently away from each other. But
there had been an immediate rebound, and Augusta knew that they had
ever since been approaching each other in understanding and spirit.
She had worked, and trained, to prepare herself for this work so dear
to her which she was doing now. And Jimmie had suffered--here in
France. Augusta's eyes had seen the things which he must have gone
through, things which her heart and her intuitions had before told her
concerning him. But all seemed only to fit them into the design that
was prepared for them. In fact, in the supreme egoism of love, it had
not been difficult to believe that the whole world's tragedy had been
in some measure arranged to form a setting for their love.

Every subconscious thought of her waking days, every half formed dream
of day or night had of late been bringing Jimmie to Augusta, until it
seemed that the terrible world about her--which she was still obliged
to call reality--could not much longer persist. The end must be near.
For she had felt the coming of her love so vividly that material, brute
things could not much longer keep it from her.

Jimmie was coming to her! The mistakes, the travail, the dim
misunderstandings of this phase of being which was called life, would
soon be past. Jimmie and she would once more take the open road out
into the country of God.

For weeks her spirit had lived upon and breathed upon her dream, until
it, the dream, had become to her the real. And it seemed to her that
she was already going through the transition that would bring her out
with Jimmie upon the glorious, untried road that lay beyond the world's
death. She had no fear. The very daring of her dream had raised in her
a faith in love that trembled at nothing.

And then, in an instant, everything had gone black.

She had seen Jimmie. And she had thought that she saw Jimmie die,
and--and--_nothing_--

Jimmie was gone from her forever. And there was left to her nothing but
the dry little reflection that she had been a fool.

In those two black days when her soul strained, listening and watching
over the edges of the normal world, she had breasted the dark tide of
despair running full down upon her, and not even she herself could
have told how near she was to going down under it.

And in the darkness, as would happen, the old love came back to mock
her. Oh, why, _why_? had she not kept the love that was hers? Why had
she not fought that dark woman for it? She had meanly run away, because
it was not good enough, because it was not perfect. Because she had
found a flaw in it she had thrown away her jewel.

Now it was given her, for punishment, to know how good that love had
been. The touch of Jimmie's clumsy hands as he had tucked her into her
hammock at night burned her now with the maddening sweetness of a lost
dream. The nights when she had watched over him, the pride and the
swelling love of seeing rugged health come back to him, the memories of
brave, struggling, laughing walks by his side through wind and snow,
all these and a thousand dear, intimate memories came to haunt her with
the mocking difference between a warm, happy human love, and the empty
dream that she had made for herself.

But she did not go down under despair.

Jimmie was gone. She would never be near him again. She did not say it.
But she had no strength to deny it. She was dumb. She was defeated.
There was nothing to live for, and, apparently, nothing to die for.

But her heart held on, beaten, unhoping, but living.

And today, not an hour ago, a wonderful thing had happened. A miracle
had stolen upon her unawares. She could not now say just where she was
or what she was doing at the time. She had heard nothing, seen nothing.
But she found that she was suddenly, and unaccountably, certain that
Jimmie was not dead.

She did not try to think what might have brought this intelligence
to her. Perhaps he had come back to consciousness and his heart had
answered her. She did not care. She did not want to think. Her dream
had sprung back to life again and was once more carrying her, happy but
still trembling and fearful, up again through the heights from which
she had fallen.

She had told the doctor the exact truth. It was not anything that she
had seen or heard. But she _knew_ that somehow a message had come to
her heart from Jimmie. God had not mocked her faith. She _knew_. And
she waited.

It was a long, long summer afternoon through which she worked and
waited, her spirit quivering to the sense of a great wonder hovering
near at hand. She did not feel or recognize any premonition that
Wardwell was physically near her. She had schooled herself well since
those terrible early days, back in the base hospital, when she had
fearfully crept near to and studied every long bundle of a broken man
that was brought in, praying that it might be, and that it might not
be, Jimmie. She did not do those things now, for she had learned the
heavy cost of them upon her strength and her nerves. And now, too, she
was still living upon that sight of Jimmie lying out in the open at the
foot of a bank, and, curiously, she did not think of him as having been
moved from there.

When Wardwell awoke again it was because his throat was hurting
abominably. His mind seemed to clear instantly, and he could not
remember to have felt so wide awake in a long time. He supposed that
this meant that he was going to get well again. He was not pleased
with the prospect, for the weeks of monotonous endurance just ahead
were too well known to be welcome; but he guessed that he would have
to go through with it. This confounded pain in his throat was about
the worst thing he had ever experienced. His mouth was all hard and
cracked inside and the big bandage above his shoulders seemed to be set
on purpose to choke him. He would like to put up his hand and see if
he couldn't ease it a little, but he was sure that as soon as he made
a move someone would notice him, and they would begin the business of
poking at him. He would rather stand this as long as he could if only
he were left to himself.

It was night now--he knew the shaded lights, the enforced quiet, the
restless murmurings of men asleep and half asleep, the feeling of
a hospital ward at night, as well as he knew the sound of his own
breathing--and he had been moved since that last time when he had been
awake. Maybe they had been obliged to clear him out of the receiving
ward--probably that was where he had been that last time--without
operating on him. Maybe the boys were coming down from the stations
pretty fast. He had seen hospitals when the surgeons couldn't begin to
keep up with the work as the men were brought in. In fact he had seen
everything. He had seen the whole blasted wreck of war from beginning
to end, and he didn't want to see any more of it.

His head was propped a little, so that he could just see over the roll
of bandage on his neck. A wardmaster was coming softly down the lane
between the two rows of cots. "I know his kind," Wardwell muttered
mentally, while he shut his eyes and waited, perfectly quiet, for the
wardmaster to pass, "their idea of a good time is to pop a fellow out
of a sound sleep right bang onto an operating table."

He felt rather than heard the wardmaster stop an instant at the foot
of the cot, looking down at him, then he heard the footfall go softly
on down the lane. "Fooled you that time, old scout," thought Wardwell,
with a sort of a foolish gladness and a feeling that he was just about
to either laugh or cry. His throat did hurt like fury.

Then he thought of Augusta. Curious, but he had been certain that she
was somewhere near that last time when he had been awake. Now he did
not seem to be able to feel her near. But just then his mind played a
trick upon him. He did not know whether or not he had shut his eyes for
the moment, but he saw something that he very distinctly remembered
having seen before. One feverish night, in the wagon, on the road, four
years ago, he had wakened from an early sleep. A bar of white moonlight
came in through a little square opening above the flap of the wagon and
fell directly on the pale golden crown of Augusta's rippling hair. She
was kneeling on the bare floor of the wagon, her arms and head sagged
forward into her little hammock.

She had fallen asleep at her night prayers.

And he felt now the big choking throb of pity and tenderness and love
that had come up in his throat at the sight of her. The memory dropped
away instantly, and he was again staring through the dimmed lights at
the bare board walls of the long ward room. But it did not seem that
Augusta was quite so far away as she had been when he awoke.

It is of no connection here. But Augusta was, at that moment, across
the open court in the nurses' pavilion, in the dark by the side of her
own cot, happily saying her tired night prayers.

Wardwell lay quiet a little while, wondering how long he would be able
to hold out against the burning pain in his throat. Perhaps he was
foolish after all. Maybe he might as well call attention to himself and
let them have it over with. They wouldn't hurt him any more than this.

There was a queer thumping noise coming from somewhere, which he
could not make out, and which annoyed him. It was not gunfire of any
kind--didn't he know every kind?--and if it were, what would it be
doing around here? He must be miles and miles down from any fighting
line. This was a regular, big, established hospital. He had no idea
as to just where it was, but it was certainty a long way from where
fighting was to be done. Yet there were explosions going on somewhere
around here. He had no personal interest in the matter, but he wanted
to know what the deuce they were thinking of. Didn't they know that
there were wounded men here who ought to have quiet!

But the thumping kept on, and came closer.

Now there were other sounds, voices outside. Other people had noticed
the thing, and they were going to have it stopped. Well, it certainly
ought to be stopped. Wardwell saw that some of the fellows around him
were being waked up by it, and he felt sorry and indignant for them. It
was a shame! Some confounded fool--

The heavy thud and shudder of an explosion shook the light walls of the
ward, and on its heels there followed a roaring, tearing, ripping sound
of timbers and boards being torn apart and flung about through the
air. Then there rose the cries of men and women, running together and
shouting in the night. Then you could hear sharp orders snapped out of
the confusion.

Another and more terrifying explosion blew out the end of a building
just a little way from the ward where Wardwell lay, and a flying
timber, driven endwise, jabbed through the roof and stuck six feet of
its length into the ward, right over a fellow's head, fourth bed to the
left. Wardwell was sure he counted right. He would like to know who the
poor fellow--

Now there came a continuous rock and roar that seemed to come right up
out of the earth and turn to smash everything flat, and the popping of
aircraft guns hurried up by cursing men began to announce the hideous
truth of what was happening.

A man whose cot lay foot to foot across from Wardwell's sat straight
up. He was an oldish man, among the men here, with a good round face
and a bald head.

"God blast them blind!" he said soberly. "They're bombing the Red Cross
right over our heads!"

The wardmaster came walking up the line between the beds, speaking
steadily through the roaring, splintering din.

"Silence, boys," he was saying, "and keep the blankets up over you.
It's all we can do. They're passing over now. It can't last long."

Now Wardwell considered this thing, and his hands went slowly and
craftily up to the bandages around his neck. He was fairly certain that
if he loosened the bandages he would bleed and faint and die in a very
short time. God! A man had _some_ rights in this business!

He had stood out and lain out to be shot at from every angle with every
kind of a gun that had been made. And he had not even complained at the
gas. But to be butchered now, when he was lying here with a pain in his
throat that would have made him cry if even the gentlest nurse's hand
touched him! He would not have it! A man had _some_ rights!

His hands found the bandages and began to tug at them, but a frightful
crash up at the end of the ward, where the wardmaster had just walked,
held his attention for a moment.

In the tail light of the explosion he saw boards, and men, and a
medicine chest, and beds, and the end of the building, erupting all
together out into the night. And then, when he could look again he saw
through the open space the low horizon stars shining gently in their
places.

The lights were gone now, and he could feel the fright rising in the
men around him. They were afraid in the dark. They began to yell. Some
swore queer oaths, original ones, with tears in their throats. Some
called to God. And some yelled pitifully to somebody to bring a light.

Wardwell began again to tug at the bandages.

But just then, above the cursing, and some praying, and the frightful,
tearing roar of death all about, he heard a girl, down near the end of
the room that was still sound, a girl had come into the ward singing.
He listened, and the words that he heard were these:

      "_Gyp, Gyp, me little horse?_"
      "_Gyp-Gyp, again, sir._"
      "_How many miles to Dublin?_"
      "_Four score an' ten, sir._"

High and sweet as the voice of a robin bird in the trees of the Hills
of Desire he heard the voice of his love.

Then the howl and the tearing jaws of death all around had their sway
again. He had thought always that Augusta would somehow come to him
before the end. But, My God! he had never bargained for this! This was
real! Augusta was here, in this death hole! He must get her out of
here. What business had she! Who had let her come here?

He was out of his cot and staggering, bumping down the cot frames,
toward the voice that rang again triumphant, singing:

      "_Gyp, Gyp, me little horse?_"
      "_Gyp-Gyp, again, sir._"

Now he was coming near her. Now! Another staggering step or two, if he
could only keep his feet straight! Now he was just going to touch her,
to take her in his arms! He had almost lurched past her in the dark.
Now he had her in his arms!

He thought he whispered her name, but it was really a wild yell in her
ear:

"_Augusta!_"

In the first swaying, burning instant their hearts leaped together
and were one at last. There was nothing from the past; nothing to be
explained, nothing to be condoned. Love and truth had burned all things
clear and true for them. They belonged to each other. They were of each
other. And neither life nor death could touch their love now!

And now, curiously, it was Wardwell who did not resist what seemed to
be the conclusion of fate. He had not wanted to die with Augusta. He
had wanted to _live_ with her! But now, if she had foreseen this, that
they were to go together in this way: Well, he was willing to take her
lead, as always. She should have her way. Her way was always right.

But Augusta had her love in her arms, and he was wounded, and fainting,
and leaning upon her. The fierce, protecting surge of mothering nature
rose up in her. She looked into the face of fire, and red murder, and
death, and sprang into battle with them all for him. They should not
have him! He was hers, and _she_ would have him!

She had come into her ward singing her little song, to help the poor
fellows through a bad few minutes. She could not have dreamed that
it was to be as bad as this fiendish reality, but she had already
forgotten her indignation, her pity, her thought of anyone or anything
but Jimmie Wardwell who was swaying leaning upon her breast. To take
him out of here to the blessed open, to keep him from being hurt, was
the thing, it seemed, for which she had lived her life!

The short moment of darkness in which they had somehow found each
other was blasted out into a white flaring light and they were shaken
stumbling and trembling together by an explosion which completely blew
out the end of the building where Augusta had come in.

Looking over her shoulder she saw that she must take him, carry him if
he could not help her, out through that band of fire where already the
jagged sides and roof of the building were being fringed with scallops
of licking flame.

She called on him for an effort, pleading with him to try, to put one
foot before another, to help just one little bit. But his weight lay
almost dead upon her shoulder. He was fainting from his effort to come
to her and from the shock of the last terrible explosion. She must do
all herself. The hoop of fire flamed before her, through which she
must drag him, and her mind and reason quailed but her heart fought on
for its love, blessing God for the strong sure feet that the hills had
given her and the cunning strength in handling the helpless bodies of
men which her training had taught her. These things had been given to
her for this her moment.

Her ears were full of the fearful cries of men in madness, her eyes
were open only to see that ring of fire toward which she was staggering
with her burden, but her heart was strong and sure. What cared she for
the dreams of a heaven that she had made, when she had the warm body of
her love in her arms!

All the women in creation might write love letters to him, but he
was hers and she would take him through that ring of fire and out to
safety! He was hers, and she would have him!

Men shouted to her, to go back, that help was coming quickly another
way, that she was crazy to try to go out that way. But she fought
her way out step by step, through all the blurring horror, up to the
ring of fire, and, staggering, whispering, praying to her love, she
went stumbling through wreck and spitting flames, half carrying, half
dragging her man out into God's open.

A little way out in the grass, away from the worst of the danger, she
stopped--she could go no farther--and let him slip, cunningly and
gently as she could, full length upon the ground.

For the moment, they were left alone. Men running shouting to the work
of rescue did not heed them. And Augusta knelt fixing the big bandage
to Jimmie's throat, and whispering to him. For now, when the strength
of her body was exhausted, her heart went cold with the fear that he
had died in her arms.

But the cool freshness of the grass came up like a reviving shock to
Wardwell's body. He stirred easily, drew two or three good breaths, and
then he spoke, slowly and easily.

"How is it, dear," he asked, plainly knowing that Augusta was there
with him, "are we going _on_, or do we stay? Whichever it is, you know,
I'm for you."

Augusta gave one little animal cry of pure joy. For, instantly, she
_knew_ that all was well, that she would have him again, alive and
strong! Then she bubbled over in tears and the hysteria of gladness,
crying:

"We're going to _stay_, Jimmie darling, we're going to _stay_! And if I
wasn't afraid of hurting you, I'd hug and kiss you till--!"

"Oh, you might take a chance--" said Jimmie. And he went contentedly
off to sleep.

Out of the chaos of noise and the uncertain light a big tall doctor
man came striding across the grass to them, dressed in a long white
operating coat which he had forgotten to throw off.

Augusta rose to her knees and to her overstrained senses the tall
white figure advancing upon her must have taken on some kind of a
supernatural appearance. We do not know just what was in her mind,
probably it is not important. But she raised her hand in a foolish
little salute, and said, somewhat apologetically, to the doctor:

"If you please, God, we've changed our mind. We'd much rather live."

Then she slid quietly down in a faint beside Jimmie.

To this day that surgeon thinks that he did not hear correctly.


      Printed in the United States of America




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:


This book uses dialect. To retain the intended flavor of the book,
spelling and punctuation in dialect text have not been altered.

Hyphenation and spelling of non-dialect wording in the text were made
consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; if
no predominant preference was found, or if there is only one occurrence
of the word, spelling and hyphenation were not changed.

Punctuation has been standardized to modern usage for better
readability.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Page 229, typo, "of" repeated, one "of" removed. (a living part of of
him,)





End of Project Gutenberg's The Hills of Desire, by Richard Aumerle Maher