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-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30093 ***

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-BY RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER

-

-Author of "The Heart of a Man," etc.

-

-M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY

-

-CHICAGO--NEW YORK

-

-

-

-

-Copyright 1916

-

-By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

-

-Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916.

-

-Reprinted March, 1916 June, 1916 October, 1916.

-

-February, 1917.

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS

-

-  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE

-        I THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN                                   3

-       II THE CHOIR UNSEEN                                          35

-      III GLOW OF DAWN                                              64

-       IV THE ANSWER                                               103

-        V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE                                     137

-       VI THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD                             174

-      VII THE INNER CITADEL                                        210

-     VIII SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?                             243

-       IX THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD                               277

-        X THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID                                  311

-

-

-

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-

-

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-I

-

-THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN

-

-

-The Bishop of Alden was practising his French upon Arsene LaComb. It

-was undoubtedly good French, this of M'sieur the Bishop, Arsene

-assured himself. It must be. But it certainly was not any kind of

-French that had ever been spoken by the folks back in Three Rivers.

-

-Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not understand all that the

-Bishop said, it was equally certain that the Bishop could not

-understand all that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a cheery

-companion for the long road. He took his upsets into six feet of

-Adirondack snow, as man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft and

-the road is uncertain.

-

-In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and the railroad behind and

-had headed into the hills. For thirty miles, with only one stop for a

-bite of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded along up the

-half-broken, logging roads. Now they were in the high country and

-there were no roads.

-

-Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a drifting storm had followed

-him down from Little Tupper, covering the road that he had made and

-leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped driving and held only a

-steady, even rein to keep his ponies from stumbling, while he let the

-tough, willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road.

-

-Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene had been tossed off the

-single bobsled out into the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting

-all day long on the swaying bumper, with no back rest, feet braced

-stiffly against the draw bar in front to keep the dizzy balance. But

-it was the only way that this trip could be made.

-

-The Bishop knew that he should not have let the confirmation in French

-Village on Little Tupper go to this late date in the season. He had

-arranged to come a month before. But Father Ponfret's illness had put

-him back at that time.

-

-Now he was worried. The early December dark was upon them. There was

-no road. The ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve bad miles

-to go.

-

-Still, things might be worse. The cold was not bad. He had the bulkier

-of his vestments and regalia in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to

-the sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils and the other sacred

-essentials were slung securely about his body. And a tumble more or

-less in the snow was a part of the day's work. They would break their

-way through somehow.

-

-So, with the occasional interruptions, he was practising his amazing

-French upon Arsene.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old Massachusetts stock. He had

-learned the French that was taught at Harvard in the fifties.

-Afterwards, after his conversion to the Catholic Church, he had gone

-to Louvain for his seminary studies. There he had heard French of

-another kind. But to the day he died he spoke his French just as it

-was written in the book, and with an aggressive New England accent.

-

-He must speak French to the children in French Village to-morrow, not

-because the children would understand, but because it would please

-Father Ponfret and the parents.

-

-They were struggling around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain and the

-Bishop was rounding out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration

-of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a sharp:

-

-"Jomp, M'sieur l'Eveque, _jomp_!"

-

-The Bishop jumped--or was thrown--ten feet into a snow-bank.

-

-While he gathered himself out of the snow and felt carefully his

-bulging breast pockets to make sure that everything was safe, he saw

-what had happened.

-

-The star-faced pony on the near side had slipped off the trail and

-rolled down a little bank, dragging the other pony and Arsene and the

-sled with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies, man and sled at

-the bottom of a little gully, and as the Bishop floundered through the

-snow to help he feared that it was serious.

-

-Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under the sled, his head just

-clear of the ponies' heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in

-the _patois_ that they understood. He was within inches of having his

-brains beaten out by the quivering hoofs; he could not, literally,

-move his head to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with them

-as quietly as if he stood at their heads.

-

-They kicked and fought each other and the sled, until the influence of

-the calm voice behind them began to work upon them. Then their own

-craft came back to them and they remembered the many bitter lessons

-they had gotten from kicking and fighting in deep snow. They lay still

-and waited for the voice to come and get them out of this.

-

-As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to release Arsene, he

-remembered that he had seen men under fire. And he said to himself

-that he had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this little

-French-Canadian storekeeper.

-

-The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had been soft under him,

-and lunged for the ponies' heads.

-

-"Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now! Ah-a! Bien!"

-

-He had them both by their bridles and dragged them skilfully to their

-feet and up the bank. With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all

-safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail.

-

-Arsene now looked around for the Bishop.

-

-"Ba Golly! M'sieur l'Eveque, dat's one fine jomp. You got hurt, you?"

-

-The Bishop declared that he was not in any way the worse from the

-tumble, and Arsene turned to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up

-the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection of his harness

-and said ruefully:

-

-"Dat's bad, M'sieur l'Eveque. She's gone bust."

-

-He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his hand. The trouble was

-quite evident.

-

-"What can we do?" asked the Bishop. "Have you any rope?"

-

-"No. Dat's how I been one big fool, me. I lef' new rope on de sled

-las' night on Lowville. Dis morning she's gone. Some t'ief."

-

-"We must get on somehow," said the Bishop, as he unbuckled part of the

-lashing from his bag and handed the strap to Arsene. "That will hold

-until we get to the first house where we can get the loan of a trace.

-We can walk behind. We're both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is

-it far?"

-

-"Dat's Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks, 'bout quarter mile, maybe."

-The little man looked up from his work long enough to point out a

-clump of hemlocks that stood out black and sharp against the white

-world around them. As the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among

-the trees, showing where life and a home fought their battle against

-the desolation of the hills.

-

-"I donno," said Arsene speculatively, as he and the Bishop took up

-their tramp behind the sled; "Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don' like

-Canuck. Maybe he don' lend no harness, I donno."

-

-"Oh, yes; he will surely," answered the Bishop easily. "Nobody would

-refuse a bit of harness in a case like this."

-

-It was full dark when they came to where Tom Lansing's cabin hid

-itself among the hemlocks. Arsene did not dare trust his team off the

-road where they had footing, so the Bishop floundered his way through

-the heavy snow to find the cabin door.

-

-It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out of the hemlocks that had

-stood around it and belonged to a generation already past. But it was

-still serviceable and tight, and it was a home.

-

-The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was no response from within.

-It was strange. For there was every sign of life about the place.

-After knocking a second time without result, he lifted the heavy

-wooden latch and pushed quietly into the cabin.

-

-A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite the door. On

-the hearth stood a big black and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not

-the slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his four legs

-planted squarely under him, his whole body quivering with fear. His

-nose was pointed upward as though ready for the howl to which he dared

-not give voice. His great brown eyes rolled in an ecstasy of fright

-but seemed unable to tear themselves from the side of the room where

-he was looking.

-

-Along the side of the room ran a long, low couch covered with soft,

-well worn hides. On it lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out

-awkwardly and unnaturally, showing that he had been dragged

-unconscious to where he was. A candle stood on the low window ledge

-and shone down full into the man's face.

-

-At the head of the couch knelt a young girl, her arm supporting the

-man's head and shoulder, her wildly tossed hair falling down across

-his chest.

-

-She was speaking to the man in a voice low and even, but so tense that

-her whole slim body seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as

-though her very soul came to the portals of her lips and shouted its

-message to the man. The power of her voice, the breathless, compelling

-strength of her soul need seemed to hold everything between heaven

-and earth, as she pleaded to the man. The Bishop stood spellbound.

-

-"Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My Father!" she was saying over and

-over. "Come back, come back, Daddy Tom! It's not true! God doesn't

-want you! He doesn't want to take you from Ruth! How could He! It's

-not never true! A tree couldn't kill my Daddy Tom! Never, never! Why,

-he's felled whole slopes of trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!"

-

-For a time which he could not measure the Bishop stood listening to

-the pleading of the girl's voice. But in reality he was not listening

-to the sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She was fighting

-bitterly with death. She was calling all the forces of love and life

-to aid her in her struggle. She was following the soul of her loved

-one down to the very door of death. She would pull him back out of the

-very clutches of the unknown.

-

-And the Bishop found that he was not merely listening to what the girl

-said. He was going down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing

-every word of her pleading. The force of her will and her prayer swept

-him along so that with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed

-for the man to open his eyes.

-

-Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible fear seemed to grip and

-crush her, so that she cowered and hid her face against the big,

-grizzled white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed in terror.

-

-The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched the girl on the head,

-saying:

-

-"Do not give up yet, child. I once had some skill. Let me try."

-

-The girl turned and looked up blankly at him. She did not question who

-he was or whence he had come. She turned again and wrapped her arms

-jealously about the head and shoulders of her father. Plainly she was

-afraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insisted

-gently and in the end she gave him place beside her.

-

-He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listen

-at the man's breast.

-

-Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life,

-certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man's pockets for the

-knife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly.

-

-"It was just a little while ago," she answered, in short, frightened

-sentences. "My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Father

-had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinned

-down under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and told

-me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it must

-be I hurt him; he fainted. I can't make him speak. I cut boughs and

-made a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can't make him speak.

-Is he?-- Is he?-- Tell me," she appealed.

-

-The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man's

-jacket and shirt.

-

-"You were all alone, child?" he said. "Where could you get the

-strength for all this? My driver is out on the road," he continued, as

-he worked on. "Call him and send him for the nearest help."

-

-The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at the

-man on the couch, went out into the snow.

-

-The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.

-

-The man's shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing there

-to constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upper

-ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them were

-caved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of them

-must have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung on

-that side.

-

-The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bled

-outwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little,

-and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula.

-

-He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was a

-little black ball of steel.

-

-While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, a

-long tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever so

-slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyes

-opened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop

-thought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come back

-naturally to a realisation of things.

-

-While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly, and the Bishop stood

-holding the little black ball between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth

-Lansing came back into the room.

-

-Seeing her father's eyes open, the girl rushed across the room and was

-about to throw herself down by the side of the couch when her father's

-voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible and clear, stopped

-her.

-

-"The White Horse Chaplain!" he said in a voice of slow wonder. "But I

-always knew he'd come for me sometime. And I suppose it's time."

-

-The Bishop started. He had not heard the name for twenty-five years.

-

-The girl stopped by the table, trembling and frightened. She had heard

-the tale of the White Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her

-that her father was delirious and raving. But he spoke so calmly and

-so certainly. He seemed so certain that the man he saw was an

-apparition that she could not think or reason herself out of her

-fright.

-

-The Bishop answered easily and quietly:

-

-"Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did not think anybody

-remembered now."

-

-Tom Lansing's eyes leaped wide with doubt and question. They stared

-full at the Bishop. Then they turned and saw the table standing in its

-right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the table; saw the dog at

-the fireplace. The man there was real!

-

-Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle to rise, then fell back

-gasping.

-

-The Bishop put his hand gently under the man's head and eased him to a

-better position, saying:

-

-"It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving past and had broken a

-trace, and came in to borrow one from you. You got a bad blow. But

-your girl has just sent my driver for help. They will get a doctor

-somewhere. We cannot tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not

-so bad as it looks." But, even as he spoke, the Bishop saw a drop of

-blood appear at the corner of the man's white mouth; and he knew that

-it was as bad as the worst.

-

-The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes moved again from the

-Bishop to the girl and the everyday things of the room.

-

-It was evident that his mind was clearing sharply. He had rallied

-quickly. But the Bishop knew instinctively that it was the last,

-flashing rally of the forces of life--in the face of the on-crowding

-darkness. The shock and the internal hemorrhage were doing their work

-fast. The time was short.

-

-Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with a look, he called the

-girl to him.

-

-Through the seventeen years of her life, since the night when her

-mother had laid her in her father's arms and died, Ruth Lansing had

-hardly ever been beyond the reach of her father's voice. They had

-grown very close together, these two. They had little need of clumsy

-words between them.

-

-As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild, eager, rebellious,

-seared her father with their terror-stricken, unbelieving question.

-

-But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her wild questioning had

-given him. She crushed back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely

-with herself until she was able to force into her eyes a look of

-understanding and great mothering tenderness.

-

-Her father saw the struggle and the look, and blessed her for it with

-his eyes. Then he said:

-

-"You'll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you? I know I'm desertin'

-you, little comrade, right in the mornin' of your battle with life.

-But you won't be afraid. I know you won't."

-

-The girl shook her head bravely, but it was clear that she dared not

-trust herself to speak.

-

-"I'm goin' to ask this man here to look to you. He came here for a

-sign to me. I see it. I see it plain. I will trust him with your life.

-And so will you, little comrade. I--I'm droppin' out. He'll take you

-on.

-

-"He saved my life once. So he gave you your life. It's a sign, my

-Ruth."

-

-The girl slipped her hands gently under his head and looked deep and

-long into the glazing eyes.

-

-Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was facing death--and life

-alone.

-

-Obedient to her father's look, she rose and walked across the room.

-She saw that he had something to say to this strange man and that the

-time was short.

-

-In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin she stood, and throwing

-one arm up against the frame of the door she buried her face in it.

-She did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty of time for

-that.

-

-The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant an irrevocable

-change had come over her. She had knelt a frightened, wondering,

-protesting child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of death and its

-infinite certainty, of life and its infinite chance, had risen from

-her knees.

-

-As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke hurriedly:

-

-"I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I did I forgot it, and it

-don't matter.

-

-"I'm dying. I don't need any doctor to tell me. I'll be gone before he

-gets here.

-

-"You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when Curtis' men were cut to

-pieces in the second charge on the trenches. They left me there,

-because it was every man for himself.

-

-"A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg. And you came drivin' mad

-across the field on a big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me

-where I lay. You threw me across your saddle and walked that wild

-horse back into our lines.

-

-"Do you remember? Dying men got up on their elbows and cheered you. I

-lay six weeks in fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?"

-

-"I do, now," said the Bishop. "Our troop came back to the Shenandoah,

-and I never knew what--"

-

-That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back upon him. He was just a

-few months ordained. He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union

-army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the ways and business of a

-battlefield, he had found himself that day in the sand dunes before

-Fort Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about him. Hail, fumes,

-lightning and thunder of battle rolled over him and sickened him. He

-saw his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against the

-Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself, and fade away back into

-the smoke. He lost it, and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered

-blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead man, now speaking to

-a living stricken one: Here straightening a torn body and giving

-water; there hearing the confession of a Catholic.

-

-Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis' troops came yelling across the flat

-land. Once, twice they tried the trenches and were driven back into

-the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a big white horse. The

-animal, mad with fright and blood scent, charged down upon him as he

-bent over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and fought the horse.

-Before he realised what he was doing, he was in the saddle riding back

-and forth across the field. Right up to the trenches the horse carried

-him.

-

-Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy, a thin, long-legged boy

-with a long beardless face. He lay there marking the high tide of the

-last charge--the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain, tumbling down

-somehow from his mount, picked up the writhing boy and bundled him

-across the saddle. Then he started walking back looking for his own

-lines.

-

-Now here was the boy talking to him across the mists of twenty-five

-years. And the boy, the man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom

-Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have died from fever bloat

-or been trampled to death in the succeeding charges. He had given him

-life. And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he had given that

-daughter life. Now he knew what Lansing was going to say.

-

-"I didn't know you then," said Lansing. "I don't know who you are now,

-Chaplain, or what you are.

-

-"But," he went on slowly, "if I'd agiven you a message that day you'd

-have taken it on for me, wouldn't you?"

-

-"Of course I would."

-

-"Suppose it had been to my mother, say: You'da risked your life to get

-it on to her?"

-

-"I hope I would," said the Bishop evenly.

-

-"I believe you would. That's what I think of you," said Tom Lansing.

-

-"I went back South after the war," he began again. "I stole my girl's

-mother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonel

-that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her up

-here into the hills and she died when the baby was just a few weeks

-old.

-

-"There ain't a relation in the world that my little girl could go to.

-I'm goin' to die in half an hour. But what better would she be if I

-lived? What would I do with her? Keep her here and let her marry some

-fightin' lumber jack that'd beat her? Or see her break her heart

-tryin' to make a livin' on one of these rock hills? She'd fret

-herself to death. She knows more now than I do and she'd soon be

-wantin' to know more. She's that kind.

-

-"She'd ought to have her chance the way I've seen girls in towns

-havin' a chance. A chance to study and learn and grow the way she

-wants to. And now I'm desertin'; goin' out like a smoky lamp.

-

-"It was a crime, a crime!" he groaned, "ever to bring her mother up

-into this place!"

-

-"You could not think of all that then. No man ever does," said the

-Bishop calmly. "And I will do my best to see that she gets her chance.

-I think that's what you want to ask me, isn't it, Lansing?"

-

-"Do you swear it?" gasped Lansing, struggling and choking in an effort

-to raise his head. "Do you swear to try and see that she gets a

-chance?"

-

-"God will help me to do the best for her," said the Bishop quietly. "I

-am the Bishop of Alden. I can do something."

-

-With the definiteness of a man who has heard a final word, Tom

-Lansing's eyes turned to his daughter.

-

-Obediently she came again and knelt at his side, holding his head.

-

-To the very last, as long as his eyes could see, they saw her smiling

-bravely and sweetly down into them; giving her sacrament and holding

-her light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.

-

-When the last twinging tremour had run through the racked body, she

-leaned over and kissed her father full on the lips.

-

-Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into the night.

-

-While the Bishop was straightening the body on the couch, a young man

-and two women came into the room.

-

-They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and her sister, neighbours

-whom Arsene had brought.

-

-The Bishop was much relieved with their coming. He could do nothing

-more now, and the long night ride was still ahead of him.

-

-He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had gone out into the cold,

-and asked him to find her.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had played with Ruth Lansing

-since she was a baby, for they were the only children on Lansing

-Mountain. He knew where he would find her.

-

-Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of the hills, where people

-had to meet their problems and burdens alone, took command at once.

-

-"No, sir," she replied to the Bishop's question, "there's nobody to

-send for. The Lansings didn't have a relation living that anybody ever

-heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom Lansing's father and

-mother. They're buried out there on the hill where he'll be buried.

-

-"There's some old soldiers down the West Slope towards Beaver River.

-They'll want to take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on

-Monday," she went on rapidly, sketching in the programme. "We have a

-preacher if we can get one. But when we can't my sister Letty here

-sings something."

-

-"Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a way," said the Bishop slowly.

-"At least, I was at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like to--"

-

-"Were you at Fort Fisher?" broke in the sister Letty, speaking for the

-first time. "And did you see Curtis' colour bearer? He was killed in

-the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton, with long, black

-hair?"

-

-"He had an old scar over his eye-brow." The Bishop supplemented the

-description out of the memory of that day.

-

-"He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five years ago to-morrow,"

-said the woman trembling. "You saw him die?"

-

-"He was dead when I came to him," said the Bishop quietly, "with the

-stock of the colour standard still clenched in his hand."

-

-"He was my--my--" Sweetheart, she wanted to say. But the hill women do

-not say things easily.

-

-"Yes?" said the Bishop gently. "I understand." She was a woman of his

-people. Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he could read

-the years of her faithfulness to the memory of that lean, dark face

-which he had once seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow.

-

-Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about her sister.

-

-"Are you--?" she questioned, hesitating strangely. "Are you the White

-Horse Chaplain?"

-

-"The boys called me that," said the Bishop. "Though it was only a name

-for a day," he added.

-

-"It was true, then?" she said slowly, as if still unready to believe.

-"We never half believed our boys when they came home from the war--the

-ones that did come home--and told about the white horse and the priest

-riding the field. We thought it was one of the things men see when

-they're fighting and dying."

-

-Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room leading Ruth Lansing by

-the hand.

-

-The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The Bishop drew her over to

-the fire.

-

-"I must go now, child," he said. "To-morrow I must be in French

-Village. Monday I will be here again.

-

-"Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he said to me, about you?"

-

-The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the Bishop's face, then

-nodded her head.

-

-"Then, we must think and pray, child, that we may know how to do what

-he wanted us to do. God will show us what is the best. That is what he

-wanted.

-

-"God keep you brave now. Your friends here will see to everything for

-you. I have to go now."

-

-He crossed the room and laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the

-dead man, renewing in his heart the promise he had made.

-

-Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting that he would be back before

-noon Monday, he went out to where Arsene and his horses were stamping

-in the snow.

-

-The little man had replaced the broken trace, and the ponies, fretting

-with the cold and eager to get home, took hungrily to the trail.

-

-But the Bishop forgot to practise his French further upon Arsene. He

-told him briefly what had happened, then lapsed into silence.

-

-Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing had said about the girl.

-She knew more now than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew now. But

-more than Tom Lansing had known half an hour ago.

-

-She would want to see the world. She would want to know life and ask

-her own questions from life and the world. In the broad open space

-between her eye-brows it was written that she would never take

-anybody's word for the puzzles of the world. She was marked a seeker;

-one of those who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand to

-know what it means. They never find out. But, heart break or sparrow

-fall, they must go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own way.

-The world is infinitely the better through them. But their own way is

-hard and lonely.

-

-She must go out. She must have education. She must have a chance to

-face life and wrest its lessons from it in her own way. It did not

-promise happiness for her. But she could go no other way. For hers was

-the high, stony way of those who demand more than jealous life is

-ready to give.

-

-The Bishop only knew that he had this night given a promise which had

-sent a man contentedly on his way. Somehow, God would show him how

-best to keep that promise.

-

-And when they halloed at Father Ponfret's house in French Village he

-had gotten no farther than that.

-

-

-Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his couch. Clean white sheets

-had been draped over the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking

-in through the west window picked out every bare thread of his service

-coat and glinted on the polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung

-into the belt at his side.

-

-Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head of the couch, listening

-to the comments and stumbling condolences of neighbours from the high

-hills and the lower valleys. They were good, kindly people, she knew.

-But why, why, must every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous

-lie-- How natural he looked!

-

-He did not. He did not. He did _not_ look natural. How could her Daddy

-Tom look natural, when he lay there all still and cold, and would not

-speak to his Ruth!

-

-He was dead. And what was death-- And why? _Why?_

-

-Who had ordered this? And _why?_

-

-And still they came with that set, borrowed phrase--the only thing

-they could think to say--upon their lips.

-

-Out in Tom Lansing's workshop on the horse-barn floor, Jacque Lafitte,

-the wright, was nailing soft pine boards together.

-

-Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not leave Daddy Tom to her?

-She wanted to ask him things. She knew that she could make him

-understand and answer.

-

-She slipped away from the couch and out of the house. At the corner of

-the house her dog joined her and together they circled away from the

-horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where her father had been

-working yesterday.

-

-She found her father's cap where it had been left in her fright of

-yesterday, and sat down fondling it in her hands. The dog came and

-slid his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle into the cap

-between her hands.

-

-So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following her with her coat

-and hood.

-

-"You better put these on, Ruth," he said, as he dropped the coat

-across her shoulder. "It's too cold here."

-

-The girl drew the coat around her obediently, but did not look up at

-him. She was grateful for his thought of her, but she was not ready to

-speak to any one.

-

-He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and drew the dog over to

-him.

-

-After a little he asked timidly:

-

-"What are you going to do, Ruth? You can't stay here. I'll tend your

-stock and look after the place for you. But you just can't stay

-here."

-

-"You?" she questioned finally. "You're going to that Albany school

-next week. You said you were all ready."

-

-"I was all ready. But I ain't going. I'll stay here and work the two

-farms for you."

-

-"For me?" she said. "And not be a lawyer at all?"

-

-"I--I don't care anything about it any more," he lied. "I told mother

-this morning that I wasn't going. She said she'd have you come and

-stay with her till Spring."

-

-"And then?" the girl faced the matter, looking straight and unafraid

-into his eyes. "And then?"

-

-"Well, then," he hesitated. "You see, then I'll be twenty. And you'll

-be old enough to marry me," he hurried. "Your father, you know, he

-always wanted me to take care of you, didn't he?" he pleaded,

-awkwardly but subtly.

-

-"I know you don't want to talk about it now," he went on hastily. "But

-you'll come home with mother to-morrow, won't you? You know she wants

-you, and I--I never had to tell you that I love you. You knew it when

-you wasn't any higher than Prince here."

-

-"Yes. I always knew it, and I'm glad," the girl answered levelly. "I'm

-glad now, Jeff. But I can't let you do it. Some day you'd hate me for

-it."

-

-"Ruth! You know better than that!"

-

-"Oh, you'd never tell me; I know that. You'd do your best to hide it

-from me. But some day when your chance was gone you'd look back and

-see what you might have been, 'stead of a humpbacked farmer in the

-hills. Oh, I know. You've told me all your dreams and plans, how

-you're going down to the law school, and going to be a great lawyer

-and go to Albany and maybe to Washington."

-

-"What's it all good for?" said the boy sturdily. "I'd rather stay here

-with you."

-

-The girl did not answer. In the strain of the night and the day, she

-had almost forgotten the things that she had heard her father say to

-the White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call the Bishop.

-

-Now she remembered those things and tried to tell them.

-

-"That strange man that said he was the Bishop of Alden told my father

-that he would see that I got a chance. My father called him the White

-Horse Chaplain and said that he had been sent here just on purpose to

-look after me. I didn't know there were bishops in this country. I

-thought it was only in books about Europe."

-

-"What did they say?"

-

-"My father said that I would want to go out and see things and know

-things; that I mustn't be married to a--a lumber jack. He said it was

-no place for me in the hills."

-

-"And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, to

-school?" he guessed shrewdly.

-

-"I don't know, I suppose that was it," said the girl slowly.

-"Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He had

-taught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills was

-full of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and see

-and pick up. And to-day I don't care."

-

-She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the dog at her feet, and

-down the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were all

-she had in the world.

-

-The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly.

-

-He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:

-

-"Don't forget to count me, Ruth. You've got me, you know."

-

-Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought.

-Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it

-was just the eternal surrender of woman.

-

-When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears,

-the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run

-out into the night.

-

-He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white,

-desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untried

-troth.

-

-When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white bosom of the hillside, and

-the people were dispersing from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting came

-and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop's sharp old eyes had told him

-to expect something of what was coming. He liked the look of the boy's

-clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance of his eyes. They

-told of dependableness and plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was

-not a boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be his.

-

-"Ruth told me that you were going to take her away from the hills," he

-began. "To a school, I suppose."

-

-"I made a promise to her father," said the Bishop, "that I would try

-to see that she got the chance that she will want in the world."

-

-"But I love her. She's going to marry me in the Spring."

-

-The Bishop was surprised. He had not thought matters had gone so far.

-

-"How old are you?" he asked thoughtfully.

-

-"Twenty in April."

-

-"You have some education?" the Bishop suggested. "You have been at

-school?"

-

-"Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth. And last Winter at the

-Academy in Lowville. I was going to Albany to law school next week."

-

-"And you are giving it all up for Ruth," said the Bishop incisively.

-"Does it hurt?"

-

-The boy winced, but caught himself at once.

-

-"It don't make any difference about that. I want Ruth."

-

-"And Ruth? What does she want?" the Bishop asked. "You are offering to

-make a sacrifice for her. You are willing to give up your hopes and

-work yourself to the bone here on these hills for her. And you would

-be man enough never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe

-that. But what of her? You find it hard enough to give up your chance,

-for her, for love.

-

-"Do you know that you are asking her to give up her chance, for

-nothing, for less than nothing; because in giving up her chance she

-would know that she had taken away yours, too. She would be a good and

-loving companion to you through all of a hard life. But, for both your

-sakes, she would never forgive you. Never."

-

-"You're asking me to give her up. If she went out and got a start,

-she'd go faster than I could. I know it," said the boy bitterly.

-"She'd go away above me. I'd lose her."

-

-"I am not asking you to give her up," the Bishop returned steadily.

-"If you are the man I think you are, you will never give her up. But

-are you afraid to let her have her chance in the sun? Are you afraid

-to let her have what you want for yourself? Are you afraid?"

-

-The boy looked steadily into the Bishop's eyes for a moment. Then he

-turned quickly and walked across the room to where Ruth sat.

-

-"I can't give it up, Ruth," he said gruffly. "I'm going to Albany to

-school. I can't give it up."

-

-The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:

-

-"You needn't have tried to lie, Jeff; though it's just like you to put

-the blame on yourself. I know what he said. I must think."

-

-The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He saw them suddenly light

-up. He knew what that meant. She was seeing the great world with all

-its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he himself had seen it. Now

-he knew that he had lost.

-

-The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready to go. The day was

-slipping away and before him there were thirty miles and a train to be

-caught.

-

-"We must not be hurried, my children," he said, standing by the boy

-and girl. "The Sacred Heart Academy at Athens is the best school this

-side of Albany. The Mother Superior will write you in a few days,

-telling you when and how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go

-as she directs.

-

-"You have been a good, brave little girl. A soldier's daughter could

-be no more, nor less. God bless you now, and you, too, my boy," he

-added.

-

-When he was settled on the sled with Arsene and they were rounding the

-shoulder of Lansing Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace, he

-turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.

-

-"To-day," he said to himself, "I have set two ambitious, eager souls

-upon the high and stony paths of the great world. Should I have left

-them where they were?

-

-"I shall never know whether I did right or not. Even time will mix

-things up so that I'll never be able to tell. Maybe some day God will

-let me see. But why should he? One can only aim right, and trust in

-Him."

-

-

-

-

-II

-

-THE CHOIR UNSEEN

-

-

-Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms of the Sacred Heart convent

-in Athens thrumming out a finger exercise that a child of six would

-have been able to do as well as she.

-

-It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world, this, into which she

-had been suddenly transplanted. It was as different from the great

-world that she had come out to see as it was from the wild, sweet life

-of the hills where she had ruled and managed everything within reach.

-Mainly it was full of girls of her own age whose talk and thoughts

-were of a range entirely new to her.

-

-She compared herself with them and knew that they were really children

-in the comparison. Their talk was of dress and manners and society and

-the thousand little and big things that growing girls look forward to.

-She knew that in any real test, anything that demanded common sense

-and action, she was years older than they. But they had things that

-she did not have.

-

-They talked of things that she knew nothing about. They could walk

-across waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walked

-on. They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or choking

-as she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had never

-in her life received a scolding, would have been driven into

-hysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses were

-supposed to be new. She knew that these were not things that they had

-learned by studying. They just grew up to them, just as she knew how

-to throw a fishing line and hold a rifle.

-

-But she wanted all those things that they had; wanted them all

-passionately. She had the sense to know that those were not great

-things. But they were the things that would make her like these other

-girls. And she wanted to be like them.

-

-Because she had not grown up with other girls, because she had never

-even had a girl playmate, she wanted not to miss any of the things

-that they had and were.

-

-They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick, eager mind sprang at

-books and fairly tore the lessons from them. She ran away from the

-girls in anything that could be learned in that way. But when she

-found herself with two or three of them they talked a language that

-she did not know. She could not keep up with them. And she was stupid

-and awkward, and felt it. It was not easy to break into their world

-and be one of them.

-

-Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls but

-infinitely removed from it--the world of the sisters.

-

-That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave their

-hours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was a

-world all by itself.

-

-What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What was

-there in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They must

-once have been as different as every girl is different from every

-other girl.

-

-How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air of

-never being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence was

-there behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to come

-out with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light that

-shone in their faces?

-

-Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What did

-they have to be happy about?

-

-Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They were

-Catholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her

-question aside with a stare:

-

-"Sisters always look like that."

-

-So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world

-of the sisters behind those walls. What did they do in there? Did

-they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they

-just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of

-God and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed so

-familiar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especially

-when He was displeased.

-

-She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, where

-there were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the trees

-to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as a

-printed book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She could

-read the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden.

-Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away from

-her.

-

-Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its door

-in the face of her sharp, hungry mind.

-

-And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worlds

-about her--the world of the Catholic Church.

-

-Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little green

-building in French Village where the "Canucks" went to church.

-

-Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. The

-pictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroom

-door. The books she read, the talk she heard was all filled with it.

-It came and went through every door of life.

-

-All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers were

-alive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much.

-The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought against

-it. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted to

-argue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrong

-sometimes.

-

-But just when she was sure that she had found something false,

-something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her,

-she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was always

-ready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she had

-gotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what was

-wrong with her that she could not understand? She could learn

-everything else faster and more easily than the other girls could.

-

-Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fell

-nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burning

-tears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her.

-

-The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills to

-conquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her.

-Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand these

-strange women about her. Would never understand them.

-

-Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her,

-where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow and

-the wild winds were her friends?

-

-She threw herself forward on her arms and gave way utterly, crying in

-great, heart-breaking, breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her

-home, for her hills.

-

-At five o'clock Sister Rose, coming to see that the music rooms were

-aired for the evening use, found Ruth an inert, shapeless little

-bundle of broken nerves lying across the piano.

-

-She took the girl to her room and sent for the sister infirmarian.

-

-But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only to leave her alone.

-

-The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness that every

-new pupil in a boarding school is liable to, sent some of the other

-girls in during the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she drove

-them away. She was not cross nor pettish. But her soul was sick for

-the sweeping freedom of her hills and for people who could understand

-her.

-

-She rose and dragged her little couch over to the window, where she

-could look out and up to the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped

-down upon her in the hills.

-

-She did not know the names that they had in books, but she had framed

-little pet names for them all out of her baby fancies and the names

-had clung to them all the years.

-

-She recognised them, although they did not stand in the places where

-they belonged when she looked at them from the hills.

-

-Out among them somewhere was Heaven. Daddy Tom was there, and her

-mother whom she had never seen.

-

-Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it seemed, there came stealing

-into her sense a sound. Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so

-illusive. It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear as other

-sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to steal past the clumsy senses

-directly into the spirit and the heart.

-

-It was music. Yes. But it was as though the Soul of Music had freed

-itself of the bondage and the body of sound and notes and came

-carrying its unutterable message straight to the soul of the world.

-

-It was only the sisters in their chapel gently hymning the _Salve_ of

-the Compline to their Queen in Heaven.

-

-Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignant

-evensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled with

-books and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her.

-To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laid

-bare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.

-

-She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of the

-windows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knew

-vaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried her

-beyond all thought.

-

-She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood them

-if she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to _Our Life, our

-Sweetness and our Hope_ caught her heart up into a world where words

-were never needed.

-

-She heard the cry of the _Banished children of Eve_. The _Mourning and

-weeping in this vale of tears_ swept into her soul like the flood-tide

-of all the sorrow of all the world.

-

-On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear the

-triumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of _The

-Promises of Christ_.

-

-The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows,

-leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar.

-She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of that

-unseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to the

-measure of the heart of the world.

-

-It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but the

-undying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of the

-little blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on their

-pyres. It was the cry of strong men and valiant women crushed under

-the forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, which

-knows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this.

-She realised it as she lay there trembling.

-

-Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked or

-laughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart and

-play upon it and lead her whether she would or no.

-

-It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her.

-

-Through all the long night she fought it. She would not! She would not

-give up her life, her will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?

-

-It would take her spirit out of the freedom of the hills and make it

-follow a trodden way. It would take her life out of her hands and

-maybe ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and the wind, in a

-darkened convent. It would take her will, the will of a soldier's

-daughter, and break it into little pieces to make a path for her to

-walk upon!

-

-No! No! No! Through all the endless night she moaned her protest. She

-would not! She would not give in to it.

-

-It would never let her rest. Through all her life that voice of the

-Choir Unseen would strike the strings of her heart. She knew it.

-

-But she would not. Never would she give in to it.

-

-In the morning, even before the coming of the dawn, the music came

-again; and it beat upon her worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched

-at her heart until she could stand it no longer.

-

-The sisters were taking up again the burden and the way of the day.

-

-She could not stand it! She could not stay here! She must go back to

-her hills, where there was peace for her.

-

-She heard the sister going down to unlock the street door so that

-Father Tenney could walk in when it was time and go up to the chapel

-for the sisters' early mass.

-

-That was her chance! The sisters would be in chapel. The girls would

-be still in their rooms.

-

-She dressed hastily and threw her books into a bag. She would take

-only these and her money. She had enough to get home on. The rest did

-not matter.

-

-When she heard the priest's step pass in the hall, she slipped out and

-down the dim, broad stairs.

-

-The great, heavy door of the convent stood like the gate of the world.

-It swung slowly, deliberately, on its well-oiled, silent hinges.

-

-She stood in the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, free

-air of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fled

-away into the dawn.

-

-The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain as Jeffrey Whiting came

-out of his mother's house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His

-uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn with the team and sled.

-Jeffrey threw his trunk upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe.

-It was twenty-five miles of half broken road and snowdrifts to

-Lowville and the railroad.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical American farm boy has been

-doing for the last hundred years and what he will probably continue to

-do as long as we Americans are what we are. He is not always a

-dreamer, your farm boy, when he starts down from his hills or his

-cross-roads farm to see the big world and conquer it. More often than

-you would think, he knows that he is not going to conquer it at all.

-And he is not, on the other hand, merely running away from the

-drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will probably have to work

-harder than he would ever have worked on the farm. But he knows that

-he has things to sell. And he is going down into the markets of men.

-He has a good head and a strong body. He has a power of work in him.

-He has grit and energy.

-

-He is going down into the markets where men pay the price for these

-things that he has. He is going to fight men for that price which he

-knows his things are worth.

-

-Jeffrey's mother came out carrying a canvas satchel which she put on

-the sled under Cassius Bascom's feet.

-

-"Don't kick that, Catty," she warned, "Jeff's lunch is in it. And,

-Jeff, don't you go and check it with the trunk." There was just a

-little catch in the laugh with which she said this. She was

-remembering a day more than twenty years before when she had started,

-a bride, with big, lumbering, slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting,

-Jeffrey's father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with their

-lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting checked the satchel through

-from Lowville to Buffalo, and they had nearly starved on the way. It

-was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity. But she never quite

-forgave him for telling it on himself when they got back. It had been

-a standing joke in the hills all these years.

-

-She was just a typical mother of the hills. She loved her boy. She

-needed him. She knew that she would never have him again. The boys do

-not come back from the market place. She knew that she would cry for

-him through many a lonely night, as she had cried all last night. But

-she was not crying now.

-

-Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his as she stretched her

-arms up around the neck of her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss

-her.

-

-He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart. He knew his mother very

-well. So he began with the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to

-tell when we were leaving.

-

-"It'll only be a little while, Mother. You won't find the time

-slipping by, and I'll be back."

-

-She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys always knew it was a

-lie. But she backed him up sturdily:

-

-"Why, of course, Jeff. Don't worry about me. You'll be back in no

-time."

-

-Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the house with a dark, oblong

-object in her hands.

-

-"There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just tried to forget this on

-purpose. It's too late to put it in the trunk now; so you'll just have

-to put it in your overcoat pocket."

-

-Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown brick covered with

-felt, a foot warmer. Aunt Letty had made him take one with him when he

-went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter, and he and his brick

-had furnished much of the winter's amusement there. The memory of his

-humiliations on account of that brick would last a lifetime. He

-wondered why maiden aunts could not understand. His mother, now, would

-have known better. But he dutifully put the thing into the pocket of

-his big coat--he could drop it into the first snowback--and turned to

-kiss his aunt.

-

-"I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany," she lectured. "Make

-your landlady heat it for you every night."

-

-A noise in the road made them all turn.

-

-Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were driving into the yard.

-

-It was evident from the signs that the men had been having a hard time

-on the road. They must have been out all night, for they could not

-have started from anywhere early enough to be here now at sunrise.

-

-Their harness had been broken and mended in several places. The cutter

-had a runner broken. The horses were cut and bloody, where they had

-kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.

-

-As they drove up beside the group in the yard, one of the men

-shouted:

-

-"Say, is there any place we can put in here? We've been on that road

-all night."

-

-"Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and warm yourselves," said

-Mrs. Whiting.

-

-"Rogers," said the man who had spoken, addressing the other, "if I

-ever get into a place that's warm, I'll stay there till spring."

-

-Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of the cutter and stepped

-stiffly out into the snow. He swept the group with a sharp, a praising

-eye, and asked:

-

-"Who's the one to talk to here?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and replied with another

-question.

-

-"What do you want?"

-

-Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby grey moustache and

-cold grey eyes, looked the youth over carefully as he spoke.

-

-"I want a man that knows this country and can get around in it in this

-season. I was brought up in the country, but I never saw anything like

-this. I wouldn't take a trip like this again for any money. I can't do

-this sort of thing. I want a man that knows the country and the people

-and can do it."

-

-"Well, I'm going away now," said Jeffrey slowly, "but Uncle Catty here

-knows the people and the country better than most and he can go

-anywhere."

-

-The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish man on the sled.

-Then he turned away decisively. Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old

-face all withered and puckered to one side, where a splinter of shell

-from Fort Fisher had taken away his right eye, was evidently not the

-kind of man that the big man wanted.

-

-"Where are you going?" he asked Jeffrey sharply.

-

-"Albany Law School," said Jeffrey promptly.

-

-"Unstrap the trunk, young man. You're not going. I've got something

-for you right here at home that'll teach you more than ten law

-schools. Put both teams into the barn," the big man commanded loudly.

-

-Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would oppose the will of

-this brusque stranger. But he knew that he would not do so. In that

-moment something told him that he would not go to law school; would

-never go there; that his life was about to take a twist away from

-everything that he had ever intended.

-

-Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:

-

-"Come into the house."

-

-In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom poured boiling tea for

-the two men, Rogers, cup in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and

-explained himself. The other man, whose name does not matter, sank

-into a great wooden chair at the side of the fire and seemed to be

-ready to make good his threat of staying until spring.

-

-"I represent the U. & M. railroad. We are coming up through here in

-the spring. All these farms have to be given up. We have eminent

-domain for this whole section," said Rogers.

-

-"What do you mean?" asked Jeffrey. "The railroad can't run _all over_

-the country."

-

-"No. But the road will need the whole strip of hills for timber.

-They'll cut off what is standing and then they'll stock the whole

-country with cedar, for ties. That's all the land's good for,

-anyway."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting's mouth opened for an answer to this, but his mother's

-sharp, warning glance stopped him. He understood that it was his place

-to listen and learn. There would be time enough for questions and

-arguments afterward.

-

-"Now these people here won't understand what eminent domain means,"

-the big man went on. "I'm going to make it clear to you, young man. I

-know who you are and I know more about you than you think. I'm going

-to make it clear to you and then I'm going to send you out among them

-to make them see it. They wouldn't understand me and they wouldn't

-believe me. You can make them see it."

-

-"How do you know that I'll believe you?" asked Jeffrey.

-

-"You've got brains. You don't have to _believe_. I can _show_ it to

-you."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed to taking

-responsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anything

-and this perhaps had given him more than the average boy's good

-opinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtly

-than this man's bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by a

-man of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is a

-man, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced

-men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.

-

-"Do you know what an option is?" the man began again.

-

-"Of course I do."

-

-"I thought so," said Rogers, in a manner that seemed to confirm his

-previous judgment of Jeffrey's brains. "Now then, the railroad has

-got to have all these farms from Beaver River right up to the head of

-Little Tupper Lake. I say these people won't know what eminent domain

-means. You're going to tell them. It means that they can sell at the

-railroad's price or they can hold off and a referee will be appointed

-to name a price. The railroad will have a big say in appointing those

-referees. Do you understand me?"

-

-"Yes. I see," said Jeffrey. "But--"

-

-"No buts at all about it, young man," said Rogers, waving his hand.

-"The people have got to sell. If they give options at once--within

-thirty days--they'll get more than a fair price for their land. If

-they don't--if they hold off--their farms will be condemned as forest

-land. And you know how much that brings.

-

-"You people will be the first. You can ask almost anything for your

-land. You'll get it. And, what is more, I am able to offer you,

-Whiting, a very liberal commission on every option you can get me

-within the time I have said. This is the thing that I can't do. It's

-the thing that I want you to do.

-

-"You'll do it. I know you will, when you get time to think it over.

-Here are the options," said the big man, pulling a packet of folded

-papers out of his pocket. "They cover every farm in the section. All

-you have to do is to get the people to write their names once. Then

-your work is done. We'll do the rest and your commissions will be

-waiting for you. Some better than law school, eh?"

-

-"But say," Jeffrey stammered, "say, that means, why, that means my

-mother and the folks here, why, they'd have to get out; they'd have to

-leave their home!"

-

-"Of course," said Rogers easily. "A man like you isn't going to keep

-his family up on top of this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you'll

-have the best home in Lowville for them, where they can live in style,

-in less than six months. Do you think your mother wants to stay here

-after you're gone. You were going away. Did you think," he said

-shrewdly, "what life up here would be worth to your mother while you

-were away. No, you're just like all boys. You wanted to get away

-yourself. But you never thought what a life this is for her.

-

-"Why, boy, she's a young woman yet. You can take her out and give her

-a chance to live. Do you hear, a chance to live.

-

-"Think it over."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than he had ever tried to

-think in his life. But he could make nothing of it.

-

-He thought of the people, old and young, on the hills, suddenly set

-adrift from their homes. He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius

-and Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back to. And he

-thought of money--illimitable money: money that could do everything.

-

-He did not want to look at his mother for counsel. The man's talk had

-gone to his head. But, slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his

-mother's, and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look which told

-him to wait, wait. He caught the meaning and spoke it brusquely:

-

-"All right. Leave the options here. I'll see what we'll do. And I'll

-write to you next week."

-

-No. That would not do. The big man must have his answer at once. He

-stormed at Jeffrey. He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished Miss

-Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius, but that guileless man led

-him off into such a discussion of cross grafting and reforestation

-that he was glad to drop him.

-

-In the end, he saw that, having committed himself, he could do no

-better than leave the matter to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for

-thought, the boy could not refuse his offer.

-

-So the two men, having breakfasted and rested their horses, set out on

-the down trip to Lowville.

-

-Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother came to a decision.

-

-"It is too big for us, Jeff," she said. "We do not know what it means.

-Nobody up here can tell us. The man was lying. But we do not know why,

-or what about.

-

-"There is one man that could tell us. The White Horse Chaplain, do you

-remember him, Jeffrey?"

-

-"I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me."

-

-"Only to give her her chance, my son. Do not forget that. He could

-tell us what this means. I don't care anything about his religion.

-Your Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day at Fort Fisher. I

-don't. He is the Catholic Bishop of Alden. You'll go to him to-morrow.

-He'll tell you what it means."

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very much worried. For the third

-time he picked up and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of the

-Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him that Ruth Lansing had left

-the convent that morning. But the third perusal of the message did not

-give him any more light on the matter than the two previous readings

-had done.

-

-Why should the girl have gone away? What could have happened? Only the

-other day he had received a letter from her telling of her studies and

-her progress and of every new thing that was interesting her.

-

-The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home where he had found her

-"Daddy Tom" dying, and where he had buried him on the hillside.

-Probably the girl would go back and try to live there. And he thought

-of the boy who had told him of his love and that he wanted to keep

-Ruth there in the hills.

-

-As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary came to the door to

-tell him that the boy, Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking

-to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature of his business to

-any one but the Bishop himself.

-

-

-The Bishop was startled. He had understood that the young man was in

-Albany at school. Now he thought that he would get a very clear light

-upon Ruth Lansing's disappearance.

-

-"I came to you, sir," said Jeffrey when the Bishop had given him a

-chair, "because you could tell us what to do."

-

-"You mean you and your--neighbour, Ruth Lansing?"

-

-"Why, no, sir. What about her?" said Jeffrey quickly.

-

-The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching look, and saw his mistake.

-The boy knew nothing.

-

-

-"This," the Bishop answered, as he handed Jeffrey the open telegram.

-

-"But where's she gone? Why did she go?" Jeffrey broke out, as he read

-the message.

-

-"I thought you were coming to tell me that."

-

-"No," said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop's meaning quickly. "She didn't

-write to me, not at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn't have it. But

-she wrote to my mother and she didn't say anything about leaving

-there."

-

-"I suppose not," said the Bishop. "She seems to have gone away

-suddenly. But, I am forgetting. You came to talk to me."

-

-"Yes." And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly and shortly, of the coming

-of Rogers and his proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to tell

-how he had been carried away by the man's offer and his flattery. He

-made it plain that it was only his mother's insight and caution that

-had held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.

-

-The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness of the young

-fellow. It was good to hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his

-old-fashioned, stiff way and said:

-

-"Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise woman. You will convey to

-her my deepest respect.

-

-"I do not know what it all means," he went on, in another tone. "But I

-can soon find out."

-

-He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the door the Bishop said:

-

-"Will you see, please, if General Chandler is in his office across the

-street. If he is, give him my respects and ask him to step over here a

-moment."

-

-The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the doorway.

-

-"What is it?" asked the Bishop.

-

-"There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She says she must see you,

-but she will not give a name. She seems to be in trouble, or

-frightened."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for the door.

-

-"Sit down where you were, young man," said the Bishop sharply. If Ruth

-Lansing were out there--and the Bishop half believed that she

-was--well, it _might_ be coincidence. But it was too much for the

-Bishop's credulity.

-

-"Send the girl in here," he said shortly.

-

-Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went straight to the Bishop. She

-did not see Jeffrey.

-

-"I came straight here all the way," she said, "to tell you, Bishop,

-that I couldn't stay in the convent any longer. I am going home. I

-could not stay there."

-

-"I am very glad to see you, Ruth," said the Bishop easily, "and if

-you'll just turn around, I think you'll see some one who is even more

-pleased."

-

-Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at sight of Jeffrey was

-abundant proof to the Bishop that the coming of these two to his door

-was indeed a coincidence.

-

-"Now," said the Bishop quickly, "you will both sit down and listen. It

-concerns both of you deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General

-Chandler. You have both heard of him. He is the political power of

-this part of the State. He can, if he will, tell us just how serious

-your situation is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just listen."

-

-Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise and perhaps a little

-resentment. For hours she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal

-of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely told to sit down and

-listen to something, she did not know what.

-

-The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler was ushered into the room

-and the two veterans saluted each other with the stiffest of military

-precision.

-

-"These are two young friends of mine from the hills, General," said

-the Bishop, as he seated his old friend. "They both own farms in the

-Beaver Run country. They have come to me to find out what the U. & M.

-Railroad wants with options on all that country. Can you, will you

-tell them?"

-

-The General plucked for a moment at the empty left sleeve of his

-coat.

-

-"No, Bishop," he said finally, "I cannot give out what I know of that

-matter. The interests behind it are too large for me. I would not

-dare. I do not often have to say that."

-

-"No," said the Bishop slowly, "I never heard you say that before."

-

-"But I can do this, Bishop," said the General, rising. "If you will

-come over here to the end of the room, I can tell you, privately, what

-I know. You can then use your own prudence to judge how much you can

-tell these young people."

-

-The Bishop followed to the window at the other end of the room, where

-the two men stood and talked in undertones.

-

-"Jeffrey," said Ruth through teeth that gritted with impatience, "if

-you don't tell me this instant what it's all about, I'll--I'll _bite_

-you!"

-

-Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little wild outbreak of hers

-to convince him that the young lady who had swept into the room and

-faced the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth, after all.

-

-In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.

-

-The Bishop walked to the door with the General, thanking him. From the

-door the General saluted gravely and stalked away.

-

-"The answer," said the Bishop quietly, as he came back to them, "is

-one word--Iron."

-

-To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making a mysterious fuss about

-nothing. But Jeffrey saw the whole matter instantly.

-

-"No one knows how much there is, or how little there is," said the

-Bishop. "The man lied to you, Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain.

-But they can get it if they get the options on a large part of the

-farms. Then, when they have the right of eminent domain, they will

-let the options lapse and buy the properties at their own prices."

-

-"I'll start back to warn the people to-night," said Jeffrey, jumping

-up. "Maybe they made that offer to other people besides me!"

-

-"Wait," said the Bishop, "there is more to think of. The railroad, if

-you serve it well, will, no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it

-is worth to you. There is your mother to be considered first. And they

-will, very likely, give you a chance to make a small fortune in your

-commissions, if you are faithful to them. If you go to fight them,

-they will probably crush you all in the end, and you will be left with

-little or nothing. Better go slowly, young man."

-

-"What?" cried Jeffrey. "Take their bribe! Take their money, for

-fooling and cheating the other people out of their homes! Why, before

-I'd do that, I'd leave that farm and everything that's there and go up

-into the big woods with only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my

-mother would follow me! You know that! My mother would be glad to go

-with me, with nothing, nothing in her hands!"

-

-"And so would I!" said Ruth, springing to her feet. "I _would_! I

-_would_!" she chanted defiantly.

-

-"Well, well, well!" said the Bishop, smiling.

-

-"But you are not going up into the big woods, Jeffrey," Ruth said

-demurely. "You are going back home to fight them. If I could help you

-I would go back with you. I would not be of any use. So, I'm going

-back, to the convent, to face my fight."

-

-"But, but," said Jeffrey, "I thought you were running away."

-

-"I did. I was," said Ruth. "Last night I heard the voice of something

-calling to me. It was such a big thing," she went on, turning to the

-Bishop; "it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing that I thought it

-would crush me. It would take my life and make me do what _it_ wanted,

-not what I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It was like a Choir

-Unseen singing to me to follow, and I didn't dare follow.

-

-"But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey spoke that way. Now I

-know what it was. It was the call of life to everybody to face life,

-to take our souls in our hands and go forward. I thought I could turn

-back. I can't. God, or life won't let us turn back."

-

-"I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing," said the Bishop. "I'm

-glad you came away, to have it out with yourself. And you will be very

-glad now to go back."

-

-"As for you, young man," he turned to Jeffrey, "I should say that your

-mother _would_ be proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you.

-Remember that, when you are in the worst of this fight that is before

-you. When you are tempted, as you will be tempted, remember it. When

-you are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed, _remember it_."

-

-

-

-

-III

-

-GLOW OF DAWN

-

-

-Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to his breakfast. It was past

-the middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was

-the time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains had

-already gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh,

-rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would not

-be enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Then

-he would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River,

-where the saw-dust came to bother him.

-

-He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond at

-the very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and

-drew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of flies

-and the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through four

-seasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,

-quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not dispute

-with him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fish

-ever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones.

-He liked flies better.

-

-His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little cool yet, for the sun

-was not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfast

-room at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away up

-on every side to the rim of the high hills.

-

-Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begun

-to draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface of

-the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was in

-sight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about a

-cat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body,

-and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap.

-But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by the

-cat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.

-

-Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, in

-other years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as

-he ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the very

-first time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They

-were not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of the

-cat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. But

-he knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most tempting

-flies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water,

-others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating and

-challenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in the

-cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of the

-pond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told them that

-he had scooted out of the pool and down into the stream. Once the girl

-had trailed a piece of flashing red flannel across the water, and

-Twinkle-tail could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible hook

-caught him in the side of the mouth! In his fury and terror he dove

-and fought until he broke the hook. He had never forgotten that

-lesson.

-

-But he was forgetting a little this season. No one came to his pool.

-He was growing big and fat, and a little careless.

-

-As he lay there in the warming sand by the cat-tails, the biggest,

-juiciest green bottle fly that Twinkle-tail had ever seen came

-skimming down to the very line of the water. It circled once.

-Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not an inch from the

-water!

-

-A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and Twinkle-tail was out of

-the water! He had the fly in his mouth.

-

-Then the struggle began.

-

-Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the shoulder of the bank

-behind which she had been hiding.

-

-The trout dove and started for the stream, the line ripping through

-the water like a shot.

-

-The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her strong, slender,

-boy-like body giving and swaying cunningly to every tug of the fish.

-

-He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool, throwing her off her

-balance and down into the water. She rose wet and angry, clinging

-grimly to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side of the

-pond. She did not dare to stand and pull against him, for fear of

-breaking the hook. She could only race around, giving him all the line

-she could until he should tire a little.

-

-Three times they fought around the circle of the pool, the taut line

-singing like a wire in the wind. Ruth's hand was cut where she had

-fallen on the rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head to foot. Her

-breath came in great, gulping sobs. But she fought on.

-

-Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down the Run, but she headed him

-back each time to the pond where she could handle him better. She had

-never before fought so big a fish all alone. Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had

-always been with her. Now she found herself calling desperately under

-her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She bit back the words and

-took a new hold on the pole.

-

-The trout was running blindly now from side to side of the pond. He

-had lost his cunning. He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her

-strength was nearly gone too. She must use her head quickly.

-

-She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate effort. She must

-catch him as he ran toward her and try to flick him out of the water.

-It was her only chance. She might break the line or the pole and lose

-him entirely, but she would try it.

-

-Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water, directly at her. She

-suddenly threw her strength on the pole. It bent nearly double but it

-held. And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her strength, was

-whipped clear out on to the grass. Dropping the pole, she dove

-desperately at him where he fought on the very edge of the bank.

-Finally she caught the line a few inches above his mouth, and her

-prize was secure.

-

-"It's you, Twinkle-tail," she panted, as she held him up for a good

-look, "sure enough!"

-

-She carried him back to a large stone and despatched him painlessly

-with a blunt stick. Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and

-dizzy from her struggle.

-

-Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she said aloud:

-

-"I wish Jeffrey was here. He'll never believe it was you unless he

-sees you."

-

-"Yes, that's him all right," said a voice behind her. "I'd know him in

-a thousand."

-

-She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-"Why, where did you come from? Your mother told me you wouldn't be

-back till to-morrow."

-

-"Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow if you want me to,"

-said Jeffrey, smiling.

-

-"Oh, Jeff, you know I'm glad to see you. I was awfully disappointed

-when I got home and found that you were away up in the hills. How is

-your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail," she hurried on a

-little nervously, for Jeffrey had her hand and was drawing her

-determinedly to him. She reached for the trout and held him up

-strategically between them.

-

-"Oh, _Fish_!" said Jeffrey discontentedly as he saw himself beaten by

-her ruse.

-

-The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly handsome face. Then

-she seemed to relent, and with a friendly little tug at his arm led

-him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit down.

-

-"Now tell me," she commanded, "all about your battle with the railroad

-people. Your mother told me some things, but I want it all, from

-yourself."

-

-But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked at her dress and shoes and

-said with a show of meanness:

-

-"Ruth, you didn't catch Twinkle-tail fair, on your line. You just

-walked into the pond and got him in a corner and kicked him to death

-brutally. I know you did. You're always cruel."

-

-Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged cut in her hand where she had

-fallen on the rocks.

-

-Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the hand

-and dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt down

-by the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with her

-handkerchief.

-

-"Now," she said, "tell me."

-

-"Well," he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained by

-delay, "the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they had

-found iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to push

-us all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found I

-wasn't the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had Rafe

-Gadbeau, you know he's a kind of a political boss of the French around

-French Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.

-

-"Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he'd been spending money

-around free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to him

-outright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what the

-land would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as well

-have held my breath. He didn't care anything about the interests of

-the people that had land. He was getting paid well for every option

-that he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will have

-trouble with that man yet.

-

-"The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, and a good man. They had

-fooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He had

-started out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties over

-on that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for the

-people to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their finding

-iron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was the

-maddest man you ever saw.

-

-"He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He

-went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not

-to sign anything.

-

-"Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for the

-railroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion and

-conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down to

-Lowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn't find anything in the charges. So

-I was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to get

-me away from here yet."

-

-"How does it stand now?" said Ruth thoughtfully. "Have they actually

-started to build the railroad?"

-

-"Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through.

-But they wouldn't build it, at least not for years yet, only that they

-want to get this iron property opened up. Why, the road is to run from

-Welden to French Village and there is not a single town on the whole

-line! The road wouldn't have business enough to keep the rust off.

-They're building the road just the same, so that shows that they

-intend to get our property some way, no matter what we do. And I

-suppose they will, somehow," he added sullenly. "They always do, I

-guess."

-

-"But the people," said Ruth, "can't you get them all to join and agree

-to sell at a fair price? Wouldn't that be all right?"

-

-"They don't want to buy. They won't buy at any fair price. They only

-want to get options enough to show the Legislature and the Governor,

-and then they will be granted eminent domain and they can have the

-land condemned and can buy it at the price of wild land."

-

-"Oh, yes; I remember now. That's what the Bishop said. Isn't it

-strange," she went on slowly, "how he seems to come into everything we

-do. How he saved my Daddy Tom's life that time at Fort Fisher. And how

-he came here that night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked us up

-and turned us around and sent me off to convent. And now how he seems

-to come into all this.

-

-"Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the North," she went on. "I

-wonder if he comes into the lives of _all_ the people that way. At the

-convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging to them

-personally. I resented it at first, because I thought I had more

-reason to know him than anybody. But I found that everybody felt the

-same way."

-

-"He's just like the Catholic Church," said Jeffrey suddenly, and a

-little sharply; "he comes into everything."

-

-"Why, Jeffrey," said Ruth in surprise, "what do you know about the

-Church?"

-

-"I know," he answered. "I've read some. And I've had to deal a lot

-with the French people up toward French Village. And I've talked with

-their priest up there. You know you have to talk to the priest before

-it's any use talking to them. That's the way with the Catholic Church.

-It comes into everything. I don't like it."

-

-He sat looking across the pool for a moment, while Ruth quietly

-studied the stubborn, settling lines of his face. She saw that a few

-months had made a big change in the boy and playmate that she had

-known. He was no longer the bright-faced, clear-eyed boy. His face was

-turning into a man's face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and of

-harshness were coming into it. It showed strength and doggedness and

-will, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not

-dislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a little

-timid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limits

-beyond which she could not play with this new man that she found.

-

-"It's all right to be religious," he went on argumentatively.

-"Mother's religious. And Aunt Letty's just full of it. But it don't

-interfere with their lives. It's all right to have a preacher for

-marrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if you

-want to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those people

-live. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything.

-They don't dare speak without looking back to it to find out what they

-must say. I don't like it."

-

-"Why, Jeffrey, I'm a Catholic!"

-

-"I _knew_ it!" he said stubbornly. "I knew it! I knew there was

-something that had changed you. And I might have known it was that."

-

-"That's funny!" said the girl, breaking in quickly. "When you came I

-was just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me at

-all. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I had

-gone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the same

-as I was before."

-

-"But it has changed you," he persisted. "And it's going to change you

-a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth," he said, suddenly softening,

-"you won't let it change you? You won't let it make any difference,

-with us, I mean?"

-

-The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:

-

-"No, Jeffrey. It won't make any difference with us, in the way you

-mean.

-

-"So long as we are what we are," she said again after a pause, "we

-will be just the same to each other. If it should make something

-different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be

-the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you

-would not be the same to me.

-

-"It's too soon," she continued decisively. "Nothing is clear to me,

-yet. I've just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and

-feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know.

-When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I'll tell you."

-

-He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood

-that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something

-in her face with which he did not dare to argue.

-

-He got up saying:

-

-"I have to be gone. I'm glad I found you here at the old place. I'll

-be back to-night to help you eat the trout."

-

-"Where are you going?"

-

-"Over to Wilbur's Fork. There's a couple of men over there that are

-shaky. I've had to keep after them or they'd be listening to Rafe

-Gadbeau and letting their land go."

-

-"But," Ruth exclaimed, "now when they know, can't they see what is to

-their own interest! Are they blind?"

-

-"I know," said Jeffrey dully. "But you know how it is with those

-people. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have to

-scratch and scrape for a little money. They don't see many dollars

-together from one year's end to the other. Even a little money, ready,

-green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them."

-

-"Good luck, then, Jeff," she said cheerily; "and get back early if you

-can."

-

-"Sure," he said easily as he picked up his hat.

-

-"And, say, Ruth." He turned back quietly to her. "If--if I shouldn't

-be back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? I

-wouldn't say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he's not very

-sharp sometimes. Will you?"

-

-"Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please."

-

-"Oh, sure," he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of the

-pond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trail

-that went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the other

-side.

-

-Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope,

-his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth.

-

-This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left when

-she went down to the convent five months before. She could see it in

-his walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she had

-seen it in his face and his talk. He was fighting with a power that

-he had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was not

-discouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of his

-boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and

-thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged

-struggle.

-

-He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Why

-should he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to have

-warned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? And

-what was there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of physical fear

-in connection with Jeffrey. Why, nothing ever happened in the hills,

-anyway. Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was true, the

-lumber jacks were rough when they came down with the log drives in the

-spring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stop

-in the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spend

-their money.

-

-What had Jeffrey to fear?

-

-Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to her

-unless he had good reason to think that something might happen to

-him.

-

-Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. The

-men were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generally

-ruled by their more energetic women. But they or their fathers had

-all been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted in

-the soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drive

-them from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes,

-where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckon

-with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. In

-another moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. She

-wondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgotten

-that she would surely be standing where he had left her?

-

-He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Then

-he stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque and

-businesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly have

-seen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had just

-known that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He had

-plunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with which

-his mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and of

-everything else.

-

-The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that might

-have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about

-the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it

-gave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming.

-

-She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived.

-Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew men

-fought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was a

-little for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour and

-good judgment would make for him out of the land.

-

-Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever,

-in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealth

-or the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely come

-to look for it and take it. That was why men fought. Wealth, even the

-scent of wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on to battle.

-

-A cloud passed between her and the morning sun. She felt the

-premonition of tragedy and suffering lowering down like a storm on her

-hills. How foolishly she had thought that all life and all the great,

-seething business of life was to be done down in the towns and the

-cities. Here was life now, with its pressure and its ugly passions,

-pushing right into the very hills.

-

-She shivered as she picked up her prize of the morning and her fishing

-tackle and started slowly up the hill toward her home.

-

-Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth with the understanding that

-Ruth was to spend the summer there in her own home. The rent was

-enough to give Ruth what little money she needed for clothes and to

-pay her modest expenses at the convent at Athens. So her life was

-arranged for her at least up to the time when she should have finished

-school.

-

-It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands of

-strangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she had

-ruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It would

-be very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged

-and how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by and

-see others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers and

-Daddy Tom's. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was her

-place. It held all the memories and all the things that connected her

-with her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to it

-and call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill,

-at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and her

-mother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which she

-had been born, she could understand the fierceness with which men

-would fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened.

-

-Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguely

-called "the railroad" would want to take _her_ home and farm away from

-her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she felt a swelling rage of

-indignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to the

-house, as though she saw it already threatened.

-

-She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and

-went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth

-weeding in what had been Ruth's own flower beds.

-

-"Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!" the woman

-exclaimed at sight of her. "I called you _three_ times, and when you

-didn't answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I told

-Norman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night."

-

-"Oh, no," said Ruth. "No danger. I'm used to getting up early, you

-see. So I just took some cakes--Didn't you miss them?--and some milk

-and slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish.

-Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had to

-do it myself this morning."

-

-"So young Whiting's gone away, eh?"

-

-"Why, no," said Ruth quickly. "He went over to Wilbur's Fork about

-half an hour ago. Who said he'd gone away?"

-

-"Oh, nobody," said the woman hastily; "it's only what they was sayin'

-up at French Village yesterday."

-

-"What were they saying?" Ruth demanded.

-

-"Oh, just talk, I suppose," Mrs. Apgarth evaded. "Still, I dunno's I

-blame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he's got out of

-it, I'd skedaddle, too."

-

-Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm.

-

-"What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl

-was trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herself

-had said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She must

-tell everything now.

-

-"Well," she began, "they say he's just fooled the people up over their

-eyes."

-

-"How?" said Ruth impatiently. "Tell me."

-

-"He's been agoin' round holdin' the people back and gettin' them to

-swear that they won't sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the

-railroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin' the rest of the people

-back till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad for

-his own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he's sold

-this farm and his own and five other ones that he'd got hold of, for

-four times what they're worth. And that gives the railroad enough to

-work on, so the rest of the people'll just have to sell for what they

-can get. He's gone now; skipped out."

-

-"But he has _not_ gone!" Ruth snapped out indignantly. "I saw him only

-half an hour ago."

-

-"Oh, well, of course," said the woman knowingly, "you'd know more

-about it than anybody else. It's all talk, I suppose."

-

-Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She said

-shortly:

-

-"I'm going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting."

-

-"Oh, then, don't say a word to her about this. She's an awful good

-neighbour. I wouldn't for the world have her think that I--"

-

-"Why, it doesn't matter at all," said Ruth, as she turned toward the

-road. "You only said what people were saying."

-

-"But I wouldn't for anything," the woman called nervously after her,

-"have her think that-- And what'll I do with this?"

-

-"Eat it," said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she had

-fought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night. Through the long

-twilight of one of the longest days of the year, Ruth sat reading in

-the old place on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find her.

-Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew that he would not come.

-

-She did not try to argue with herself. She did not fight back the

-nervous feeling that something had happened. She was sure that she had

-been all day expecting it. When the moon came up over the hill and the

-long purple shadows of the elm trees on the crest came stalking down

-in the white light, she went miserably into the house and up to the

-little room they had fitted up for her in the loft of her own home.

-

-She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep. But with the

-elasticity of youth and health she was awake at the first hint of

-morning, and the cloud of the night had passed.

-

-She dressed and hurried down into the yard where Norman Apgarth was

-just stirring about with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight

-and action. A man had put his trust in her before all others. She was

-eager to answer to his faith.

-

-"Where is Brom Bones?" she demanded of the still drowsy Apgarth as she

-caught him crossing the yard from the milk house.

-

-"The colt? He's up in the back pasture, just around the knob of the

-mountain. What was you calc'latin' to do with him, Miss?"

-

-"I want to use him," said Ruth. "May I?"

-

-"Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But, say, Miss, that colt ain't

-been driv' since the Spring's work. An' he's so fat an' silky he's

-liable to act foolish."

-

-"I'm going to _ride_ him," said Ruth briefly, as she stepped to the

-horse barn door for a bridle.

-

-"Now, say, Miss," the man opposed feebly, "you could take the brown

-pony just as well; I don't need her a bit. And I tell you that colt

-is just a lun-_at_-ic, when he's been idle so long."

-

-"Thank you," said Ruth, as she started up the hill. "But I think I'll

-find work enough to satisfy even Brom Bones to-day."

-

-The big black colt followed her peaceably down the mountain, and stood

-champing at the door while she went in to get something to eat. When

-she brought out a shining new side saddle he looked suspiciously at

-the strange thing, but he made no serious objection as she fastened it

-on. Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood looking

-doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as new to her as it was to the

-horse. She had bought it on her way home the other day, as a

-concession to the fact that she was now a young lady who could no

-longer go stampeding over the hills on a bare-backed horse.

-

-She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming to know in the way of his

-kind that she was uneasy and uncomfortable, began at once to act

-badly. His intention seemed to be to walk into the open well on his

-hind feet. The girl caught a short hold on her lines and cut him

-sharply across the ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the

-hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.

-

-The path led straight up to the top of the slope. Ruth did not try to

-hold him. The sooner he ran the conceit out of himself, she thought,

-the better.

-

-He hurled himself down the other slope, past the pool, and into the

-trail which Jeffrey had taken yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in

-a strange saddle. But the girl's anxiety rose with the excitement of

-the horse's wild rush, so that when they reached the top of the divide

-where she had last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl that

-was ready to settle down to a sober and safer pace.

-

-Her common sense told her that she was probably foolish; that Jeffrey

-had merely stayed over night somewhere and that she would meet him on

-the way. But another and a subtler sense kept whispering to her to

-hurry on, that she was needed, that the good name, if not the life, of

-the boy she loved was in danger!

-

-She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just who were the men whom Jeffrey

-had gone to see. But she did not know how she could dash up to their

-doors and demand to know where he was. It was eleven miles up the

-stony trail that followed Wilbur's Fork, and the girl's nerves now

-keyed up to expect she knew not what jangled at every turn of the

-road. Jeffrey had meant to come straight back this way to her. That he

-had not done so meant that _something_ had stopped him on the way.

-What was it?

-

-On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks and the underbrush

-was grown into an impenetrable wall. On the other it ran sheer along

-the edge of Wilbur's Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing stream that

-tumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country.

-

-Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as she

-pushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to the

-trail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rock

-bed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle to

-look down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came

-carelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once--a

-single blow at the back of the head--and Jeffrey would have gone

-stumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not be

-even the sign of a struggle.

-

-Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.

-

-"Ruth Lansing," she scolded aloud, "you're making a little fool of

-yourself. You've been down there in that convent living among a lot of

-girls, and you're forgetting that these hills are your own, that there

-never was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Just

-keep that in your mind and hustle on about your business."

-

-When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork she

-met old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man did

-not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharply

-at the steaming withers of Brom Bones before he would give any

-attention to her question.

-

-"What's the tarnation hurry, young lady?" he inquired exasperatingly.

-"Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest'day. Why?"

-

-"Did he start home by this trail?" asked Ruth eagerly. "Or did he go

-on up country?"

-

-"He went on up country."

-

-Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word.

-

-"But stay!" the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twenty

-yards. "He came back again."

-

-Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to his

-knees.

-

-"Didn't ask me that," the old man chortled, as she came back, "but if

-I didn't tell you I reckon you'd run that colt to death up the

-hills."

-

-"Then he _did_ take the Forks trail back."

-

-"Didn't do that, nuther."

-

-"Then where _did_ he go? Please tell me!" cried the girl, the tears of

-vexation rising into her voice.

-

-"Why, what's the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there," said

-the old man, pointing, "and he took over the hill for French Village.

-You his wife? You're mighty young."

-

-But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping down

-the rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones.

-

-In the middle of the ford she stopped and loosened the bridle, let the

-colt drink a little, then drove him across, up the other bank and on

-up the stiff slope.

-

-She did not know the trail, but she knew the general run of the

-country that way and had no doubt of finding her road.

-

-Now she told herself that it was certainly a wild goose chase. Jeffrey

-had merely found that he had to see some one in French Village and had

-gone there and, of course, had spent the night there.

-

-By the time she had come over the ridge of the hill and was dropping

-down through the heavily wooded country toward French Village, she had

-begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly remembered

-that it was Saint John the Baptist's day. It was not a holy day of

-obligation but she knew it was a feast day in French Village. There

-would be Mass. She should have gone, anyway. And she would hear with

-her own ears the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store in French Village in the

-glory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store was

-closed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would put

-on his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church,

-and march solemnly over to ring the bell for Mass.

-

-The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady whom he seemed to know

-vaguely, riding down the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on

-the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made the little man

-reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.

-

-"M'm'selle Lansing!" he said, bowing in friendly pomp as Ruth drove

-up.

-

-"How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came down to go to Mass. Can you tell me

-what time it begins?"

-

-"I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M'm'selle."

-Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute

-from the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman.

-His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must

-await her convenience.

-

-He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feet

-loose and slid down deftly.

-

-"I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb," said Ruth as she took his

-hand. "Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?"

-

-A girl of about Ruth's own age had come quietly up the street and

-stood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail of

-Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots.

-

-"'Cynthe," said the little man briskly, "you show Miss Lansing on my

-pew for Mass." He took the bridle from Ruth's hand and led the horse

-away to the shed in the rear of the store.

-

-The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The

-little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not

-answer?

-

-She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing about

-the church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questions

-of them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to a

-front pew.

-

-At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the church

-door they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of which

-Ruth could only catch a little here and there.

-

-"You will come by the _fête_, M'm'selle. You will not dance _non_, I

-s'pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one

-_jolie_ time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance." Arsene led

-Ruth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal,

-across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. There

-were tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the food

-that they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a great

-stump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard,

-the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings.

-

-It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment before

-been so devout and concentrated in church should in an instant switch

-their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soon

-found their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it,

-she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into

-the fun with all her heart.

-

-"Which is Rafe Gadbeau?" she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. "I want

-to know him."

-

-"Why for you want to know him?" the girl asked sharply in English.

-

-"Oh, nothing," said Ruth carelessly, "only I've heard of him."

-

-The other girl reached out into the crowd and plucked at the sleeve of

-a tall, beak-nosed man. The man was evidently flattered by Ruth's

-request, and wanted her to dance with him immediately.

-

-"No," said Ruth, "I do not know how to dance your dances, and we'd

-only break up the sets if I tried to learn now. We've heard a lot

-about you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to know you. And we've

-heard some things about Jeffrey Whiting. I'm sure you could tell me if

-they are true."

-

-"You don' dance? Well, we sit then. I tell you. One rascal, this young

-Whiting!"

-

-Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietly

-as he led her to a seat.

-

-As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform,

-Ruth, looking back, caught a swift glance of what she knew was

-jealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make an

-enemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to get

-this man to tell her all he would.

-

-"One rascal, I tell you," repeated Gadbeau. "First he stop all the

-people. He say don' sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He

-sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out.

-An' he leave these poor French people in the soup.

-

-"But I"--he sat back tapping himself on the chest--"I got hinfluence

-with that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nine

-o'clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sell

-out everything on the option to him."

-

-"But," objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, "if Jeffrey Whiting

-should come back before then?"

-

-"He don' come back, that fellow."

-

-"How do you know?"

-

-"I know, I-- He don' come back. I tell you that."

-

-"Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o'clock to-morrow," she

-said, turning suddenly upon him.

-

-"Eh? M'm'selle, what you mean? What you know?" he questioned

-excitedly.

-

-"Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she

-arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture."

-

-Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and

-talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe

-Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had

-alarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey

-Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way.

-

-When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bell

-ringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place

-among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door.

-When the people rose to sing the _Tantum Ergo_, she saw Gadbeau slip

-unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing was

-finished, then she almost ran to the door.

-

-Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all day

-in the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trail

-which she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the street

-to Arsene LaComb's store. There was not a pony in the hills that Brom

-Bones could not overtake easily, but she must see by what trail the

-man left the Village.

-

-Brom Bones was very willing to make a race for home, and she let him

-have his head until she again caught sight of the man. She pulled up

-sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The man was still on the

-main road, and he might turn any moment. Finally she saw him pull into

-the trail that led over to Wilbur's Fork. Then she knew. Jeffrey was

-somewhere on the trail between French Village and Wilbur's Fork. And

-he was alive! The man was going now to make sure that he was still

-there.

-

-For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough to assure her that the

-man was still following the trail. Then, just when the real darkness

-had fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at her left. The man

-had turned off into the woods! She had almost passed him! She threw

-herself out upon Brom Bones' neck and caught him by the nose. He threw

-up his head indignantly and tried to bolt, but she blessed him for

-making no noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred yards,

-slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into the bushes away from the road

-and tied him. She talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading

-with him to be quiet. Then she left him and stole back to where she

-had heard the pony.

-

-In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing. But her feet found

-themselves on what seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly.

-She almost walked into a square black thing that suddenly confronted

-her. Within what seemed a foot of her she heard voices. Her heart

-stopped beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she could not

-distinguish a word. One of the voices was certainly Gadbeau's. The

-other-- It was!-- It was! Though it was only a mumble, she knew it was

-Jeffrey Whiting who tried to speak!

-

-She took a step forward, ready to dash into the place, whatever it

-was. But the caution of the hills made her back away noiselessly into

-the brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, _why_ had she not brought a

-rifle? Gadbeau was sure to be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably

-wounded and bound.

-

-She backed farther into the bushes and started to make a circuit of

-the place. She understood now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely

-of logs, even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse. She knew

-that she was helpless. And she knew that Jeffrey would not be a

-prisoner there unless he were hurt.

-

-She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come to injure Jeffrey further.

-He had merely come to make himself sure that his prisoner was secure.

-He would not stay long.

-

-As she stole around away from the path and the pony she saw a little

-stream of light shoot out through a chink between the logs of the hut.

-Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had brought something for

-Jeffrey to eat. She pulled off the white collar of her jacket, the

-only white thing that showed about her and settled down for a long

-wait.

-

-First she had thought that she ought to steal away to her horse and

-ride for help. But she could not bear the thought of even getting

-beyond the sound of Jeffrey's voice. She knew where he was now. He

-might be taken away while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing had

-always learned to do things for herself. She had always disliked

-appealing for help.

-

-Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place she could find, leaning

-against the bole of a great tree. The light, candles, of course,

-burned on; and the voices came irregularly through the living silence

-of the woods. She did not dare to creep nearer to hear what was being

-said. That did not matter. The important thing was to have Gadbeau go

-away without any suspicion that he had been followed. Then she would

-be free to release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she would be able

-to get him down to French Village in the morning. She could easily

-have him there before nine o'clock.

-

-When she saw by the stars that it was long past midnight she began to

-be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away

-at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound.

-She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against

-the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion.

-

-Would he never come out? It seemed not. Was he going to stay there all

-night?

-

-Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the door of the cabin.

-Apparently both men were asleep within. She pushed the door ever so

-quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.

-

-What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Oh, why, _why_ had she

-not brought a rifle? She would shoot. She _would_, if she had it now,

-and that man opened the door! It was too late now to think of riding

-for help, too late!

-

-She sank down again beside her tree and raged helplessly at herself,

-at her conceit in herself that would not let her go for help in the

-first place, at her foolishness in coming on this business without a

-gun. The hours dragged out their weary minutes, every minute an age to

-the taut, ragged nerves of the girl.

-

-The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops, while the ground still

-lay in utter darkness. Ruth rose and slipped farther back into the

-bushes.

-

-Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in the soft grass, and the

-hot, angry tears of desperation and rage at herself were softened. Her

-heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and sang its prayer to God;

-a thrilling, lifting little prayer of confidence and wonder. The

-words that the night before would not form themselves for her now

-sprang up ready in her soul--the words of all the children of earth,

-to Our Father Who Art in Heaven--paused an instant to bless her lips,

-then sped away to God in His Heaven. Fear was gone, and doubt, and

-anxiety. She would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor, befooled

-people from ruin. God had told her so, as He walked abroad in the

-_Glow_ of _Dawn_.

-

-Two long hours more she waited, but now with patience and a sure

-confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau came out of the hut and strode down the

-path to his pony.

-

-Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and ran to the door, and

-called to Jeffrey. The only answer was a moan. The door was locked

-with a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy padlock. She

-reached for the nearest stone and attacked the lock frantically. She

-beat it out of all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her. There

-was no window in the hut. She had to come back again to the lock. Her

-hands, softened by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on the

-tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave, and she threw herself

-against the door.

-

-Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk beside the furnace

-where they boiled the sugar sap. His arms were stretched out and tied

-together down under the narrow bunk. She saw that his left arm was

-broken. For an instant the girl's heart leaped back to the rage of

-the night when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But pity swallowed

-up every other feeling as she cut the cords from his hands and

-loosened the rope that they had bound in between his teeth.

-

-"Don't talk, Jeff," she commanded. "I can see just what happened. Lie

-easy and get your strength. I've got to take you to French Village at

-once."

-

-She ran out to bring water. When she returned he was sitting dizzily

-on the edge of the bunk. While she bathed his head with the water and

-gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and crooned over him as

-she would over a baby for she saw that he was shaken and half

-delirious with pain.

-

-Brom Bones was standing munching twigs where she had left him. He had

-never before been asked to carry double and he did not like it. But

-the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into his silky black ear

-that he finally gave in.

-

-When they were mounted, she fastened the white collar of her jacket

-into a sling for the boy's broken arm, and with a prayer to the

-heathen Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down the trail.

-

-When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey spoke suddenly:

-

-"Say, Ruth, what's the use trying to save these people? Let's sell

-out while we can and take mother and go away."

-

-"Why, Jeff, dear," she said lightly, "this fight hasn't begun yet.

-Wait till we get to French Village. You'll say something different.

-You'll say just what you said to the Shepherd of the North;

-remember?"

-

-Jeffrey said no more. The girl's heart was weak with the pain she knew

-he was bearing, but she knew that they must go through with this.

-

-All French Village and the farmers of Little Tupper country were

-gathered in front of Arsene Lacomb's store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing

-on the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with his prisoner as he

-thought up to the last possible moment, so he stammered in his speech

-when he saw a big black horse come tearing down the street carrying a

-girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy behind her. Rogers, the

-railroad lawyer beside him, said:

-

-"Go on, man. What's the matter with you?"

-

-The girl drove the horse right in through the crowd until Jeffrey

-Whiting faced Rogers. Then Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain,

-took up his fight again.

-

-"Rogers," he shouted, "you did this. You got Rafe Gadbeau and the

-others to knock me on the head and put me out of the way, so that you

-could spread your lies about me. And you'd have won out, too, if it

-hadn't been for this brave girl here.

-

-"Now, Rogers, you liar," he shouted louder, "I dare you, dare you, to

-tell these people here that I or any of our people have sold you a

-foot of land. I dare you!"

-

-Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau pulled him away. Gadbeau

-knew that crowd. They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and full of

-potential fury. They were already cheering the brave girl. In a few

-minutes they would be hunting the life of the man who had lied to them

-and nearly ruined them.

-

-A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from the saddle, but she waved

-them away and pointed to Jeffrey's broken arm. They helped him down

-and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough's little office.

-

-Ruth saw that her business was finished. She wheeled Brom Bones toward

-home, and gave him his head.

-

-For three glorious miles they fairly flew through the pearly morning

-air along the hard mountain road, and the girl never pulled a line.

-Breakfastless and weary in body, her heart sang the song that it had

-learned in the Glow of Dawn.

-

-

-

-

-IV

-

-THE ANSWER

-

-

-The Committee on Franchises was in session in one of the committee

-rooms outside the chamber of the New York State Senate. It was not a

-routine session. A bill was before it, the purpose of which was

-virtually to dispossess some four or five hundred families of their

-homes in the counties of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The bill did

-not say this. It cited the need of adequate transportation in that

-part of the State and proposed that the U. & M. Railroad should be

-granted the right of eminent domain over three thousand square miles

-of the region, in order to help the development of the country.

-

-The committee was composed of five members, three of the majority

-party in the Senate and two of the minority. A political agent of the

-railroad who drew a salary from Racquette County as a judge had just

-finished presenting to the committee the reasons why the people of

-that part of the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill should

-become a law. He had drawn a pathetic picture of the condition of the

-farmers, so long deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He had

-almost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce left to rot up

-there in the hills because the men who toiled to produce it had no

-means of bringing it down to the starving thousands of the cities. The

-scraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that region became in his

-picture vast reservoirs of cheap food, only waiting to be tapped by

-the beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world's poor.

-

-When the judge had finished, one minority member of the committee

-looked at his colleague, the other minority member, and winked. It was

-a grave and respectful wink. It meant that the committee was not often

-privileged to listen to quite such bare-faced effrontery. If the

-hearing had been a secret one they would not have listened to it. But

-the bill had already aroused a storm. So the leader of the majority

-had given orders that the hearing should be public.

-

-So far not a word had been said as to the fact which underlay the

-motives of the bill. Iron had been found in workable quantities in

-those three thousand square miles of hill country. Not a word had been

-said about iron.

-

-No one in the room had listened to the speech with any degree of

-interest. It was intended entirely for the consumption of the outside

-public. Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during its

-delivery. They had been furnished with advance copies of it and had

-already turned them in to their papers. But with the naming of the

-next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around the room.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from his place in the rear of the

-room and walked briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall, spare

-figure of a man coming to his sixty years, his hair as white as the

-snow of his hills, with a large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan

-governor, he would have attracted attention under almost any

-circumstances.

-

-Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee, had received his orders

-from the leader of the majority in the Senate that the bill should be

-reported back favourably to that body before night. He had anticipated

-no difficulty. The form of a public hearing had to be gone through

-with. It was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions that

-had been aroused as to the nature of the bill. The speech of the

-Racquette County Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The

-chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising reformers of

-the opposition would come before the committee with time-honoured,

-stock diatribes against the rapacity and greed of railroads in general

-and this one in particular. Then he and his two majority colleagues

-would vote to report the bill favourably, while the two members of the

-minority would vote to report adversely. This, the chairman said, was

-about all a public hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted on

-the coming of the Bishop of Alden.

-

-"The committee would like to hear, sir," began the chairman, as the

-Bishop took his place, "whom you represent in the matter of this

-bill."

-

-The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in what had been a dull

-session of a dull committee, sat with poised pencils while the Bishop

-turned a look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:

-

-"I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of Racquette County."

-

-"I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee quite understands that

-you do not come here in the interest of any one. But the gentleman who

-has just been before us spoke for the farmers who would be most

-directly affected by the prosperity of the railroad, including those

-of your county. Are we to understand that there is opposition in your

-county to the proposed grant?"

-

-"Your committee," said the Bishop, "cannot be ignorant that there is

-the most stubborn opposition to this grant in all three counties. If

-there had not been that opposition, there would have been no call for

-the bill which you are now considering. If the railroad could have

-gotten the options which it tried to get on those farms the grant

-would have been given without question. Your committee knows this

-better than I."

-

-"But," returned the chairman, "we have been advised that the railroad

-was not able to get those options because a boy up there in the

-Beaver River country, who fancied that he had some grievance against

-the railroad people, banded the people together to oppose the options

-in unfair and unlawful ways."

-

-The chairman paused an impressive moment.

-

-"In fact," he resumed, "from what this committee has been able to

-gather, it looks very much as though there were conspiracy in the

-matter, against the U. & M. Railroad. It almost would seem that some

-rival of the railroad in question had used the boy and his fancied

-grievance to manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be proven,

-but there was every appearance."

-

-The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his challenge quietly at the

-feet of the committee.

-

-"The boy, Jeffrey Whiting," he said, "was guided by me. I directed his

-movements from the beginning."

-

-The whole room sat up and leaned forward as one man, alive to the fact

-that a novel and stirring situation was being developed. Everybody had

-understood that the Bishop had come to plead the cause of the

-French-Canadian farmers of the hills.

-

-They had supposed that he would speak only on what was a side issue of

-the case. No one had expected that he would attack the main question

-of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming himself the

-principal in that silent, stubborn fight that had been going on up in

-the hills for six months!

-

-The reporters doubled down to their work and wrote furiously. They

-were trying to throw this unusual man upon a screen before their

-readers. It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product of New

-England, and what was more he had been one of the leaders of that

-collection of striking men who made the Brook Farm "Experiment." He

-had endeared himself to the old generation of Americans by his war

-record as a chaplain. To some of the new generation he was known as

-the Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from the Mohawk Valley to

-the Canadian line and to Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd

-of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to North Creek men knew his

-ways and felt the beating of the great heart of him behind the stern,

-ascetic set of his countenance.

-

-As much as they could of this the reporters were trying to put into

-their notes while Nathan Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That

-well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself into a trap. He had

-been too zealous in announcing his impression that the opposition to

-the U. & M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival. The Bishop had

-taken that ground from under him by a simple stroke of truth. He could

-neither go forward with his charge nor could he retract it.

-

-"Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this committee," he

-temporised, "just why you wished to arouse this opposition to the

-railroad?"

-

-"There is not and has never been any opposition whatever to the

-railroad," said the Bishop. "The bill before your committee has

-nothing to do with the right of way of the railroad. That has already

-been granted. Your bill proposes to confiscate, practically, from the

-present owners a strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly

-eighty miles long. That land is valuable because the experts of the

-railroad know, and the people up there know, and, I think, this

-committee knows that there is iron ore in these hills.

-

-"I have said that I do not represent any one here," the Bishop went

-on. "But there are four hundred families up there in our hills who

-stand to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people. They have no

-voice to reach the world. I have asked to speak before your committee

-because only in this way can the case of my people reach the great,

-final trial court of publicity before the whole State.

-

-"They are a silent people, the people of the hills. You will have

-heard that they are a stubborn people. They are a stubborn people, for

-they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside homes that their

-hands have made just as do the hardy trees of the hills. You cannot

-uproot them by the stroke of a pen.

-

-"These people are my friends and my neighbours. Many of them were once

-my comrades. I know what they think. I know what they feel. I would

-beg your committee to consider very earnestly this question before

-bringing to bear against these people the sovereign power of the

-State. They love their State. Many of them have loved their country to

-the peril of their lives. They live on the little farms that their

-fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness.

-

-"Not through prejudice or ignorance are they opposing this development,

-which will in the end be for the good of the whole region. They are

-opposed to this bill before you because it would give a corporation

-power to drive them from the homes they love, and that without fair

-compensation.

-

-"They are opposed to it because they are Americans. They know what it

-has meant and what it still means to be Americans. And they know that

-this bill is directly against everything that is American.

-

-"They are ever ready to submit themselves to the sovereign will of the

-State, but you will never convince them that this bill is the real

-will of the State. They are fighting men and the sons of fighting men.

-They have fought the course of the railroad in trying to get options

-from them by coercion and trickery. They have been aroused. Their

-homes, poor and wretched as they often are, mean more to them than any

-law you can set on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it. It

-will set a ring of fire and murder about our peaceful hills.

-

-"In the name of high justice, in the name of common honesty, in the

-name--to come to lower levels--of political common sense, I tell you

-this bill should never go back to the Senate.

-

-"It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound upon those who are

-found weak enough to let it pass here."

-

-The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils of the reporters

-could be plainly heard in the hush of the room.

-

-Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating question which he had

-been wanting to put from the beginning.

-

-"Perhaps the committee has been badly informed," he began to the

-Bishop; "we understood that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian

-immigrants and not usually owners of land."

-

-"Is it necessary for me to repeat," said the Bishop, turning sharply,

-"that I am here, Joseph Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours

-and my friends? Does it matter to them or to this committee that I

-wear the badge of a service that they do not understand? I do not come

-before you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come as an owner of

-property. I come because I think the cause of my friends will be

-served by my coming.

-

-"The facts I have laid before you, the warning I have given might as

-well have been sent out direct through the press. But I have chosen to

-come before you, with your permission, because these facts will get a

-wider hearing and a more eager reading coming from this room.

-

-"I do not seek to create sensation here. I have no doubt that some

-of you are thinking that the place for a churchman to speak is in

-his church. But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing to

-create sensation. I am willing that you should say that I have

-gone far beyond the privilege of a witness invited to come before

-your committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should put any

-interpretation you like upon my use of my privilege here, only so

-that my neighbours of the hills shall have their matter put squarely

-and fully before all the people of the State.

-

-"When this matter is once thoroughly understood by the people, then I

-know that no branch of the lawmaking power will dare make itself

-responsible for the passage of this bill."

-

-The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further questions. When he saw

-that none were forthcoming, he thanked the committee and begged leave

-to retire.

-

-As the Bishop passed out of the room the chairman arose and declared

-the public hearing closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporters

-crowded out of the room and scattered through the corridors of the

-Capitol. Four or five reporters bunched themselves about the elevator

-shaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired boy of twenty,

-summed up the matter with irreverent brevity.

-

-"Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway," he said. "Not every bad bill

-has a bishop at the obsequies."

-

-"You can't tell," said the Associated Press man slowly; "they might

-report it out in spite of all that."

-

-"No use," said the youngster shortly. "The Senate wouldn't dare touch

-it once this stuff is in the papers." And he jammed a wad of flimsy

-down into his pocket.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-Three weeks of a blistering August sun had withered the grasses of the

-hills almost to a powder. The thin soil of the north country, where

-the trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture; so that the heat

-of the short, vicious summer goes down through the roots of the

-vegetation to the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone.

-

-Since June there had been no rain. The tumbling hill streams were

-reduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were

-covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stunted

-timber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man,

-stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattle

-to the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hide

-itself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolen

-away into the depths of the thick woods.

-

-Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a scarred pine on the French

-Village road and sat looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up

-away from the road on either side. Every child of the hills knew the

-menace that a hot dry summer brought to us in those days. The first,

-ruthless cutting of the timber had followed the water courses. Men had

-cut and slashed their way up through the hills without thought of what

-they were leaving behind. They had taken only the prime, sound trees

-that stood handiest to the roll-ways. They had left dead and dying

-trees standing. Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of brush and

-trimmings. The farmers had come pushing into the hills in the wake of

-the lumbermen and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes and

-hay land. But around every piece of cleared land there was an

-ever-encroaching ring of brush and undergrowth and fallen timber that

-held a constant threat for the little home within the ring.

-

-A summer without rain meant a season of grim and unrelenting

-watchfulness. Men armed themselves and tramped through the woods on

-unbidden sentry duty, to see that no campfires were made. Strangers

-and outsiders who were likely to be careless were watched from the

-moment they came into the hills until they were seen safely out of

-them again. Where other children scouted for and fought imaginary

-Indians, the children of our hills hunted and fought imaginary fires.

-The forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo. It was an

-enemy that lurked just outside the little clearing of the farm, out

-there in the underbrush and fallen timber.

-

-Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had ridden up to French

-Village for mail. For some weeks they had known that the railroad

-would try to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the special

-session of the Legislature. And they knew that the session would

-probably come to a close this week.

-

-If that bill became a law, then the resistance of the people of the

-hills had been in vain: Jeffrey had merely led them into a bitter and

-useless fight against a power with which they could not cope. They

-would have to leave their homes, taking whatever a corrupted board of

-condemnation would grant for them. It would be hard on all, but it

-would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness. He would have to

-remember that he had had the chance to make his mother and himself

-independently rich. He had thrown away that chance, and now if his

-fight had failed he would have nothing to bring back to his mother

-but his own miserable failure.

-

-Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop's house in Alden when Jeffrey

-had said proudly that his mother would be glad to follow him into

-poverty. And she smiled now at her own outburst at that time. They had

-both meant it, every word; but the ashes of failure are bitter. And

-she had seen the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through all

-the summer.

-

-She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad had succeeded. She

-would not be able to go back to school, and would probably have to go

-somewhere to get work of some kind, for the little that she would get

-for her farm now would not keep her any time. But that was a little

-matter, or at least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence of

-Jeffrey's failure and what he would consider his disgrace. She did not

-know how he would take it, for during the summer she had seen him in

-vicious moods when he seemed capable of everything.

-

-She saw the speck which he made against the horizon as he came over

-Argyle Mountain three miles away and she saw that he was riding fast.

-He was bringing good news!

-

-It needed only the excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Bones

-whirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moods

-and followed them better than he would have followed whip or rein of

-another. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canter

-and gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came thundering down

-upon them. He pulled up sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two

-horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected to do and their

-two riders gave them no more heed than if they had been wooden

-horses.

-

-"How did you know it was all right, Ruth?"

-

-"I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain," Ruth laughed. "You looked as

-though you were riding Victory down the top side of the earth. How did

-it all come out?"

-

-"Here's the paper," he said, handing her an Albany newspaper of the

-day previous; "it tells the story right off. But I got a letter from

-the Bishop, too," he added.

-

-"Oh, did you?" she exclaimed, looking up from the headline--U. & M.

-Grab Killed in Committee--which she had been feverishly trying to

-translate into her own language. "Please let me hear. I'm never sure

-what headlines mean till I go down to the fine print, and then it's

-generally something else. I can understand what the Bishop says, I'm

-sure."

-

-"Well, it's only short," said Jeffrey, unfolding the letter. "He

-leaves out all the part that he did himself."

-

-"Of course," said Ruth simply. "He always does."

-

-"He says:

-

-"'You will see from the Albany papers, which will probably reach you

-before this does, that the special session of the Legislature closed

-to-night and that the railroad's bill was not reported to the Senate.

-It had passed the Assembly, as you know. The bill aroused a measure of

-just public anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently

-thought it the part of wisdom not to risk a contest over it in the

-open Senate. So there can be no legislative action in favour of the

-railroad before December at the earliest, and I regard it as doubtful

-that the matter will be brought up even then.'

-

-"You see," said Jeffrey, "from this you'd never know that he was there

-present at all. And it was just his speech before the committee that

-aroused that public anger. Then he goes on:

-

-"'But we must not make the mistake of presuming that the matter ends

-here. You and your people are just where you were in the beginning.

-Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not in the nature of

-things that a corporation which has spent an enormous amount of money

-in constructing a line with the one purpose of getting to your lands

-should now give up the idea of getting them by reason of a mere

-legislative setback. They have not entered into this business in

-any half-hearted manner. They are bound to carry it through

-somehow--anyhow. We must realise that.

-

-"'We need not speculate upon the soul or the conscience of a

-corporation or the lack of those things. We know that this corporation

-will have an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must watch for that

-answer. What their future methods or their plans may be I think no man

-can tell. Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed. But there will

-be an answer. While rejoicing that a fear of sound public opinion has

-been on your side, we must never forget that there will be an answer.

-

-"'In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond the limits which men

-set for the proper activities of a priest of the church. I do not

-apologise. I have done this, partly because your people are my own,

-my friends and my comrades of old, partly because you yourself

-came to me in a confidence which I do not forget, partly--and most,

-perhaps--because where my people and their rights are in question I

-have never greatly respected those limits which men set. I put

-these things before you so that when the answer comes you will

-remember that you engaged yourself in this business solely in

-defence of the right. So it is not your personal fight and you must

-try to keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a quarrel.

-The struggle is a larger thing than that and you must keep your heart

-larger still and above it. I fear that you will sorely need to

-remember this.

-

-"'My sincerest regards to your family and to all my friends in the

-hills, not forgetting your friend Ruth.' That's all," said Jeffrey,

-folding the letter. "I wish he'd said more about how he managed the

-thing."

-

-"Isn't it enough to know that he did manage it, without bothering

-about how? That is the way he does everything."

-

-"I suppose I ought to be satisfied," said Jeffrey as he gathered up

-his reins. "But I wonder what he means by that last part of the

-letter. It sounds like a warning to me."

-

-"It is a warning to you," said Ruth thoughtfully.

-

-"Why, what does it mean? What does he think I'm likely to do?"

-

-"Maybe he does not mean what you are likely to do exactly," said Ruth,

-trying to choose her words wisely; "maybe he is thinking more of what

-you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to your heart rather than

-to your head or about your actions."

-

-"Now I don't know what you mean, either," said Jeffrey a little

-discontentedly.

-

-"I know I oughtn't to try to tell you what the Bishop means, for I

-don't know myself. But I've been worried and I'm sure your mother has

-too," said Ruth reluctantly.

-

-"But what is it?" said Jeffrey quickly. "What have I been doing?"

-

-"I'm sure it isn't anything you've done, nor anything maybe that

-you're likely to do. I don't know just what it is, or how to say it.

-But, Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in the Bishop's

-house at Alden?"

-

-"Yes, and I remember what you said, too."

-

-"We both meant it," Ruth returned gravely, not attempting to evade any

-of the meaning that he had thrown into his words. "And we both mean it

-now, I'm sure. But there's a difference, Jeffrey, a difference with

-you."

-

-"I don't know it," he said a little shortly. "I'm still doing just the

-thing I started out to do that day."

-

-"Yes. But that day you started out to fight for the people. Now you

-are fighting for yourself-- Oh, not for anything selfish! Not for

-anything you want for yourself! I know that. But you have made the

-fight your own. It is your own quarrel now. You are fighting because

-you have come to hate the railroad people."

-

-"Well, you wouldn't expect me to love them?"

-

-"No. I'm not blaming you, Jeff. But--but, I'm afraid. Hate is a

-terrible thing. I wish you were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you.

-I'm afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through all the long,

-long years of life. Can you see? I'm afraid of something that might go

-deeper than all this, something that might go as deep as life. After

-all, that's what I'm afraid of, I guess--Life, great, big, terrible,

-menacing, Life!"

-

-"My life?" Jeffrey asked gruffly.

-

-"I have faced that," the girl answered evenly, "just as you have faced

-it. And I am not afraid of that. No. It's what you might do in

-anger--if they hurt you again. Something that would scar your heart

-and your soul. Jeffrey, do you know that sometimes I've seen the

-worst, the worst--even _murder_ in your eyes!"

-

-"I wish," the boy returned shortly, "the Bishop would keep his

-religion out of all this. He's a good man and a good friend," he went

-on, "but I don't like this religion coming into everything."

-

-"But how can he? He cannot keep religion apart from life and right and

-wrong. What good would religion be if it did not go ahead of us in

-life and show us the way?"

-

-"But what's the use?" the boy said grudgingly. "What good does it do?

-You wouldn't have thought of any of this only for that last part of

-his letter. Why does that have to come into everything? It's the

-Catholic Church all over again, always pushing in everywhere."

-

-"Isn't that funny," the girl said, brightening; "I have cried myself

-sick thinking just that same thing. I have gone almost frantic

-thinking that if I once gave in to the Church it would crush me and

-make me do everything that I didn't want to do. And now I never think

-of it. Life goes along really just as though being a Catholic didn't

-make any difference at all."

-

-"That's because you've given in to it altogether. You don't even know

-that you want to resist. You're swallowed up in it."

-

-The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before she answered.

-

-"It's the queerest thing, isn't it, Jeff," she said finally in a

-thoughtful, friendly way, "how two people can fight about religion?

-Now you don't care a particle about it one way or the other. And

-I--I'd rather not talk about it. And yet, we were just now within an

-inch of quarrelling bitterly about it. Why is it?"

-

-"I don't know. I'm sorry, Ruth," the boy apologised slowly. "It's none

-of my business, anyway."

-

-They were just coming over the long hill above Ruth's home. Below them

-stretched the long sweep of the road down past her house and up the

-other slope until it lost itself around the shoulder of Lansing

-Mountain.

-

-Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his big roan horse up the

-hill towards them at a heart-breaking pace.

-

-"That's 'My' Stocking's roan," said Jeffrey, straightening in his

-saddle; "I'd know that horse three miles away."

-

-"But what's he carrying?" cried Ruth excitedly, as she peered eagerly

-from under her shading hand. "Look. Across his saddle. Rifles! _Two_

-of them!"

-

-Brom Bones, sensing the girl's excitement, was already pulling at his

-bit, eager for a wild race down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long,

-sharp look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly to the side of

-the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the

-things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was

-no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes

-downhill.

-

-The rider was Myron Stocking from over in the Crooked Lake country, as

-Jeffrey had supposed. He pulled up as he recognised the two who waited

-for him by the roadside, and when he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew

-by sight, he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as she was to

-hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces farther away from them. They would

-not talk freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey would tell her

-all that she needed to know.

-

-The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences and Ruth heard

-Stocking conclude:

-

-"Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun o' yours. Your Ma didn't

-see."

-

-Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he came to Ruth.

-

-"There's some strangers over in the hills that maybe ought to be

-watched. The country's awful dry," he added quietly. He knew that Ruth

-would need no further explanation.

-

-He pulled the Bishop's letter from his pocket and handed it to Ruth,

-saying:

-

-"Take this and the paper along to Mother. She'll want to see them

-right away. And say, Ruth," he went on, as he looked anxiously at the

-great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between them

-and his home on the hill three miles away, "the country's awful dry.

-If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of this

-country. You can make them go. Nobody else could."

-

-The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to ask

-questions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey's pauses and

-silences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her a

-trust to look after the ones whom he loved.

-

-She put out her hand to his and said simply:

-

-"I'm glad we didn't quarrel, Jeff."

-

-"I was a fool," said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. "But I'll

-remember. Forgive me, please, Ruth."

-

-"There's nothing to forgive--ever--between us, Jeffrey. Go now," she

-said softly.

-

-Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over the

-hill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they

-were out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifle

-across the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart.

-She would have given everything in her world to have had back what she

-had said of seeing murder in Jeffrey's eyes.

-

-Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village road

-for an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a long

-winding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country.

-

-"We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away," said Jeffrey, as

-they came about sundown to a fork in their trail. "The breeze comes

-straight down from the east. That's where the danger is, if there is

-any."

-

-"I suppose you're right, Jeff. But it means we'll have to sleep out if

-we go that way."

-

-"I guess that won't hurt us," Jeffrey returned. "If anything happens

-we might have to sleep out a good many nights--and a lot of other

-people would have to do the same."

-

-"All right then," Stocking agreed. "We'll get a bite and give the

-horses a feed and a rest at Hosmer's, that's about two miles over the

-hills here; and then we can go on as far as you like."

-

-At Hosmer's they got food enough for two days in the hills, and

-having fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higher

-woods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the great

-trees were standing from the beginning, because they had been too high

-up to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels.

-Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops of

-the trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving the

-horses to pick their own canny footing up the trail.

-

-"Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?" Jeffrey asked as they rode

-along. "You know, the man that was in French Village this summer."

-

-"I don't know," Stocking answered. "You see they came up to the end of

-the rails, at Grafton, on a handcar. And then they scattered. Nobody's

-sure that he's seen any of 'em since. But they must be in the hills

-somewhere. And Rafe Gadbeau's with 'em. You can bet on that. That's

-all we've got to go on. But it may be a-plenty."

-

-"It's enough to set us on the move, anyway," said Jeffrey. "They have

-no business in the hills. They're bound to be up to mischief of some

-sort. And there's just one big mischief that they can do. Can we make

-Bald Mountain before daylight?"

-

-"Oh, certainly; that'll be easy. We'll get a little light when we're

-through this belt of heavy woods and then we can push along. We ought

-to get up there by two o'clock. It ain't light till near five. That'll

-give us a little sleep, if we feel like it."

-

-True to Stocking's calculation they came out upon the rocky, thinly

-grassed knobs of Bald Mountain shortly before two o'clock. It was a

-soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain in the air somewhere,

-for there was no dew; but it might be on the other side of the divide

-or it might be miles below on the lowlands.

-

-Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in the vicinity of the

-mountain, or were heading toward here. For the word of the menace had

-gone through the hills that day, and men would decide, as Jeffrey had

-done, that the danger would come from this direction. But they had not

-heard anything to show the presence of others, nor did they care to

-give any signals of their own whereabouts.

-

-As for those others, the possible enemy, who had left the railroad

-that morning and had scattered into the hills, if their purpose was

-the one that men feared, they, too, would be near here. But it was

-useless to look for them in the dark: neither was anything to be

-feared from them before morning. Men do not start forest fires in the

-night. There is little wind. A fire would probably die out of itself.

-And the first blaze would rouse the whole country.

-

-The two hobbled their horses with the bridle reins and lay down in the

-open to wait for morning. Neither had any thought of sleep. But the

-softness of the night, the pungent odour of the tamarack trees

-floating up to them from below, and their long ride, soon began to

-tell on them. Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch.

-

-"Curl up and go to sleep, 'My,'" he said, shaking himself. "You might

-as well. I'll wake you in an hour."

-

-A ready snore was the only answer.

-

-Morning coming over the higher eastern hills found them stiff and

-weary, but alert. The woods below them were still banked in darkness

-as they ate their dry food and caught their horses for the day that

-was before them. There was no water to be had up here, and they knew

-their horses must be gotten down to some water course before night.

-

-A half circle of open country belted by heavy woods lay just below

-them. Eagerly, as the light crept down the hill, they scanned the area

-for sign of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently they had the world

-to themselves. A fresh morning breeze came down over the mountain and

-watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops of the distant

-trees. The same thought made both men grip their rifles and search

-more carefully the ground below them, for that innocent breeze blowing

-straight down towards their homes and loved ones was a potential

-enemy more to be feared than all the doings of men.

-

-Down to the right, two miles or more away, a man came out of the

-shadow of the woods. They could only see that he was a big man and

-stout. There was nothing about him to tell them whether he was friend

-or foe, of the hills or a stranger. Without waiting to see who he was

-or what he did, the two dove for their saddles and started their

-horses pell-mell down the hill towards him.

-

-He saw them at once against the bare brow of the hill, and ran back

-into the wood.

-

-In another instant they knew what he was and what was his business.

-

-They saw a light moving swiftly along the fringe of the woods. Behind

-the light rose a trail of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a line

-of living fire. The man was running, dragging a flaming torch through

-the long dried grass and brush!

-

-The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks, regardless of paths or

-horses' legs, would gladly have killed the man as he ran. But it was

-too far for even a random shot. They could only ride on in reckless

-rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat it to death with their hands, to

-stamp it into the earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and a

-fair shot at the fiend there within the wood.

-

-Before they had stumbled half the distance down the hill, a wave of

-leaping flame a hundred feet long was hurling itself upon the forest.

-They could not stamp that fire out. But they could kill that man!

-

-The man ran back behind the wall of fire to where he had started and

-began to run another line of fire in the other direction. At that

-moment Stocking yelled:

-

-"There's another starting, straight in front!"

-

-"Get him," Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder. "I'm going to kill this

-one."

-

-Stocking turned slightly and made for a second light which he had seen

-starting. Jeffrey rode on alone, unslinging his rifle and driving

-madly. His horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down the hill, now

-saw the fire and started to bolt off at a tangent. Jeffrey fought with

-him a furious moment, trying to force him toward the fire and the man.

-Then, seeing that he could not conquer the fright of the horse and

-that his man was escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and

-leaping free with his gun ran towards the man.

-

-The man was dodging in and out now among the trees, but still using

-his torch and moving rapidly away.

-

-Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man in his zigzag until he

-was within easy distance. But the man continued weaving his way among

-the trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim. Jeffrey dropped

-to one knee and steadied the sights of his rifle until they closed

-upon the running man and clung to him.

-

-Suddenly the man turned in an open space and faced about. It was

-Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He was unarmed, but he must be killed.

-

-"I am going to kill him," said Jeffrey under his breath, as he again

-fixed the sights of his rifle, this time full on the man's breast.

-

-A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers threw up his hands, took a

-half step forward, and fell on his face.

-

-Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger which he had not

-pulled, ran forward to where the man lay.

-

-He was lying face down, his arms stretched out wide at either side,

-his fingers convulsively clutching at tufts of grass.

-

-He was dying. No need for a second look.

-

-His hat had fallen off to a little distance. There was a clean round

-hole in the back of the skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair

-showed just the merest streak of red.

-

-Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still flaming railroad

-torch, with which he had done his work.

-

-Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction from which the shot

-had come. There was no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no

-sign of another human being anywhere.

-

-Away back of him he heard shots, one, two, three; Stocking, probably,

-or some of the other men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at

-other fleeing figures in the woods.

-

-He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the wick and stamped it into

-a patch of burnt ground, threw the torch back from the fire line, and

-started clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of his

-rifle.

-

-He was quickly brought to his senses, when the forgotten cartridge in

-his gun accidentally exploded and the bullet went whizzing past his

-ear. He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp piece of sapling

-he began to work furiously, but systematically at the line of fire.

-

-The line was thin here, where it had really only that moment been

-started, and he made some headway. But as he worked along to where it

-had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless. Still he clung to

-his work. It was the only thing that his numbed brain could think of

-to do for the moment.

-

-He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the loose dirt furiously after

-the fire as it ran away from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire

-and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept up his trousers

-and shirt and up even to his hair. And still the fire ran away from

-him, away down the hill after its real prey. He looked farther on

-along the line and saw that it was not now a line but a charging,

-rushing river of flame that ran down the hill, twenty feet at a jump.

-Nothing, nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain could now

-stop that torrent of fire.

-

-He stepped back. There was nothing to be done here now, behind the

-fire. Nothing to be done but to get ahead of it and save what could be

-saved. He looked around for his horse.

-

-Just then men came riding along the back of the line, Stocking and old

-Erskine Beasley in the lead. They came up to where Jeffrey was

-standing and looked on beyond moodily to where the body of Rogers

-lay.

-

-Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell upon the little group

-of horsemen and upon the boy standing there.

-

-Myron Stocking spoke at last:

-

-"Mine got away, Jeff," he said slowly.

-

-Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the meaning of the words

-flashed upon him.

-

-"I didn't do that!" he exclaimed hastily. "Somebody else shot him from

-the woods. My gun went off accidental."

-

-Silence fell again upon the little group of men. They did not look at

-Jeffrey. They had heard but one shot. The shot from the woods had been

-too muffled for them to hear.

-

-Again Stocking broke the silence.

-

-"What difference does it make," he said. "Any of us would have done it

-if we could."

-

-"But I didn't! I tell you I didn't," shouted Jeffrey. "The shot from

-the woods got ahead of me. That man was facing me. He was shot from

-behind!"

-

-Old Erskine Beasley took command.

-

-"What difference does it make, as Stocking says. We've got live men

-and women and children to think about to-day," he said. "Straighten

-him out decent. Then divide and go around the fire both ways. The

-alarm can't travel half fast enough for this breeze, and it's rising,

-too," he added.

-

-"But I tell you--!" Jeffrey began again. Then he saw how useless it

-was.

-

-He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which even in the face of

-this unheard-of terror had preferred to venture back toward his

-master.

-

-He caught the horse, mounted, and started to ride south with the party

-that was to try to get around the fire from that side.

-

-He rode with them. They were his friends. But he was not with them.

-There was a circle drawn around him. He was separated from them. They

-probably did not feel it, but he felt it. It is a circle which draws

-itself ever around a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of

-blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may say that they themselves

-would wish to have done it. But the circle is there.

-

-Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She would not see that circle.

-

-Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a few hours before said

-that she had sometimes seen even murder in his eyes.

-

-

-

-

-V

-

-MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE

-

-

-Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the fire raved exultingly,

-leaping and skipping fantastically as it ran. It was a prisoner

-released from the bondage of the elements that had held it. It was a

-spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom. It was a flood raging down a

-valley. It was a maniac at large.

-

-The broad base of the mountain where it sat upon the backs of the

-lower hills spread out fanwise to a width of five miles. The fire

-spread its wings as it came down until it swept the whole apron of the

-mountain. A five-mile wave of solid flame rolled down upon the hills.

-

-Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early browse missed the

-juicy dew from the grass. They looked to where the sun should be

-coming over the mountain and instead they saw the sun coming down the

-side of the mountain in a blanket of white smoke. They left their feed

-and began to huddle together, mooing nervously to each other about

-this thing and sniffing the air and pawing the earth.

-

-Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle in to milking looked

-blinking up at the mountain, stood a moment before their numb minds

-understood what their senses were telling them, then ran shouting back

-to the farm houses, throwing open pasture gates and knocking down

-lengths of fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear in their

-hearts, ran straight to the barns and mounting the best horses fled

-down the roads to the west. For the hireling flees because he is a

-hireling.

-

-Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children came tumbling out of

-the houses, to look up at the death that was coming down to them. Some

-cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and shook foolish fists at the

-oncoming enemy. Some fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God

-of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the house for his or her

-treasure; a little bag of money under a mattress, or a babe in its

-crib, or a little rifle, or a dolly of rags.

-

-Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm wagons. The treasures were

-quickly bundled in. Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into

-the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at the heads of the

-sweating horses, then climbed to their places in the wagons and took

-the reins. For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind mad horses,

-they would have to hold the lives of the children, the horses, and,

-incidentally, of themselves in their hands. But they were capable

-hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother hearts that went

-with them.

-

-They would have preferred to stay with the men, these women. But it

-was the law that they should take the brood and run to safety.

-

-Men stood watching the wagons until they shot out of sight behind the

-trees of the road. Then they turned back to the hopeless, probably

-useless fight. They could do little or nothing. But it was the law

-that men must stay and make the fight. They must go out with shovels

-to the very edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of new earth

-which the running fire could not cross. Thus they might divert the

-fire a little. They might even divide it, if the wind died down a

-little, so that it would roll on to either side of their homes.

-

-This was their business. There was little chance that they would

-succeed. Probably they would have to drop shovels at the last moment

-and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But this was the law,

-that every man must stay and try to make his own little clearing the

-point of an entering wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No man, no

-ten thousand men could stop the fire. But, against all probabilities,

-some one man might be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground,

-or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of it. That sector

-might be fought and narrowed down by other men until it was beaten.

-And so something would be gained. For this men stayed, stifled and

-blinded, and fought on until the last possible moment, and then ran

-past their already smoking homes and down the wind for life.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake of four other men down a

-long spiral course towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he

-would have ridden at their head. He would have taken the place of

-leadership and command among them which he had for months been taking

-in the fight against the railroad. Probably he could still have had

-that place among them if he had tried to assert himself, for men had

-come to have a habit of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear,

-dispirited and miserable.

-

-They were trying to get around the fire, so that they might hang upon

-its flank and beat it in upon itself. There was no thought now of

-getting ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm. That rolling

-curtain of smoke would have already aroused every living thing ahead

-of it. They could only hope to get to the end of the line of fire and

-fight it inch by inch to narrow the path of destruction that it was

-making for itself.

-

-If the wind had held stiff and straight down the mountain it would

-have driven the fire ahead in a line only a little wider than its

-original front. But the shape of the mountain caught the light breeze

-as it came down and twisted it away always to the side. So that the

-end of the fire line was not a thin edge of scattered fire that could

-be fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted funnel of flame

-that leaped and danced ever outward and onward.

-

-Half way down the mountain they thought that they had outflanked it.

-They slid from their horses and began to beat desperately at the brush

-and grasses among the trees. They gained upon it. They were doing

-something. They shouted to each other when they had driven it back

-even a foot. They fought it madly for the possession of a single tree.

-They were gaining. They were turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat

-began to streak the caking grime upon their faces. There was no air to

-breathe, only the hot breath of fire. But it was heartsome work, for

-they were surely pushing the fire in upon itself.

-

-A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smoke

-about them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves

-pressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.

-

-When they could look they saw a wall of fire bearing down upon them

-from three sides. The wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise

-so that it had surrounded the meagre little space that they had

-cleared and had now outflanked them. Their own manoeuvre had been

-turned against them. There was but one way to run, straight down the

-hill with the fire roaring and panting after them. It was a playful,

-tricky monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing at their

-puny efforts.

-

-Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves out of the path of

-the flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by

-them on its way.

-

-Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap had

-caught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following their

-instinct to hunt water.

-

-The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They were

-five already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must

-follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run at

-their best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch of

-the way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from

-spreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fire

-shoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished what

-these five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But they

-hung on in desperation.

-

-Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fire

-back a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something.

-And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behind

-and around them so that they had to race for life.

-

-Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and among

-the broken hills. Here their work was entirely hopeless and they knew

-it. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of being

-cut off and completely surrounded. Here the fire did not keep any

-steady edge that they could follow and attack. The wind eddied and

-whirled about among the broken peaks of the hills in every direction

-and with it the fire ran apparently at will.

-

-When they tried to hold it to one side of a hill and were just

-beginning to think that they had won, a sudden sweep of the wind would

-send a ring of fire around to the other side so that they saw

-themselves again and again surrounded and almost cut off.

-

-Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold the fire to the north

-side of the Chain. The Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly

-east and west. It divides the hill country into fairly even portions.

-If they could keep the fire north of the lakes they would save the

-southern half of the country. Their own homes all lay to the north of

-the lakes and they were now doomed. But that was a matter that did not

-enter here. What was gone was gone. Their loved ones would have had

-plenty of warning and would be out of the way by now. The men were

-fighting the enemy merely to save what could be saved. And as is the

-way of men in fight they began to make it a personal quarrel with the

-fire.

-

-They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. It was no longer

-an impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was a

-cunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its

-eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and

-bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the

-roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips

-were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it.

-

-They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of them

-had forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last night

-and who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten those

-other men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men into

-the hills to do this thing.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and the

-fight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sight

-of the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. He

-fought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, until

-there was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in his

-brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quarter

-given or asked with the demon of the fire.

-

-Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south and

-joined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, where

-the Chain began and stretched away to the west. If they could hold

-the fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along the

-north side of the lakes and the other half of the country would be

-safe.

-

-The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. The

-five weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollen

-tongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strength

-from the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back down

-the north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with

-charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it.

-

-They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and their

-work would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! God

-in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it!

-To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and

-_drink_!

-

-Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Here

-was the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder,

-fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath of

-the fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed the

-fire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. They

-had won! It could not beat them now!

-

-As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of the

-placid lake below him one of the new men, who still had voice, raised

-a shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voice

-croaking out what would have been a cry of triumph.

-

-But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they had

-safely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry,

-flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flames

-went dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread out

-around the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, the

-thing was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flames

-went roaring to the top of it.

-

-The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to get

-themselves out of that encircling death.

-

-When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw the

-full extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment of

-victory.

-

-Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain--but they

-themselves could not get near the lake.

-

-Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they could

-not reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line between

-them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet in

-the lake.

-

-Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted silent teeth, according

-to the nature that was in each.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men

-pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke

-and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not

-men of the hills.

-

-They were!--They were the real enemy!--They were two of those who had

-set the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headed

-straight for the lake and had gotten there. _They_ were safe. And

-_they_ had _water_!

-

-All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting fire

-fury of the day, rushed back upon him.

-

-He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he had

-not.

-

-Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill those

-two there in the water. _In the water!_

-

-He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of the

-fire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward,

-his face buried in a patch of bare earth.

-

-Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. When

-they had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into him

-with their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As he

-understood, he turned on his face moaning:

-

-"I didn't kill Rogers. I wish I had--I wish I had."

-

-And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as the

-intolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canal

-and the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of the

-morning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, four

-hours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good wash

-and rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was he

-querulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow and

-dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop had

-found plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentle

-philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood the

-faults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour at

-the back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, Joseph

-Winthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop.

-

-But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing in

-Albany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He had

-appealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And the

-conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that the

-U. & M. Railroad must not dare to drive the people of the hills from

-their homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Then

-the conscience of the people of the State had gone off about its

-business, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The public

-would forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with a

-mild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few days

-at most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But the

-railroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behind

-it who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results.

-

-He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strike

-in some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the hand

-that struck.

-

-Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of the

-first hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of the

-mountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blue

-of the sky behind them.

-

-Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where Old

-Forge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the

-divide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The day

-was very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew that

-morning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the early

-morning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now.

-

-Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journey

-up this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fair

-day. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the top

-of other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you remember

-that his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand square

-miles of broken country, you will see that he had need of marking

-posts.

-

-Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach from

-the western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country to

-the east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany and

-around by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east by

-Malone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into the

-mountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre of

-his diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, south

-and west.

-

-He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled,

-perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station he

-went out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.

-

-Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where he

-knew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he had

-recognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountain

-had suddenly been moved into the gap. He went back to his seat and

-sat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the whole

-contour of the hills that he had known was changed under his very

-eyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smooth

-skulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks should

-have been.

-

-He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind,

-and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of

-Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heart

-whose passions ran deep below a placid surface.

-

-At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped and

-hurried to the operator's window to ask if any news had gone down the

-wire of a fire in the hills.

-

-Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table "listening in"

-with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going over

-the wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company,

-between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the office

-at Steuben.

-

-The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.

-

-Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:

-

-"This ain't the bulletin board. We're busy."

-

-The Bishop stood quiet a moment.

-

-Then Jerry looked up. The face looking calmly through the window was

-the face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder of

-certain things.

-

-Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. He

-grabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped:

-

-"I--I'm sorry, Bishop! I--I--didn't hear what you said."

-

-The Bishop--if one might say it--grinned. Then he said quickly:

-

-"I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anything

-on the wire?"

-

-Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop's mouth. The beet red

-colour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles were

-coming back. He was now coherent.

-

-No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the

-wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed

-abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call."

-

-Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica," he said. They waited

-a little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call

-everything," Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the

-benefit of the Bishop.

-

-"It must be big, Bishop," he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call--"

-

-But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing

-train.

-

-At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house.

-Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the

-housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady's

-saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the

-hills.

-

-It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no

-telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a

-half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among

-the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated

-country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady's

-clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the

-matter no more than a mild wonder.

-

-For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road

-over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the

-winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He

-thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on

-that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But

-more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up

-there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all.

-

-He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started

-accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men

-into the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were

-caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody

-justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady's

-horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his

-well fed life.

-

-Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther.

-Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of

-keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for a

-fresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had just

-slid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop's destination in the

-hills--which was vague, and his business--which was still more vague.

-He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the whole

-matter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have the

-fresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.

-

-The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corben

-believed that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the

-diocese. Corben did not believe that.

-

-In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to

-believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in

-his pockets he pressed on into the high hills.

-

-Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road.

-But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe

-of the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the

-origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond

-that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.

-

-Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones,

-and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask

-a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the

-situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning

-by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the

-children. That was all they could tell.

-

-As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones

-escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew

-without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women

-would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger.

-

-In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory

-authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to

-the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea

-that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself

-in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the

-mere argument that he was a man.

-

-The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what

-she knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road

-yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in

-the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald

-Mountain.

-

-The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched.

-He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the

-breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and

-futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of

-that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even

-than the one of the fire itself.

-

-"He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth

-had to tell.

-

-"Yes. We had just read it."

-

-"He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly.

-

-"Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him," the girl answered

-simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer

-implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.

-

-"They will all be driven in upon French Village," said the Bishop

-slowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills.

-Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road

-from here there, is it open, do you know?"

-

-"No one has come down from that far," said Ruth. "We have watched the

-people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the

-lake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the road

-certainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes

-down."

-

-"I must hurry, then," said the Bishop, gripping his reins.

-

-"Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will be

-trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a

-few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot

-go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost."

-

-"Well, I can always come back," said the Bishop lightly, as he set his

-horse up the hill.

-

-"But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop," Ruth pleaded after

-him. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on the

-road!"

-

-But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he

-heard or not, he did not answer or look back.

-

-Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know

-whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a

-quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not

-drive him back. She knew that.

-

-She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which

-he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be

-driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and hunted

-alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills

-would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside

-it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and

-the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be

-trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek

-safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death

-just as certain but which they would prefer to face.

-

-The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was

-riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be

-among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.

-

-But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and

-before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.

-

-"I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs.

-Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will

-catch you before long."

-

-"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you.

-Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet,

-and won't be for some time."

-

-Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day

-long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did

-not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to

-run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run

-very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the

-hill.

-

-But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him.

-When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile

-away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.

-

-She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all

-against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances

-stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the

-chances and was ready to measure himself against them.

-

-"Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up

-the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too

-late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid.

-Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like a

-man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all

-about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God's

-business. I wonder."

-

-Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of

-the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a

-pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired from

-the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that

-he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he

-disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into

-the sky.

-

-Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to

-the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming,

-sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward

-her home.

-

-All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had

-passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present

-among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting

-to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never

-before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her.

-

-For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a

-living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined

-course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down

-the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open

-chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and

-surround them.

-

-While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but

-the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This

-was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep

-in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the

-level lands and safety.

-

-The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid front

-beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the

-Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and

-get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was

-sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely

-before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great

-limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he

-would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind

-whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead

-of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the

-road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander

-aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him.

-

-Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need

-her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw

-the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril

-from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life.

-He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find

-him and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he did

-not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the

-attempt.

-

-Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home.

-For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his

-flanks--to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing

-like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for he

-had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the

-stroke of the whip to madden him.

-

-Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red

-terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not

-understand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of rising

-excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:

-

-"You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way

-before, did I? But it's for life--a good man's life! You can make it.

-I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. You

-can make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It _can't_ hurt us! Bromie, dear,

-I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!"

-

-She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon her

-hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw

-that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was

-going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet

-body.

-

-But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that

-red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point

-just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came?

-She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where

-the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she

-could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting

-down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were

-whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should

-hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The

-girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him

-so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged

-straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road.

-

-A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and

-reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he

-felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on

-again, through the smoke and out into the good air.

-

-The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed

-them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared,

-either.

-

-Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and

-turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away

-with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already

-leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire

-from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where

-everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with

-the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter

-much.

-

-Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the

-hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her

-loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at

-the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the

-men who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it.) She wanted

-vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take

-revenge in the way of men.

-

-But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and

-for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And

-she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our

-trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive

-those who trespass against us," she meant that, too.

-

-The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal

-another.

-

-Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire

-burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but

-a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and

-to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole

-horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be

-coming down upon the whole world.

-

-She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of

-herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the

-road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out

-of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little

-moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there

-was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost

-certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she

-could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop

-would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom

-Bones for his brave best.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to

-French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the

-sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white

-smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show

-that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the

-sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come

-to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance

-but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.

-

-He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty

-sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest

-shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he

-would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the

-fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he

-would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through

-somehow.

-

-He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran

-straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him,

-sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading

-steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill

-before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed

-the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill

-he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French

-Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous

-horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and

-make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far

-from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.

-

-Then he came to the top of the hill.

-

-He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that

-same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight

-slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran

-straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could

-see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road.

-This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided

-the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still

-moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the

-hill where he stood.

-

-Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than

-he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse

-and looked.

-

-Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was

-marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given

-its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not

-have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road

-clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid

-wall of fire.

-

-There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The

-way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But

-at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the

-fire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed in

-entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So,

-if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe

-again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French

-Village.

-

-Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick

-upon him.

-

-His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the

-shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop

-dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the

-horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture

-land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way.

-

-Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have

-expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood

-stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look.

-

-"I am sorry, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You have done your

-best. And I--have done my worst. You did not deserve this."

-

-He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, two

-miles away and a thousand feet below.

-

-The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into

-the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to

-the west down through the great trees, travelling faster than any

-horse could have been driven.

-

-The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking

-mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an

-unbroken line--death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with

-a calm and certain steadiness of purpose--death. On the hill to the

-west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift

-line of fire coming down the northern side of the square--death. One

-narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the

-north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few

-minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and

-running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With

-a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it.

-

-With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over

-the horse and came heavily to the ground.

-

-"You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance," he said, as he

-hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle.

-

-He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed.

-

-"We stay together, then." And the Bishop mounted again.

-

-Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around

-them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope.

-No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it

-was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying

-equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran

-through the grass by his horse's feet.

-

-One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility

-that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned

-away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might

-be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding

-nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this,

-the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west.

-

-Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a

-bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to

-be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in

-hand.

-

-Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he

-would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his

-hand.

-

-But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb

-and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him,

-the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of

-the thing than he could see heroism.

-

-He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certain

-men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was

-all. He had meant well. God meant better.

-

-Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently

-with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the

-Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this

-square of fire.

-

-"It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thought

-I'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'll

-follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks," she yelled back over her shoulder, "we

-can make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. But

-we won't _burn_!"

-

-Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under

-command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to

-think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse

-followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck

-path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath

-or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of

-what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.

-

-They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom

-Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw

-that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent

-and perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking down

-he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks

-below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to

-the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the

-lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks.

-Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.

-

-It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side

-of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came

-slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop

-brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light.

-The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing.

-But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe

-Gadbeau.

-

-The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, then

-crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck

-and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.

-

-The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised

-the Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips

-there came the moan:

-

-_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse--"_

-

-With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in which

-the French people began the telling of their sins in confession. And

-she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.

-

-She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking of

-Jeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like--the

-Catholic Church always turning up in everything.

-

-She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up there

-behind that awful veil of red.

-

-

-

-

-VI

-

-THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD

-

-

-The Bishop laid the man's head back so that he lay as easy as it was

-possible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of his

-which was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country.

-

-But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw the

-Bishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know

-what it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, only

-continued to mumble the words with which they had begun:

-

-_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--"

-

-Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he could

-speak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue of

-his mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one of

-these.

-

-Again the Bishop lowered the man's head and changed the position of

-the body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouth

-with his hat.

-

-Now the man tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp

-effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he

-forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of

-encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise,

-recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada

-have been drilling into the children for the last three hundred

-years.

-

-Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it worked

-easily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At that

-time he had received the Sacrament. He went through the "table of

-sins" with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses a

-step in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of the

-young men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in the

-sawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill country

-would have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting in

-the camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down to

-spend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. The

-Bishop had heard the story ten thousand times.

-

-But now--_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--there was something more, something

-that would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. It

-had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the

-feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For the

-Bishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, just

-below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a

-wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying

-where he fell.

-

-He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolled

-itself to his mind.

-

-"I die, Mon Pere, I die," he began between gasps. "I die. Since the

-afternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down,

-if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have lain

-down to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.

-

-"All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till I

-had found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here I

-breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran out

-from the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not run

-out of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire and

-fought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. All

-the day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the fire

-when I would run out.

-

-"They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with the

-men who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to the

-fire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they went

-to set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale.

-

-"Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All were

-drinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. _Mon

-Pere_, I struck no blow. But my knife--my knife was found in the man's

-heart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad that

-comes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showed

-the knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word to

-the law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only to

-me he said, 'Some day I may need you.'

-

-"Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he was

-not a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He

-would buy the land from the people.

-

-"The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he came

-again. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He must

-force the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. 'You,'

-he said, 'I need you.'

-

-"_Mon Pere_, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinch

-of salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will do

-this, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied to

-my own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed

-the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came.

-He bade me do and I did.

-

-"M'sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of all

-sins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate.

-And hate goes raging to do all sin.

-

-"So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was always

-the face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine.

-

-"Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at the

-railroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up into

-the high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. I

-would not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved

-me, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go.

-

-"I went. Fear, _Mon Pere_, fear is the father of all. I went because

-there was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followed

-into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the last

-moment. I do not know.

-

-"I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see.

-If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be

-seen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to be

-punished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I would

-have to take the blame. I would not dare to speak.

-

-"Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And of

-the seven I alone was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me.

-I knew.

-

-"Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. And

-his speech was, 'You owe me this. Now you must pay.'

-

-"In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along the

-fringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went

-out into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen other

-men watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with a

-lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light my

-torch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, the

-red flare of the fire running after him.

-

-"Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of fire

-in the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!" With

-a terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop's arms,

-gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming:

-

-"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!"

-

-He fell back as the scream died in his throat.

-

-The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of the

-well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe

-Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips

-began to form the words of the Act of Contrition.

-

-As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in

-his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man.

-

-Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against the

-flank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrific

-forces of this world and the other that were at work about her. This

-world, with the exception of this little island on which she stood,

-was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side the

-flames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place,

-all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south.

-Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these few

-bare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out

-of which she must get the breath of life.

-

-Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a

-rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself

-down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the

-mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him!

-

-She was only a young girl. But since that night when the Bishop had

-come to her as she held her father dying in her arms she had thought

-much. Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had pressed themselves

-in upon her mind. The things that she had been hearing and reading

-since her childhood, the thoughts of the people among whom she had

-grown up, the feeling of loyalty to her own kind, all these had fought

-in her against the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged

-them all.

-

-Because she had so recently come under its influence, the Catholic

-Church seemed ever to be unfolding new wonders to her. It seemed as

-though she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another more

-wonderful, more awesome. Yet always there seemed to be something just

-beyond, some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which she could not

-quite attain. Always a door opened, only to disclose another closed

-door beyond it.

-

-Here surely she stood as near to naked truth as it was possible to

-get. Here were none of the forms of words, none of the explanations,

-none of the ready-made answers of the catechism. Here were just two

-men. One was a bad man, a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few

-moments his soul must go--somewhere. The other was a good man. To-day

-he had risked his life to save the lives of this man and others--for

-Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been caught in the fire

-because other men were chasing him.

-

-Now these two men had a question to settle between them. In a very few

-minutes these two men must settle whether this bad man's soul was

-presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity. You see, she

-was a very direct young person. She took her religion at its word,

-straight in the eyes, literally.

-

-So far she had not needed to take any precautions against hearing

-anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them

-effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high

-above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, breaking voice of

-Gadbeau, screaming:

-

-"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stopped!"

-

-Involuntarily she turned and started towards the men. Gadbeau had

-fallen back in the Bishop's arms and the Bishop was leaning over,

-apparently talking to him. She knew that she must not go near until

-the Bishop gave her leave. She turned back and putting her hands up to

-her ears buried her face in Brom Bones' mane.

-

-But she could not put away the words that she had heard. Never, so

-long as she lived, was she able to forget them. Like the flash of the

-shot itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves there.

-Years afterwards she could shut her eyes and fairly see those words

-burning in her mind.

-

-When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and she went over timidly.

-She heard the Bishop say:

-

-"He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?"

-

-Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the light of the flames, the

-Prayers for the Departed. Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and

-among the Mysteries she wept gently--why, she knew not.

-

-When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while in silence, looking

-into the face of the dead. Then he arose and folded the long arms on

-the tattered breast and straightened the body.

-

-Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way. Once, twice she opened

-her lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it.

-Finally she began:

-

-"Bishop, I--I heard--"

-

-"No, child. You heard nothing," the Bishop interrupted quietly,

-"nothing."

-

-Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there looking

-down. The dead man's secret lay between them, buried under God's awful

-seal.

-

-The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady's storm coat

-which he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of the

-dead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders that

-rained down upon everything.

-

-Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing at

-their horses' heads, their faces buried in the manes, their arms

-thrown over the horses' eyes.

-

-As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the east

-and south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But the

-sharp, acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept them

-in exquisite, blinded torture.

-

-The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the fires

-to the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night.

-The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through the

-smoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to be

-rising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting the

-heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into the

-west. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a

-land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there a

-great tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch.

-

-They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the man

-lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping

-hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach

-Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live.

-Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and

-they knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse.

-

-Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travel

-circuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallen

-trees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The road

-was impossible because it had largely run through wooded places and

-the trees would have fallen across it. Their situation was not

-desperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad for

-water.

-

-For two hours they plodded steadily over the hills through the hot,

-loose-lying ashes. In all the world it seemed that not man nor beast

-nor bird was alive. The top of the earth was one grey ruin, draped

-with the little sworls of dust and ashes that the playful wind sent

-drifting up into their mouths and eyes.

-

-They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the ashes had blown level

-over holes and traps of all sorts in which a galloping horse would

-surely break his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the horses to

-any rapid expenditure of energy. The little that was left in them must

-be doled out to the very last ounce. For they did not yet know what

-lay between them and French Village and the lake. If the fire had not

-reached the lake during the night then it was always a possibility

-that, with this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring up from

-the ashes of the old and place an impassable barrier between them and

-the water.

-

-When this thought came to them, as it must, they involuntarily

-quickened their pace. The impulse was to make one wild dash for the

-lake. But they knew that it would be nothing short of madness. They

-must go slowly and carefully, enduring the torture with what fortitude

-they could.

-

-The story which the Bishop had heard from the lips of the dying man

-had stirred him profoundly. He now knew definitely, what yesterday he

-had suspected, that men had been sent into the hills by the railroad

-people to set fire to the forests, thereby driving the people out of

-that part of the country which the railroad wished to possess. He was

-moved to anger by the knowledge, but he knew that he must try to drive

-that knowledge back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try to

-hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded moment, some time of

-stress and mental conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture or

-even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness of that knowledge.

-Now he knew that the situation which last night he had thought to meet

-in French Village would almost certainly confront him there this

-morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be

-doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should

-in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned

-under the seal of the confessional.

-

-Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words of

-that last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near they

-came to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his

-gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she

-would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under

-any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears.

-And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.

-

-As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of the

-country sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. There

-was not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little French

-Village had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completely

-around the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn it

-up in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself out

-along the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward the

-west, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there would

-be no more fire in this region.

-

-"Would the people make their way down the river," the Bishop asked;

-"or did they escape back into the higher hills?"

-

-"I don't think they did either," Ruth answered as she scanned the lake

-sharply. "There is something out there in the middle of the lake, and

-I wouldn't be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and went

-through the fire that way. They'd be better off than we were, and that

-way they could save some things. If they had run away they would have

-had to drop everything."

-

-The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up their

-ears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruth

-was right in her conjecture. They could now make out five or six

-large rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of the

-logs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the

-sawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must have

-stood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided by

-such help as the people could give it with boards and poles, was

-moving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been.

-

-The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep through

-the ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village and

-watched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing for

-them to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other side

-of the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with that

-dumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back and

-begin their nests over again.

-

-For nearly an hour they stood on the little beach, letting the horses

-drink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts.

-When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling from

-the rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts were

-emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must be

-carried off.

-

-They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl with

-wonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these two

-people must have come straight through the fire. But when Father

-Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a great

-glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people.

-It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing!

-His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors.

-Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long

-night. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that all

-was well!

-

-Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes their

-race what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging his

-blessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He was

-infinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith.

-He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They were

-homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it had

-needed but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded

-confidence that God was good, that the world was right again.

-

-The other people, the hill people of the Bishop's own blood and race,

-stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kind

-of people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were not

-unmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some

-two or three old men of them saw him now through a mist of memory and

-battle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that this

-was the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare

-through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a

-part of the strange things that they had always half believed about

-him.

-

-Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop.

-Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag

-the Bishop's story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven?

-How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the

-fire?

-

-The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own

-imprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it by

-the quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translated

-freely and with a fine flourish. Then the Bishop told of the coming of

-Rafe Gadbeau and how the man had died with the Sacrament. They nodded

-their heads in silence. There was nothing to be said. They knew who

-the man was. He had done wickedly. But the good God had stretched out

-the wing of His great Church over him at the last. Why say more? God

-was good. No?

-

-Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people, grouped on the outskirts

-of the crowd that pressed around the Bishop, answering their eager

-questions and asking questions of her own. There was just one

-question that she wanted to ask, but something kept it back from her

-lips. There was no reason at all why she should not ask them about

-Jeffrey Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard news of him,

-must know in what direction he had gone to fight the fire. But some

-unnamed dread seemed to take possession of her so that she dared not

-put her crying question into words.

-

-Some one at her elbow, who had heard what the French people were

-saying, asked:

-

-"You're sure that was Gadbeau that crawled out of the fire and died,

-Miss Lansing?"

-

-"Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly," Ruth

-answered without looking up.

-

-Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:

-

-"Then that's two of 'em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting

-shot Rogers."

-

-"He did not!" Ruth blazed up in the young man's face. "Jeffrey Whiting

-did _not_ shoot Rogers! Rafe--!"

-

-The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her and

-blinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain,

-choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The young

-man, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall.

-She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp:

-

-"It's nothing-- Let me go."

-

-Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand from

-her arm.

-

-Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself

-in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be

-likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a

-sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand.

-Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling that

-she stood among those who could have understood gave her strength and

-a feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have had

-among her own kind.

-

-But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan,

-grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and

-drew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth found

-it difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly French

-girl she had met in the early summer.

-

-"You saw Rafe Gadbeau die," the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruth

-sharply at a little distance from the crowd. "You were there, close?

-No?"

-

-"Yes, the fire was all around," Ruth answered, quaking.

-

-"How did he die? Tell me. How?"

-

-"Why--why, he died quickly, in the Bishop's arms."

-

-"I know. Yes. But how? He _confessed_?"

-

-"He--he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so."

-

-But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.

-

-"I know that," she persisted. "I heard M'sieur the Bishop. But did he

-_confess_--about Rogers?"

-

-"Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn't hear anything. I

-couldn't--"

-

-"He didn't say nothing, except in confession?" the girl questioned

-swiftly.

-

-"Nothing at all," Ruth answered, relieved.

-

-"And you heard?" the girl returned shrewdly.

-

-"Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that."

-

-"I know you are lying," Cynthe said slowly. "That is right. But I do

-not know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You are

-Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometime

-you will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in

-us. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you a

-question and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will be

-silent--and that will be just as bad."

-

-Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did not

-even raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuring

-look to the girl would be an admission that she must not make.

-

-"Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! You

-cannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul," said the girl in a

-low, tense whisper; "swear that you will never, sleeping or waking,

-laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know that

-you heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember." She drew Ruth

-close to her and almost hissed into her ear:

-

-"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting!"

-

-She dropped Ruth's arm and turned quickly away.

-

-Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright

-and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not

-grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind.

-

-This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love

-and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the

-dark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes given

-to those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girl

-had seen Ruth's terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had

-plucked it out before Ruth's very eyes.

-

-The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She had

-broken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with the

-most terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the most

-awful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret had

-escaped her!

-

-She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she had

-repeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that the

-other girl had taken her secret from her.

-

-And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into the

-future and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her.

-Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraid

-to speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had ever

-known.

-

-And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth's secrets, one that

-had been hidden even from herself. She had said:

-

-"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting."

-

-In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she had

-never known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up in

-the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for the

-dead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was,

-and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of her

-own beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cain

-upon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over the

-hills-- The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love!

-Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would love

-forever!

-

-He would hear it from other mouths. But, oh! the cruel, unbearable

-taunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her own

-lips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thought

-of such a thing?

-

-But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She

-could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the

-bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not

-even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the

-faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his

-and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to

-look into his eyes and say:

-

-I _know_ you did not do it.

-

-Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that she

-knew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man.

-It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love,

-horror, and the awful weight of God's seal pressed in upon her to

-crush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could not

-meet them, could not cope with them.

-

-Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where Brom

-Bones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, her

-face buried in the colt's mane, crying hysterically. They bathed her

-hands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted they

-gave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing that she

-would need strength above all things, took what was given and silently

-faced the galling weight of the burden that was hers.

-

-The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The first

-thing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold out

-where they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villages

-on the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walking

-over ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north it

-would mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and have

-water at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might come

-into the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help.

-

-Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they do

-there? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothing

-left for them here but the places where their homes had been, but at

-least they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had all

-passed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-stricken

-alike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation,

-would here bind them together and give them a common strength for a

-new grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the four

-or five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowville

-or from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here.

-

-The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawing

-family groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Already

-these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing around

-them and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circle

-drawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindly

-of eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded.

-Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth from

-nondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. It

-appeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision store

-until the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, to

-each one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was all

-pitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for those

-refugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, he

-thought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured to

-scanty living.

-

-The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put something

-before them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all

-things it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merely

-wait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried in

-their hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort of

-shelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kind

-would cover at least the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up

-or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of the

-lake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. But

-it would put heart into them to see at least something, anything,

-begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes.

-

-Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holding

-desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading

-them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to

-what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which

-messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They

-bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that

-were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little

-village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men

-gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would

-mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well

-know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth

-while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the

-Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy

-relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes

-the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was

-characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of

-penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations

-upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of

-his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary

-upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one

-of the notes he signed that day.

-

-All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and

-driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and

-joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes

-from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came

-down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of

-women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised

-cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French

-Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then

-Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the

-Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far

-Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had

-never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and

-young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears,

-their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt

-of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal

-and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and

-unashamed.

-

-Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight

-brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men,

-sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and

-dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.

-

-Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid

-his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the

-Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his

-fingers and unfolded their story to him.

-

-Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far

-slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the

-grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on

-past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of

-barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown

-country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for

-travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging

-like hunted rats, between a line of fire--of their own making--before

-them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire

-and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them.

-They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run with

-them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through

-all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the

-blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching

-thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes.

-And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them,

-torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and

-wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that

-it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight.

-They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake

-came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from

-it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to

-taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy

-that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks.

-This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all

-might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had

-yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered

-around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might

-come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt

-ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened

-hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And,

-for these two men, to be seen meant to die.

-

-So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture.

-Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been

-beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down

-to the water.

-

-They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of

-the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no

-more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until

-they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst

-and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised

-now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up

-so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything

-else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew

-that if they would live and travel--and they must travel--they would

-have to have food at once.

-

-Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died

-out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was

-food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it

-did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great

-thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one

-thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else.

-They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the

-world!

-

-Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a

-few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself.

-There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed,

-seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not

-remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some

-baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat

-them, but--Fresh grass! Or oats!

-

-Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing

-to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around

-him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the

-matter.

-

-A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He

-carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At

-peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile

-that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and

-children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridle

-and tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a can

-of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom

-Bones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.

-

-A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking

-the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and

-fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and

-plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout,

-faithful heart.

-

-In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and

-shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and

-children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building.

-

-The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to

-give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men

-running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and

-hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire.

-

-They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men

-whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the

-most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been

-thirsting to kill them. The hour had come.

-

-"Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves." Old

-Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence.

-

-A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that

-suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey.

-

-Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying

-hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had

-caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he had

-cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he

-spoke now calmly, as one assured.

-

-"Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We know

-that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for

-they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall

-only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence

-these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?"

-

-"We'll be sure of these two," said a sullen voice in the crowd.

-

-"True," returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you there

-are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills

-risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater

-ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the

-end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a

-thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this

-trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my

-friends and my neighbours," he went on raising his hand, "I pledge you

-that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you.

-

-"Before these men die, bring a justice--there is one of the

-village--and let them confess before the world and to him on paper

-what they know of this crime and of those who commanded it."

-

-A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the

-time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought

-forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit

-upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his

-long hand of the _rue Henri_ the story that the men told.

-

-They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of

-all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for

-the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task.

-

-The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save

-these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a

-Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend,

-Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain

-man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of

-that story which he himself could but must not tell.

-

-The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the

-story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure

-that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke

-simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the

-first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their

-intention, he said:

-

-"My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I

-will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not

-move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets

-must pass through me.

-

-"You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is

-just one thing--Revenge."

-

-"What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd.

-

-"It is _not_ my business," said the Bishop solemnly. "It is the

-business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have

-I no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe all

-the same things? My business is with the souls of men--of all men. And

-never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing

-this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my

-fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your

-souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you

-sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and

-say: A man warned us, but he had no _business_!

-

-"Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done.

-And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh!

-believe me now! You shall see right!"

-

-The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men

-about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his

-feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.

-

-He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.

-

-Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her

-dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done

-his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden.

-But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful

-words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this

-grief.

-

-He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into

-the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered

-the things of God and His world.

-

-

-

-

-VII

-

-THE INNER CITADEL

-

-

-"And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute

-satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and

-with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August

-twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a

-long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered

-man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall

-not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have

-done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths

-of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes,

-actual eye-witnesses of the crime."

-

-In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District

-Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against

-Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had

-died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald

-Mountain.

-

-From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of

-Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the

-hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial.

-Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the

-villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose

-lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge

-Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it

-plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers

-must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the

-guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder

-itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been

-doing at the time.

-

-For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed

-just a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a little

-of the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned over

-in the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to these

-people. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had

-suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible

-to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer

-of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages

-of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that

-a man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire had

-started at about the same time and place. But few people had any clear

-version of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to the

-identity of the slayer.

-

-There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunate

-for Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of

-Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same man

-who only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before the

-Senate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroad

-against the lawless people of the hills. He had given the District

-Attorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury who

-would be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. For

-this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of

-the hills against the U. & M. Railroad.

-

-Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of its

-rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad

-system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that

-had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the

-North. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it was

-not in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave the

-county in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroad

-saw to it that only men personally known to its officials should have

-public office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench.

-And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well for

-the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it.

-

-The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of

-Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to

-every money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible but

-impenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in every

-direction and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tell

-where it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines of

-influence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of the

-attorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand they

-passed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whose

-money and brain dominated the whole transportation business of the

-State. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitol

-at Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to the

-youngest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune from

-their influence.

-

-Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procured

-the setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill people

-homeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, be

-impossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in any

-county of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the way

-of criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper and

-roused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public.

-The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even a muttered

-and vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in a

-spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter

-charge.

-

-Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand

-Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment

-against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They had

-found that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon a

-peaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of his

-company. He had been found shot through the back of the head and the

-circumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature and

-disposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young man

-who for months had been leading a stubborn fight against the

-railroad.

-

-The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in Judge

-Leslie's court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind of

-the public with this case until the people should have had time to

-forget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of the

-railroad's affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold only

-one thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder case

-into that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise.

-

-The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; the

-well-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had

-done its work, and the efficient way in which judge and prosecuting

-attorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a

-"railroad" jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident power

-was moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge and

-this jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in the

-way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in

-the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to

-appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as

-justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The

-fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether

-or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would be

-allowed to enter.

-

-And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were already

-made up. The prisoner's friends and associates in the hills had been

-at first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubt

-was his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did not

-deny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on the

-very scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any one

-for doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since his

-conviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what room

-was there to hope for his acquittal?

-

-The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they had

-been working night and day to put a roof over their families before

-the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. They

-had no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and

-they had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew--every

-word of which would count against them. They had come down determined

-that he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as it

-were, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which the

-machinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them.

-There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idle

-and glum, waiting for the end.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment by

-the District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of

-circumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morning

-on Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold

-upon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that night

-and had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his mother

-there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had been

-horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face of

-the fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No

-word had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactly

-what had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He

-had wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not,

-in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, of

-course. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he would

-have told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey was

-aware that she was the only person who did or would believe him.

-

-He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother's horses, to go

-up into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wandering

-somewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers.

-The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gotten

-quickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroad

-people had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. The

-warrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reached

-Lowville.

-

-When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before the

-Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might

-have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost.

-Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he

-was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His

-own friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath.

-

-His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in the front seats just to

-the right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly at

-them with a confidence that he was far from feeling. His mother

-smiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with a

-twinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep into

-the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of the

-morning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly and

-unaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged to

-lift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, to

-conquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness

-of everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once the

-pride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he had

-kissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told--that

-he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again.

-And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with

-him.

-

-Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart

-in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail

-of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them.

-Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she

-been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the

-thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the

-hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart

-of her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of her

-boy brought to this pass because of that man.

-

-Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with his

-mother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung

-to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men.

-The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to

-see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had

-seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had

-been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he

-remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him

-squarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget the

-foolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. In

-that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seen

-there not the love of the little girl that he had known but the

-unbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself to

-him for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women of

-earth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity,

-whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts.

-

-It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of his

-cell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcely

-listened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of course, she had

-heard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiar

-with it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not like

-Ruth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know the

-exact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have been

-satisfied with anybody's telling of the matter but his own.

-

-Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind and struck at his

-heart. Could it be that she had over-acted it all? Could it be that

-she had brushed aside his story because she really did not believe it

-and could not listen to it without betraying her doubt? And had she

-blinded him with her pity? Had she acted all--!

-

-He threw himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Might

-not even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have been

-acting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! The

-girl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it was

-only--!

-

-But his good sense brought him back and set him on his feet. Ruth was

-no actress. And if she had been the greatest actress the world had

-ever seen she could not have acted that flooding love light into her

-eyes.

-

-He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cell

-rapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberately

-put his story aside in order to keep the whole of their little time

-together entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made his

-story unimportant.

-

-She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop must

-have gone straight through it from their home in its front line to the

-rear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey had

-heard wild tales of the exploit-- The French people had made many

-wonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of their

-deliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the young

-girl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from the

-angels.

-

-Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed to

-one or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there were

-other men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered Rafe

-Gadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey at

-Rogers' command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogers

-was intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the line

-of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullet

-had struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head.

-

-Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort of

-mysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding

-unwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if Gadbeau there under

-the excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would be

-charged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and place

-to rid himself of the man who had made him his slave!

-

-The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell,

-stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table,

-sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey

-caught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that would

-fit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into many

-blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at

-last came upon the truth--and stuck to it.

-

-Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had

-almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth

-and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence.

-He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they were

-going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth _knew_. The

-Bishop _knew_.

-

-When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw--just what he

-had expected to see. Ruth _knew_. It was not only her love and her

-confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturing

-doubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even his

-mother. Ruth _knew_.

-

-That she should not tell him, or give him any outward hint of what

-she was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a very

-serious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter with

-anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speak

-unnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need,

-she would speak. For the present--Ruth _knew_. That was enough.

-

-When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched him

-as he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had never

-had more than a boy's careless indifference and disregard of details

-in his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the dark

-had now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive as

-those of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop's

-hand on his, the look of the Bishop's eye into his, were not those of

-a man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keep

-his faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man who

-wished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and was

-obliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all.

-No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who _knew_. The Bishop

-_knew_.

-

-It was even easier to understand the Bishop's silence than it had been

-to see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an

-official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. He must not

-speak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course,

-there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent

-man. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop would

-speak.

-

-So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of fact and deduction. So

-he had watched and discovered and reasoned and debated with himself.

-He had not, of course, said a word of these things to any one. The

-result was that, while he listened to the plans which his lawyer,

-young Emmet Dardis, laid for his defence--plans which, in the face of

-the incontestable facts which would be brought against them, would

-certainly amount to little or nothing--he really paid little attention

-to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of the things his heart

-felt, he had built up around himself an inner citadel, as it were, of

-defence which no attack could shake. He had come to feel, had made

-himself feel, that his life and his name were absolutely safe in the

-keeping of these two people--the one a girl who loved him and who

-would give her life for him, and the other a true friend, a man of

-God, a true man. He had nothing to fear. When the time came these two

-would speak. It was true that he was outwardly depressed by the

-concise and bitter conviction in the words of the prosecuting

-attorney. For Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes the most

-terrible of criminal prosecutors--an honest, narrow man who was

-always absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused from the

-moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly he had no fear.

-

-The weight of evidence that would be brought against him, the fact

-that his own best friends would be obliged to give their oaths against

-him, the very feeling of being accused and of having to scheme and

-plan to prove his innocence to a world that--except here and

-there--cared not a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these

-things bowed his head and brought his eyes down to the floor. But they

-could not touch that inner wall that he had built around himself. Ruth

-_knew_; the Bishop _knew_.

-

-The rasping speech of the prosecutor was finished at last.

-

-Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.

-

-The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in hand at once for though

-he had been called as a witness for the prosecution it was well known

-that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney had made no

-attempt to school him beforehand, and he was determined now to allow

-him to give only direct answers to the questions put to him.

-

-Two or three times the old man attempted to explain, at the end of an

-answer, just why he had gone up into the high hills the night before

-the twentieth of August--that he had heard that Rogers and a band of

-men had gone into the woods to start fires. But he was ordered to

-stop, and these parts of his answers were kept out of the record.

-Finally he was rebuked savagely by the Judge and ordered to confine

-himself to answering the lawyer's questions, on pain of being arrested

-for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding that showed the temper

-and the intention of the Judge and a stir of protest ran around the

-courtroom. But old Erskine Beasley was quelled. He gave only the

-answers that the prosecutor forced from him.

-

-"Did you hear a shot fired?" he was asked.

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you hear two shots fired?"

-

-"No."

-

-"Did you see Jeffrey Whiting's gun?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you examine it?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Had it been fired off?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Excused," snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears,

-came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers

-had made the most damaging sort of evidence.

-

-Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. He

-called several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad and

-associated in one way or another with the murdered man in his efforts

-to get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses,

-though they were ready to give details and opinions which might have

-been favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly to

-answering with a word his own carefully thought out questions.

-

-With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of cause

-and effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills to

-offer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to the

-moment when the two had faced each other that morning on Bald

-Mountain.

-

-He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and oppose

-Rogers' work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of a

-family well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had been

-quick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep the

-people from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers' work would then be a

-failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man who

-could get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out at

-his word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at his

-terms.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from many of the owners that they

-would not sell or even sign any paper until such time as he gave them

-the word. Did those promises bind the people to him? They did. Did

-they have the same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained actual

-options on the property? Yes. Would the people stand by their

-promises? Yes. Then Whiting had actually been obtaining what were

-really options to himself, while pretending to hold the people back in

-their own interest? Yes.

-

-The prosecutor went on to draw out answer after answer tending to show

-that it was not really a conflict between the people and the railroad

-that had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, in

-fact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain between

-Jeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully done

-and drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which bald

-negative and affirmative answers invariably carry.

-

-He went on to show that a bitter hatred had grown up between the two

-men. Rogers had been accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the

-way at a time in the early summer when many of the people about French

-Village had been prepared to sign Rogers' options. Rogers had been

-obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account of Whiting's anger.

-He had not returned to the hills until the day before he was killed.

-

-The people in the hills had talked freely of what had happened on Bald

-Mountain on the morning of August twentieth and in the hills during

-the afternoon and night preceding. The prosecutor knew the incidents

-and knew what men had said to each other. He now called Myron

-Stocking.

-

-"Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon of August nineteenth?"

-was the question.

-

-"I went lookin' for him, to tell--"

-

-"Answer, yes or no?" shouted the attorney.

-

-"Yes," the witness admitted sullenly.

-

-"Did you tell him that Rogers was in the hills?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?"

-

-"He followed me," the witness began. But the Judge rapped warningly

-and the attorney yelled:

-

-"Yes or no?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you see Rogers in the morning?"

-

-"Yes, he was settin' fire to--" The Judge hammering furiously with his

-gavel drowned his words. The attorney went on:

-

-"Did you hear a shot?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you hear two shots?"

-

-"The fire"--was making a lot of noise, he tried to say. But his voice

-was smothered by eruptions from the court and the attorney. He was

-finally obliged to say that he had heard but one shot. Then he was

-asked:

-

-"What did you say when you came up and saw the dead man?"

-

-"I said, 'Mine got away, Jeff.'"

-

-"What else did you say?"

-

-"I said, 'What's the difference, any of us would've done it if we had

-the chance.'"

-

-"Whiting's gun had been fired?" asked the attorney, working back.

-

-"Yes."

-

-"One question more and I will excuse you," said the attorney, with a

-show of friendliness--"I see it is hard for you to testify against

-your friend. Did you, standing there with the facts fresh before you,

-conclude that Jeffrey Whiting had fired the shot which killed

-Rogers?"

-

-To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that it was not proper, that

-the answer would not be evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply,

-reminding him that this witness had been called by the prosecution,

-that it was not the business of opposing counsel to protect him. The

-witness found himself forced to answer a simple yes.

-

-One by one the other men who had been present that fatal morning were

-called. Their answers were identical, and as each one was forced to

-give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning Jeffrey Whiting

-out of the mouths of his friends who had stood on the very ground of

-the murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for him was closing.

-

-On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do little with the witnesses.

-He was gruffly reminded by the Judge that the witnesses were not his,

-that he must not attempt to draw any fresh stories from them, that he

-might only examine them on the facts which they had stated to the

-District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had pinned his witnesses down

-absolutely to answers of known fact, there was really nothing in their

-testimony that could be attacked.

-

-With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet Dardis let the last

-witness go. The State promptly rested its case.

-

-Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised how pitifully

-inadequate their testimony would be when placed beside the chain of

-facts which the District Attorney had pieced together. They were in

-the main character witnesses, hardly more. They could tell only of

-their long acquaintance with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in him,

-of their firm faith that in holding the people back from giving the

-options to Rogers and the railroad he had been acting in absolute good

-faith and purely in the interests of the people. Not one of these men

-had been near the scene of the murder, for the railroad had planned

-its campaign comprehensively and had subpoenaed for its side every man

-who could have had any direct knowledge of the events leading up to

-the tragedy. As line after line of their testimony was stricken from

-the record, as being irrelevant, it was seen that the defence had

-little or no case. Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single

-objections, made a general ruling that no testimony which did not tend

-to reveal the identity of the man who had shot Rogers could go into

-the record.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously watching the course of

-the trial. Beside him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village.

-The little French priest looked up from time to time and guardedly

-studied the long angular white head of his bishop as it towered above

-him. He did not know, but he could guess some of the struggle that was

-going on in the mind and the heart of the Bishop.

-

-The Bishop had come down to the trial to give what aid he could, in

-the way of showing his confidence and faith, to the case of the boy

-who stood in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he had first

-heard of Jeffrey's arrest, he had not thought it possible that, even

-had he been guilty of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be

-convicted under such circumstances. Men must see that the act was in

-defence of life and property. But as he listened to the progress of

-the trial he realised sadly that he had very much underestimated the

-seriousness of the railroad people in the matter and the hold which

-they had upon the machinery of justice in Racquette County.

-

-He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and tell the reason why

-Jeffrey Whiting had entered into this fight against the railroad. He

-would associate himself and his own good name with the things that

-Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the two might stand before men

-together. But he now saw that it would be of no avail. His words would

-be swept aside as irrelevant.

-

-One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. This

-morning on his arrival in Danton, the Bishop had been angered at

-learning that the two men whose lives he had saved that night by the

-lake at French Village had escaped from the train as they were being

-brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at this trial.

-

-Whether they could have told anything of value to Jeffrey Whiting was

-not known. Certainly they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the

-connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop had their confession in

-his pocket at this minute, but there was nothing in it concerning the

-murder. He had intended to read it into the record of the trial. He

-saw that he would not be allowed to do so.

-

-One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey

-Whiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man or

-woman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did not

-kill Samuel Rogers. Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or--He told

-me so.

-

-The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy upon

-this course which had brought him here into this court and into the

-shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actually

-fired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph,

-Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? He

-would.

-

-And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through a

-chain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he,

-Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of these

-circumstances, in a way responsible? He was.

-

-Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: "Rafe

-Gadbeau killed Samuel Rogers--He told me so"--could he thus save

-Jeffrey Whiting from a felon's fate? He could. Nine words, no more,

-would do.

-

-And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what was

-necessary--did not speak those nine words--would he, Joseph Winthrop,

-be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin of

-Jeffrey Whiting? He would.

-

-Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words?

-He would not.

-

-There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break the

-seal and let those nine words escape his lips.

-

-There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop's mind

-as he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boy

-who sat there in the prisoner's stand before him. He felt responsible

-for him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for the

-dead man or the dead man's secret, as such. Yet he would go up there

-and defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was bound

-by the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal

-salvation of men's souls.

-

-But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. His

-course was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothing

-to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between the

-greater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be ground

-between the working of the two.

-

-If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty God had ordained

-the salvation of men through the confession of sin. Therefore the

-salvation of men depended on the inviolability of the seal of the

-confessional. But he did not reason. He merely sat through his

-torture, waiting.

-

-When his name was called, he walked heavily forward and took his place

-standing beside the chair that was set for him.

-

-At Dardis' question, the Bishop began to speak freely and rapidly. He

-told of the coming of Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated

-what he had said to the boy, and from that point went on to sketch the

-things that had been happening in the hills. He wanted to get clearly

-before the minds of the jurymen the fact that he had advised and

-directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything that the boy had done.

-

-The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy to the Bishop. But he

-saw that he must stop him. His story could not but have a powerful

-effect upon even this jury. Looking past the Bishop and addressing

-Dardis, he said:

-

-"Is this testimony pertinent?"

-

-"It is, if Your Honor pardon me," said the Bishop, turning quickly.

-"It goes to prove that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed the

-crime charged, any more than I could have done so."

-

-The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully the logic or the legal

-phraseology of his answer. He hurried on with his story to the jury.

-He related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting. He told of his

-ride into the hills. He told of the capture of the two men in the

-night at French Village. They should be here now as witnesses. They

-had escaped. But he held in his hand a written confession, written and

-sealed by a justice of the peace, made by the two men. He would read

-this to the jury.

-

-He began reading rapidly. But before he had gotten much past the

-opening sentences, the Judge saw that this would not do. It was the

-story of the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in court.

-

-He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when the Bishop stopped, he

-asked:

-

-"Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned in that paper?"

-

-"No, Your Honor. But there are--"

-

-"It is irrelevant," interrupted the Judge shortly. "It cannot go

-before the jury."

-

-The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do no more.

-

-Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not the slightest hope for his

-client--unless--unless. He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession

-to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask the Bishop this morning, if there

-was not some way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The Bishop stood

-waiting for his further questions. There might be some way or some

-help, thought Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was not a part

-of the real confession. He said quickly:

-

-"You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?"

-

-"I was."

-

-"What did he say to you?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair, his eyes eager and

-confident. His heart shouting that here was his deliverance. Here was

-the hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!

-

-The Bishop's eyes fell upon the prisoner for an instant. Then he

-looked full into the eyes of his questioner and he answered:

-

-"Nothing."

-

-"That will do. Thank you, Bishop," said Dardis in a low, broken

-voice.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The light of confidence died

-slowly, reluctantly out of his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop

-had _lied_! He _knew_! And he had _lied_!

-

-As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat, Ruth Lansing saw the

-terrible suffering of the spirit reflected in his face. If she were

-questioned about that night, she must do as he had done.

-

-Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must I do that? _Can_ I do

-that?

-

-Oh! She had never thought it would come to this. How _could_ it happen

-like this! How could any one think that she would ever stand like

-this, alone in all the world, with the fate of her love in her hands,

-and not be able to speak the few little words that would save him to

-her and life!

-

-She _would_ save him! She _would_ speak the words! What did she care

-for that wicked man who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?

-Why should she keep a secret of his? One night in the early summer she

-had lain all through the night in the woods outside a cabin and wished

-for a way to kill that man. Why should she guard a secret that was no

-good to him or to any one now?

-

-Who was it that said she must not speak? The Catholic Church. Then she

-would be a Catholic no longer. She would renounce it this minute. She

-had never promised anything like this. But, on the instant, she knew

-that that would not free her. She knew that she could throw off the

-outward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free to

-speak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal of

-the secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off the

-Church, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty and

-unbreakable across her lips.

-

-That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what she

-saw held her.

-

-What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not

-the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not

-a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and

-fear of death.

-

-What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she

-saw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of God

-from which--Heart break or world burn!--that sin must never be

-disturbed.

-

-As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name,

-a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path.

-Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce,

-piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which

-she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village--the

-terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And

-though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:

-Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-How well that girl knew!

-

-Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not

-been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he

-had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had

-become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was

-always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.

-

-"You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought

-to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?" he asked.

-

-"Yes, sir."

-

-"Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?"

-

-"No, sir."

-

-Then he flashed the question upon her:

-

-"What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?"

-

-Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden,

-startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to

-what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a

-terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and--relief.

-A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. _On my knee I dropped

-and shot him, shot Rogers as he stood._

-

-Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling. Again the inner citadel

-of his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the word

-that would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time.

-Ruth _knew_. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad that

-the Bishop had lied. Ruth _knew_. Ruth would speak.

-

-The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth's brain

-and down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout

-them out to the ends of the earth!

-

-But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered:

-

-"Nothing."

-

-Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand.

-

-Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.

-

-_Ruth_ had _lied_!

-

-The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him.

-

-

-

-

-VIII

-

-SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?

-

-

-The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up the

-street toward the little church. He had not been the same man since

-his experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They had

-aged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering and

-superhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had broken

-the spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and the

-vital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up in

-him. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He had

-roused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has already

-reached almost the full allotted span of life may do these things

-without showing the outward effects of them. But these things had

-struck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quick

-spirit of the man within.

-

-The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into the

-spiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given the

-alternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he would

-have offered the few years that might be his, without question or

-halting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled or

-thought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ.

-Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he had

-never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole to

-receive the secret of another's soul he puts his life in pledge for

-the sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by

-any perplexities or confusion.

-

-Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forced

-upon him. Years ago he had given his own life entire to Christ. The

-snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces farther on would be

-a matter of no more moment than the length of a thread. This world had

-nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from him. But to guard his

-secret at the cost of another life, and that a young, vigorous,

-battling life full of future and promise, full of youth and the glory

-of living, the life of a boy he loved--that was another matter. Never

-had he reckoned with a thing such as that. Life had always been so

-direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To think right, to do

-right, to serve God; these things had always seemed very simple. But

-the thing that he had done to-day was breaking his heart. He could not

-have done otherwise. He had been given no choice, to be sure.

-

-But was it possible that God would have allowed things to come to

-that issue, if somewhere, at some turn in that line of circumstances

-which had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not done a wrong? It

-did not seem possible. Somewhere he had done wrong or he had done

-foolishly--and, where men go to direct the lives of others, to do

-unwisely is much the same as to do wickedly.

-

-What use to go over the things that he had done, the things that he

-had advised? What use to say, here he had done his best, there he

-thought only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere he had spoken

-foolishly, or he had been headstrong in his interference, or he had

-acted without thought and prayer. What use to go over the record? He

-could only carry this matter to God and let Him see his heart.

-

-He stumbled in the half light of the darkened little church and sank

-heavily into the last pew. Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart

-he cried out from afar to the Presence on the little altar, where he,

-Bishop of Alden, had often spoken with much authority.

-

-When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up into the witness stand she

-sank down quietly into a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the

-other girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes. She hung

-upon every fleeting wave of the contending emotions that showed

-themselves on Ruth's face. She was convinced that this girl knew that

-Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and that

-Jeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would be

-called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it at

-the last moment.

-

-Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to hating this girl, for she

-had seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very

-long time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talking

-gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing

-left of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But that

-memory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this

-other girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? What

-would that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was not

-likely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish to

-tell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came to

-her of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then?

-Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep on

-denying?

-

-Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. She

-did not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it

-who had been born to the Faith.

-

-Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it was

-no place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden away

-in her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fear

-hung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint

-might be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had a

-superstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not be

-hidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. She

-knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these days

-when the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers

-and hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting's

-story believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial and

-had sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly to

-every word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearing

-the name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name and

-his memory from the blight of his deed had become more than a

-religion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own

-thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her

-world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled.

-

-When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of

-the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that

-he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They might

-as well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell

-Rafe Gadbeau's secret as to ask it from the Bishop.

-

-But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might do

-under the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbroken

-upon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. She

-would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for

-her!

-

-When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in

-the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl

-stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask

-her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in

-pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw

-the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of

-Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not

-know what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who could

-suffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her love

-under foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steady

-word--"Nothing."

-

-Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at the

-torture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself

-at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from the

-stand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that she

-must tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For Cynthe

-Cardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a

-frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street.

-

-She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to the

-court. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand,

-she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cynthe

-understood. Even M'sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he was

-troubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have business

-with God.

-

-She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw the

-Bishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken.

-

-He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisper

-at his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:

-

-_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse._

-

-The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. But

-here was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrential

-rush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishop

-listened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor the

-power to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing its

-keeper night and day. He knew that it was true, knew what the end of

-it would be. But still he must be careful to give no word that would

-show that he knew what was coming. The French of the hills and of

-Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but it was easy to follow the

-thread of the story. When she had finished and was weeping quietly,

-the Bishop prompted gently.

-

-"And now? my daughter."

-

-"And now, _Mon Pere_, must I tell? I would not tell. I loved Rafe

-Gadbeau. As long as I shall live I shall love him. For his good name I

-would die. But I cannot see the suffering of that girl, Ruth. _Mon

-Pere_, it is too much! I cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before

-men and call my love a murderer. Consider, _Mon Pere_. There is

-another way. I, too, am guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I

-would have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do many

-things that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I went

-to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would have

-killed that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When I

-saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, _Mon Pere_, I am

-guilty. And I called joyfully to my love to run with me and save

-himself, for he was now free from that man forever. But he ran in the

-path of the fire because he feared those other men.

-

-"But see, _Mon Pere_, I am guilty. I will go and tell the court that I

-am the guilty one. I will say that my hand shot that man. See, I will

-tell the story. I have told it many times to myself. Such a straight

-story I shall tell. And they will believe. I will make them believe.

-And they will not hurt a girl much," she said, dropping back upon her

-native shrewdness to strengthen her plea. "The railroad does not care

-who killed Rogers. They want only to punish the young Whiting. And the

-court will believe, as I shall tell it."

-

-"But, my daughter," said the Bishop, temporising. "It would not be

-true. We must not lie."

-

-"But M'sieur the Bishop, himself," the girl argued swiftly, evidently

-separating the priest in the confessional from the great bishop in his

-public walk, "he himself, on the stand--"

-

-The girl stopped abruptly.

-

-The Bishop held the silence of the grave.

-

-"_Mon Pere_ will make me tell, then--the truth," she began. "_Mon

-Pere_, I cannot! I--!"

-

-"Let us consider," the Bishop broke in deliberately. "Suppose he had

-told this thing to you when he was dying. You would have said to him:

-Your soul may not rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed.

-Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?"

-

-"To escape Hell," said the girl quickly, "yes. He would have said:

-Tell everything; tell anything!" In the desolate forlornness of her

-grief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, she

-had known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly--and had loved

-him. Would always love him.

-

-"We will not speak of Hell," said the Bishop gently. "In that hour he

-would have seen the right. He would have told you to tell."

-

-"But he confessed to M'sieur the Bishop himself," she retorted

-quickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelate

-in person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound Moral

-Theology back upon him with a vengeance, "and he gave _him_ no leave

-to speak."

-

-The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground.

-

-"If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?"

-

-"_Mon Pere_, with the bones of my hands!"

-

-"Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who was

-blind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where a

-great light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not know

-here--Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He stands

-alone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God and

-cries: _Seigneur Dieu_, whither go I?

-

-"And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the open

-place. Would he come back to the world?

-

-"And he answers: 'No, my God; but I have left a debt behind and

-another man's life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward

-with that debt unpaid.'

-

-"Then God: 'And is there none to cancel the debt? Is there not one in

-all that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none

-loved you who will pay the debt?'

-

-"And he will answer with a lifted heart: 'My God, yes; there was one,

-a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right;

-only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debt

-will be right; my God, let me go.'"

-

-The Bishop's French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully put

-together. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to

-her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little break

-of joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved in

-spite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins of

-life. And her love leaped up quickly to the ideal and the illusions

-that every woman craves for and clings to.

-

-"This," the Bishop was going on quietly, "is the new man we are to

-consider; the one who stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not

-hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he care for the opinions

-or the words that are said here? See, he stands in the great open

-space, all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God and tell Him

-all. Will you be afraid to stand in the court and tell these people,

-who do not matter at all?

-

-"Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It is not for the sake of

-Ruth Lansing. It is because the man you loved calls back to you, from

-where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom he has now learned

-tells him must be done. He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He

-would have you tell."

-

-"_Mon Pere_, I will tell the tale," said the girl simply as she rose

-from her knees. "I will go quickly, while I have yet the courage."

-

-The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel rooms in the courthouse

-and sent for Dardis.

-

-"This girl," he told the lawyer, "has a story to tell. I think you

-would do wisely to put her on the stand and let her tell it in her own

-way. She will make no mistakes. They will not be able to break her

-down."

-

-Then the Bishop went back to take up again his business with God.

-

-As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey Whiting had been put

-upon the stand in his own defence. There was nothing he could tell

-which the jurors had not already heard in one form or another.

-Everybody had heard what he had said that morning on Bald Mountain. He

-had not been believed even then, by men who had never had a reason to

-doubt his simple word. There was little likelihood that he would be

-believed here now by these jurors, whose minds were already fixed by

-the facts and the half truths which they had been hearing. But there

-was some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he

-clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a

-single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale

-that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell

-what might strike a man on a jury. So Dardis argued.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel wished him to tell his

-story he would do so. It would not matter. His own friends did not

-believe his story. Nobody believed it. Two people _knew_ that it was

-true. And those two people had stood up there upon the stand and sworn

-that they did not know. One of them was a good man, a man of God, a

-man he would have trusted with every dear thing that life held. That

-man had stood up there and lied. The other was a girl whom he loved,

-and who, he was sure, loved him.

-

-It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie--or maybe she did not

-consider it a lie: he had seen her suffer terribly in the telling of

-it. He was beginning to feel that he did not care much what was the

-outcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death,

-or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty common

-deaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one big

-thing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and took

-from him his interest in every other fact in the world.

-

-Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had never before in her life

-told a lie. Why should she have ever told a lie. She had never had

-reason to fear any one; and they only lie who fear. He would have said

-that the fear of death could not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she

-had stood up there and lied.

-

-For what? For a church. For a religion to which she had foolishly

-given herself. For that she had given up him. For that she had given

-up her conscience. For that she had given up her own truth!

-

-It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and listened to it.

-

-He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer to a question which

-meant life or death to him. She had known that. She could not have

-escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was no way in which she

-could have fooled herself or been persuaded into believing that she

-was not lying or that she was not taking from him his last hope of

-life.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What

-was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed

-dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision.

-

-He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until some

-one told him to be seated. He answered the questions put him

-automatically, without looking either at the questioner or at the

-jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watching

-the alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-day

-wondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would he

-confess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb?

-

-Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had raced

-forward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He looked

-vacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his words

-stricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed no

-resentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had run

-away from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he did

-not seem to notice the Judge's anger in cautioning him not to mention

-the fire again.

-

-At his counsel's direction, he went through a lifeless pantomime of

-falling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now

-the man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killed

-Rogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forward

-to look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away.

-

-Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule

-out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet

-going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a

-simple story. The thing _might_ have happened. It was entirely

-credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of

-Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not

-the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his

-life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was

-now living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying,

-many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping man

-might have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, though

-puzzled by the manner of the recital.

-

-Even Lemuel Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to

-any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went

-back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly

-without any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to make

-him say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of the

-story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horrible

-fact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of her

-church.

-

-When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he was

-again the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of this

-wholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called.

-He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squires

-would begin his speech at once.

-

-He noticed that this witness was a girl from French Village whom he

-had seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau's

-girl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything,

-and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn't the poor little

-thing look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here to

-bring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at the

-girl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matter

-anyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not let

-them hurt her.

-

-Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe against

-interruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to say

-nothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers

-and nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to

-relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very

-beginning:

-

-"Four years ago," she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was

-killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe

-Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know

-who had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife

-and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept the

-knife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the

-price of his silence.

-

-"Last summer this man Rogers came into the woods looking for some one

-to help get the people to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He

-showed him the knife. He told him that whatever he laid upon him to

-do, that he must do. He made him lie to the people. He made him attack

-the young Whiting. He made him do many things that he would not do,

-for Rafe Gadbeau was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And Rafe

-Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear that this man had put upon

-him.

-

-"At times he said to me, 'Cynthe, I will kill this man one day, and

-that will be the end of all.' But I said, '_Non, non, mon Rafe_, we

-will marry in the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will never

-see you again, and we will not know that he ever lived.'"

-

-Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was telling over to herself the

-tragedy of her little life and her great love. Genius could not have

-told her how better to tell it for the purpose for which her story was

-here needed. Dardis thanked his stars that he had taken the Bishop's

-advice, to let her get through with it in her own way.

-

-"But it was not time for us to marry yet," she went on. "Then came the

-morning of the nineteenth August. I was sitting on the back steps of

-my aunt's house by the Little Tupper, putting apples on a string to

-hang up in the hot sun to dry." The Judge turned impatiently on his

-bench and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and her eyes blazed

-angrily at him. Who was he to shrug his shoulders! Was it not

-important, this story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter the

-Judge gave her the most rigid attention.

-

-"Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that he

-was troubled. 'What is it, _mon Rafe_?' I asked. He groaned and said

-one bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message from

-Rogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and six

-horses. 'What to do, _mon Rafe_?' 'I do not know,' he said, 'though I

-can guess. But I will not tell you, Cynthe.'

-

-"'You will not go, _mon Rafe_. Promise me you will not go. Hide away,

-and we will slip down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married--me, I

-do not care for the grand wedding in the church here--and then we will

-get away to Beaupre. Promise me.'

-

-"'_Bien_, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to him.'

-

-"But it was a man's promise. I knew he would go in the end.

-

-"I watched and followed. I did not know what I could do. But I

-followed, hoping that somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done

-what they intended and we could run away together with clean hands.

-

-"When I saw that they had gone toward the railroad I turned aside and

-climbed up to the Bald Mountain. I knew they would all come back

-there together. I waited until it was dark and they came. They would

-do nothing in the night. I waited for the morning. Then I would find

-Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I was a wild girl that

-night. If I could have found that Rogers and come near him I would

-have killed him myself. I hated him, for he had made me much

-suffering.

-

-"In the morning I was in the woods near them. I saw Rafe. But that

-Rogers kept him always near him.

-

-"I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to look. Rafe was a little

-way from him and coming slowly toward me. I called to him. He did not

-hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the look of one who has made

-up his mind to kill. Again I called to him. But he did not hear.

-

-"I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the wood. Now he came

-running back toward Rafe. He stopped and turned.

-

-"The young Whiting was on his knee with the rifle raised to shoot. I

-looked to Rafe. The sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face.

-The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head. I saw. The young

-Whiting had not fired at all.

-

-"I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. 'Come with me, _mon

-Rafe_,' I called. 'I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in the

-night. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will cover all. None

-will ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come.'

-

-"But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him at

-least to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not

-wish to be separated from him in this world or the next.

-

-"But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those other

-men, the old M'sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind him

-and the fire."

-

-She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Her

-story was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voice

-rose into a cry of farewell as she told the end.

-

-"Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God,

-who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and

-running on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and God

-took him away.

-

-"That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe."

-

-Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the

-story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its

-naïve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature

-to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily

-her own unthought, clipped expressions than they would any more

-connected elaborations he might try to make her give.

-

-Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been

-a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of

-the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into

-court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a

-personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case.

-But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story was

-true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it

-was true.

-

-His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing.

-The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading

-nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury.

-

-It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the

-facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put

-aside the girl's dramatic story. He was still convinced that the

-prisoner was guilty. But--the girl's story was true. His mind was not

-nimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless under

-it. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stood

-aside to grapple with that one astounding thing.

-

-The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these

-hampering limitations of mind. He had always regarded the taking and

-discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All

-democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to

-a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county

-had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.

-

-He charged the jury that the girl's testimony was no more credible

-than that of a dozen other witnesses--which was quite true. All had

-told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided

-smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act.

-No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that.

-

-He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the

-comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the

-jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he

-had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view

-of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts

-by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt

-which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing

-clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.

-

-Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an

-agreement.

-

-The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood up.

-

-The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying:

-

-"Not guilty."

-

-The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his name

-was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly

-for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for

-their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little

-Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something

-real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole

-political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the

-railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love

-story of an ignorant French girl from the hills.

-

-Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been a

-prisoner and brought him to his mother.

-

-Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother's eyes as he

-stooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that all

-the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the

-sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey,

-trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him

-fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake

-off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they

-had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his

-heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had

-done to her in these four weeks and in these two days.

-

-And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to

-hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have

-done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all

-that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion

-of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to

-what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man's name.

-

-Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon her

-with a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl

-as a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voice

-he said brutally:

-

-"You lied!"

-

-Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words.

-Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, could

-not tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under the

-awful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked his

-life and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knew

-it. All the world could talk freely about what she had done except

-only herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his head

-down to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into his

-ear that he was right, or try to tell him why she had not been able

-to speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives,

-unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as the

-line of death.

-

-When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight.

-

-The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he

-came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into

-the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they

-had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him.

-They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people were

-not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and

-their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which

-he was quick to notice.

-

-During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his

-waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle

-that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and

-once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click

-into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his

-horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge

-and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the

-nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.

-

-When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full

-news of the last four weeks.

-

-It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings

-has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the

-vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never

-for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course

-upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad

-must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying

-along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must

-be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The

-incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only

-as they contributed to the general result.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There

-were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate

-committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an

-obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by

-procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for

-the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything

-they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no

-animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as

-impersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction.

-Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely

-incidental.

-

-Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as

-an instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been

-Rogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had been

-used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey

-Whiting had been put out of the way--definitely, the railroad had

-hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things

-were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying

-through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old

-Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills

-during the four weeks of his removal from the scene.

-

-The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of

-the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad

-would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved

-right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned

-instantly of Rogers' death and had instantly set to work to use that

-as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was

-only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main

-business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with what

-seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands

-which the railroad coveted.

-

-They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun to

-rebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The whole

-people were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scattering

-which the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it was

-worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through the

-thin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farming

-for many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that Jeffrey

-Whiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely to

-be convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would win

-in the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they could

-not see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do?

-

-Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep the

-people in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suit

-the railroad's purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one that

-was now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun to

-fear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was an

-enemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomed

-them. It struck in the dark, and no man's hand could be raised to

-punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark of

-officials.

-

-The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still

-down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant

-help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain

-ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not

-roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them

-before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of

-winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a

-claim, for the mere privilege of living.

-

-When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had

-been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had

-thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now

-ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and

-a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now

-put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing

-blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it

-only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!

-

-The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the

-full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The

-hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red

-sun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps,

-where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the

-autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should

-have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but

-blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the

-east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle

-of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the

-eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!

-

-Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here

-were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen

-built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what

-shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were

-enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again,

-for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and

-good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names were

-written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly

-needful.

-

-Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from

-sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed

-them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men

-and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe

-Cardinal.

-

-The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting.

-Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible

-sacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl a

-great deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. He

-struck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush the

-memory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His body

-had no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merely

-served to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyond

-him.

-

-At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the night

-had told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at the

-railroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take from

-them the little that was left to them. They had been fools that they

-had not struck in the beginning when they had first found that they

-were being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the early

-summer their homes would not have been burned and they would not be

-now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter.

-

-Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had not

-struck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the

-law. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hills

-in ashes, their families scattered and going hungry!

-

-If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end of

-the rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as he

-could, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and their

-own.

-

-If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen for

-days, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into the

-hills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothing

-was being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight for

-them and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager to

-fight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If

-the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it,

-were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it was

-their own?

-

-If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad clear

-down below the line of the hills and put the work back for months.

-They would have sheriffs' posses out against them. They would have to

-fight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up against

-them. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia,

-but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more than

-militia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and their

-people!

-

-Some men would die. But some men always died, in every cause. And in

-the end the people of the whole State would judge the cause!

-

-Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty?

-

-Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys of

-ashes where their homes had been, took what food the French people

-could spare them, and mounted silently behind him.

-

-Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars of the homes of

-many of them, for half the day they rode, saving every strain they

-could upon their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the southern

-divide and down the slope they thundered to strike the railroad at

-Leavit's bridge.

-

-

-

-

-IX

-

-THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD

-

-

-The wires coming down from the north were flashing the railroad's call

-for help. A band of madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit's

-Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge. They had raced down

-the line, driving the frightened labourers before them, tearing up the

-ties and making huge fires of them on which they threw the new rails,

-heating and twisting these beyond any hope of future usefulness.

-

-Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction had fled literally

-for their lives. The men of the hills had no quarrel with them. They

-preferred not to injure them. But they were infuriated men with their

-wrongs fresh in mind and with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The

-workmen on the line needed no second warning. They would take no

-chances with an enemy of this kind. They were used to violence and

-rioting in their own labour troubles, but this was different. This was

-war. They threw themselves headlong upon handcars and work engines and

-bolted down the line, carrying panic before them.

-

-In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting at their head had

-ridden down and destroyed nearly twenty miles of very costly

-construction work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left in the

-hills and if the men were not stopped they would not leave a single

-rail in all the hill country where they were masters.

-

-The call of the railroad was at first frantic with panic and fright.

-That was while little men who had lost their wits were nominally in

-charge of a situation in which nobody knew what to do. Then suddenly

-the tone of the railroad's call changed. Big men, used to meeting all

-sorts of things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold. They had the

-telegraph lines of the State in their hands. There was no more

-frightened appeal. Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in

-Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties. They were told to swear

-in as many deputies as they could lead. They were to forget the

-consideration of expense. The railroad would pay and feed the men.

-They were to think of nothing but to get the greatest possible number

-of fighting men upon the line at once.

-

-Then a single great man, a man who sat in a great office building in

-New York and held his hand upon every activity in the State, saw the

-gravity of the business in the hills and put himself to work upon it.

-He took no half measures. He had no faith in little local authorities,

-who would be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill people in this

-battle.

-

-He called the Governor of the State from Albany to his office. He

-ordered the Governor to turn out the State's armed forces and set them

-in motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically that the

-Governor had not had the sense to do this of himself. The Governor

-bridled and hesitated. The Governor had been living on the fiction

-that he was the executive head of the State. It took Clifford W.

-Stanton just three minutes to disabuse him completely and forever of

-this illusion. He explained to him just why he was Governor and by

-whose permission. Also he pointed out that the permission of the great

-railroad system that covered the State would again be necessary in

-order that Governor Foster might succeed himself. Then the great man

-sent Wilbur Foster back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment of

-the National Guard for service in the hills.

-

-Before the second night three companies of the militia had passed

-through Utica and had gone up the line of the U. & M. Their orders

-were to avoid killing where possible and to capture all of the hill

-men that they could. The railroad wished to have them tried and

-imprisoned by the impartial law of the land. For it was characteristic

-of the great power which in those days ruled the State that when it

-had outraged every sense of fair play and common humanity to attain

-its ends it was then ready to spend much money creating public opinion

-in favour of itself.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the cover of the woods above

-Milton's Crossing and watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars

-come creeping up the grade from the south. This was the last of the

-hills. He had refused to let his men go farther. Behind him lay fifty

-miles of new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open, settled

-country. His men, once the fever of destruction had begun to run in

-their blood, had wished to sweep on down into the villages and carry

-their work through them. But he had stood firm. This was their own

-country where they belonged and where the railroad was the interloper.

-Here they were at home. Here there was a certain measure of safety for

-them even in the destructive and lawless work that they had begun.

-They had done enough. They had pushed the railroad back to the edge of

-the hills. They had roused the men of the hills behind them. Where he

-had started with his seventy-two friends, there were now three hundred

-well-armed men in the woods around him. Here in their cover they could

-hold the line of the railroad indefinitely against almost any force

-that might be sent against them.

-

-But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership and responsibility was

-already at work upon him. The burning, rankling anger that had driven

-him onward so that he had carried everything and everybody near him

-into this business of destruction was now dulled down to a slow, dull

-hate that while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave him

-time to think. Those men coming up there on the cars were not

-professional soldiers, paid to fight wherever there was fighting to be

-done. Neither did they care anything for the railroad that they should

-come up here to fight for it. Why did they come?

-

-They had joined their organisation for various reasons that usually

-had very little to do with fighting. They were clerks and office men,

-for the most part, from the villages and factories of the central part

-of the State. The militia companies had attracted them because the

-armouries in the towns had social advantages to offer, because

-uniforms and parade appeal to all boys, because they were sons of

-veterans and the military tradition was strong in them. Jeffrey

-Whiting's strong natural sense told him the substance of these things.

-He could not regard these boys as deadly enemies to be shot down

-without mercy or warning. They had taken their arms at a word of

-command and had come up here to uphold the arm of the State. If the

-railroad was able to control the politics of the State and so was able

-to send these boys up here on its own business, then other people were

-to blame for the situation. Certainly these boys, coming up here to do

-nothing but what their duty to the State compelled them to do; they

-were not to be blamed.

-

-His men were now urging him to withdraw a little distance into the

-hills to where the bed of the road ran through a defile between two

-hills. The soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the line of

-what had been the railroad, covering the workmen and engineers who

-would be coming on behind them. If they were allowed to go on up into

-the defile without warning or opposition they could be shot down by

-the hill men from almost absolute safety. If he had been dealing with

-a hated enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed to that. But

-to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of

-them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing

-in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate.

-Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they were

-to expect.

-

-He saw them leave the cars at the end of the broken line and take up

-their march in a rough column of fours along the roadbed. He was

-surprised and puzzled. He had expected them to work along the line

-only as fast as the men repaired the rails behind them. He had not

-thought that they would go away from their cars.

-

-Then he understood. They were not coming merely to protect the

-rebuilding of the railroad. They had their orders to come straight

-into the hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The railroad

-was not only able to call the State to protect itself. It had called

-upon the State to avenge its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His

-men had understood this better than he. Probably they were right. This

-thing might as well be fought out from the first. In the end there

-would be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of troops and

-drive them back out of the hills with an ease that would be almost

-ridiculous. But that would not be the end.

-

-The State would send other men, unlimited numbers of them, for it must

-and would uphold the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did not

-deceive himself. Probably he had not from the beginning had any doubt

-as to what would be the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The

-railroad itself had broken the law of the State and the law of

-humanity. It had defied every principle of justice and common decency.

-It had burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in the hills. Yet

-the law had not raised a hand to punish it. But now when the railroad

-itself had suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to be set

-in motion to punish the men of the hills who had merely paid their

-debt.

-

-But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself that he had not

-foreseen all this from the outset. Those days of thinking in jail had

-given him an insight into realities that years of growth and

-observation of things outside might not have produced in him. He had

-been given time to see that some things are insurmountable, that

-things may be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still persist

-and go on indefinitely. Youth does not readily admit this. Jeffrey

-Whiting had recognised it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had

-led these men, his friends, men who trusted him, upon this mad

-raid. They had come without the clear vision of the end which he now

-realised had been his from the start. They had thought that they

-could accomplish something, that they had some chance of winning a

-victory over the railroad. They had believed that the power of the

-State would intervene to settle the differences between them and

-their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting knew, must have known all along, that the

-moment a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength of the

-State would be put forth to capture these men and punish them. There

-would be no compromise. There would be no bargaining. If they

-surrendered and gave themselves up now they would be jailed for

-varying terms. If they did not, if they stayed here and fought, some

-of them would be killed and injured and in one way or another all

-would suffer in the end.

-

-He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth of this struck him with

-startling clearness now. He had led them into this without letting

-them see the full extent of what they were doing, as he must have seen

-it.

-

-There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed now and scattered

-themselves through the hills few of them would ever be identified. And

-if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad would be almost

-satisfied with punishing him. It was the one just and right thing to

-do.

-

-He went swiftly among the men where they stood among the trees,

-waiting with poised rifles for the word to fire upon the advancing

-soldiers, and told them what they must do. He had deceived them. He

-had not told them the whole truth as he himself knew it. They must

-leave at once, scattering up among the hills and keeping close mouths

-as to where they had been and what they had done. He would go down and

-give himself up, for if the railroad people once had him in custody

-they would not bother so very much about bringing the others to

-punishment.

-

-His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder. They did not

-understand, unless it might be that he had suddenly gone crazy. There

-was an enemy marching up the line toward them, bent upon killing or

-capturing them. They turned from him and without a spoken word,

-without a signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the front

-of the oncoming troops. The battle was on!

-

-The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed to shoot deer and

-foxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of the

-soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with scythes. Not one of

-them was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had

-begun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was as

-though they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be no

-advance.

-

-These soldiers had never before been shot at. The very restraint which

-the hill men had shown in not killing any of them in that volley

-proved to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise how deadly

-was the aim and the judgment of the invisible enemy somewhere in the

-woods there before them. To their credit, they did not drop their arms

-or run. They stood stunned and paralysed, as much by the suddenness

-with which the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.

-

-Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous command for them

-to halt, and ordering them to carry the wounded men back to the cars.

-For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they would again advance or

-would put themselves into some kind of defence formation and hold the

-ground on which they stood.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two other trains come slowly

-creeping up the line. From the second train he saw men leaping down

-who did not take up any sort of military formation. These he knew were

-sheriffs' posses, fighting men sworn in because they were known to be

-fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted in the chase of

-the human animal. He had often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and

-he knew that they were an enemy of a character far different from

-those harmless boys who could not hit a mark smaller than the side of

-a hill. These men would follow doggedly, persistently into the highest

-of the hills, saving themselves, but never letting the prey slip from

-their sight, dividing the hill men, separating them, cornering them

-until they should have tracked them down one by one and either

-captured or killed them all.

-

-These men did not attempt to advance along the line of the road. They

-stepped quickly out into the undergrowth and began spreading a thin

-line of men to either side.

-

-Then he saw that the third train, although they were soldiers, took

-their lesson from the men who had just preceded them. They left the

-tracks and spreading still farther out took up the wings of a long

-line that was now stretching east to west along the fringe of the

-hills. The soldiers in the centre retired a little way down the

-roadbed, stood bunched together for a little time while their officers

-evidently conferred together, then left the road by twos and fours and

-began spreading out and pushing the other lines out still farther. It

-was perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that could not have been

-better done if he and his companions had planned it for their own

-capture.

-

-There were easily eight hundred men there in front, he judged; men

-well armed and ready for an indefinite stay in the hills, with a

-railroad at their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire State

-behind them. And the State was ready to send more and more men after

-these if it should be necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of

-other men were being held in readiness to follow these or were perhaps

-already on their way. He saw the end.

-

-Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly and surround his men.

-If they stood together they would be massacred. If they separated they

-would be hunted down one by one.

-

-Their only chance was to scatter at once and ride back to where their

-homes had been. This time he implored them to take their chance,

-begged them to save themselves while they could. But he might have

-known that they would do nothing of the kind. Already they were

-breaking away and spreading out to meet that distending line in front

-of them. Nothing short of a miracle could now save them from

-annihilation, and Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle. There

-was nothing to be done but to take command and sell his life along

-with theirs as dearly as possible.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up and down the State. Men

-who had followed the course of things through the past months, men

-who knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which no newspaper

-had dared to print openly, understood just what it meant. The men up

-there had been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men agreed

-quietly with each other that they had done the very worst thing that

-could have been done. The injury they had done the railroad would

-amount to very little, comparatively, in the end, while it would give

-the railroad an absolutely free hand from now on. The people would be

-driven forever out of the lands which the railroad wished to possess.

-There would be no legislative hindrances now. The people had doomed

-themselves.

-

-The echoes reached also to two million other men throughout the State

-who did not understand the matter in the least. These looked up a

-moment from the work of living and earning a living to sympathise

-vaguely with the foolish men up there in the hills who had attacked

-the sacred and awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad.

-Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the case. But who could

-tell? And the two million, the rulers and sovereigns of the State,

-went back again to their business.

-

-The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, almost before a

-blow had been struck. It is hardly too much to say that he was

-listening for it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech, slow

-to anger; but, once past a certain point of aggravation, absolutely

-heedless and reckless of consequences.

-

-He did not stop to compute just how much he himself was bound up in

-the causes and consequences of what had happened and what was

-happening in the hills. He had given advice. He had thought with the

-people and only for the people.

-

-He saw, long before it was told him in words, the wild ride down

-through the hills to strike the railroad, the fury of destruction, the

-gathering of the forces of the State to punish.

-

-Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein Joseph

-Winthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no

-moment now.

-

-One man there was in all the State, in all the nation, who could give

-the word that would now save the people of the hills. Clifford W.

-Stanton who had sat months ago in his office in New York and had set

-all these things going, whose ruthless hand was to be recognised in

-every act of those which had driven the people to this madness, his

-will and his alone could stay the storm that was now raging in the

-hills.

-

-Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act of supreme and unselfish

-bravery. It was an act of both physical and moral courage the like of

-which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was an act which had

-revealed in Clifford W. Stanton a depth of strong fineness that no man

-would have suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of faraway

-youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten. And he knew that men do not

-rise to such heights without having very deep in them the nobility to

-make it possible and at times inevitable that they should rise to

-those heights.

-

-After these years and the encrusting strata of compromise and

-cowardice and selfishness which years and life lay upon the fresh

-heart of the youth of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul of

-Clifford W. Stanton again be touched?

-

-Almost before the forces of the State were in motion against the

-people of the hills, the Bishop, early of a morning, walked into the

-office of Clifford Stanton.

-

-Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and though younger than the

-latter by some half-dozen years, it was evident that he had burned up

-the fuel of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked and spoke and

-moved with the deliberate fixity of the settling years, Stanton acted

-with a quick nervousness that shook just a perceptible little. The

-spiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking which had

-chiselled the Bishop's face into a single, simple expression of will

-power was not to be found in the other's face. In its stead there was

-a certain steel-trap impression, as though the man behind the face

-had all his life refused to be certain of anything until the jaws of

-the trap had set upon the accomplished fact.

-

-Physically the two men were much of a type. You would have known them

-anywhere for New Englanders of the generation that has disappeared

-almost completely in the last twenty years. They had been boys at

-Harvard together, though not of the same class. They had been together

-in the Civil War, though the nature of their services had been

-infinitely diverse. They had met here and there casually and

-incidentally in the business of life. But they faced each other now

-virtually as strangers, and with a certain tightening grip upon

-himself each man realised that he was about to grapple with one of the

-strongest willed men that he had ever met, and that he must test out

-the other man to the depths and be himself tried out to the limit of

-his strength.

-

-"It is some years since I've seen you, Bishop. But we are both busy

-men. And--well-- You know I am glad to have you come to see me. I need

-not tell you that."

-

-The Bishop accepted the other man's frank courtesy and took a chair

-quietly. Stanton watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing the

-last few years a good deal, he thought. In reality it was the last

-month that the Bishop was showing. But it did not show in the

-steady, untroubled glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no time on

-preliminaries.

-

-"I have come on business, of course, Mr. Stanton," he began. "It is a

-very strange and unusual business. And to come at it rightly I must

-tell you a story. At the end of the story I will ask you a question.

-That will be my whole business."

-

-The other man said nothing. He did not understand and he never spoke

-until he was sure that he understood. The Bishop plunged into his

-story.

-

-"One January day in 'Sixty-five' I was going up the Shenandoah alone.

-My command had left me behind for two days of hospital service at

-Cross Keys. They were probably some twenty miles ahead of me and would

-be crossing over the divide towards Five Forks and the east. I thought

-I knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of the distance that

-separated me from them, so I started across the Ridge by a path which

-would have been impossible for troops in order.

-

-"I was right. I did cut off the distance which I had expected and came

-down in the early afternoon upon a good road that ran up the eastern

-side of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself that I would be

-with my men before dark, when a troop of Confederate cavalry came

-pelting over a rise in the road behind me.

-

-"I leaped my horse back into the brush at the side of the road and

-waited. They would sweep on past and allow me to go on my way. Behind

-them came a troop of our own horse pursuing hotly. The Confederate

-horses were well spent. I saw that the end of the pursuit was not far

-off. The Confederates--some detached band of Early's men, I

-imagine--realised that they would soon be run down. Just where I had

-left the road there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates threw

-themselves from their horses and drew themselves across the road. They

-were in perfect ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen yards

-back on the narrow road.

-

-"I broke from the bush and fled back along the road to warn our men.

-But I did no good. They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even, as

-they came yelling around the turn of the road.

-

-"For three minutes there was some of the sharpest fighting I ever saw,

-there in the narrow road, before what remained of the Confederates

-broke after their horses and made off again. In the very middle of the

-fight I noticed two young officers. One was a captain, the other a

-lieutenant. I knew them. I knew their story. I believe I was the only

-man living who knew that story. Probably _I_ did not know the whole of

-that story.

-

-"The lieutenant had maligned the captain. He had said of him the one

-thing that a soldier may not say of another. They had fought once. Why

-they had been kept in the same command I do not know.

-

-"Now in the very hottest of this fight, without apparently the

-slightest warning, the lieutenant threw himself upon the captain,

-attacking him viciously with his sword. For a moment they struggled

-there, unnoticed in the dust of the conflict. Then the captain,

-swinging free, struck the lieutenant's sword from his hand. The latter

-drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It missed. By what miracle I

-do not know. All this time the captain had held his sword poised to

-lunge, within easy striking distance of the other's throat. But he had

-made no attempt to thrust. As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his

-arm to strike. Instead he looked a long moment into the lieutenant's

-eyes. The latter was screaming what were evidently taunts into his

-face. The captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at the now

-breaking line of Confederates.

-

-"I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have seen brave men bravely

-refrain from killing. That was the bravest thing I ever saw."

-

-Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of him. He gave no sign

-of hearing. He was living over for himself that scene on a lonely,

-forgotten Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:

-

-"The lieutenant died, a soldier's death, the next day."

-

-"I knew," said the Bishop quietly. "My question is: Are you the same

-brave man with a soldier's brave, great heart that you were that

-day?"

-

-For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring directly at something

-that was not in the visible world. The question had sprung upon him

-out of the dead past. What right had this man, what right had any man

-to face him with it?

-

-He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:

-

-"You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of the tragedy of my life

-as it whirled by you on the road! How dare you come here to tell me

-the little bit of it you saw?"

-

-"Because," said the Bishop swiftly, "you have forgotten how great and

-brave a man you are."

-

-Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He was stirred to the depths

-of feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotion

-and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. His

-lifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kept

-him waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it was

-merely the instinct of self-defence.

-

-"For months," the Bishop was going on quietly, "the people of my hills

-have been harassed by you in your unfair efforts to get possession of

-the lands upon which their fathers built their homes. You have tried

-to cheat them. You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to debauch

-a legislature in your attempt to overcome them. I have here in my

-pocket the sworn confessions of two men who stood in the shadow of

-death and said that they had been sent to burn a whole countryside

-that you and your associates coveted--to burn the people in their

-homes like the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that act to

-within two men of you. And I can sit here, Clifford Stanton, and look

-you in the eye man to man and tell you that I _know_ you gave the

-suggestion. And you cannot look back and deny it. I cannot take you

-into a court of law in this State and prove it. We both know the

-futility of talking of that. But I can take you, I do take you this

-minute into the court of your own heart--where I know a brave man

-lives--and convict you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If the

-whole world stood here accusing you would we know it any the better?

-

-"Now my people have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the law

-into their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. They

-have done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? You

-have power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of the

-land. They did not understand. They did not know you. They have been

-misled. They have listened to men like me preaching: 'Right shall

-prevail: Justice shall conquer.' And where does right prevail? And

-when shall justice conquer? No doubt you have said these phrases

-yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers taught us to say them.

-But are they true? Does justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can

-say. I ask you, who have the answer in your power. Does right prevail?

-Then give my stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?

-Then see that they come to no harm.

-

-"I dare to put this thing raw to your face because I know the man that

-once lived within you. I saw you--!"

-

-"Don't harp on that," Stanton cut in viciously. "You know nothing

-about it."

-

-"I _do_ harp on that. I have come here to harp on that. Do you think

-that if I had not with my eyes seen that thing I would have come near

-you at all? No. I would have branded you before all men for the thing

-that you have done. I would have given these confessions which I hold

-to the world. I would have denounced you as far as tongue and pen

-would go to every man who through four years gave blood at your side.

-I would have braved the rebuke of my superiors and maybe the

-discipline of my Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of men. I

-would have made your name hated in the ears of little children. But I

-would not have come to you.

-

-"If I had not seen that thing I would not have come to you, for I

-would have said: What good? The man is a coward without a heart. A

-_coward_, do you remember that word?"

-

-The man groaned and struck out with his hand as though to drive away a

-ghastly thing that would leap upon him.

-

-"A coward without a heart," the Bishop repeated remorselessly, "who

-has men and women and children in his power and who, because he has no

-heart, can use his power to crush them.

-

-"If I had not seen, I would have said that.

-

-"But I saw. I _saw_. And I have come here to ask you: Are you the same

-brave man with a heart that I saw on that day?

-

-"You shall not evade me. Do you think you can put me off with defences

-and puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of

-property? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will go

-down into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the naked

-truth. But I will have my answer. Are you that same man?

-

-"If you are not that same man; if you have killed that in you which

-gave life to that man; if that man no longer lives in you; if you are

-not capable of being that same man with the heart of a great and

-tender hero, then tell me and I will go. But you shall answer me. I

-will have my answer."

-

-Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair and stood trembling as

-though in an overpowering rage, and visibly struggling for his command

-of mind and tongue.

-

-"Words, words, words," he groaned at last. "Your life is made of

-words. Words are your coin. What do you know?

-

-"Do you think that words can go down into my soul to find the man that

-was once there? Do you think that words can call him up? When did

-words ever mean anything to a man's real heart! You come here with

-your question. It's made of words.

-

-"When did men ever do anything for _words_? Honour is a word. Truth is

-a word. Bravery is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word. Do you

-think men do things for words? No! What do you know? What _could_ you

-know?

-

-"Men do things and you call them by words. But do they do them for the

-words? No!

-

-"They do them-- Because _some woman lives, or once lived!_ What do

-_you_ know?

-

-"Go out there. Stay there." He pointed. "I've got to think."

-

-He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against his desk. The Bishop

-rose and walked from the room.

-

-When he heard the door close, the man got up and going to the door

-barred it.

-

-He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning heavily upon his propped

-hands.

-

-He opened a drawer of his desk and looked at a smooth, glinting black

-and steel thing that lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang

-that went out to the Bishop listening in the outer office. It was a

-sinister, suggestive noise, and for an instant it chilled that good

-man's heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he knew immediately

-that he had been mistaken.

-

-Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked a smaller compartment

-within it, and from the latter took a small gold-framed picture. He

-set it up on the desk between his hands and looked long at it,

-questioning the face in the frame with a tender, diffident expression

-of a wonder that never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled.

-

-The face that looked out of the picture was one of a quiet,

-translucent beauty. At first glance the face had none of the striking

-features that men associate with great beauty. But behind the eyes

-there seemed to glow, and to grow gradually, and softly stronger, a

-light, as though diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly

-radiated from the whole countenance an impression of indescribable,

-gentle loveliness.

-

-Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was that light from within.

-He wondered now, and questioned. Never before had that light seemed

-so wonderful and so real. Now there came to him an answer. An answer

-that shook him, for it was the last answer he would have expected. The

-light within was truth--truth. It seemed that in a world of sham and

-illusions and evasions this one woman had understood, had lived with

-truth.

-

-The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry laugh that was nearer to a

-sob.

-

-"Was that it, Lucy?" he queried. "Truth? Then let us have a little

-truth, for once! I'll tell you some truth!

-

-"I lied a while ago. He did _not_ die a soldier's death. I told the

-same lie to you long ago. Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven

-happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to you. Words. And yet

-you died a happy woman, because of that lie.

-

-"He lied to you. He took you from me with lies. Words. Lies. And yet

-they made you happy. Where is truth?

-

-"You lived happy and died happy with a lie. Because I lied like what

-they call a man and a gentleman. _Truth!_"

-

-He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face before him. Did he

-expect to see the light fade out, to see the face wither under the

-bitter revelation?

-

-"I've been everything," he went on, still trying to make his point,

-"I've done everything, that men say I've been and done. Why?

-

-"Well--Why?" he asked sharply. "Did it make any difference?

-

-"Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my face--sometimes.

-Well--Why not? Does it make any difference? Did it make any difference

-with you? If I had thought it would-- But it didn't. Lies, trickery,

-words! They served with you. They made you happy. _Truth!_"

-

-But as he looked into the face and the smiling light of truth

-persisted in it, there came over his soul the dawn of a wonder. And

-the dawn glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and looked out

-wondering at a world remade.

-

-"Is it true, Lucy?" he asked gently. "Can that be _truth_, at last? Is

-that what you mean? Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words and

-beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand--a little? And do

-you, somewhere, understand now?

-

-"Then tell me. Was it worth the lies? Down underneath, when you

-understood, which was the truth? The thing I did--which men would call

-fine? Or was it the words?

-

-"Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was it the fine thing that was

-really the truth, and did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there

-truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were made of truth, did

-you somehow understand all the time?"

-

-He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally believing. Then he

-said:

-

-"Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I will not speak it to him.

-But I'll say it to you: Yes, I am that same man who once did what they

-call a fine, brave thing. I didn't do it because it was a great thing,

-a brave thing. I did it for you.

-

-"And--I'll do this for you."

-

-He looked again at the face in the picture, as if to make sure. Then

-he locked it away quickly in its place.

-

-He thought for a moment, then drew a pad abruptly to him and began

-writing. He wrote two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State, the

-other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then he took another pad and

-wrote a note, this to his personal representative who was following

-the state troops into the hills.

-

-He rose and walked briskly to the door. Throwing it open he called a

-clerk and gave him the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand and

-asked the Bishop back into the office.

-

-Closing the door quickly, he said without preface:

-

-"This note will put my man up there at your service. You will prefer

-to go up into the hills yourself, I think. The officers in command of

-the troops will know that you are empowered to act for all parties.

-The Governor will have seen to that before you get there, I think.

-There will be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards. You can

-settle the whole matter in no time.

-

-"We will not buy the land, but we'll give a fair rental, based on what

-ores we find to take out. You can give _your_ word--mine wouldn't go

-for much up there, I guess," he put in grimly--"that it will be fair.

-You can make that the basis of settlement.

-

-"They can go back and rebuild. I will help, where it will do the most

-good. Our operations won't interfere much with their farm land, I

-find.

-

-"You will want to start at once. That is all, I guess, Bishop," he

-concluded abruptly.

-

-The Bishop reached for the smaller man's hand and wrung it with a

-sudden, unwonted emotion.

-

-"I will not cheapen this, sir," he said evenly, "by attempting to

-thank you."

-

-"A mere whim of mine, that's all," Stanton cut in almost curtly, the

-steel-trap expression snapping into place over his face. "A mere

-whim."

-

-"Well," said the Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I

-only came to ask a question, anyhow." Then he turned and walked

-briskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what the

-other man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner.

-

-So these two men parted. In words, they had not understood each other.

-Neither had come near the depths of the other. But then, what man does

-ever let another man see what is in his heart?

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider and

-wider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of men

-hidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly and

-more clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. His

-line was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemy

-had known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a few

-daring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strength

-of the men with him.

-

-All the afternoon as he watched he saw other and yet other groups and

-troops of men come up the railroad, detrain and push out ever farther

-upon the enveloping wings to east and west.

-

-Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line had been driven in and

-almost surrounded. They had decided in the beginning to leave their

-horses in the rear, and so use them only at the last. But the

-spreading line in front had become too long to be covered on foot by

-the few men he had. They were forced to use the speed of the animals

-to make a show of greater force than they really had. The horses

-furnished marks that even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the

-afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams of terrified,

-wounded horses rang horribly through the woods above the pattering

-crackle of the irregular rifle fire. Old men who years before had

-learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and fell asleep grumbling.

-Young men and boys who had never heard such sounds turned sick with

-horror or wandered frightened through the dark, nervously ready to

-fire on any moving twig or scraping branch.

-

-In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the line, talking aside to

-every man; telling them to slip quietly away through the dark. They

-could make their way out through the loose lines of soldiers and

-sheriffs' men and get down to the villages where they would be unknown

-and where nobody would bother with them.

-

-The inevitable few took his word-- There is always the inevitable few.

-They slipped away one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly

-good reason for going, several good reasons, in fact; any reason,

-indeed, but that they were afraid. Most of them were gathered in by

-the soldier pickets and sent down to jail.

-

-Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with a grim, ugly suggestion in

-it of the coming winter. Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily out

-to their posts, munching dryly at the last of the stores which they

-had taken from the construction depots along the line which they had

-destroyed. This was the end. It was not far from the mind of each man

-that this would probably be his last meal.

-

-The firing began again as the outer line came creeping in upon them.

-They had still the great advantage of the shelter of the woods and the

-formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship kept those

-directly in front of them almost out of range. But there was nothing

-in sight before them but that they would certainly all be surrounded

-and shot down or taken.

-

-Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those who had been watching the

-most distant of the two wings creeping around them saw these men halt

-and slowly begin to gather back together. What was it? Were they going

-to rush at last? Here would be a fight in earnest!

-

-But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation, merely walked

-back in their tracks until they were entirely out of range. It must be

-a ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their shelter, puzzled, but

-determined not to be drawn out.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of the line, saw an old man

-walking, barehead, up over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted

-rails. That white head with the high, wide brow, the slightly

-stooping, spare shoulders, the long, swinging walk-- That was the

-Bishop of Alden!

-

-Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to the men on either side

-to stay where they were, jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet

-the Bishop.

-

-"Are any men killed?" the Bishop asked before Jeffrey had time to

-speak as they met.

-

-"Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the chest--we don't know how bad

-it is," said Jeffrey, stopping short. "Ten other men are wounded. I

-don't think any of them are bad."

-

-"Call in your men," said the Bishop briefly. "The soldiers are going

-back."

-

-At Jeffrey's call the men came running from all sides as he and the

-Bishop reached the line. Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered

-round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance of the White

-Horse Chaplain, for so one and all they knew and remembered him. Men

-who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped back into the scene

-of that day and looked about blankly for the white horse. And young

-men who had heard that tale many times and had seen and heard of his

-coming through the fire to French Village stared round-eyed at him.

-What did this coming mean?

-

-He told them shortly the terms that Clifford W. Stanton, their enemy,

-was willing to make with them. And in the end he added:

-

-"You have only my word that these things will be done as I say. _I_

-believe. If you believe, you will take your horses and get back to

-your families at once."

-

-Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the first

-time knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them.

-They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many who

-had thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying

-over the names of those they were saved to.

-

-The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him, walked slowly back down

-the roadbed. Suddenly Jeffrey remembered something that had gone

-completely out of his mind in these last hours.

-

-"Bishop," he stammered, "that day--that day in court. I--I said you

-lied. Now I know you didn't. You told the truth, of course."

-

-"My boy," said the Bishop queerly, "yesterday I asked a man, on his

-soul, for the truth--the truth. I got no answer.

-

-"But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor of

-all the World, once asked what was truth. And _he_ got no answer.

-Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are things

-bigger than we are. We get no answer."

-

-Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.

-

-

-

-

-X

-

-THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID

-

-

-It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of

-Promise.

-

-The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He

-still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from

-which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He

-still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the

-sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running

-down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had

-chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the

-grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the

-enemy was gone.

-

-But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the

-forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even

-the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and

-hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature.

-For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But

-the sun came warmer, more insistent, and kissed the scarred, brown

-body of earth and warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and the

-little flowers took courage out of their very craving for life and

-pushed resolutely forth. And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The

-world was born again!

-

-Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run on her way back to French

-Village. She had been to put the first flowers of the Spring on the

-grave of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had blessed the ground for

-him and they had laid him, there under the sunny side of the Gaunt

-Rocks that had given him his last breathing space that he might die in

-peace. They had put him here, for there was no way in that time to

-carry him to the little cemetery in French Village. And Cynthe was

-well satisfied that it was so. Here, under the Gaunt Rocks, she would

-not have to share him with any one. And she would not have to hear

-people pointing out the grave to each other and to see them staring.

-

-The water tumbling down the Run out of the hills sang a glad,

-uproarious song, as is the way of all brooks at their beginnings,

-concerning the necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible to the

-big, wide life of the sea. The sea would not care at all if that brook

-never came down to it. But the brook did not know that. Would not have

-believed it if it had been told.

-

-And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song of old Beaupre--which

-she had never seen, for Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was

-sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time, and-- But Cynthe was

-not unhappy. The Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good.

-Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet. There was work in the

-world to do. And--when all was said and done--Rafe Gadbeau was in

-Heaven.

-

-As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey

-Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur's Fork country and

-was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk

-with her. Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty, sociable

-little person, and, besides, for some time she had had it in mind that

-she would some day take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this

-scowling young gentleman with the big face.

-

-"You're with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren't you?" he said, after some

-verbal beating about the bush; "how is she?"

-

-"Why don't you come see, if you want to know?" retorted Cynthe

-sharply.

-

-Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on:

-

-"If you wanted to know why didn't you come up all Winter and see? Why

-didn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies

-through the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid of

-them? Why didn't you come see when she was helping the mothers up

-there to get into their houses and make the houses warm before the

-coming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn't

-you come see when she nearly got her death from the 'mmonia caring for

-old Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till she

-shamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebody

-then? Why didn't you come see?"

-

-"Well," Jeffrey defended, "I didn't know about any of those things.

-And we had plenty to do here--our place and my mother and all. I

-didn't see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church,

-just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn't seem to want

-to."

-

-"But she should have been delighted to see you," Cynthe snapped back.

-"Don't you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. She

-should have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said to

-her the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. You

-called her 'liar' before the whole court, even the Judge! Of one

-certainty, she should have flown to you. No?"

-

-Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have gone away, with all haste.

-But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure that

-some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue.

-

-"But she--she cared for me," he blurted out. "I know she did. I

-couldn't understand why she couldn't tell--the truth; when you--you

-did so much for me."

-

-"For you? For _you_!" the girl flamed up in his face. "Oh, villainous

-monster of vanity! For _you_! Ha! I could laugh! For _you_! I put _mon

-Rafe_--dead in his grave--to shame before all the world, called him

-murderer, blackened his name, for _you_!

-

-"No! No! _No!_ _Never!_

-

-"I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death.

-_Never!_

-

-"I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which _mon Rafe_

-had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay

-that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in.

-I did it for _you_! Ha!"

-

-The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so

-rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of

-the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main

-argument.

-

-"But why couldn't she have told the truth?"

-

-"The truth, eh! You must have the truth! The girl must tell the truth

-for you! No matter if she was to blacken her soul before God, you

-must have the truth told for you. The truth! It was not enough for you

-to know that the girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that

-she would have died for you if she might! No. The poor girl must tear

-out the secret lining of her heart for you, to save you!

-

-"Think you that if _mon Rafe_ was alive and stood there where you

-stood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give up

-the secret of the Holy Confession to save him. _Non!_ _Mon Rafe_ was a

-_man_! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted me

-with!

-

-"Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to be saved; that the Good God must

-come down from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened Book for

-_you_!

-

-"You ask for truth! _Tiens!_ I will tell you truth!

-

-"You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried that you were an

-innocent man. _Mon Rafe_ was the guilty man. The whole world must come

-forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth to declare you

-innocent and him guilty! You were innocent! You were persecuted! The

-earth and the Heaven must come to show that you were innocent and he

-was guilty! _Bah!_ _You were as guilty as he!_

-

-"I was there. I saw. Your finger was on the trigger. You only waited

-for the man to stop moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder was in

-your soul. Murder was in your finger. But you were innocent and _mon

-Rafe_ was guilty. By how much?

-

-"By one second. That was the difference between _mon Rafe_ and you.

-Just that second that he shot before you were ready. _That_ was the

-difference between you the innocent man and _mon Rafe_!

-

-"You were guilty. In your heart you were guilty. In your soul you were

-guilty. M'sieur Cain himself was not more guilty than you!

-

-"You were more guilty than _mon Rafe_, for he had suffered more from

-that man. He was hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were cool. You

-were ready. Only _mon Rafe_ was a little quicker, because he was

-desperate. Before the Good God you were more guilty.

-

-"And _mon Rafe_ must be blackened more than the fire had blackened his

-poor body. And the poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the good

-M'sieur the Bishop must break his holiest oath. All to make you

-innocent!

-

-"Bah! _Innocent!_"

-

-She flung away from him and ran up the hill. Cynthe had not said quite

-all that she intended to say to this young gentleman. But then, also,

-she had said a good deal more than she had intended to say. So it was

-about even. She had said enough. And it would do him no harm. She had

-felt that she owed _mon Rafe_ a little plain speaking. She was much

-relieved.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him digging up the tender

-roots of the new grass with his toe. He did not look after the girl.

-He had forgotten her.

-

-He felt no resentment at the things that she had said. He did not

-argue with himself as to whether these things were just or unjust. Of

-all the things that she had said only one thing mattered. And that not

-because she had said it. It mattered because it was true. The quick,

-jabbing sentences from the girl had driven home to him just one

-thing.

-

-Guilty? He _was_ guilty. He was as guilty as--Rafe Gadbeau.

-

-Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation, bitter, blinding provocation.

-But so had Rafe Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau as

-anything but guilty of murder.

-

-He turned on his heel and walked down the Run with swift, swinging

-strides, fighting this conviction that was settling upon him. He

-fought it viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a man, that

-the thing was done and past, that men have no time for remorse and

-sickish, mawkish repentance. Those things were for brooding women, and

-Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably, sagaciously; contending that he

-had not, in fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that he would

-ever have done so? Maybe he had not really intended to kill at all.

-Maybe he would not have killed. The man might have spoken to him.

-Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned that time. Who could

-tell? Ten thousand things might have happened, any one of which would

-have stood between him and killing the man. He fought it defiantly.

-Suppose he had killed the man? What about it? The man deserved it. He

-had a right to kill him.

-

-But he knew that he was losing at every angle of the fight. For the

-conviction answered not a word to any of these things. It merely

-fastened itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment:

-"As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau."

-

-And when he came over the top of the hill, from where he could look

-down upon the grave of Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the

-conviction pointed out to him just one enduring fact. It said: "There

-is the grave of Rafe Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything

-about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried here."

-

-Then he fought no more with the conviction. It gripped his spirit and

-cowed him. It sat upon his shoulders and rode home with him. His

-mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding, began to look for

-some fresh trouble.

-

-She need not have looked for new trouble, so far as concerned things

-outside himself. For Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men.

-He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable and finer home than

-it had ever been. He had secured an excellent contract from the

-railroad to supply thousands of ties out of the timber of the high

-hills. He had made money out of that. And once he had gotten a taste

-of money-making, in a business that was his by the traditions of his

-people and his own liking, he knew that he had found himself a

-career.

-

-He was working now on a far bigger project, the reforesting of thirty

-thousand acres of the higher hill country. In time there would be

-unlimited money in that. But there was more than money in it. It was a

-game and a life which he knew and which he loved. To make money by

-making things more abundant, by covering the naked peaks of the hill

-country with sturdy, growing timber, that was a thing that appealed to

-him.

-

-All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men had

-done in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding this

-knowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already he

-knew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more about

-growing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how much

-this meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youth

-more than its due. Already he was being picked as an expert. Next

-week he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislative

-committee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to get

-appropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls from

-out of standing timber--a thing that if well done would render forest

-fires almost harmless.

-

-He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that law

-school diploma--the thing that he had once regarded as the portal of

-the world--look cheap and little.

-

-But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations,

-the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The high

-colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him

-and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the

-word--_guilty_.

-

-What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything?

-when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall

-with the word written across it. Guilty--guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And

-Ruth Lansing--!

-

-A flash of sudden insight caught him and held him in its glaring

-light. He had been doing all this work. He had built this home. He had

-fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills and the raging

-winter for money. He had dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built

-them higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.

-

-He had fought the thought of her. He had put her out of his mind. He

-had said that she had failed him in need. He had even, in the blackest

-time of the night, called her liar. He had forgotten her, he said.

-

-Now he knew that not for an instant had she been out of his mind.

-Every stroke of work had been for her. She had stood at the top of the

-high path of every struggling dream.

-

-Between him and her now rose that grey wall with the one word written

-on it. Was that what they had meant that day there in the court, she

-and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all? Was there some sort of

-uncanny truth or insight or hidden justice in that secret confessional

-of theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting truth,

-while it hid the momentary, accidental truth of mere words? In effect,

-they had said that he was guilty. And he _was_ guilty!

-

-What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that day

-on the railroad line? "Sooner or later we have to learn that there is

-something bigger than we are." Was this what it meant? Was this the

-thing bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, had

-looked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing that

-was bigger than he?

-

-He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting maze of imagination,

-misinformation, and some unreadable facts.

-

-He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that he was guilty. That was

-why she had acted as she had. He would go to her. He would--! But what

-was the use? She would not talk to him about this. She would merely

-deny, as she had done before, that she knew anything at all. What

-could he do? Where could he turn? They, he and Ruth, could never speak

-of that thing. They could never come to any understanding of anything.

-This thing, this wall--with that word written on it--would stand

-between them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that was

-sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the thing that was stronger

-than he. There was no answer. There was no way out.

-

-Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!

-

-But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He was not guilty any more.

-Cynthe had said so. He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow. He

-had merely come through the fire and thrown himself at a man's feet

-and had his guilt wiped away. What was there in that uncanny thing

-they called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as--as Rafe

-Gadbeau, could come to another man, and, by the saying of a few words,

-turn over and face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?

-

-It was a delusion, of course. The saying of words could never wipe

-away Rafe Gadbeau's guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt

-from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes. But Rafe Gadbeau

-_believed_ it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. _Ruth_

-believed it!

-

-It was a delusion, yes. But--_What_ a delusion! What a magnificent,

-soul-stirring delusion! A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau out of

-the misery of his guilt, that carried the souls of millions of guilty

-people through all the world up out of the depths of their crimes to a

-confidence of relief and freedom!

-

-Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down into the abyss of

-despairing loneliness. It trod the dark ways in which there was no

-guidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what it

-might appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause to

-effect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, or

-thought, that must have been the starting point, that must have held

-the germ of his guilt.

-

-Somewhere there must have been a beginning. He knew that he was not in

-any particular a different person, capable of anything different,

-likely to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain from what

-he had been on any other morning since he had become a man. There was

-never a time, so far as he could see, when he would not have been

-ready to do the thing which he was ready to do that morning--given the

-circumstances. Nor had he changed in any way since that morning. What

-had been essentially his act, his thought, a part of him, that morning

-was just as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this minute.

-There was no thing in the succession of incidents to which he could

-point and say: That was not I who did that: I did not mean that: I am

-sorry I did that. Nor would there ever be a time when he could say any

-of these things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty of

-that thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty of

-it. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to make

-him wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he would

-undo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begun

-away back in the formation of his character, and which would persist

-as long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it.

-There was no way that it might ever end.

-

-And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing had seen that guilt, too.

-She had seen it in his eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in

-his mind.

-

-What had she seen? What was that thing written so clear in his eyes

-that she could read and tell him of it that day on the road from

-French Village?

-

-He would go to her and ask her. She should tell him what was that

-thing she had seen. He would make her tell. He would have it from

-her!

-

-But, no. Where was the use? It would only bring them to that whole,

-impossible, bewildering business of the confessional. And he did not

-want to hear any more of that. His heart was sick of it. It had made

-him suffer enough. And he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered

-equally, or maybe more, from it.

-

-Where could he go? He must tell this thing. He _must_ talk of it to

-some one! That resistless, irrepressible impulse for confession, that

-call of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon him. He must find

-some other soul to share with him the burden of this conviction. He

-must find some one who would understand and to whom he could speak.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not have analysed what this

-craving meant. He only knew that it was very real, that his soul was

-staggering alone and blind under the weight of this thing.

-

-There was one man who would understand. The man who had looked upon

-the faces of life and death these many years, the man of strange

-comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him on the way of all this,

-and who from what he had said in his house in Alden, that day so long

-ago when all this began, may have foreseen this very thing, the man

-who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry out his guilt; that man would

-understand. He would go to him.

-

-He wrote a note which his mother would find in the morning, and

-slipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride to

-Lowville.

-

-"I came because I had to come," Jeffrey began, when the Bishop had

-seated him. "I don't know why I should come to you. I know you cannot

-do anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tell

-some one. I _had_ to say it to somebody."

-

-"I sat that day in the courtroom," he went on as the Bishop waited,

-"and thought that the whole world was against me. It seemed that

-everybody was determined to make me guilty--even you, even Ruth. And I

-was innocent. I had done nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the

-idea that everybody was trying to make me out guilty, when I was

-innocent. I had done nothing. I had not killed a man. I told the men

-there on the mountain that I was innocent and they would not believe

-me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts that I had not done the thing,

-but you would not say a word for me, an innocent man."

-

-"It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole world

-wanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on to

-the wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting back

-against everybody.

-

-"And--this is what I came to say--all the time I was guilty--guilty:

-guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!"

-

-"I am not sure I understand," said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey

-stopped.

-

-"Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty

-of that man's death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty

-of it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I will

-always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turn

-over into the next world, free. I cannot," he ended, with a sort of

-grim finality as though he saw again before him that wall against

-which he had come the night before.

-

-"You mean--" the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, "What

-brought your mind to this view of the matter?"

-

-"A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that

-loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me."

-

-Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some

-plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than

-to treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not a boy to be

-laughed out of a morbid notion, or to be told to grow older and forget

-the thing. His was a man's soul, standing in the dark, grappling with

-a thing with which it could not cope. The wrong word here might mar

-his whole life. Here was no place for softening away the realities

-with reasoning. The man's soul demanded a man's straight answer.

-

-"Before you could be guilty," said the Bishop decisively, "you must

-have injured some one by your thought, your intention. Whom did you

-injure?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought, to follow it out from

-the maze which his mind had been treading. Here was the answer. This

-would clear the way. Whom had he injured?

-

-Well, _whom_ had he injured? _Who_ had been hurt by his thought, his

-wish, to kill a man? Had it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was

-none the worse of it.

-

-Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not enter into this at all.

-

-Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till yesterday; and not in

-the way meant.

-

-Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then--then why all this--?

-Jeffrey Whiting rose from his chair as though to go. He did not look

-at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing upon the floor,

-asking:

-

-Whom?

-

-Suddenly, from within, just barely audible through his lips there came

-the answer; a single word:

-

-"_God!_"

-

-"Your business is with Him, then," said the Bishop, rising with what

-almost seemed brusqueness. "You wanted to see Him."

-

-"But--but," Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to argue, "men come to you, to

-confess. Rafe Gadbeau--!"

-

-"No," said the Bishop quickly, "you are wrong. Men come to me to

-_confession_. They come to _confess_ to God."

-

-He took the young man's hand, saying:

-

-"I will not say another word. You have found your own answer. You

-would not understand better if I talked forever. Find God, and tell

-Him, what you have told me."

-

-In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the long way to the hills

-and home. He was still bewildered, disappointed, and a little

-resentful of the Bishop's brief manners with him. He had gone looking

-for sympathy, understanding, help. And he had been told to find God.

-

-Find God? How did men go about to find God? Wasn't all the world

-continually on the lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did the

-preachers find Him? Did the priests find Him? And if they did, what

-did they say to Him? Did people who were sick, and people who said God

-had answered their prayers and punished their enemies for them; did

-they find God?

-

-Did they find Him when they prayed? Did they find Him when they were

-in trouble? What did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must have meant

-something? How did the Bishop himself find God? Was there some word,

-some key, some hidden portal by which men found God? Was God to be

-found here on the hills, in the night, in the open?

-

-God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how can I come, how can I find!

-A wordless, baffled, impotent cry, that reached nowhere.

-

-The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.

-

-Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable guilt, swept down

-upon him again and beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It

-left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to face this thing. It was

-too big for him. He was after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling

-alone in the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had been caught and

-crushed between forces and passions that were too much for him. He was

-little and these things were very great.

-

-Unconsciously the heart within him, the child heart that somehow lives

-ever in every man, began to speak, to speak, without knowing it,

-direct to God.

-

-It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was not an excuse. It was

-the simple unfolding of the heart of a child to the Father who made

-it. The heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It could not lift

-itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness complete, of dependence

-utter and unreasoning.

-

-Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at the stars, blinking at

-him through the starting tears.

-

-Was that God? Had some one spoken? Where was the load that had lain

-upon him all these weary hours?

-

-He stopped his horse and looked about him, breathing in great, free,

-hungry breaths of God's air about him. For it _was_ God's air. That

-was the wonder of it. The world was God's! And it was new made for him

-to live in!

-

-He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer of thanks, as simple and

-unreasoning, unquestioning, as had been the unfolding of his heart. He

-had been bound: he was free!

-

-Then his horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new

-life upon the soft, breathing air of the spring night.

-

-With the inconsequence of all of us children when God has lifted the

-stone from our hearts, Jeffrey had already left everything of the last

-thirty-six hours behind him as completely as if he had never lived

-through those hours. (That He lets us forget so easily, shows that He

-is the Royal God in very deed.)

-

-Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to

-French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old

-Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof.

-

-What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that

-he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months. For

-the French people had taken her to their hearts and had made of her a

-wonderful new kind of saint. They had seen her come to them out of the

-fire. They had heard of her silence at the trial of the man she loved.

-They had seen her devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to

-their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria had frightened

-the wits out of the best of women. All the while they knew that she

-was not happy. And they had explained fully to the countryside just

-what was their opinion of the whole matter.

-

-Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly understanding many

-things that had been hidden from him, was very humble as he wondered

-what he could say to Ruth.

-

-At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he met Cynthe.

-

-"Where is she?" he asked without preface.

-

-Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching look, and was amazed

-at the change she saw.

-

-Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to whom she had talked the

-other day. Here was a man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and

-had learned some things out of unknown places of his heart.

-

-I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too much. But I am not sorry.

-_Non._

-

-"The last house," she answered, "by the crook of the lake there. She

-will be glad," she remarked simply, and turned on her way.

-

-Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl heartily for the word

-that she had thought to add. It was a warrant, it seemed, of

-forgiveness--and of all things.

-

-Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife Philomena sat in the sun

-by the side of the house watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms

-bare above the elbow was working away contentedly in their little

-patch of garden. They nudged each other as Jeffrey rode up and left

-his horse, but they made no sign to Ruth.

-

-So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth came to her unseen

-and unheard. He took the hoe from her hand as she turned to face

-him. Up to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he was to say to

-her. What was there to say? But as he looked into her startled,

-pain-clouded eyes he found himself saying:

-

-"I hurt God once, very much. I did not know what to say to Him. Last

-night He taught me what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will you

-tell me what to say to you, Ruth?"

-

-It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting. But Ruth quickly

-understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man's stumbling,

-wholehearted confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny.

-The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently

-took his hand and led him out of the little garden and to where his

-horse stood.

-

-There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers slipping softly

-through the big bay's mane, Jeffrey standing stiff and anxious before

-her, with the glad morning and the high hills and all French Village

-observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced their question.

-

-But after all there was no question. For when Jeffrey had told all,

-down to that moment in the dark road when he had found God in his

-heart, Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness that is born

-in every woman, said:

-

-"Poor boy, you have suffered too much!"

-

-"What I suffered was that I made for myself," he said thickly. "Cynthe

-Cardinal told me what a fool I was."

-

-"What did Cynthe tell you?"

-

-"She told me that you loved me."

-

-"Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?" said the girl very quietly.

-

-"Yes, it seems so. I'd known your little white soul ever since you

-were a baby. I knew that in all your life you'd never had a thought

-that was not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I knew that

-there was never a time when you wouldn't have given everything, even

-life, for me. I knew it that day in the Bishop's house. I knew it

-that morning when you came to me in the sugar cabin."

-

-"Yes, I knew all that," he went on bitterly. "I knew you loved me, and

-I knew what a love it was. I knew it. And yet that day--that day in

-the courtroom, the only thing I could do was to call you liar!"

-

-She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him, but he went on

-doggedly.

-

-"Yes, I did. That was all I could think of. I threw it at you like a

-blow in the face. I saw you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck

-you. And even that sight wasn't enough for me. I kept on saying it,

-when I knew in my heart it wasn't so. I couldn't help but know it. I

-knew you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied; kept on till

-yesterday. I wasn't big enough. I wasn't man enough to see that you

-were just facing something that was bigger than both of us--something

-that was bigger and truer than words--that there was no way out for

-you but to do what you did."

-

-"Jeffrey, dear," the girl hurried to say, "you know that's a thing we

-can't speak about--"

-

-"Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand. You needn't say anything.

-I _understand_."

-

-"And I understand a lot more," he began again. "It took that little

-French girl to tell me what was the truth. I know it now. There was a

-deeper, a truer truth under everything. That was why you had to do as

-you did. That's why everything was so. I wasn't innocent. Things don't

-_happen_ as those things did. They work out, because they have to."

-

-The girl was watching him with fright and wonder in her eyes. What was

-he going to say? But she let him go on.

-

-"No, I wasn't innocent," he said, as though to himself now. "I fooled

-myself into thinking that I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man.

-I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but Rafe Gadbeau's quickness

-prevented me. No, I wasn't innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was a

-murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as

-Ca--!"

-

-The girl had suddenly sprung forward and thrown her arms around his

-neck. She caught the word that was on his lips and stopped it with a

-kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say what he had been

-going to say.

-

-"You shall not say that!" she panted. "I will not let you say it!

-Nobody shall say it! I defy the whole world to say it!"

-

-"But it's--it's true," said the boy brokenly as he held her.

-

-"It is not true! Never! Nothing's true, only the truth that God has

-hidden in His heart! And that is hidden! How can we say? How dare we

-say what we would have done, when we didn't do it? How do we know

-what's really in our hearts? Don't you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot say

-things like that! We don't know! I won't let you say it.

-

-"And if you do say it," she argued, "why, I'll have to say it, too."

-

-"You?"

-

-"Yes, I. Do you remember that night you were in the sugar cabin? I was

-outside looking through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was I

-thinking? What was in my heart? I'll tell you. I was out there

-stalking like a panther. I wanted just one thing out of all the world.

-Just one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would have done it

-gladly--with joy in my heart! I could have sung while I was doing it!

-

-"Now," she gasped, "now, if you're going to say that thing, why, we'll

-say it together!"

-

-The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer in his arms, understood

-nothing but that she wanted to stand with him, to put herself in

-whatever place was his, to take that black, terrible shadow that had

-fallen on him and wrap it around herself too.

-

-"My poor little white-souled darling," he said through tears that

-choked him, "I can't take this from you! It's too much, I can't!"

-

-After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against his shoulder and

-argued dreamily:

-

-"I don't see what you can do. You'll have to take _me_. And I don't

-see how you can take me any way but just as I am."

-

-Then she was suddenly conscious that the world was observing. She drew

-quickly away, and Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go.

-

-Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered and adored, he began

-to speak in wonder and self-abasement.

-

-"After all I've made you suffer--!"

-

-But Ruth would have none of this. It had been nothing, she declared.

-She had found work to do. She had been happy, in a way. God had been

-very kind.

-

-At length Jeffrey said: "Well, I guess we'll never have to misunderstand

-again, anyway, Ruth. I had to find God because I was--I needed Him.

-Now I want to find Him--your way."

-

-"You mean--you mean that you _believe_!"

-

-"Yes," said Jeffrey slowly. "I didn't think I ever would. I certainly

-didn't want to. But I do. And it isn't just to win with you, Ruth, or

-to make you happier. I can't help it. It's the thing the Bishop once

-told me about--the thing that's bigger than I am."

-

-Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for leading him forthwith to

-Father Ponfret, that he might begin at once his course of instructions

-which she assured him was essential.

-

-But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading books all winter, he said.

-Though he admitted that until last night he had not understood much

-of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God! Could she not come

-home, then, to his mother, who was pining for her--and--and they would

-have all their lives to finish the instructions.

-

-On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she would stay, among these good

-people where she had made for herself a place and a home. He must come

-every week to Father Ponfret for his instructions, like any other

-convert. If on those occasions he also came to see her, well, she

-would, of course, be glad to see him and to know how he was

-progressing.

-

-Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would see.

-

-And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree.

-

-Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this arrangement, grumbled

-that the way of the heretic was indeed made easy in these days. But

-his wife Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed him that

-if the good Ruth saw fit to convert even a heathen Turk into a husband

-for herself she would no doubt make a good job of it.

-

-So love came and went through the summer, practically unrebuked.

-

-Again the Bishop came riding up to French Village with Arsene LaComb.

-But this time they rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up

-over the new line of railroad that came into the hills from Welden

-Junction. And Arsene was very glad of this, for as he looked at his

-beloved M'sieur l'Eveque he saw that he was not now the man to have

-faced the long road up over the hills. He was not two, he was many

-years older and less sturdy.

-

-The Bishop practised his French a little, but mostly he was silent and

-thoughtful. He was remembering that day, nearly two years ago now,

-when he had set two ambitious young souls upon a way which they did

-not like. What a coil of good and bad had come out of that doing of

-his. And again he wondered, as he had wondered then, whether he had

-done right. Who was to tell?

-

-And again to-morrow he was to set those two again upon their way of

-life, for he was coming up to French Village to the wedding of Ruth

-Lansing to Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing's side in the little rough-finished

-sanctuary of the chapel which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to

-raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer. But Jeffrey Whiting

-saw none of the poor makeshifts out of which the little priest had

-contrived a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again, in the night,

-on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned stars, crying out to find

-God. Then God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch and lifted

-him out of the dust and agony of the road, and, finally, had brought him

-here, to this moment.

-

-He had just received into his body the God of life. His soul stood

-trembling at its portal, receiving its Guest for the first time. He

-was amazed with a great wonder, for here was the very God of the dark

-night speaking to him in words that beat upon his heart. And his

-wonder was that from this he should ever arise and go on with any

-other business whatever.

-

-Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to the music of that

-_choir unseen_ which had once given her the call of life. She had

-followed it, not always in the perfect way, but at least bravely,

-unquestioningly. And it had brought her now to a holy and awed

-happiness. Neither life nor death would ever rob her of this moment.

-

-Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop. And as the Shepherd

-blessed their joined hands he prayed for these two who were dear to

-him, as well as for his other little ones, and, as always, for those

-"other sheep." And the breathing of his prayer was:

-

-That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear; but trust long in Thee

-and in each other.

-

-THE END

-

-Printed in the United States of America.

-

-

-

-

-

-End of Project Gutenberg's The Shepherd of the North, by Richard Aumerle Maher

-

-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30093 ***

+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30093 ***
+
+THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH
+
+BY RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER
+
+Author of "The Heart of a Man," etc.
+
+M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
+
+CHICAGO--NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+Copyright 1916
+
+By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916.
+
+Reprinted March, 1916 June, 1916 October, 1916.
+
+February, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+        I THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN                                   3
+       II THE CHOIR UNSEEN                                          35
+      III GLOW OF DAWN                                              64
+       IV THE ANSWER                                               103
+        V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE                                     137
+       VI THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD                             174
+      VII THE INNER CITADEL                                        210
+     VIII SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?                             243
+       IX THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD                               277
+        X THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID                                  311
+
+
+
+
+THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH
+
+
+
+
+THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH
+
+I
+
+THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN
+
+
+The Bishop of Alden was practising his French upon Arsene LaComb. It
+was undoubtedly good French, this of M'sieur the Bishop, Arsene
+assured himself. It must be. But it certainly was not any kind of
+French that had ever been spoken by the folks back in Three Rivers.
+
+Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not understand all that the
+Bishop said, it was equally certain that the Bishop could not
+understand all that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a cheery
+companion for the long road. He took his upsets into six feet of
+Adirondack snow, as man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft and
+the road is uncertain.
+
+In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and the railroad behind and
+had headed into the hills. For thirty miles, with only one stop for a
+bite of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded along up the
+half-broken, logging roads. Now they were in the high country and
+there were no roads.
+
+Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a drifting storm had followed
+him down from Little Tupper, covering the road that he had made and
+leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped driving and held only a
+steady, even rein to keep his ponies from stumbling, while he let the
+tough, willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road.
+
+Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene had been tossed off the
+single bobsled out into the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting
+all day long on the swaying bumper, with no back rest, feet braced
+stiffly against the draw bar in front to keep the dizzy balance. But
+it was the only way that this trip could be made.
+
+The Bishop knew that he should not have let the confirmation in French
+Village on Little Tupper go to this late date in the season. He had
+arranged to come a month before. But Father Ponfret's illness had put
+him back at that time.
+
+Now he was worried. The early December dark was upon them. There was
+no road. The ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve bad miles
+to go.
+
+Still, things might be worse. The cold was not bad. He had the bulkier
+of his vestments and regalia in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to
+the sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils and the other sacred
+essentials were slung securely about his body. And a tumble more or
+less in the snow was a part of the day's work. They would break their
+way through somehow.
+
+So, with the occasional interruptions, he was practising his amazing
+French upon Arsene.
+
+Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old Massachusetts stock. He had
+learned the French that was taught at Harvard in the fifties.
+Afterwards, after his conversion to the Catholic Church, he had gone
+to Louvain for his seminary studies. There he had heard French of
+another kind. But to the day he died he spoke his French just as it
+was written in the book, and with an aggressive New England accent.
+
+He must speak French to the children in French Village to-morrow, not
+because the children would understand, but because it would please
+Father Ponfret and the parents.
+
+They were struggling around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain and the
+Bishop was rounding out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration
+of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a sharp:
+
+"Jomp, M'sieur l'Eveque, _jomp_!"
+
+The Bishop jumped--or was thrown--ten feet into a snow-bank.
+
+While he gathered himself out of the snow and felt carefully his
+bulging breast pockets to make sure that everything was safe, he saw
+what had happened.
+
+The star-faced pony on the near side had slipped off the trail and
+rolled down a little bank, dragging the other pony and Arsene and the
+sled with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies, man and sled at
+the bottom of a little gully, and as the Bishop floundered through the
+snow to help he feared that it was serious.
+
+Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under the sled, his head just
+clear of the ponies' heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in
+the _patois_ that they understood. He was within inches of having his
+brains beaten out by the quivering hoofs; he could not, literally,
+move his head to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with them
+as quietly as if he stood at their heads.
+
+They kicked and fought each other and the sled, until the influence of
+the calm voice behind them began to work upon them. Then their own
+craft came back to them and they remembered the many bitter lessons
+they had gotten from kicking and fighting in deep snow. They lay still
+and waited for the voice to come and get them out of this.
+
+As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to release Arsene, he
+remembered that he had seen men under fire. And he said to himself
+that he had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this little
+French-Canadian storekeeper.
+
+The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had been soft under him,
+and lunged for the ponies' heads.
+
+"Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now! Ah-a! Bien!"
+
+He had them both by their bridles and dragged them skilfully to their
+feet and up the bank. With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all
+safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail.
+
+Arsene now looked around for the Bishop.
+
+"Ba Golly! M'sieur l'Eveque, dat's one fine jomp. You got hurt, you?"
+
+The Bishop declared that he was not in any way the worse from the
+tumble, and Arsene turned to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up
+the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection of his harness
+and said ruefully:
+
+"Dat's bad, M'sieur l'Eveque. She's gone bust."
+
+He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his hand. The trouble was
+quite evident.
+
+"What can we do?" asked the Bishop. "Have you any rope?"
+
+"No. Dat's how I been one big fool, me. I lef' new rope on de sled
+las' night on Lowville. Dis morning she's gone. Some t'ief."
+
+"We must get on somehow," said the Bishop, as he unbuckled part of the
+lashing from his bag and handed the strap to Arsene. "That will hold
+until we get to the first house where we can get the loan of a trace.
+We can walk behind. We're both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is
+it far?"
+
+"Dat's Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks, 'bout quarter mile, maybe."
+The little man looked up from his work long enough to point out a
+clump of hemlocks that stood out black and sharp against the white
+world around them. As the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among
+the trees, showing where life and a home fought their battle against
+the desolation of the hills.
+
+"I donno," said Arsene speculatively, as he and the Bishop took up
+their tramp behind the sled; "Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don' like
+Canuck. Maybe he don' lend no harness, I donno."
+
+"Oh, yes; he will surely," answered the Bishop easily. "Nobody would
+refuse a bit of harness in a case like this."
+
+It was full dark when they came to where Tom Lansing's cabin hid
+itself among the hemlocks. Arsene did not dare trust his team off the
+road where they had footing, so the Bishop floundered his way through
+the heavy snow to find the cabin door.
+
+It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out of the hemlocks that had
+stood around it and belonged to a generation already past. But it was
+still serviceable and tight, and it was a home.
+
+The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was no response from within.
+It was strange. For there was every sign of life about the place.
+After knocking a second time without result, he lifted the heavy
+wooden latch and pushed quietly into the cabin.
+
+A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite the door. On
+the hearth stood a big black and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not
+the slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his four legs
+planted squarely under him, his whole body quivering with fear. His
+nose was pointed upward as though ready for the howl to which he dared
+not give voice. His great brown eyes rolled in an ecstasy of fright
+but seemed unable to tear themselves from the side of the room where
+he was looking.
+
+Along the side of the room ran a long, low couch covered with soft,
+well worn hides. On it lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out
+awkwardly and unnaturally, showing that he had been dragged
+unconscious to where he was. A candle stood on the low window ledge
+and shone down full into the man's face.
+
+At the head of the couch knelt a young girl, her arm supporting the
+man's head and shoulder, her wildly tossed hair falling down across
+his chest.
+
+She was speaking to the man in a voice low and even, but so tense that
+her whole slim body seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as
+though her very soul came to the portals of her lips and shouted its
+message to the man. The power of her voice, the breathless, compelling
+strength of her soul need seemed to hold everything between heaven
+and earth, as she pleaded to the man. The Bishop stood spellbound.
+
+"Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My Father!" she was saying over and
+over. "Come back, come back, Daddy Tom! It's not true! God doesn't
+want you! He doesn't want to take you from Ruth! How could He! It's
+not never true! A tree couldn't kill my Daddy Tom! Never, never! Why,
+he's felled whole slopes of trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!"
+
+For a time which he could not measure the Bishop stood listening to
+the pleading of the girl's voice. But in reality he was not listening
+to the sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She was fighting
+bitterly with death. She was calling all the forces of love and life
+to aid her in her struggle. She was following the soul of her loved
+one down to the very door of death. She would pull him back out of the
+very clutches of the unknown.
+
+And the Bishop found that he was not merely listening to what the girl
+said. He was going down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing
+every word of her pleading. The force of her will and her prayer swept
+him along so that with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed
+for the man to open his eyes.
+
+Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible fear seemed to grip and
+crush her, so that she cowered and hid her face against the big,
+grizzled white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed in terror.
+
+The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched the girl on the head,
+saying:
+
+"Do not give up yet, child. I once had some skill. Let me try."
+
+The girl turned and looked up blankly at him. She did not question who
+he was or whence he had come. She turned again and wrapped her arms
+jealously about the head and shoulders of her father. Plainly she was
+afraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insisted
+gently and in the end she gave him place beside her.
+
+He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listen
+at the man's breast.
+
+Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life,
+certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man's pockets for the
+knife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly.
+
+"It was just a little while ago," she answered, in short, frightened
+sentences. "My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Father
+had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinned
+down under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and told
+me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it must
+be I hurt him; he fainted. I can't make him speak. I cut boughs and
+made a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can't make him speak.
+Is he?-- Is he?-- Tell me," she appealed.
+
+The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man's
+jacket and shirt.
+
+"You were all alone, child?" he said. "Where could you get the
+strength for all this? My driver is out on the road," he continued, as
+he worked on. "Call him and send him for the nearest help."
+
+The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at the
+man on the couch, went out into the snow.
+
+The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.
+
+The man's shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing there
+to constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upper
+ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them were
+caved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of them
+must have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung on
+that side.
+
+The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bled
+outwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little,
+and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula.
+
+He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was a
+little black ball of steel.
+
+While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, a
+long tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever so
+slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyes
+opened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop
+thought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come back
+naturally to a realisation of things.
+
+While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly, and the Bishop stood
+holding the little black ball between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth
+Lansing came back into the room.
+
+Seeing her father's eyes open, the girl rushed across the room and was
+about to throw herself down by the side of the couch when her father's
+voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible and clear, stopped
+her.
+
+"The White Horse Chaplain!" he said in a voice of slow wonder. "But I
+always knew he'd come for me sometime. And I suppose it's time."
+
+The Bishop started. He had not heard the name for twenty-five years.
+
+The girl stopped by the table, trembling and frightened. She had heard
+the tale of the White Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her
+that her father was delirious and raving. But he spoke so calmly and
+so certainly. He seemed so certain that the man he saw was an
+apparition that she could not think or reason herself out of her
+fright.
+
+The Bishop answered easily and quietly:
+
+"Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did not think anybody
+remembered now."
+
+Tom Lansing's eyes leaped wide with doubt and question. They stared
+full at the Bishop. Then they turned and saw the table standing in its
+right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the table; saw the dog at
+the fireplace. The man there was real!
+
+Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle to rise, then fell back
+gasping.
+
+The Bishop put his hand gently under the man's head and eased him to a
+better position, saying:
+
+"It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving past and had broken a
+trace, and came in to borrow one from you. You got a bad blow. But
+your girl has just sent my driver for help. They will get a doctor
+somewhere. We cannot tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not
+so bad as it looks." But, even as he spoke, the Bishop saw a drop of
+blood appear at the corner of the man's white mouth; and he knew that
+it was as bad as the worst.
+
+The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes moved again from the
+Bishop to the girl and the everyday things of the room.
+
+It was evident that his mind was clearing sharply. He had rallied
+quickly. But the Bishop knew instinctively that it was the last,
+flashing rally of the forces of life--in the face of the on-crowding
+darkness. The shock and the internal hemorrhage were doing their work
+fast. The time was short.
+
+Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with a look, he called the
+girl to him.
+
+Through the seventeen years of her life, since the night when her
+mother had laid her in her father's arms and died, Ruth Lansing had
+hardly ever been beyond the reach of her father's voice. They had
+grown very close together, these two. They had little need of clumsy
+words between them.
+
+As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild, eager, rebellious,
+seared her father with their terror-stricken, unbelieving question.
+
+But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her wild questioning had
+given him. She crushed back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely
+with herself until she was able to force into her eyes a look of
+understanding and great mothering tenderness.
+
+Her father saw the struggle and the look, and blessed her for it with
+his eyes. Then he said:
+
+"You'll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you? I know I'm desertin'
+you, little comrade, right in the mornin' of your battle with life.
+But you won't be afraid. I know you won't."
+
+The girl shook her head bravely, but it was clear that she dared not
+trust herself to speak.
+
+"I'm goin' to ask this man here to look to you. He came here for a
+sign to me. I see it. I see it plain. I will trust him with your life.
+And so will you, little comrade. I--I'm droppin' out. He'll take you
+on.
+
+"He saved my life once. So he gave you your life. It's a sign, my
+Ruth."
+
+The girl slipped her hands gently under his head and looked deep and
+long into the glazing eyes.
+
+Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was facing death--and life
+alone.
+
+Obedient to her father's look, she rose and walked across the room.
+She saw that he had something to say to this strange man and that the
+time was short.
+
+In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin she stood, and throwing
+one arm up against the frame of the door she buried her face in it.
+She did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty of time for
+that.
+
+The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant an irrevocable
+change had come over her. She had knelt a frightened, wondering,
+protesting child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of death and its
+infinite certainty, of life and its infinite chance, had risen from
+her knees.
+
+As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke hurriedly:
+
+"I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I did I forgot it, and it
+don't matter.
+
+"I'm dying. I don't need any doctor to tell me. I'll be gone before he
+gets here.
+
+"You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when Curtis' men were cut to
+pieces in the second charge on the trenches. They left me there,
+because it was every man for himself.
+
+"A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg. And you came drivin' mad
+across the field on a big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me
+where I lay. You threw me across your saddle and walked that wild
+horse back into our lines.
+
+"Do you remember? Dying men got up on their elbows and cheered you. I
+lay six weeks in fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?"
+
+"I do, now," said the Bishop. "Our troop came back to the Shenandoah,
+and I never knew what--"
+
+That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back upon him. He was just a
+few months ordained. He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union
+army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the ways and business of a
+battlefield, he had found himself that day in the sand dunes before
+Fort Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about him. Hail, fumes,
+lightning and thunder of battle rolled over him and sickened him. He
+saw his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against the
+Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself, and fade away back into
+the smoke. He lost it, and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered
+blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead man, now speaking to
+a living stricken one: Here straightening a torn body and giving
+water; there hearing the confession of a Catholic.
+
+Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis' troops came yelling across the flat
+land. Once, twice they tried the trenches and were driven back into
+the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a big white horse. The
+animal, mad with fright and blood scent, charged down upon him as he
+bent over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and fought the horse.
+Before he realised what he was doing, he was in the saddle riding back
+and forth across the field. Right up to the trenches the horse carried
+him.
+
+Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy, a thin, long-legged boy
+with a long beardless face. He lay there marking the high tide of the
+last charge--the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain, tumbling down
+somehow from his mount, picked up the writhing boy and bundled him
+across the saddle. Then he started walking back looking for his own
+lines.
+
+Now here was the boy talking to him across the mists of twenty-five
+years. And the boy, the man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom
+Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have died from fever bloat
+or been trampled to death in the succeeding charges. He had given him
+life. And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he had given that
+daughter life. Now he knew what Lansing was going to say.
+
+"I didn't know you then," said Lansing. "I don't know who you are now,
+Chaplain, or what you are.
+
+"But," he went on slowly, "if I'd agiven you a message that day you'd
+have taken it on for me, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Of course I would."
+
+"Suppose it had been to my mother, say: You'da risked your life to get
+it on to her?"
+
+"I hope I would," said the Bishop evenly.
+
+"I believe you would. That's what I think of you," said Tom Lansing.
+
+"I went back South after the war," he began again. "I stole my girl's
+mother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonel
+that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her up
+here into the hills and she died when the baby was just a few weeks
+old.
+
+"There ain't a relation in the world that my little girl could go to.
+I'm goin' to die in half an hour. But what better would she be if I
+lived? What would I do with her? Keep her here and let her marry some
+fightin' lumber jack that'd beat her? Or see her break her heart
+tryin' to make a livin' on one of these rock hills? She'd fret
+herself to death. She knows more now than I do and she'd soon be
+wantin' to know more. She's that kind.
+
+"She'd ought to have her chance the way I've seen girls in towns
+havin' a chance. A chance to study and learn and grow the way she
+wants to. And now I'm desertin'; goin' out like a smoky lamp.
+
+"It was a crime, a crime!" he groaned, "ever to bring her mother up
+into this place!"
+
+"You could not think of all that then. No man ever does," said the
+Bishop calmly. "And I will do my best to see that she gets her chance.
+I think that's what you want to ask me, isn't it, Lansing?"
+
+"Do you swear it?" gasped Lansing, struggling and choking in an effort
+to raise his head. "Do you swear to try and see that she gets a
+chance?"
+
+"God will help me to do the best for her," said the Bishop quietly. "I
+am the Bishop of Alden. I can do something."
+
+With the definiteness of a man who has heard a final word, Tom
+Lansing's eyes turned to his daughter.
+
+Obediently she came again and knelt at his side, holding his head.
+
+To the very last, as long as his eyes could see, they saw her smiling
+bravely and sweetly down into them; giving her sacrament and holding
+her light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.
+
+When the last twinging tremour had run through the racked body, she
+leaned over and kissed her father full on the lips.
+
+Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into the night.
+
+While the Bishop was straightening the body on the couch, a young man
+and two women came into the room.
+
+They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and her sister, neighbours
+whom Arsene had brought.
+
+The Bishop was much relieved with their coming. He could do nothing
+more now, and the long night ride was still ahead of him.
+
+He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had gone out into the cold,
+and asked him to find her.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had played with Ruth Lansing
+since she was a baby, for they were the only children on Lansing
+Mountain. He knew where he would find her.
+
+Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of the hills, where people
+had to meet their problems and burdens alone, took command at once.
+
+"No, sir," she replied to the Bishop's question, "there's nobody to
+send for. The Lansings didn't have a relation living that anybody ever
+heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom Lansing's father and
+mother. They're buried out there on the hill where he'll be buried.
+
+"There's some old soldiers down the West Slope towards Beaver River.
+They'll want to take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on
+Monday," she went on rapidly, sketching in the programme. "We have a
+preacher if we can get one. But when we can't my sister Letty here
+sings something."
+
+"Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a way," said the Bishop slowly.
+"At least, I was at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like to--"
+
+"Were you at Fort Fisher?" broke in the sister Letty, speaking for the
+first time. "And did you see Curtis' colour bearer? He was killed in
+the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton, with long, black
+hair?"
+
+"He had an old scar over his eye-brow." The Bishop supplemented the
+description out of the memory of that day.
+
+"He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five years ago to-morrow,"
+said the woman trembling. "You saw him die?"
+
+"He was dead when I came to him," said the Bishop quietly, "with the
+stock of the colour standard still clenched in his hand."
+
+"He was my--my--" Sweetheart, she wanted to say. But the hill women do
+not say things easily.
+
+"Yes?" said the Bishop gently. "I understand." She was a woman of his
+people. Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he could read
+the years of her faithfulness to the memory of that lean, dark face
+which he had once seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow.
+
+Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about her sister.
+
+"Are you--?" she questioned, hesitating strangely. "Are you the White
+Horse Chaplain?"
+
+"The boys called me that," said the Bishop. "Though it was only a name
+for a day," he added.
+
+"It was true, then?" she said slowly, as if still unready to believe.
+"We never half believed our boys when they came home from the war--the
+ones that did come home--and told about the white horse and the priest
+riding the field. We thought it was one of the things men see when
+they're fighting and dying."
+
+Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room leading Ruth Lansing by
+the hand.
+
+The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The Bishop drew her over to
+the fire.
+
+"I must go now, child," he said. "To-morrow I must be in French
+Village. Monday I will be here again.
+
+"Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he said to me, about you?"
+
+The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the Bishop's face, then
+nodded her head.
+
+"Then, we must think and pray, child, that we may know how to do what
+he wanted us to do. God will show us what is the best. That is what he
+wanted.
+
+"God keep you brave now. Your friends here will see to everything for
+you. I have to go now."
+
+He crossed the room and laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the
+dead man, renewing in his heart the promise he had made.
+
+Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting that he would be back before
+noon Monday, he went out to where Arsene and his horses were stamping
+in the snow.
+
+The little man had replaced the broken trace, and the ponies, fretting
+with the cold and eager to get home, took hungrily to the trail.
+
+But the Bishop forgot to practise his French further upon Arsene. He
+told him briefly what had happened, then lapsed into silence.
+
+Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing had said about the girl.
+She knew more now than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew now. But
+more than Tom Lansing had known half an hour ago.
+
+She would want to see the world. She would want to know life and ask
+her own questions from life and the world. In the broad open space
+between her eye-brows it was written that she would never take
+anybody's word for the puzzles of the world. She was marked a seeker;
+one of those who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand to
+know what it means. They never find out. But, heart break or sparrow
+fall, they must go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own way.
+The world is infinitely the better through them. But their own way is
+hard and lonely.
+
+She must go out. She must have education. She must have a chance to
+face life and wrest its lessons from it in her own way. It did not
+promise happiness for her. But she could go no other way. For hers was
+the high, stony way of those who demand more than jealous life is
+ready to give.
+
+The Bishop only knew that he had this night given a promise which had
+sent a man contentedly on his way. Somehow, God would show him how
+best to keep that promise.
+
+And when they halloed at Father Ponfret's house in French Village he
+had gotten no farther than that.
+
+
+Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his couch. Clean white sheets
+had been draped over the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking
+in through the west window picked out every bare thread of his service
+coat and glinted on the polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung
+into the belt at his side.
+
+Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head of the couch, listening
+to the comments and stumbling condolences of neighbours from the high
+hills and the lower valleys. They were good, kindly people, she knew.
+But why, why, must every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous
+lie-- How natural he looked!
+
+He did not. He did not. He did _not_ look natural. How could her Daddy
+Tom look natural, when he lay there all still and cold, and would not
+speak to his Ruth!
+
+He was dead. And what was death-- And why? _Why?_
+
+Who had ordered this? And _why?_
+
+And still they came with that set, borrowed phrase--the only thing
+they could think to say--upon their lips.
+
+Out in Tom Lansing's workshop on the horse-barn floor, Jacque Lafitte,
+the wright, was nailing soft pine boards together.
+
+Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not leave Daddy Tom to her?
+She wanted to ask him things. She knew that she could make him
+understand and answer.
+
+She slipped away from the couch and out of the house. At the corner of
+the house her dog joined her and together they circled away from the
+horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where her father had been
+working yesterday.
+
+She found her father's cap where it had been left in her fright of
+yesterday, and sat down fondling it in her hands. The dog came and
+slid his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle into the cap
+between her hands.
+
+So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following her with her coat
+and hood.
+
+"You better put these on, Ruth," he said, as he dropped the coat
+across her shoulder. "It's too cold here."
+
+The girl drew the coat around her obediently, but did not look up at
+him. She was grateful for his thought of her, but she was not ready to
+speak to any one.
+
+He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and drew the dog over to
+him.
+
+After a little he asked timidly:
+
+"What are you going to do, Ruth? You can't stay here. I'll tend your
+stock and look after the place for you. But you just can't stay
+here."
+
+"You?" she questioned finally. "You're going to that Albany school
+next week. You said you were all ready."
+
+"I was all ready. But I ain't going. I'll stay here and work the two
+farms for you."
+
+"For me?" she said. "And not be a lawyer at all?"
+
+"I--I don't care anything about it any more," he lied. "I told mother
+this morning that I wasn't going. She said she'd have you come and
+stay with her till Spring."
+
+"And then?" the girl faced the matter, looking straight and unafraid
+into his eyes. "And then?"
+
+"Well, then," he hesitated. "You see, then I'll be twenty. And you'll
+be old enough to marry me," he hurried. "Your father, you know, he
+always wanted me to take care of you, didn't he?" he pleaded,
+awkwardly but subtly.
+
+"I know you don't want to talk about it now," he went on hastily. "But
+you'll come home with mother to-morrow, won't you? You know she wants
+you, and I--I never had to tell you that I love you. You knew it when
+you wasn't any higher than Prince here."
+
+"Yes. I always knew it, and I'm glad," the girl answered levelly. "I'm
+glad now, Jeff. But I can't let you do it. Some day you'd hate me for
+it."
+
+"Ruth! You know better than that!"
+
+"Oh, you'd never tell me; I know that. You'd do your best to hide it
+from me. But some day when your chance was gone you'd look back and
+see what you might have been, 'stead of a humpbacked farmer in the
+hills. Oh, I know. You've told me all your dreams and plans, how
+you're going down to the law school, and going to be a great lawyer
+and go to Albany and maybe to Washington."
+
+"What's it all good for?" said the boy sturdily. "I'd rather stay here
+with you."
+
+The girl did not answer. In the strain of the night and the day, she
+had almost forgotten the things that she had heard her father say to
+the White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call the Bishop.
+
+Now she remembered those things and tried to tell them.
+
+"That strange man that said he was the Bishop of Alden told my father
+that he would see that I got a chance. My father called him the White
+Horse Chaplain and said that he had been sent here just on purpose to
+look after me. I didn't know there were bishops in this country. I
+thought it was only in books about Europe."
+
+"What did they say?"
+
+"My father said that I would want to go out and see things and know
+things; that I mustn't be married to a--a lumber jack. He said it was
+no place for me in the hills."
+
+"And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, to
+school?" he guessed shrewdly.
+
+"I don't know, I suppose that was it," said the girl slowly.
+"Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He had
+taught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills was
+full of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and see
+and pick up. And to-day I don't care."
+
+She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the dog at her feet, and
+down the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were all
+she had in the world.
+
+The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly.
+
+He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:
+
+"Don't forget to count me, Ruth. You've got me, you know."
+
+Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought.
+Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it
+was just the eternal surrender of woman.
+
+When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears,
+the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run
+out into the night.
+
+He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white,
+desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untried
+troth.
+
+When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white bosom of the hillside, and
+the people were dispersing from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting came
+and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop's sharp old eyes had told him
+to expect something of what was coming. He liked the look of the boy's
+clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance of his eyes. They
+told of dependableness and plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was
+not a boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be his.
+
+"Ruth told me that you were going to take her away from the hills," he
+began. "To a school, I suppose."
+
+"I made a promise to her father," said the Bishop, "that I would try
+to see that she got the chance that she will want in the world."
+
+"But I love her. She's going to marry me in the Spring."
+
+The Bishop was surprised. He had not thought matters had gone so far.
+
+"How old are you?" he asked thoughtfully.
+
+"Twenty in April."
+
+"You have some education?" the Bishop suggested. "You have been at
+school?"
+
+"Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth. And last Winter at the
+Academy in Lowville. I was going to Albany to law school next week."
+
+"And you are giving it all up for Ruth," said the Bishop incisively.
+"Does it hurt?"
+
+The boy winced, but caught himself at once.
+
+"It don't make any difference about that. I want Ruth."
+
+"And Ruth? What does she want?" the Bishop asked. "You are offering to
+make a sacrifice for her. You are willing to give up your hopes and
+work yourself to the bone here on these hills for her. And you would
+be man enough never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe
+that. But what of her? You find it hard enough to give up your chance,
+for her, for love.
+
+"Do you know that you are asking her to give up her chance, for
+nothing, for less than nothing; because in giving up her chance she
+would know that she had taken away yours, too. She would be a good and
+loving companion to you through all of a hard life. But, for both your
+sakes, she would never forgive you. Never."
+
+"You're asking me to give her up. If she went out and got a start,
+she'd go faster than I could. I know it," said the boy bitterly.
+"She'd go away above me. I'd lose her."
+
+"I am not asking you to give her up," the Bishop returned steadily.
+"If you are the man I think you are, you will never give her up. But
+are you afraid to let her have her chance in the sun? Are you afraid
+to let her have what you want for yourself? Are you afraid?"
+
+The boy looked steadily into the Bishop's eyes for a moment. Then he
+turned quickly and walked across the room to where Ruth sat.
+
+"I can't give it up, Ruth," he said gruffly. "I'm going to Albany to
+school. I can't give it up."
+
+The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:
+
+"You needn't have tried to lie, Jeff; though it's just like you to put
+the blame on yourself. I know what he said. I must think."
+
+The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He saw them suddenly light
+up. He knew what that meant. She was seeing the great world with all
+its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he himself had seen it. Now
+he knew that he had lost.
+
+The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready to go. The day was
+slipping away and before him there were thirty miles and a train to be
+caught.
+
+"We must not be hurried, my children," he said, standing by the boy
+and girl. "The Sacred Heart Academy at Athens is the best school this
+side of Albany. The Mother Superior will write you in a few days,
+telling you when and how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go
+as she directs.
+
+"You have been a good, brave little girl. A soldier's daughter could
+be no more, nor less. God bless you now, and you, too, my boy," he
+added.
+
+When he was settled on the sled with Arsene and they were rounding the
+shoulder of Lansing Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace, he
+turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.
+
+"To-day," he said to himself, "I have set two ambitious, eager souls
+upon the high and stony paths of the great world. Should I have left
+them where they were?
+
+"I shall never know whether I did right or not. Even time will mix
+things up so that I'll never be able to tell. Maybe some day God will
+let me see. But why should he? One can only aim right, and trust in
+Him."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE CHOIR UNSEEN
+
+
+Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms of the Sacred Heart convent
+in Athens thrumming out a finger exercise that a child of six would
+have been able to do as well as she.
+
+It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world, this, into which she
+had been suddenly transplanted. It was as different from the great
+world that she had come out to see as it was from the wild, sweet life
+of the hills where she had ruled and managed everything within reach.
+Mainly it was full of girls of her own age whose talk and thoughts
+were of a range entirely new to her.
+
+She compared herself with them and knew that they were really children
+in the comparison. Their talk was of dress and manners and society and
+the thousand little and big things that growing girls look forward to.
+She knew that in any real test, anything that demanded common sense
+and action, she was years older than they. But they had things that
+she did not have.
+
+They talked of things that she knew nothing about. They could walk
+across waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walked
+on. They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or choking
+as she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had never
+in her life received a scolding, would have been driven into
+hysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses were
+supposed to be new. She knew that these were not things that they had
+learned by studying. They just grew up to them, just as she knew how
+to throw a fishing line and hold a rifle.
+
+But she wanted all those things that they had; wanted them all
+passionately. She had the sense to know that those were not great
+things. But they were the things that would make her like these other
+girls. And she wanted to be like them.
+
+Because she had not grown up with other girls, because she had never
+even had a girl playmate, she wanted not to miss any of the things
+that they had and were.
+
+They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick, eager mind sprang at
+books and fairly tore the lessons from them. She ran away from the
+girls in anything that could be learned in that way. But when she
+found herself with two or three of them they talked a language that
+she did not know. She could not keep up with them. And she was stupid
+and awkward, and felt it. It was not easy to break into their world
+and be one of them.
+
+Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls but
+infinitely removed from it--the world of the sisters.
+
+That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave their
+hours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was a
+world all by itself.
+
+What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What was
+there in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They must
+once have been as different as every girl is different from every
+other girl.
+
+How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air of
+never being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence was
+there behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to come
+out with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light that
+shone in their faces?
+
+Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What did
+they have to be happy about?
+
+Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They were
+Catholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her
+question aside with a stare:
+
+"Sisters always look like that."
+
+So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world
+of the sisters behind those walls. What did they do in there? Did
+they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they
+just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of
+God and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed so
+familiar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especially
+when He was displeased.
+
+She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, where
+there were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the trees
+to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as a
+printed book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She could
+read the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden.
+Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away from
+her.
+
+Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its door
+in the face of her sharp, hungry mind.
+
+And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worlds
+about her--the world of the Catholic Church.
+
+Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little green
+building in French Village where the "Canucks" went to church.
+
+Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. The
+pictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroom
+door. The books she read, the talk she heard was all filled with it.
+It came and went through every door of life.
+
+All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers were
+alive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much.
+The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought against
+it. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted to
+argue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrong
+sometimes.
+
+But just when she was sure that she had found something false,
+something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her,
+she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was always
+ready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she had
+gotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what was
+wrong with her that she could not understand? She could learn
+everything else faster and more easily than the other girls could.
+
+Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fell
+nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burning
+tears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her.
+
+The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills to
+conquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her.
+Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand these
+strange women about her. Would never understand them.
+
+Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her,
+where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow and
+the wild winds were her friends?
+
+She threw herself forward on her arms and gave way utterly, crying in
+great, heart-breaking, breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her
+home, for her hills.
+
+At five o'clock Sister Rose, coming to see that the music rooms were
+aired for the evening use, found Ruth an inert, shapeless little
+bundle of broken nerves lying across the piano.
+
+She took the girl to her room and sent for the sister infirmarian.
+
+But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only to leave her alone.
+
+The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness that every
+new pupil in a boarding school is liable to, sent some of the other
+girls in during the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she drove
+them away. She was not cross nor pettish. But her soul was sick for
+the sweeping freedom of her hills and for people who could understand
+her.
+
+She rose and dragged her little couch over to the window, where she
+could look out and up to the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped
+down upon her in the hills.
+
+She did not know the names that they had in books, but she had framed
+little pet names for them all out of her baby fancies and the names
+had clung to them all the years.
+
+She recognised them, although they did not stand in the places where
+they belonged when she looked at them from the hills.
+
+Out among them somewhere was Heaven. Daddy Tom was there, and her
+mother whom she had never seen.
+
+Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it seemed, there came stealing
+into her sense a sound. Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so
+illusive. It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear as other
+sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to steal past the clumsy senses
+directly into the spirit and the heart.
+
+It was music. Yes. But it was as though the Soul of Music had freed
+itself of the bondage and the body of sound and notes and came
+carrying its unutterable message straight to the soul of the world.
+
+It was only the sisters in their chapel gently hymning the _Salve_ of
+the Compline to their Queen in Heaven.
+
+Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignant
+evensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled with
+books and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her.
+To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laid
+bare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.
+
+She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of the
+windows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knew
+vaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried her
+beyond all thought.
+
+She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood them
+if she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to _Our Life, our
+Sweetness and our Hope_ caught her heart up into a world where words
+were never needed.
+
+She heard the cry of the _Banished children of Eve_. The _Mourning and
+weeping in this vale of tears_ swept into her soul like the flood-tide
+of all the sorrow of all the world.
+
+On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear the
+triumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of _The
+Promises of Christ_.
+
+The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows,
+leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar.
+She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of that
+unseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to the
+measure of the heart of the world.
+
+It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but the
+undying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of the
+little blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on their
+pyres. It was the cry of strong men and valiant women crushed under
+the forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, which
+knows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this.
+She realised it as she lay there trembling.
+
+Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked or
+laughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart and
+play upon it and lead her whether she would or no.
+
+It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her.
+
+Through all the long night she fought it. She would not! She would not
+give up her life, her will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?
+
+It would take her spirit out of the freedom of the hills and make it
+follow a trodden way. It would take her life out of her hands and
+maybe ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and the wind, in a
+darkened convent. It would take her will, the will of a soldier's
+daughter, and break it into little pieces to make a path for her to
+walk upon!
+
+No! No! No! Through all the endless night she moaned her protest. She
+would not! She would not give in to it.
+
+It would never let her rest. Through all her life that voice of the
+Choir Unseen would strike the strings of her heart. She knew it.
+
+But she would not. Never would she give in to it.
+
+In the morning, even before the coming of the dawn, the music came
+again; and it beat upon her worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched
+at her heart until she could stand it no longer.
+
+The sisters were taking up again the burden and the way of the day.
+
+She could not stand it! She could not stay here! She must go back to
+her hills, where there was peace for her.
+
+She heard the sister going down to unlock the street door so that
+Father Tenney could walk in when it was time and go up to the chapel
+for the sisters' early mass.
+
+That was her chance! The sisters would be in chapel. The girls would
+be still in their rooms.
+
+She dressed hastily and threw her books into a bag. She would take
+only these and her money. She had enough to get home on. The rest did
+not matter.
+
+When she heard the priest's step pass in the hall, she slipped out and
+down the dim, broad stairs.
+
+The great, heavy door of the convent stood like the gate of the world.
+It swung slowly, deliberately, on its well-oiled, silent hinges.
+
+She stood in the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, free
+air of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fled
+away into the dawn.
+
+The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain as Jeffrey Whiting came
+out of his mother's house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His
+uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn with the team and sled.
+Jeffrey threw his trunk upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe.
+It was twenty-five miles of half broken road and snowdrifts to
+Lowville and the railroad.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical American farm boy has been
+doing for the last hundred years and what he will probably continue to
+do as long as we Americans are what we are. He is not always a
+dreamer, your farm boy, when he starts down from his hills or his
+cross-roads farm to see the big world and conquer it. More often than
+you would think, he knows that he is not going to conquer it at all.
+And he is not, on the other hand, merely running away from the
+drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will probably have to work
+harder than he would ever have worked on the farm. But he knows that
+he has things to sell. And he is going down into the markets of men.
+He has a good head and a strong body. He has a power of work in him.
+He has grit and energy.
+
+He is going down into the markets where men pay the price for these
+things that he has. He is going to fight men for that price which he
+knows his things are worth.
+
+Jeffrey's mother came out carrying a canvas satchel which she put on
+the sled under Cassius Bascom's feet.
+
+"Don't kick that, Catty," she warned, "Jeff's lunch is in it. And,
+Jeff, don't you go and check it with the trunk." There was just a
+little catch in the laugh with which she said this. She was
+remembering a day more than twenty years before when she had started,
+a bride, with big, lumbering, slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting,
+Jeffrey's father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with their
+lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting checked the satchel through
+from Lowville to Buffalo, and they had nearly starved on the way. It
+was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity. But she never quite
+forgave him for telling it on himself when they got back. It had been
+a standing joke in the hills all these years.
+
+She was just a typical mother of the hills. She loved her boy. She
+needed him. She knew that she would never have him again. The boys do
+not come back from the market place. She knew that she would cry for
+him through many a lonely night, as she had cried all last night. But
+she was not crying now.
+
+Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his as she stretched her
+arms up around the neck of her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss
+her.
+
+He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart. He knew his mother very
+well. So he began with the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to
+tell when we were leaving.
+
+"It'll only be a little while, Mother. You won't find the time
+slipping by, and I'll be back."
+
+She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys always knew it was a
+lie. But she backed him up sturdily:
+
+"Why, of course, Jeff. Don't worry about me. You'll be back in no
+time."
+
+Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the house with a dark, oblong
+object in her hands.
+
+"There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just tried to forget this on
+purpose. It's too late to put it in the trunk now; so you'll just have
+to put it in your overcoat pocket."
+
+Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown brick covered with
+felt, a foot warmer. Aunt Letty had made him take one with him when he
+went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter, and he and his brick
+had furnished much of the winter's amusement there. The memory of his
+humiliations on account of that brick would last a lifetime. He
+wondered why maiden aunts could not understand. His mother, now, would
+have known better. But he dutifully put the thing into the pocket of
+his big coat--he could drop it into the first snowback--and turned to
+kiss his aunt.
+
+"I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany," she lectured. "Make
+your landlady heat it for you every night."
+
+A noise in the road made them all turn.
+
+Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were driving into the yard.
+
+It was evident from the signs that the men had been having a hard time
+on the road. They must have been out all night, for they could not
+have started from anywhere early enough to be here now at sunrise.
+
+Their harness had been broken and mended in several places. The cutter
+had a runner broken. The horses were cut and bloody, where they had
+kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.
+
+As they drove up beside the group in the yard, one of the men
+shouted:
+
+"Say, is there any place we can put in here? We've been on that road
+all night."
+
+"Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and warm yourselves," said
+Mrs. Whiting.
+
+"Rogers," said the man who had spoken, addressing the other, "if I
+ever get into a place that's warm, I'll stay there till spring."
+
+Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of the cutter and stepped
+stiffly out into the snow. He swept the group with a sharp, a praising
+eye, and asked:
+
+"Who's the one to talk to here?"
+
+Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and replied with another
+question.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby grey moustache and
+cold grey eyes, looked the youth over carefully as he spoke.
+
+"I want a man that knows this country and can get around in it in this
+season. I was brought up in the country, but I never saw anything like
+this. I wouldn't take a trip like this again for any money. I can't do
+this sort of thing. I want a man that knows the country and the people
+and can do it."
+
+"Well, I'm going away now," said Jeffrey slowly, "but Uncle Catty here
+knows the people and the country better than most and he can go
+anywhere."
+
+The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish man on the sled.
+Then he turned away decisively. Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old
+face all withered and puckered to one side, where a splinter of shell
+from Fort Fisher had taken away his right eye, was evidently not the
+kind of man that the big man wanted.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked Jeffrey sharply.
+
+"Albany Law School," said Jeffrey promptly.
+
+"Unstrap the trunk, young man. You're not going. I've got something
+for you right here at home that'll teach you more than ten law
+schools. Put both teams into the barn," the big man commanded loudly.
+
+Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would oppose the will of
+this brusque stranger. But he knew that he would not do so. In that
+moment something told him that he would not go to law school; would
+never go there; that his life was about to take a twist away from
+everything that he had ever intended.
+
+Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:
+
+"Come into the house."
+
+In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom poured boiling tea for
+the two men, Rogers, cup in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and
+explained himself. The other man, whose name does not matter, sank
+into a great wooden chair at the side of the fire and seemed to be
+ready to make good his threat of staying until spring.
+
+"I represent the U. & M. railroad. We are coming up through here in
+the spring. All these farms have to be given up. We have eminent
+domain for this whole section," said Rogers.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Jeffrey. "The railroad can't run _all over_
+the country."
+
+"No. But the road will need the whole strip of hills for timber.
+They'll cut off what is standing and then they'll stock the whole
+country with cedar, for ties. That's all the land's good for,
+anyway."
+
+Jeffrey Whiting's mouth opened for an answer to this, but his mother's
+sharp, warning glance stopped him. He understood that it was his place
+to listen and learn. There would be time enough for questions and
+arguments afterward.
+
+"Now these people here won't understand what eminent domain means,"
+the big man went on. "I'm going to make it clear to you, young man. I
+know who you are and I know more about you than you think. I'm going
+to make it clear to you and then I'm going to send you out among them
+to make them see it. They wouldn't understand me and they wouldn't
+believe me. You can make them see it."
+
+"How do you know that I'll believe you?" asked Jeffrey.
+
+"You've got brains. You don't have to _believe_. I can _show_ it to
+you."
+
+Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed to taking
+responsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anything
+and this perhaps had given him more than the average boy's good
+opinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtly
+than this man's bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by a
+man of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is a
+man, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced
+men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.
+
+"Do you know what an option is?" the man began again.
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+"I thought so," said Rogers, in a manner that seemed to confirm his
+previous judgment of Jeffrey's brains. "Now then, the railroad has
+got to have all these farms from Beaver River right up to the head of
+Little Tupper Lake. I say these people won't know what eminent domain
+means. You're going to tell them. It means that they can sell at the
+railroad's price or they can hold off and a referee will be appointed
+to name a price. The railroad will have a big say in appointing those
+referees. Do you understand me?"
+
+"Yes. I see," said Jeffrey. "But--"
+
+"No buts at all about it, young man," said Rogers, waving his hand.
+"The people have got to sell. If they give options at once--within
+thirty days--they'll get more than a fair price for their land. If
+they don't--if they hold off--their farms will be condemned as forest
+land. And you know how much that brings.
+
+"You people will be the first. You can ask almost anything for your
+land. You'll get it. And, what is more, I am able to offer you,
+Whiting, a very liberal commission on every option you can get me
+within the time I have said. This is the thing that I can't do. It's
+the thing that I want you to do.
+
+"You'll do it. I know you will, when you get time to think it over.
+Here are the options," said the big man, pulling a packet of folded
+papers out of his pocket. "They cover every farm in the section. All
+you have to do is to get the people to write their names once. Then
+your work is done. We'll do the rest and your commissions will be
+waiting for you. Some better than law school, eh?"
+
+"But say," Jeffrey stammered, "say, that means, why, that means my
+mother and the folks here, why, they'd have to get out; they'd have to
+leave their home!"
+
+"Of course," said Rogers easily. "A man like you isn't going to keep
+his family up on top of this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you'll
+have the best home in Lowville for them, where they can live in style,
+in less than six months. Do you think your mother wants to stay here
+after you're gone. You were going away. Did you think," he said
+shrewdly, "what life up here would be worth to your mother while you
+were away. No, you're just like all boys. You wanted to get away
+yourself. But you never thought what a life this is for her.
+
+"Why, boy, she's a young woman yet. You can take her out and give her
+a chance to live. Do you hear, a chance to live.
+
+"Think it over."
+
+Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than he had ever tried to
+think in his life. But he could make nothing of it.
+
+He thought of the people, old and young, on the hills, suddenly set
+adrift from their homes. He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius
+and Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back to. And he
+thought of money--illimitable money: money that could do everything.
+
+He did not want to look at his mother for counsel. The man's talk had
+gone to his head. But, slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his
+mother's, and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look which told
+him to wait, wait. He caught the meaning and spoke it brusquely:
+
+"All right. Leave the options here. I'll see what we'll do. And I'll
+write to you next week."
+
+No. That would not do. The big man must have his answer at once. He
+stormed at Jeffrey. He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished Miss
+Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius, but that guileless man led
+him off into such a discussion of cross grafting and reforestation
+that he was glad to drop him.
+
+In the end, he saw that, having committed himself, he could do no
+better than leave the matter to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for
+thought, the boy could not refuse his offer.
+
+So the two men, having breakfasted and rested their horses, set out on
+the down trip to Lowville.
+
+Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother came to a decision.
+
+"It is too big for us, Jeff," she said. "We do not know what it means.
+Nobody up here can tell us. The man was lying. But we do not know why,
+or what about.
+
+"There is one man that could tell us. The White Horse Chaplain, do you
+remember him, Jeffrey?"
+
+"I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me."
+
+"Only to give her her chance, my son. Do not forget that. He could
+tell us what this means. I don't care anything about his religion.
+Your Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day at Fort Fisher. I
+don't. He is the Catholic Bishop of Alden. You'll go to him to-morrow.
+He'll tell you what it means."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very much worried. For the third
+time he picked up and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of the
+Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him that Ruth Lansing had left
+the convent that morning. But the third perusal of the message did not
+give him any more light on the matter than the two previous readings
+had done.
+
+Why should the girl have gone away? What could have happened? Only the
+other day he had received a letter from her telling of her studies and
+her progress and of every new thing that was interesting her.
+
+The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home where he had found her
+"Daddy Tom" dying, and where he had buried him on the hillside.
+Probably the girl would go back and try to live there. And he thought
+of the boy who had told him of his love and that he wanted to keep
+Ruth there in the hills.
+
+As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary came to the door to
+tell him that the boy, Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking
+to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature of his business to
+any one but the Bishop himself.
+
+
+The Bishop was startled. He had understood that the young man was in
+Albany at school. Now he thought that he would get a very clear light
+upon Ruth Lansing's disappearance.
+
+"I came to you, sir," said Jeffrey when the Bishop had given him a
+chair, "because you could tell us what to do."
+
+"You mean you and your--neighbour, Ruth Lansing?"
+
+"Why, no, sir. What about her?" said Jeffrey quickly.
+
+The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching look, and saw his mistake.
+The boy knew nothing.
+
+
+"This," the Bishop answered, as he handed Jeffrey the open telegram.
+
+"But where's she gone? Why did she go?" Jeffrey broke out, as he read
+the message.
+
+"I thought you were coming to tell me that."
+
+"No," said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop's meaning quickly. "She didn't
+write to me, not at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn't have it. But
+she wrote to my mother and she didn't say anything about leaving
+there."
+
+"I suppose not," said the Bishop. "She seems to have gone away
+suddenly. But, I am forgetting. You came to talk to me."
+
+"Yes." And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly and shortly, of the coming
+of Rogers and his proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to tell
+how he had been carried away by the man's offer and his flattery. He
+made it plain that it was only his mother's insight and caution that
+had held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.
+
+The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness of the young
+fellow. It was good to hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his
+old-fashioned, stiff way and said:
+
+"Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise woman. You will convey to
+her my deepest respect.
+
+"I do not know what it all means," he went on, in another tone. "But I
+can soon find out."
+
+He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the door the Bishop said:
+
+"Will you see, please, if General Chandler is in his office across the
+street. If he is, give him my respects and ask him to step over here a
+moment."
+
+The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the doorway.
+
+"What is it?" asked the Bishop.
+
+"There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She says she must see you,
+but she will not give a name. She seems to be in trouble, or
+frightened."
+
+Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for the door.
+
+"Sit down where you were, young man," said the Bishop sharply. If Ruth
+Lansing were out there--and the Bishop half believed that she
+was--well, it _might_ be coincidence. But it was too much for the
+Bishop's credulity.
+
+"Send the girl in here," he said shortly.
+
+Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went straight to the Bishop. She
+did not see Jeffrey.
+
+"I came straight here all the way," she said, "to tell you, Bishop,
+that I couldn't stay in the convent any longer. I am going home. I
+could not stay there."
+
+"I am very glad to see you, Ruth," said the Bishop easily, "and if
+you'll just turn around, I think you'll see some one who is even more
+pleased."
+
+Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at sight of Jeffrey was
+abundant proof to the Bishop that the coming of these two to his door
+was indeed a coincidence.
+
+"Now," said the Bishop quickly, "you will both sit down and listen. It
+concerns both of you deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General
+Chandler. You have both heard of him. He is the political power of
+this part of the State. He can, if he will, tell us just how serious
+your situation is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just listen."
+
+Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise and perhaps a little
+resentment. For hours she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal
+of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely told to sit down and
+listen to something, she did not know what.
+
+The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler was ushered into the room
+and the two veterans saluted each other with the stiffest of military
+precision.
+
+"These are two young friends of mine from the hills, General," said
+the Bishop, as he seated his old friend. "They both own farms in the
+Beaver Run country. They have come to me to find out what the U. & M.
+Railroad wants with options on all that country. Can you, will you
+tell them?"
+
+The General plucked for a moment at the empty left sleeve of his
+coat.
+
+"No, Bishop," he said finally, "I cannot give out what I know of that
+matter. The interests behind it are too large for me. I would not
+dare. I do not often have to say that."
+
+"No," said the Bishop slowly, "I never heard you say that before."
+
+"But I can do this, Bishop," said the General, rising. "If you will
+come over here to the end of the room, I can tell you, privately, what
+I know. You can then use your own prudence to judge how much you can
+tell these young people."
+
+The Bishop followed to the window at the other end of the room, where
+the two men stood and talked in undertones.
+
+"Jeffrey," said Ruth through teeth that gritted with impatience, "if
+you don't tell me this instant what it's all about, I'll--I'll _bite_
+you!"
+
+Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little wild outbreak of hers
+to convince him that the young lady who had swept into the room and
+faced the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth, after all.
+
+In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.
+
+The Bishop walked to the door with the General, thanking him. From the
+door the General saluted gravely and stalked away.
+
+"The answer," said the Bishop quietly, as he came back to them, "is
+one word--Iron."
+
+To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making a mysterious fuss about
+nothing. But Jeffrey saw the whole matter instantly.
+
+"No one knows how much there is, or how little there is," said the
+Bishop. "The man lied to you, Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain.
+But they can get it if they get the options on a large part of the
+farms. Then, when they have the right of eminent domain, they will
+let the options lapse and buy the properties at their own prices."
+
+"I'll start back to warn the people to-night," said Jeffrey, jumping
+up. "Maybe they made that offer to other people besides me!"
+
+"Wait," said the Bishop, "there is more to think of. The railroad, if
+you serve it well, will, no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it
+is worth to you. There is your mother to be considered first. And they
+will, very likely, give you a chance to make a small fortune in your
+commissions, if you are faithful to them. If you go to fight them,
+they will probably crush you all in the end, and you will be left with
+little or nothing. Better go slowly, young man."
+
+"What?" cried Jeffrey. "Take their bribe! Take their money, for
+fooling and cheating the other people out of their homes! Why, before
+I'd do that, I'd leave that farm and everything that's there and go up
+into the big woods with only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my
+mother would follow me! You know that! My mother would be glad to go
+with me, with nothing, nothing in her hands!"
+
+"And so would I!" said Ruth, springing to her feet. "I _would_! I
+_would_!" she chanted defiantly.
+
+"Well, well, well!" said the Bishop, smiling.
+
+"But you are not going up into the big woods, Jeffrey," Ruth said
+demurely. "You are going back home to fight them. If I could help you
+I would go back with you. I would not be of any use. So, I'm going
+back, to the convent, to face my fight."
+
+"But, but," said Jeffrey, "I thought you were running away."
+
+"I did. I was," said Ruth. "Last night I heard the voice of something
+calling to me. It was such a big thing," she went on, turning to the
+Bishop; "it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing that I thought it
+would crush me. It would take my life and make me do what _it_ wanted,
+not what I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It was like a Choir
+Unseen singing to me to follow, and I didn't dare follow.
+
+"But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey spoke that way. Now I
+know what it was. It was the call of life to everybody to face life,
+to take our souls in our hands and go forward. I thought I could turn
+back. I can't. God, or life won't let us turn back."
+
+"I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing," said the Bishop. "I'm
+glad you came away, to have it out with yourself. And you will be very
+glad now to go back."
+
+"As for you, young man," he turned to Jeffrey, "I should say that your
+mother _would_ be proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you.
+Remember that, when you are in the worst of this fight that is before
+you. When you are tempted, as you will be tempted, remember it. When
+you are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed, _remember it_."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+GLOW OF DAWN
+
+
+Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to his breakfast. It was past
+the middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was
+the time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains had
+already gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh,
+rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would not
+be enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Then
+he would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River,
+where the saw-dust came to bother him.
+
+He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond at
+the very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and
+drew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of flies
+and the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through four
+seasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,
+quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not dispute
+with him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fish
+ever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones.
+He liked flies better.
+
+His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little cool yet, for the sun
+was not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfast
+room at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away up
+on every side to the rim of the high hills.
+
+Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begun
+to draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface of
+the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was in
+sight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about a
+cat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body,
+and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap.
+But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by the
+cat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.
+
+Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, in
+other years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as
+he ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the very
+first time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They
+were not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of the
+cat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. But
+he knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most tempting
+flies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water,
+others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating and
+challenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in the
+cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of the
+pond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told them that
+he had scooted out of the pool and down into the stream. Once the girl
+had trailed a piece of flashing red flannel across the water, and
+Twinkle-tail could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible hook
+caught him in the side of the mouth! In his fury and terror he dove
+and fought until he broke the hook. He had never forgotten that
+lesson.
+
+But he was forgetting a little this season. No one came to his pool.
+He was growing big and fat, and a little careless.
+
+As he lay there in the warming sand by the cat-tails, the biggest,
+juiciest green bottle fly that Twinkle-tail had ever seen came
+skimming down to the very line of the water. It circled once.
+Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not an inch from the
+water!
+
+A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and Twinkle-tail was out of
+the water! He had the fly in his mouth.
+
+Then the struggle began.
+
+Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the shoulder of the bank
+behind which she had been hiding.
+
+The trout dove and started for the stream, the line ripping through
+the water like a shot.
+
+The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her strong, slender,
+boy-like body giving and swaying cunningly to every tug of the fish.
+
+He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool, throwing her off her
+balance and down into the water. She rose wet and angry, clinging
+grimly to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side of the
+pond. She did not dare to stand and pull against him, for fear of
+breaking the hook. She could only race around, giving him all the line
+she could until he should tire a little.
+
+Three times they fought around the circle of the pool, the taut line
+singing like a wire in the wind. Ruth's hand was cut where she had
+fallen on the rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head to foot. Her
+breath came in great, gulping sobs. But she fought on.
+
+Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down the Run, but she headed him
+back each time to the pond where she could handle him better. She had
+never before fought so big a fish all alone. Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had
+always been with her. Now she found herself calling desperately under
+her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She bit back the words and
+took a new hold on the pole.
+
+The trout was running blindly now from side to side of the pond. He
+had lost his cunning. He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her
+strength was nearly gone too. She must use her head quickly.
+
+She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate effort. She must
+catch him as he ran toward her and try to flick him out of the water.
+It was her only chance. She might break the line or the pole and lose
+him entirely, but she would try it.
+
+Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water, directly at her. She
+suddenly threw her strength on the pole. It bent nearly double but it
+held. And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her strength, was
+whipped clear out on to the grass. Dropping the pole, she dove
+desperately at him where he fought on the very edge of the bank.
+Finally she caught the line a few inches above his mouth, and her
+prize was secure.
+
+"It's you, Twinkle-tail," she panted, as she held him up for a good
+look, "sure enough!"
+
+She carried him back to a large stone and despatched him painlessly
+with a blunt stick. Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and
+dizzy from her struggle.
+
+Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she said aloud:
+
+"I wish Jeffrey was here. He'll never believe it was you unless he
+sees you."
+
+"Yes, that's him all right," said a voice behind her. "I'd know him in
+a thousand."
+
+She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.
+
+"Why, where did you come from? Your mother told me you wouldn't be
+back till to-morrow."
+
+"Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow if you want me to,"
+said Jeffrey, smiling.
+
+"Oh, Jeff, you know I'm glad to see you. I was awfully disappointed
+when I got home and found that you were away up in the hills. How is
+your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail," she hurried on a
+little nervously, for Jeffrey had her hand and was drawing her
+determinedly to him. She reached for the trout and held him up
+strategically between them.
+
+"Oh, _Fish_!" said Jeffrey discontentedly as he saw himself beaten by
+her ruse.
+
+The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly handsome face. Then
+she seemed to relent, and with a friendly little tug at his arm led
+him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit down.
+
+"Now tell me," she commanded, "all about your battle with the railroad
+people. Your mother told me some things, but I want it all, from
+yourself."
+
+But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked at her dress and shoes and
+said with a show of meanness:
+
+"Ruth, you didn't catch Twinkle-tail fair, on your line. You just
+walked into the pond and got him in a corner and kicked him to death
+brutally. I know you did. You're always cruel."
+
+Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged cut in her hand where she had
+fallen on the rocks.
+
+Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the hand
+and dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt down
+by the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with her
+handkerchief.
+
+"Now," she said, "tell me."
+
+"Well," he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained by
+delay, "the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they had
+found iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to push
+us all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found I
+wasn't the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had Rafe
+Gadbeau, you know he's a kind of a political boss of the French around
+French Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.
+
+"Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he'd been spending money
+around free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to him
+outright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what the
+land would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as well
+have held my breath. He didn't care anything about the interests of
+the people that had land. He was getting paid well for every option
+that he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will have
+trouble with that man yet.
+
+"The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, and a good man. They had
+fooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He had
+started out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties over
+on that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for the
+people to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their finding
+iron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was the
+maddest man you ever saw.
+
+"He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He
+went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not
+to sign anything.
+
+"Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for the
+railroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion and
+conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down to
+Lowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn't find anything in the charges. So
+I was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to get
+me away from here yet."
+
+"How does it stand now?" said Ruth thoughtfully. "Have they actually
+started to build the railroad?"
+
+"Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through.
+But they wouldn't build it, at least not for years yet, only that they
+want to get this iron property opened up. Why, the road is to run from
+Welden to French Village and there is not a single town on the whole
+line! The road wouldn't have business enough to keep the rust off.
+They're building the road just the same, so that shows that they
+intend to get our property some way, no matter what we do. And I
+suppose they will, somehow," he added sullenly. "They always do, I
+guess."
+
+"But the people," said Ruth, "can't you get them all to join and agree
+to sell at a fair price? Wouldn't that be all right?"
+
+"They don't want to buy. They won't buy at any fair price. They only
+want to get options enough to show the Legislature and the Governor,
+and then they will be granted eminent domain and they can have the
+land condemned and can buy it at the price of wild land."
+
+"Oh, yes; I remember now. That's what the Bishop said. Isn't it
+strange," she went on slowly, "how he seems to come into everything we
+do. How he saved my Daddy Tom's life that time at Fort Fisher. And how
+he came here that night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked us up
+and turned us around and sent me off to convent. And now how he seems
+to come into all this.
+
+"Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the North," she went on. "I
+wonder if he comes into the lives of _all_ the people that way. At the
+convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging to them
+personally. I resented it at first, because I thought I had more
+reason to know him than anybody. But I found that everybody felt the
+same way."
+
+"He's just like the Catholic Church," said Jeffrey suddenly, and a
+little sharply; "he comes into everything."
+
+"Why, Jeffrey," said Ruth in surprise, "what do you know about the
+Church?"
+
+"I know," he answered. "I've read some. And I've had to deal a lot
+with the French people up toward French Village. And I've talked with
+their priest up there. You know you have to talk to the priest before
+it's any use talking to them. That's the way with the Catholic Church.
+It comes into everything. I don't like it."
+
+He sat looking across the pool for a moment, while Ruth quietly
+studied the stubborn, settling lines of his face. She saw that a few
+months had made a big change in the boy and playmate that she had
+known. He was no longer the bright-faced, clear-eyed boy. His face was
+turning into a man's face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and of
+harshness were coming into it. It showed strength and doggedness and
+will, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not
+dislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a little
+timid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limits
+beyond which she could not play with this new man that she found.
+
+"It's all right to be religious," he went on argumentatively.
+"Mother's religious. And Aunt Letty's just full of it. But it don't
+interfere with their lives. It's all right to have a preacher for
+marrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if you
+want to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those people
+live. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything.
+They don't dare speak without looking back to it to find out what they
+must say. I don't like it."
+
+"Why, Jeffrey, I'm a Catholic!"
+
+"I _knew_ it!" he said stubbornly. "I knew it! I knew there was
+something that had changed you. And I might have known it was that."
+
+"That's funny!" said the girl, breaking in quickly. "When you came I
+was just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me at
+all. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I had
+gone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the same
+as I was before."
+
+"But it has changed you," he persisted. "And it's going to change you
+a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth," he said, suddenly softening,
+"you won't let it change you? You won't let it make any difference,
+with us, I mean?"
+
+The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:
+
+"No, Jeffrey. It won't make any difference with us, in the way you
+mean.
+
+"So long as we are what we are," she said again after a pause, "we
+will be just the same to each other. If it should make something
+different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be
+the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you
+would not be the same to me.
+
+"It's too soon," she continued decisively. "Nothing is clear to me,
+yet. I've just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and
+feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know.
+When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I'll tell you."
+
+He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood
+that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something
+in her face with which he did not dare to argue.
+
+He got up saying:
+
+"I have to be gone. I'm glad I found you here at the old place. I'll
+be back to-night to help you eat the trout."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"Over to Wilbur's Fork. There's a couple of men over there that are
+shaky. I've had to keep after them or they'd be listening to Rafe
+Gadbeau and letting their land go."
+
+"But," Ruth exclaimed, "now when they know, can't they see what is to
+their own interest! Are they blind?"
+
+"I know," said Jeffrey dully. "But you know how it is with those
+people. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have to
+scratch and scrape for a little money. They don't see many dollars
+together from one year's end to the other. Even a little money, ready,
+green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them."
+
+"Good luck, then, Jeff," she said cheerily; "and get back early if you
+can."
+
+"Sure," he said easily as he picked up his hat.
+
+"And, say, Ruth." He turned back quietly to her. "If--if I shouldn't
+be back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? I
+wouldn't say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he's not very
+sharp sometimes. Will you?"
+
+"Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please."
+
+"Oh, sure," he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of the
+pond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trail
+that went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the other
+side.
+
+Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope,
+his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth.
+
+This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left when
+she went down to the convent five months before. She could see it in
+his walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she had
+seen it in his face and his talk. He was fighting with a power that
+he had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was not
+discouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of his
+boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and
+thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged
+struggle.
+
+He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Why
+should he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to have
+warned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? And
+what was there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of physical fear
+in connection with Jeffrey. Why, nothing ever happened in the hills,
+anyway. Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was true, the
+lumber jacks were rough when they came down with the log drives in the
+spring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stop
+in the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spend
+their money.
+
+What had Jeffrey to fear?
+
+Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to her
+unless he had good reason to think that something might happen to
+him.
+
+Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. The
+men were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generally
+ruled by their more energetic women. But they or their fathers had
+all been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted in
+the soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drive
+them from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes,
+where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckon
+with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. In
+another moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. She
+wondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgotten
+that she would surely be standing where he had left her?
+
+He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Then
+he stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque and
+businesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly have
+seen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had just
+known that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He had
+plunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with which
+his mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and of
+everything else.
+
+The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that might
+have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about
+the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it
+gave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming.
+
+She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived.
+Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew men
+fought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was a
+little for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour and
+good judgment would make for him out of the land.
+
+Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever,
+in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealth
+or the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely come
+to look for it and take it. That was why men fought. Wealth, even the
+scent of wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on to battle.
+
+A cloud passed between her and the morning sun. She felt the
+premonition of tragedy and suffering lowering down like a storm on her
+hills. How foolishly she had thought that all life and all the great,
+seething business of life was to be done down in the towns and the
+cities. Here was life now, with its pressure and its ugly passions,
+pushing right into the very hills.
+
+She shivered as she picked up her prize of the morning and her fishing
+tackle and started slowly up the hill toward her home.
+
+Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth with the understanding that
+Ruth was to spend the summer there in her own home. The rent was
+enough to give Ruth what little money she needed for clothes and to
+pay her modest expenses at the convent at Athens. So her life was
+arranged for her at least up to the time when she should have finished
+school.
+
+It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands of
+strangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she had
+ruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It would
+be very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged
+and how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by and
+see others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers and
+Daddy Tom's. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was her
+place. It held all the memories and all the things that connected her
+with her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to it
+and call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill,
+at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and her
+mother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which she
+had been born, she could understand the fierceness with which men
+would fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened.
+
+Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguely
+called "the railroad" would want to take _her_ home and farm away from
+her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she felt a swelling rage of
+indignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to the
+house, as though she saw it already threatened.
+
+She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and
+went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth
+weeding in what had been Ruth's own flower beds.
+
+"Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!" the woman
+exclaimed at sight of her. "I called you _three_ times, and when you
+didn't answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I told
+Norman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night."
+
+"Oh, no," said Ruth. "No danger. I'm used to getting up early, you
+see. So I just took some cakes--Didn't you miss them?--and some milk
+and slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish.
+Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had to
+do it myself this morning."
+
+"So young Whiting's gone away, eh?"
+
+"Why, no," said Ruth quickly. "He went over to Wilbur's Fork about
+half an hour ago. Who said he'd gone away?"
+
+"Oh, nobody," said the woman hastily; "it's only what they was sayin'
+up at French Village yesterday."
+
+"What were they saying?" Ruth demanded.
+
+"Oh, just talk, I suppose," Mrs. Apgarth evaded. "Still, I dunno's I
+blame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he's got out of
+it, I'd skedaddle, too."
+
+Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm.
+
+"What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl
+was trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herself
+had said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She must
+tell everything now.
+
+"Well," she began, "they say he's just fooled the people up over their
+eyes."
+
+"How?" said Ruth impatiently. "Tell me."
+
+"He's been agoin' round holdin' the people back and gettin' them to
+swear that they won't sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the
+railroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin' the rest of the people
+back till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad for
+his own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he's sold
+this farm and his own and five other ones that he'd got hold of, for
+four times what they're worth. And that gives the railroad enough to
+work on, so the rest of the people'll just have to sell for what they
+can get. He's gone now; skipped out."
+
+"But he has _not_ gone!" Ruth snapped out indignantly. "I saw him only
+half an hour ago."
+
+"Oh, well, of course," said the woman knowingly, "you'd know more
+about it than anybody else. It's all talk, I suppose."
+
+Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She said
+shortly:
+
+"I'm going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting."
+
+"Oh, then, don't say a word to her about this. She's an awful good
+neighbour. I wouldn't for the world have her think that I--"
+
+"Why, it doesn't matter at all," said Ruth, as she turned toward the
+road. "You only said what people were saying."
+
+"But I wouldn't for anything," the woman called nervously after her,
+"have her think that-- And what'll I do with this?"
+
+"Eat it," said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she had
+fought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night. Through the long
+twilight of one of the longest days of the year, Ruth sat reading in
+the old place on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find her.
+Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew that he would not come.
+
+She did not try to argue with herself. She did not fight back the
+nervous feeling that something had happened. She was sure that she had
+been all day expecting it. When the moon came up over the hill and the
+long purple shadows of the elm trees on the crest came stalking down
+in the white light, she went miserably into the house and up to the
+little room they had fitted up for her in the loft of her own home.
+
+She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep. But with the
+elasticity of youth and health she was awake at the first hint of
+morning, and the cloud of the night had passed.
+
+She dressed and hurried down into the yard where Norman Apgarth was
+just stirring about with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight
+and action. A man had put his trust in her before all others. She was
+eager to answer to his faith.
+
+"Where is Brom Bones?" she demanded of the still drowsy Apgarth as she
+caught him crossing the yard from the milk house.
+
+"The colt? He's up in the back pasture, just around the knob of the
+mountain. What was you calc'latin' to do with him, Miss?"
+
+"I want to use him," said Ruth. "May I?"
+
+"Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But, say, Miss, that colt ain't
+been driv' since the Spring's work. An' he's so fat an' silky he's
+liable to act foolish."
+
+"I'm going to _ride_ him," said Ruth briefly, as she stepped to the
+horse barn door for a bridle.
+
+"Now, say, Miss," the man opposed feebly, "you could take the brown
+pony just as well; I don't need her a bit. And I tell you that colt
+is just a lun-_at_-ic, when he's been idle so long."
+
+"Thank you," said Ruth, as she started up the hill. "But I think I'll
+find work enough to satisfy even Brom Bones to-day."
+
+The big black colt followed her peaceably down the mountain, and stood
+champing at the door while she went in to get something to eat. When
+she brought out a shining new side saddle he looked suspiciously at
+the strange thing, but he made no serious objection as she fastened it
+on. Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood looking
+doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as new to her as it was to the
+horse. She had bought it on her way home the other day, as a
+concession to the fact that she was now a young lady who could no
+longer go stampeding over the hills on a bare-backed horse.
+
+She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming to know in the way of his
+kind that she was uneasy and uncomfortable, began at once to act
+badly. His intention seemed to be to walk into the open well on his
+hind feet. The girl caught a short hold on her lines and cut him
+sharply across the ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the
+hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.
+
+The path led straight up to the top of the slope. Ruth did not try to
+hold him. The sooner he ran the conceit out of himself, she thought,
+the better.
+
+He hurled himself down the other slope, past the pool, and into the
+trail which Jeffrey had taken yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in
+a strange saddle. But the girl's anxiety rose with the excitement of
+the horse's wild rush, so that when they reached the top of the divide
+where she had last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl that
+was ready to settle down to a sober and safer pace.
+
+Her common sense told her that she was probably foolish; that Jeffrey
+had merely stayed over night somewhere and that she would meet him on
+the way. But another and a subtler sense kept whispering to her to
+hurry on, that she was needed, that the good name, if not the life, of
+the boy she loved was in danger!
+
+She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just who were the men whom Jeffrey
+had gone to see. But she did not know how she could dash up to their
+doors and demand to know where he was. It was eleven miles up the
+stony trail that followed Wilbur's Fork, and the girl's nerves now
+keyed up to expect she knew not what jangled at every turn of the
+road. Jeffrey had meant to come straight back this way to her. That he
+had not done so meant that _something_ had stopped him on the way.
+What was it?
+
+On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks and the underbrush
+was grown into an impenetrable wall. On the other it ran sheer along
+the edge of Wilbur's Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing stream that
+tumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country.
+
+Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as she
+pushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to the
+trail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rock
+bed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle to
+look down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came
+carelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once--a
+single blow at the back of the head--and Jeffrey would have gone
+stumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not be
+even the sign of a struggle.
+
+Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.
+
+"Ruth Lansing," she scolded aloud, "you're making a little fool of
+yourself. You've been down there in that convent living among a lot of
+girls, and you're forgetting that these hills are your own, that there
+never was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Just
+keep that in your mind and hustle on about your business."
+
+When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork she
+met old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man did
+not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharply
+at the steaming withers of Brom Bones before he would give any
+attention to her question.
+
+"What's the tarnation hurry, young lady?" he inquired exasperatingly.
+"Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest'day. Why?"
+
+"Did he start home by this trail?" asked Ruth eagerly. "Or did he go
+on up country?"
+
+"He went on up country."
+
+Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word.
+
+"But stay!" the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twenty
+yards. "He came back again."
+
+Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to his
+knees.
+
+"Didn't ask me that," the old man chortled, as she came back, "but if
+I didn't tell you I reckon you'd run that colt to death up the
+hills."
+
+"Then he _did_ take the Forks trail back."
+
+"Didn't do that, nuther."
+
+"Then where _did_ he go? Please tell me!" cried the girl, the tears of
+vexation rising into her voice.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there," said
+the old man, pointing, "and he took over the hill for French Village.
+You his wife? You're mighty young."
+
+But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping down
+the rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones.
+
+In the middle of the ford she stopped and loosened the bridle, let the
+colt drink a little, then drove him across, up the other bank and on
+up the stiff slope.
+
+She did not know the trail, but she knew the general run of the
+country that way and had no doubt of finding her road.
+
+Now she told herself that it was certainly a wild goose chase. Jeffrey
+had merely found that he had to see some one in French Village and had
+gone there and, of course, had spent the night there.
+
+By the time she had come over the ridge of the hill and was dropping
+down through the heavily wooded country toward French Village, she had
+begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly remembered
+that it was Saint John the Baptist's day. It was not a holy day of
+obligation but she knew it was a feast day in French Village. There
+would be Mass. She should have gone, anyway. And she would hear with
+her own ears the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.
+
+Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store in French Village in the
+glory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store was
+closed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would put
+on his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church,
+and march solemnly over to ring the bell for Mass.
+
+The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady whom he seemed to know
+vaguely, riding down the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on
+the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made the little man
+reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.
+
+"M'm'selle Lansing!" he said, bowing in friendly pomp as Ruth drove
+up.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came down to go to Mass. Can you tell me
+what time it begins?"
+
+"I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M'm'selle."
+Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute
+from the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman.
+His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must
+await her convenience.
+
+He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feet
+loose and slid down deftly.
+
+"I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb," said Ruth as she took his
+hand. "Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?"
+
+A girl of about Ruth's own age had come quietly up the street and
+stood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail of
+Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots.
+
+"'Cynthe," said the little man briskly, "you show Miss Lansing on my
+pew for Mass." He took the bridle from Ruth's hand and led the horse
+away to the shed in the rear of the store.
+
+The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The
+little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not
+answer?
+
+She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing about
+the church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questions
+of them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to a
+front pew.
+
+At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the church
+door they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of which
+Ruth could only catch a little here and there.
+
+"You will come by the _fête_, M'm'selle. You will not dance _non_, I
+s'pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one
+_jolie_ time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance." Arsene led
+Ruth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal,
+across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. There
+were tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the food
+that they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a great
+stump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard,
+the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings.
+
+It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment before
+been so devout and concentrated in church should in an instant switch
+their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soon
+found their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it,
+she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into
+the fun with all her heart.
+
+"Which is Rafe Gadbeau?" she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. "I want
+to know him."
+
+"Why for you want to know him?" the girl asked sharply in English.
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Ruth carelessly, "only I've heard of him."
+
+The other girl reached out into the crowd and plucked at the sleeve of
+a tall, beak-nosed man. The man was evidently flattered by Ruth's
+request, and wanted her to dance with him immediately.
+
+"No," said Ruth, "I do not know how to dance your dances, and we'd
+only break up the sets if I tried to learn now. We've heard a lot
+about you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to know you. And we've
+heard some things about Jeffrey Whiting. I'm sure you could tell me if
+they are true."
+
+"You don' dance? Well, we sit then. I tell you. One rascal, this young
+Whiting!"
+
+Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietly
+as he led her to a seat.
+
+As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform,
+Ruth, looking back, caught a swift glance of what she knew was
+jealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make an
+enemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to get
+this man to tell her all he would.
+
+"One rascal, I tell you," repeated Gadbeau. "First he stop all the
+people. He say don' sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He
+sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out.
+An' he leave these poor French people in the soup.
+
+"But I"--he sat back tapping himself on the chest--"I got hinfluence
+with that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nine
+o'clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sell
+out everything on the option to him."
+
+"But," objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, "if Jeffrey Whiting
+should come back before then?"
+
+"He don' come back, that fellow."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I know, I-- He don' come back. I tell you that."
+
+"Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o'clock to-morrow," she
+said, turning suddenly upon him.
+
+"Eh? M'm'selle, what you mean? What you know?" he questioned
+excitedly.
+
+"Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she
+arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture."
+
+Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and
+talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe
+Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had
+alarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey
+Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way.
+
+When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bell
+ringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place
+among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door.
+When the people rose to sing the _Tantum Ergo_, she saw Gadbeau slip
+unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing was
+finished, then she almost ran to the door.
+
+Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all day
+in the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trail
+which she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the street
+to Arsene LaComb's store. There was not a pony in the hills that Brom
+Bones could not overtake easily, but she must see by what trail the
+man left the Village.
+
+Brom Bones was very willing to make a race for home, and she let him
+have his head until she again caught sight of the man. She pulled up
+sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The man was still on the
+main road, and he might turn any moment. Finally she saw him pull into
+the trail that led over to Wilbur's Fork. Then she knew. Jeffrey was
+somewhere on the trail between French Village and Wilbur's Fork. And
+he was alive! The man was going now to make sure that he was still
+there.
+
+For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough to assure her that the
+man was still following the trail. Then, just when the real darkness
+had fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at her left. The man
+had turned off into the woods! She had almost passed him! She threw
+herself out upon Brom Bones' neck and caught him by the nose. He threw
+up his head indignantly and tried to bolt, but she blessed him for
+making no noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred yards,
+slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into the bushes away from the road
+and tied him. She talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading
+with him to be quiet. Then she left him and stole back to where she
+had heard the pony.
+
+In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing. But her feet found
+themselves on what seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly.
+She almost walked into a square black thing that suddenly confronted
+her. Within what seemed a foot of her she heard voices. Her heart
+stopped beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she could not
+distinguish a word. One of the voices was certainly Gadbeau's. The
+other-- It was!-- It was! Though it was only a mumble, she knew it was
+Jeffrey Whiting who tried to speak!
+
+She took a step forward, ready to dash into the place, whatever it
+was. But the caution of the hills made her back away noiselessly into
+the brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, _why_ had she not brought a
+rifle? Gadbeau was sure to be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably
+wounded and bound.
+
+She backed farther into the bushes and started to make a circuit of
+the place. She understood now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely
+of logs, even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse. She knew
+that she was helpless. And she knew that Jeffrey would not be a
+prisoner there unless he were hurt.
+
+She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come to injure Jeffrey further.
+He had merely come to make himself sure that his prisoner was secure.
+He would not stay long.
+
+As she stole around away from the path and the pony she saw a little
+stream of light shoot out through a chink between the logs of the hut.
+Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had brought something for
+Jeffrey to eat. She pulled off the white collar of her jacket, the
+only white thing that showed about her and settled down for a long
+wait.
+
+First she had thought that she ought to steal away to her horse and
+ride for help. But she could not bear the thought of even getting
+beyond the sound of Jeffrey's voice. She knew where he was now. He
+might be taken away while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing had
+always learned to do things for herself. She had always disliked
+appealing for help.
+
+Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place she could find, leaning
+against the bole of a great tree. The light, candles, of course,
+burned on; and the voices came irregularly through the living silence
+of the woods. She did not dare to creep nearer to hear what was being
+said. That did not matter. The important thing was to have Gadbeau go
+away without any suspicion that he had been followed. Then she would
+be free to release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she would be able
+to get him down to French Village in the morning. She could easily
+have him there before nine o'clock.
+
+When she saw by the stars that it was long past midnight she began to
+be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away
+at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound.
+She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against
+the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion.
+
+Would he never come out? It seemed not. Was he going to stay there all
+night?
+
+Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the door of the cabin.
+Apparently both men were asleep within. She pushed the door ever so
+quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.
+
+What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Oh, why, _why_ had she
+not brought a rifle? She would shoot. She _would_, if she had it now,
+and that man opened the door! It was too late now to think of riding
+for help, too late!
+
+She sank down again beside her tree and raged helplessly at herself,
+at her conceit in herself that would not let her go for help in the
+first place, at her foolishness in coming on this business without a
+gun. The hours dragged out their weary minutes, every minute an age to
+the taut, ragged nerves of the girl.
+
+The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops, while the ground still
+lay in utter darkness. Ruth rose and slipped farther back into the
+bushes.
+
+Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in the soft grass, and the
+hot, angry tears of desperation and rage at herself were softened. Her
+heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and sang its prayer to God;
+a thrilling, lifting little prayer of confidence and wonder. The
+words that the night before would not form themselves for her now
+sprang up ready in her soul--the words of all the children of earth,
+to Our Father Who Art in Heaven--paused an instant to bless her lips,
+then sped away to God in His Heaven. Fear was gone, and doubt, and
+anxiety. She would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor, befooled
+people from ruin. God had told her so, as He walked abroad in the
+_Glow_ of _Dawn_.
+
+Two long hours more she waited, but now with patience and a sure
+confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau came out of the hut and strode down the
+path to his pony.
+
+Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and ran to the door, and
+called to Jeffrey. The only answer was a moan. The door was locked
+with a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy padlock. She
+reached for the nearest stone and attacked the lock frantically. She
+beat it out of all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her. There
+was no window in the hut. She had to come back again to the lock. Her
+hands, softened by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on the
+tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave, and she threw herself
+against the door.
+
+Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk beside the furnace
+where they boiled the sugar sap. His arms were stretched out and tied
+together down under the narrow bunk. She saw that his left arm was
+broken. For an instant the girl's heart leaped back to the rage of
+the night when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But pity swallowed
+up every other feeling as she cut the cords from his hands and
+loosened the rope that they had bound in between his teeth.
+
+"Don't talk, Jeff," she commanded. "I can see just what happened. Lie
+easy and get your strength. I've got to take you to French Village at
+once."
+
+She ran out to bring water. When she returned he was sitting dizzily
+on the edge of the bunk. While she bathed his head with the water and
+gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and crooned over him as
+she would over a baby for she saw that he was shaken and half
+delirious with pain.
+
+Brom Bones was standing munching twigs where she had left him. He had
+never before been asked to carry double and he did not like it. But
+the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into his silky black ear
+that he finally gave in.
+
+When they were mounted, she fastened the white collar of her jacket
+into a sling for the boy's broken arm, and with a prayer to the
+heathen Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down the trail.
+
+When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey spoke suddenly:
+
+"Say, Ruth, what's the use trying to save these people? Let's sell
+out while we can and take mother and go away."
+
+"Why, Jeff, dear," she said lightly, "this fight hasn't begun yet.
+Wait till we get to French Village. You'll say something different.
+You'll say just what you said to the Shepherd of the North;
+remember?"
+
+Jeffrey said no more. The girl's heart was weak with the pain she knew
+he was bearing, but she knew that they must go through with this.
+
+All French Village and the farmers of Little Tupper country were
+gathered in front of Arsene Lacomb's store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing
+on the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with his prisoner as he
+thought up to the last possible moment, so he stammered in his speech
+when he saw a big black horse come tearing down the street carrying a
+girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy behind her. Rogers, the
+railroad lawyer beside him, said:
+
+"Go on, man. What's the matter with you?"
+
+The girl drove the horse right in through the crowd until Jeffrey
+Whiting faced Rogers. Then Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain,
+took up his fight again.
+
+"Rogers," he shouted, "you did this. You got Rafe Gadbeau and the
+others to knock me on the head and put me out of the way, so that you
+could spread your lies about me. And you'd have won out, too, if it
+hadn't been for this brave girl here.
+
+"Now, Rogers, you liar," he shouted louder, "I dare you, dare you, to
+tell these people here that I or any of our people have sold you a
+foot of land. I dare you!"
+
+Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau pulled him away. Gadbeau
+knew that crowd. They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and full of
+potential fury. They were already cheering the brave girl. In a few
+minutes they would be hunting the life of the man who had lied to them
+and nearly ruined them.
+
+A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from the saddle, but she waved
+them away and pointed to Jeffrey's broken arm. They helped him down
+and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough's little office.
+
+Ruth saw that her business was finished. She wheeled Brom Bones toward
+home, and gave him his head.
+
+For three glorious miles they fairly flew through the pearly morning
+air along the hard mountain road, and the girl never pulled a line.
+Breakfastless and weary in body, her heart sang the song that it had
+learned in the Glow of Dawn.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE ANSWER
+
+
+The Committee on Franchises was in session in one of the committee
+rooms outside the chamber of the New York State Senate. It was not a
+routine session. A bill was before it, the purpose of which was
+virtually to dispossess some four or five hundred families of their
+homes in the counties of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The bill did
+not say this. It cited the need of adequate transportation in that
+part of the State and proposed that the U. & M. Railroad should be
+granted the right of eminent domain over three thousand square miles
+of the region, in order to help the development of the country.
+
+The committee was composed of five members, three of the majority
+party in the Senate and two of the minority. A political agent of the
+railroad who drew a salary from Racquette County as a judge had just
+finished presenting to the committee the reasons why the people of
+that part of the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill should
+become a law. He had drawn a pathetic picture of the condition of the
+farmers, so long deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He had
+almost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce left to rot up
+there in the hills because the men who toiled to produce it had no
+means of bringing it down to the starving thousands of the cities. The
+scraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that region became in his
+picture vast reservoirs of cheap food, only waiting to be tapped by
+the beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world's poor.
+
+When the judge had finished, one minority member of the committee
+looked at his colleague, the other minority member, and winked. It was
+a grave and respectful wink. It meant that the committee was not often
+privileged to listen to quite such bare-faced effrontery. If the
+hearing had been a secret one they would not have listened to it. But
+the bill had already aroused a storm. So the leader of the majority
+had given orders that the hearing should be public.
+
+So far not a word had been said as to the fact which underlay the
+motives of the bill. Iron had been found in workable quantities in
+those three thousand square miles of hill country. Not a word had been
+said about iron.
+
+No one in the room had listened to the speech with any degree of
+interest. It was intended entirely for the consumption of the outside
+public. Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during its
+delivery. They had been furnished with advance copies of it and had
+already turned them in to their papers. But with the naming of the
+next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around the room.
+
+Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from his place in the rear of the
+room and walked briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall, spare
+figure of a man coming to his sixty years, his hair as white as the
+snow of his hills, with a large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan
+governor, he would have attracted attention under almost any
+circumstances.
+
+Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee, had received his orders
+from the leader of the majority in the Senate that the bill should be
+reported back favourably to that body before night. He had anticipated
+no difficulty. The form of a public hearing had to be gone through
+with. It was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions that
+had been aroused as to the nature of the bill. The speech of the
+Racquette County Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The
+chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising reformers of
+the opposition would come before the committee with time-honoured,
+stock diatribes against the rapacity and greed of railroads in general
+and this one in particular. Then he and his two majority colleagues
+would vote to report the bill favourably, while the two members of the
+minority would vote to report adversely. This, the chairman said, was
+about all a public hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted on
+the coming of the Bishop of Alden.
+
+"The committee would like to hear, sir," began the chairman, as the
+Bishop took his place, "whom you represent in the matter of this
+bill."
+
+The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in what had been a dull
+session of a dull committee, sat with poised pencils while the Bishop
+turned a look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:
+
+"I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of Racquette County."
+
+"I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee quite understands that
+you do not come here in the interest of any one. But the gentleman who
+has just been before us spoke for the farmers who would be most
+directly affected by the prosperity of the railroad, including those
+of your county. Are we to understand that there is opposition in your
+county to the proposed grant?"
+
+"Your committee," said the Bishop, "cannot be ignorant that there is
+the most stubborn opposition to this grant in all three counties. If
+there had not been that opposition, there would have been no call for
+the bill which you are now considering. If the railroad could have
+gotten the options which it tried to get on those farms the grant
+would have been given without question. Your committee knows this
+better than I."
+
+"But," returned the chairman, "we have been advised that the railroad
+was not able to get those options because a boy up there in the
+Beaver River country, who fancied that he had some grievance against
+the railroad people, banded the people together to oppose the options
+in unfair and unlawful ways."
+
+The chairman paused an impressive moment.
+
+"In fact," he resumed, "from what this committee has been able to
+gather, it looks very much as though there were conspiracy in the
+matter, against the U. & M. Railroad. It almost would seem that some
+rival of the railroad in question had used the boy and his fancied
+grievance to manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be proven,
+but there was every appearance."
+
+The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his challenge quietly at the
+feet of the committee.
+
+"The boy, Jeffrey Whiting," he said, "was guided by me. I directed his
+movements from the beginning."
+
+The whole room sat up and leaned forward as one man, alive to the fact
+that a novel and stirring situation was being developed. Everybody had
+understood that the Bishop had come to plead the cause of the
+French-Canadian farmers of the hills.
+
+They had supposed that he would speak only on what was a side issue of
+the case. No one had expected that he would attack the main question
+of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming himself the
+principal in that silent, stubborn fight that had been going on up in
+the hills for six months!
+
+The reporters doubled down to their work and wrote furiously. They
+were trying to throw this unusual man upon a screen before their
+readers. It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product of New
+England, and what was more he had been one of the leaders of that
+collection of striking men who made the Brook Farm "Experiment." He
+had endeared himself to the old generation of Americans by his war
+record as a chaplain. To some of the new generation he was known as
+the Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from the Mohawk Valley to
+the Canadian line and to Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd
+of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to North Creek men knew his
+ways and felt the beating of the great heart of him behind the stern,
+ascetic set of his countenance.
+
+As much as they could of this the reporters were trying to put into
+their notes while Nathan Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That
+well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself into a trap. He had
+been too zealous in announcing his impression that the opposition to
+the U. & M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival. The Bishop had
+taken that ground from under him by a simple stroke of truth. He could
+neither go forward with his charge nor could he retract it.
+
+"Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this committee," he
+temporised, "just why you wished to arouse this opposition to the
+railroad?"
+
+"There is not and has never been any opposition whatever to the
+railroad," said the Bishop. "The bill before your committee has
+nothing to do with the right of way of the railroad. That has already
+been granted. Your bill proposes to confiscate, practically, from the
+present owners a strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly
+eighty miles long. That land is valuable because the experts of the
+railroad know, and the people up there know, and, I think, this
+committee knows that there is iron ore in these hills.
+
+"I have said that I do not represent any one here," the Bishop went
+on. "But there are four hundred families up there in our hills who
+stand to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people. They have no
+voice to reach the world. I have asked to speak before your committee
+because only in this way can the case of my people reach the great,
+final trial court of publicity before the whole State.
+
+"They are a silent people, the people of the hills. You will have
+heard that they are a stubborn people. They are a stubborn people, for
+they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside homes that their
+hands have made just as do the hardy trees of the hills. You cannot
+uproot them by the stroke of a pen.
+
+"These people are my friends and my neighbours. Many of them were once
+my comrades. I know what they think. I know what they feel. I would
+beg your committee to consider very earnestly this question before
+bringing to bear against these people the sovereign power of the
+State. They love their State. Many of them have loved their country to
+the peril of their lives. They live on the little farms that their
+fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness.
+
+"Not through prejudice or ignorance are they opposing this development,
+which will in the end be for the good of the whole region. They are
+opposed to this bill before you because it would give a corporation
+power to drive them from the homes they love, and that without fair
+compensation.
+
+"They are opposed to it because they are Americans. They know what it
+has meant and what it still means to be Americans. And they know that
+this bill is directly against everything that is American.
+
+"They are ever ready to submit themselves to the sovereign will of the
+State, but you will never convince them that this bill is the real
+will of the State. They are fighting men and the sons of fighting men.
+They have fought the course of the railroad in trying to get options
+from them by coercion and trickery. They have been aroused. Their
+homes, poor and wretched as they often are, mean more to them than any
+law you can set on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it. It
+will set a ring of fire and murder about our peaceful hills.
+
+"In the name of high justice, in the name of common honesty, in the
+name--to come to lower levels--of political common sense, I tell you
+this bill should never go back to the Senate.
+
+"It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound upon those who are
+found weak enough to let it pass here."
+
+The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils of the reporters
+could be plainly heard in the hush of the room.
+
+Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating question which he had
+been wanting to put from the beginning.
+
+"Perhaps the committee has been badly informed," he began to the
+Bishop; "we understood that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian
+immigrants and not usually owners of land."
+
+"Is it necessary for me to repeat," said the Bishop, turning sharply,
+"that I am here, Joseph Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours
+and my friends? Does it matter to them or to this committee that I
+wear the badge of a service that they do not understand? I do not come
+before you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come as an owner of
+property. I come because I think the cause of my friends will be
+served by my coming.
+
+"The facts I have laid before you, the warning I have given might as
+well have been sent out direct through the press. But I have chosen to
+come before you, with your permission, because these facts will get a
+wider hearing and a more eager reading coming from this room.
+
+"I do not seek to create sensation here. I have no doubt that some
+of you are thinking that the place for a churchman to speak is in
+his church. But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing to
+create sensation. I am willing that you should say that I have
+gone far beyond the privilege of a witness invited to come before
+your committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should put any
+interpretation you like upon my use of my privilege here, only so
+that my neighbours of the hills shall have their matter put squarely
+and fully before all the people of the State.
+
+"When this matter is once thoroughly understood by the people, then I
+know that no branch of the lawmaking power will dare make itself
+responsible for the passage of this bill."
+
+The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further questions. When he saw
+that none were forthcoming, he thanked the committee and begged leave
+to retire.
+
+As the Bishop passed out of the room the chairman arose and declared
+the public hearing closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporters
+crowded out of the room and scattered through the corridors of the
+Capitol. Four or five reporters bunched themselves about the elevator
+shaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired boy of twenty,
+summed up the matter with irreverent brevity.
+
+"Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway," he said. "Not every bad bill
+has a bishop at the obsequies."
+
+"You can't tell," said the Associated Press man slowly; "they might
+report it out in spite of all that."
+
+"No use," said the youngster shortly. "The Senate wouldn't dare touch
+it once this stuff is in the papers." And he jammed a wad of flimsy
+down into his pocket.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three weeks of a blistering August sun had withered the grasses of the
+hills almost to a powder. The thin soil of the north country, where
+the trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture; so that the heat
+of the short, vicious summer goes down through the roots of the
+vegetation to the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone.
+
+Since June there had been no rain. The tumbling hill streams were
+reduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were
+covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stunted
+timber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man,
+stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattle
+to the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hide
+itself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolen
+away into the depths of the thick woods.
+
+Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a scarred pine on the French
+Village road and sat looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up
+away from the road on either side. Every child of the hills knew the
+menace that a hot dry summer brought to us in those days. The first,
+ruthless cutting of the timber had followed the water courses. Men had
+cut and slashed their way up through the hills without thought of what
+they were leaving behind. They had taken only the prime, sound trees
+that stood handiest to the roll-ways. They had left dead and dying
+trees standing. Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of brush and
+trimmings. The farmers had come pushing into the hills in the wake of
+the lumbermen and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes and
+hay land. But around every piece of cleared land there was an
+ever-encroaching ring of brush and undergrowth and fallen timber that
+held a constant threat for the little home within the ring.
+
+A summer without rain meant a season of grim and unrelenting
+watchfulness. Men armed themselves and tramped through the woods on
+unbidden sentry duty, to see that no campfires were made. Strangers
+and outsiders who were likely to be careless were watched from the
+moment they came into the hills until they were seen safely out of
+them again. Where other children scouted for and fought imaginary
+Indians, the children of our hills hunted and fought imaginary fires.
+The forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo. It was an
+enemy that lurked just outside the little clearing of the farm, out
+there in the underbrush and fallen timber.
+
+Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had ridden up to French
+Village for mail. For some weeks they had known that the railroad
+would try to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the special
+session of the Legislature. And they knew that the session would
+probably come to a close this week.
+
+If that bill became a law, then the resistance of the people of the
+hills had been in vain: Jeffrey had merely led them into a bitter and
+useless fight against a power with which they could not cope. They
+would have to leave their homes, taking whatever a corrupted board of
+condemnation would grant for them. It would be hard on all, but it
+would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness. He would have to
+remember that he had had the chance to make his mother and himself
+independently rich. He had thrown away that chance, and now if his
+fight had failed he would have nothing to bring back to his mother
+but his own miserable failure.
+
+Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop's house in Alden when Jeffrey
+had said proudly that his mother would be glad to follow him into
+poverty. And she smiled now at her own outburst at that time. They had
+both meant it, every word; but the ashes of failure are bitter. And
+she had seen the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through all
+the summer.
+
+She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad had succeeded. She
+would not be able to go back to school, and would probably have to go
+somewhere to get work of some kind, for the little that she would get
+for her farm now would not keep her any time. But that was a little
+matter, or at least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence of
+Jeffrey's failure and what he would consider his disgrace. She did not
+know how he would take it, for during the summer she had seen him in
+vicious moods when he seemed capable of everything.
+
+She saw the speck which he made against the horizon as he came over
+Argyle Mountain three miles away and she saw that he was riding fast.
+He was bringing good news!
+
+It needed only the excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Bones
+whirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moods
+and followed them better than he would have followed whip or rein of
+another. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canter
+and gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came thundering down
+upon them. He pulled up sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two
+horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected to do and their
+two riders gave them no more heed than if they had been wooden
+horses.
+
+"How did you know it was all right, Ruth?"
+
+"I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain," Ruth laughed. "You looked as
+though you were riding Victory down the top side of the earth. How did
+it all come out?"
+
+"Here's the paper," he said, handing her an Albany newspaper of the
+day previous; "it tells the story right off. But I got a letter from
+the Bishop, too," he added.
+
+"Oh, did you?" she exclaimed, looking up from the headline--U. & M.
+Grab Killed in Committee--which she had been feverishly trying to
+translate into her own language. "Please let me hear. I'm never sure
+what headlines mean till I go down to the fine print, and then it's
+generally something else. I can understand what the Bishop says, I'm
+sure."
+
+"Well, it's only short," said Jeffrey, unfolding the letter. "He
+leaves out all the part that he did himself."
+
+"Of course," said Ruth simply. "He always does."
+
+"He says:
+
+"'You will see from the Albany papers, which will probably reach you
+before this does, that the special session of the Legislature closed
+to-night and that the railroad's bill was not reported to the Senate.
+It had passed the Assembly, as you know. The bill aroused a measure of
+just public anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently
+thought it the part of wisdom not to risk a contest over it in the
+open Senate. So there can be no legislative action in favour of the
+railroad before December at the earliest, and I regard it as doubtful
+that the matter will be brought up even then.'
+
+"You see," said Jeffrey, "from this you'd never know that he was there
+present at all. And it was just his speech before the committee that
+aroused that public anger. Then he goes on:
+
+"'But we must not make the mistake of presuming that the matter ends
+here. You and your people are just where you were in the beginning.
+Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not in the nature of
+things that a corporation which has spent an enormous amount of money
+in constructing a line with the one purpose of getting to your lands
+should now give up the idea of getting them by reason of a mere
+legislative setback. They have not entered into this business in
+any half-hearted manner. They are bound to carry it through
+somehow--anyhow. We must realise that.
+
+"'We need not speculate upon the soul or the conscience of a
+corporation or the lack of those things. We know that this corporation
+will have an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must watch for that
+answer. What their future methods or their plans may be I think no man
+can tell. Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed. But there will
+be an answer. While rejoicing that a fear of sound public opinion has
+been on your side, we must never forget that there will be an answer.
+
+"'In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond the limits which men
+set for the proper activities of a priest of the church. I do not
+apologise. I have done this, partly because your people are my own,
+my friends and my comrades of old, partly because you yourself
+came to me in a confidence which I do not forget, partly--and most,
+perhaps--because where my people and their rights are in question I
+have never greatly respected those limits which men set. I put
+these things before you so that when the answer comes you will
+remember that you engaged yourself in this business solely in
+defence of the right. So it is not your personal fight and you must
+try to keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a quarrel.
+The struggle is a larger thing than that and you must keep your heart
+larger still and above it. I fear that you will sorely need to
+remember this.
+
+"'My sincerest regards to your family and to all my friends in the
+hills, not forgetting your friend Ruth.' That's all," said Jeffrey,
+folding the letter. "I wish he'd said more about how he managed the
+thing."
+
+"Isn't it enough to know that he did manage it, without bothering
+about how? That is the way he does everything."
+
+"I suppose I ought to be satisfied," said Jeffrey as he gathered up
+his reins. "But I wonder what he means by that last part of the
+letter. It sounds like a warning to me."
+
+"It is a warning to you," said Ruth thoughtfully.
+
+"Why, what does it mean? What does he think I'm likely to do?"
+
+"Maybe he does not mean what you are likely to do exactly," said Ruth,
+trying to choose her words wisely; "maybe he is thinking more of what
+you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to your heart rather than
+to your head or about your actions."
+
+"Now I don't know what you mean, either," said Jeffrey a little
+discontentedly.
+
+"I know I oughtn't to try to tell you what the Bishop means, for I
+don't know myself. But I've been worried and I'm sure your mother has
+too," said Ruth reluctantly.
+
+"But what is it?" said Jeffrey quickly. "What have I been doing?"
+
+"I'm sure it isn't anything you've done, nor anything maybe that
+you're likely to do. I don't know just what it is, or how to say it.
+But, Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in the Bishop's
+house at Alden?"
+
+"Yes, and I remember what you said, too."
+
+"We both meant it," Ruth returned gravely, not attempting to evade any
+of the meaning that he had thrown into his words. "And we both mean it
+now, I'm sure. But there's a difference, Jeffrey, a difference with
+you."
+
+"I don't know it," he said a little shortly. "I'm still doing just the
+thing I started out to do that day."
+
+"Yes. But that day you started out to fight for the people. Now you
+are fighting for yourself-- Oh, not for anything selfish! Not for
+anything you want for yourself! I know that. But you have made the
+fight your own. It is your own quarrel now. You are fighting because
+you have come to hate the railroad people."
+
+"Well, you wouldn't expect me to love them?"
+
+"No. I'm not blaming you, Jeff. But--but, I'm afraid. Hate is a
+terrible thing. I wish you were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you.
+I'm afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through all the long,
+long years of life. Can you see? I'm afraid of something that might go
+deeper than all this, something that might go as deep as life. After
+all, that's what I'm afraid of, I guess--Life, great, big, terrible,
+menacing, Life!"
+
+"My life?" Jeffrey asked gruffly.
+
+"I have faced that," the girl answered evenly, "just as you have faced
+it. And I am not afraid of that. No. It's what you might do in
+anger--if they hurt you again. Something that would scar your heart
+and your soul. Jeffrey, do you know that sometimes I've seen the
+worst, the worst--even _murder_ in your eyes!"
+
+"I wish," the boy returned shortly, "the Bishop would keep his
+religion out of all this. He's a good man and a good friend," he went
+on, "but I don't like this religion coming into everything."
+
+"But how can he? He cannot keep religion apart from life and right and
+wrong. What good would religion be if it did not go ahead of us in
+life and show us the way?"
+
+"But what's the use?" the boy said grudgingly. "What good does it do?
+You wouldn't have thought of any of this only for that last part of
+his letter. Why does that have to come into everything? It's the
+Catholic Church all over again, always pushing in everywhere."
+
+"Isn't that funny," the girl said, brightening; "I have cried myself
+sick thinking just that same thing. I have gone almost frantic
+thinking that if I once gave in to the Church it would crush me and
+make me do everything that I didn't want to do. And now I never think
+of it. Life goes along really just as though being a Catholic didn't
+make any difference at all."
+
+"That's because you've given in to it altogether. You don't even know
+that you want to resist. You're swallowed up in it."
+
+The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before she answered.
+
+"It's the queerest thing, isn't it, Jeff," she said finally in a
+thoughtful, friendly way, "how two people can fight about religion?
+Now you don't care a particle about it one way or the other. And
+I--I'd rather not talk about it. And yet, we were just now within an
+inch of quarrelling bitterly about it. Why is it?"
+
+"I don't know. I'm sorry, Ruth," the boy apologised slowly. "It's none
+of my business, anyway."
+
+They were just coming over the long hill above Ruth's home. Below them
+stretched the long sweep of the road down past her house and up the
+other slope until it lost itself around the shoulder of Lansing
+Mountain.
+
+Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his big roan horse up the
+hill towards them at a heart-breaking pace.
+
+"That's 'My' Stocking's roan," said Jeffrey, straightening in his
+saddle; "I'd know that horse three miles away."
+
+"But what's he carrying?" cried Ruth excitedly, as she peered eagerly
+from under her shading hand. "Look. Across his saddle. Rifles! _Two_
+of them!"
+
+Brom Bones, sensing the girl's excitement, was already pulling at his
+bit, eager for a wild race down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long,
+sharp look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly to the side of
+the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the
+things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was
+no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes
+downhill.
+
+The rider was Myron Stocking from over in the Crooked Lake country, as
+Jeffrey had supposed. He pulled up as he recognised the two who waited
+for him by the roadside, and when he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew
+by sight, he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as she was to
+hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces farther away from them. They would
+not talk freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey would tell her
+all that she needed to know.
+
+The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences and Ruth heard
+Stocking conclude:
+
+"Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun o' yours. Your Ma didn't
+see."
+
+Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he came to Ruth.
+
+"There's some strangers over in the hills that maybe ought to be
+watched. The country's awful dry," he added quietly. He knew that Ruth
+would need no further explanation.
+
+He pulled the Bishop's letter from his pocket and handed it to Ruth,
+saying:
+
+"Take this and the paper along to Mother. She'll want to see them
+right away. And say, Ruth," he went on, as he looked anxiously at the
+great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between them
+and his home on the hill three miles away, "the country's awful dry.
+If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of this
+country. You can make them go. Nobody else could."
+
+The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to ask
+questions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey's pauses and
+silences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her a
+trust to look after the ones whom he loved.
+
+She put out her hand to his and said simply:
+
+"I'm glad we didn't quarrel, Jeff."
+
+"I was a fool," said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. "But I'll
+remember. Forgive me, please, Ruth."
+
+"There's nothing to forgive--ever--between us, Jeffrey. Go now," she
+said softly.
+
+Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over the
+hill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they
+were out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifle
+across the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart.
+She would have given everything in her world to have had back what she
+had said of seeing murder in Jeffrey's eyes.
+
+Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village road
+for an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a long
+winding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country.
+
+"We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away," said Jeffrey, as
+they came about sundown to a fork in their trail. "The breeze comes
+straight down from the east. That's where the danger is, if there is
+any."
+
+"I suppose you're right, Jeff. But it means we'll have to sleep out if
+we go that way."
+
+"I guess that won't hurt us," Jeffrey returned. "If anything happens
+we might have to sleep out a good many nights--and a lot of other
+people would have to do the same."
+
+"All right then," Stocking agreed. "We'll get a bite and give the
+horses a feed and a rest at Hosmer's, that's about two miles over the
+hills here; and then we can go on as far as you like."
+
+At Hosmer's they got food enough for two days in the hills, and
+having fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higher
+woods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the great
+trees were standing from the beginning, because they had been too high
+up to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels.
+Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops of
+the trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving the
+horses to pick their own canny footing up the trail.
+
+"Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?" Jeffrey asked as they rode
+along. "You know, the man that was in French Village this summer."
+
+"I don't know," Stocking answered. "You see they came up to the end of
+the rails, at Grafton, on a handcar. And then they scattered. Nobody's
+sure that he's seen any of 'em since. But they must be in the hills
+somewhere. And Rafe Gadbeau's with 'em. You can bet on that. That's
+all we've got to go on. But it may be a-plenty."
+
+"It's enough to set us on the move, anyway," said Jeffrey. "They have
+no business in the hills. They're bound to be up to mischief of some
+sort. And there's just one big mischief that they can do. Can we make
+Bald Mountain before daylight?"
+
+"Oh, certainly; that'll be easy. We'll get a little light when we're
+through this belt of heavy woods and then we can push along. We ought
+to get up there by two o'clock. It ain't light till near five. That'll
+give us a little sleep, if we feel like it."
+
+True to Stocking's calculation they came out upon the rocky, thinly
+grassed knobs of Bald Mountain shortly before two o'clock. It was a
+soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain in the air somewhere,
+for there was no dew; but it might be on the other side of the divide
+or it might be miles below on the lowlands.
+
+Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in the vicinity of the
+mountain, or were heading toward here. For the word of the menace had
+gone through the hills that day, and men would decide, as Jeffrey had
+done, that the danger would come from this direction. But they had not
+heard anything to show the presence of others, nor did they care to
+give any signals of their own whereabouts.
+
+As for those others, the possible enemy, who had left the railroad
+that morning and had scattered into the hills, if their purpose was
+the one that men feared, they, too, would be near here. But it was
+useless to look for them in the dark: neither was anything to be
+feared from them before morning. Men do not start forest fires in the
+night. There is little wind. A fire would probably die out of itself.
+And the first blaze would rouse the whole country.
+
+The two hobbled their horses with the bridle reins and lay down in the
+open to wait for morning. Neither had any thought of sleep. But the
+softness of the night, the pungent odour of the tamarack trees
+floating up to them from below, and their long ride, soon began to
+tell on them. Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch.
+
+"Curl up and go to sleep, 'My,'" he said, shaking himself. "You might
+as well. I'll wake you in an hour."
+
+A ready snore was the only answer.
+
+Morning coming over the higher eastern hills found them stiff and
+weary, but alert. The woods below them were still banked in darkness
+as they ate their dry food and caught their horses for the day that
+was before them. There was no water to be had up here, and they knew
+their horses must be gotten down to some water course before night.
+
+A half circle of open country belted by heavy woods lay just below
+them. Eagerly, as the light crept down the hill, they scanned the area
+for sign of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently they had the world
+to themselves. A fresh morning breeze came down over the mountain and
+watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops of the distant
+trees. The same thought made both men grip their rifles and search
+more carefully the ground below them, for that innocent breeze blowing
+straight down towards their homes and loved ones was a potential
+enemy more to be feared than all the doings of men.
+
+Down to the right, two miles or more away, a man came out of the
+shadow of the woods. They could only see that he was a big man and
+stout. There was nothing about him to tell them whether he was friend
+or foe, of the hills or a stranger. Without waiting to see who he was
+or what he did, the two dove for their saddles and started their
+horses pell-mell down the hill towards him.
+
+He saw them at once against the bare brow of the hill, and ran back
+into the wood.
+
+In another instant they knew what he was and what was his business.
+
+They saw a light moving swiftly along the fringe of the woods. Behind
+the light rose a trail of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a line
+of living fire. The man was running, dragging a flaming torch through
+the long dried grass and brush!
+
+The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks, regardless of paths or
+horses' legs, would gladly have killed the man as he ran. But it was
+too far for even a random shot. They could only ride on in reckless
+rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat it to death with their hands, to
+stamp it into the earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and a
+fair shot at the fiend there within the wood.
+
+Before they had stumbled half the distance down the hill, a wave of
+leaping flame a hundred feet long was hurling itself upon the forest.
+They could not stamp that fire out. But they could kill that man!
+
+The man ran back behind the wall of fire to where he had started and
+began to run another line of fire in the other direction. At that
+moment Stocking yelled:
+
+"There's another starting, straight in front!"
+
+"Get him," Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder. "I'm going to kill this
+one."
+
+Stocking turned slightly and made for a second light which he had seen
+starting. Jeffrey rode on alone, unslinging his rifle and driving
+madly. His horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down the hill, now
+saw the fire and started to bolt off at a tangent. Jeffrey fought with
+him a furious moment, trying to force him toward the fire and the man.
+Then, seeing that he could not conquer the fright of the horse and
+that his man was escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and
+leaping free with his gun ran towards the man.
+
+The man was dodging in and out now among the trees, but still using
+his torch and moving rapidly away.
+
+Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man in his zigzag until he
+was within easy distance. But the man continued weaving his way among
+the trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim. Jeffrey dropped
+to one knee and steadied the sights of his rifle until they closed
+upon the running man and clung to him.
+
+Suddenly the man turned in an open space and faced about. It was
+Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He was unarmed, but he must be killed.
+
+"I am going to kill him," said Jeffrey under his breath, as he again
+fixed the sights of his rifle, this time full on the man's breast.
+
+A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers threw up his hands, took a
+half step forward, and fell on his face.
+
+Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger which he had not
+pulled, ran forward to where the man lay.
+
+He was lying face down, his arms stretched out wide at either side,
+his fingers convulsively clutching at tufts of grass.
+
+He was dying. No need for a second look.
+
+His hat had fallen off to a little distance. There was a clean round
+hole in the back of the skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair
+showed just the merest streak of red.
+
+Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still flaming railroad
+torch, with which he had done his work.
+
+Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction from which the shot
+had come. There was no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no
+sign of another human being anywhere.
+
+Away back of him he heard shots, one, two, three; Stocking, probably,
+or some of the other men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at
+other fleeing figures in the woods.
+
+He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the wick and stamped it into
+a patch of burnt ground, threw the torch back from the fire line, and
+started clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of his
+rifle.
+
+He was quickly brought to his senses, when the forgotten cartridge in
+his gun accidentally exploded and the bullet went whizzing past his
+ear. He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp piece of sapling
+he began to work furiously, but systematically at the line of fire.
+
+The line was thin here, where it had really only that moment been
+started, and he made some headway. But as he worked along to where it
+had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless. Still he clung to
+his work. It was the only thing that his numbed brain could think of
+to do for the moment.
+
+He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the loose dirt furiously after
+the fire as it ran away from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire
+and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept up his trousers
+and shirt and up even to his hair. And still the fire ran away from
+him, away down the hill after its real prey. He looked farther on
+along the line and saw that it was not now a line but a charging,
+rushing river of flame that ran down the hill, twenty feet at a jump.
+Nothing, nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain could now
+stop that torrent of fire.
+
+He stepped back. There was nothing to be done here now, behind the
+fire. Nothing to be done but to get ahead of it and save what could be
+saved. He looked around for his horse.
+
+Just then men came riding along the back of the line, Stocking and old
+Erskine Beasley in the lead. They came up to where Jeffrey was
+standing and looked on beyond moodily to where the body of Rogers
+lay.
+
+Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell upon the little group
+of horsemen and upon the boy standing there.
+
+Myron Stocking spoke at last:
+
+"Mine got away, Jeff," he said slowly.
+
+Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the meaning of the words
+flashed upon him.
+
+"I didn't do that!" he exclaimed hastily. "Somebody else shot him from
+the woods. My gun went off accidental."
+
+Silence fell again upon the little group of men. They did not look at
+Jeffrey. They had heard but one shot. The shot from the woods had been
+too muffled for them to hear.
+
+Again Stocking broke the silence.
+
+"What difference does it make," he said. "Any of us would have done it
+if we could."
+
+"But I didn't! I tell you I didn't," shouted Jeffrey. "The shot from
+the woods got ahead of me. That man was facing me. He was shot from
+behind!"
+
+Old Erskine Beasley took command.
+
+"What difference does it make, as Stocking says. We've got live men
+and women and children to think about to-day," he said. "Straighten
+him out decent. Then divide and go around the fire both ways. The
+alarm can't travel half fast enough for this breeze, and it's rising,
+too," he added.
+
+"But I tell you--!" Jeffrey began again. Then he saw how useless it
+was.
+
+He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which even in the face of
+this unheard-of terror had preferred to venture back toward his
+master.
+
+He caught the horse, mounted, and started to ride south with the party
+that was to try to get around the fire from that side.
+
+He rode with them. They were his friends. But he was not with them.
+There was a circle drawn around him. He was separated from them. They
+probably did not feel it, but he felt it. It is a circle which draws
+itself ever around a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of
+blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may say that they themselves
+would wish to have done it. But the circle is there.
+
+Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She would not see that circle.
+
+Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a few hours before said
+that she had sometimes seen even murder in his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE
+
+
+Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the fire raved exultingly,
+leaping and skipping fantastically as it ran. It was a prisoner
+released from the bondage of the elements that had held it. It was a
+spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom. It was a flood raging down a
+valley. It was a maniac at large.
+
+The broad base of the mountain where it sat upon the backs of the
+lower hills spread out fanwise to a width of five miles. The fire
+spread its wings as it came down until it swept the whole apron of the
+mountain. A five-mile wave of solid flame rolled down upon the hills.
+
+Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early browse missed the
+juicy dew from the grass. They looked to where the sun should be
+coming over the mountain and instead they saw the sun coming down the
+side of the mountain in a blanket of white smoke. They left their feed
+and began to huddle together, mooing nervously to each other about
+this thing and sniffing the air and pawing the earth.
+
+Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle in to milking looked
+blinking up at the mountain, stood a moment before their numb minds
+understood what their senses were telling them, then ran shouting back
+to the farm houses, throwing open pasture gates and knocking down
+lengths of fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear in their
+hearts, ran straight to the barns and mounting the best horses fled
+down the roads to the west. For the hireling flees because he is a
+hireling.
+
+Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children came tumbling out of
+the houses, to look up at the death that was coming down to them. Some
+cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and shook foolish fists at the
+oncoming enemy. Some fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God
+of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the house for his or her
+treasure; a little bag of money under a mattress, or a babe in its
+crib, or a little rifle, or a dolly of rags.
+
+Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm wagons. The treasures were
+quickly bundled in. Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into
+the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at the heads of the
+sweating horses, then climbed to their places in the wagons and took
+the reins. For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind mad horses,
+they would have to hold the lives of the children, the horses, and,
+incidentally, of themselves in their hands. But they were capable
+hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother hearts that went
+with them.
+
+They would have preferred to stay with the men, these women. But it
+was the law that they should take the brood and run to safety.
+
+Men stood watching the wagons until they shot out of sight behind the
+trees of the road. Then they turned back to the hopeless, probably
+useless fight. They could do little or nothing. But it was the law
+that men must stay and make the fight. They must go out with shovels
+to the very edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of new earth
+which the running fire could not cross. Thus they might divert the
+fire a little. They might even divide it, if the wind died down a
+little, so that it would roll on to either side of their homes.
+
+This was their business. There was little chance that they would
+succeed. Probably they would have to drop shovels at the last moment
+and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But this was the law,
+that every man must stay and try to make his own little clearing the
+point of an entering wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No man, no
+ten thousand men could stop the fire. But, against all probabilities,
+some one man might be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground,
+or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of it. That sector
+might be fought and narrowed down by other men until it was beaten.
+And so something would be gained. For this men stayed, stifled and
+blinded, and fought on until the last possible moment, and then ran
+past their already smoking homes and down the wind for life.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake of four other men down a
+long spiral course towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he
+would have ridden at their head. He would have taken the place of
+leadership and command among them which he had for months been taking
+in the fight against the railroad. Probably he could still have had
+that place among them if he had tried to assert himself, for men had
+come to have a habit of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear,
+dispirited and miserable.
+
+They were trying to get around the fire, so that they might hang upon
+its flank and beat it in upon itself. There was no thought now of
+getting ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm. That rolling
+curtain of smoke would have already aroused every living thing ahead
+of it. They could only hope to get to the end of the line of fire and
+fight it inch by inch to narrow the path of destruction that it was
+making for itself.
+
+If the wind had held stiff and straight down the mountain it would
+have driven the fire ahead in a line only a little wider than its
+original front. But the shape of the mountain caught the light breeze
+as it came down and twisted it away always to the side. So that the
+end of the fire line was not a thin edge of scattered fire that could
+be fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted funnel of flame
+that leaped and danced ever outward and onward.
+
+Half way down the mountain they thought that they had outflanked it.
+They slid from their horses and began to beat desperately at the brush
+and grasses among the trees. They gained upon it. They were doing
+something. They shouted to each other when they had driven it back
+even a foot. They fought it madly for the possession of a single tree.
+They were gaining. They were turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat
+began to streak the caking grime upon their faces. There was no air to
+breathe, only the hot breath of fire. But it was heartsome work, for
+they were surely pushing the fire in upon itself.
+
+A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smoke
+about them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves
+pressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.
+
+When they could look they saw a wall of fire bearing down upon them
+from three sides. The wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise
+so that it had surrounded the meagre little space that they had
+cleared and had now outflanked them. Their own manoeuvre had been
+turned against them. There was but one way to run, straight down the
+hill with the fire roaring and panting after them. It was a playful,
+tricky monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing at their
+puny efforts.
+
+Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves out of the path of
+the flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by
+them on its way.
+
+Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap had
+caught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following their
+instinct to hunt water.
+
+The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They were
+five already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must
+follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run at
+their best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch of
+the way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from
+spreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fire
+shoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished what
+these five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But they
+hung on in desperation.
+
+Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fire
+back a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something.
+And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behind
+and around them so that they had to race for life.
+
+Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and among
+the broken hills. Here their work was entirely hopeless and they knew
+it. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of being
+cut off and completely surrounded. Here the fire did not keep any
+steady edge that they could follow and attack. The wind eddied and
+whirled about among the broken peaks of the hills in every direction
+and with it the fire ran apparently at will.
+
+When they tried to hold it to one side of a hill and were just
+beginning to think that they had won, a sudden sweep of the wind would
+send a ring of fire around to the other side so that they saw
+themselves again and again surrounded and almost cut off.
+
+Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold the fire to the north
+side of the Chain. The Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly
+east and west. It divides the hill country into fairly even portions.
+If they could keep the fire north of the lakes they would save the
+southern half of the country. Their own homes all lay to the north of
+the lakes and they were now doomed. But that was a matter that did not
+enter here. What was gone was gone. Their loved ones would have had
+plenty of warning and would be out of the way by now. The men were
+fighting the enemy merely to save what could be saved. And as is the
+way of men in fight they began to make it a personal quarrel with the
+fire.
+
+They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. It was no longer
+an impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was a
+cunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its
+eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and
+bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the
+roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips
+were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it.
+
+They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of them
+had forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last night
+and who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten those
+other men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men into
+the hills to do this thing.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and the
+fight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sight
+of the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. He
+fought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, until
+there was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in his
+brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quarter
+given or asked with the demon of the fire.
+
+Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south and
+joined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, where
+the Chain began and stretched away to the west. If they could hold
+the fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along the
+north side of the lakes and the other half of the country would be
+safe.
+
+The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. The
+five weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollen
+tongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strength
+from the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back down
+the north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with
+charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it.
+
+They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and their
+work would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! God
+in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it!
+To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and
+_drink_!
+
+Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Here
+was the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder,
+fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath of
+the fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed the
+fire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. They
+had won! It could not beat them now!
+
+As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of the
+placid lake below him one of the new men, who still had voice, raised
+a shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voice
+croaking out what would have been a cry of triumph.
+
+But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they had
+safely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry,
+flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flames
+went dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread out
+around the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, the
+thing was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flames
+went roaring to the top of it.
+
+The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to get
+themselves out of that encircling death.
+
+When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw the
+full extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment of
+victory.
+
+Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain--but they
+themselves could not get near the lake.
+
+Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they could
+not reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line between
+them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet in
+the lake.
+
+Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted silent teeth, according
+to the nature that was in each.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men
+pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke
+and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not
+men of the hills.
+
+They were!--They were the real enemy!--They were two of those who had
+set the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headed
+straight for the lake and had gotten there. _They_ were safe. And
+_they_ had _water_!
+
+All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting fire
+fury of the day, rushed back upon him.
+
+He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he had
+not.
+
+Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill those
+two there in the water. _In the water!_
+
+He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of the
+fire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward,
+his face buried in a patch of bare earth.
+
+Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. When
+they had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into him
+with their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As he
+understood, he turned on his face moaning:
+
+"I didn't kill Rogers. I wish I had--I wish I had."
+
+And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as the
+intolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canal
+and the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of the
+morning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, four
+hours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good wash
+and rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was he
+querulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow and
+dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop had
+found plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentle
+philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood the
+faults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour at
+the back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, Joseph
+Winthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop.
+
+But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing in
+Albany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He had
+appealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And the
+conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that the
+U. & M. Railroad must not dare to drive the people of the hills from
+their homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Then
+the conscience of the people of the State had gone off about its
+business, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The public
+would forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with a
+mild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few days
+at most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But the
+railroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behind
+it who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results.
+
+He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strike
+in some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the hand
+that struck.
+
+Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of the
+first hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of the
+mountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blue
+of the sky behind them.
+
+Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where Old
+Forge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the
+divide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The day
+was very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew that
+morning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the early
+morning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now.
+
+Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journey
+up this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fair
+day. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the top
+of other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you remember
+that his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand square
+miles of broken country, you will see that he had need of marking
+posts.
+
+Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach from
+the western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country to
+the east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany and
+around by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east by
+Malone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into the
+mountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre of
+his diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, south
+and west.
+
+He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled,
+perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station he
+went out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.
+
+Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where he
+knew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he had
+recognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountain
+had suddenly been moved into the gap. He went back to his seat and
+sat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the whole
+contour of the hills that he had known was changed under his very
+eyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smooth
+skulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks should
+have been.
+
+He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind,
+and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of
+Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heart
+whose passions ran deep below a placid surface.
+
+At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped and
+hurried to the operator's window to ask if any news had gone down the
+wire of a fire in the hills.
+
+Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table "listening in"
+with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going over
+the wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company,
+between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the office
+at Steuben.
+
+The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.
+
+Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:
+
+"This ain't the bulletin board. We're busy."
+
+The Bishop stood quiet a moment.
+
+Then Jerry looked up. The face looking calmly through the window was
+the face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder of
+certain things.
+
+Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. He
+grabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped:
+
+"I--I'm sorry, Bishop! I--I--didn't hear what you said."
+
+The Bishop--if one might say it--grinned. Then he said quickly:
+
+"I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anything
+on the wire?"
+
+Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop's mouth. The beet red
+colour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles were
+coming back. He was now coherent.
+
+No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the
+wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed
+abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call."
+
+Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica," he said. They waited
+a little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call
+everything," Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the
+benefit of the Bishop.
+
+"It must be big, Bishop," he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call--"
+
+But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing
+train.
+
+At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house.
+Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the
+housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady's
+saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the
+hills.
+
+It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no
+telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a
+half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among
+the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated
+country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady's
+clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the
+matter no more than a mild wonder.
+
+For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road
+over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the
+winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He
+thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on
+that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But
+more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up
+there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all.
+
+He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started
+accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men
+into the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were
+caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody
+justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady's
+horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his
+well fed life.
+
+Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther.
+Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of
+keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for a
+fresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had just
+slid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop's destination in the
+hills--which was vague, and his business--which was still more vague.
+He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the whole
+matter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have the
+fresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.
+
+The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corben
+believed that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the
+diocese. Corben did not believe that.
+
+In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to
+believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in
+his pockets he pressed on into the high hills.
+
+Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road.
+But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe
+of the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the
+origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond
+that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.
+
+Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones,
+and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask
+a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the
+situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning
+by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the
+children. That was all they could tell.
+
+As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones
+escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew
+without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women
+would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger.
+
+In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory
+authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to
+the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea
+that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself
+in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the
+mere argument that he was a man.
+
+The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what
+she knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road
+yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in
+the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald
+Mountain.
+
+The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched.
+He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the
+breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and
+futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of
+that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even
+than the one of the fire itself.
+
+"He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth
+had to tell.
+
+"Yes. We had just read it."
+
+"He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly.
+
+"Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him," the girl answered
+simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer
+implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.
+
+"They will all be driven in upon French Village," said the Bishop
+slowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills.
+Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road
+from here there, is it open, do you know?"
+
+"No one has come down from that far," said Ruth. "We have watched the
+people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the
+lake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the road
+certainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes
+down."
+
+"I must hurry, then," said the Bishop, gripping his reins.
+
+"Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will be
+trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a
+few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot
+go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost."
+
+"Well, I can always come back," said the Bishop lightly, as he set his
+horse up the hill.
+
+"But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop," Ruth pleaded after
+him. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on the
+road!"
+
+But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he
+heard or not, he did not answer or look back.
+
+Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know
+whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a
+quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not
+drive him back. She knew that.
+
+She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which
+he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be
+driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and hunted
+alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills
+would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside
+it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and
+the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be
+trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek
+safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death
+just as certain but which they would prefer to face.
+
+The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was
+riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be
+among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.
+
+But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and
+before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.
+
+"I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs.
+Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will
+catch you before long."
+
+"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you.
+Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet,
+and won't be for some time."
+
+Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day
+long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did
+not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to
+run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run
+very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the
+hill.
+
+But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him.
+When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile
+away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.
+
+She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all
+against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances
+stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the
+chances and was ready to measure himself against them.
+
+"Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up
+the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too
+late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid.
+Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like a
+man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all
+about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God's
+business. I wonder."
+
+Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of
+the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a
+pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired from
+the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that
+he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he
+disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into
+the sky.
+
+Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to
+the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming,
+sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward
+her home.
+
+All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had
+passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present
+among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting
+to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never
+before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her.
+
+For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a
+living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined
+course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down
+the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open
+chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and
+surround them.
+
+While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but
+the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This
+was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep
+in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the
+level lands and safety.
+
+The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid front
+beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the
+Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and
+get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was
+sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely
+before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great
+limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he
+would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind
+whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead
+of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the
+road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander
+aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him.
+
+Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need
+her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw
+the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril
+from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life.
+He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find
+him and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he did
+not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the
+attempt.
+
+Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home.
+For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his
+flanks--to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing
+like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for he
+had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the
+stroke of the whip to madden him.
+
+Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red
+terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not
+understand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of rising
+excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:
+
+"You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way
+before, did I? But it's for life--a good man's life! You can make it.
+I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. You
+can make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It _can't_ hurt us! Bromie, dear,
+I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!"
+
+She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon her
+hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw
+that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was
+going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet
+body.
+
+But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that
+red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point
+just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came?
+She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where
+the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she
+could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting
+down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were
+whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should
+hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The
+girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him
+so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged
+straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road.
+
+A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and
+reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he
+felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on
+again, through the smoke and out into the good air.
+
+The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed
+them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared,
+either.
+
+Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and
+turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away
+with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already
+leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire
+from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where
+everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with
+the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter
+much.
+
+Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the
+hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her
+loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at
+the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the
+men who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it.) She wanted
+vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take
+revenge in the way of men.
+
+But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and
+for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And
+she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our
+trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive
+those who trespass against us," she meant that, too.
+
+The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal
+another.
+
+Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire
+burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but
+a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and
+to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole
+horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be
+coming down upon the whole world.
+
+She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of
+herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the
+road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out
+of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little
+moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there
+was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost
+certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she
+could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop
+would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom
+Bones for his brave best.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to
+French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the
+sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white
+smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show
+that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the
+sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come
+to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance
+but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.
+
+He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty
+sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest
+shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he
+would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the
+fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he
+would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through
+somehow.
+
+He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran
+straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him,
+sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading
+steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill
+before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed
+the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill
+he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French
+Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous
+horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and
+make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far
+from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.
+
+Then he came to the top of the hill.
+
+He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that
+same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight
+slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran
+straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could
+see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road.
+This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided
+the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still
+moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the
+hill where he stood.
+
+Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than
+he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse
+and looked.
+
+Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was
+marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given
+its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not
+have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road
+clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid
+wall of fire.
+
+There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The
+way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But
+at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the
+fire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed in
+entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So,
+if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe
+again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French
+Village.
+
+Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick
+upon him.
+
+His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the
+shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop
+dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the
+horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture
+land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way.
+
+Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have
+expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood
+stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look.
+
+"I am sorry, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You have done your
+best. And I--have done my worst. You did not deserve this."
+
+He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, two
+miles away and a thousand feet below.
+
+The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into
+the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to
+the west down through the great trees, travelling faster than any
+horse could have been driven.
+
+The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking
+mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an
+unbroken line--death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with
+a calm and certain steadiness of purpose--death. On the hill to the
+west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift
+line of fire coming down the northern side of the square--death. One
+narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the
+north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few
+minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and
+running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With
+a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it.
+
+With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over
+the horse and came heavily to the ground.
+
+"You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance," he said, as he
+hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle.
+
+He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed.
+
+"We stay together, then." And the Bishop mounted again.
+
+Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around
+them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope.
+No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it
+was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying
+equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran
+through the grass by his horse's feet.
+
+One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility
+that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned
+away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might
+be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding
+nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this,
+the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west.
+
+Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a
+bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to
+be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in
+hand.
+
+Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he
+would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his
+hand.
+
+But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb
+and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him,
+the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of
+the thing than he could see heroism.
+
+He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certain
+men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was
+all. He had meant well. God meant better.
+
+Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently
+with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the
+Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this
+square of fire.
+
+"It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thought
+I'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'll
+follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks," she yelled back over her shoulder, "we
+can make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. But
+we won't _burn_!"
+
+Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under
+command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to
+think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse
+followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck
+path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath
+or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of
+what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.
+
+They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom
+Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw
+that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent
+and perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking down
+he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks
+below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to
+the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the
+lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks.
+Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.
+
+It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side
+of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came
+slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop
+brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light.
+The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing.
+But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe
+Gadbeau.
+
+The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, then
+crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck
+and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.
+
+The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised
+the Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips
+there came the moan:
+
+_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse--"_
+
+With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in which
+the French people began the telling of their sins in confession. And
+she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.
+
+She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking of
+Jeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like--the
+Catholic Church always turning up in everything.
+
+She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up there
+behind that awful veil of red.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD
+
+
+The Bishop laid the man's head back so that he lay as easy as it was
+possible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of his
+which was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country.
+
+But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw the
+Bishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know
+what it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, only
+continued to mumble the words with which they had begun:
+
+_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--"
+
+Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he could
+speak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue of
+his mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one of
+these.
+
+Again the Bishop lowered the man's head and changed the position of
+the body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouth
+with his hat.
+
+Now the man tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp
+effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he
+forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of
+encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise,
+recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada
+have been drilling into the children for the last three hundred
+years.
+
+Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it worked
+easily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At that
+time he had received the Sacrament. He went through the "table of
+sins" with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses a
+step in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of the
+young men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in the
+sawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill country
+would have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting in
+the camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down to
+spend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. The
+Bishop had heard the story ten thousand times.
+
+But now--_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--there was something more, something
+that would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. It
+had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the
+feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For the
+Bishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, just
+below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a
+wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying
+where he fell.
+
+He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolled
+itself to his mind.
+
+"I die, Mon Pere, I die," he began between gasps. "I die. Since the
+afternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down,
+if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have lain
+down to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.
+
+"All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till I
+had found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here I
+breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran out
+from the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not run
+out of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire and
+fought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. All
+the day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the fire
+when I would run out.
+
+"They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with the
+men who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to the
+fire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they went
+to set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale.
+
+"Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All were
+drinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. _Mon
+Pere_, I struck no blow. But my knife--my knife was found in the man's
+heart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad that
+comes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showed
+the knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word to
+the law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only to
+me he said, 'Some day I may need you.'
+
+"Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he was
+not a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He
+would buy the land from the people.
+
+"The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he came
+again. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He must
+force the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. 'You,'
+he said, 'I need you.'
+
+"_Mon Pere_, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinch
+of salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will do
+this, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied to
+my own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed
+the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came.
+He bade me do and I did.
+
+"M'sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of all
+sins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate.
+And hate goes raging to do all sin.
+
+"So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was always
+the face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine.
+
+"Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at the
+railroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up into
+the high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. I
+would not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved
+me, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go.
+
+"I went. Fear, _Mon Pere_, fear is the father of all. I went because
+there was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followed
+into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the last
+moment. I do not know.
+
+"I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see.
+If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be
+seen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to be
+punished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I would
+have to take the blame. I would not dare to speak.
+
+"Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And of
+the seven I alone was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me.
+I knew.
+
+"Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. And
+his speech was, 'You owe me this. Now you must pay.'
+
+"In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along the
+fringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went
+out into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen other
+men watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with a
+lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light my
+torch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, the
+red flare of the fire running after him.
+
+"Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of fire
+in the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!" With
+a terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop's arms,
+gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming:
+
+"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!"
+
+He fell back as the scream died in his throat.
+
+The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of the
+well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe
+Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips
+began to form the words of the Act of Contrition.
+
+As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in
+his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man.
+
+Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against the
+flank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrific
+forces of this world and the other that were at work about her. This
+world, with the exception of this little island on which she stood,
+was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side the
+flames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place,
+all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south.
+Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these few
+bare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out
+of which she must get the breath of life.
+
+Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a
+rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself
+down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the
+mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him!
+
+She was only a young girl. But since that night when the Bishop had
+come to her as she held her father dying in her arms she had thought
+much. Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had pressed themselves
+in upon her mind. The things that she had been hearing and reading
+since her childhood, the thoughts of the people among whom she had
+grown up, the feeling of loyalty to her own kind, all these had fought
+in her against the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged
+them all.
+
+Because she had so recently come under its influence, the Catholic
+Church seemed ever to be unfolding new wonders to her. It seemed as
+though she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another more
+wonderful, more awesome. Yet always there seemed to be something just
+beyond, some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which she could not
+quite attain. Always a door opened, only to disclose another closed
+door beyond it.
+
+Here surely she stood as near to naked truth as it was possible to
+get. Here were none of the forms of words, none of the explanations,
+none of the ready-made answers of the catechism. Here were just two
+men. One was a bad man, a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few
+moments his soul must go--somewhere. The other was a good man. To-day
+he had risked his life to save the lives of this man and others--for
+Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been caught in the fire
+because other men were chasing him.
+
+Now these two men had a question to settle between them. In a very few
+minutes these two men must settle whether this bad man's soul was
+presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity. You see, she
+was a very direct young person. She took her religion at its word,
+straight in the eyes, literally.
+
+So far she had not needed to take any precautions against hearing
+anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them
+effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high
+above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, breaking voice of
+Gadbeau, screaming:
+
+"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stopped!"
+
+Involuntarily she turned and started towards the men. Gadbeau had
+fallen back in the Bishop's arms and the Bishop was leaning over,
+apparently talking to him. She knew that she must not go near until
+the Bishop gave her leave. She turned back and putting her hands up to
+her ears buried her face in Brom Bones' mane.
+
+But she could not put away the words that she had heard. Never, so
+long as she lived, was she able to forget them. Like the flash of the
+shot itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves there.
+Years afterwards she could shut her eyes and fairly see those words
+burning in her mind.
+
+When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and she went over timidly.
+She heard the Bishop say:
+
+"He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?"
+
+Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the light of the flames, the
+Prayers for the Departed. Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and
+among the Mysteries she wept gently--why, she knew not.
+
+When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while in silence, looking
+into the face of the dead. Then he arose and folded the long arms on
+the tattered breast and straightened the body.
+
+Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way. Once, twice she opened
+her lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it.
+Finally she began:
+
+"Bishop, I--I heard--"
+
+"No, child. You heard nothing," the Bishop interrupted quietly,
+"nothing."
+
+Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there looking
+down. The dead man's secret lay between them, buried under God's awful
+seal.
+
+The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady's storm coat
+which he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of the
+dead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders that
+rained down upon everything.
+
+Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing at
+their horses' heads, their faces buried in the manes, their arms
+thrown over the horses' eyes.
+
+As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the east
+and south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But the
+sharp, acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept them
+in exquisite, blinded torture.
+
+The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the fires
+to the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night.
+The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through the
+smoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to be
+rising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting the
+heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into the
+west. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a
+land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there a
+great tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch.
+
+They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the man
+lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping
+hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach
+Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live.
+Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and
+they knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse.
+
+Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travel
+circuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallen
+trees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The road
+was impossible because it had largely run through wooded places and
+the trees would have fallen across it. Their situation was not
+desperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad for
+water.
+
+For two hours they plodded steadily over the hills through the hot,
+loose-lying ashes. In all the world it seemed that not man nor beast
+nor bird was alive. The top of the earth was one grey ruin, draped
+with the little sworls of dust and ashes that the playful wind sent
+drifting up into their mouths and eyes.
+
+They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the ashes had blown level
+over holes and traps of all sorts in which a galloping horse would
+surely break his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the horses to
+any rapid expenditure of energy. The little that was left in them must
+be doled out to the very last ounce. For they did not yet know what
+lay between them and French Village and the lake. If the fire had not
+reached the lake during the night then it was always a possibility
+that, with this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring up from
+the ashes of the old and place an impassable barrier between them and
+the water.
+
+When this thought came to them, as it must, they involuntarily
+quickened their pace. The impulse was to make one wild dash for the
+lake. But they knew that it would be nothing short of madness. They
+must go slowly and carefully, enduring the torture with what fortitude
+they could.
+
+The story which the Bishop had heard from the lips of the dying man
+had stirred him profoundly. He now knew definitely, what yesterday he
+had suspected, that men had been sent into the hills by the railroad
+people to set fire to the forests, thereby driving the people out of
+that part of the country which the railroad wished to possess. He was
+moved to anger by the knowledge, but he knew that he must try to drive
+that knowledge back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try to
+hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded moment, some time of
+stress and mental conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture or
+even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness of that knowledge.
+Now he knew that the situation which last night he had thought to meet
+in French Village would almost certainly confront him there this
+morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be
+doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should
+in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned
+under the seal of the confessional.
+
+Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words of
+that last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near they
+came to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his
+gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she
+would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under
+any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears.
+And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.
+
+As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of the
+country sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. There
+was not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little French
+Village had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completely
+around the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn it
+up in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself out
+along the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward the
+west, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there would
+be no more fire in this region.
+
+"Would the people make their way down the river," the Bishop asked;
+"or did they escape back into the higher hills?"
+
+"I don't think they did either," Ruth answered as she scanned the lake
+sharply. "There is something out there in the middle of the lake, and
+I wouldn't be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and went
+through the fire that way. They'd be better off than we were, and that
+way they could save some things. If they had run away they would have
+had to drop everything."
+
+The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up their
+ears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruth
+was right in her conjecture. They could now make out five or six
+large rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of the
+logs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the
+sawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must have
+stood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided by
+such help as the people could give it with boards and poles, was
+moving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been.
+
+The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep through
+the ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village and
+watched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing for
+them to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other side
+of the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with that
+dumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back and
+begin their nests over again.
+
+For nearly an hour they stood on the little beach, letting the horses
+drink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts.
+When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling from
+the rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts were
+emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must be
+carried off.
+
+They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl with
+wonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these two
+people must have come straight through the fire. But when Father
+Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a great
+glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people.
+It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing!
+His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors.
+Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long
+night. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that all
+was well!
+
+Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes their
+race what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging his
+blessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He was
+infinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith.
+He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They were
+homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it had
+needed but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded
+confidence that God was good, that the world was right again.
+
+The other people, the hill people of the Bishop's own blood and race,
+stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kind
+of people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were not
+unmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some
+two or three old men of them saw him now through a mist of memory and
+battle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that this
+was the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare
+through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a
+part of the strange things that they had always half believed about
+him.
+
+Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop.
+Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag
+the Bishop's story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven?
+How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the
+fire?
+
+The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own
+imprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it by
+the quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translated
+freely and with a fine flourish. Then the Bishop told of the coming of
+Rafe Gadbeau and how the man had died with the Sacrament. They nodded
+their heads in silence. There was nothing to be said. They knew who
+the man was. He had done wickedly. But the good God had stretched out
+the wing of His great Church over him at the last. Why say more? God
+was good. No?
+
+Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people, grouped on the outskirts
+of the crowd that pressed around the Bishop, answering their eager
+questions and asking questions of her own. There was just one
+question that she wanted to ask, but something kept it back from her
+lips. There was no reason at all why she should not ask them about
+Jeffrey Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard news of him,
+must know in what direction he had gone to fight the fire. But some
+unnamed dread seemed to take possession of her so that she dared not
+put her crying question into words.
+
+Some one at her elbow, who had heard what the French people were
+saying, asked:
+
+"You're sure that was Gadbeau that crawled out of the fire and died,
+Miss Lansing?"
+
+"Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly," Ruth
+answered without looking up.
+
+Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:
+
+"Then that's two of 'em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting
+shot Rogers."
+
+"He did not!" Ruth blazed up in the young man's face. "Jeffrey Whiting
+did _not_ shoot Rogers! Rafe--!"
+
+The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her and
+blinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain,
+choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The young
+man, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall.
+She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp:
+
+"It's nothing-- Let me go."
+
+Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand from
+her arm.
+
+Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself
+in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be
+likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a
+sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand.
+Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling that
+she stood among those who could have understood gave her strength and
+a feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have had
+among her own kind.
+
+But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan,
+grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and
+drew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth found
+it difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly French
+girl she had met in the early summer.
+
+"You saw Rafe Gadbeau die," the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruth
+sharply at a little distance from the crowd. "You were there, close?
+No?"
+
+"Yes, the fire was all around," Ruth answered, quaking.
+
+"How did he die? Tell me. How?"
+
+"Why--why, he died quickly, in the Bishop's arms."
+
+"I know. Yes. But how? He _confessed_?"
+
+"He--he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so."
+
+But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.
+
+"I know that," she persisted. "I heard M'sieur the Bishop. But did he
+_confess_--about Rogers?"
+
+"Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn't hear anything. I
+couldn't--"
+
+"He didn't say nothing, except in confession?" the girl questioned
+swiftly.
+
+"Nothing at all," Ruth answered, relieved.
+
+"And you heard?" the girl returned shrewdly.
+
+"Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that."
+
+"I know you are lying," Cynthe said slowly. "That is right. But I do
+not know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You are
+Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometime
+you will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in
+us. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you a
+question and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will be
+silent--and that will be just as bad."
+
+Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did not
+even raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuring
+look to the girl would be an admission that she must not make.
+
+"Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! You
+cannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul," said the girl in a
+low, tense whisper; "swear that you will never, sleeping or waking,
+laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know that
+you heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember." She drew Ruth
+close to her and almost hissed into her ear:
+
+"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting!"
+
+She dropped Ruth's arm and turned quickly away.
+
+Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright
+and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not
+grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind.
+
+This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love
+and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the
+dark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes given
+to those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girl
+had seen Ruth's terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had
+plucked it out before Ruth's very eyes.
+
+The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She had
+broken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with the
+most terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the most
+awful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret had
+escaped her!
+
+She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she had
+repeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that the
+other girl had taken her secret from her.
+
+And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into the
+future and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her.
+Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraid
+to speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had ever
+known.
+
+And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth's secrets, one that
+had been hidden even from herself. She had said:
+
+"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting."
+
+In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she had
+never known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up in
+the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for the
+dead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was,
+and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of her
+own beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cain
+upon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over the
+hills-- The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love!
+Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would love
+forever!
+
+He would hear it from other mouths. But, oh! the cruel, unbearable
+taunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her own
+lips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thought
+of such a thing?
+
+But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She
+could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the
+bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not
+even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the
+faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his
+and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to
+look into his eyes and say:
+
+I _know_ you did not do it.
+
+Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that she
+knew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man.
+It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love,
+horror, and the awful weight of God's seal pressed in upon her to
+crush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could not
+meet them, could not cope with them.
+
+Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where Brom
+Bones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, her
+face buried in the colt's mane, crying hysterically. They bathed her
+hands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted they
+gave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing that she
+would need strength above all things, took what was given and silently
+faced the galling weight of the burden that was hers.
+
+The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The first
+thing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold out
+where they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villages
+on the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walking
+over ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north it
+would mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and have
+water at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might come
+into the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help.
+
+Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they do
+there? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothing
+left for them here but the places where their homes had been, but at
+least they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had all
+passed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-stricken
+alike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation,
+would here bind them together and give them a common strength for a
+new grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the four
+or five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowville
+or from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here.
+
+The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawing
+family groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Already
+these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing around
+them and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circle
+drawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindly
+of eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded.
+Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth from
+nondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. It
+appeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision store
+until the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, to
+each one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was all
+pitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for those
+refugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, he
+thought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured to
+scanty living.
+
+The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put something
+before them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all
+things it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merely
+wait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried in
+their hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort of
+shelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kind
+would cover at least the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up
+or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of the
+lake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. But
+it would put heart into them to see at least something, anything,
+begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes.
+
+Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holding
+desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading
+them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to
+what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which
+messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They
+bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that
+were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little
+village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men
+gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would
+mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well
+know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth
+while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the
+Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy
+relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes
+the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was
+characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of
+penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations
+upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of
+his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary
+upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one
+of the notes he signed that day.
+
+All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and
+driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and
+joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes
+from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came
+down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of
+women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised
+cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French
+Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then
+Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the
+Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far
+Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had
+never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and
+young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears,
+their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt
+of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal
+and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and
+unashamed.
+
+Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight
+brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men,
+sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and
+dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.
+
+Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid
+his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the
+Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his
+fingers and unfolded their story to him.
+
+Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far
+slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the
+grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on
+past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of
+barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown
+country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for
+travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging
+like hunted rats, between a line of fire--of their own making--before
+them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire
+and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them.
+They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run with
+them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through
+all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the
+blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching
+thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes.
+And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them,
+torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and
+wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that
+it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight.
+They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake
+came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from
+it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to
+taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy
+that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks.
+This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all
+might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had
+yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered
+around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might
+come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt
+ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened
+hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And,
+for these two men, to be seen meant to die.
+
+So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture.
+Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been
+beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down
+to the water.
+
+They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of
+the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no
+more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until
+they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst
+and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised
+now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up
+so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything
+else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew
+that if they would live and travel--and they must travel--they would
+have to have food at once.
+
+Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died
+out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was
+food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it
+did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great
+thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one
+thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else.
+They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the
+world!
+
+Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a
+few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself.
+There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed,
+seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not
+remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some
+baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat
+them, but--Fresh grass! Or oats!
+
+Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing
+to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around
+him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the
+matter.
+
+A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He
+carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At
+peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile
+that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and
+children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridle
+and tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a can
+of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom
+Bones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.
+
+A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking
+the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and
+fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and
+plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout,
+faithful heart.
+
+In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and
+shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and
+children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building.
+
+The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to
+give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men
+running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and
+hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire.
+
+They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men
+whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the
+most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been
+thirsting to kill them. The hour had come.
+
+"Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves." Old
+Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence.
+
+A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that
+suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey.
+
+Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying
+hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had
+caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he had
+cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he
+spoke now calmly, as one assured.
+
+"Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We know
+that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for
+they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall
+only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence
+these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?"
+
+"We'll be sure of these two," said a sullen voice in the crowd.
+
+"True," returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you there
+are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills
+risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater
+ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the
+end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a
+thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this
+trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my
+friends and my neighbours," he went on raising his hand, "I pledge you
+that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you.
+
+"Before these men die, bring a justice--there is one of the
+village--and let them confess before the world and to him on paper
+what they know of this crime and of those who commanded it."
+
+A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the
+time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought
+forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit
+upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his
+long hand of the _rue Henri_ the story that the men told.
+
+They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of
+all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for
+the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task.
+
+The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save
+these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a
+Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend,
+Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain
+man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of
+that story which he himself could but must not tell.
+
+The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the
+story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure
+that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke
+simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the
+first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their
+intention, he said:
+
+"My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I
+will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not
+move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets
+must pass through me.
+
+"You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is
+just one thing--Revenge."
+
+"What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd.
+
+"It is _not_ my business," said the Bishop solemnly. "It is the
+business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have
+I no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe all
+the same things? My business is with the souls of men--of all men. And
+never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing
+this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my
+fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your
+souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you
+sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and
+say: A man warned us, but he had no _business_!
+
+"Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done.
+And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh!
+believe me now! You shall see right!"
+
+The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men
+about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his
+feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.
+
+He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.
+
+Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her
+dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done
+his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden.
+But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful
+words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this
+grief.
+
+He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into
+the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered
+the things of God and His world.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE INNER CITADEL
+
+
+"And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute
+satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and
+with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August
+twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a
+long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered
+man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall
+not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have
+done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths
+of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes,
+actual eye-witnesses of the crime."
+
+In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District
+Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against
+Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had
+died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald
+Mountain.
+
+From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of
+Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the
+hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial.
+Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the
+villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose
+lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge
+Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it
+plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers
+must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the
+guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder
+itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been
+doing at the time.
+
+For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed
+just a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a little
+of the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned over
+in the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to these
+people. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had
+suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible
+to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer
+of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages
+of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that
+a man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire had
+started at about the same time and place. But few people had any clear
+version of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to the
+identity of the slayer.
+
+There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunate
+for Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of
+Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same man
+who only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before the
+Senate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroad
+against the lawless people of the hills. He had given the District
+Attorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury who
+would be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. For
+this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of
+the hills against the U. & M. Railroad.
+
+Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of its
+rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad
+system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that
+had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the
+North. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it was
+not in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave the
+county in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroad
+saw to it that only men personally known to its officials should have
+public office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench.
+And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well for
+the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it.
+
+The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of
+Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to
+every money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible but
+impenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in every
+direction and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tell
+where it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines of
+influence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of the
+attorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand they
+passed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whose
+money and brain dominated the whole transportation business of the
+State. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitol
+at Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to the
+youngest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune from
+their influence.
+
+Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procured
+the setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill people
+homeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, be
+impossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in any
+county of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the way
+of criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper and
+roused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public.
+The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even a muttered
+and vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in a
+spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter
+charge.
+
+Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand
+Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment
+against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They had
+found that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon a
+peaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of his
+company. He had been found shot through the back of the head and the
+circumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature and
+disposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young man
+who for months had been leading a stubborn fight against the
+railroad.
+
+The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in Judge
+Leslie's court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind of
+the public with this case until the people should have had time to
+forget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of the
+railroad's affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold only
+one thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder case
+into that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise.
+
+The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; the
+well-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had
+done its work, and the efficient way in which judge and prosecuting
+attorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a
+"railroad" jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident power
+was moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge and
+this jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in the
+way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in
+the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to
+appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as
+justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The
+fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether
+or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would be
+allowed to enter.
+
+And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were already
+made up. The prisoner's friends and associates in the hills had been
+at first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubt
+was his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did not
+deny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on the
+very scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any one
+for doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since his
+conviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what room
+was there to hope for his acquittal?
+
+The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they had
+been working night and day to put a roof over their families before
+the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. They
+had no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and
+they had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew--every
+word of which would count against them. They had come down determined
+that he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as it
+were, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which the
+machinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them.
+There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idle
+and glum, waiting for the end.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment by
+the District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of
+circumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morning
+on Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold
+upon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that night
+and had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his mother
+there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had been
+horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face of
+the fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No
+word had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactly
+what had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He
+had wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not,
+in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, of
+course. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he would
+have told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey was
+aware that she was the only person who did or would believe him.
+
+He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother's horses, to go
+up into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wandering
+somewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers.
+The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gotten
+quickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroad
+people had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. The
+warrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reached
+Lowville.
+
+When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before the
+Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might
+have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost.
+Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he
+was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His
+own friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath.
+
+His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in the front seats just to
+the right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly at
+them with a confidence that he was far from feeling. His mother
+smiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with a
+twinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep into
+the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of the
+morning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly and
+unaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged to
+lift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, to
+conquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness
+of everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once the
+pride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he had
+kissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told--that
+he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again.
+And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with
+him.
+
+Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart
+in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail
+of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them.
+Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she
+been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the
+thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the
+hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart
+of her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of her
+boy brought to this pass because of that man.
+
+Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with his
+mother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung
+to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men.
+The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to
+see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had
+seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had
+been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he
+remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him
+squarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget the
+foolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. In
+that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seen
+there not the love of the little girl that he had known but the
+unbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself to
+him for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women of
+earth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity,
+whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts.
+
+It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of his
+cell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcely
+listened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of course, she had
+heard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiar
+with it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not like
+Ruth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know the
+exact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have been
+satisfied with anybody's telling of the matter but his own.
+
+Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind and struck at his
+heart. Could it be that she had over-acted it all? Could it be that
+she had brushed aside his story because she really did not believe it
+and could not listen to it without betraying her doubt? And had she
+blinded him with her pity? Had she acted all--!
+
+He threw himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Might
+not even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have been
+acting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! The
+girl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it was
+only--!
+
+But his good sense brought him back and set him on his feet. Ruth was
+no actress. And if she had been the greatest actress the world had
+ever seen she could not have acted that flooding love light into her
+eyes.
+
+He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cell
+rapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberately
+put his story aside in order to keep the whole of their little time
+together entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made his
+story unimportant.
+
+She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop must
+have gone straight through it from their home in its front line to the
+rear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey had
+heard wild tales of the exploit-- The French people had made many
+wonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of their
+deliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the young
+girl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from the
+angels.
+
+Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed to
+one or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there were
+other men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered Rafe
+Gadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey at
+Rogers' command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogers
+was intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the line
+of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullet
+had struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head.
+
+Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort of
+mysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding
+unwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if Gadbeau there under
+the excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would be
+charged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and place
+to rid himself of the man who had made him his slave!
+
+The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell,
+stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table,
+sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey
+caught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that would
+fit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into many
+blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at
+last came upon the truth--and stuck to it.
+
+Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had
+almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth
+and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence.
+He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they were
+going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth _knew_. The
+Bishop _knew_.
+
+When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw--just what he
+had expected to see. Ruth _knew_. It was not only her love and her
+confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturing
+doubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even his
+mother. Ruth _knew_.
+
+That she should not tell him, or give him any outward hint of what
+she was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a very
+serious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter with
+anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speak
+unnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need,
+she would speak. For the present--Ruth _knew_. That was enough.
+
+When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched him
+as he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had never
+had more than a boy's careless indifference and disregard of details
+in his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the dark
+had now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive as
+those of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop's
+hand on his, the look of the Bishop's eye into his, were not those of
+a man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keep
+his faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man who
+wished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and was
+obliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all.
+No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who _knew_. The Bishop
+_knew_.
+
+It was even easier to understand the Bishop's silence than it had been
+to see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an
+official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. He must not
+speak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course,
+there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent
+man. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop would
+speak.
+
+So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of fact and deduction. So
+he had watched and discovered and reasoned and debated with himself.
+He had not, of course, said a word of these things to any one. The
+result was that, while he listened to the plans which his lawyer,
+young Emmet Dardis, laid for his defence--plans which, in the face of
+the incontestable facts which would be brought against them, would
+certainly amount to little or nothing--he really paid little attention
+to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of the things his heart
+felt, he had built up around himself an inner citadel, as it were, of
+defence which no attack could shake. He had come to feel, had made
+himself feel, that his life and his name were absolutely safe in the
+keeping of these two people--the one a girl who loved him and who
+would give her life for him, and the other a true friend, a man of
+God, a true man. He had nothing to fear. When the time came these two
+would speak. It was true that he was outwardly depressed by the
+concise and bitter conviction in the words of the prosecuting
+attorney. For Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes the most
+terrible of criminal prosecutors--an honest, narrow man who was
+always absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused from the
+moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly he had no fear.
+
+The weight of evidence that would be brought against him, the fact
+that his own best friends would be obliged to give their oaths against
+him, the very feeling of being accused and of having to scheme and
+plan to prove his innocence to a world that--except here and
+there--cared not a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these
+things bowed his head and brought his eyes down to the floor. But they
+could not touch that inner wall that he had built around himself. Ruth
+_knew_; the Bishop _knew_.
+
+The rasping speech of the prosecutor was finished at last.
+
+Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.
+
+The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in hand at once for though
+he had been called as a witness for the prosecution it was well known
+that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney had made no
+attempt to school him beforehand, and he was determined now to allow
+him to give only direct answers to the questions put to him.
+
+Two or three times the old man attempted to explain, at the end of an
+answer, just why he had gone up into the high hills the night before
+the twentieth of August--that he had heard that Rogers and a band of
+men had gone into the woods to start fires. But he was ordered to
+stop, and these parts of his answers were kept out of the record.
+Finally he was rebuked savagely by the Judge and ordered to confine
+himself to answering the lawyer's questions, on pain of being arrested
+for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding that showed the temper
+and the intention of the Judge and a stir of protest ran around the
+courtroom. But old Erskine Beasley was quelled. He gave only the
+answers that the prosecutor forced from him.
+
+"Did you hear a shot fired?" he was asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you hear two shots fired?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you see Jeffrey Whiting's gun?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you examine it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Had it been fired off?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Excused," snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears,
+came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers
+had made the most damaging sort of evidence.
+
+Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. He
+called several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad and
+associated in one way or another with the murdered man in his efforts
+to get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses,
+though they were ready to give details and opinions which might have
+been favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly to
+answering with a word his own carefully thought out questions.
+
+With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of cause
+and effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills to
+offer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to the
+moment when the two had faced each other that morning on Bald
+Mountain.
+
+He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and oppose
+Rogers' work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of a
+family well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had been
+quick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep the
+people from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers' work would then be a
+failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man who
+could get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out at
+his word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at his
+terms.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from many of the owners that they
+would not sell or even sign any paper until such time as he gave them
+the word. Did those promises bind the people to him? They did. Did
+they have the same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained actual
+options on the property? Yes. Would the people stand by their
+promises? Yes. Then Whiting had actually been obtaining what were
+really options to himself, while pretending to hold the people back in
+their own interest? Yes.
+
+The prosecutor went on to draw out answer after answer tending to show
+that it was not really a conflict between the people and the railroad
+that had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, in
+fact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain between
+Jeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully done
+and drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which bald
+negative and affirmative answers invariably carry.
+
+He went on to show that a bitter hatred had grown up between the two
+men. Rogers had been accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the
+way at a time in the early summer when many of the people about French
+Village had been prepared to sign Rogers' options. Rogers had been
+obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account of Whiting's anger.
+He had not returned to the hills until the day before he was killed.
+
+The people in the hills had talked freely of what had happened on Bald
+Mountain on the morning of August twentieth and in the hills during
+the afternoon and night preceding. The prosecutor knew the incidents
+and knew what men had said to each other. He now called Myron
+Stocking.
+
+"Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon of August nineteenth?"
+was the question.
+
+"I went lookin' for him, to tell--"
+
+"Answer, yes or no?" shouted the attorney.
+
+"Yes," the witness admitted sullenly.
+
+"Did you tell him that Rogers was in the hills?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?"
+
+"He followed me," the witness began. But the Judge rapped warningly
+and the attorney yelled:
+
+"Yes or no?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you see Rogers in the morning?"
+
+"Yes, he was settin' fire to--" The Judge hammering furiously with his
+gavel drowned his words. The attorney went on:
+
+"Did you hear a shot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you hear two shots?"
+
+"The fire"--was making a lot of noise, he tried to say. But his voice
+was smothered by eruptions from the court and the attorney. He was
+finally obliged to say that he had heard but one shot. Then he was
+asked:
+
+"What did you say when you came up and saw the dead man?"
+
+"I said, 'Mine got away, Jeff.'"
+
+"What else did you say?"
+
+"I said, 'What's the difference, any of us would've done it if we had
+the chance.'"
+
+"Whiting's gun had been fired?" asked the attorney, working back.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"One question more and I will excuse you," said the attorney, with a
+show of friendliness--"I see it is hard for you to testify against
+your friend. Did you, standing there with the facts fresh before you,
+conclude that Jeffrey Whiting had fired the shot which killed
+Rogers?"
+
+To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that it was not proper, that
+the answer would not be evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply,
+reminding him that this witness had been called by the prosecution,
+that it was not the business of opposing counsel to protect him. The
+witness found himself forced to answer a simple yes.
+
+One by one the other men who had been present that fatal morning were
+called. Their answers were identical, and as each one was forced to
+give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning Jeffrey Whiting
+out of the mouths of his friends who had stood on the very ground of
+the murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for him was closing.
+
+On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do little with the witnesses.
+He was gruffly reminded by the Judge that the witnesses were not his,
+that he must not attempt to draw any fresh stories from them, that he
+might only examine them on the facts which they had stated to the
+District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had pinned his witnesses down
+absolutely to answers of known fact, there was really nothing in their
+testimony that could be attacked.
+
+With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet Dardis let the last
+witness go. The State promptly rested its case.
+
+Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised how pitifully
+inadequate their testimony would be when placed beside the chain of
+facts which the District Attorney had pieced together. They were in
+the main character witnesses, hardly more. They could tell only of
+their long acquaintance with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in him,
+of their firm faith that in holding the people back from giving the
+options to Rogers and the railroad he had been acting in absolute good
+faith and purely in the interests of the people. Not one of these men
+had been near the scene of the murder, for the railroad had planned
+its campaign comprehensively and had subpoenaed for its side every man
+who could have had any direct knowledge of the events leading up to
+the tragedy. As line after line of their testimony was stricken from
+the record, as being irrelevant, it was seen that the defence had
+little or no case. Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single
+objections, made a general ruling that no testimony which did not tend
+to reveal the identity of the man who had shot Rogers could go into
+the record.
+
+Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously watching the course of
+the trial. Beside him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village.
+The little French priest looked up from time to time and guardedly
+studied the long angular white head of his bishop as it towered above
+him. He did not know, but he could guess some of the struggle that was
+going on in the mind and the heart of the Bishop.
+
+The Bishop had come down to the trial to give what aid he could, in
+the way of showing his confidence and faith, to the case of the boy
+who stood in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he had first
+heard of Jeffrey's arrest, he had not thought it possible that, even
+had he been guilty of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be
+convicted under such circumstances. Men must see that the act was in
+defence of life and property. But as he listened to the progress of
+the trial he realised sadly that he had very much underestimated the
+seriousness of the railroad people in the matter and the hold which
+they had upon the machinery of justice in Racquette County.
+
+He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and tell the reason why
+Jeffrey Whiting had entered into this fight against the railroad. He
+would associate himself and his own good name with the things that
+Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the two might stand before men
+together. But he now saw that it would be of no avail. His words would
+be swept aside as irrelevant.
+
+One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. This
+morning on his arrival in Danton, the Bishop had been angered at
+learning that the two men whose lives he had saved that night by the
+lake at French Village had escaped from the train as they were being
+brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at this trial.
+
+Whether they could have told anything of value to Jeffrey Whiting was
+not known. Certainly they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the
+connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop had their confession in
+his pocket at this minute, but there was nothing in it concerning the
+murder. He had intended to read it into the record of the trial. He
+saw that he would not be allowed to do so.
+
+One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey
+Whiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man or
+woman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did not
+kill Samuel Rogers. Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or--He told
+me so.
+
+The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy upon
+this course which had brought him here into this court and into the
+shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actually
+fired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph,
+Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? He
+would.
+
+And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through a
+chain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he,
+Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of these
+circumstances, in a way responsible? He was.
+
+Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: "Rafe
+Gadbeau killed Samuel Rogers--He told me so"--could he thus save
+Jeffrey Whiting from a felon's fate? He could. Nine words, no more,
+would do.
+
+And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what was
+necessary--did not speak those nine words--would he, Joseph Winthrop,
+be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin of
+Jeffrey Whiting? He would.
+
+Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words?
+He would not.
+
+There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break the
+seal and let those nine words escape his lips.
+
+There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop's mind
+as he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boy
+who sat there in the prisoner's stand before him. He felt responsible
+for him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for the
+dead man or the dead man's secret, as such. Yet he would go up there
+and defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was bound
+by the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal
+salvation of men's souls.
+
+But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. His
+course was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothing
+to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between the
+greater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be ground
+between the working of the two.
+
+If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty God had ordained
+the salvation of men through the confession of sin. Therefore the
+salvation of men depended on the inviolability of the seal of the
+confessional. But he did not reason. He merely sat through his
+torture, waiting.
+
+When his name was called, he walked heavily forward and took his place
+standing beside the chair that was set for him.
+
+At Dardis' question, the Bishop began to speak freely and rapidly. He
+told of the coming of Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated
+what he had said to the boy, and from that point went on to sketch the
+things that had been happening in the hills. He wanted to get clearly
+before the minds of the jurymen the fact that he had advised and
+directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything that the boy had done.
+
+The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy to the Bishop. But he
+saw that he must stop him. His story could not but have a powerful
+effect upon even this jury. Looking past the Bishop and addressing
+Dardis, he said:
+
+"Is this testimony pertinent?"
+
+"It is, if Your Honor pardon me," said the Bishop, turning quickly.
+"It goes to prove that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed the
+crime charged, any more than I could have done so."
+
+The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully the logic or the legal
+phraseology of his answer. He hurried on with his story to the jury.
+He related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting. He told of his
+ride into the hills. He told of the capture of the two men in the
+night at French Village. They should be here now as witnesses. They
+had escaped. But he held in his hand a written confession, written and
+sealed by a justice of the peace, made by the two men. He would read
+this to the jury.
+
+He began reading rapidly. But before he had gotten much past the
+opening sentences, the Judge saw that this would not do. It was the
+story of the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in court.
+
+He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when the Bishop stopped, he
+asked:
+
+"Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned in that paper?"
+
+"No, Your Honor. But there are--"
+
+"It is irrelevant," interrupted the Judge shortly. "It cannot go
+before the jury."
+
+The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do no more.
+
+Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not the slightest hope for his
+client--unless--unless. He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession
+to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask the Bishop this morning, if there
+was not some way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The Bishop stood
+waiting for his further questions. There might be some way or some
+help, thought Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was not a part
+of the real confession. He said quickly:
+
+"You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"What did he say to you?"
+
+Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair, his eyes eager and
+confident. His heart shouting that here was his deliverance. Here was
+the hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!
+
+The Bishop's eyes fell upon the prisoner for an instant. Then he
+looked full into the eyes of his questioner and he answered:
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"That will do. Thank you, Bishop," said Dardis in a low, broken
+voice.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The light of confidence died
+slowly, reluctantly out of his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop
+had _lied_! He _knew_! And he had _lied_!
+
+As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat, Ruth Lansing saw the
+terrible suffering of the spirit reflected in his face. If she were
+questioned about that night, she must do as he had done.
+
+Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must I do that? _Can_ I do
+that?
+
+Oh! She had never thought it would come to this. How _could_ it happen
+like this! How could any one think that she would ever stand like
+this, alone in all the world, with the fate of her love in her hands,
+and not be able to speak the few little words that would save him to
+her and life!
+
+She _would_ save him! She _would_ speak the words! What did she care
+for that wicked man who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?
+Why should she keep a secret of his? One night in the early summer she
+had lain all through the night in the woods outside a cabin and wished
+for a way to kill that man. Why should she guard a secret that was no
+good to him or to any one now?
+
+Who was it that said she must not speak? The Catholic Church. Then she
+would be a Catholic no longer. She would renounce it this minute. She
+had never promised anything like this. But, on the instant, she knew
+that that would not free her. She knew that she could throw off the
+outward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free to
+speak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal of
+the secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off the
+Church, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty and
+unbreakable across her lips.
+
+That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what she
+saw held her.
+
+What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not
+the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not
+a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and
+fear of death.
+
+What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she
+saw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of God
+from which--Heart break or world burn!--that sin must never be
+disturbed.
+
+As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name,
+a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path.
+Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce,
+piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which
+she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village--the
+terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And
+though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:
+Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.
+
+How well that girl knew!
+
+Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not
+been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he
+had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had
+become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was
+always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.
+
+"You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought
+to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Then he flashed the question upon her:
+
+"What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?"
+
+Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden,
+startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to
+what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a
+terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and--relief.
+A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. _On my knee I dropped
+and shot him, shot Rogers as he stood._
+
+Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling. Again the inner citadel
+of his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the word
+that would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time.
+Ruth _knew_. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad that
+the Bishop had lied. Ruth _knew_. Ruth would speak.
+
+The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth's brain
+and down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout
+them out to the ends of the earth!
+
+But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered:
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand.
+
+Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.
+
+_Ruth_ had _lied_!
+
+The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?
+
+
+The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up the
+street toward the little church. He had not been the same man since
+his experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They had
+aged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering and
+superhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had broken
+the spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and the
+vital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up in
+him. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He had
+roused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has already
+reached almost the full allotted span of life may do these things
+without showing the outward effects of them. But these things had
+struck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quick
+spirit of the man within.
+
+The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into the
+spiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given the
+alternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he would
+have offered the few years that might be his, without question or
+halting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled or
+thought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ.
+Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he had
+never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole to
+receive the secret of another's soul he puts his life in pledge for
+the sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by
+any perplexities or confusion.
+
+Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forced
+upon him. Years ago he had given his own life entire to Christ. The
+snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces farther on would be
+a matter of no more moment than the length of a thread. This world had
+nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from him. But to guard his
+secret at the cost of another life, and that a young, vigorous,
+battling life full of future and promise, full of youth and the glory
+of living, the life of a boy he loved--that was another matter. Never
+had he reckoned with a thing such as that. Life had always been so
+direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To think right, to do
+right, to serve God; these things had always seemed very simple. But
+the thing that he had done to-day was breaking his heart. He could not
+have done otherwise. He had been given no choice, to be sure.
+
+But was it possible that God would have allowed things to come to
+that issue, if somewhere, at some turn in that line of circumstances
+which had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not done a wrong? It
+did not seem possible. Somewhere he had done wrong or he had done
+foolishly--and, where men go to direct the lives of others, to do
+unwisely is much the same as to do wickedly.
+
+What use to go over the things that he had done, the things that he
+had advised? What use to say, here he had done his best, there he
+thought only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere he had spoken
+foolishly, or he had been headstrong in his interference, or he had
+acted without thought and prayer. What use to go over the record? He
+could only carry this matter to God and let Him see his heart.
+
+He stumbled in the half light of the darkened little church and sank
+heavily into the last pew. Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart
+he cried out from afar to the Presence on the little altar, where he,
+Bishop of Alden, had often spoken with much authority.
+
+When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up into the witness stand she
+sank down quietly into a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the
+other girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes. She hung
+upon every fleeting wave of the contending emotions that showed
+themselves on Ruth's face. She was convinced that this girl knew that
+Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and that
+Jeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would be
+called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it at
+the last moment.
+
+Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to hating this girl, for she
+had seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very
+long time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talking
+gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing
+left of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But that
+memory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this
+other girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? What
+would that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was not
+likely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish to
+tell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came to
+her of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then?
+Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep on
+denying?
+
+Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. She
+did not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it
+who had been born to the Faith.
+
+Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it was
+no place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden away
+in her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fear
+hung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint
+might be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had a
+superstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not be
+hidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. She
+knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these days
+when the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers
+and hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting's
+story believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial and
+had sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly to
+every word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearing
+the name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name and
+his memory from the blight of his deed had become more than a
+religion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own
+thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her
+world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled.
+
+When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of
+the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that
+he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They might
+as well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell
+Rafe Gadbeau's secret as to ask it from the Bishop.
+
+But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might do
+under the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbroken
+upon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. She
+would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for
+her!
+
+When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in
+the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl
+stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask
+her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in
+pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw
+the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of
+Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not
+know what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who could
+suffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her love
+under foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steady
+word--"Nothing."
+
+Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at the
+torture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself
+at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from the
+stand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that she
+must tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For Cynthe
+Cardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a
+frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street.
+
+She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to the
+court. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand,
+she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cynthe
+understood. Even M'sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he was
+troubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have business
+with God.
+
+She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw the
+Bishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken.
+
+He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisper
+at his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:
+
+_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse._
+
+The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. But
+here was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrential
+rush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishop
+listened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor the
+power to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing its
+keeper night and day. He knew that it was true, knew what the end of
+it would be. But still he must be careful to give no word that would
+show that he knew what was coming. The French of the hills and of
+Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but it was easy to follow the
+thread of the story. When she had finished and was weeping quietly,
+the Bishop prompted gently.
+
+"And now? my daughter."
+
+"And now, _Mon Pere_, must I tell? I would not tell. I loved Rafe
+Gadbeau. As long as I shall live I shall love him. For his good name I
+would die. But I cannot see the suffering of that girl, Ruth. _Mon
+Pere_, it is too much! I cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before
+men and call my love a murderer. Consider, _Mon Pere_. There is
+another way. I, too, am guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I
+would have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do many
+things that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I went
+to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would have
+killed that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When I
+saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, _Mon Pere_, I am
+guilty. And I called joyfully to my love to run with me and save
+himself, for he was now free from that man forever. But he ran in the
+path of the fire because he feared those other men.
+
+"But see, _Mon Pere_, I am guilty. I will go and tell the court that I
+am the guilty one. I will say that my hand shot that man. See, I will
+tell the story. I have told it many times to myself. Such a straight
+story I shall tell. And they will believe. I will make them believe.
+And they will not hurt a girl much," she said, dropping back upon her
+native shrewdness to strengthen her plea. "The railroad does not care
+who killed Rogers. They want only to punish the young Whiting. And the
+court will believe, as I shall tell it."
+
+"But, my daughter," said the Bishop, temporising. "It would not be
+true. We must not lie."
+
+"But M'sieur the Bishop, himself," the girl argued swiftly, evidently
+separating the priest in the confessional from the great bishop in his
+public walk, "he himself, on the stand--"
+
+The girl stopped abruptly.
+
+The Bishop held the silence of the grave.
+
+"_Mon Pere_ will make me tell, then--the truth," she began. "_Mon
+Pere_, I cannot! I--!"
+
+"Let us consider," the Bishop broke in deliberately. "Suppose he had
+told this thing to you when he was dying. You would have said to him:
+Your soul may not rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed.
+Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?"
+
+"To escape Hell," said the girl quickly, "yes. He would have said:
+Tell everything; tell anything!" In the desolate forlornness of her
+grief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, she
+had known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly--and had loved
+him. Would always love him.
+
+"We will not speak of Hell," said the Bishop gently. "In that hour he
+would have seen the right. He would have told you to tell."
+
+"But he confessed to M'sieur the Bishop himself," she retorted
+quickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelate
+in person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound Moral
+Theology back upon him with a vengeance, "and he gave _him_ no leave
+to speak."
+
+The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground.
+
+"If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?"
+
+"_Mon Pere_, with the bones of my hands!"
+
+"Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who was
+blind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where a
+great light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not know
+here--Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He stands
+alone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God and
+cries: _Seigneur Dieu_, whither go I?
+
+"And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the open
+place. Would he come back to the world?
+
+"And he answers: 'No, my God; but I have left a debt behind and
+another man's life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward
+with that debt unpaid.'
+
+"Then God: 'And is there none to cancel the debt? Is there not one in
+all that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none
+loved you who will pay the debt?'
+
+"And he will answer with a lifted heart: 'My God, yes; there was one,
+a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right;
+only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debt
+will be right; my God, let me go.'"
+
+The Bishop's French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully put
+together. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to
+her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little break
+of joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved in
+spite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins of
+life. And her love leaped up quickly to the ideal and the illusions
+that every woman craves for and clings to.
+
+"This," the Bishop was going on quietly, "is the new man we are to
+consider; the one who stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not
+hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he care for the opinions
+or the words that are said here? See, he stands in the great open
+space, all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God and tell Him
+all. Will you be afraid to stand in the court and tell these people,
+who do not matter at all?
+
+"Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It is not for the sake of
+Ruth Lansing. It is because the man you loved calls back to you, from
+where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom he has now learned
+tells him must be done. He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He
+would have you tell."
+
+"_Mon Pere_, I will tell the tale," said the girl simply as she rose
+from her knees. "I will go quickly, while I have yet the courage."
+
+The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel rooms in the courthouse
+and sent for Dardis.
+
+"This girl," he told the lawyer, "has a story to tell. I think you
+would do wisely to put her on the stand and let her tell it in her own
+way. She will make no mistakes. They will not be able to break her
+down."
+
+Then the Bishop went back to take up again his business with God.
+
+As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey Whiting had been put
+upon the stand in his own defence. There was nothing he could tell
+which the jurors had not already heard in one form or another.
+Everybody had heard what he had said that morning on Bald Mountain. He
+had not been believed even then, by men who had never had a reason to
+doubt his simple word. There was little likelihood that he would be
+believed here now by these jurors, whose minds were already fixed by
+the facts and the half truths which they had been hearing. But there
+was some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he
+clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a
+single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale
+that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell
+what might strike a man on a jury. So Dardis argued.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel wished him to tell his
+story he would do so. It would not matter. His own friends did not
+believe his story. Nobody believed it. Two people _knew_ that it was
+true. And those two people had stood up there upon the stand and sworn
+that they did not know. One of them was a good man, a man of God, a
+man he would have trusted with every dear thing that life held. That
+man had stood up there and lied. The other was a girl whom he loved,
+and who, he was sure, loved him.
+
+It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie--or maybe she did not
+consider it a lie: he had seen her suffer terribly in the telling of
+it. He was beginning to feel that he did not care much what was the
+outcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death,
+or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty common
+deaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one big
+thing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and took
+from him his interest in every other fact in the world.
+
+Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had never before in her life
+told a lie. Why should she have ever told a lie. She had never had
+reason to fear any one; and they only lie who fear. He would have said
+that the fear of death could not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she
+had stood up there and lied.
+
+For what? For a church. For a religion to which she had foolishly
+given herself. For that she had given up him. For that she had given
+up her conscience. For that she had given up her own truth!
+
+It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and listened to it.
+
+He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer to a question which
+meant life or death to him. She had known that. She could not have
+escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was no way in which she
+could have fooled herself or been persuaded into believing that she
+was not lying or that she was not taking from him his last hope of
+life.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What
+was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed
+dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision.
+
+He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until some
+one told him to be seated. He answered the questions put him
+automatically, without looking either at the questioner or at the
+jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watching
+the alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-day
+wondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would he
+confess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb?
+
+Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had raced
+forward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He looked
+vacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his words
+stricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed no
+resentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had run
+away from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he did
+not seem to notice the Judge's anger in cautioning him not to mention
+the fire again.
+
+At his counsel's direction, he went through a lifeless pantomime of
+falling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now
+the man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killed
+Rogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forward
+to look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away.
+
+Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule
+out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet
+going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a
+simple story. The thing _might_ have happened. It was entirely
+credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of
+Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not
+the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his
+life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was
+now living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying,
+many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping man
+might have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, though
+puzzled by the manner of the recital.
+
+Even Lemuel Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to
+any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went
+back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly
+without any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to make
+him say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of the
+story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horrible
+fact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of her
+church.
+
+When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he was
+again the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of this
+wholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called.
+He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squires
+would begin his speech at once.
+
+He noticed that this witness was a girl from French Village whom he
+had seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau's
+girl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything,
+and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn't the poor little
+thing look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here to
+bring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at the
+girl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matter
+anyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not let
+them hurt her.
+
+Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe against
+interruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to say
+nothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers
+and nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to
+relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very
+beginning:
+
+"Four years ago," she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was
+killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe
+Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know
+who had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife
+and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept the
+knife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the
+price of his silence.
+
+"Last summer this man Rogers came into the woods looking for some one
+to help get the people to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He
+showed him the knife. He told him that whatever he laid upon him to
+do, that he must do. He made him lie to the people. He made him attack
+the young Whiting. He made him do many things that he would not do,
+for Rafe Gadbeau was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And Rafe
+Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear that this man had put upon
+him.
+
+"At times he said to me, 'Cynthe, I will kill this man one day, and
+that will be the end of all.' But I said, '_Non, non, mon Rafe_, we
+will marry in the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will never
+see you again, and we will not know that he ever lived.'"
+
+Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was telling over to herself the
+tragedy of her little life and her great love. Genius could not have
+told her how better to tell it for the purpose for which her story was
+here needed. Dardis thanked his stars that he had taken the Bishop's
+advice, to let her get through with it in her own way.
+
+"But it was not time for us to marry yet," she went on. "Then came the
+morning of the nineteenth August. I was sitting on the back steps of
+my aunt's house by the Little Tupper, putting apples on a string to
+hang up in the hot sun to dry." The Judge turned impatiently on his
+bench and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and her eyes blazed
+angrily at him. Who was he to shrug his shoulders! Was it not
+important, this story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter the
+Judge gave her the most rigid attention.
+
+"Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that he
+was troubled. 'What is it, _mon Rafe_?' I asked. He groaned and said
+one bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message from
+Rogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and six
+horses. 'What to do, _mon Rafe_?' 'I do not know,' he said, 'though I
+can guess. But I will not tell you, Cynthe.'
+
+"'You will not go, _mon Rafe_. Promise me you will not go. Hide away,
+and we will slip down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married--me, I
+do not care for the grand wedding in the church here--and then we will
+get away to Beaupre. Promise me.'
+
+"'_Bien_, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to him.'
+
+"But it was a man's promise. I knew he would go in the end.
+
+"I watched and followed. I did not know what I could do. But I
+followed, hoping that somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done
+what they intended and we could run away together with clean hands.
+
+"When I saw that they had gone toward the railroad I turned aside and
+climbed up to the Bald Mountain. I knew they would all come back
+there together. I waited until it was dark and they came. They would
+do nothing in the night. I waited for the morning. Then I would find
+Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I was a wild girl that
+night. If I could have found that Rogers and come near him I would
+have killed him myself. I hated him, for he had made me much
+suffering.
+
+"In the morning I was in the woods near them. I saw Rafe. But that
+Rogers kept him always near him.
+
+"I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to look. Rafe was a little
+way from him and coming slowly toward me. I called to him. He did not
+hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the look of one who has made
+up his mind to kill. Again I called to him. But he did not hear.
+
+"I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the wood. Now he came
+running back toward Rafe. He stopped and turned.
+
+"The young Whiting was on his knee with the rifle raised to shoot. I
+looked to Rafe. The sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face.
+The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head. I saw. The young
+Whiting had not fired at all.
+
+"I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. 'Come with me, _mon
+Rafe_,' I called. 'I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in the
+night. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will cover all. None
+will ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come.'
+
+"But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him at
+least to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not
+wish to be separated from him in this world or the next.
+
+"But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those other
+men, the old M'sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind him
+and the fire."
+
+She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Her
+story was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voice
+rose into a cry of farewell as she told the end.
+
+"Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God,
+who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and
+running on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and God
+took him away.
+
+"That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe."
+
+Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the
+story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its
+naïve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature
+to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily
+her own unthought, clipped expressions than they would any more
+connected elaborations he might try to make her give.
+
+Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been
+a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of
+the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into
+court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a
+personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case.
+But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story was
+true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it
+was true.
+
+His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing.
+The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading
+nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury.
+
+It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the
+facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put
+aside the girl's dramatic story. He was still convinced that the
+prisoner was guilty. But--the girl's story was true. His mind was not
+nimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless under
+it. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stood
+aside to grapple with that one astounding thing.
+
+The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these
+hampering limitations of mind. He had always regarded the taking and
+discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All
+democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to
+a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county
+had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.
+
+He charged the jury that the girl's testimony was no more credible
+than that of a dozen other witnesses--which was quite true. All had
+told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided
+smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act.
+No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that.
+
+He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the
+comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the
+jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he
+had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view
+of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts
+by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt
+which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing
+clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.
+
+Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an
+agreement.
+
+The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting stood up.
+
+The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying:
+
+"Not guilty."
+
+The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his name
+was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly
+for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for
+their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little
+Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something
+real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole
+political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the
+railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love
+story of an ignorant French girl from the hills.
+
+Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been a
+prisoner and brought him to his mother.
+
+Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother's eyes as he
+stooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that all
+the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the
+sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey,
+trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him
+fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake
+off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they
+had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his
+heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had
+done to her in these four weeks and in these two days.
+
+And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to
+hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have
+done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all
+that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion
+of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to
+what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man's name.
+
+Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon her
+with a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl
+as a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voice
+he said brutally:
+
+"You lied!"
+
+Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words.
+Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, could
+not tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under the
+awful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked his
+life and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knew
+it. All the world could talk freely about what she had done except
+only herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his head
+down to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into his
+ear that he was right, or try to tell him why she had not been able
+to speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives,
+unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as the
+line of death.
+
+When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight.
+
+The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he
+came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into
+the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they
+had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him.
+They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people were
+not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and
+their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which
+he was quick to notice.
+
+During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his
+waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle
+that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and
+once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click
+into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his
+horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge
+and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the
+nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.
+
+When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full
+news of the last four weeks.
+
+It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings
+has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the
+vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never
+for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course
+upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad
+must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying
+along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must
+be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The
+incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only
+as they contributed to the general result.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There
+were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate
+committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an
+obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by
+procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for
+the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything
+they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no
+animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as
+impersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction.
+Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely
+incidental.
+
+Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as
+an instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been
+Rogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had been
+used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey
+Whiting had been put out of the way--definitely, the railroad had
+hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things
+were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying
+through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old
+Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills
+during the four weeks of his removal from the scene.
+
+The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of
+the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad
+would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved
+right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned
+instantly of Rogers' death and had instantly set to work to use that
+as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was
+only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main
+business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with what
+seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands
+which the railroad coveted.
+
+They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun to
+rebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The whole
+people were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scattering
+which the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it was
+worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through the
+thin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farming
+for many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that Jeffrey
+Whiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely to
+be convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would win
+in the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they could
+not see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do?
+
+Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep the
+people in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suit
+the railroad's purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one that
+was now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun to
+fear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was an
+enemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomed
+them. It struck in the dark, and no man's hand could be raised to
+punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark of
+officials.
+
+The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still
+down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant
+help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain
+ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not
+roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them
+before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of
+winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a
+claim, for the mere privilege of living.
+
+When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had
+been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had
+thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now
+ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and
+a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now
+put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing
+blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it
+only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!
+
+The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the
+full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The
+hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red
+sun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps,
+where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the
+autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should
+have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but
+blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the
+east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle
+of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the
+eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!
+
+Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here
+were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen
+built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what
+shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were
+enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again,
+for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and
+good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names were
+written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly
+needful.
+
+Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from
+sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed
+them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men
+and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe
+Cardinal.
+
+The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting.
+Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible
+sacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl a
+great deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. He
+struck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush the
+memory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His body
+had no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merely
+served to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyond
+him.
+
+At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the night
+had told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at the
+railroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take from
+them the little that was left to them. They had been fools that they
+had not struck in the beginning when they had first found that they
+were being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the early
+summer their homes would not have been burned and they would not be
+now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter.
+
+Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had not
+struck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the
+law. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hills
+in ashes, their families scattered and going hungry!
+
+If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end of
+the rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as he
+could, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and their
+own.
+
+If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen for
+days, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into the
+hills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothing
+was being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight for
+them and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager to
+fight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If
+the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it,
+were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it was
+their own?
+
+If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad clear
+down below the line of the hills and put the work back for months.
+They would have sheriffs' posses out against them. They would have to
+fight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up against
+them. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia,
+but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more than
+militia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and their
+people!
+
+Some men would die. But some men always died, in every cause. And in
+the end the people of the whole State would judge the cause!
+
+Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty?
+
+Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys of
+ashes where their homes had been, took what food the French people
+could spare them, and mounted silently behind him.
+
+Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars of the homes of
+many of them, for half the day they rode, saving every strain they
+could upon their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the southern
+divide and down the slope they thundered to strike the railroad at
+Leavit's bridge.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD
+
+
+The wires coming down from the north were flashing the railroad's call
+for help. A band of madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit's
+Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge. They had raced down
+the line, driving the frightened labourers before them, tearing up the
+ties and making huge fires of them on which they threw the new rails,
+heating and twisting these beyond any hope of future usefulness.
+
+Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction had fled literally
+for their lives. The men of the hills had no quarrel with them. They
+preferred not to injure them. But they were infuriated men with their
+wrongs fresh in mind and with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The
+workmen on the line needed no second warning. They would take no
+chances with an enemy of this kind. They were used to violence and
+rioting in their own labour troubles, but this was different. This was
+war. They threw themselves headlong upon handcars and work engines and
+bolted down the line, carrying panic before them.
+
+In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting at their head had
+ridden down and destroyed nearly twenty miles of very costly
+construction work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left in the
+hills and if the men were not stopped they would not leave a single
+rail in all the hill country where they were masters.
+
+The call of the railroad was at first frantic with panic and fright.
+That was while little men who had lost their wits were nominally in
+charge of a situation in which nobody knew what to do. Then suddenly
+the tone of the railroad's call changed. Big men, used to meeting all
+sorts of things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold. They had the
+telegraph lines of the State in their hands. There was no more
+frightened appeal. Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in
+Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties. They were told to swear
+in as many deputies as they could lead. They were to forget the
+consideration of expense. The railroad would pay and feed the men.
+They were to think of nothing but to get the greatest possible number
+of fighting men upon the line at once.
+
+Then a single great man, a man who sat in a great office building in
+New York and held his hand upon every activity in the State, saw the
+gravity of the business in the hills and put himself to work upon it.
+He took no half measures. He had no faith in little local authorities,
+who would be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill people in this
+battle.
+
+He called the Governor of the State from Albany to his office. He
+ordered the Governor to turn out the State's armed forces and set them
+in motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically that the
+Governor had not had the sense to do this of himself. The Governor
+bridled and hesitated. The Governor had been living on the fiction
+that he was the executive head of the State. It took Clifford W.
+Stanton just three minutes to disabuse him completely and forever of
+this illusion. He explained to him just why he was Governor and by
+whose permission. Also he pointed out that the permission of the great
+railroad system that covered the State would again be necessary in
+order that Governor Foster might succeed himself. Then the great man
+sent Wilbur Foster back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment of
+the National Guard for service in the hills.
+
+Before the second night three companies of the militia had passed
+through Utica and had gone up the line of the U. & M. Their orders
+were to avoid killing where possible and to capture all of the hill
+men that they could. The railroad wished to have them tried and
+imprisoned by the impartial law of the land. For it was characteristic
+of the great power which in those days ruled the State that when it
+had outraged every sense of fair play and common humanity to attain
+its ends it was then ready to spend much money creating public opinion
+in favour of itself.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the cover of the woods above
+Milton's Crossing and watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars
+come creeping up the grade from the south. This was the last of the
+hills. He had refused to let his men go farther. Behind him lay fifty
+miles of new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open, settled
+country. His men, once the fever of destruction had begun to run in
+their blood, had wished to sweep on down into the villages and carry
+their work through them. But he had stood firm. This was their own
+country where they belonged and where the railroad was the interloper.
+Here they were at home. Here there was a certain measure of safety for
+them even in the destructive and lawless work that they had begun.
+They had done enough. They had pushed the railroad back to the edge of
+the hills. They had roused the men of the hills behind them. Where he
+had started with his seventy-two friends, there were now three hundred
+well-armed men in the woods around him. Here in their cover they could
+hold the line of the railroad indefinitely against almost any force
+that might be sent against them.
+
+But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership and responsibility was
+already at work upon him. The burning, rankling anger that had driven
+him onward so that he had carried everything and everybody near him
+into this business of destruction was now dulled down to a slow, dull
+hate that while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave him
+time to think. Those men coming up there on the cars were not
+professional soldiers, paid to fight wherever there was fighting to be
+done. Neither did they care anything for the railroad that they should
+come up here to fight for it. Why did they come?
+
+They had joined their organisation for various reasons that usually
+had very little to do with fighting. They were clerks and office men,
+for the most part, from the villages and factories of the central part
+of the State. The militia companies had attracted them because the
+armouries in the towns had social advantages to offer, because
+uniforms and parade appeal to all boys, because they were sons of
+veterans and the military tradition was strong in them. Jeffrey
+Whiting's strong natural sense told him the substance of these things.
+He could not regard these boys as deadly enemies to be shot down
+without mercy or warning. They had taken their arms at a word of
+command and had come up here to uphold the arm of the State. If the
+railroad was able to control the politics of the State and so was able
+to send these boys up here on its own business, then other people were
+to blame for the situation. Certainly these boys, coming up here to do
+nothing but what their duty to the State compelled them to do; they
+were not to be blamed.
+
+His men were now urging him to withdraw a little distance into the
+hills to where the bed of the road ran through a defile between two
+hills. The soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the line of
+what had been the railroad, covering the workmen and engineers who
+would be coming on behind them. If they were allowed to go on up into
+the defile without warning or opposition they could be shot down by
+the hill men from almost absolute safety. If he had been dealing with
+a hated enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed to that. But
+to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of
+them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing
+in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate.
+Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they were
+to expect.
+
+He saw them leave the cars at the end of the broken line and take up
+their march in a rough column of fours along the roadbed. He was
+surprised and puzzled. He had expected them to work along the line
+only as fast as the men repaired the rails behind them. He had not
+thought that they would go away from their cars.
+
+Then he understood. They were not coming merely to protect the
+rebuilding of the railroad. They had their orders to come straight
+into the hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The railroad
+was not only able to call the State to protect itself. It had called
+upon the State to avenge its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His
+men had understood this better than he. Probably they were right. This
+thing might as well be fought out from the first. In the end there
+would be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of troops and
+drive them back out of the hills with an ease that would be almost
+ridiculous. But that would not be the end.
+
+The State would send other men, unlimited numbers of them, for it must
+and would uphold the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did not
+deceive himself. Probably he had not from the beginning had any doubt
+as to what would be the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The
+railroad itself had broken the law of the State and the law of
+humanity. It had defied every principle of justice and common decency.
+It had burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in the hills. Yet
+the law had not raised a hand to punish it. But now when the railroad
+itself had suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to be set
+in motion to punish the men of the hills who had merely paid their
+debt.
+
+But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself that he had not
+foreseen all this from the outset. Those days of thinking in jail had
+given him an insight into realities that years of growth and
+observation of things outside might not have produced in him. He had
+been given time to see that some things are insurmountable, that
+things may be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still persist
+and go on indefinitely. Youth does not readily admit this. Jeffrey
+Whiting had recognised it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had
+led these men, his friends, men who trusted him, upon this mad
+raid. They had come without the clear vision of the end which he now
+realised had been his from the start. They had thought that they
+could accomplish something, that they had some chance of winning a
+victory over the railroad. They had believed that the power of the
+State would intervene to settle the differences between them and
+their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting knew, must have known all along, that the
+moment a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength of the
+State would be put forth to capture these men and punish them. There
+would be no compromise. There would be no bargaining. If they
+surrendered and gave themselves up now they would be jailed for
+varying terms. If they did not, if they stayed here and fought, some
+of them would be killed and injured and in one way or another all
+would suffer in the end.
+
+He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth of this struck him with
+startling clearness now. He had led them into this without letting
+them see the full extent of what they were doing, as he must have seen
+it.
+
+There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed now and scattered
+themselves through the hills few of them would ever be identified. And
+if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad would be almost
+satisfied with punishing him. It was the one just and right thing to
+do.
+
+He went swiftly among the men where they stood among the trees,
+waiting with poised rifles for the word to fire upon the advancing
+soldiers, and told them what they must do. He had deceived them. He
+had not told them the whole truth as he himself knew it. They must
+leave at once, scattering up among the hills and keeping close mouths
+as to where they had been and what they had done. He would go down and
+give himself up, for if the railroad people once had him in custody
+they would not bother so very much about bringing the others to
+punishment.
+
+His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder. They did not
+understand, unless it might be that he had suddenly gone crazy. There
+was an enemy marching up the line toward them, bent upon killing or
+capturing them. They turned from him and without a spoken word,
+without a signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the front
+of the oncoming troops. The battle was on!
+
+The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed to shoot deer and
+foxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of the
+soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with scythes. Not one of
+them was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had
+begun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was as
+though they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be no
+advance.
+
+These soldiers had never before been shot at. The very restraint which
+the hill men had shown in not killing any of them in that volley
+proved to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise how deadly
+was the aim and the judgment of the invisible enemy somewhere in the
+woods there before them. To their credit, they did not drop their arms
+or run. They stood stunned and paralysed, as much by the suddenness
+with which the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.
+
+Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous command for them
+to halt, and ordering them to carry the wounded men back to the cars.
+For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they would again advance or
+would put themselves into some kind of defence formation and hold the
+ground on which they stood.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two other trains come slowly
+creeping up the line. From the second train he saw men leaping down
+who did not take up any sort of military formation. These he knew were
+sheriffs' posses, fighting men sworn in because they were known to be
+fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted in the chase of
+the human animal. He had often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and
+he knew that they were an enemy of a character far different from
+those harmless boys who could not hit a mark smaller than the side of
+a hill. These men would follow doggedly, persistently into the highest
+of the hills, saving themselves, but never letting the prey slip from
+their sight, dividing the hill men, separating them, cornering them
+until they should have tracked them down one by one and either
+captured or killed them all.
+
+These men did not attempt to advance along the line of the road. They
+stepped quickly out into the undergrowth and began spreading a thin
+line of men to either side.
+
+Then he saw that the third train, although they were soldiers, took
+their lesson from the men who had just preceded them. They left the
+tracks and spreading still farther out took up the wings of a long
+line that was now stretching east to west along the fringe of the
+hills. The soldiers in the centre retired a little way down the
+roadbed, stood bunched together for a little time while their officers
+evidently conferred together, then left the road by twos and fours and
+began spreading out and pushing the other lines out still farther. It
+was perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that could not have been
+better done if he and his companions had planned it for their own
+capture.
+
+There were easily eight hundred men there in front, he judged; men
+well armed and ready for an indefinite stay in the hills, with a
+railroad at their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire State
+behind them. And the State was ready to send more and more men after
+these if it should be necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of
+other men were being held in readiness to follow these or were perhaps
+already on their way. He saw the end.
+
+Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly and surround his men.
+If they stood together they would be massacred. If they separated they
+would be hunted down one by one.
+
+Their only chance was to scatter at once and ride back to where their
+homes had been. This time he implored them to take their chance,
+begged them to save themselves while they could. But he might have
+known that they would do nothing of the kind. Already they were
+breaking away and spreading out to meet that distending line in front
+of them. Nothing short of a miracle could now save them from
+annihilation, and Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle. There
+was nothing to be done but to take command and sell his life along
+with theirs as dearly as possible.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up and down the State. Men
+who had followed the course of things through the past months, men
+who knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which no newspaper
+had dared to print openly, understood just what it meant. The men up
+there had been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men agreed
+quietly with each other that they had done the very worst thing that
+could have been done. The injury they had done the railroad would
+amount to very little, comparatively, in the end, while it would give
+the railroad an absolutely free hand from now on. The people would be
+driven forever out of the lands which the railroad wished to possess.
+There would be no legislative hindrances now. The people had doomed
+themselves.
+
+The echoes reached also to two million other men throughout the State
+who did not understand the matter in the least. These looked up a
+moment from the work of living and earning a living to sympathise
+vaguely with the foolish men up there in the hills who had attacked
+the sacred and awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad.
+Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the case. But who could
+tell? And the two million, the rulers and sovereigns of the State,
+went back again to their business.
+
+The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, almost before a
+blow had been struck. It is hardly too much to say that he was
+listening for it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech, slow
+to anger; but, once past a certain point of aggravation, absolutely
+heedless and reckless of consequences.
+
+He did not stop to compute just how much he himself was bound up in
+the causes and consequences of what had happened and what was
+happening in the hills. He had given advice. He had thought with the
+people and only for the people.
+
+He saw, long before it was told him in words, the wild ride down
+through the hills to strike the railroad, the fury of destruction, the
+gathering of the forces of the State to punish.
+
+Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein Joseph
+Winthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no
+moment now.
+
+One man there was in all the State, in all the nation, who could give
+the word that would now save the people of the hills. Clifford W.
+Stanton who had sat months ago in his office in New York and had set
+all these things going, whose ruthless hand was to be recognised in
+every act of those which had driven the people to this madness, his
+will and his alone could stay the storm that was now raging in the
+hills.
+
+Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act of supreme and unselfish
+bravery. It was an act of both physical and moral courage the like of
+which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was an act which had
+revealed in Clifford W. Stanton a depth of strong fineness that no man
+would have suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of faraway
+youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten. And he knew that men do not
+rise to such heights without having very deep in them the nobility to
+make it possible and at times inevitable that they should rise to
+those heights.
+
+After these years and the encrusting strata of compromise and
+cowardice and selfishness which years and life lay upon the fresh
+heart of the youth of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul of
+Clifford W. Stanton again be touched?
+
+Almost before the forces of the State were in motion against the
+people of the hills, the Bishop, early of a morning, walked into the
+office of Clifford Stanton.
+
+Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and though younger than the
+latter by some half-dozen years, it was evident that he had burned up
+the fuel of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked and spoke and
+moved with the deliberate fixity of the settling years, Stanton acted
+with a quick nervousness that shook just a perceptible little. The
+spiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking which had
+chiselled the Bishop's face into a single, simple expression of will
+power was not to be found in the other's face. In its stead there was
+a certain steel-trap impression, as though the man behind the face
+had all his life refused to be certain of anything until the jaws of
+the trap had set upon the accomplished fact.
+
+Physically the two men were much of a type. You would have known them
+anywhere for New Englanders of the generation that has disappeared
+almost completely in the last twenty years. They had been boys at
+Harvard together, though not of the same class. They had been together
+in the Civil War, though the nature of their services had been
+infinitely diverse. They had met here and there casually and
+incidentally in the business of life. But they faced each other now
+virtually as strangers, and with a certain tightening grip upon
+himself each man realised that he was about to grapple with one of the
+strongest willed men that he had ever met, and that he must test out
+the other man to the depths and be himself tried out to the limit of
+his strength.
+
+"It is some years since I've seen you, Bishop. But we are both busy
+men. And--well-- You know I am glad to have you come to see me. I need
+not tell you that."
+
+The Bishop accepted the other man's frank courtesy and took a chair
+quietly. Stanton watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing the
+last few years a good deal, he thought. In reality it was the last
+month that the Bishop was showing. But it did not show in the
+steady, untroubled glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no time on
+preliminaries.
+
+"I have come on business, of course, Mr. Stanton," he began. "It is a
+very strange and unusual business. And to come at it rightly I must
+tell you a story. At the end of the story I will ask you a question.
+That will be my whole business."
+
+The other man said nothing. He did not understand and he never spoke
+until he was sure that he understood. The Bishop plunged into his
+story.
+
+"One January day in 'Sixty-five' I was going up the Shenandoah alone.
+My command had left me behind for two days of hospital service at
+Cross Keys. They were probably some twenty miles ahead of me and would
+be crossing over the divide towards Five Forks and the east. I thought
+I knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of the distance that
+separated me from them, so I started across the Ridge by a path which
+would have been impossible for troops in order.
+
+"I was right. I did cut off the distance which I had expected and came
+down in the early afternoon upon a good road that ran up the eastern
+side of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself that I would be
+with my men before dark, when a troop of Confederate cavalry came
+pelting over a rise in the road behind me.
+
+"I leaped my horse back into the brush at the side of the road and
+waited. They would sweep on past and allow me to go on my way. Behind
+them came a troop of our own horse pursuing hotly. The Confederate
+horses were well spent. I saw that the end of the pursuit was not far
+off. The Confederates--some detached band of Early's men, I
+imagine--realised that they would soon be run down. Just where I had
+left the road there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates threw
+themselves from their horses and drew themselves across the road. They
+were in perfect ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen yards
+back on the narrow road.
+
+"I broke from the bush and fled back along the road to warn our men.
+But I did no good. They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even, as
+they came yelling around the turn of the road.
+
+"For three minutes there was some of the sharpest fighting I ever saw,
+there in the narrow road, before what remained of the Confederates
+broke after their horses and made off again. In the very middle of the
+fight I noticed two young officers. One was a captain, the other a
+lieutenant. I knew them. I knew their story. I believe I was the only
+man living who knew that story. Probably _I_ did not know the whole of
+that story.
+
+"The lieutenant had maligned the captain. He had said of him the one
+thing that a soldier may not say of another. They had fought once. Why
+they had been kept in the same command I do not know.
+
+"Now in the very hottest of this fight, without apparently the
+slightest warning, the lieutenant threw himself upon the captain,
+attacking him viciously with his sword. For a moment they struggled
+there, unnoticed in the dust of the conflict. Then the captain,
+swinging free, struck the lieutenant's sword from his hand. The latter
+drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It missed. By what miracle I
+do not know. All this time the captain had held his sword poised to
+lunge, within easy striking distance of the other's throat. But he had
+made no attempt to thrust. As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his
+arm to strike. Instead he looked a long moment into the lieutenant's
+eyes. The latter was screaming what were evidently taunts into his
+face. The captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at the now
+breaking line of Confederates.
+
+"I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have seen brave men bravely
+refrain from killing. That was the bravest thing I ever saw."
+
+Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of him. He gave no sign
+of hearing. He was living over for himself that scene on a lonely,
+forgotten Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:
+
+"The lieutenant died, a soldier's death, the next day."
+
+"I knew," said the Bishop quietly. "My question is: Are you the same
+brave man with a soldier's brave, great heart that you were that
+day?"
+
+For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring directly at something
+that was not in the visible world. The question had sprung upon him
+out of the dead past. What right had this man, what right had any man
+to face him with it?
+
+He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:
+
+"You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of the tragedy of my life
+as it whirled by you on the road! How dare you come here to tell me
+the little bit of it you saw?"
+
+"Because," said the Bishop swiftly, "you have forgotten how great and
+brave a man you are."
+
+Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He was stirred to the depths
+of feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotion
+and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. His
+lifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kept
+him waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it was
+merely the instinct of self-defence.
+
+"For months," the Bishop was going on quietly, "the people of my hills
+have been harassed by you in your unfair efforts to get possession of
+the lands upon which their fathers built their homes. You have tried
+to cheat them. You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to debauch
+a legislature in your attempt to overcome them. I have here in my
+pocket the sworn confessions of two men who stood in the shadow of
+death and said that they had been sent to burn a whole countryside
+that you and your associates coveted--to burn the people in their
+homes like the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that act to
+within two men of you. And I can sit here, Clifford Stanton, and look
+you in the eye man to man and tell you that I _know_ you gave the
+suggestion. And you cannot look back and deny it. I cannot take you
+into a court of law in this State and prove it. We both know the
+futility of talking of that. But I can take you, I do take you this
+minute into the court of your own heart--where I know a brave man
+lives--and convict you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If the
+whole world stood here accusing you would we know it any the better?
+
+"Now my people have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the law
+into their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. They
+have done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? You
+have power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of the
+land. They did not understand. They did not know you. They have been
+misled. They have listened to men like me preaching: 'Right shall
+prevail: Justice shall conquer.' And where does right prevail? And
+when shall justice conquer? No doubt you have said these phrases
+yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers taught us to say them.
+But are they true? Does justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can
+say. I ask you, who have the answer in your power. Does right prevail?
+Then give my stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?
+Then see that they come to no harm.
+
+"I dare to put this thing raw to your face because I know the man that
+once lived within you. I saw you--!"
+
+"Don't harp on that," Stanton cut in viciously. "You know nothing
+about it."
+
+"I _do_ harp on that. I have come here to harp on that. Do you think
+that if I had not with my eyes seen that thing I would have come near
+you at all? No. I would have branded you before all men for the thing
+that you have done. I would have given these confessions which I hold
+to the world. I would have denounced you as far as tongue and pen
+would go to every man who through four years gave blood at your side.
+I would have braved the rebuke of my superiors and maybe the
+discipline of my Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of men. I
+would have made your name hated in the ears of little children. But I
+would not have come to you.
+
+"If I had not seen that thing I would not have come to you, for I
+would have said: What good? The man is a coward without a heart. A
+_coward_, do you remember that word?"
+
+The man groaned and struck out with his hand as though to drive away a
+ghastly thing that would leap upon him.
+
+"A coward without a heart," the Bishop repeated remorselessly, "who
+has men and women and children in his power and who, because he has no
+heart, can use his power to crush them.
+
+"If I had not seen, I would have said that.
+
+"But I saw. I _saw_. And I have come here to ask you: Are you the same
+brave man with a heart that I saw on that day?
+
+"You shall not evade me. Do you think you can put me off with defences
+and puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of
+property? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will go
+down into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the naked
+truth. But I will have my answer. Are you that same man?
+
+"If you are not that same man; if you have killed that in you which
+gave life to that man; if that man no longer lives in you; if you are
+not capable of being that same man with the heart of a great and
+tender hero, then tell me and I will go. But you shall answer me. I
+will have my answer."
+
+Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair and stood trembling as
+though in an overpowering rage, and visibly struggling for his command
+of mind and tongue.
+
+"Words, words, words," he groaned at last. "Your life is made of
+words. Words are your coin. What do you know?
+
+"Do you think that words can go down into my soul to find the man that
+was once there? Do you think that words can call him up? When did
+words ever mean anything to a man's real heart! You come here with
+your question. It's made of words.
+
+"When did men ever do anything for _words_? Honour is a word. Truth is
+a word. Bravery is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word. Do you
+think men do things for words? No! What do you know? What _could_ you
+know?
+
+"Men do things and you call them by words. But do they do them for the
+words? No!
+
+"They do them-- Because _some woman lives, or once lived!_ What do
+_you_ know?
+
+"Go out there. Stay there." He pointed. "I've got to think."
+
+He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against his desk. The Bishop
+rose and walked from the room.
+
+When he heard the door close, the man got up and going to the door
+barred it.
+
+He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning heavily upon his propped
+hands.
+
+He opened a drawer of his desk and looked at a smooth, glinting black
+and steel thing that lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang
+that went out to the Bishop listening in the outer office. It was a
+sinister, suggestive noise, and for an instant it chilled that good
+man's heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he knew immediately
+that he had been mistaken.
+
+Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked a smaller compartment
+within it, and from the latter took a small gold-framed picture. He
+set it up on the desk between his hands and looked long at it,
+questioning the face in the frame with a tender, diffident expression
+of a wonder that never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled.
+
+The face that looked out of the picture was one of a quiet,
+translucent beauty. At first glance the face had none of the striking
+features that men associate with great beauty. But behind the eyes
+there seemed to glow, and to grow gradually, and softly stronger, a
+light, as though diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly
+radiated from the whole countenance an impression of indescribable,
+gentle loveliness.
+
+Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was that light from within.
+He wondered now, and questioned. Never before had that light seemed
+so wonderful and so real. Now there came to him an answer. An answer
+that shook him, for it was the last answer he would have expected. The
+light within was truth--truth. It seemed that in a world of sham and
+illusions and evasions this one woman had understood, had lived with
+truth.
+
+The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry laugh that was nearer to a
+sob.
+
+"Was that it, Lucy?" he queried. "Truth? Then let us have a little
+truth, for once! I'll tell you some truth!
+
+"I lied a while ago. He did _not_ die a soldier's death. I told the
+same lie to you long ago. Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven
+happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to you. Words. And yet
+you died a happy woman, because of that lie.
+
+"He lied to you. He took you from me with lies. Words. Lies. And yet
+they made you happy. Where is truth?
+
+"You lived happy and died happy with a lie. Because I lied like what
+they call a man and a gentleman. _Truth!_"
+
+He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face before him. Did he
+expect to see the light fade out, to see the face wither under the
+bitter revelation?
+
+"I've been everything," he went on, still trying to make his point,
+"I've done everything, that men say I've been and done. Why?
+
+"Well--Why?" he asked sharply. "Did it make any difference?
+
+"Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my face--sometimes.
+Well--Why not? Does it make any difference? Did it make any difference
+with you? If I had thought it would-- But it didn't. Lies, trickery,
+words! They served with you. They made you happy. _Truth!_"
+
+But as he looked into the face and the smiling light of truth
+persisted in it, there came over his soul the dawn of a wonder. And
+the dawn glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and looked out
+wondering at a world remade.
+
+"Is it true, Lucy?" he asked gently. "Can that be _truth_, at last? Is
+that what you mean? Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words and
+beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand--a little? And do
+you, somewhere, understand now?
+
+"Then tell me. Was it worth the lies? Down underneath, when you
+understood, which was the truth? The thing I did--which men would call
+fine? Or was it the words?
+
+"Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was it the fine thing that was
+really the truth, and did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there
+truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were made of truth, did
+you somehow understand all the time?"
+
+He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally believing. Then he
+said:
+
+"Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I will not speak it to him.
+But I'll say it to you: Yes, I am that same man who once did what they
+call a fine, brave thing. I didn't do it because it was a great thing,
+a brave thing. I did it for you.
+
+"And--I'll do this for you."
+
+He looked again at the face in the picture, as if to make sure. Then
+he locked it away quickly in its place.
+
+He thought for a moment, then drew a pad abruptly to him and began
+writing. He wrote two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State, the
+other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then he took another pad and
+wrote a note, this to his personal representative who was following
+the state troops into the hills.
+
+He rose and walked briskly to the door. Throwing it open he called a
+clerk and gave him the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand and
+asked the Bishop back into the office.
+
+Closing the door quickly, he said without preface:
+
+"This note will put my man up there at your service. You will prefer
+to go up into the hills yourself, I think. The officers in command of
+the troops will know that you are empowered to act for all parties.
+The Governor will have seen to that before you get there, I think.
+There will be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards. You can
+settle the whole matter in no time.
+
+"We will not buy the land, but we'll give a fair rental, based on what
+ores we find to take out. You can give _your_ word--mine wouldn't go
+for much up there, I guess," he put in grimly--"that it will be fair.
+You can make that the basis of settlement.
+
+"They can go back and rebuild. I will help, where it will do the most
+good. Our operations won't interfere much with their farm land, I
+find.
+
+"You will want to start at once. That is all, I guess, Bishop," he
+concluded abruptly.
+
+The Bishop reached for the smaller man's hand and wrung it with a
+sudden, unwonted emotion.
+
+"I will not cheapen this, sir," he said evenly, "by attempting to
+thank you."
+
+"A mere whim of mine, that's all," Stanton cut in almost curtly, the
+steel-trap expression snapping into place over his face. "A mere
+whim."
+
+"Well," said the Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I
+only came to ask a question, anyhow." Then he turned and walked
+briskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what the
+other man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner.
+
+So these two men parted. In words, they had not understood each other.
+Neither had come near the depths of the other. But then, what man does
+ever let another man see what is in his heart?
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider and
+wider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of men
+hidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly and
+more clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. His
+line was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemy
+had known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a few
+daring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strength
+of the men with him.
+
+All the afternoon as he watched he saw other and yet other groups and
+troops of men come up the railroad, detrain and push out ever farther
+upon the enveloping wings to east and west.
+
+Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line had been driven in and
+almost surrounded. They had decided in the beginning to leave their
+horses in the rear, and so use them only at the last. But the
+spreading line in front had become too long to be covered on foot by
+the few men he had. They were forced to use the speed of the animals
+to make a show of greater force than they really had. The horses
+furnished marks that even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the
+afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams of terrified,
+wounded horses rang horribly through the woods above the pattering
+crackle of the irregular rifle fire. Old men who years before had
+learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and fell asleep grumbling.
+Young men and boys who had never heard such sounds turned sick with
+horror or wandered frightened through the dark, nervously ready to
+fire on any moving twig or scraping branch.
+
+In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the line, talking aside to
+every man; telling them to slip quietly away through the dark. They
+could make their way out through the loose lines of soldiers and
+sheriffs' men and get down to the villages where they would be unknown
+and where nobody would bother with them.
+
+The inevitable few took his word-- There is always the inevitable few.
+They slipped away one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly
+good reason for going, several good reasons, in fact; any reason,
+indeed, but that they were afraid. Most of them were gathered in by
+the soldier pickets and sent down to jail.
+
+Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with a grim, ugly suggestion in
+it of the coming winter. Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily out
+to their posts, munching dryly at the last of the stores which they
+had taken from the construction depots along the line which they had
+destroyed. This was the end. It was not far from the mind of each man
+that this would probably be his last meal.
+
+The firing began again as the outer line came creeping in upon them.
+They had still the great advantage of the shelter of the woods and the
+formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship kept those
+directly in front of them almost out of range. But there was nothing
+in sight before them but that they would certainly all be surrounded
+and shot down or taken.
+
+Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those who had been watching the
+most distant of the two wings creeping around them saw these men halt
+and slowly begin to gather back together. What was it? Were they going
+to rush at last? Here would be a fight in earnest!
+
+But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation, merely walked
+back in their tracks until they were entirely out of range. It must be
+a ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their shelter, puzzled, but
+determined not to be drawn out.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of the line, saw an old man
+walking, barehead, up over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted
+rails. That white head with the high, wide brow, the slightly
+stooping, spare shoulders, the long, swinging walk-- That was the
+Bishop of Alden!
+
+Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to the men on either side
+to stay where they were, jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet
+the Bishop.
+
+"Are any men killed?" the Bishop asked before Jeffrey had time to
+speak as they met.
+
+"Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the chest--we don't know how bad
+it is," said Jeffrey, stopping short. "Ten other men are wounded. I
+don't think any of them are bad."
+
+"Call in your men," said the Bishop briefly. "The soldiers are going
+back."
+
+At Jeffrey's call the men came running from all sides as he and the
+Bishop reached the line. Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered
+round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance of the White
+Horse Chaplain, for so one and all they knew and remembered him. Men
+who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped back into the scene
+of that day and looked about blankly for the white horse. And young
+men who had heard that tale many times and had seen and heard of his
+coming through the fire to French Village stared round-eyed at him.
+What did this coming mean?
+
+He told them shortly the terms that Clifford W. Stanton, their enemy,
+was willing to make with them. And in the end he added:
+
+"You have only my word that these things will be done as I say. _I_
+believe. If you believe, you will take your horses and get back to
+your families at once."
+
+Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the first
+time knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them.
+They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many who
+had thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying
+over the names of those they were saved to.
+
+The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him, walked slowly back down
+the roadbed. Suddenly Jeffrey remembered something that had gone
+completely out of his mind in these last hours.
+
+"Bishop," he stammered, "that day--that day in court. I--I said you
+lied. Now I know you didn't. You told the truth, of course."
+
+"My boy," said the Bishop queerly, "yesterday I asked a man, on his
+soul, for the truth--the truth. I got no answer.
+
+"But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor of
+all the World, once asked what was truth. And _he_ got no answer.
+Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are things
+bigger than we are. We get no answer."
+
+Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID
+
+
+It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of
+Promise.
+
+The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He
+still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from
+which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He
+still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the
+sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running
+down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had
+chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the
+grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the
+enemy was gone.
+
+But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the
+forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even
+the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and
+hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature.
+For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But
+the sun came warmer, more insistent, and kissed the scarred, brown
+body of earth and warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and the
+little flowers took courage out of their very craving for life and
+pushed resolutely forth. And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The
+world was born again!
+
+Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run on her way back to French
+Village. She had been to put the first flowers of the Spring on the
+grave of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had blessed the ground for
+him and they had laid him, there under the sunny side of the Gaunt
+Rocks that had given him his last breathing space that he might die in
+peace. They had put him here, for there was no way in that time to
+carry him to the little cemetery in French Village. And Cynthe was
+well satisfied that it was so. Here, under the Gaunt Rocks, she would
+not have to share him with any one. And she would not have to hear
+people pointing out the grave to each other and to see them staring.
+
+The water tumbling down the Run out of the hills sang a glad,
+uproarious song, as is the way of all brooks at their beginnings,
+concerning the necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible to the
+big, wide life of the sea. The sea would not care at all if that brook
+never came down to it. But the brook did not know that. Would not have
+believed it if it had been told.
+
+And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song of old Beaupre--which
+she had never seen, for Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was
+sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time, and-- But Cynthe was
+not unhappy. The Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good.
+Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet. There was work in the
+world to do. And--when all was said and done--Rafe Gadbeau was in
+Heaven.
+
+As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey
+Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur's Fork country and
+was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk
+with her. Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty, sociable
+little person, and, besides, for some time she had had it in mind that
+she would some day take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this
+scowling young gentleman with the big face.
+
+"You're with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren't you?" he said, after some
+verbal beating about the bush; "how is she?"
+
+"Why don't you come see, if you want to know?" retorted Cynthe
+sharply.
+
+Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on:
+
+"If you wanted to know why didn't you come up all Winter and see? Why
+didn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies
+through the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid of
+them? Why didn't you come see when she was helping the mothers up
+there to get into their houses and make the houses warm before the
+coming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn't
+you come see when she nearly got her death from the 'mmonia caring for
+old Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till she
+shamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebody
+then? Why didn't you come see?"
+
+"Well," Jeffrey defended, "I didn't know about any of those things.
+And we had plenty to do here--our place and my mother and all. I
+didn't see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church,
+just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn't seem to want
+to."
+
+"But she should have been delighted to see you," Cynthe snapped back.
+"Don't you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. She
+should have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said to
+her the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. You
+called her 'liar' before the whole court, even the Judge! Of one
+certainty, she should have flown to you. No?"
+
+Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have gone away, with all haste.
+But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure that
+some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue.
+
+"But she--she cared for me," he blurted out. "I know she did. I
+couldn't understand why she couldn't tell--the truth; when you--you
+did so much for me."
+
+"For you? For _you_!" the girl flamed up in his face. "Oh, villainous
+monster of vanity! For _you_! Ha! I could laugh! For _you_! I put _mon
+Rafe_--dead in his grave--to shame before all the world, called him
+murderer, blackened his name, for _you_!
+
+"No! No! _No!_ _Never!_
+
+"I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death.
+_Never!_
+
+"I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which _mon Rafe_
+had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay
+that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in.
+I did it for _you_! Ha!"
+
+The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so
+rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of
+the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main
+argument.
+
+"But why couldn't she have told the truth?"
+
+"The truth, eh! You must have the truth! The girl must tell the truth
+for you! No matter if she was to blacken her soul before God, you
+must have the truth told for you. The truth! It was not enough for you
+to know that the girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that
+she would have died for you if she might! No. The poor girl must tear
+out the secret lining of her heart for you, to save you!
+
+"Think you that if _mon Rafe_ was alive and stood there where you
+stood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give up
+the secret of the Holy Confession to save him. _Non!_ _Mon Rafe_ was a
+_man_! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted me
+with!
+
+"Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to be saved; that the Good God must
+come down from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened Book for
+_you_!
+
+"You ask for truth! _Tiens!_ I will tell you truth!
+
+"You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried that you were an
+innocent man. _Mon Rafe_ was the guilty man. The whole world must come
+forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth to declare you
+innocent and him guilty! You were innocent! You were persecuted! The
+earth and the Heaven must come to show that you were innocent and he
+was guilty! _Bah!_ _You were as guilty as he!_
+
+"I was there. I saw. Your finger was on the trigger. You only waited
+for the man to stop moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder was in
+your soul. Murder was in your finger. But you were innocent and _mon
+Rafe_ was guilty. By how much?
+
+"By one second. That was the difference between _mon Rafe_ and you.
+Just that second that he shot before you were ready. _That_ was the
+difference between you the innocent man and _mon Rafe_!
+
+"You were guilty. In your heart you were guilty. In your soul you were
+guilty. M'sieur Cain himself was not more guilty than you!
+
+"You were more guilty than _mon Rafe_, for he had suffered more from
+that man. He was hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were cool. You
+were ready. Only _mon Rafe_ was a little quicker, because he was
+desperate. Before the Good God you were more guilty.
+
+"And _mon Rafe_ must be blackened more than the fire had blackened his
+poor body. And the poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the good
+M'sieur the Bishop must break his holiest oath. All to make you
+innocent!
+
+"Bah! _Innocent!_"
+
+She flung away from him and ran up the hill. Cynthe had not said quite
+all that she intended to say to this young gentleman. But then, also,
+she had said a good deal more than she had intended to say. So it was
+about even. She had said enough. And it would do him no harm. She had
+felt that she owed _mon Rafe_ a little plain speaking. She was much
+relieved.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him digging up the tender
+roots of the new grass with his toe. He did not look after the girl.
+He had forgotten her.
+
+He felt no resentment at the things that she had said. He did not
+argue with himself as to whether these things were just or unjust. Of
+all the things that she had said only one thing mattered. And that not
+because she had said it. It mattered because it was true. The quick,
+jabbing sentences from the girl had driven home to him just one
+thing.
+
+Guilty? He _was_ guilty. He was as guilty as--Rafe Gadbeau.
+
+Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation, bitter, blinding provocation.
+But so had Rafe Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau as
+anything but guilty of murder.
+
+He turned on his heel and walked down the Run with swift, swinging
+strides, fighting this conviction that was settling upon him. He
+fought it viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a man, that
+the thing was done and past, that men have no time for remorse and
+sickish, mawkish repentance. Those things were for brooding women, and
+Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably, sagaciously; contending that he
+had not, in fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that he would
+ever have done so? Maybe he had not really intended to kill at all.
+Maybe he would not have killed. The man might have spoken to him.
+Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned that time. Who could
+tell? Ten thousand things might have happened, any one of which would
+have stood between him and killing the man. He fought it defiantly.
+Suppose he had killed the man? What about it? The man deserved it. He
+had a right to kill him.
+
+But he knew that he was losing at every angle of the fight. For the
+conviction answered not a word to any of these things. It merely
+fastened itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment:
+"As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau."
+
+And when he came over the top of the hill, from where he could look
+down upon the grave of Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the
+conviction pointed out to him just one enduring fact. It said: "There
+is the grave of Rafe Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything
+about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried here."
+
+Then he fought no more with the conviction. It gripped his spirit and
+cowed him. It sat upon his shoulders and rode home with him. His
+mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding, began to look for
+some fresh trouble.
+
+She need not have looked for new trouble, so far as concerned things
+outside himself. For Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men.
+He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable and finer home than
+it had ever been. He had secured an excellent contract from the
+railroad to supply thousands of ties out of the timber of the high
+hills. He had made money out of that. And once he had gotten a taste
+of money-making, in a business that was his by the traditions of his
+people and his own liking, he knew that he had found himself a
+career.
+
+He was working now on a far bigger project, the reforesting of thirty
+thousand acres of the higher hill country. In time there would be
+unlimited money in that. But there was more than money in it. It was a
+game and a life which he knew and which he loved. To make money by
+making things more abundant, by covering the naked peaks of the hill
+country with sturdy, growing timber, that was a thing that appealed to
+him.
+
+All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men had
+done in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding this
+knowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already he
+knew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more about
+growing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how much
+this meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youth
+more than its due. Already he was being picked as an expert. Next
+week he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislative
+committee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to get
+appropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls from
+out of standing timber--a thing that if well done would render forest
+fires almost harmless.
+
+He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that law
+school diploma--the thing that he had once regarded as the portal of
+the world--look cheap and little.
+
+But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations,
+the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The high
+colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him
+and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the
+word--_guilty_.
+
+What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything?
+when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall
+with the word written across it. Guilty--guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And
+Ruth Lansing--!
+
+A flash of sudden insight caught him and held him in its glaring
+light. He had been doing all this work. He had built this home. He had
+fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills and the raging
+winter for money. He had dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built
+them higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.
+
+He had fought the thought of her. He had put her out of his mind. He
+had said that she had failed him in need. He had even, in the blackest
+time of the night, called her liar. He had forgotten her, he said.
+
+Now he knew that not for an instant had she been out of his mind.
+Every stroke of work had been for her. She had stood at the top of the
+high path of every struggling dream.
+
+Between him and her now rose that grey wall with the one word written
+on it. Was that what they had meant that day there in the court, she
+and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all? Was there some sort of
+uncanny truth or insight or hidden justice in that secret confessional
+of theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting truth,
+while it hid the momentary, accidental truth of mere words? In effect,
+they had said that he was guilty. And he _was_ guilty!
+
+What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that day
+on the railroad line? "Sooner or later we have to learn that there is
+something bigger than we are." Was this what it meant? Was this the
+thing bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, had
+looked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing that
+was bigger than he?
+
+He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting maze of imagination,
+misinformation, and some unreadable facts.
+
+He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that he was guilty. That was
+why she had acted as she had. He would go to her. He would--! But what
+was the use? She would not talk to him about this. She would merely
+deny, as she had done before, that she knew anything at all. What
+could he do? Where could he turn? They, he and Ruth, could never speak
+of that thing. They could never come to any understanding of anything.
+This thing, this wall--with that word written on it--would stand
+between them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that was
+sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the thing that was stronger
+than he. There was no answer. There was no way out.
+
+Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!
+
+But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He was not guilty any more.
+Cynthe had said so. He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow. He
+had merely come through the fire and thrown himself at a man's feet
+and had his guilt wiped away. What was there in that uncanny thing
+they called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as--as Rafe
+Gadbeau, could come to another man, and, by the saying of a few words,
+turn over and face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?
+
+It was a delusion, of course. The saying of words could never wipe
+away Rafe Gadbeau's guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt
+from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes. But Rafe Gadbeau
+_believed_ it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. _Ruth_
+believed it!
+
+It was a delusion, yes. But--_What_ a delusion! What a magnificent,
+soul-stirring delusion! A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau out of
+the misery of his guilt, that carried the souls of millions of guilty
+people through all the world up out of the depths of their crimes to a
+confidence of relief and freedom!
+
+Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down into the abyss of
+despairing loneliness. It trod the dark ways in which there was no
+guidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what it
+might appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause to
+effect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, or
+thought, that must have been the starting point, that must have held
+the germ of his guilt.
+
+Somewhere there must have been a beginning. He knew that he was not in
+any particular a different person, capable of anything different,
+likely to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain from what
+he had been on any other morning since he had become a man. There was
+never a time, so far as he could see, when he would not have been
+ready to do the thing which he was ready to do that morning--given the
+circumstances. Nor had he changed in any way since that morning. What
+had been essentially his act, his thought, a part of him, that morning
+was just as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this minute.
+There was no thing in the succession of incidents to which he could
+point and say: That was not I who did that: I did not mean that: I am
+sorry I did that. Nor would there ever be a time when he could say any
+of these things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty of
+that thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty of
+it. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to make
+him wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he would
+undo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begun
+away back in the formation of his character, and which would persist
+as long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it.
+There was no way that it might ever end.
+
+And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing had seen that guilt, too.
+She had seen it in his eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in
+his mind.
+
+What had she seen? What was that thing written so clear in his eyes
+that she could read and tell him of it that day on the road from
+French Village?
+
+He would go to her and ask her. She should tell him what was that
+thing she had seen. He would make her tell. He would have it from
+her!
+
+But, no. Where was the use? It would only bring them to that whole,
+impossible, bewildering business of the confessional. And he did not
+want to hear any more of that. His heart was sick of it. It had made
+him suffer enough. And he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered
+equally, or maybe more, from it.
+
+Where could he go? He must tell this thing. He _must_ talk of it to
+some one! That resistless, irrepressible impulse for confession, that
+call of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon him. He must find
+some other soul to share with him the burden of this conviction. He
+must find some one who would understand and to whom he could speak.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not have analysed what this
+craving meant. He only knew that it was very real, that his soul was
+staggering alone and blind under the weight of this thing.
+
+There was one man who would understand. The man who had looked upon
+the faces of life and death these many years, the man of strange
+comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him on the way of all this,
+and who from what he had said in his house in Alden, that day so long
+ago when all this began, may have foreseen this very thing, the man
+who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry out his guilt; that man would
+understand. He would go to him.
+
+He wrote a note which his mother would find in the morning, and
+slipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride to
+Lowville.
+
+"I came because I had to come," Jeffrey began, when the Bishop had
+seated him. "I don't know why I should come to you. I know you cannot
+do anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tell
+some one. I _had_ to say it to somebody."
+
+"I sat that day in the courtroom," he went on as the Bishop waited,
+"and thought that the whole world was against me. It seemed that
+everybody was determined to make me guilty--even you, even Ruth. And I
+was innocent. I had done nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the
+idea that everybody was trying to make me out guilty, when I was
+innocent. I had done nothing. I had not killed a man. I told the men
+there on the mountain that I was innocent and they would not believe
+me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts that I had not done the thing,
+but you would not say a word for me, an innocent man."
+
+"It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole world
+wanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on to
+the wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting back
+against everybody.
+
+"And--this is what I came to say--all the time I was guilty--guilty:
+guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!"
+
+"I am not sure I understand," said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey
+stopped.
+
+"Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty
+of that man's death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty
+of it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I will
+always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turn
+over into the next world, free. I cannot," he ended, with a sort of
+grim finality as though he saw again before him that wall against
+which he had come the night before.
+
+"You mean--" the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, "What
+brought your mind to this view of the matter?"
+
+"A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that
+loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me."
+
+Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some
+plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than
+to treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not a boy to be
+laughed out of a morbid notion, or to be told to grow older and forget
+the thing. His was a man's soul, standing in the dark, grappling with
+a thing with which it could not cope. The wrong word here might mar
+his whole life. Here was no place for softening away the realities
+with reasoning. The man's soul demanded a man's straight answer.
+
+"Before you could be guilty," said the Bishop decisively, "you must
+have injured some one by your thought, your intention. Whom did you
+injure?"
+
+Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought, to follow it out from
+the maze which his mind had been treading. Here was the answer. This
+would clear the way. Whom had he injured?
+
+Well, _whom_ had he injured? _Who_ had been hurt by his thought, his
+wish, to kill a man? Had it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was
+none the worse of it.
+
+Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not enter into this at all.
+
+Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till yesterday; and not in
+the way meant.
+
+Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then--then why all this--?
+Jeffrey Whiting rose from his chair as though to go. He did not look
+at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing upon the floor,
+asking:
+
+Whom?
+
+Suddenly, from within, just barely audible through his lips there came
+the answer; a single word:
+
+"_God!_"
+
+"Your business is with Him, then," said the Bishop, rising with what
+almost seemed brusqueness. "You wanted to see Him."
+
+"But--but," Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to argue, "men come to you, to
+confess. Rafe Gadbeau--!"
+
+"No," said the Bishop quickly, "you are wrong. Men come to me to
+_confession_. They come to _confess_ to God."
+
+He took the young man's hand, saying:
+
+"I will not say another word. You have found your own answer. You
+would not understand better if I talked forever. Find God, and tell
+Him, what you have told me."
+
+In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the long way to the hills
+and home. He was still bewildered, disappointed, and a little
+resentful of the Bishop's brief manners with him. He had gone looking
+for sympathy, understanding, help. And he had been told to find God.
+
+Find God? How did men go about to find God? Wasn't all the world
+continually on the lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did the
+preachers find Him? Did the priests find Him? And if they did, what
+did they say to Him? Did people who were sick, and people who said God
+had answered their prayers and punished their enemies for them; did
+they find God?
+
+Did they find Him when they prayed? Did they find Him when they were
+in trouble? What did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must have meant
+something? How did the Bishop himself find God? Was there some word,
+some key, some hidden portal by which men found God? Was God to be
+found here on the hills, in the night, in the open?
+
+God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how can I come, how can I find!
+A wordless, baffled, impotent cry, that reached nowhere.
+
+The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.
+
+Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable guilt, swept down
+upon him again and beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It
+left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to face this thing. It was
+too big for him. He was after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling
+alone in the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had been caught and
+crushed between forces and passions that were too much for him. He was
+little and these things were very great.
+
+Unconsciously the heart within him, the child heart that somehow lives
+ever in every man, began to speak, to speak, without knowing it,
+direct to God.
+
+It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was not an excuse. It was
+the simple unfolding of the heart of a child to the Father who made
+it. The heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It could not lift
+itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness complete, of dependence
+utter and unreasoning.
+
+Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at the stars, blinking at
+him through the starting tears.
+
+Was that God? Had some one spoken? Where was the load that had lain
+upon him all these weary hours?
+
+He stopped his horse and looked about him, breathing in great, free,
+hungry breaths of God's air about him. For it _was_ God's air. That
+was the wonder of it. The world was God's! And it was new made for him
+to live in!
+
+He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer of thanks, as simple and
+unreasoning, unquestioning, as had been the unfolding of his heart. He
+had been bound: he was free!
+
+Then his horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new
+life upon the soft, breathing air of the spring night.
+
+With the inconsequence of all of us children when God has lifted the
+stone from our hearts, Jeffrey had already left everything of the last
+thirty-six hours behind him as completely as if he had never lived
+through those hours. (That He lets us forget so easily, shows that He
+is the Royal God in very deed.)
+
+Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to
+French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old
+Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof.
+
+What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that
+he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months. For
+the French people had taken her to their hearts and had made of her a
+wonderful new kind of saint. They had seen her come to them out of the
+fire. They had heard of her silence at the trial of the man she loved.
+They had seen her devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to
+their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria had frightened
+the wits out of the best of women. All the while they knew that she
+was not happy. And they had explained fully to the countryside just
+what was their opinion of the whole matter.
+
+Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly understanding many
+things that had been hidden from him, was very humble as he wondered
+what he could say to Ruth.
+
+At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he met Cynthe.
+
+"Where is she?" he asked without preface.
+
+Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching look, and was amazed
+at the change she saw.
+
+Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to whom she had talked the
+other day. Here was a man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and
+had learned some things out of unknown places of his heart.
+
+I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too much. But I am not sorry.
+_Non._
+
+"The last house," she answered, "by the crook of the lake there. She
+will be glad," she remarked simply, and turned on her way.
+
+Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl heartily for the word
+that she had thought to add. It was a warrant, it seemed, of
+forgiveness--and of all things.
+
+Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife Philomena sat in the sun
+by the side of the house watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms
+bare above the elbow was working away contentedly in their little
+patch of garden. They nudged each other as Jeffrey rode up and left
+his horse, but they made no sign to Ruth.
+
+So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth came to her unseen
+and unheard. He took the hoe from her hand as she turned to face
+him. Up to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he was to say to
+her. What was there to say? But as he looked into her startled,
+pain-clouded eyes he found himself saying:
+
+"I hurt God once, very much. I did not know what to say to Him. Last
+night He taught me what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will you
+tell me what to say to you, Ruth?"
+
+It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting. But Ruth quickly
+understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man's stumbling,
+wholehearted confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny.
+The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently
+took his hand and led him out of the little garden and to where his
+horse stood.
+
+There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers slipping softly
+through the big bay's mane, Jeffrey standing stiff and anxious before
+her, with the glad morning and the high hills and all French Village
+observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced their question.
+
+But after all there was no question. For when Jeffrey had told all,
+down to that moment in the dark road when he had found God in his
+heart, Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness that is born
+in every woman, said:
+
+"Poor boy, you have suffered too much!"
+
+"What I suffered was that I made for myself," he said thickly. "Cynthe
+Cardinal told me what a fool I was."
+
+"What did Cynthe tell you?"
+
+"She told me that you loved me."
+
+"Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?" said the girl very quietly.
+
+"Yes, it seems so. I'd known your little white soul ever since you
+were a baby. I knew that in all your life you'd never had a thought
+that was not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I knew that
+there was never a time when you wouldn't have given everything, even
+life, for me. I knew it that day in the Bishop's house. I knew it
+that morning when you came to me in the sugar cabin."
+
+"Yes, I knew all that," he went on bitterly. "I knew you loved me, and
+I knew what a love it was. I knew it. And yet that day--that day in
+the courtroom, the only thing I could do was to call you liar!"
+
+She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him, but he went on
+doggedly.
+
+"Yes, I did. That was all I could think of. I threw it at you like a
+blow in the face. I saw you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck
+you. And even that sight wasn't enough for me. I kept on saying it,
+when I knew in my heart it wasn't so. I couldn't help but know it. I
+knew you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied; kept on till
+yesterday. I wasn't big enough. I wasn't man enough to see that you
+were just facing something that was bigger than both of us--something
+that was bigger and truer than words--that there was no way out for
+you but to do what you did."
+
+"Jeffrey, dear," the girl hurried to say, "you know that's a thing we
+can't speak about--"
+
+"Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand. You needn't say anything.
+I _understand_."
+
+"And I understand a lot more," he began again. "It took that little
+French girl to tell me what was the truth. I know it now. There was a
+deeper, a truer truth under everything. That was why you had to do as
+you did. That's why everything was so. I wasn't innocent. Things don't
+_happen_ as those things did. They work out, because they have to."
+
+The girl was watching him with fright and wonder in her eyes. What was
+he going to say? But she let him go on.
+
+"No, I wasn't innocent," he said, as though to himself now. "I fooled
+myself into thinking that I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man.
+I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but Rafe Gadbeau's quickness
+prevented me. No, I wasn't innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was a
+murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as
+Ca--!"
+
+The girl had suddenly sprung forward and thrown her arms around his
+neck. She caught the word that was on his lips and stopped it with a
+kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say what he had been
+going to say.
+
+"You shall not say that!" she panted. "I will not let you say it!
+Nobody shall say it! I defy the whole world to say it!"
+
+"But it's--it's true," said the boy brokenly as he held her.
+
+"It is not true! Never! Nothing's true, only the truth that God has
+hidden in His heart! And that is hidden! How can we say? How dare we
+say what we would have done, when we didn't do it? How do we know
+what's really in our hearts? Don't you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot say
+things like that! We don't know! I won't let you say it.
+
+"And if you do say it," she argued, "why, I'll have to say it, too."
+
+"You?"
+
+"Yes, I. Do you remember that night you were in the sugar cabin? I was
+outside looking through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was I
+thinking? What was in my heart? I'll tell you. I was out there
+stalking like a panther. I wanted just one thing out of all the world.
+Just one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would have done it
+gladly--with joy in my heart! I could have sung while I was doing it!
+
+"Now," she gasped, "now, if you're going to say that thing, why, we'll
+say it together!"
+
+The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer in his arms, understood
+nothing but that she wanted to stand with him, to put herself in
+whatever place was his, to take that black, terrible shadow that had
+fallen on him and wrap it around herself too.
+
+"My poor little white-souled darling," he said through tears that
+choked him, "I can't take this from you! It's too much, I can't!"
+
+After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against his shoulder and
+argued dreamily:
+
+"I don't see what you can do. You'll have to take _me_. And I don't
+see how you can take me any way but just as I am."
+
+Then she was suddenly conscious that the world was observing. She drew
+quickly away, and Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go.
+
+Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered and adored, he began
+to speak in wonder and self-abasement.
+
+"After all I've made you suffer--!"
+
+But Ruth would have none of this. It had been nothing, she declared.
+She had found work to do. She had been happy, in a way. God had been
+very kind.
+
+At length Jeffrey said: "Well, I guess we'll never have to misunderstand
+again, anyway, Ruth. I had to find God because I was--I needed Him.
+Now I want to find Him--your way."
+
+"You mean--you mean that you _believe_!"
+
+"Yes," said Jeffrey slowly. "I didn't think I ever would. I certainly
+didn't want to. But I do. And it isn't just to win with you, Ruth, or
+to make you happier. I can't help it. It's the thing the Bishop once
+told me about--the thing that's bigger than I am."
+
+Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for leading him forthwith to
+Father Ponfret, that he might begin at once his course of instructions
+which she assured him was essential.
+
+But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading books all winter, he said.
+Though he admitted that until last night he had not understood much
+of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God! Could she not come
+home, then, to his mother, who was pining for her--and--and they would
+have all their lives to finish the instructions.
+
+On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she would stay, among these good
+people where she had made for herself a place and a home. He must come
+every week to Father Ponfret for his instructions, like any other
+convert. If on those occasions he also came to see her, well, she
+would, of course, be glad to see him and to know how he was
+progressing.
+
+Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would see.
+
+And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree.
+
+Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this arrangement, grumbled
+that the way of the heretic was indeed made easy in these days. But
+his wife Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed him that
+if the good Ruth saw fit to convert even a heathen Turk into a husband
+for herself she would no doubt make a good job of it.
+
+So love came and went through the summer, practically unrebuked.
+
+Again the Bishop came riding up to French Village with Arsene LaComb.
+But this time they rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up
+over the new line of railroad that came into the hills from Welden
+Junction. And Arsene was very glad of this, for as he looked at his
+beloved M'sieur l'Eveque he saw that he was not now the man to have
+faced the long road up over the hills. He was not two, he was many
+years older and less sturdy.
+
+The Bishop practised his French a little, but mostly he was silent and
+thoughtful. He was remembering that day, nearly two years ago now,
+when he had set two ambitious young souls upon a way which they did
+not like. What a coil of good and bad had come out of that doing of
+his. And again he wondered, as he had wondered then, whether he had
+done right. Who was to tell?
+
+And again to-morrow he was to set those two again upon their way of
+life, for he was coming up to French Village to the wedding of Ruth
+Lansing to Jeffrey Whiting.
+
+Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing's side in the little rough-finished
+sanctuary of the chapel which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to
+raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer. But Jeffrey Whiting
+saw none of the poor makeshifts out of which the little priest had
+contrived a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again, in the night,
+on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned stars, crying out to find
+God. Then God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch and lifted
+him out of the dust and agony of the road, and, finally, had brought him
+here, to this moment.
+
+He had just received into his body the God of life. His soul stood
+trembling at its portal, receiving its Guest for the first time. He
+was amazed with a great wonder, for here was the very God of the dark
+night speaking to him in words that beat upon his heart. And his
+wonder was that from this he should ever arise and go on with any
+other business whatever.
+
+Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to the music of that
+_choir unseen_ which had once given her the call of life. She had
+followed it, not always in the perfect way, but at least bravely,
+unquestioningly. And it had brought her now to a holy and awed
+happiness. Neither life nor death would ever rob her of this moment.
+
+Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop. And as the Shepherd
+blessed their joined hands he prayed for these two who were dear to
+him, as well as for his other little ones, and, as always, for those
+"other sheep." And the breathing of his prayer was:
+
+That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear; but trust long in Thee
+and in each other.
+
+THE END
+
+Printed in the United States of America.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Shepherd of the North, by Richard Aumerle Maher
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30093 ***
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-<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30093 ***</div>

-

-<p class='tp' style='margin-top:30px;font-size:2.2em;margin-bottom:50px;'>THE SHEPHERD OF<br />THE NORTH</p>

-<p class='tp' >BY</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.4em;margin-bottom:20px;'>RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER</p>

-<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:120px;'>Author of<br />&ldquo;The Heart of a Man,&rdquo; etc.</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:larger;'>M. A. DONOHUE &amp; COMPANY</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:larger;margin-bottom:30px;'>CHICAGO&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW YORK</p>

-<hr class='pb' />

-<p class='tp' style='margin-top:20px;'>Copyright 1916</p>

-<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:10px;'><span class='smcap'>By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;'>Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916.</p>

-<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:20px;font-size:smaller;'>Reprinted March, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;June, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;October, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;February, 1917.</p>

-<hr class='pb' />

-<h2>CONTENTS</h2>

-<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'><span style='font-size:0.8em'>CHAPTER</span></td>

-  <td />

-  <td valign='top' align='right'><span style='font-size:0.8em;'>PAGE</span></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>I</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The White Horse Chaplain</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN'>3</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>II</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Choir Unseen</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN'>35</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>III</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Glow of Dawn</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#III_GLOW_OF_DAWN'>64</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IV</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Answer</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IV_THE_ANSWER'>103</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>V</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Mon Pere Je Me &rsquo;Cuse</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE'>137</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VI</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Business of the Shepherd</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'>174</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VII</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Inner Citadel</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL'>210</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VIII</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Seigneur Dieu, Whither Go I?</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I'>243</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IX</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Coming of the Shepherd</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'>277</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>X</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>That They Be Not Afraid</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID'>311</a></td>

-</tr>

-</table>

-<hr class='pb' />

-<h1>THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH</h1>

-<hr class='pb' />

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span></div>

-<h2>THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH</h2>

-<div class='chsp' style='padding-top:0'>

-<a name='I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN' id='I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN'></a>

-<h2>I</h2>

-<h3>THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The Bishop of Alden was practising his French

-upon Arsene LaComb. It was undoubtedly good

-French, this of M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop, Arsene assured

-himself. It must be. But it certainly was

-not any kind of French that had ever been spoken

-by the folks back in Three Rivers.</p>

-<p>Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not

-understand all that the Bishop said, it was equally

-certain that the Bishop could not understand all

-that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a

-cheery companion for the long road. He took

-his upsets into six feet of Adirondack snow, as

-man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft

-and the road is uncertain.</p>

-<p>In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and

-the railroad behind and had headed into the hills.

-For thirty miles, with only one stop for a bite

-of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded

-along up the half-broken, logging roads. Now

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>

-they were in the high country and there were no

-roads.</p>

-<p>Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a

-drifting storm had followed him down from Little

-Tupper, covering the road that he had made

-and leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped

-driving and held only a steady, even rein to keep

-his ponies from stumbling, while he let the tough,

-willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road.</p>

-<p>Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene

-had been tossed off the single bobsled out into

-the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting all

-day long on the swaying bumper, with no back

-rest, feet braced stiffly against the draw bar in

-front to keep the dizzy balance. But it was the

-only way that this trip could be made.</p>

-<p>The Bishop knew that he should not have let

-the confirmation in French Village on Little Tupper

-go to this late date in the season. He had

-arranged to come a month before. But Father

-Ponfret&rsquo;s illness had put him back at that time.</p>

-<p>Now he was worried. The early December

-dark was upon them. There was no road. The

-ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve

-bad miles to go.</p>

-<p>Still, things might be worse. The cold was not

-bad. He had the bulkier of his vestments and regalia

-in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to the

-sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils

-and the other sacred essentials were slung securely

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>

-about his body. And a tumble more or less in

-the snow was a part of the day&rsquo;s work. They

-would break their way through somehow.</p>

-<p>So, with the occasional interruptions, he was

-practising his amazing French upon Arsene.</p>

-<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old

-Massachusetts stock. He had learned the French

-that was taught at Harvard in the fifties. Afterwards,

-after his conversion to the Catholic

-Church, he had gone to Louvain for his seminary

-studies. There he had heard French of another

-kind. But to the day he died he spoke his

-French just as it was written in the book, and with

-an aggressive New England accent.</p>

-<p>He must speak French to the children in French

-Village to-morrow, not because the children would

-understand, but because it would please Father

-Ponfret and the parents.</p>

-<p>They were struggling around the shoulder of

-Lansing Mountain and the Bishop was rounding

-out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration

-of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a

-sharp:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Jomp, M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque, <i>jomp</i>!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop jumped&ndash;&ndash;or was thrown&ndash;&ndash;ten

-feet into a snow-bank.</p>

-<p>While he gathered himself out of the snow and

-felt carefully his bulging breast pockets to make

-sure that everything was safe, he saw what had

-happened.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span></div>

-<p>The star-faced pony on the near side had

-slipped off the trail and rolled down a little bank,

-dragging the other pony and Arsene and the sled

-with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies,

-man and sled at the bottom of a little gully, and

-as the Bishop floundered through the snow to help

-he feared that it was serious.</p>

-<p>Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under

-the sled, his head just clear of the ponies&rsquo;

-heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in

-the <i>patois</i> that they understood. He was within

-inches of having his brains beaten out by the quivering

-hoofs; he could not, literally, move his head

-to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with

-them as quietly as if he stood at their heads.</p>

-<p>They kicked and fought each other and the sled,

-until the influence of the calm voice behind them

-began to work upon them. Then their own craft

-came back to them and they remembered the many

-bitter lessons they had gotten from kicking and

-fighting in deep snow. They lay still and waited

-for the voice to come and get them out of this.</p>

-<p>As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to

-release Arsene, he remembered that he had seen

-men under fire. And he said to himself that he

-had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this

-little French-Canadian storekeeper.</p>

-<p>The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had

-been soft under him, and lunged for the ponies&rsquo;

-heads.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now!

-Ah-a! Bien!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He had them both by their bridles and dragged

-them skilfully to their feet and up the bank.

-With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all

-safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail.</p>

-<p>Arsene now looked around for the Bishop.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ba Golly! M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque, dat&rsquo;s one fine

-jomp. You got hurt, you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop declared that he was not in any

-way the worse from the tumble, and Arsene turned

-to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up

-the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection

-of his harness and said ruefully:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s bad, M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque. She&rsquo;s gone

-bust.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his

-hand. The trouble was quite evident.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What can we do?&rdquo; asked the Bishop.

-&ldquo;Have you any rope?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No. Dat&rsquo;s how I been one big fool, me.

-I lef&rsquo; new rope on de sled las&rsquo; night on Lowville.

-Dis morning she&rsquo;s gone. Some t&rsquo;ief.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We must get on somehow,&rdquo; said the Bishop,

-as he unbuckled part of the lashing from his bag

-and handed the strap to Arsene. &ldquo;That will hold

-until we get to the first house where we can get the

-loan of a trace. We can walk behind. We&rsquo;re

-both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is it

-far?&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks,

-&rsquo;bout quarter mile, maybe.&rdquo; The little man

-looked up from his work long enough to point

-out a clump of hemlocks that stood out black and

-sharp against the white world around them. As

-the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among

-the trees, showing where life and a home

-fought their battle against the desolation of the

-hills.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I donno,&rdquo; said Arsene speculatively, as he and

-the Bishop took up their tramp behind the sled;

-&ldquo;Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don&rsquo; like Canuck.

-Maybe he don&rsquo; lend no harness, I donno.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes; he will surely,&rdquo; answered the Bishop

-easily. &ldquo;Nobody would refuse a bit of harness

-in a case like this.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>It was full dark when they came to where

-Tom Lansing&rsquo;s cabin hid itself among the hemlocks.

-Arsene did not dare trust his team off the

-road where they had footing, so the Bishop

-floundered his way through the heavy snow to

-find the cabin door.</p>

-<p>It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out

-of the hemlocks that had stood around it and

-belonged to a generation already past. But it

-was still serviceable and tight, and it was a home.</p>

-<p>The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was

-no response from within. It was strange. For

-there was every sign of life about the place.

-After knocking a second time without result, he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>

-lifted the heavy wooden latch and pushed quietly

-into the cabin.</p>

-<p>A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite

-the door. On the hearth stood a big black

-and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not the

-slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his

-four legs planted squarely under him, his whole

-body quivering with fear. His nose was pointed

-upward as though ready for the howl to which

-he dared not give voice. His great brown eyes

-rolled in an ecstasy of fright but seemed unable

-to tear themselves from the side of the room

-where he was looking.</p>

-<p>Along the side of the room ran a long, low

-couch covered with soft, well worn hides. On it

-lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out awkwardly

-and unnaturally, showing that he had been

-dragged unconscious to where he was. A candle

-stood on the low window ledge and shone down

-full into the man&rsquo;s face.</p>

-<p>At the head of the couch knelt a young girl,

-her arm supporting the man&rsquo;s head and shoulder,

-her wildly tossed hair falling down across his

-chest.</p>

-<p>She was speaking to the man in a voice low

-and even, but so tense that her whole slim body

-seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as

-though her very soul came to the portals of her lips

-and shouted its message to the man. The power

-of her voice, the breathless, compelling strength

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>

-of her soul need seemed to hold everything between

-heaven and earth, as she pleaded to the

-man. The Bishop stood spellbound.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My

-Father!&rdquo; she was saying over and over. &ldquo;Come

-back, come back, Daddy Tom! It&rsquo;s not true!

-God doesn&rsquo;t want you! He doesn&rsquo;t want to take

-you from Ruth! How could He! It&rsquo;s not never

-true! A tree couldn&rsquo;t kill my Daddy Tom!

-Never, never! Why, he&rsquo;s felled whole slopes of

-trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>For a time which he could not measure the

-Bishop stood listening to the pleading of the girl&rsquo;s

-voice. But in reality he was not listening to the

-sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She

-was fighting bitterly with death. She was calling

-all the forces of love and life to aid her in her

-struggle. She was following the soul of her

-loved one down to the very door of death. She

-would pull him back out of the very clutches of

-the unknown.</p>

-<p>And the Bishop found that he was not merely

-listening to what the girl said. He was going

-down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing

-every word of her pleading. The force of

-her will and her prayer swept him along so that

-with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed

-for the man to open his eyes.</p>

-<p>Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible

-fear seemed to grip and crush her, so that she

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>

-cowered and hid her face against the big, grizzled

-white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed

-in terror.</p>

-<p>The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched

-the girl on the head, saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do not give up yet, child. I once had some

-skill. Let me try.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl turned and looked up blankly at him.

-She did not question who he was or whence he

-had come. She turned again and wrapped her

-arms jealously about the head and shoulders of

-her father. Plainly she was afraid and resentful

-of any interference. But the Bishop insisted

-gently and in the end she gave him place beside

-her.</p>

-<p>He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he

-knelt quickly to listen at the man&rsquo;s breast.</p>

-<p>Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but

-there was life, certainly. While the Bishop fumbled

-through the man&rsquo;s pockets for the knife that

-he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl

-quietly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was just a little while ago,&rdquo; she answered,

-in short, frightened sentences. &ldquo;My dog came

-yelping down from the mountain where Father

-had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran

-up there. He was pinned down under a limb.

-I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and

-told me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away

-with his axe. But it must be I hurt him; he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>

-fainted. I can&rsquo;t make him speak. I cut boughs

-and made a sledge and dragged him down here.

-But I can&rsquo;t make him speak. Is he?&ndash;&ndash; Is

-he?&ndash;&ndash; Tell me,&rdquo; she appealed.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and

-shoulder of the man&rsquo;s jacket and shirt.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were all alone, child?&rdquo; he said.

-&ldquo;Where could you get the strength for all this?

-My driver is out on the road,&rdquo; he continued, as

-he worked on. &ldquo;Call him and send him for the

-nearest help.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking

-look back at the man on the couch, went out

-into the snow.</p>

-<p>The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.</p>

-<p>The man&rsquo;s shoulder was crushed hopelessly,

-but there was nothing there to constitute a fatal

-injury. It was only when he came to the upper

-ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage.

-Several of them were caved in frightfully, and it

-seemed certain that one or two of them must have

-been shattered and the splinters driven into the

-lung on that side.</p>

-<p>The cold had driven back the blood, so that

-the wounds had bled outwardly very little. The

-Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little, and

-something black showed out of a torn muscle under

-the scapula.</p>

-<p>He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in

-his hand. It was a little black ball of steel.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span></div>

-<p>While the Bishop stood there wondering at the

-thing in his hand, a long tremor ran through the

-body on the couch. The man stirred ever so

-slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from

-his lips. His eyes opened and fixed themselves

-searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop

-thought it best not to speak, but to give the man

-time to come back naturally to a realisation of

-things.</p>

-<p>While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly,

-and the Bishop stood holding the little black ball

-between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth Lansing

-came back into the room.</p>

-<p>Seeing her father&rsquo;s eyes open, the girl rushed

-across the room and was about to throw herself

-down by the side of the couch when her father&rsquo;s

-voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible

-and clear, stopped her.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The White Horse Chaplain!&rdquo; he said in a

-voice of slow wonder. &ldquo;But I always knew he&rsquo;d

-come for me sometime. And I suppose it&rsquo;s

-time.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop started. He had not heard the

-name for twenty-five years.</p>

-<p>The girl stopped by the table, trembling and

-frightened. She had heard the tale of the White

-Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her

-that her father was delirious and raving. But he

-spoke so calmly and so certainly. He seemed so

-certain that the man he saw was an apparition

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>

-that she could not think or reason herself out of

-her fright.</p>

-<p>The Bishop answered easily and quietly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did

-not think anybody remembered now.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Tom Lansing&rsquo;s eyes leaped wide with doubt

-and question. They stared full at the Bishop.

-Then they turned and saw the table standing in

-its right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the

-table; saw the dog at the fireplace. The man

-there was real!</p>

-<p>Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle

-to rise, then fell back gasping.</p>

-<p>The Bishop put his hand gently under the man&rsquo;s

-head and eased him to a better position, saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving

-past and had broken a trace, and came in to

-borrow one from you. You got a bad blow.

-But your girl has just sent my driver for help.

-They will get a doctor somewhere. We cannot

-tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not so

-bad as it looks.&rdquo; But, even as he spoke, the

-Bishop saw a drop of blood appear at the corner

-of the man&rsquo;s white mouth; and he knew that it was

-as bad as the worst.</p>

-<p>The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes

-moved again from the Bishop to the girl and the

-everyday things of the room.</p>

-<p>It was evident that his mind was clearing

-sharply. He had rallied quickly. But the Bishop

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>

-knew instinctively that it was the last, flashing rally

-of the forces of life&ndash;&ndash;in the face of the on-crowding

-darkness. The shock and the internal

-hemorrhage were doing their work fast. The

-time was short.</p>

-<p>Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with

-a look, he called the girl to him.</p>

-<p>Through the seventeen years of her life, since

-the night when her mother had laid her in her

-father&rsquo;s arms and died, Ruth Lansing had hardly

-ever been beyond the reach of her father&rsquo;s voice.

-They had grown very close together, these two.

-They had little need of clumsy words between

-them.</p>

-<p>As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild,

-eager, rebellious, seared her father with their terror-stricken,

-unbelieving question.</p>

-<p>But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her

-wild questioning had given him. She crushed

-back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely with

-herself until she was able to force into her eyes

-a look of understanding and great mothering tenderness.</p>

-<p>Her father saw the struggle and the look,

-and blessed her for it with his eyes. Then he

-said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you?

-I know I&rsquo;m desertin&rsquo; you, little comrade, right in

-the mornin&rsquo; of your battle with life. But you

-won&rsquo;t be afraid. I know you won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span></div>

-<p>The girl shook her head bravely, but it was

-clear that she dared not trust herself to speak.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to ask this man here to look to you.

-He came here for a sign to me. I see it. I see

-it plain. I will trust him with your life. And so

-will you, little comrade. I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;m droppin&rsquo; out.

-He&rsquo;ll take you on.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He saved my life once. So he gave you your

-life. It&rsquo;s a sign, my Ruth.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl slipped her hands gently under his head

-and looked deep and long into the glazing eyes.</p>

-<p>Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was

-facing death&ndash;&ndash;and life alone.</p>

-<p>Obedient to her father&rsquo;s look, she rose and

-walked across the room. She saw that he had

-something to say to this strange man and that the

-time was short.</p>

-<p>In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin

-she stood, and throwing one arm up against the

-frame of the door she buried her face in it. She

-did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty

-of time for that.</p>

-<p>The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant

-an irrevocable change had come over her.

-She had knelt a frightened, wondering, protesting

-child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of

-death and its infinite certainty, of life and its infinite

-chance, had risen from her knees.</p>

-<p>As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke

-hurriedly:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I

-did I forgot it, and it don&rsquo;t matter.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m dying. I don&rsquo;t need any doctor to tell

-me. I&rsquo;ll be gone before he gets here.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when

-Curtis&rsquo; men were cut to pieces in the second charge

-on the trenches. They left me there, because it

-was every man for himself.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg.

-And you came drivin&rsquo; mad across the field on a

-big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me

-where I lay. You threw me across your saddle

-and walked that wild horse back into our lines.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you remember? Dying men got up on

-their elbows and cheered you. I lay six weeks in

-fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I do, now,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;Our troop

-came back to the Shenandoah, and I never knew

-what&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back

-upon him. He was just a few months ordained.

-He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union

-army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the

-ways and business of a battlefield, he had found

-himself that day in the sand dunes before Fort

-Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about

-him. Hail, fumes, lightning and thunder of battle

-rolled over him and sickened him. He saw

-his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>

-the Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself,

-and fade away back into the smoke. He lost it,

-and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered

-blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead

-man, now speaking to a living stricken one: Here

-straightening a torn body and giving water; there

-hearing the confession of a Catholic.</p>

-<p>Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis&rsquo; troops

-came yelling across the flat land. Once, twice

-they tried the trenches and were driven back into

-the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a

-big white horse. The animal, mad with fright and

-blood scent, charged down upon him as he bent

-over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and

-fought the horse. Before he realised what he was

-doing, he was in the saddle riding back and forth

-across the field. Right up to the trenches the

-horse carried him.</p>

-<p>Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy,

-a thin, long-legged boy with a long beardless face.

-He lay there marking the high tide of the last

-charge&ndash;&ndash;the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain,

-tumbling down somehow from his mount,

-picked up the writhing boy and bundled him across

-the saddle. Then he started walking back looking

-for his own lines.</p>

-<p>Now here was the boy talking to him across

-the mists of twenty-five years. And the boy, the

-man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom

-Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>

-died from fever bloat or been trampled to death

-in the succeeding charges. He had given him life.

-And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he

-had given that daughter life. Now he knew what

-Lansing was going to say.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know you then,&rdquo; said Lansing. &ldquo;I

-don&rsquo;t know who you are now, Chaplain, or what

-you are.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; he went on slowly, &ldquo;if I&rsquo;d agiven you a

-message that day you&rsquo;d have taken it on for me,

-wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course I would.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Suppose it had been to my mother, say:

-You&rsquo;da risked your life to get it on to her?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I hope I would,&rdquo; said the Bishop evenly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I believe you would. That&rsquo;s what I think

-of you,&rdquo; said Tom Lansing.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I went back South after the war,&rdquo; he began

-again. &ldquo;I stole my girl&rsquo;s mother from her grandfather,

-an old, broken-down Confederate colonel

-that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on

-me. I brought her up here into the hills and she

-died when the baby was just a few weeks old.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There ain&rsquo;t a relation in the world that my

-little girl could go to. I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to die in half

-an hour. But what better would she be if I lived?

-What would I do with her? Keep her here and

-let her marry some fightin&rsquo; lumber jack that&rsquo;d beat

-her? Or see her break her heart tryin&rsquo; to make

-a livin&rsquo; on one of these rock hills? She&rsquo;d fret

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>

-herself to death. She knows more now than I

-do and she&rsquo;d soon be wantin&rsquo; to know more.

-She&rsquo;s that kind.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;d ought to have her chance the way I&rsquo;ve

-seen girls in towns havin&rsquo; a chance. A chance to

-study and learn and grow the way she wants to.

-And now I&rsquo;m desertin&rsquo;; goin&rsquo; out like a smoky

-lamp.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was a crime, a crime!&rdquo; he groaned, &ldquo;ever

-to bring her mother up into this place!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You could not think of all that then. No

-man ever does,&rdquo; said the Bishop calmly. &ldquo;And

-I will do my best to see that she gets her chance.

-I think that&rsquo;s what you want to ask me, isn&rsquo;t it,

-Lansing?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you swear it?&rdquo; gasped Lansing, struggling

-and choking in an effort to raise his head.

-&ldquo;Do you swear to try and see that she gets a

-chance?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;God will help me to do the best for her,&rdquo; said

-the Bishop quietly. &ldquo;I am the Bishop of Alden.

-I can do something.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>With the definiteness of a man who has heard a

-final word, Tom Lansing&rsquo;s eyes turned to his

-daughter.</p>

-<p>Obediently she came again and knelt at his side,

-holding his head.</p>

-<p>To the very last, as long as his eyes could see,

-they saw her smiling bravely and sweetly down

-into them; giving her sacrament and holding her

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>

-light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.</p>

-<p>When the last twinging tremour had run

-through the racked body, she leaned over and

-kissed her father full on the lips.</p>

-<p>Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into

-the night.</p>

-<p>While the Bishop was straightening the body

-on the couch, a young man and two women came

-into the room.</p>

-<p>They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and

-her sister, neighbours whom Arsene had brought.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was much relieved with their coming.

-He could do nothing more now, and the

-long night ride was still ahead of him.</p>

-<p>He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had

-gone out into the cold, and asked him to find her.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had

-played with Ruth Lansing since she was a baby,

-for they were the only children on Lansing Mountain.

-He knew where he would find her.</p>

-<p>Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of

-the hills, where people had to meet their problems

-and burdens alone, took command at once.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; she replied to the Bishop&rsquo;s question,

-&ldquo;there&rsquo;s nobody to send for. The Lansings

-didn&rsquo;t have a relation living that anybody

-ever heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom

-Lansing&rsquo;s father and mother. They&rsquo;re buried out

-there on the hill where he&rsquo;ll be buried.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s some old soldiers down the West

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>

-Slope towards Beaver River. They&rsquo;ll want to

-take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on

-Monday,&rdquo; she went on rapidly, sketching in the

-programme. &ldquo;We have a preacher if we can

-get one. But when we can&rsquo;t my sister Letty here

-sings something.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a

-way,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly. &ldquo;At least, I was

-at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like

-to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Were you at Fort Fisher?&rdquo; broke in the

-sister Letty, speaking for the first time. &ldquo;And

-did you see Curtis&rsquo; colour bearer? He was killed

-in the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton,

-with long, black hair?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He had an old scar over his eye-brow.&rdquo;

-The Bishop supplemented the description out of

-the memory of that day.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five

-years ago to-morrow,&rdquo; said the woman trembling.

-&ldquo;You saw him die?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He was dead when I came to him,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop quietly, &ldquo;with the stock of the colour

-standard still clenched in his hand.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He was my&ndash;&ndash;my&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; Sweetheart, she

-wanted to say. But the hill women do not say

-things easily.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said the Bishop gently. &ldquo;I understand.&rdquo;

-She was a woman of his people.

-Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>

-could read the years of her faithfulness to the

-memory of that lean, dark face which he had once

-seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow.</p>

-<p>Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about

-her sister.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Are you&ndash;&ndash;?&rdquo; she questioned, hesitating

-strangely. &ldquo;Are you the White Horse Chaplain?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The boys called me that,&rdquo; said the Bishop.

-&ldquo;Though it was only a name for a day,&rdquo; he

-added.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was true, then?&rdquo; she said slowly, as if

-still unready to believe. &ldquo;We never half believed

-our boys when they came home from the

-war&ndash;&ndash;the ones that did come home&ndash;&ndash;and told

-about the white horse and the priest riding the

-field. We thought it was one of the things men

-see when they&rsquo;re fighting and dying.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room

-leading Ruth Lansing by the hand.</p>

-<p>The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The

-Bishop drew her over to the fire.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I must go now, child,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;To-morrow

-I must be in French Village. Monday I will

-be here again.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he

-said to me, about you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the

-Bishop&rsquo;s face, then nodded her head.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then, we must think and pray, child, that we

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>

-may know how to do what he wanted us to do.

-God will show us what is the best. That is what

-he wanted.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;God keep you brave now. Your friends here

-will see to everything for you. I have to go

-now.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He crossed the room and laid his hand for a

-moment on the brow of the dead man, renewing in

-his heart the promise he had made.</p>

-<p>Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting

-that he would be back before noon Monday, he

-went out to where Arsene and his horses were

-stamping in the snow.</p>

-<p>The little man had replaced the broken trace,

-and the ponies, fretting with the cold and eager

-to get home, took hungrily to the trail.</p>

-<p>But the Bishop forgot to practise his French

-further upon Arsene. He told him briefly what

-had happened, then lapsed into silence.</p>

-<p>Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing

-had said about the girl. She knew more now

-than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew

-now. But more than Tom Lansing had known

-half an hour ago.</p>

-<p>She would want to see the world. She would

-want to know life and ask her own questions from

-life and the world. In the broad open space between

-her eye-brows it was written that she would

-never take anybody&rsquo;s word for the puzzles of the

-world. She was marked a seeker; one of those

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>

-who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand

-to know what it means. They never find

-out. But, heart break or sparrow fall, they must

-go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own

-way. The world is infinitely the better through

-them. But their own way is hard and lonely.</p>

-<p>She must go out. She must have education.

-She must have a chance to face life and wrest its

-lessons from it in her own way. It did not

-promise happiness for her. But she could go no

-other way. For hers was the high, stony way of

-those who demand more than jealous life is ready

-to give.</p>

-<p>The Bishop only knew that he had this night

-given a promise which had sent a man contentedly

-on his way. Somehow, God would show him how

-best to keep that promise.</p>

-<p>And when they halloed at Father Ponfret&rsquo;s

-house in French Village he had gotten no farther

-than that.</p>

-<p>Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his

-couch. Clean white sheets had been draped over

-the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking

-in through the west window picked out every

-bare thread of his service coat and glinted on the

-polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung

-into the belt at his side.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head

-of the couch, listening to the comments and

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>

-stumbling condolences of neighbours from the

-high hills and the lower valleys. They were good,

-kindly people, she knew. But why, why, must

-every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous

-lie&ndash;&ndash; How natural he looked!</p>

-<p>He did not. He did not. He did <i>not</i> look

-natural. How could her Daddy Tom look natural,

-when he lay there all still and cold, and would

-not speak to his Ruth!</p>

-<p>He was dead. And what was death&ndash;&ndash; And

-why? <i>Why?</i></p>

-<p>Who had ordered this? And <i>why?</i></p>

-<p>And still they came with that set, borrowed

-phrase&ndash;&ndash;the only thing they could think to say&ndash;&ndash;upon

-their lips.</p>

-<p>Out in Tom Lansing&rsquo;s workshop on the horse-barn

-floor, Jacque Lafitte, the wright, was nailing

-soft pine boards together.</p>

-<p>Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not

-leave Daddy Tom to her? She wanted to ask him

-things. She knew that she could make him understand

-and answer.</p>

-<p>She slipped away from the couch and out of

-the house. At the corner of the house her dog

-joined her and together they circled away from the

-horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where

-her father had been working yesterday.</p>

-<p>She found her father&rsquo;s cap where it had been

-left in her fright of yesterday, and sat down

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>

-fondling it in her hands. The dog came and slid

-his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle

-into the cap between her hands.</p>

-<p>So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following

-her with her coat and hood.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You better put these on, Ruth,&rdquo; he said, as

-he dropped the coat across her shoulder. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s

-too cold here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl drew the coat around her obediently,

-but did not look up at him. She was grateful for

-his thought of her, but she was not ready to speak

-to any one.</p>

-<p>He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and

-drew the dog over to him.</p>

-<p>After a little he asked timidly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do, Ruth? You can&rsquo;t

-stay here. I&rsquo;ll tend your stock and look after the

-place for you. But you just can&rsquo;t stay here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You?&rdquo; she questioned finally. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re going

-to that Albany school next week. You said

-you were all ready.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was all ready. But I ain&rsquo;t going. I&rsquo;ll stay

-here and work the two farms for you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;For me?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And not be a lawyer

-at all?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&ndash;&ndash;I don&rsquo;t care anything about it any more,&rdquo;

-he lied. &ldquo;I told mother this morning that I

-wasn&rsquo;t going. She said she&rsquo;d have you come and

-stay with her till Spring.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;And then?&rdquo; the girl faced the matter, looking

-straight and unafraid into his eyes. &ldquo;And

-then?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; he hesitated. &ldquo;You see, then

-I&rsquo;ll be twenty. And you&rsquo;ll be old enough to

-marry me,&rdquo; he hurried. &ldquo;Your father, you

-know, he always wanted me to take care of you,

-didn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; he pleaded, awkwardly but subtly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know you don&rsquo;t want to talk about it now,&rdquo;

-he went on hastily. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;ll come home with

-mother to-morrow, won&rsquo;t you? You know she

-wants you, and I&ndash;&ndash;I never had to tell you that I

-love you. You knew it when you wasn&rsquo;t any

-higher than Prince here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. I always knew it, and I&rsquo;m glad,&rdquo; the

-girl answered levelly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad now, Jeff. But

-I can&rsquo;t let you do it. Some day you&rsquo;d hate me

-for it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ruth! You know better than that!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;d never tell me; I know that. You&rsquo;d

-do your best to hide it from me. But some day

-when your chance was gone you&rsquo;d look back and

-see what you might have been, &rsquo;stead of a humpbacked

-farmer in the hills. Oh, I know. You&rsquo;ve

-told me all your dreams and plans, how you&rsquo;re

-going down to the law school, and going to be a

-great lawyer and go to Albany and maybe to

-Washington.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s it all good for?&rdquo; said the boy

-sturdily. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather stay here with you.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span></div>

-<p>The girl did not answer. In the strain of the

-night and the day, she had almost forgotten the

-things that she had heard her father say to the

-White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call

-the Bishop.</p>

-<p>Now she remembered those things and tried to

-tell them.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That strange man that said he was the

-Bishop of Alden told my father that he would see

-that I got a chance. My father called him the

-White Horse Chaplain and said that he had been

-sent here just on purpose to look after me. I

-didn&rsquo;t know there were bishops in this country. I

-thought it was only in books about Europe.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What did they say?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My father said that I would want to go out

-and see things and know things; that I mustn&rsquo;t be

-married to a&ndash;&ndash;a lumber jack. He said it was

-no place for me in the hills.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And this man, this bishop, is going to send

-you away somewhere, to school?&rdquo; he guessed

-shrewdly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, I suppose that was it,&rdquo; said

-the girl slowly. &ldquo;Yesterday I wanted to go so

-much. It was just as father said. He had

-taught me all he knew. And I thought the world

-outside the hills was full of just the most wonderful

-things, all ready for me to go and see and pick

-up. And to-day I don&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>

-dog at her feet, and down the hillside to the little

-cabin in the hemlocks. They were all she had

-in the world.</p>

-<p>The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look

-and read it rightly.</p>

-<p>He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to count me, Ruth. You&rsquo;ve got

-me, you know.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Perhaps it was because he had so answered

-her unspoken thought. Perhaps it was because

-she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it was

-just the eternal surrender of woman.</p>

-<p>When she looked up at him her eyes were full

-of great, shining tears, the first that they had

-known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run

-out into the night.</p>

-<p>He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they

-faced the white, desolate world all below them

-and plighted to each other their untried troth.</p>

-<p>When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white

-bosom of the hillside, and the people were dispersing

-from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting

-came and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop&rsquo;s

-sharp old eyes had told him to expect something of

-what was coming. He liked the look of the boy&rsquo;s

-clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance

-of his eyes. They told of dependableness and

-plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was not a

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>

-boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be

-his.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ruth told me that you were going to take

-her away from the hills,&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;To a

-school, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I made a promise to her father,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop, &ldquo;that I would try to see that she got the

-chance that she will want in the world.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I love her. She&rsquo;s going to marry me in

-the Spring.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop was surprised. He had not

-thought matters had gone so far.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; he asked thoughtfully.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Twenty in April.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You have some education?&rdquo; the Bishop suggested.

-&ldquo;You have been at school?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth.

-And last Winter at the Academy in Lowville. I

-was going to Albany to law school next week.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And you are giving it all up for Ruth,&rdquo; said

-the Bishop incisively. &ldquo;Does it hurt?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The boy winced, but caught himself at once.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It don&rsquo;t make any difference about that. I

-want Ruth.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And Ruth? What does she want?&rdquo; the

-Bishop asked. &ldquo;You are offering to make a sacrifice

-for her. You are willing to give up your

-hopes and work yourself to the bone here on these

-hills for her. And you would be man enough

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>

-never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe

-that. But what of her? You find it hard

-enough to give up your chance, for her, for love.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you know that you are asking her to give

-up her chance, for nothing, for less than nothing;

-because in giving up her chance she would

-know that she had taken away yours, too. She

-would be a good and loving companion to you

-through all of a hard life. But, for both your

-sakes, she would never forgive you. Never.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re asking me to give her up. If she went

-out and got a start, she&rsquo;d go faster than I could.

-I know it,&rdquo; said the boy bitterly. &ldquo;She&rsquo;d go away

-above me. I&rsquo;d lose her.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am not asking you to give her up,&rdquo; the

-Bishop returned steadily. &ldquo;If you are the man

-I think you are, you will never give her up. But

-are you afraid to let her have her chance in the

-sun? Are you afraid to let her have what you

-want for yourself? Are you afraid?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The boy looked steadily into the Bishop&rsquo;s eyes

-for a moment. Then he turned quickly and

-walked across the room to where Ruth sat.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t give it up, Ruth,&rdquo; he said gruffly.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to Albany to school. I can&rsquo;t give it

-up.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t have tried to lie, Jeff; though

-it&rsquo;s just like you to put the blame on yourself. I

-know what he said. I must think.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span></div>

-<p>The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He

-saw them suddenly light up. He knew what that

-meant. She was seeing the great world with all

-its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he

-himself had seen it. Now he knew that he had

-lost.</p>

-<p>The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready

-to go. The day was slipping away and before

-him there were thirty miles and a train to be

-caught.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We must not be hurried, my children,&rdquo; he

-said, standing by the boy and girl. &ldquo;The Sacred

-Heart Academy at Athens is the best school

-this side of Albany. The Mother Superior will

-write you in a few days, telling you when and

-how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go

-as she directs.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You have been a good, brave little girl. A

-soldier&rsquo;s daughter could be no more, nor less.

-God bless you now, and you, too, my boy,&rdquo; he

-added.</p>

-<p>When he was settled on the sled with Arsene

-and they were rounding the shoulder of Lansing

-Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace,

-he turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;To-day,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;I have set two

-ambitious, eager souls upon the high and stony

-paths of the great world. Should I have left them

-where they were?</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I shall never know whether I did right or not.

-Even time will mix things up so that I&rsquo;ll never be

-able to tell. Maybe some day God will let me

-see. But why should he? One can only aim

-right, and trust in Him.&rdquo;</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>

-<a name='II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN' id='II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN'></a>

-<h2>II</h2>

-<h3>THE CHOIR UNSEEN</h3>

-</div>

-<p>Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms

-of the Sacred Heart convent in Athens thrumming

-out a finger exercise that a child of six would have

-been able to do as well as she.</p>

-<p>It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world,

-this, into which she had been suddenly transplanted.

-It was as different from the great world

-that she had come out to see as it was from the

-wild, sweet life of the hills where she had ruled

-and managed everything within reach. Mainly it

-was full of girls of her own age whose talk and

-thoughts were of a range entirely new to her.</p>

-<p>She compared herself with them and knew that

-they were really children in the comparison.

-Their talk was of dress and manners and society

-and the thousand little and big things that growing

-girls look forward to. She knew that in any

-real test, anything that demanded common sense

-and action, she was years older than they. But

-they had things that she did not have.</p>

-<p>They talked of things that she knew nothing

-about. They could walk across waxed floors as

-though waxed floors were meant to be walked on.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>

-They could rise to recite lessons without stammering

-or choking as she did. They could take reproof

-jauntily, where she, who had never in her

-life received a scolding, would have been driven

-into hysterics. They could wear new dresses just

-as though all dresses were supposed to be new.

-She knew that these were not things that they had

-learned by studying. They just grew up to them,

-just as she knew how to throw a fishing line and

-hold a rifle.</p>

-<p>But she wanted all those things that they had;

-wanted them all passionately. She had the sense

-to know that those were not great things. But

-they were the things that would make her like

-these other girls. And she wanted to be like

-them.</p>

-<p>Because she had not grown up with other girls,

-because she had never even had a girl playmate,

-she wanted not to miss any of the things that they

-had and were.</p>

-<p>They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick,

-eager mind sprang at books and fairly tore the

-lessons from them. She ran away from the girls

-in anything that could be learned in that way.

-But when she found herself with two or three of

-them they talked a language that she did not know.

-She could not keep up with them. And she

-was stupid and awkward, and felt it. It was not

-easy to break into their world and be one of them.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span></div>

-<p>Then there was that other world, touching the

-world of the girls but infinitely removed from it&ndash;&ndash;the

-world of the sisters.</p>

-<p>That mysterious cloister from which the sisters

-came and gave their hours of teaching or duty and

-to which they retreated back again was a world all

-by itself.</p>

-<p>What was there in there behind those doors

-that never banged? What was there in there

-that made the sisters all so very much alike?

-They must once have been as different as every

-girl is different from every other girl.</p>

-<p>How was it that they could carry with them

-all day long that air of never being tired or fretted

-or worried? What wonderful presence was there

-behind the doors of that cloistered house that

-seemed to come out with them and stay with them

-all the time? What was the light that shone in

-their faces?</p>

-<p>Was it just because they were always contented

-and happy? What did they have to be happy

-about?</p>

-<p>Ruth had tried to question the other girls about

-this. They were Catholics. They ought to

-know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her

-question aside with a stare:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Sisters always look like that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind

-kept prying at that world of the sisters behind

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>

-those walls. What did they do in there? Did

-they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people?

-Or did they just pray all the time? Or

-did they see wonderful, starry visions of God and

-Heaven that they were always talking about?

-They seemed so familiar with God. They knew

-just when He was pleased and especially when He

-was displeased.</p>

-<p>She had come down out of her hills where

-everything was so open, where there were no mysteries,

-where everything from the bark on the trees

-to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away,

-was as clear as a printed book. Everything up

-there told its plain lesson. She could read the

-storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had

-been hidden. Nothing in nature or life up there

-had ever shut itself away from her.</p>

-<p>Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of

-them closing its door in the face of her sharp,

-hungry mind.</p>

-<p>And there was that other world, enveloping all

-the other lesser worlds about her&ndash;&ndash;the world of

-the Catholic Church.</p>

-<p>Three weeks ago those two words had meant

-to her a little green building in French Village

-where the &ldquo;Canucks&rdquo; went to church.</p>

-<p>Now her day began and ended with it. It was

-on all sides of her. The pictures and the images

-on every wall, the signs on every classroom door.

-The books she read, the talk she heard was all

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>

-filled with it. It came and went through every

-door of life.</p>

-<p>All the inherited prejudices of her line of New

-England fathers were alive and stirring in her

-against this religion that demanded so much.

-The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given

-her fought against it. It was so absolute. It was

-so sure of everything. She wanted to argue with

-it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must

-be wrong sometimes.</p>

-<p>But just when she was sure that she had found

-something false, something that she knew was not

-right in the things they taught her, she was always

-told that she had not understood. Some one was

-always ready to tell her, in an easy, patient,

-amused way, that she had gotten the thing wrong.

-How could they always be so sure? And what

-was wrong with her that she could not understand?

-She could learn everything else faster and more

-easily than the other girls could.</p>

-<p>Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her

-hands fell nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were

-blinded with great, burning tears. A wave of intolerable

-longing and loneliness swept over her.</p>

-<p>The wonderful, enchanting world that she had

-come out of her hills to conquer was cut down

-to the four little grey walls that enclosed her.

-Everything was shut away from her. She did not

-understand these strange women about her.

-Would never understand them.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span></div>

-<p>Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where

-Daddy Tom was near her, where there was love

-for her, where the people and even the snow and

-the wild winds were her friends?</p>

-<p>She threw herself forward on her arms and

-gave way utterly, crying in great, heart-breaking,

-breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her home,

-for her hills.</p>

-<p>At five o&rsquo;clock Sister Rose, coming to see that

-the music rooms were aired for the evening use,

-found Ruth an inert, shapeless little bundle of

-broken nerves lying across the piano.</p>

-<p>She took the girl to her room and sent for the

-sister infirmarian.</p>

-<p>But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only

-to leave her alone.</p>

-<p>The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness

-that every new pupil in a boarding school

-is liable to, sent some of the other girls in during

-the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she

-drove them away. She was not cross nor pettish.

-But her soul was sick for the sweeping freedom

-of her hills and for people who could understand

-her.</p>

-<p>She rose and dragged her little couch over to

-the window, where she could look out and up to

-the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped down

-upon her in the hills.</p>

-<p>She did not know the names that they had in

-books, but she had framed little pet names for

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>

-them all out of her baby fancies and the names had

-clung to them all the years.</p>

-<p>She recognised them, although they did not

-stand in the places where they belonged when she

-looked at them from the hills.</p>

-<p>Out among them somewhere was Heaven.

-Daddy Tom was there, and her mother whom she

-had never seen.</p>

-<p>Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it

-seemed, there came stealing into her sense a sound.

-Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so illusive.

-It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear

-as other sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to

-steal past the clumsy senses directly into the spirit

-and the heart.</p>

-<p>It was music. Yes. But it was as though the

-Soul of Music had freed itself of the bondage and

-the body of sound and notes and came carrying its

-unutterable message straight to the soul of the

-world.</p>

-<p>It was only the sisters in their chapel gently

-hymning the <i>Salve</i> of the Compline to their Queen

-in Heaven.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued,

-sweetly poignant evensong on every other

-night. Other nights, her mind filled with books

-and its other business, the music had scarcely

-reached her. To-night her soul was alive. Her

-every sense was like a nerve laid bare, ready to be

-thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span></div>

-<p>She did not think of the sisters. She saw the

-deep rose flush of the windows in the dimly lighted

-chapel across the court, and knew vaguely, perhaps,

-that the music came from there. But it carried

-her beyond all thought.</p>

-<p>She did not hear the words of the hymn.

-Would not have understood them if she had heard.

-But the lifting of hearts to <i>Our Life, our Sweetness

-and our Hope</i> caught her heart up into a

-world where words were never needed.</p>

-<p>She heard the cry of the <i>Banished children of

-Eve</i>. The <i>Mourning and weeping in this vale

-of tears</i> swept into her soul like the flood-tide of

-all the sorrow of all the world.</p>

-<p>On and upwards the music carried her, until she

-could hear the triumph, until her soul rang with

-the glory and the victory of <i>The Promises of

-Christ</i>.</p>

-<p>The music ceased. She saw the light fade from

-the chapel windows, leaving only the one little

-blood-red spot of light before the altar. She lay

-there trembling, not daring to move, while the

-echo of that unseen choir caught her heartstrings

-and set them ringing to the measure of the heart

-of the world.</p>

-<p>It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and

-helplessness but the undying hope of the world

-that she had heard. It was the cry of the little

-blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of

-martyrs on their pyres. It was the cry of strong

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>

-men and valiant women crushed under the forces

-of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic

-Church, which knows what the soul of the world

-is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this. She realised

-it as she lay there trembling.</p>

-<p>Always, as long as life was in her; always,

-whether she worked or laughed, cried or played;

-always that voice would grip her heart and play

-upon it and lead her whether she would or no.</p>

-<p>It would lead her. It would carry her. It

-would send her.</p>

-<p>Through all the long night she fought it. She

-would not! She would not give up her life, her

-will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?</p>

-<p>It would take her spirit out of the freedom of

-the hills and make it follow a trodden way. It

-would take her life out of her hands and maybe

-ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and

-the wind, in a darkened convent. It would take

-her will, the will of a soldier&rsquo;s daughter, and break

-it into little pieces to make a path for her to walk

-upon!</p>

-<p>No! No! No! Through all the endless

-night she moaned her protest. She would not!

-She would not give in to it.</p>

-<p>It would never let her rest. Through all her

-life that voice of the Choir Unseen would strike

-the strings of her heart. She knew it.</p>

-<p>But she would not. Never would she give in

-to it.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span></div>

-<p>In the morning, even before the coming of the

-dawn, the music came again; and it beat upon her

-worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched at

-her heart until she could stand it no longer.</p>

-<p>The sisters were taking up again the burden and

-the way of the day.</p>

-<p>She could not stand it! She could not stay

-here! She must go back to her hills, where there

-was peace for her.</p>

-<p>She heard the sister going down to unlock the

-street door so that Father Tenney could walk in

-when it was time and go up to the chapel for the

-sisters&rsquo; early mass.</p>

-<p>That was her chance! The sisters would be in

-chapel. The girls would be still in their rooms.</p>

-<p>She dressed hastily and threw her books into a

-bag. She would take only these and her money.

-She had enough to get home on. The rest did

-not matter.</p>

-<p>When she heard the priest&rsquo;s step pass in the

-hall, she slipped out and down the dim, broad

-stairs.</p>

-<p>The great, heavy door of the convent stood

-like the gate of the world. It swung slowly, deliberately,

-on its well-oiled, silent hinges.</p>

-<p>She stood in the portal a moment, drinking

-hungrily the fresh, free air of the morning that

-had come down from her hills. Then she fled

-away into the dawn.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span></div>

-<p>The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain

-as Jeffrey Whiting came out of his mother&rsquo;s

-house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His

-uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn

-with the team and sled. Jeffrey threw his trunk

-upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe. It

-was twenty-five miles of half broken road and

-snowdrifts to Lowville and the railroad.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical

-American farm boy has been doing for the last

-hundred years and what he will probably continue

-to do as long as we Americans are what we are.

-He is not always a dreamer, your farm boy, when

-he starts down from his hills or his cross-roads

-farm to see the big world and conquer it. More

-often than you would think, he knows that he is

-not going to conquer it at all. And he is not, on

-the other hand, merely running away from the

-drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will

-probably have to work harder than he would ever

-have worked on the farm. But he knows that he

-has things to sell. And he is going down into the

-markets of men. He has a good head and a

-strong body. He has a power of work in him.

-He has grit and energy.</p>

-<p>He is going down into the markets where men

-pay the price for these things that he has. He is

-going to fight men for that price which he knows

-his things are worth.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span></div>

-<p>Jeffrey&rsquo;s mother came out carrying a canvas

-satchel which she put on the sled under Cassius

-Bascom&rsquo;s feet.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t kick that, Catty,&rdquo; she warned, &ldquo;Jeff&rsquo;s

-lunch is in it. And, Jeff, don&rsquo;t you go and check

-it with the trunk.&rdquo; There was just a little catch

-in the laugh with which she said this. She was

-remembering a day more than twenty years before

-when she had started, a bride, with big, lumbering,

-slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting, Jeffrey&rsquo;s

-father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with

-their lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting

-checked the satchel through from Lowville to Buffalo,

-and they had nearly starved on the way. It

-was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity.

-But she never quite forgave him for telling it on

-himself when they got back. It had been a standing

-joke in the hills all these years.</p>

-<p>She was just a typical mother of the hills. She

-loved her boy. She needed him. She knew that

-she would never have him again. The boys do

-not come back from the market place. She knew

-that she would cry for him through many a lonely

-night, as she had cried all last night. But she was

-not crying now.</p>

-<p>Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his

-as she stretched her arms up around the neck of

-her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss her.</p>

-<p>He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart.

-He knew his mother very well. So he began with

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span>

-the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to tell

-when we were leaving.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll only be a little while, Mother. You

-won&rsquo;t find the time slipping by, and I&rsquo;ll be back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys

-always knew it was a lie. But she backed him up

-sturdily:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, of course, Jeff. Don&rsquo;t worry about me.

-You&rsquo;ll be back in no time.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the

-house with a dark, oblong object in her hands.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just

-tried to forget this on purpose. It&rsquo;s too late to

-put it in the trunk now; so you&rsquo;ll just have to put

-it in your overcoat pocket.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown

-brick covered with felt, a foot warmer. Aunt

-Letty had made him take one with him when he

-went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter,

-and he and his brick had furnished much of the

-winter&rsquo;s amusement there. The memory of his

-humiliations on account of that brick would last a

-lifetime. He wondered why maiden aunts could

-not understand. His mother, now, would have

-known better. But he dutifully put the thing into

-the pocket of his big coat&ndash;&ndash;he could drop it into

-the first snowback&ndash;&ndash;and turned to kiss his aunt.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany,&rdquo;

-she lectured. &ldquo;Make your landlady heat

-it for you every night.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span></div>

-<p>A noise in the road made them all turn.</p>

-<p>Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were

-driving into the yard.</p>

-<p>It was evident from the signs that the men

-had been having a hard time on the road. They

-must have been out all night, for they could not

-have started from anywhere early enough to be

-here now at sunrise.</p>

-<p>Their harness had been broken and mended in

-several places. The cutter had a runner broken.

-The horses were cut and bloody, where they had

-kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.</p>

-<p>As they drove up beside the group in the yard,

-one of the men shouted:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Say, is there any place we can put in here?

-We&rsquo;ve been on that road all night.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and

-warm yourselves,&rdquo; said Mrs. Whiting.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Rogers,&rdquo; said the man who had spoken, addressing

-the other, &ldquo;if I ever get into a place that&rsquo;s

-warm, I&rsquo;ll stay there till spring.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of

-the cutter and stepped stiffly out into the snow.

-He swept the group with a sharp, a praising eye,

-and asked:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s the one to talk to here?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and

-replied with another question.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>

-grey moustache and cold grey eyes, looked the

-youth over carefully as he spoke.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I want a man that knows this country and can

-get around in it in this season. I was brought up

-in the country, but I never saw anything like this.

-I wouldn&rsquo;t take a trip like this again for any

-money. I can&rsquo;t do this sort of thing. I want a

-man that knows the country and the people and

-can do it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going away now,&rdquo; said Jeffrey

-slowly, &ldquo;but Uncle Catty here knows the people

-and the country better than most and he can go

-anywhere.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish

-man on the sled. Then he turned away decisively.

-Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old face

-all withered and puckered to one side, where a

-splinter of shell from Fort Fisher had taken away

-his right eye, was evidently not the kind of man

-that the big man wanted.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo; he asked Jeffrey

-sharply.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Albany Law School,&rdquo; said Jeffrey promptly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Unstrap the trunk, young man. You&rsquo;re not

-going. I&rsquo;ve got something for you right here at

-home that&rsquo;ll teach you more than ten law schools.

-Put both teams into the barn,&rdquo; the big man commanded

-loudly.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would

-oppose the will of this brusque stranger. But he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>

-knew that he would not do so. In that moment

-something told him that he would not go to law

-school; would never go there; that his life was

-about to take a twist away from everything that he

-had ever intended.</p>

-<p>Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Come into the house.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom

-poured boiling tea for the two men, Rogers, cup

-in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and explained

-himself. The other man, whose name

-does not matter, sank into a great wooden chair

-at the side of the fire and seemed to be ready to

-make good his threat of staying until spring.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I represent the U. &amp; M. railroad. We are

-coming up through here in the spring. All these

-farms have to be given up. We have eminent domain

-for this whole section,&rdquo; said Rogers.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Jeffrey. &ldquo;The

-railroad can&rsquo;t run <i>all over</i> the country.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No. But the road will need the whole strip

-of hills for timber. They&rsquo;ll cut off what is standing

-and then they&rsquo;ll stock the whole country with

-cedar, for ties. That&rsquo;s all the land&rsquo;s good for,

-anyway.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s mouth opened for an answer

-to this, but his mother&rsquo;s sharp, warning glance

-stopped him. He understood that it was his place

-to listen and learn. There would be time enough

-for questions and arguments afterward.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Now these people here won&rsquo;t understand what

-eminent domain means,&rdquo; the big man went on.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to make it clear to you, young man.

-I know who you are and I know more about you

-than you think. I&rsquo;m going to make it clear to you

-and then I&rsquo;m going to send you out among them

-to make them see it. They wouldn&rsquo;t understand

-me and they wouldn&rsquo;t believe me. You can make

-them see it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How do you know that I&rsquo;ll believe you?&rdquo;

-asked Jeffrey.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got brains. You don&rsquo;t have to <i>believe</i>.

-I can <i>show</i> it to you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed

-to taking responsibilities upon himself.

-He had never been afraid of anything and this

-perhaps had given him more than the average

-boy&rsquo;s good opinion of himself. Nothing could

-have appealed to him more subtly than this man&rsquo;s

-bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to

-man by a man of the world. No boy is proof

-against the compliment that he is a man, to be

-dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced

-men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you know what an option is?&rdquo; the man

-began again.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course I do.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; said Rogers, in a manner that

-seemed to confirm his previous judgment of

-Jeffrey&rsquo;s brains. &ldquo;Now then, the railroad has got

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>

-to have all these farms from Beaver River right

-up to the head of Little Tupper Lake. I say these

-people won&rsquo;t know what eminent domain means.

-You&rsquo;re going to tell them. It means that they can

-sell at the railroad&rsquo;s price or they can hold off

-and a referee will be appointed to name a price.

-The railroad will have a big say in appointing

-those referees. Do you understand me?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. I see,&rdquo; said Jeffrey. &ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No buts at all about it, young man,&rdquo; said Rogers,

-waving his hand. &ldquo;The people have got to

-sell. If they give options at once&ndash;&ndash;within thirty

-days&ndash;&ndash;they&rsquo;ll get more than a fair price for their

-land. If they don&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;if they hold off&ndash;&ndash;their

-farms will be condemned as forest land. And you

-know how much that brings.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You people will be the first. You can ask almost

-anything for your land. You&rsquo;ll get it.

-And, what is more, I am able to offer you, Whiting,

-a very liberal commission on every option

-you can get me within the time I have said. This

-is the thing that I can&rsquo;t do. It&rsquo;s the thing that I

-want you to do.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll do it. I know you will, when you get

-time to think it over. Here are the options,&rdquo; said

-the big man, pulling a packet of folded papers

-out of his pocket. &ldquo;They cover every farm in

-the section. All you have to do is to get the

-people to write their names once. Then your

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>

-work is done. We&rsquo;ll do the rest and your commissions

-will be waiting for you. Some better

-than law school, eh?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But say,&rdquo; Jeffrey stammered, &ldquo;say, that

-means, why, that means my mother and the folks

-here, why, they&rsquo;d have to get out; they&rsquo;d have to

-leave their home!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Rogers easily. &ldquo;A man

-like you isn&rsquo;t going to keep his family up on top of

-this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you&rsquo;ll

-have the best home in Lowville for them, where

-they can live in style, in less than six months. Do

-you think your mother wants to stay here after

-you&rsquo;re gone. You were going away. Did you

-think,&rdquo; he said shrewdly, &ldquo;what life up here would

-be worth to your mother while you were away.

-No, you&rsquo;re just like all boys. You wanted to get

-away yourself. But you never thought what a

-life this is for her.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, boy, she&rsquo;s a young woman yet. You

-can take her out and give her a chance to live.

-Do you hear, a chance to live.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Think it over.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than

-he had ever tried to think in his life. But he could

-make nothing of it.</p>

-<p>He thought of the people, old and young, on

-the hills, suddenly set adrift from their homes.

-He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius and

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>

-Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back

-to. And he thought of money&ndash;&ndash;illimitable

-money: money that could do everything.</p>

-<p>He did not want to look at his mother for counsel.

-The man&rsquo;s talk had gone to his head. But,

-slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his mother&rsquo;s,

-and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look

-which told him to wait, wait. He caught the

-meaning and spoke it brusquely:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;All right. Leave the options here. I&rsquo;ll see

-what we&rsquo;ll do. And I&rsquo;ll write to you next week.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>No. That would not do. The big man must

-have his answer at once. He stormed at Jeffrey.

-He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished

-Miss Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius,

-but that guileless man led him off into such a discussion

-of cross grafting and reforestation that he

-was glad to drop him.</p>

-<p>In the end, he saw that, having committed himself,

-he could do no better than leave the matter

-to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for thought,

-the boy could not refuse his offer.</p>

-<p>So the two men, having breakfasted and rested

-their horses, set out on the down trip to Lowville.</p>

-<p>Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother

-came to a decision.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is too big for us, Jeff,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We do

-not know what it means. Nobody up here can tell

-us. The man was lying. But we do not know

-why, or what about.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;There is one man that could tell us. The

-White Horse Chaplain, do you remember him,

-Jeffrey?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Only to give her her chance, my son. Do

-not forget that. He could tell us what this means.

-I don&rsquo;t care anything about his religion. Your

-Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day

-at Fort Fisher. I don&rsquo;t. He is the Catholic

-Bishop of Alden. You&rsquo;ll go to him to-morrow.

-He&rsquo;ll tell you what it means.&rdquo;</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very

-much worried. For the third time he picked up

-and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of

-the Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him

-that Ruth Lansing had left the convent that morning.

-But the third perusal of the message did not

-give him any more light on the matter than the

-two previous readings had done.</p>

-<p>Why should the girl have gone away? What

-could have happened? Only the other day he

-had received a letter from her telling of her studies

-and her progress and of every new thing that was

-interesting her.</p>

-<p>The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home

-where he had found her &ldquo;Daddy Tom&rdquo; dying,

-and where he had buried him on the hillside.

-Probably the girl would go back and try to live

-there. And he thought of the boy who had told

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>

-him of his love and that he wanted to keep Ruth

-there in the hills.</p>

-<p>As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary

-came to the door to tell him that the boy,

-Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking

-to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature

-of his business to any one but the Bishop himself.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was startled. He had understood

-that the young man was in Albany at school.

-Now he thought that he would get a very clear

-light upon Ruth Lansing&rsquo;s disappearance.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I came to you, sir,&rdquo; said Jeffrey when the

-Bishop had given him a chair, &ldquo;because you could

-tell us what to do.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You mean you and your&ndash;&ndash;neighbour, Ruth

-Lansing?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, no, sir. What about her?&rdquo; said

-Jeffrey quickly.</p>

-<p>The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching

-look, and saw his mistake. The boy knew nothing.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; the Bishop answered, as he handed

-Jeffrey the open telegram.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But where&rsquo;s she gone? Why did she go?&rdquo;

-Jeffrey broke out, as he read the message.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I thought you were coming to tell me that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop&rsquo;s

-meaning quickly. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t write to me, not

-at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn&rsquo;t have it.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>

-But she wrote to my mother and she didn&rsquo;t say

-anything about leaving there.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I suppose not,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;She seems

-to have gone away suddenly. But, I am forgetting.

-You came to talk to me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly

-and shortly, of the coming of Rogers and his

-proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to

-tell how he had been carried away by the man&rsquo;s

-offer and his flattery. He made it plain that it

-was only his mother&rsquo;s insight and caution that had

-held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.</p>

-<p>The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness

-of the young fellow. It was good to

-hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his

-old-fashioned, stiff way and said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise

-woman. You will convey to her my deepest respect.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I do not know what it all means,&rdquo; he went on,

-in another tone. &ldquo;But I can soon find out.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the

-door the Bishop said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Will you see, please, if General Chandler is

-in his office across the street. If he is, give him

-my respects and ask him to step over here a moment.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the

-doorway.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked the Bishop.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She

-says she must see you, but she will not give a name.

-She seems to be in trouble, or frightened.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for

-the door.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Sit down where you were, young man,&rdquo; said

-the Bishop sharply. If Ruth Lansing were out

-there&ndash;&ndash;and the Bishop half believed that she was&ndash;&ndash;well,

-it <i>might</i> be coincidence. But it was too

-much for the Bishop&rsquo;s credulity.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Send the girl in here,&rdquo; he said shortly.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went

-straight to the Bishop. She did not see Jeffrey.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I came straight here all the way,&rdquo; she said,

-&ldquo;to tell you, Bishop, that I couldn&rsquo;t stay in the

-convent any longer. I am going home. I could

-not stay there.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am very glad to see you, Ruth,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop easily, &ldquo;and if you&rsquo;ll just turn around, I

-think you&rsquo;ll see some one who is even more

-pleased.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at

-sight of Jeffrey was abundant proof to the Bishop

-that the coming of these two to his door was indeed

-a coincidence.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the Bishop quickly, &ldquo;you will

-both sit down and listen. It concerns both of you

-deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General

-Chandler. You have both heard of him.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>

-He is the political power of this part of the State.

-He can, if he will, tell us just how serious your situation

-is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just

-listen.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise

-and perhaps a little resentment. For hours

-she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal

-of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely

-told to sit down and listen to something, she did

-not know what.</p>

-<p>The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler

-was ushered into the room and the two veterans

-saluted each other with the stiffest of military precision.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;These are two young friends of mine from

-the hills, General,&rdquo; said the Bishop, as he seated

-his old friend. &ldquo;They both own farms in the

-Beaver Run country. They have come to me to

-find out what the U. &amp; M. Railroad wants with

-options on all that country. Can you, will you

-tell them?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The General plucked for a moment at the empty

-left sleeve of his coat.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, Bishop,&rdquo; he said finally, &ldquo;I cannot give

-out what I know of that matter. The interests

-behind it are too large for me. I would not dare.

-I do not often have to say that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly, &ldquo;I never heard

-you say that before.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I can do this, Bishop,&rdquo; said the General,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>

-rising. &ldquo;If you will come over here to the end

-of the room, I can tell you, privately, what I know.

-You can then use your own prudence to judge

-how much you can tell these young people.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop followed to the window at the other

-end of the room, where the two men stood and

-talked in undertones.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey,&rdquo; said Ruth through teeth that gritted

-with impatience, &ldquo;if you don&rsquo;t tell me this instant

-what it&rsquo;s all about, I&rsquo;ll&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ll <i>bite</i> you!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little

-wild outbreak of hers to convince him that the

-young lady who had swept into the room and faced

-the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth,

-after all.</p>

-<p>In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.</p>

-<p>The Bishop walked to the door with the General,

-thanking him. From the door the General

-saluted gravely and stalked away.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The answer,&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly, as he

-came back to them, &ldquo;is one word&ndash;&ndash;Iron.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making

-a mysterious fuss about nothing. But Jeffrey saw

-the whole matter instantly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No one knows how much there is, or how little

-there is,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;The man lied to you,

-Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain. But

-they can get it if they get the options on a large

-part of the farms. Then, when they have the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>

-right of eminent domain, they will let the options

-lapse and buy the properties at their own prices.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll start back to warn the people to-night,&rdquo;

-said Jeffrey, jumping up. &ldquo;Maybe they made

-that offer to other people besides me!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; said the Bishop, &ldquo;there is more to

-think of. The railroad, if you serve it well, will,

-no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it is

-worth to you. There is your mother to be considered

-first. And they will, very likely, give you

-a chance to make a small fortune in your commissions,

-if you are faithful to them. If you go to

-fight them, they will probably crush you all in the

-end, and you will be left with little or nothing.

-Better go slowly, young man.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried Jeffrey. &ldquo;Take their bribe!

-Take their money, for fooling and cheating the

-other people out of their homes! Why, before

-I&rsquo;d do that, I&rsquo;d leave that farm and everything

-that&rsquo;s there and go up into the big woods with

-only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my

-mother would follow me! You know that! My

-mother would be glad to go with me, with nothing,

-nothing in her hands!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And so would I!&rdquo; said Ruth, springing to her

-feet. &ldquo;I <i>would</i>! I <i>would</i>!&rdquo; she chanted defiantly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, well, well!&rdquo; said the Bishop, smiling.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But you are not going up into the big woods,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>

-Jeffrey,&rdquo; Ruth said demurely. &ldquo;You are going

-back home to fight them. If I could help you I

-would go back with you. I would not be of any

-use. So, I&rsquo;m going back, to the convent, to face

-my fight.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But, but,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;I thought you were

-running away.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I did. I was,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;Last night I

-heard the voice of something calling to me. It

-was such a big thing,&rdquo; she went on, turning to the

-Bishop; &ldquo;it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing

-that I thought it would crush me. It would take

-my life and make me do what <i>it</i> wanted, not what

-I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It

-was like a Choir Unseen singing to me to follow,

-and I didn&rsquo;t dare follow.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey

-spoke that way. Now I know what it was. It

-was the call of life to everybody to face life, to

-take our souls in our hands and go forward. I

-thought I could turn back. I can&rsquo;t. God, or

-life won&rsquo;t let us turn back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing,&rdquo;

-said the Bishop. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you came away,

-to have it out with yourself. And you will be

-very glad now to go back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;As for you, young man,&rdquo; he turned to

-Jeffrey, &ldquo;I should say that your mother <i>would</i> be

-proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you.

-Remember that, when you are in the worst of this

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>

-fight that is before you. When you are tempted,

-as you will be tempted, remember it. When you

-are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed,

-<i>remember it</i>.&rdquo;</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>

-<a name='III_GLOW_OF_DAWN' id='III_GLOW_OF_DAWN'></a>

-<h2>III</h2>

-<h3>GLOW OF DAWN</h3>

-</div>

-<p>Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to

-his breakfast. It was past the middle of June, or,

-as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was the

-time when the snow water and the water from the

-spring rains had already gone down to the Big

-River: Beaver Run was still a fresh, rushing

-stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon

-there would not be enough water in it to make it

-safe for a trout as large as he. Then he would

-have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver

-River, where the saw-dust came to bother him.</p>

-<p>He was going up to lie all the morning in the

-shallow little pond at the very head of Beaver

-Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and drew

-the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very

-fond of flies and the pond was his own. He had

-made it his own now through four seasons, by his

-speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,

-quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below

-did not dispute with him this sweet upper stretch

-of his own stream. No large fish ever came up

-this way now, and he did not bother with the little

-ones. He liked flies better.</p>

-<p>His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>

-cool yet, for the sun was not high enough to have

-heated it through: a beautiful breakfast room at

-the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that

-ran away up on every side to the rim of the high

-hills.</p>

-<p>Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast.

-The sun had not yet begun to draw the flies from

-their hiding places to buzz over the surface of

-the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool

-only one fly was in sight. A rather decrepit looking

-black fly was doddering about a cat-tail stalk

-at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his

-body, and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and

-took the fly in his leap. But that was no breakfast.

-He would have to settle down by the cat-tails,

-in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.</p>

-<p>Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond

-this season. Always, in other years, two people,

-a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as he

-ate his breakfast. The girl had called him

-Twinkle-tail the very first time they had seen him.

-But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They were not

-friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow

-of the cat-tails and watch them as they crept along

-the edge of the bank. But he knew they came to

-catch him. When they were there the most

-tempting flies seemed to appear. Some of those

-flies fell into the water, others just skimmed the

-surface in the most aggravating and challenging

-manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>

-the cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl

-came to his side of the pond, then a lightning

-twinkle of his tail was all that told them that he

-had scooted out of the pool and down into the

-stream. Once the girl had trailed a piece of

-flashing red flannel across the water, and Twinkle-tail

-could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible

-hook caught him in the side of the mouth!

-In his fury and terror he dove and fought until he

-broke the hook. He had never forgotten that

-lesson.</p>

-<p>But he was forgetting a little this season. No

-one came to his pool. He was growing big and

-fat, and a little careless.</p>

-<p>As he lay there in the warming sand by the

-cat-tails, the biggest, juiciest green bottle fly that

-Twinkle-tail had ever seen came skimming down

-to the very line of the water. It circled once.

-Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not

-an inch from the water!</p>

-<p>A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and

-Twinkle-tail was out of the water! He had the

-fly in his mouth.</p>

-<p>Then the struggle began.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the

-shoulder of the bank behind which she had been

-hiding.</p>

-<p>The trout dove and started for the stream, the

-line ripping through the water like a shot.</p>

-<p>The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span>

-strong, slender, boy-like body giving and swaying

-cunningly to every tug of the fish.</p>

-<p>He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool,

-throwing her off her balance and down into the

-water. She rose wet and angry, clinging grimly

-to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side

-of the pond. She did not dare to stand and pull

-against him, for fear of breaking the hook. She

-could only race around, giving him all the line she

-could until he should tire a little.</p>

-<p>Three times they fought around the circle of the

-pool, the taut line singing like a wire in the wind.

-Ruth&rsquo;s hand was cut where she had fallen on the

-rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head

-to foot. Her breath came in great, gulping sobs.

-But she fought on.</p>

-<p>Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down

-the Run, but she headed him back each time to the

-pond where she could handle him better. She

-had never before fought so big a fish all alone.

-Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had always been with her.

-Now she found herself calling desperately under

-her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She

-bit back the words and took a new hold on the

-pole.</p>

-<p>The trout was running blindly now from side

-to side of the pond. He had lost his cunning.

-He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her

-strength was nearly gone too. She must use her

-head quickly.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span></div>

-<p>She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate

-effort. She must catch him as he ran

-toward her and try to flick him out of the water.

-It was her only chance. She might break the line

-or the pole and lose him entirely, but she would

-try it.</p>

-<p>Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water,

-directly at her. She suddenly threw her strength

-on the pole. It bent nearly double but it held.

-And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her

-strength, was whipped clear out on to the grass.

-Dropping the pole, she dove desperately at him

-where he fought on the very edge of the bank.

-Finally she caught the line a few inches above his

-mouth, and her prize was secure.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you, Twinkle-tail,&rdquo; she panted, as she held

-him up for a good look, &ldquo;sure enough!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She carried him back to a large stone and

-despatched him painlessly with a blunt stick.

-Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and

-dizzy from her struggle.</p>

-<p>Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she

-said aloud:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I wish Jeffrey was here. He&rsquo;ll never believe

-it was you unless he sees you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s him all right,&rdquo; said a voice behind

-her. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d know him in a thousand.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, where did you come from? Your mother

-told me you wouldn&rsquo;t be back till to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow

-if you want me to,&rdquo; said Jeffrey,

-smiling.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, Jeff, you know I&rsquo;m glad to see you. I

-was awfully disappointed when I got home and

-found that you were away up in the hills. How

-is your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail,&rdquo;

-she hurried on a little nervously, for Jeffrey

-had her hand and was drawing her determinedly

-to him. She reached for the trout and held him

-up strategically between them.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, <i>Fish</i>!&rdquo; said Jeffrey discontentedly as he

-saw himself beaten by her ruse.</p>

-<p>The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly

-handsome face. Then she seemed to relent,

-and with a friendly little tug at his arm led

-him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit

-down.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now tell me,&rdquo; she commanded, &ldquo;all about

-your battle with the railroad people. Your

-mother told me some things, but I want it all,

-from yourself.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked

-at her dress and shoes and said with a show of

-meanness:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ruth, you didn&rsquo;t catch Twinkle-tail fair, on

-your line. You just walked into the pond and got

-him in a corner and kicked him to death brutally.

-I know you did. You&rsquo;re always cruel.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>

-cut in her hand where she had fallen on the

-rocks.</p>

-<p>Instantly he was all interest and contrition.

-He must wash the hand and dress it! But she

-made him sit where he was, while she knelt down

-by the water and bathed the smarting hand and

-bound it with her handkerchief.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;tell me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he began, when he saw that there was

-nothing to be gained by delay, &ldquo;the very night that

-the Bishop of Alden told me that they had found

-iron in the hills here and that they were going to

-try to push us all out of our homes, I started out

-to warn the people. I found I wasn&rsquo;t the only

-man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had

-Rafe Gadbeau, you know he&rsquo;s a kind of a political

-boss of the French around French Village; and a

-man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but

-he&rsquo;d been spending money around free, and I knew

-the railroad must have given it to him outright.

-I told him what I had found out, about the iron

-and what the land would be worth if the farmers

-held on to it. But I might as well have held my

-breath. He didn&rsquo;t care anything about the interests

-of the people that had land. He was getting

-paid well for every option that he could get. And

-he was going to get all he could. I will have

-trouble with that man yet.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>

-and a good man. They had fooled him, just as

-that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He

-had started out in good faith to help the railroad

-get the properties over on that side of the mountains,

-thinking it was the best thing for the people

-to do to sell out at once. When I told him about

-their finding iron, he saw that they had made a

-catspaw of him; and he was the maddest man you

-ever saw.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He is a big man over that way, and his word

-was worth ten of mine. He went right out with

-me to warn every man who had a piece of land

-not to sign anything.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling

-the whole business for the railroad, came up here

-and had me arrested on charges of extortion and

-conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They

-took me down to Lowville, but Judge Clemmons

-couldn&rsquo;t find anything in the charges. So I was let

-go. But they are not through. They will find

-some way to get me away from here yet.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How does it stand now?&rdquo; said Ruth thoughtfully.

-&ldquo;Have they actually started to build the

-railroad?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes. You know they have the right of

-way to run the road through. But they wouldn&rsquo;t

-build it, at least not for years yet, only that they

-want to get this iron property opened up. Why,

-the road is to run from Welden to French Village

-and there is not a single town on the whole line!

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>

-The road wouldn&rsquo;t have business enough to keep

-the rust off. They&rsquo;re building the road just the

-same, so that shows that they intend to get our

-property some way, no matter what we do. And

-I suppose they will, somehow,&rdquo; he added sullenly.

-&ldquo;They always do, I guess.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But the people,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;can&rsquo;t you get

-them all to join and agree to sell at a fair price?

-Wouldn&rsquo;t that be all right?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t want to buy. They won&rsquo;t buy

-at any fair price. They only want to get options

-enough to show the Legislature and the Governor,

-and then they will be granted eminent domain and

-they can have the land condemned and can buy it

-at the price of wild land.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes; I remember now. That&rsquo;s what the

-Bishop said. Isn&rsquo;t it strange,&rdquo; she went on

-slowly, &ldquo;how he seems to come into everything

-we do. How he saved my Daddy Tom&rsquo;s life that

-time at Fort Fisher. And how he came here that

-night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked

-us up and turned us around and sent me off to

-convent. And now how he seems to come into all

-this.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the

-North,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;I wonder if he comes

-into the lives of <i>all</i> the people that way. At the

-convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging

-to them personally. I resented it at first,

-because I thought I had more reason to know him

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>

-than anybody. But I found that everybody felt

-the same way.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s just like the Catholic Church,&rdquo; said

-Jeffrey suddenly, and a little sharply; &ldquo;he comes

-into everything.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeffrey,&rdquo; said Ruth in surprise, &ldquo;what

-do you know about the Church?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve read some.

-And I&rsquo;ve had to deal a lot with the French people

-up toward French Village. And I&rsquo;ve talked with

-their priest up there. You know you have to talk

-to the priest before it&rsquo;s any use talking to them.

-That&rsquo;s the way with the Catholic Church. It

-comes into everything. I don&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He sat looking across the pool for a moment,

-while Ruth quietly studied the stubborn, settling

-lines of his face. She saw that a few months had

-made a big change in the boy and playmate that

-she had known. He was no longer the bright-faced,

-clear-eyed boy. His face was turning into

-a man&rsquo;s face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and

-of harshness were coming into it. It showed

-strength and doggedness and will, along with some

-of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not

-dislike the change altogether. But it began to

-make her a little timid. She was quick to see from

-it that there would be certain limits beyond which

-she could not play with this new man that she

-found.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right to be religious,&rdquo; he went on argumentatively.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>

-&ldquo;Mother&rsquo;s religious. And Aunt

-Letty&rsquo;s just full of it. But it don&rsquo;t interfere with

-their lives. It&rsquo;s all right to have a preacher for

-marrying or dying or something like that; and to

-go to hear him if you want to. But the Catholic

-Church comes right in to where those people live.

-It tells them what to do and what to think about

-everything. They don&rsquo;t dare speak without looking

-back to it to find out what they must say. I

-don&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeffrey, I&rsquo;m a Catholic!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I <i>knew</i> it!&rdquo; he said stubbornly. &ldquo;I knew it!

-I knew there was something that had changed you.

-And I might have known it was that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s funny!&rdquo; said the girl, breaking in

-quickly. &ldquo;When you came I was just wondering

-to myself why it had not seemed to change me at

-all. I think I was half disappointed with myself,

-to think that I had gone through a wonderful

-experience and it had left me just the same as I

-was before.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But it has changed you,&rdquo; he persisted. &ldquo;And

-it&rsquo;s going to change you a lot more. I can see it.

-Please, Ruth,&rdquo; he said, suddenly softening, &ldquo;you

-won&rsquo;t let it change you? You won&rsquo;t let it make

-any difference, with us, I mean?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his

-face, and said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, Jeffrey. It won&rsquo;t make any difference

-with us, in the way you mean.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;So long as we are what we are,&rdquo; she said again

-after a pause, &ldquo;we will be just the same to each

-other. If it should make something different out

-of me than what I am, then, of course, I would

-not be the same to you. Or if you should change

-into something else, then you would not be the

-same to me.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s too soon,&rdquo; she continued decisively.

-&ldquo;Nothing is clear to me, yet. I&rsquo;ve just entered

-into a great, wonderful world of thought and feeling

-that I never knew existed. Where it leads

-to, I do not know. When I do know, Jeffrey

-dear, I&rsquo;ll tell you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her

-feet, and he understood that she had said the last

-word that was to be said. He saw something in

-her face with which he did not dare to argue.</p>

-<p>He got up saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have to be gone. I&rsquo;m glad I found you here

-at the old place. I&rsquo;ll be back to-night to help you

-eat the trout.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. There&rsquo;s a couple of

-men over there that are shaky. I&rsquo;ve had to keep

-after them or they&rsquo;d be listening to Rafe Gadbeau

-and letting their land go.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; Ruth exclaimed, &ldquo;now when they

-know, can&rsquo;t they see what is to their own interest!

-Are they blind?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Jeffrey dully. &ldquo;But you know

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>

-how it is with those people. Their land is hard

-to work. It is poor land. They have to scratch

-and scrape for a little money. They don&rsquo;t see

-many dollars together from one year&rsquo;s end to the

-other. Even a little money, ready, green money,

-shaken in their faces looks awful big to them.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Good luck, then, Jeff,&rdquo; she said cheerily;

-&ldquo;and get back early if you can.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; he said easily as he picked up his hat.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And, say, Ruth.&rdquo; He turned back quietly to

-her. &ldquo;If&ndash;&ndash;if I shouldn&rsquo;t be back to-night, or to-morrow;

-why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you?

-I wouldn&rsquo;t say anything to mother. And Uncle

-Catty, well, he&rsquo;s not very sharp sometimes. Will

-you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff,

-please.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, sure,&rdquo; he sang back, as he walked quickly

-around the edge of the pond and slipped into the

-alder bushes through which ran the trail that went

-up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on

-the other side.</p>

-<p>Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily

-up the opposite slope, his grey felt hat and wide

-shoulders showing above the undergrowth.</p>

-<p>This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey

-that she had left when she went down to the convent

-five months before. She could see it in his

-walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside

-just as she had seen it in his face and his talk.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>

-He was fighting with a power that he had found

-to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was

-not discouraged. He had no thought of giving

-up. But the airy edge of his boyish confidence

-in himself was gone. He had become grim and

-thoughtful and determined. He had settled

-down to a long, dogged struggle.</p>

-<p>He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau.

-How much did he mean? Why should he have

-said this to her? Would it not have been better

-to have warned some of the men that were associated

-with him in his fight? And what was

-there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of

-physical fear in connection with Jeffrey. Why,

-nothing ever happened in the hills, anyway.

-Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was

-true, the lumber jacks were rough when they came

-down with the log drives in the spring. But they

-only fought among themselves. And they did not

-stop in the hills. They hurried on down to the

-towns where they could spend their money.</p>

-<p>What had Jeffrey to fear?</p>

-<p>Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He

-would not have spoken to her unless he had good

-reason to think that something might happen to

-him.</p>

-<p>Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the

-temper of the hills. The men were easy-going.

-They were slow of speech. They were generally

-ruled by their more energetic women. But they

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>

-or their fathers had all been fighting men, like her

-own father. And they were rooted in the soil of

-the hills. Any man or any power that attempted

-to drive them from the land which their hands had

-cleared and made into homes, where the bones of

-their fathers and mothers lay, would have to

-reckon with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top

-of the ridge. In another moment he would drop

-down the other side out of sight. She wondered

-whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he

-forgotten that she would surely be standing where

-he had left her?</p>

-<p>He had not forgotten. He turned and waved

-briskly to her. Then he stepped down quickly

-out of sight. His act was brusque and businesslike.

-It showed that he remembered. He could

-hardly have seen her standing there in all the

-green by the pond. He had just known that she

-was there. But it showed something else, too.

-He had plunged down over the edge of the hill

-upon a business with which his mind was filled, to

-the exclusion, almost, of her and of everything

-else.</p>

-<p>The girl did not feel any of the little pique or

-resentment that might have been very natural.

-It was so that she would wish him to go about the

-business that was going to be so serious for all of

-them. But it gave her a new and startling flash

-of insight into what was coming.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span></div>

-<p>She had always thought of her hills as the place

-where peace lived. Out in the great crowded

-market places of the world she knew men fought

-each other for money. But why do that in the

-hills? There was a little for all. And a man

-could only get as much as his own labour and good

-judgment would make for him out of the land.</p>

-<p>Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills

-or of cities. Wherever, in the hills or the city or

-in the farthest desert, there was wealth or the hope

-of wealth, there greedy men with power would

-surely come to look for it and take it. That was

-why men fought. Wealth, even the scent of

-wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on

-to battle.</p>

-<p>A cloud passed between her and the morning

-sun. She felt the premonition of tragedy and suffering

-lowering down like a storm on her hills.

-How foolishly she had thought that all life and all

-the great, seething business of life was to be done

-down in the towns and the cities. Here was life

-now, with its pressure and its ugly passions, pushing

-right into the very hills.</p>

-<p>She shivered as she picked up her prize of the

-morning and her fishing tackle and started slowly

-up the hill toward her home.</p>

-<p>Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth

-with the understanding that Ruth was to spend the

-summer there in her own home. The rent was

-enough to give Ruth what little money she needed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>

-for clothes and to pay her modest expenses at the

-convent at Athens. So her life was arranged for

-her at least up to the time when she should have

-finished school.</p>

-<p>It seemed very strange to come home and find

-her home in the hands of strangers. It was odd

-to be a sort of guest in the house that she had

-ruled and managed from almost the time that she

-was a baby. It would be very hard to keep from

-telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged and

-how other things should be done. It would be

-hard to stand by and see others driving the horses

-that had never known a hand but hers and Daddy

-Tom&rsquo;s. Still she had been very glad to come

-home. It was her place. It held all the memories

-and all the things that connected her with

-her own people. She wanted to be able always

-to come back to it and call it her own. Looking

-down over it from the crest of the hill, at the little

-clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom

-and her mother, at the little house that had seen

-their love and in which she had been born, she

-could understand the fierceness with which men

-would fight to hold the farms and homes which

-were threatened.</p>

-<p>Until now she had hardly realised that those

-men whom people vaguely called &ldquo;the railroad&rdquo;

-would want to take <i>her</i> home and farm away from

-her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span>

-felt a swelling rage of indignation rising in her

-throat. She hurried down the hill to the house,

-as though she saw it already threatened.</p>

-<p>She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof

-of the wood shed and went around to the front of

-the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth weeding

-in what had been Ruth&rsquo;s own flower beds.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss

-Ruth!&rdquo; the woman exclaimed at sight of her.

-&ldquo;I called you <i>three</i> times, and when you didn&rsquo;t

-answer I went to your door; and there you were

-gone! I told Norman Apgarth somebody must

-have took you off in the night.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;No danger. I&rsquo;m

-used to getting up early, you see. So I just took

-some cakes&ndash;&ndash;Didn&rsquo;t you miss them?&ndash;&ndash;and

-some milk and slipped out without waking any one.

-I wanted to catch this fish. Jeffrey Whiting and I

-tried to catch him for four years. And I had to

-do it myself this morning.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;So young Whiting&rsquo;s gone away, eh?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, no,&rdquo; said Ruth quickly. &ldquo;He went

-over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork about half an hour ago.

-Who said he&rsquo;d gone away?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, nobody,&rdquo; said the woman hastily; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s

-only what they was sayin&rsquo; up at French Village

-yesterday.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What were they saying?&rdquo; Ruth demanded.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, just talk, I suppose,&rdquo; Mrs. Apgarth

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>

-evaded. &ldquo;Still, I dunno&rsquo;s I blame him. I guess

-if I got as much money as they say he&rsquo;s got out of

-it, I&rsquo;d skedaddle, too.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth stepped over and caught the woman

-sharply by the arm.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What did they say? Tell me, please.

-Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl was trembling

-with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she

-herself had said too much, or too little. She

-could not stop at that. She must tell everything

-now.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;they say he&rsquo;s just fooled

-the people up over their eyes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo; said Ruth impatiently. &ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been agoin&rsquo; round holdin&rsquo; the people

-back and gettin&rsquo; them to swear that they won&rsquo;t

-sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the railroad.

-Now it turns out he was just keepin&rsquo; the rest of

-the people back till he could get a good big lot of

-money from the railroad for his own farm and

-for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he&rsquo;s sold

-this farm and his own and five other ones that he&rsquo;d

-got hold of, for four times what they&rsquo;re worth.

-And that gives the railroad enough to work on,

-so the rest of the people&rsquo;ll just have to sell for

-what they can get. He&rsquo;s gone now; skipped out.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But he has <i>not</i> gone!&rdquo; Ruth snapped out indignantly.

-&ldquo;I saw him only half an hour ago.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, of course,&rdquo; said the woman knowingly,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>

-&ldquo;you&rsquo;d know more about it than anybody

-else. It&rsquo;s all talk, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten

-on the grass. She said shortly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, then, don&rsquo;t say a word to her about this.

-She&rsquo;s an awful good neighbour. I wouldn&rsquo;t for

-the world have her think that I&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, it doesn&rsquo;t matter at all,&rdquo; said Ruth, as

-she turned toward the road. &ldquo;You only said

-what people were saying.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I wouldn&rsquo;t for anything,&rdquo; the woman

-called nervously after her, &ldquo;have her think that&ndash;&ndash; And

-what&rsquo;ll I do with this?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Eat it,&rdquo; said Ruth over her shoulder. The

-prize for which she had fought so desperately in

-the early morning meant nothing to her now.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night.

-Through the long twilight of one of the longest

-days of the year, Ruth sat reading in the old place

-on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find

-her. Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew

-that he would not come.</p>

-<p>She did not try to argue with herself. She did

-not fight back the nervous feeling that something

-had happened. She was sure that she had been

-all day expecting it. When the moon came up

-over the hill and the long purple shadows of the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span>

-elm trees on the crest came stalking down in the

-white light, she went miserably into the house and

-up to the little room they had fitted up for her in

-the loft of her own home.</p>

-<p>She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep.

-But with the elasticity of youth and health she was

-awake at the first hint of morning, and the cloud

-of the night had passed.</p>

-<p>She dressed and hurried down into the yard

-where Norman Apgarth was just stirring about

-with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight

-and action. A man had put his trust in her before

-all others. She was eager to answer to his

-faith.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Where is Brom Bones?&rdquo; she demanded of the

-still drowsy Apgarth as she caught him crossing

-the yard from the milk house.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The colt? He&rsquo;s up in the back pasture, just

-around the knob of the mountain. What was you

-calc&rsquo;latin&rsquo; to do with him, Miss?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I want to use him,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;May I?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But,

-say, Miss, that colt ain&rsquo;t been driv&rsquo; since the

-Spring&rsquo;s work. An&rsquo; he&rsquo;s so fat an&rsquo; silky he&rsquo;s liable

-to act foolish.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to <i>ride</i> him,&rdquo; said Ruth briefly, as

-she stepped to the horse barn door for a bridle.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now, say, Miss,&rdquo; the man opposed feebly,

-&ldquo;you could take the brown pony just as well; I

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>

-don&rsquo;t need her a bit. And I tell you that colt is

-just a lun-<i>at</i>-ic, when he&rsquo;s been idle so long.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Ruth, as she started up the

-hill. &ldquo;But I think I&rsquo;ll find work enough to satisfy

-even Brom Bones to-day.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The big black colt followed her peaceably down

-the mountain, and stood champing at the door

-while she went in to get something to eat. When

-she brought out a shining new side saddle he

-looked suspiciously at the strange thing, but he

-made no serious objection as she fastened it on.

-Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood

-looking doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as

-new to her as it was to the horse. She had bought

-it on her way home the other day, as a concession

-to the fact that she was now a young lady who

-could no longer go stampeding over the hills on a

-bare-backed horse.</p>

-<p>She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming

-to know in the way of his kind that she was uneasy

-and uncomfortable, began at once to act badly.

-His intention seemed to be to walk into the open

-well on his hind feet. The girl caught a short

-hold on her lines and cut him sharply across the

-ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the

-hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.</p>

-<p>The path led straight up to the top of the slope.

-Ruth did not try to hold him. The sooner he ran

-the conceit out of himself, she thought, the better.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span></div>

-<p>He hurled himself down the other slope, past

-the pool, and into the trail which Jeffrey had taken

-yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in a strange

-saddle. But the girl&rsquo;s anxiety rose with the excitement

-of the horse&rsquo;s wild rush, so that when

-they reached the top of the divide where she had

-last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl

-that was ready to settle down to a sober and safer

-pace.</p>

-<p>Her common sense told her that she was probably

-foolish; that Jeffrey had merely stayed over

-night somewhere and that she would meet him on

-the way. But another and a subtler sense kept

-whispering to her to hurry on, that she was

-needed, that the good name, if not the life, of the

-boy she loved was in danger!</p>

-<p>She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just

-who were the men whom Jeffrey had gone to see.

-But she did not know how she could dash up to

-their doors and demand to know where he was.

-It was eleven miles up the stony trail that followed

-Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork, and the girl&rsquo;s nerves now keyed

-up to expect she knew not what jangled at every

-turn of the road. Jeffrey had meant to come

-straight back this way to her. That he had not

-done so meant that <i>something</i> had stopped him on

-the way. What was it?</p>

-<p>On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks

-and the underbrush was grown into an impenetrable

-wall. On the other it ran sheer along

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>

-the edge of Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing

-stream that tumbled and brawled its way down

-the long slope of the country.</p>

-<p>Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped

-her saddle as she pushed on past a place where the

-undergrowth came right down to the trail, and

-six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to

-the rock bed of the stream. She caught herself

-leaning across the saddle to look down. A man

-might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came

-carelessly along. And that man might have

-swung a cant-stick once&ndash;&ndash;a single blow at the

-back of the head&ndash;&ndash;and Jeffrey would have gone

-stumbling and falling over the edge of the path.

-There would not be even the sign of a struggle.</p>

-<p>Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ruth Lansing,&rdquo; she scolded aloud, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re

-making a little fool of yourself. You&rsquo;ve been

-down there in that convent living among a lot of

-girls, and you&rsquo;re forgetting that these hills are

-your own, that there never was and never is any

-danger in them for us who belong here. Just

-keep that in your mind and hustle on about your

-business.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>When she came out into the open country near

-the head of the Fork she met old Darius Wilbur

-turning his cattle to pasture. The old man

-did not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing

-colt and he looked sharply at the steaming withers

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>

-of Brom Bones before he would give any attention

-to her question.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the tarnation hurry, young lady?&rdquo; he

-inquired exasperatingly. &ldquo;Jeff Whiting? Yes,

-he was here yest&rsquo;day. Why?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did he start home by this trail?&rdquo; asked Ruth

-eagerly. &ldquo;Or did he go on up country?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He went on up country.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again

-without a word.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But stay!&rdquo; the old man yelled after her,

-when she had gone twenty yards. &ldquo;He came

-back again.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly

-threw Brom Bones to his knees.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t ask me that,&rdquo; the old man chortled, as

-she came back, &ldquo;but if I didn&rsquo;t tell you I reckon

-you&rsquo;d run that colt to death up the hills.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then he <i>did</i> take the Forks trail back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t do that, nuther.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then where <i>did</i> he go? Please tell me!&rdquo;

-cried the girl, the tears of vexation rising into her

-voice.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter, girl? He crossed

-the Fork just there,&rdquo; said the old man, pointing,

-&ldquo;and he took over the hill for French Village.

-You his wife? You&rsquo;re mighty young.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones

-were already slipping down the rough bank in a

-shower of dirt and stones.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span></div>

-<p>In the middle of the ford she stopped and

-loosened the bridle, let the colt drink a little, then

-drove him across, up the other bank and on up the

-stiff slope.</p>

-<p>She did not know the trail, but she knew the

-general run of the country that way and had no

-doubt of finding her road.</p>

-<p>Now she told herself that it was certainly a

-wild goose chase. Jeffrey had merely found that

-he had to see some one in French Village and had

-gone there and, of course, had spent the night

-there.</p>

-<p>By the time she had come over the ridge of the

-hill and was dropping down through the heavily

-wooded country toward French Village, she had

-begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly

-remembered that it was Saint John the Baptist&rsquo;s

-day. It was not a holy day of obligation

-but she knew it was a feast day in French Village.

-There would be Mass. She should have gone,

-anyway. And she would hear with her own ears

-the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.</p>

-<p>Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store

-in French Village in the glory of a stiff white shirt

-and a festal red vest. The store was closed, of

-course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he

-would put on his black coat, in his official capacity

-of trustee of the church, and march solemnly over

-to ring the bell for Mass.</p>

-<p>The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>

-whom he seemed to know vaguely, riding down

-the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on

-the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made

-the little man reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle Lansing!&rdquo; he said, bowing in

-friendly pomp as Ruth drove up.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came

-down to go to Mass. Can you tell me what time

-it begins?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I shall ring the bell when I have put away

-your horse, M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle.&rdquo; Now no earthly power

-could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute

-from the exact time for ringing that bell.

-But, he was a Frenchman. His manner intimated

-that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must await

-her convenience.</p>

-<p>He stepped forward jauntily to help her down.

-Ruth kicked her feet loose and slid down

-deftly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb,&rdquo;

-said Ruth as she took his hand. &ldquo;Did you see

-Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>A girl of about Ruth&rsquo;s own age had come

-quietly up the street and stood beside them, recording

-in one swift inspection every detail of

-Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her

-brown boots.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Cynthe,&rdquo; said the little man briskly, &ldquo;you

-show Miss Lansing on my pew for Mass.&rdquo; He

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>

-took the bridle from Ruth&rsquo;s hand and led the horse

-away to the shed in the rear of the store.</p>

-<p>The fear and uneasiness of the early morning

-leaped back to Ruth. The little man had certainly

-run away from her question. Why should

-he not answer?</p>

-<p>She would have liked to linger a while among

-the people standing about the church door. She

-knew some of them. She might have asked questions

-of them. But her escort led her straight into

-the church and up to a front pew.</p>

-<p>At the end of the Mass the people filed out

-quietly, but at the church door they broke into volleys

-of rapid-fire French chatter of which Ruth

-could only catch a little here and there.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You will come by the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>, M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle. You

-will not dance <i>non</i>, I s&rsquo;pose. But you will eat,

-and you will see the fun they make, one <i>jolie</i> time!

-Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance.&rdquo;

-Arsene led Ruth and the other girl, whom she

-now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal, across the

-road to a little wood that stood opposite the

-church. There were tables, on which the women

-had already begun to spread the food that they had

-brought from home, and a dancing platform. On

-a great stump which had been carved rudely into

-a chair sat Soriel Brouchard, the fiddler of the

-hills, twiddling critically at his strings.</p>

-<p>It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who

-had a moment before been so devout and concentrated

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>

-in church should in an instant switch

-their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking.

-But she soon found their light-hearted

-gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it, she

-was sputtering away in the best French she had

-and entering into the fun with all her heart.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Which is Rafe Gadbeau?&rdquo; she suddenly

-asked Cynthe Cardinal. &ldquo;I want to know him.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why for you want to know him?&rdquo; the girl

-asked sharply in English.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, nothing,&rdquo; said Ruth carelessly, &ldquo;only

-I&rsquo;ve heard of him.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The other girl reached out into the crowd and

-plucked at the sleeve of a tall, beak-nosed man.

-The man was evidently flattered by Ruth&rsquo;s request,

-and wanted her to dance with him immediately.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;I do not know how to dance

-your dances, and we&rsquo;d only break up the sets if

-I tried to learn now. We&rsquo;ve heard a lot about

-you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to

-know you. And we&rsquo;ve heard some things about

-Jeffrey Whiting. I&rsquo;m sure you could tell me if

-they are true.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo; dance? Well, we sit then. I tell

-you. One rascal, this young Whiting!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled

-herself to listen quietly as he led her to a seat.</p>

-<p>As they left the other girl standing in the middle

-of the platform, Ruth, looking back, caught

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>

-a swift glance of what she knew was jealous anger

-in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want

-to make an enemy of this girl. But she felt that

-she must use every effort to get this man to tell

-her all he would.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;One rascal, I tell you,&rdquo; repeated Gadbeau.

-&ldquo;First he stop all the people. He say don&rsquo; sell

-nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He

-sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip

-the country, right out. An&rsquo; he leave these poor

-French people in the soup.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;he sat back tapping himself on the

-chest&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;I got hinfluence with that railroad.

-They buy now from us. To-morrow morning,

-nine o&rsquo;clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on

-French Village. We sell out everything on the

-option to him.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; objected Ruth, trying to draw him out,

-&ldquo;if Jeffrey Whiting should come back before

-then?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He don&rsquo; come back, that fellow.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know, I&ndash;&ndash; He don&rsquo; come back. I tell

-you that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine

-o&rsquo;clock to-morrow,&rdquo; she said, turning suddenly

-upon him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Eh? M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle, what you mean? What

-you know?&rdquo; he questioned excitedly.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at

-us,&rdquo; she smiled as she arose, &ldquo;and I think you are

-in for a lecture.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Through all the long day, while she ate and

-listened to the fun and talked to Father Ponfret

-about her convent life, she did not let Rafe Gadbeau

-out of her sight or mind for an instant. She

-knew that she had alarmed him. She was certain

-that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey

-Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray

-himself in some way.</p>

-<p>When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers,

-she waited by the bell ringer to see that

-Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place

-among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly

-into a pew near the door. When the people rose

-to sing the <i>Tantum Ergo</i>, she saw Gadbeau slip

-unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely

-until the singing was finished, then she almost ran

-to the door.</p>

-<p>Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that

-had been standing all day in the little woods, was

-riding away in the direction of the trail which she

-had come down this morning. She fairly flew

-down the street to Arsene LaComb&rsquo;s store.

-There was not a pony in the hills that Brom Bones

-could not overtake easily, but she must see by what

-trail the man left the Village.</p>

-<p>Brom Bones was very willing to make a race

-for home, and she let him have his head until she

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>

-again caught sight of the man. She pulled up

-sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The

-man was still on the main road, and he might turn

-any moment. Finally she saw him pull into the

-trail that led over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. Then she

-knew. Jeffrey was somewhere on the trail between

-French Village and Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. And

-he was alive! The man was going now to make

-sure that he was still there.</p>

-<p>For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough

-to assure her that the man was still following

-the trail. Then, just when the real darkness had

-fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at

-her left. The man had turned off into the woods!

-She had almost passed him! She threw herself

-out upon Brom Bones&rsquo; neck and caught him by

-the nose. He threw up his head indignantly and

-tried to bolt, but she blessed him for making no

-noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred

-yards, slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into

-the bushes away from the road and tied him. She

-talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading

-with him to be quiet. Then she left him and

-stole back to where she had heard the pony.</p>

-<p>In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing.

-But her feet found themselves on what

-seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly.

-She almost walked into a square black thing that

-suddenly confronted her. Within what seemed a

-foot of her she heard voices. Her heart stopped

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>

-beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she

-could not distinguish a word. One of the voices

-was certainly Gadbeau&rsquo;s. The other&ndash;&ndash; It

-was!&ndash;&ndash; It was! Though it was only a mumble,

-she knew it was Jeffrey Whiting who tried to

-speak!</p>

-<p>She took a step forward, ready to dash into

-the place, whatever it was. But the caution of the

-hills made her back away noiselessly into the

-brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, <i>why</i>

-had she not brought a rifle? Gadbeau was sure to

-be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably

-wounded and bound.</p>

-<p>She backed farther into the bushes and started

-to make a circuit of the place. She understood

-now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely of logs,

-even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse.

-She knew that she was helpless. And she knew

-that Jeffrey would not be a prisoner there unless

-he were hurt.</p>

-<p>She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come

-to injure Jeffrey further. He had merely come to

-make himself sure that his prisoner was secure.

-He would not stay long.</p>

-<p>As she stole around away from the path and

-the pony she saw a little stream of light shoot

-out through a chink between the logs of the hut.

-Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had

-brought something for Jeffrey to eat. She pulled

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>

-off the white collar of her jacket, the only white

-thing that showed about her and settled down for

-a long wait.</p>

-<p>First she had thought that she ought to steal

-away to her horse and ride for help. But she

-could not bear the thought of even getting beyond

-the sound of Jeffrey&rsquo;s voice. She knew

-where he was now. He might be taken away

-while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing

-had always learned to do things for herself. She

-had always disliked appealing for help.</p>

-<p>Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place

-she could find, leaning against the bole of a great

-tree. The light, candles, of course, burned on;

-and the voices came irregularly through the living

-silence of the woods. She did not dare to

-creep nearer to hear what was being said. That

-did not matter. The important thing was to have

-Gadbeau go away without any suspicion that he

-had been followed. Then she would be free to

-release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she

-would be able to get him down to French Village

-in the morning. She could easily have him there

-before nine o&rsquo;clock.</p>

-<p>When she saw by the stars that it was long

-past midnight she began to be worried. Just then

-the light went out. Ah! The man was going

-away at last! She waited a long, nervous half

-hour. But there was no sound. She dared not

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>

-move, for even when she shifted her position

-against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to

-crackle with her motion.</p>

-<p>Would he never come out? It seemed not.

-Was he going to stay there all night?</p>

-<p>Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the

-door of the cabin. Apparently both men were

-asleep within. She pushed the door ever so

-quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.</p>

-<p>What could she do? Nothing, absolutely

-nothing! Oh, why, <i>why</i> had she not brought a

-rifle? She would shoot. She <i>would</i>, if she had

-it now, and that man opened the door! It was

-too late now to think of riding for help, too late!</p>

-<p>She sank down again beside her tree and raged

-helplessly at herself, at her conceit in herself that

-would not let her go for help in the first place,

-at her foolishness in coming on this business without

-a gun. The hours dragged out their weary

-minutes, every minute an age to the taut, ragged

-nerves of the girl.</p>

-<p>The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops,

-while the ground still lay in utter darkness. Ruth

-rose and slipped farther back into the bushes.</p>

-<p>Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in

-the soft grass, and the hot, angry tears of desperation

-and rage at herself were softened. Her

-heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and

-sang its prayer to God; a thrilling, lifting little

-prayer of confidence and wonder. The words

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>

-that the night before would not form themselves

-for her now sprang up ready in her soul&ndash;&ndash;the

-words of all the children of earth, to Our Father

-Who Art in Heaven&ndash;&ndash;paused an instant to bless

-her lips, then sped away to God in His Heaven.

-Fear was gone, and doubt, and anxiety. She

-would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor,

-befooled people from ruin. God had told her so,

-as He walked abroad in the <i>Glow</i> of <i>Dawn</i>.</p>

-<p>Two long hours more she waited, but now with

-patience and a sure confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau

-came out of the hut and strode down the

-path to his pony.</p>

-<p>Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and

-ran to the door, and called to Jeffrey. The only

-answer was a moan. The door was locked with

-a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy

-padlock. She reached for the nearest stone and

-attacked the lock frantically. She beat it out of

-all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her.

-There was no window in the hut. She had to

-come back again to the lock. Her hands, softened

-by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on

-the tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave,

-and she threw herself against the door.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk

-beside the furnace where they boiled the sugar

-sap. His arms were stretched out and tied together

-down under the narrow bunk. She saw

-that his left arm was broken. For an instant the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>

-girl&rsquo;s heart leaped back to the rage of the night

-when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But

-pity swallowed up every other feeling as she cut

-the cords from his hands and loosened the rope

-that they had bound in between his teeth.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk, Jeff,&rdquo; she commanded. &ldquo;I can

-see just what happened. Lie easy and get your

-strength. I&rsquo;ve got to take you to French Village

-at once.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She ran out to bring water. When she returned

-he was sitting dizzily on the edge of the bunk.

-While she bathed his head with the water and

-gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and

-crooned over him as she would over a baby for

-she saw that he was shaken and half delirious with

-pain.</p>

-<p>Brom Bones was standing munching twigs

-where she had left him. He had never before

-been asked to carry double and he did not like it.

-But the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into

-his silky black ear that he finally gave in.</p>

-<p>When they were mounted, she fastened the

-white collar of her jacket into a sling for the

-boy&rsquo;s broken arm, and with a prayer to the heathen

-Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down

-the trail.</p>

-<p>When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey

-spoke suddenly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Say, Ruth, what&rsquo;s the use trying to save these

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>

-people? Let&rsquo;s sell out while we can and take

-mother and go away.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeff, dear,&rdquo; she said lightly, &ldquo;this fight

-hasn&rsquo;t begun yet. Wait till we get to French Village.

-You&rsquo;ll say something different. You&rsquo;ll say

-just what you said to the Shepherd of the North;

-remember?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey said no more. The girl&rsquo;s heart was

-weak with the pain she knew he was bearing, but

-she knew that they must go through with this.</p>

-<p>All French Village and the farmers of Little

-Tupper country were gathered in front of Arsene

-Lacomb&rsquo;s store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing on

-the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with

-his prisoner as he thought up to the last possible

-moment, so he stammered in his speech when he

-saw a big black horse come tearing down the street

-carrying a girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy

-behind her. Rogers, the railroad lawyer beside

-him, said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Go on, man. What&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl drove the horse right in through the

-crowd until Jeffrey Whiting faced Rogers. Then

-Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain, took up his

-fight again.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Rogers,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;you did this. You

-got Rafe Gadbeau and the others to knock me on

-the head and put me out of the way, so that you

-could spread your lies about me. And you&rsquo;d have

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>

-won out, too, if it hadn&rsquo;t been for this brave girl

-here.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now, Rogers, you liar,&rdquo; he shouted louder,

-&ldquo;I dare you, dare you, to tell these people here

-that I or any of our people have sold you a foot

-of land. I dare you!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau

-pulled him away. Gadbeau knew that crowd.

-They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and

-full of potential fury. They were already cheering

-the brave girl. In a few minutes they would

-be hunting the life of the man who had lied to

-them and nearly ruined them.</p>

-<p>A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from

-the saddle, but she waved them away and pointed

-to Jeffrey&rsquo;s broken arm. They helped him down

-and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough&rsquo;s

-little office.</p>

-<p>Ruth saw that her business was finished. She

-wheeled Brom Bones toward home, and gave him

-his head.</p>

-<p>For three glorious miles they fairly flew through

-the pearly morning air along the hard mountain

-road, and the girl never pulled a line. Breakfastless

-and weary in body, her heart sang the

-song that it had learned in the Glow of Dawn.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>

-<a name='IV_THE_ANSWER' id='IV_THE_ANSWER'></a>

-<h2>IV</h2>

-<h3>THE ANSWER</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The Committee on Franchises was in session in

-one of the committee rooms outside the chamber

-of the New York State Senate. It was not a routine

-session. A bill was before it, the purpose of

-which was virtually to dispossess some four or

-five hundred families of their homes in the counties

-of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The

-bill did not say this. It cited the need of adequate

-transportation in that part of the State and

-proposed that the U. &amp; M. Railroad should be

-granted the right of eminent domain over three

-thousand square miles of the region, in order to

-help the development of the country.</p>

-<p>The committee was composed of five members,

-three of the majority party in the Senate and two

-of the minority. A political agent of the railroad

-who drew a salary from Racquette County as a

-judge had just finished presenting to the committee

-the reasons why the people of that part of

-the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill

-should become a law. He had drawn a pathetic

-picture of the condition of the farmers, so long

-deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He had

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>

-almost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce

-left to rot up there in the hills because the men

-who toiled to produce it had no means of bringing

-it down to the starving thousands of the cities.

-The scraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that

-region became in his picture vast reservoirs of

-cheap food, only waiting to be tapped by the

-beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world&rsquo;s

-poor.</p>

-<p>When the judge had finished, one minority

-member of the committee looked at his colleague,

-the other minority member, and winked. It was

-a grave and respectful wink. It meant that the

-committee was not often privileged to listen to

-quite such bare-faced effrontery. If the hearing

-had been a secret one they would not have listened

-to it. But the bill had already aroused a storm.

-So the leader of the majority had given orders

-that the hearing should be public.</p>

-<p>So far not a word had been said as to the fact

-which underlay the motives of the bill. Iron had

-been found in workable quantities in those three

-thousand square miles of hill country. Not a

-word had been said about iron.</p>

-<p>No one in the room had listened to the speech

-with any degree of interest. It was intended entirely

-for the consumption of the outside public.

-Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during

-its delivery. They had been furnished with

-advance copies of it and had already turned them

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>

-in to their papers. But with the naming of the

-next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around

-the room.</p>

-<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from

-his place in the rear of the room and walked

-briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall,

-spare figure of a man coming to his sixty years,

-his hair as white as the snow of his hills, with a

-large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan governor,

-he would have attracted attention under almost

-any circumstances.</p>

-<p>Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee,

-had received his orders from the leader of the

-majority in the Senate that the bill should be reported

-back favourably to that body before night.

-He had anticipated no difficulty. The form of a

-public hearing had to be gone through with. It

-was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions

-that had been aroused as to the nature of

-the bill. The speech of the Racquette County

-Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The

-chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising

-reformers of the opposition would come before

-the committee with time-honoured, stock diatribes

-against the rapacity and greed of railroads

-in general and this one in particular. Then he

-and his two majority colleagues would vote to report

-the bill favourably, while the two members

-of the minority would vote to report adversely.

-This, the chairman said, was about all a public

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>

-hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted

-on the coming of the Bishop of Alden.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The committee would like to hear, sir,&rdquo; began

-the chairman, as the Bishop took his place, &ldquo;whom

-you represent in the matter of this bill.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in

-what had been a dull session of a dull committee,

-sat with poised pencils while the Bishop turned a

-look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of

-Racquette County.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee

-quite understands that you do not come here in the

-interest of any one. But the gentleman who has

-just been before us spoke for the farmers who

-would be most directly affected by the prosperity

-of the railroad, including those of your county.

-Are we to understand that there is opposition in

-your county to the proposed grant?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Your committee,&rdquo; said the Bishop, &ldquo;cannot be

-ignorant that there is the most stubborn opposition

-to this grant in all three counties. If there had

-not been that opposition, there would have been no

-call for the bill which you are now considering.

-If the railroad could have gotten the options which

-it tried to get on those farms the grant would have

-been given without question. Your committee

-knows this better than I.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; returned the chairman, &ldquo;we have been

-advised that the railroad was not able to get those

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>

-options because a boy up there in the Beaver River

-country, who fancied that he had some grievance

-against the railroad people, banded the people together

-to oppose the options in unfair and unlawful

-ways.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The chairman paused an impressive moment.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;In fact,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;from what this committee

-has been able to gather, it looks very much

-as though there were conspiracy in the matter,

-against the U. &amp; M. Railroad. It almost would

-seem that some rival of the railroad in question

-had used the boy and his fancied grievance to

-manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be

-proven, but there was every appearance.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his

-challenge quietly at the feet of the committee.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The boy, Jeffrey Whiting,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;was

-guided by me. I directed his movements from the

-beginning.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The whole room sat up and leaned forward as

-one man, alive to the fact that a novel and stirring

-situation was being developed. Everybody had

-understood that the Bishop had come to plead the

-cause of the French-Canadian farmers of the

-hills.</p>

-<p>They had supposed that he would speak only

-on what was a side issue of the case. No one had

-expected that he would attack the main question

-of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming

-himself the principal in that silent, stubborn

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>

-fight that had been going on up in the hills

-for six months!</p>

-<p>The reporters doubled down to their work and

-wrote furiously. They were trying to throw this

-unusual man upon a screen before their readers.

-It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product

-of New England, and what was more he had been

-one of the leaders of that collection of striking

-men who made the Brook Farm &ldquo;Experiment.&rdquo;

-He had endeared himself to the old generation of

-Americans by his war record as a chaplain. To

-some of the new generation he was known as the

-Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from

-the Mohawk Valley to the Canadian line and to

-Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd

-of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to

-North Creek men knew his ways and felt the beating

-of the great heart of him behind the stern,

-ascetic set of his countenance.</p>

-<p>As much as they could of this the reporters

-were trying to put into their notes while Nathan

-Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That

-well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself

-into a trap. He had been too zealous in announcing

-his impression that the opposition to the

-U. &amp; M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival.

-The Bishop had taken that ground from under

-him by a simple stroke of truth. He could

-neither go forward with his charge nor could he

-retract it.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this

-committee,&rdquo; he temporised, &ldquo;just why you wished

-to arouse this opposition to the railroad?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There is not and has never been any opposition

-whatever to the railroad,&rdquo; said the Bishop.

-&ldquo;The bill before your committee has nothing to

-do with the right of way of the railroad. That

-has already been granted. Your bill proposes to

-confiscate, practically, from the present owners a

-strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly

-eighty miles long. That land is valuable because

-the experts of the railroad know, and the people

-up there know, and, I think, this committee knows

-that there is iron ore in these hills.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have said that I do not represent any one

-here,&rdquo; the Bishop went on. &ldquo;But there are four

-hundred families up there in our hills who stand

-to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people.

-They have no voice to reach the world. I have

-asked to speak before your committee because

-only in this way can the case of my people reach

-the great, final trial court of publicity before the

-whole State.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They are a silent people, the people of the

-hills. You will have heard that they are a stubborn

-people. They are a stubborn people, for

-they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside

-homes that their hands have made just as do the

-hardy trees of the hills. You cannot uproot them

-by the stroke of a pen.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;These people are my friends and my neighbours.

-Many of them were once my comrades.

-I know what they think. I know what they feel.

-I would beg your committee to consider very

-earnestly this question before bringing to bear

-against these people the sovereign power of the

-State. They love their State. Many of them

-have loved their country to the peril of their

-lives. They live on the little farms that their

-fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Not through prejudice or ignorance are they

-opposing this development, which will in the end

-be for the good of the whole region. They are

-opposed to this bill before you because it would

-give a corporation power to drive them from the

-homes they love, and that without fair compensation.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They are opposed to it because they are

-Americans. They know what it has meant and

-what it still means to be Americans. And they

-know that this bill is directly against everything

-that is American.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They are ever ready to submit themselves to

-the sovereign will of the State, but you will never

-convince them that this bill is the real will of the

-State. They are fighting men and the sons of

-fighting men. They have fought the course of the

-railroad in trying to get options from them by

-coercion and trickery. They have been aroused.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>

-Their homes, poor and wretched as they often

-are, mean more to them than any law you can set

-on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it.

-It will set a ring of fire and murder about our

-peaceful hills.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;In the name of high justice, in the name of

-common honesty, in the name&ndash;&ndash;to come to lower

-levels&ndash;&ndash;of political common sense, I tell you this

-bill should never go back to the Senate.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound

-upon those who are found weak enough to

-let it pass here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils

-of the reporters could be plainly heard in the

-hush of the room.</p>

-<p>Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating

-question which he had been wanting to put

-from the beginning.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Perhaps the committee has been badly informed,&rdquo;

-he began to the Bishop; &ldquo;we understood

-that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian

-immigrants and not usually owners of land.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is it necessary for me to repeat,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop, turning sharply, &ldquo;that I am here, Joseph

-Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours and

-my friends? Does it matter to them or to this

-committee that I wear the badge of a service that

-they do not understand? I do not come before

-you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come

-as an owner of property. I come because I think

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>

-the cause of my friends will be served by my coming.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The facts I have laid before you, the warning

-I have given might as well have been sent out

-direct through the press. But I have chosen to

-come before you, with your permission, because

-these facts will get a wider hearing and a more

-eager reading coming from this room.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I do not seek to create sensation here. I

-have no doubt that some of you are thinking that

-the place for a churchman to speak is in his church.

-But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing

-to create sensation. I am willing that you

-should say that I have gone far beyond the privilege

-of a witness invited to come before your

-committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should

-put any interpretation you like upon my use of my

-privilege here, only so that my neighbours of the

-hills shall have their matter put squarely and fully

-before all the people of the State.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;When this matter is once thoroughly understood

-by the people, then I know that no branch

-of the lawmaking power will dare make itself responsible

-for the passage of this bill.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further

-questions. When he saw that none were

-forthcoming, he thanked the committee and

-begged leave to retire.</p>

-<p>As the Bishop passed out of the room the

-chairman arose and declared the public hearing

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>

-closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporters

-crowded out of the room and scattered through

-the corridors of the Capitol. Four or five reporters

-bunched themselves about the elevator

-shaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired

-boy of twenty, summed up the matter with

-irreverent brevity.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway,&rdquo; he said.

-&ldquo;Not every bad bill has a bishop at the obsequies.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t tell,&rdquo; said the Associated Press

-man slowly; &ldquo;they might report it out in spite

-of all that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No use,&rdquo; said the youngster shortly. &ldquo;The

-Senate wouldn&rsquo;t dare touch it once this stuff is

-in the papers.&rdquo; And he jammed a wad of flimsy

-down into his pocket.</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>Three weeks of a blistering August sun had

-withered the grasses of the hills almost to a powder.

-The thin soil of the north country, where

-the trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture;

-so that the heat of the short, vicious summer

-goes down through the roots of the vegetation to

-the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone.</p>

-<p>Since June there had been no rain. The

-tumbling hill streams were reduced to a trickle

-among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were

-covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The

-second growth of stunted timber, showing everywhere

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>

-the scars of the wasting rapacity of man,

-stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving

-life, from the cattle to the woodchucks and even

-the field mice, had moved down to hide itself in

-the thicker growths near the water courses or had

-stolen away into the depths of the thick woods.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a

-scarred pine on the French Village road and sat

-looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up

-away from the road on either side. Every child

-of the hills knew the menace that a hot dry summer

-brought to us in those days. The first, ruthless

-cutting of the timber had followed the water

-courses. Men had cut and slashed their way up

-through the hills without thought of what they

-were leaving behind. They had taken only the

-prime, sound trees that stood handiest to the roll-ways.

-They had left dead and dying trees standing.

-Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of

-brush and trimmings. The farmers had come

-pushing into the hills in the wake of the lumbermen

-and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes

-and hay land. But around every piece of

-cleared land there was an ever-encroaching ring of

-brush and undergrowth and fallen timber that held

-a constant threat for the little home within the

-ring.</p>

-<p>A summer without rain meant a season of grim

-and unrelenting watchfulness. Men armed themselves

-and tramped through the woods on unbidden

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>

-sentry duty, to see that no campfires were

-made. Strangers and outsiders who were likely

-to be careless were watched from the moment they

-came into the hills until they were seen safely out

-of them again. Where other children scouted for

-and fought imaginary Indians, the children of our

-hills hunted and fought imaginary fires. The

-forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo.

-It was an enemy that lurked just outside the

-little clearing of the farm, out there in the underbrush

-and fallen timber.</p>

-<p>Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had

-ridden up to French Village for mail. For some

-weeks they had known that the railroad would try

-to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the

-special session of the Legislature. And they

-knew that the session would probably come to a

-close this week.</p>

-<p>If that bill became a law, then the resistance of

-the people of the hills had been in vain: Jeffrey

-had merely led them into a bitter and useless fight

-against a power with which they could not cope.

-They would have to leave their homes, taking

-whatever a corrupted board of condemnation

-would grant for them. It would be hard on all,

-but it would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness.

-He would have to remember that he had

-had the chance to make his mother and himself

-independently rich. He had thrown away that

-chance, and now if his fight had failed he would

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>

-have nothing to bring back to his mother but his

-own miserable failure.</p>

-<p>Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop&rsquo;s house

-in Alden when Jeffrey had said proudly that his

-mother would be glad to follow him into poverty.

-And she smiled now at her own outburst at that

-time. They had both meant it, every word; but

-the ashes of failure are bitter. And she had seen

-the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through

-all the summer.</p>

-<p>She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad

-had succeeded. She would not be able to go back

-to school, and would probably have to go somewhere

-to get work of some kind, for the little that

-she would get for her farm now would not keep

-her any time. But that was a little matter, or at

-least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence

-of Jeffrey&rsquo;s failure and what he would

-consider his disgrace. She did not know how he

-would take it, for during the summer she had seen

-him in vicious moods when he seemed capable of

-everything.</p>

-<p>She saw the speck which he made against the

-horizon as he came over Argyle Mountain three

-miles away and she saw that he was riding fast.

-He was bringing good news!</p>

-<p>It needed only the excited, happy touch of her

-hand to set Brom Bones whirling up the road, for

-the big colt understood her ways and moods and

-followed them better than he would have followed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>

-whip or rein of another. Half-way, she pulled

-the big fellow down to a decorous canter and

-gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came

-thundering down upon them. He pulled up

-sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two

-horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected

-to do and their two riders gave them no

-more heed than if they had been wooden horses.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How did you know it was all right, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain,&rdquo;

-Ruth laughed. &ldquo;You looked as though you were

-riding Victory down the top side of the earth.

-How did it all come out?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the paper,&rdquo; he said, handing her an

-Albany newspaper of the day previous; &ldquo;it tells

-the story right off. But I got a letter from the

-Bishop, too,&rdquo; he added.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, did you?&rdquo; she exclaimed, looking up

-from the headline&ndash;&ndash;U. &amp; M. Grab Killed in

-Committee&ndash;&ndash;which she had been feverishly trying

-to translate into her own language. &ldquo;Please

-let me hear. I&rsquo;m never sure what headlines mean

-till I go down to the fine print, and then it&rsquo;s generally

-something else. I can understand what the

-Bishop says, I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s only short,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, unfolding

-the letter. &ldquo;He leaves out all the part that he

-did himself.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Ruth simply. &ldquo;He always

-does.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;He says:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You will see from the Albany papers, which

-will probably reach you before this does, that the

-special session of the Legislature closed to-night

-and that the railroad&rsquo;s bill was not reported to

-the Senate. It had passed the Assembly, as you

-know. The bill aroused a measure of just public

-anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently

-thought it the part of wisdom not to risk

-a contest over it in the open Senate. So there can

-be no legislative action in favour of the railroad

-before December at the earliest, and I regard it as

-doubtful that the matter will be brought up even

-then.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;from this you&rsquo;d never

-know that he was there present at all. And

-it was just his speech before the committee

-that aroused that public anger. Then he goes

-on:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But we must not make the mistake of presuming

-that the matter ends here. You and your

-people are just where you were in the beginning.

-Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not

-in the nature of things that a corporation which

-has spent an enormous amount of money in constructing

-a line with the one purpose of getting

-to your lands should now give up the idea of getting

-them by reason of a mere legislative setback.

-They have not entered into this business

-in any half-hearted manner. They are bound to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>

-carry it through somehow&ndash;&ndash;anyhow. We must

-realise that.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;We need not speculate upon the soul or the

-conscience of a corporation or the lack of those

-things. We know that this corporation will have

-an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must

-watch for that answer. What their future methods

-or their plans may be I think no man can tell.

-Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed.

-But there will be an answer. While rejoicing that

-a fear of sound public opinion has been on your

-side, we must never forget that there will be an

-answer.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond

-the limits which men set for the proper activities

-of a priest of the church. I do not apologise.

-I have done this, partly because your

-people are my own, my friends and my comrades

-of old, partly because you yourself came to me in

-a confidence which I do not forget, partly&ndash;&ndash;and

-most, perhaps&ndash;&ndash;because where my people and

-their rights are in question I have never greatly

-respected those limits which men set. I put these

-things before you so that when the answer comes

-you will remember that you engaged yourself in

-this business solely in defence of the right. So it

-is not your personal fight and you must try to

-keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a

-quarrel. The struggle is a larger thing than that

-and you must keep your heart larger still and

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>

-above it. I fear that you will sorely need to remember

-this.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;My sincerest regards to your family and to

-all my friends in the hills, not forgetting your

-friend Ruth.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, folding

-the letter. &ldquo;I wish he&rsquo;d said more about how he

-managed the thing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it enough to know that he did manage it,

-without bothering about how? That is the way

-he does everything.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I suppose I ought to be satisfied,&rdquo; said Jeffrey

-as he gathered up his reins. &ldquo;But I wonder what

-he means by that last part of the letter. It sounds

-like a warning to me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is a warning to you,&rdquo; said Ruth thoughtfully.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, what does it mean? What does he

-think I&rsquo;m likely to do?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Maybe he does not mean what you are likely

-to do exactly,&rdquo; said Ruth, trying to choose her

-words wisely; &ldquo;maybe he is thinking more of what

-you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to

-your heart rather than to your head or about your

-actions.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now I don&rsquo;t know what you mean, either,&rdquo;

-said Jeffrey a little discontentedly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know I oughtn&rsquo;t to try to tell you what the

-Bishop means, for I don&rsquo;t know myself. But I&rsquo;ve

-been worried and I&rsquo;m sure your mother has too,&rdquo;

-said Ruth reluctantly.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;But what is it?&rdquo; said Jeffrey quickly.

-&ldquo;What have I been doing?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it isn&rsquo;t anything you&rsquo;ve done, nor

-anything maybe that you&rsquo;re likely to do. I don&rsquo;t

-know just what it is, or how to say it. But,

-Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in

-the Bishop&rsquo;s house at Alden?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, and I remember what you said, too.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We both meant it,&rdquo; Ruth returned gravely,

-not attempting to evade any of the meaning that

-he had thrown into his words. &ldquo;And we both

-mean it now, I&rsquo;m sure. But there&rsquo;s a difference,

-Jeffrey, a difference with you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know it,&rdquo; he said a little shortly.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m still doing just the thing I started out to do

-that day.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. But that day you started out to fight

-for the people. Now you are fighting for yourself&ndash;&ndash; Oh,

-not for anything selfish! Not for

-anything you want for yourself! I know that.

-But you have made the fight your own. It is your

-own quarrel now. You are fighting because you

-have come to hate the railroad people.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, you wouldn&rsquo;t expect me to love them?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No. I&rsquo;m not blaming you, Jeff. But&ndash;&ndash;but,

-I&rsquo;m afraid. Hate is a terrible thing. I wish you

-were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you. I&rsquo;m

-afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through

-all the long, long years of life. Can you see?

-I&rsquo;m afraid of something that might go deeper

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>

-than all this, something that might go as deep as

-life. After all, that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid of, I

-guess&ndash;&ndash;Life, great, big, terrible, menacing,

-Life!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My life?&rdquo; Jeffrey asked gruffly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have faced that,&rdquo; the girl answered evenly,

-&ldquo;just as you have faced it. And I am not afraid

-of that. No. It&rsquo;s what you might do in anger&ndash;&ndash;if

-they hurt you again. Something that would

-scar your heart and your soul. Jeffrey, do you

-know that sometimes I&rsquo;ve seen the worst, the worst&ndash;&ndash;even

-<i>murder</i> in your eyes!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; the boy returned shortly, &ldquo;the

-Bishop would keep his religion out of all this.

-He&rsquo;s a good man and a good friend,&rdquo; he went on,

-&ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t like this religion coming into everything.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But how can he? He cannot keep religion

-apart from life and right and wrong. What

-good would religion be if it did not go ahead of

-us in life and show us the way?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s the use?&rdquo; the boy said grudgingly.

-&ldquo;What good does it do? You wouldn&rsquo;t have

-thought of any of this only for that last part of

-his letter. Why does that have to come into

-everything? It&rsquo;s the Catholic Church all over

-again, always pushing in everywhere.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t that funny,&rdquo; the girl said, brightening;

-&ldquo;I have cried myself sick thinking just that same

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>

-thing. I have gone almost frantic thinking that

-if I once gave in to the Church it would crush

-me and make me do everything that I didn&rsquo;t want

-to do. And now I never think of it. Life goes

-along really just as though being a Catholic didn&rsquo;t

-make any difference at all.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve given in to it altogether.

-You don&rsquo;t even know that you want to

-resist. You&rsquo;re swallowed up in it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before

-she answered.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the queerest thing, isn&rsquo;t it, Jeff,&rdquo; she said

-finally in a thoughtful, friendly way, &ldquo;how two

-people can fight about religion? Now you don&rsquo;t

-care a particle about it one way or the other.

-And I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;d rather not talk about it. And yet,

-we were just now within an inch of quarrelling bitterly

-about it. Why is it?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;m sorry, Ruth,&rdquo; the boy

-apologised slowly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s none of my business,

-anyway.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>They were just coming over the long hill above

-Ruth&rsquo;s home. Below them stretched the long

-sweep of the road down past her house and up

-the other slope until it lost itself around the

-shoulder of Lansing Mountain.</p>

-<p>Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his

-big roan horse up the hill towards them at a heart-breaking

-pace.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s &lsquo;My&rsquo; Stocking&rsquo;s roan,&rdquo; said Jeffrey,

-straightening in his saddle; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d know that horse

-three miles away.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s he carrying?&rdquo; cried Ruth excitedly,

-as she peered eagerly from under her

-shading hand. &ldquo;Look. Across his saddle.

-Rifles! <i>Two</i> of them!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Brom Bones, sensing the girl&rsquo;s excitement, was

-already pulling at his bit, eager for a wild race

-down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long, sharp

-look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly

-to the side of the road. And Ruth did the same.

-She was too well trained in the things of the hills

-not to know that if there was trouble, then it was

-no time to be weakening horses&rsquo; knees in mad and

-useless dashes downhill.</p>

-<p>The rider was Myron Stocking from over in

-the Crooked Lake country, as Jeffrey had supposed.

-He pulled up as he recognised the two

-who waited for him by the roadside, and when

-he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew by sight,

-he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as

-she was to hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces

-farther away from them. They would not talk

-freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey

-would tell her all that she needed to know.</p>

-<p>The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences

-and Ruth heard Stocking conclude:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun

-o&rsquo; yours. Your Ma didn&rsquo;t see.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span></div>

-<p>Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he

-came to Ruth.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s some strangers over in the hills that

-maybe ought to be watched. The country&rsquo;s awful

-dry,&rdquo; he added quietly. He knew that Ruth

-would need no further explanation.</p>

-<p>He pulled the Bishop&rsquo;s letter from his pocket

-and handed it to Ruth, saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Take this and the paper along to Mother.

-She&rsquo;ll want to see them right away. And say,

-Ruth,&rdquo; he went on, as he looked anxiously at the

-great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that

-lay between them and his home on the hill three

-miles away, &ldquo;the country&rsquo;s awful dry. If anything

-happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down

-out of this country. You can make them go.

-Nobody else could.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl had not yet spoken. There was no

-need for her to ask questions. She knew what

-lay under every one of Jeffrey&rsquo;s pauses and

-silences. It was no time for many words. He

-was laying upon her a trust to look after the ones

-whom he loved.</p>

-<p>She put out her hand to his and said simply:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad we didn&rsquo;t quarrel, Jeff.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was a fool,&rdquo; said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung

-her hand. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ll remember. Forgive me,

-please, Ruth.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to forgive&ndash;&ndash;ever&ndash;&ndash;between

-us, Jeffrey. Go now,&rdquo; she said softly.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span></div>

-<p>Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the

-other man back over the hill on the road which

-he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they

-were out of sight. At the very last she saw

-Jeffrey swing his rifle across the saddle in front of

-him, and a shadow fell across her heart. She

-would have given everything in her world to have

-had back what she had said of seeing murder in

-Jeffrey&rsquo;s eyes.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up

-the French Village road for an hour or so. Then

-they turned off from the road and began a long

-winding climb up into the higher levels of the

-Racquette country.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We might as well head for Bald Mountain

-right away,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, as they came about sundown

-to a fork in their trail. &ldquo;The breeze comes

-straight down from the east. That&rsquo;s where the

-danger is, if there is any.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re right, Jeff. But it means

-we&rsquo;ll have to sleep out if we go that way.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I guess that won&rsquo;t hurt us,&rdquo; Jeffrey returned.

-&ldquo;If anything happens we might have to sleep out

-a good many nights&ndash;&ndash;and a lot of other people

-would have to do the same.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;All right then,&rdquo; Stocking agreed. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll

-get a bite and give the horses a feed and a rest at

-Hosmer&rsquo;s, that&rsquo;s about two miles over the hills

-here; and then we can go on as far as you like.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>At Hosmer&rsquo;s they got food enough for two

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>

-days in the hills, and having fed and breathed the

-horses they rode on up into the higher woods.

-They were now in the region of the uncut timber

-where the great trees were standing from the beginning,

-because they had been too high up to be

-accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the

-lower levels. Though the long summer twilight

-of the North still lighted the tops of the trees, the

-two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving

-the horses to pick their own canny footing up the

-trail.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?&rdquo;

-Jeffrey asked as they rode along. &ldquo;You know,

-the man that was in French Village this summer.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Stocking answered. &ldquo;You

-see they came up to the end of the rails, at Grafton,

-on a handcar. And then they scattered.

-Nobody&rsquo;s sure that he&rsquo;s seen any of &rsquo;em since.

-But they must be in the hills somewhere. And

-Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s with &rsquo;em. You can bet on that.

-That&rsquo;s all we&rsquo;ve got to go on. But it may be

-a-plenty.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s enough to set us on the move, anyway,&rdquo;

-said Jeffrey. &ldquo;They have no business in the

-hills. They&rsquo;re bound to be up to mischief of some

-sort. And there&rsquo;s just one big mischief that they

-can do. Can we make Bald Mountain before daylight?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, certainly; that&rsquo;ll be easy. We&rsquo;ll get a

-little light when we&rsquo;re through this belt of heavy

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>

-woods and then we can push along. We ought

-to get up there by two o&rsquo;clock. It ain&rsquo;t light till

-near five. That&rsquo;ll give us a little sleep, if we feel

-like it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>True to Stocking&rsquo;s calculation they came out

-upon the rocky, thinly grassed knobs of Bald

-Mountain shortly before two o&rsquo;clock. It was a

-soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain

-in the air somewhere, for there was no dew; but

-it might be on the other side of the divide or it

-might be miles below on the lowlands.</p>

-<p>Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in

-the vicinity of the mountain, or were heading

-toward here. For the word of the menace had

-gone through the hills that day, and men would decide,

-as Jeffrey had done, that the danger would

-come from this direction. But they had not

-heard anything to show the presence of others,

-nor did they care to give any signals of their own

-whereabouts.</p>

-<p>As for those others, the possible enemy, who

-had left the railroad that morning and had scattered

-into the hills, if their purpose was the one

-that men feared, they, too, would be near here.

-But it was useless to look for them in the dark:

-neither was anything to be feared from them before

-morning. Men do not start forest fires in

-the night. There is little wind. A fire would

-probably die out of itself. And the first blaze

-would rouse the whole country.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span></div>

-<p>The two hobbled their horses with the bridle

-reins and lay down in the open to wait for morning.

-Neither had any thought of sleep. But the

-softness of the night, the pungent odour of the

-tamarack trees floating up to them from below,

-and their long ride, soon began to tell on them.

-Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Curl up and go to sleep, &lsquo;My,&rsquo;&rdquo; he said,

-shaking himself. &ldquo;You might as well. I&rsquo;ll wake

-you in an hour.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>A ready snore was the only answer.</p>

-<p>Morning coming over the higher eastern hills

-found them stiff and weary, but alert. The

-woods below them were still banked in darkness

-as they ate their dry food and caught their horses

-for the day that was before them. There was

-no water to be had up here, and they knew their

-horses must be gotten down to some water course

-before night.</p>

-<p>A half circle of open country belted by heavy

-woods lay just below them. Eagerly, as the light

-crept down the hill, they scanned the area for sign

-of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently

-they had the world to themselves. A fresh morning

-breeze came down over the mountain and

-watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops

-of the distant trees. The same thought made

-both men grip their rifles and search more carefully

-the ground below them, for that innocent

-breeze blowing straight down towards their homes

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>

-and loved ones was a potential enemy more to be

-feared than all the doings of men.</p>

-<p>Down to the right, two miles or more away, a

-man came out of the shadow of the woods. They

-could only see that he was a big man and stout.

-There was nothing about him to tell them whether

-he was friend or foe, of the hills or a stranger.

-Without waiting to see who he was or what he

-did, the two dove for their saddles and started

-their horses pell-mell down the hill towards him.</p>

-<p>He saw them at once against the bare brow of

-the hill, and ran back into the wood.</p>

-<p>In another instant they knew what he was and

-what was his business.</p>

-<p>They saw a light moving swiftly along the

-fringe of the woods. Behind the light rose a trail

-of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a

-line of living fire. The man was running, dragging

-a flaming torch through the long dried grass

-and brush!</p>

-<p>The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks,

-regardless of paths or horses&rsquo; legs, would gladly

-have killed the man as he ran. But it was too far

-for even a random shot. They could only ride on

-in reckless rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat

-it to death with their hands, to stamp it into the

-earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and

-a fair shot at the fiend there within the wood.</p>

-<p>Before they had stumbled half the distance

-down the hill, a wave of leaping flame a hundred

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>

-feet long was hurling itself upon the forest.

-They could not stamp that fire out. But they

-could kill that man!</p>

-<p>The man ran back behind the wall of fire to

-where he had started and began to run another

-line of fire in the other direction. At that moment

-Stocking yelled:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s another starting, straight in front!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Get him,&rdquo; Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to kill this one.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Stocking turned slightly and made for a second

-light which he had seen starting. Jeffrey rode on

-alone, unslinging his rifle and driving madly. His

-horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down

-the hill, now saw the fire and started to bolt off at

-a tangent. Jeffrey fought with him a furious

-moment, trying to force him toward the fire and

-the man. Then, seeing that he could not conquer

-the fright of the horse and that his man was

-escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and

-leaping free with his gun ran towards the

-man.</p>

-<p>The man was dodging in and out now among

-the trees, but still using his torch and moving

-rapidly away.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man

-in his zigzag until he was within easy distance.

-But the man continued weaving his way among the

-trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim.

-Jeffrey dropped to one knee and steadied the sights

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>

-of his rifle until they closed upon the running

-man and clung to him.</p>

-<p>Suddenly the man turned in an open space and

-faced about. It was Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He

-was unarmed, but he must be killed.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am going to kill him,&rdquo; said Jeffrey under

-his breath, as he again fixed the sights of his rifle,

-this time full on the man&rsquo;s breast.</p>

-<p>A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers

-threw up his hands, took a half step forward, and

-fell on his face.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger

-which he had not pulled, ran forward to where

-the man lay.</p>

-<p>He was lying face down, his arms stretched out

-wide at either side, his fingers convulsively clutching

-at tufts of grass.</p>

-<p>He was dying. No need for a second look.</p>

-<p>His hat had fallen off to a little distance.

-There was a clean round hole in the back of the

-skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair showed

-just the merest streak of red.</p>

-<p>Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still

-flaming railroad torch, with which he had done his

-work.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction

-from which the shot had come. There was

-no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no

-sign of another human being anywhere.</p>

-<p>Away back of him he heard shots, one, two,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>

-three; Stocking, probably, or some of the other

-men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at

-other fleeing figures in the woods.</p>

-<p>He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the

-wick and stamped it into a patch of burnt ground,

-threw the torch back from the fire line, and started

-clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of

-his rifle.</p>

-<p>He was quickly brought to his senses, when the

-forgotten cartridge in his gun accidentally exploded

-and the bullet went whizzing past his ear.

-He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp

-piece of sapling he began to work furiously, but

-systematically at the line of fire.</p>

-<p>The line was thin here, where it had really only

-that moment been started, and he made some

-headway. But as he worked along to where it

-had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless.

-Still he clung to his work. It was the only thing

-that his numbed brain could think of to do for the

-moment.</p>

-<p>He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the

-loose dirt furiously after the fire as it ran away

-from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire

-and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept

-up his trousers and shirt and up even to his hair.

-And still the fire ran away from him, away down

-the hill after its real prey. He looked farther

-on along the line and saw that it was not now a line

-but a charging, rushing river of flame that ran

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>

-down the hill, twenty feet at a jump. Nothing,

-nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain

-could now stop that torrent of fire.</p>

-<p>He stepped back. There was nothing to be

-done here now, behind the fire. Nothing to be

-done but to get ahead of it and save what could

-be saved. He looked around for his horse.</p>

-<p>Just then men came riding along the back of the

-line, Stocking and old Erskine Beasley in the lead.

-They came up to where Jeffrey was standing and

-looked on beyond moodily to where the body of

-Rogers lay.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell

-upon the little group of horsemen and upon the

-boy standing there.</p>

-<p>Myron Stocking spoke at last:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Mine got away, Jeff,&rdquo; he said slowly.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the

-meaning of the words flashed upon him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t do that!&rdquo; he exclaimed hastily.

-&ldquo;Somebody else shot him from the woods. My

-gun went off accidental.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Silence fell again upon the little group of men.

-They did not look at Jeffrey. They had heard

-but one shot. The shot from the woods had been

-too muffled for them to hear.</p>

-<p>Again Stocking broke the silence.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What difference does it make,&rdquo; he said.

-&ldquo;Any of us would have done it if we could.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t! I tell you I didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; shouted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>

-Jeffrey. &ldquo;The shot from the woods got ahead of

-me. That man was facing me. He was shot

-from behind!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Old Erskine Beasley took command.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What difference does it make, as Stocking

-says. We&rsquo;ve got live men and women and children

-to think about to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Straighten

-him out decent. Then divide and go around the

-fire both ways. The alarm can&rsquo;t travel half fast

-enough for this breeze, and it&rsquo;s rising, too,&rdquo; he

-added.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I tell you&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo; Jeffrey began again.

-Then he saw how useless it was.</p>

-<p>He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which

-even in the face of this unheard-of terror had preferred

-to venture back toward his master.</p>

-<p>He caught the horse, mounted, and started to

-ride south with the party that was to try to get

-around the fire from that side.</p>

-<p>He rode with them. They were his friends.

-But he was not with them. There was a circle

-drawn around him. He was separated from

-them. They probably did not feel it, but he felt

-it. It is a circle which draws itself ever around

-a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of

-blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may

-say that they themselves would wish to have done

-it. But the circle is there.</p>

-<p>Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She

-would not see that circle.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span></div>

-<p>Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a

-few hours before said that she had sometimes seen

-even murder in his eyes.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>

-<a name='V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE' id='V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE'></a>

-<h2>V</h2>

-<h3>MON PERE JE ME &rsquo;CUSE</h3>

-</div>

-<p>Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the

-fire raved exultingly, leaping and skipping fantastically

-as it ran. It was a prisoner released

-from the bondage of the elements that had held

-it. It was a spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom.

-It was a flood raging down a valley. It

-was a maniac at large.</p>

-<p>The broad base of the mountain where it sat

-upon the backs of the lower hills spread out fanwise

-to a width of five miles. The fire spread its

-wings as it came down until it swept the whole

-apron of the mountain. A five-mile wave of solid

-flame rolled down upon the hills.</p>

-<p>Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early

-browse missed the juicy dew from the grass.

-They looked to where the sun should be coming

-over the mountain and instead they saw the sun

-coming down the side of the mountain in a blanket

-of white smoke. They left their feed and began

-to huddle together, mooing nervously to each

-other about this thing and sniffing the air and

-pawing the earth.</p>

-<p>Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>

-in to milking looked blinking up at the mountain,

-stood a moment before their numb minds understood

-what their senses were telling them, then

-ran shouting back to the farm houses, throwing

-open pasture gates and knocking down lengths of

-fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear

-in their hearts, ran straight to the barns and

-mounting the best horses fled down the roads to

-the west. For the hireling flees because he is a

-hireling.</p>

-<p>Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children

-came tumbling out of the houses, to look up

-at the death that was coming down to them.

-Some cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and

-shook foolish fists at the oncoming enemy. Some

-fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God

-of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the

-house for his or her treasure; a little bag of money

-under a mattress, or a babe in its crib, or a little

-rifle, or a dolly of rags.</p>

-<p>Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm

-wagons. The treasures were quickly bundled in.

-Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into

-the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at

-the heads of the sweating horses, then climbed to

-their places in the wagons and took the reins.

-For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind

-mad horses, they would have to hold the lives of

-the children, the horses, and, incidentally, of themselves

-in their hands. But they were capable

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>

-hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother

-hearts that went with them.</p>

-<p>They would have preferred to stay with the

-men, these women. But it was the law that they

-should take the brood and run to safety.</p>

-<p>Men stood watching the wagons until they shot

-out of sight behind the trees of the road. Then

-they turned back to the hopeless, probably useless

-fight. They could do little or nothing. But it

-was the law that men must stay and make the

-fight. They must go out with shovels to the very

-edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of

-new earth which the running fire could not cross.

-Thus they might divert the fire a little. They

-might even divide it, if the wind died down a little,

-so that it would roll on to either side of their

-homes.</p>

-<p>This was their business. There was little

-chance that they would succeed. Probably they

-would have to drop shovels at the last moment

-and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But

-this was the law, that every man must stay and try

-to make his own little clearing the point of an entering

-wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No

-man, no ten thousand men could stop the fire.

-But, against all probabilities, some one man might

-be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground,

-or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of

-it. That sector might be fought and narrowed

-down by other men until it was beaten. And so

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>

-something would be gained. For this men stayed,

-stifled and blinded, and fought on until the last

-possible moment, and then ran past their already

-smoking homes and down the wind for life.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake

-of four other men down a long spiral course

-towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he

-would have ridden at their head. He would have

-taken the place of leadership and command among

-them which he had for months been taking in the

-fight against the railroad. Probably he could still

-have had that place among them if he had tried to

-assert himself, for men had come to have a habit

-of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear,

-dispirited and miserable.</p>

-<p>They were trying to get around the fire, so that

-they might hang upon its flank and beat it in upon

-itself. There was no thought now of getting

-ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm.

-That rolling curtain of smoke would have already

-aroused every living thing ahead of it.

-They could only hope to get to the end of the line

-of fire and fight it inch by inch to narrow the path

-of destruction that it was making for itself.</p>

-<p>If the wind had held stiff and straight down the

-mountain it would have driven the fire ahead in a

-line only a little wider than its original front.

-But the shape of the mountain caught the light

-breeze as it came down and twisted it away always

-to the side. So that the end of the fire line was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>

-not a thin edge of scattered fire that could be

-fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted

-funnel of flame that leaped and danced ever

-outward and onward.</p>

-<p>Half way down the mountain they thought that

-they had outflanked it. They slid from their

-horses and began to beat desperately at the brush

-and grasses among the trees. They gained upon

-it. They were doing something. They shouted

-to each other when they had driven it back even a

-foot. They fought it madly for the possession of

-a single tree. They were gaining. They were

-turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat began to

-streak the caking grime upon their faces. There

-was no air to breathe, only the hot breath of fire.

-But it was heartsome work, for they were surely

-pushing the fire in upon itself.</p>

-<p>A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud

-of hot white smoke about them. They stood still

-with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves pressed over

-eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.</p>

-<p>When they could look they saw a wall of fire

-bearing down upon them from three sides. The

-wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise

-so that it had surrounded the meagre little space

-that they had cleared and had now outflanked

-them. Their own man&oelig;uvre had been turned

-against them. There was but one way to run,

-straight down the hill with the fire roaring and

-panting after them. It was a playful, tricky

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>

-monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing

-at their puny efforts.</p>

-<p>Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves

-out of the path of the flames and dropped

-exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by

-them on its way.</p>

-<p>Their horses were gone, of course. The fire

-in its side leap had caught them and they had fled

-shrieking down the hill, following their instinct

-to hunt water.</p>

-<p>The men now began to understand the work

-that was theirs. They were five already weary

-men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must

-follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they

-could run at their best. And they must hang upon

-its edge and fight every inch of the way to fold

-that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from

-spreading out upon them. A hundred men who

-could have flanked the fire shoulder to shoulder for

-a long space might have accomplished what these

-five were trying to do. For them it was impossible.

-But they hung on in desperation.</p>

-<p>Three times more they made a stand and

-pushed the edge of the fire back a little, each time

-daring to hope that they had done something.

-And three times more the treacherous wind

-whirled the fire back behind and around them so

-that they had to race for life.</p>

-<p>Now they were down off the straight slope of

-the mountain and among the broken hills. Here

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>

-their work was entirely hopeless and they knew it.

-They knew also that they were in almost momentary

-danger of being cut off and completely surrounded.

-Here the fire did not keep any steady

-edge that they could follow and attack. The

-wind eddied and whirled about among the broken

-peaks of the hills in every direction and with it

-the fire ran apparently at will.</p>

-<p>When they tried to hold it to one side of a

-hill and were just beginning to think that they had

-won, a sudden sweep of the wind would send a

-ring of fire around to the other side so that they

-saw themselves again and again surrounded and

-almost cut off.</p>

-<p>Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold

-the fire to the north side of the Chain. The

-Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly east

-and west. It divides the hill country into fairly

-even portions. If they could keep the fire north

-of the lakes they would save the southern half of

-the country. Their own homes all lay to the

-north of the lakes and they were now doomed.

-But that was a matter that did not enter here.

-What was gone was gone. Their loved ones

-would have had plenty of warning and would be

-out of the way by now. The men were fighting

-the enemy merely to save what could be saved.

-And as is the way of men in fight they began to

-make it a personal quarrel with the fire.</p>

-<p>They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>

-It was no longer an impersonal, natural

-creature of the elements, that fire. It was a cunning,

-a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them.

-They hated it. Its eyes were red with gloating

-over them. Their eyes were red and bloodshot

-with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse

-with the roar of its laughing at them. Their

-voices were thick and their lips were cracking with

-the hot curses they hurled back at it.</p>

-<p>They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel.

-All but one of them had forgotten the men

-whom they had tracked into the hills last night

-and who had started the fire. All but one of them

-had forgotten those other men, far away and safe

-and cowardly, who had sent those men into the

-hills to do this thing.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the

-day wore on and the fight waxed more bitter and

-more hopeless, even he began to lose sight of the

-beginning and to make it his own single feud with

-the fire. He fought and was beaten back and

-ran and went back to fight again, until there was

-but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in

-his brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without

-mercy, without quarter given or asked with the

-demon of the fire.</p>

-<p>Now other men came from scattered, far-flung

-homes to the south and joined the five. Two hills

-stood between them and Sixth Lake, where the

-Chain began and stretched away to the west. If

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>

-they could hold the fire to the north of these two

-hills then it would sweep along the north side of

-the lakes and the other half of the country would

-be safe.</p>

-<p>The first hill was easy. They took their stand

-along its crest. The five weary, scarred, singed

-men, their voices gone, their swollen tongues protruding

-through their splitting lips, took new

-strength from the help that had come to them.

-They fought the enemy back down the north side

-of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with

-charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones

-down upon it.</p>

-<p>They were beating it at last! Only another

-hill like this and their work would be done. They

-would strike the lake and water. Water! God

-in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it!

-To throw themselves into it! To sink into its

-cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and

-<i>drink</i>!</p>

-<p>Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy

-with undergrowth. Here was the worst place.

-Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder,

-fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass,

-the hated breath of the fire in their nostrils. And

-they held their line. They pushed the fire on past

-the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill.

-They had won! It could not beat them now!</p>

-<p>As he came around the brow of the hill and saw

-the shining body of the placid lake below him one

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>

-of the new men, who still had voice, raised a shout.

-It ran back along the line, even the five who had

-no voice croaking out what would have been a

-cry of triumph.</p>

-<p>But the wind heard them and laughed.

-Through the ravine which they had safely crossed

-with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a

-merry, flirting little gust, a draught. On the

-draught the lingering flames went dancing swiftly

-through the brush of the ravine and spread out

-around the southern side of the hill. Before the

-men could turn, the thing was done. The hill

-made itself into a chimney and the flames went

-roaring to the top of it.</p>

-<p>The men fled over the ridge of the hill and

-down to the south, to get themselves out of that

-encircling death.</p>

-<p>When they were beyond the circle of fire on

-that side, they saw the full extent of what had befallen

-them in what had been their moment of

-victory.</p>

-<p>Not only would the fire come south of the lake

-and the Chain&ndash;&ndash;but they themselves could not

-get near the lake.</p>

-<p>Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet

-almost! And they could not reach it! The fire

-was marching in a swift, widening line between

-them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger

-might they wet in the lake.</p>

-<p>Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>

-silent teeth, according to the nature that was in

-each.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the

-lake. He saw two men pushing a boat into the

-lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke and

-waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes.

-They were not men of the hills.</p>

-<p>They were!&ndash;&ndash;They were the real enemy!&ndash;&ndash;They

-were two of those who had set the fire!

-They had not stopped to fight fire. They had

-headed straight for the lake and had gotten there.

-<i>They</i> were safe. And <i>they</i> had <i>water</i>!</p>

-<p>All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him

-by the fighting fire fury of the day, rushed back

-upon him.</p>

-<p>He had not killed a man this morning. Men

-said he had, but he had not.</p>

-<p>Now he would kill. The fire should not stop

-him. He would kill those two there in the water.

-<i>In the water!</i></p>

-<p>He ran madly down the slope and into the

-flaming, fuming maw of the fire. He went blind.

-His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward,

-his face buried in a patch of bare earth.</p>

-<p>Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged

-him out by the feet. When they had brought him

-back to safety and had fanned breath into him with

-their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at

-them. As he understood, he turned on his face

-moaning:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t kill Rogers. I wish I had&ndash;&ndash;I wish

-I had.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled

-away into the west.</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of

-the window as the intolerable, sooty train jolted

-its slow way northward along the canal and the

-Black River. He had left Albany in the very

-early hours of the morning. Now it was nearing

-noon and there were yet eighty miles, four hours,

-of this interminable journey before he could find

-a good wash and rest and some clean food. But

-he was not hungry, neither was he querulous.

-There were worse ways of travel than even by a

-slow and dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn

-diocese the Bishop had found plenty of

-them. He was never one to complain. A gentle

-philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and

-understood the faults of high and low, a slow,

-quiet gleam of New England humour at the back

-of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these

-things, Joseph Winthrop contrived to be a very

-good man and a very good bishop.</p>

-<p>But to-day he was not content with things. He

-had done one thing in Albany, or rather, he would

-have said, he had seen it done. He had appealed

-to the conscience of the people of the State. And

-the conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable

-terms that the U. &amp; M. Railroad must not

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>

-dare to drive the people of the hills from their

-homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their

-land. Then the conscience of the people of the

-State had gone off about its business, as the public

-conscience has a way of doing. The public would

-forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished

-it with a mild sensation which had aroused

-it for a time, a matter of a few days at most.

-He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days.

-But the railroad would not forget. It never slept.

-For there were men behind it who said, and kept

-on saying, that they must have results.</p>

-<p>He was sure that the railroad would strike back.

-And it would strike in some way that would be effective,

-but that yet would hide the hand that

-struck.</p>

-<p>Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode

-north lay the line of the first hills. Beyond them

-stood the softly etched outlines of the mountains,

-their white-blue tones blending gently into the

-deep blue of the sky behind them.</p>

-<p>Forty miles away he could make out the break

-in the line where Old Forge lay and the Chain began.

-Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the divide.

-But he could not see Bald Mountain.

-That was strange. The day was very clear. He

-had noticed that there had been no dew that morning.

-There might have been a little haze on the

-hills in the early morning. But this sun would

-have cleared that all away by now.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span></div>

-<p>Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the

-compass on his journey up this side of his diocese.

-He had never before missed it on a fair

-day. It was something more to him than a mere

-bare rock set on the top of other rocks. It was

-one of his marking posts. And when you remember

-that his was a charge of souls scattered

-over twenty thousand square miles of broken

-country, you will see that he had need of marking

-posts.</p>

-<p>Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory

-which he could reach from the western side of his

-diocese. When he had to go into the country to

-the east of the mountain he must go all the way

-south to Albany and around by North Creek or

-he must go all the way north and east by Malone

-and Rouses Point and then south and west again

-into the mountains. The mountain was set in almost

-the geographical centre of his diocese and

-he had travelled towards it from north, east, south

-and west.</p>

-<p>He missed his mountain now and rubbed his

-eyes in a troubled, perplexed way. When the

-train stopped at the next little station he went out

-on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.</p>

-<p>Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between

-the hills where he knew Old Forge nestled

-was gone. The open rift of sky that he had

-recognised a few moments before was now filled,

-as though a mountain had suddenly been moved

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>

-into the gap. He went back to his seat and sat

-watching the line of the mountains. As he

-watched, the whole contour of the hills that he

-had known was changed under his very eyes.

-Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and

-rounded, smooth skulls of mountains showed

-against the sky where sharp peaks should have

-been.</p>

-<p>He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion

-shot into his mind, and stayed. Then a

-just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of

-Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a

-man of gentle heart whose passions ran deep below

-a placid surface.</p>

-<p>At Booneville he stepped off the train before

-it had stopped and hurried to the operator&rsquo;s window

-to ask if any news had gone down the wire of

-a fire in the hills.</p>

-<p>Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over

-his table &ldquo;listening in&rdquo; with shameless glee to

-a flirtatious conversation that was going over the

-wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the

-Company, between the young lady operator at

-Snowden and the man in the office at Steuben.</p>

-<p>The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.</p>

-<p>Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This ain&rsquo;t the bulletin board. We&rsquo;re busy.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop stood quiet a moment.</p>

-<p>Then Jerry looked up. The face looking

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>

-calmly through the window was the face of one

-who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder

-of certain things.</p>

-<p>Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously,

-on his feet. He grabbed at his front lock

-of curly red hair and gasped:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;m sorry, Bishop! I&ndash;&ndash;I&ndash;&ndash;didn&rsquo;t hear

-what you said.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop&ndash;&ndash;if one might say it&ndash;&ndash;grinned.

-Then he said quickly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills.

-Have you heard anything on the wire?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop&rsquo;s

-mouth. The beet red colour of his face had gone

-down several degrees. The freckles were coming

-back. He was now coherent.</p>

-<p>No he had not heard anything. He was sure

-nothing had come down the wire. Just then the

-rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed

-abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a

-&ldquo;call.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jerry held up his hand. &ldquo;Lowville calling

-Utica,&rdquo; he said. They waited a little and then:

-&ldquo;Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country.

-Call everything,&rdquo; Jerry repeated from the

-sounder, punctuating for the benefit of the Bishop.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It must be big, Bishop,&rdquo; he said, turning, &ldquo;or

-they wouldn&rsquo;t call&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But the Bishop was already running for the

-steps of his departing train.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span></div>

-<p>At Lowville he left the train and hurried to

-Father Brady&rsquo;s house. Finding the priest out on

-a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the housekeeper,

-and, commandeering some riding clothes

-and Father Brady&rsquo;s saddle horse, he was soon on

-the road to French Village and the hills.</p>

-<p>It was before the days of the rural telephone

-and there was no telegraph up the hill road. A

-messenger had come down from the hills a half

-hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was

-no alarm among the people of Lowville, for there

-lay twenty miles of well cultivated country between

-them and the hills. If they noticed Father

-Brady&rsquo;s clothes riding furiously out toward

-the hill road, they gave the matter no more than

-a mild wonder.</p>

-<p>For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily

-up the hard dirt road over which he and Arsene

-LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the

-winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who

-had died that night. He thought of the many

-things that had in some way had their beginning

-on that night, all leading up, more or less, to this

-present moment. But more than all he thought

-of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up

-there in the hills fighting for their lives and their

-little all.</p>

-<p>He did not know who had started this fire. It

-might well have started accidentally. He did not

-know that the railroad people had sent men into

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>

-the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those

-men were caught by the men of the hills, then

-there would be swift and bloody justice done.

-The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father

-Brady&rsquo;s horse as that good animal had never been

-ridden in the course of his well fed life.</p>

-<p>Nearing Corben&rsquo;s, he saw that the horse could

-go but little farther. Registering a remonstrance

-to Father Brady, anent the matter of keeping

-his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with

-Corben for a fresh horse. Corben looked at the

-horse from which the Bishop had just slid

-swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop&rsquo;s

-destination in the hills&ndash;&ndash;which was vague,

-and his business&ndash;&ndash;which was still more vague.

-He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and

-reviewed the whole matter critically. Finally he

-guessed that the Bishop could have the fresh

-horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.</p>

-<p>The Bishop explained that he did not have the

-money about him. Corben believed that. The

-Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the

-diocese. Corben did not believe that.</p>

-<p>In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay,

-persuaded the man to believe him and to accept

-his surety for the horse. And taking food in his

-pockets he pressed on into the high hills.</p>

-<p>Already he had met wagons loaded with women

-and children on the road. But he knew that they

-would be of those who lived nearest the fringe of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>

-the hills. They would know little more than he

-did himself of the origin of the fire or of what

-was going on up there under and beyond that pall

-of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.</p>

-<p>Now the road began to be dotted with these

-wagons of the fleeing ones, and some seemed to

-have come far. Twice he stopped long enough

-to ask a question or two. But their replies gave

-him no real knowledge of the situation. They

-had been called from their beds in the early morning

-by the fire. Their men had stayed, the

-women had fled with the children. That was all

-they could tell.</p>

-<p>As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth

-Lansing on Brom Bones escorting Mrs. Whiting

-and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew

-without asking that the fire was now coming near,

-for these women would not have left their homes

-except in the nearness of danger.</p>

-<p>In fact the two older women had only yielded

-to the most peremptory authority, exercised by

-Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to

-the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously

-against the idea that Cassius Bascom, who

-was notoriously unable to look after himself in

-the most ordinary things of life, should now be

-left behind on the mere argument that he was a

-man.</p>

-<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s first question concerned Jeffrey

-Whiting. Ruth told what she knew. That a

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>

-man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road yesterday;

-that the man had brought news of strange

-men being seen in the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden

-away with him toward Bald Mountain.</p>

-<p>The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain

-would be the place to be watched. He could even

-conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and

-the breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could

-see the desperate and futile struggle with the fire

-as it reached down to the hills. Back of that

-screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy

-darker even than the one of the fire itself.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He had my letter?&rdquo; the Bishop asked, when

-he had heard all that Ruth had to tell.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. We had just read it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He went armed?&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey&rsquo;s gun to

-him,&rdquo; the girl answered simply, with a full knowledge

-of all that the question and answer implied.

-The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They will all be driven in upon French Village,&rdquo;

-said the Bishop slowly. &ldquo;The wind will

-not hold any one direction in the high hills. Little

-Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all

-in the end. The road from here there, is it open,

-do you know?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No one has come down from that far,&rdquo; said

-Ruth. &ldquo;We have watched the people on the

-road all day. But probably they would not leave

-the lake. And if they did they would go north

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>

-by the river. But the road certainly won&rsquo;t be

-open long. The fire is spreading north as it

-comes down.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I must hurry, then,&rdquo; said the Bishop, gripping

-his reins.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, but you cannot, you must not!&rdquo; exclaimed

-Ruth. &ldquo;You will be trapped. You can never go

-through. We are the last to leave, except a few

-men with fast horses who know the country every

-step. You cannot go through on the road, and if

-you leave it you will be lost.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, I can always come back,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop lightly, as he set his horse up the hill.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But you cannot. Won&rsquo;t you listen, please,

-Bishop,&rdquo; Ruth pleaded after him. &ldquo;The fire may

-cross behind you, and you&rsquo;ll be trapped on the

-road!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up

-the hill. Whether he heard or not, he did not

-answer or look back.</p>

-<p>Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after

-him. She did not know whether or not he realised

-his danger. Probably he did, for he was a

-quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge

-of his danger would not drive him back. She

-knew that.</p>

-<p>She knew the business upon which he went.

-No doubt it was one in which he was ready to

-risk his life. He had said that they would all

-be driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>

-meant hunters and hunted alike. For there were

-the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills

-would be up there behind the wall of fire or working

-along down beside it. But while they fought

-the fire they would be hunting the brush and the

-smoke for the traces of other men. Those other

-men would maybe be trapped by the swift running

-of the fire. All might be driven to seek safety

-together. The hunted men would flee from the

-fire to a death just as certain but which they would

-prefer to face.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was riding to save the lives of

-those men. Also he was riding to keep the men

-of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be

-among them. Only yesterday she had spoken

-that word to him.</p>

-<p>But he can do neither, she thought. He will

-be caught on the road, and before he will give in

-and turn back he will be trapped.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am going back to the top of the hill,&rdquo; she

-said suddenly to Mrs. Whiting. &ldquo;I want to see

-what it looks like now. Go on down. I will

-catch you before long.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No. We will pull in at the side of the road

-here and wait for you. Don&rsquo;t go past the hill.

-We&rsquo;ll wait. There&rsquo;s no danger down here yet,

-and won&rsquo;t be for some time.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for

-he was fresh and all day long he had been held

-in tight when he had wanted to run away. He

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>

-did not know what that thing was from which he

-had all day been wanting to run. But he knew

-that if he had been his own master he would have

-run very far, hunting water. So now he bolted

-quickly to the top of the hill.</p>

-<p>But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse

-and was not sparing him. When Ruth came to

-the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a

-mile away, already past her own home and mounting

-the long hill.</p>

-<p>She stood watching him, undecided what to do.

-The chances were all against him. Perhaps he

-did not understand how certainly those chances

-stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode

-like a man who knew the chances and was ready

-to measure himself against them.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Brom Bones could catch him, I think,&rdquo; she

-said as she watched him up the long hill. &ldquo;But

-we could not make him come back until it was too

-late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I

-don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m afraid. Only somehow he seems&ndash;&ndash;seems

-different. He doesn&rsquo;t seem just like a

-man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger.

-No. He knows all about it. But it doesn&rsquo;t

-count. He is a man going on business&ndash;&ndash;God&rsquo;s

-business. I wonder.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Now she saw him against the rim of the sky

-as he went over the brow of the hill, where

-Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was

-not a pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>

-for he was very tired from the unusual ride, and

-he crouched forward, saving his horse all that he

-could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten

-as he disappeared over the crown of the hill,

-seeming to ride right on into the sky.</p>

-<p>Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her.

-He was looking away to the right of the long, terraced

-hill before her. The fire was coming,

-sweeping diagonally down across the face of the

-hill straight toward her home.</p>

-<p>All her life she had been hearing of forest fires.

-Hardly a summer had passed within her memory

-when the menace of them had not been present

-among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill

-children did, expecting to some day have to fly

-for her life before one. But she had never before

-seen a wall of breathing fire marching down

-a hill toward her.</p>

-<p>For moments the sight held her enthralled in

-wonder and awe. It was a living thing, moving

-down the hillside with an intelligent, defined

-course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer

-and a silver fox down the hill. It could not catch

-those timid, fleet animals in the open chase. But

-if they halted or turned aside it might come upon

-them and surround them.</p>

-<p>While she looked, one part of her brain was

-numbed by the sight, but the other part was thinking

-rapidly. This was not the real fire. This

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>

-was only one great paw of fire that shot out before

-the body, to sweep in any foolish thing that

-did not at first alarm hurry down to the level lands

-and safety.</p>

-<p>The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming

-on in a solid front beyond the hill. It would not

-yet have struck the road up which the Bishop was

-hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past

-it and get into French Village before it should

-cross the road. But she was sure he could not

-do so. He would go on until he found it

-squarely before him. Then he would have to turn

-back. And here was this great limb of fire already

-stretching out behind him. In five minutes

-he would be cut off. The formation of the

-hills had sent the wind whirling down through a

-gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead

-of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country

-to the north of the road. If he left the road

-he could only flounder about and wander aimlessly

-until the fire closed in upon him.</p>

-<p>Ruth&rsquo;s decision was taken on the instant. The

-two women did not need her. They would

-know enough to drive on down to safety when

-they saw the fire surely coming. There was a

-man gone unblinking into a peril from which he

-would not know how to escape. He had gone to

-save life. He had gone to prevent crime. If he

-stayed in the road she could find him and lead him

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>

-out to the north and probably to safety. If he did

-not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only

-make the attempt.</p>

-<p>Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the

-road towards his home. For the first time in his

-life, he felt the cut of a whip on his flanks&ndash;&ndash;to

-make him go faster. He did not know what it

-meant. Nothing like that had ever been a part

-of Brom Bones&rsquo; scheme of life, for he had always

-gone as fast as he was let go. But it did

-not need the stroke of the whip to madden him.</p>

-<p>Down across the slope of the hill in front of

-him he saw a great, red terror racing towards the

-road which he travelled. If he could not understand

-the girl&rsquo;s words, he could feel the thrill of

-rising excitement in her voice as she urged him

-on, saying over and over:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You can make it, Brom! I know you can!

-I never struck you this way before, did I? But

-it&rsquo;s for life&ndash;&ndash;a good man&rsquo;s life! You can make

-it. I know you can make it. I wouldn&rsquo;t ask you

-to if I didn&rsquo;t know. You can make it! It won&rsquo;t

-hurt us a bit. It <i>can&rsquo;t</i> hurt us! Bromie, dear,

-I tell you it can&rsquo;t hurt us. It just can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She crouched out over the horse&rsquo;s shoulder,

-laying her weight upon her hands to even it for

-the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw

-that neither terror nor punishment could drive him

-faster than he was going. He was giving her the

-best of his willing heart and fleet body.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span></div>

-<p>But would it be enough? Fast as she raced

-along the road she saw that red death whirling

-down the hillside, to cross the road at a

-point just above her home. Could she pass that

-point before the fire came? She did not know.

-And when she came to within a hundred yards of

-where the fire would strike the road she still did

-not know whether she could pass it. Already she

-could feel the hot breath of it panting down upon

-her. Already showers of burning leaves and

-branches were whirling down upon her head and

-shoulders. If her horse should hesitate or bolt

-sidewise now they would both be burned to death.

-The girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking

-into his mane, she told him so. Perhaps he, too,

-knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he

-plunged straight into the blinding blast that swept

-across the road.</p>

-<p>A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in

-the face. He reeled and reared a little, and a

-moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But

-he felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane

-and he plunged on again, through the smoke and

-out into the good air.</p>

-<p>The fire laughed and leaped across the road

-behind them. It had missed them, but it did not

-care. The other way, it would not have cared,

-either.</p>

-<p>Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long

-slope of the hill, and turning looked back at her

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>

-home. The farmer had long since gone away

-with his family. The place was not his. The

-flames were already leaping up from the grass

-to the windows and the roof was taking fire from

-the cinders and burning branches in the air. But,

-where everything was burning, where a whole

-countryside was being swept with the broom of

-destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter

-much.</p>

-<p>Only when she saw the flames sweep on past

-the house and across the hillside and attack the

-trees that stood guard over the graves of her

-loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul.

-She revolted at the cruel wickedness of it all.

-Her heart hated the fire. Hated the men who

-had set it. (She was sure that men <i>had</i> set it.)

-She wanted vengeance. The Bishop was wrong.

-Why should he interfere? Let men take revenge

-in the way of men.</p>

-<p>But on the instant she was sorry and breathed

-a little prayer of and for forgiveness. You see,

-she was rather a downright young person. And

-she took her religion at its word. When she

-said, &ldquo;Forgive us our trespasses,&rdquo; she meant just

-that. And when she said, &ldquo;As we forgive those

-who trespass against us,&rdquo; she meant that, too.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was right, of course. One horror,

-one sin, would not heal another.</p>

-<p>Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder

-and horror of the fire burst upon her with appalling

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>

-force. What she had so far seen was but

-a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill.

-Now in front and to the right of her, in an unbroken

-quarter circle of the whole horizon, there

-ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed

-to be coming down upon the whole world.</p>

-<p>She knew that it was already behind her. If

-she had thought of herself, she would have turned

-Brom Bones to the left, away from the road and

-have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the

-north and out of the range of the moving terror.

-But only for one quaking little moment did she

-think of herself. Along that road ahead of her

-there was a man, a good man, who rode bravely,

-unquestioningly, to almost certain death, for

-others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as

-she could see, the fire was not yet crossing the

-road in front. The Bishop would still be on the

-road. She was sure of that. Again she asked

-Brom Bones for his brave best.</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>The Bishop was beginning to think that he

-might yet get through to French Village. His

-watch told him that it was six o&rsquo;clock. Soon the

-sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable

-tenting of white smoke that had spread high

-over all the air there was nothing to show that

-a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the

-going down of the sun the wind, too, would probably

-die away. The fire had not yet come to the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>

-road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire

-would advance but slowly, and would hardly

-spread to the north at all.</p>

-<p>He was not discrediting the enemy in front.

-He had seen the mighty sweep of the fire and

-he knew that it would need but the slightest shift

-of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon

-him from which he would have to run for his

-life. He did not, of course, know that the fire

-had already crossed the road behind him. But

-even if he had, he would probably have kept on

-trusting to the chance of getting through somehow.</p>

-<p>He was ascending another long slope of country

-where the road ran straight up to the east.

-The fire was already to the right of him, sweeping

-along in a steady march to the west. It was

-spreading steadily northward, toward the road;

-but he was hoping that the hill before him had

-served to hold it back, that it had not really

-crossed the road at any point, and that when he

-came to the top of this hill he would be able to

-see the road clear before him up to French Village.

-He was wearied to the point of exhaustion,

-and his nervous horse fought him constantly in

-an effort to bolt from the road and make off to

-the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing

-so far from the fire; and there was no real

-reason to be discouraged.</p>

-<p>Then he came to the top of the hill.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span></div>

-<p>He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long

-time before on that same day. Five hundred

-yards before him as he looked down a slight

-slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to

-the sky. The road ran straight through that.

-Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could see

-the whole country banked in terraces of flame.

-There was no road. This hill had divided the

-wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided the

-fire. Already the fire had run away to the north,

-and it was still moving northward as it also advanced

-more slowly to the top of the hill where

-he stood.</p>

-<p>Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing

-worse had happened than he had, in reason, anticipated.

-He must go back. He turned the

-horse and looked.</p>

-<p>Across the ridge of the last hill that he had

-passed the fire was marching majestically. The

-daylight, such as it had been, had given its place

-to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago

-he could not have distinguished anything back

-there. Now he could see the road clearly marked,

-nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid

-wall of fire.</p>

-<p>There were no moments to be lost. He was cut

-off on three sides. The way out lay to the north,

-over he knew not what sort of country. But at

-least it was a way out. He must not altogether

-run away from the fire, for in that way he might

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>

-easily be caught and hemmed in entirely. He

-must ride along as near as he could in front of

-it. So, if he were fast enough, he might turn the

-edge of it and be safe again. He might even

-be able to go on his way again to French Village.</p>

-<p>Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the

-fire played no new trick upon him.</p>

-<p>His horse turned willingly from the road and

-ran along under the shelter of the ridge of the hill

-for a full mile as fast as the Bishop dared let

-him go. He could not drive. He was obliged

-to trust the horse to pick his own footing. It

-was mad riding over rough pasture land and brush,

-but it was better to let the horse have his own

-way.</p>

-<p>Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge

-where the Bishop might have expected to be able

-to go around the edge of the fire. The horse

-stood stock still. The Bishop took one quiet,

-comprehensive look.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am sorry, boy,&rdquo; he said gently to the horse.

-&ldquo;You have done your best. And I&ndash;&ndash;have done

-my worst. You did not deserve this.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He was looking down toward Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork,

-a dry water course, two miles away and a thousand

-feet below.</p>

-<p>The fire had come clear around the hill and

-had been driven down into the heavy timber along

-the water course. There it was raging away to

-the west down through the great trees, travelling

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>

-faster than any horse could have been driven.</p>

-<p>The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in

-his saddle, thinking mechanically. To the east

-the fire was coming over the ridge in an unbroken

-line&ndash;&ndash;death. From the south it was advancing

-slowly but with a calm and certain steadiness of

-purpose&ndash;&ndash;death. On the hill to the west it was

-burning brightly and running speedily to meet that

-swift line of fire coming down the northern side

-of the square&ndash;&ndash;death. One narrowing avenue

-of escape was for the moment open. The lines

-on the north and the west had not met. For some

-minutes, a pitifully few minutes, there would be

-a gap between them. The horse, riderless and

-running by the instinct of his kind might make

-that gap in time. With a rider and stumbling

-under weight, it was useless to think of it.</p>

-<p>With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop

-slid a tired leg over the horse and came heavily

-to the ground.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You have done well, boy, you shall have your

-chance,&rdquo; he said, as he hurried to loosen the heavy

-saddle and slip the bridle.</p>

-<p>He looked again. There was no chance. The

-square of fire was closed.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We stay together, then.&rdquo; And the Bishop

-mounted again.</p>

-<p>Within the four walls of breathing death that

-were now closing around them there was one

-slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>

-No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe

-of life. Still it was to be played with to the

-last. For that again is the law, applying equally

-to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things

-that ran through the grass by his horse&rsquo;s feet.</p>

-<p>One fire was burning behind the other. There

-was just a possibility that a place might be found

-where the first fire would have burned away a

-breathing place before the other fire came up to

-it. It might be possible to live in that place until

-the second fire, finding nothing to eat, should

-die. It might be possible. Thinking of this, the

-Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the

-west.</p>

-<p>Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden,

-thought of death. How should a bishop die?

-He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But

-there seemed to be nothing in those passages that

-bore on the matter immediately in hand.</p>

-<p>Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid,

-guessed that he would die very much as

-another man would die, with his rosary in his

-hand.</p>

-<p>But was there not a certain ignominy in being

-trapped here as the dumb and senseless brute creatures

-were being trapped? For the life of him,

-the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the

-matter or the manner of the thing than he could

-see heroism.</p>

-<p>He had come out on a bootless errand, to save

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>

-the lives of certain men, if it might be. God had

-not seen wisdom in his plan. That was all. He

-had meant well. God meant better.</p>

-<p>Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl

-broke insistently with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere

-neighed to his horse, and the Bishop realised

-with a start of horror that a woman was here

-in this square of fire.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you, Bishop, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; the voice cried

-frantically. &ldquo;I thought I&rsquo;d never find you.

-Over here to the right. Let your horse come.

-He&rsquo;ll follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks,&rdquo; she

-yelled back over her shoulder, &ldquo;we can make them

-yet! There&rsquo;s nothing there to burn. We may

-smother. But we won&rsquo;t <i>burn</i>!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse

-taken swiftly under command. It was Ruth

-Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to

-think how she had gotten into this fortress of

-death. His horse followed Brom Bones through

-a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck path of

-loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get

-a fair breath or any knowledge of where he was

-going, he found himself on the top of what seemed

-to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.</p>

-<p>They stopped, and Ruth was already down and

-talking soothingly to Brom Bones when the Bishop

-got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he

-saw that they were on a plateau of rock at least

-several acres in extent and perhaps a hundred feet

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>

-above the ground about them. Looking down he

-saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot

-of the rocks below. They had not been an instant

-too soon. As he turned to speak to the

-girl, his eye was caught by something that ran

-out of one of the lines of fire. It ran and fell

-headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it

-stirred and began crawling up the rocks.</p>

-<p>It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands

-and knees up the side of the refuge. The Bishop

-went down a little to help. As the two came

-slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there

-waiting. The Bishop brought the man to his feet

-and stood there holding him in the light. The

-face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond

-any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed

-figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe Gadbeau.</p>

-<p>The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop&rsquo;s

-arms for a moment, then crumpled down inert.

-The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck

-and holding the head of what he was quick to fear

-was a dying man.</p>

-<p>The man&rsquo;s eyes opened and in the strong light

-he evidently recognised the Bishop&rsquo;s grimy collar,

-for out of his cracked and swollen lips there came

-the moan:</p>

-<p><i>&ldquo;Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</i></p>

-<p>With a start, Ruth recognised the words.

-They were the form in which the French people

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>

-began the telling of their sins in confession. And

-she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.</p>

-<p>She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom

-Bones, thinking of Jeffrey Whiting. Here was

-one of the things that he did not like&ndash;&ndash;the Catholic

-Church always turning up in everything.</p>

-<p>She wondered where he was and what he was

-doing and thinking, up there behind that awful

-veil of red.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>

-<a name='VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD' id='VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'></a>

-<h2>VI</h2>

-<h3>THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The Bishop laid the man&rsquo;s head back so that

-he lay as easy as it was possible and spoke a word

-or two in that astonishing French of his which

-was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the

-North Country.</p>

-<p>But for a long time the man seemed unable to

-go farther. He saw the Bishop slip the little

-pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know

-what it was and what it was for. The swollen

-lips, however, only continued to mumble the words

-with which they had begun:</p>

-<p><i>&ldquo;Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse</i>&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or

-better than he could speak French. But there

-are times when a man reverts to the tongue of his

-mother. And confession, especially in the face

-of death, is one of these.</p>

-<p>Again the Bishop lowered the man&rsquo;s head and

-changed the position of the body, while he fanned

-what air there was across the gasping mouth with

-his hat.</p>

-<p>Now the man tried to gather his straying wits

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>

-to him. With a sharp effort that seemed to send

-a tremor through his whole long body he forced

-his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered

-word of encouragement from the Bishop,

-he began hoarsely that precise, recitative form of

-confession that the good priests of Lower Canada

-have been drilling into the children for the last

-three hundred years.</p>

-<p>Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed

-way it worked easily, mechanically.

-Since five years he had not confessed. At that

-time he had received the Sacrament. He went

-through the &ldquo;table of sins&rdquo; with the methodical

-care of a man who knows that if he misses a step

-in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the

-story of the young men of his people in the hills,

-in the lumber camps, in the sawmills, in the

-towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill

-country would have told the same story, of hard

-work and anger and fighting in the camps, of

-drink and debauch in the towns when they went

-down to spend their money; and would have told

-it in exactly the same way. The Bishop had

-heard the story ten thousand times.</p>

-<p>But now&ndash;&ndash;<i>Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse</i>&ndash;&ndash;there

-was something more, something that would not

-fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day.

-It had begun a long time ago and it was just coming

-to an end here at the feet of the Bishop.

-Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>

-the Bishop had found blood caked on the man&rsquo;s

-shirt, in the back, just below the shoulder blade.

-There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a

-wound from which ordinarily the man would have

-fallen and stayed lying where he fell.</p>

-<p>He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards,

-as it unrolled itself to his mind.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I die, Mon Pere, I die,&rdquo; he began between

-gasps. &ldquo;I die. Since the afternoon I have been

-dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down,

-if I could have had two minutes free from the

-fire, I would have lain down to die. But shall a

-man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;All day I have run from the fire. I could

-not lie down to die till I had found a free place

-where my soul could breathe out. Here I

-breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes

-and the deer ran out from the fire, and they ran

-no faster than I ran. But I could not run out of

-its way. All day long men followed the line of

-the fire and fought around its edge. They fought

-the fire, but they hunted me. All the day long

-they hunted me and drove me always back into the

-fire when I would run out.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They hunted me because in the early morning

-they had seen me with the men who set the

-fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand

-to the fire. Why was I with those men? Why

-did I go with them when they went to set the fire?

-Ah, that is a longer tale.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in

-a drinking place. All were drinking. There was

-a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow.

-<i>Mon Pere</i>, I struck no blow. But my knife&ndash;&ndash;my

-knife was found in the man&rsquo;s heart. Who

-struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad

-that comes now into the hills found my knife.

-He traced it to me. He showed the knife to me.

-It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no

-word to the law. With the knife he could hang

-me. But he said no word. Only to me he said,

-&lsquo;Some day I may need you.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Last winter that man the detective came into

-the hills. Now he was not a detective. He was

-Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He

-would buy the land from the people.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The people would not sell. You know of

-the matter. In June he came again. He was

-angry, because other men above him were angry.

-He must force the people to sell. He must trick

-the people. He saw me. &lsquo;You,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I

-need you.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, that man owned me. On the

-point of my knife, like a pinch of salt, he held my

-life. Never a moment when I could say, I will

-do this, I will do that. Always I must do his

-bidding. For him I lied to my own people. For

-him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed

-the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told.

-He called and I came. He bade me do and I did.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;M&rsquo;sieur does not know the sin of hate. It

-is the wild beast of all sins. And fear, too, that

-is the father of sin. For fear begets hate. And

-hate goes raging to do all sin.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before

-my eyes was always the face of this man,

-threatening with that knife of mine.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yesterday, in the morning came a message

-that I must meet him at the railroad. He would

-come to the end of the rail and we would go up

-into the high hills. I knew what was to be done.

-To myself, I rebelled. I would not go. I swore

-I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved me,

-begged me not to go. To her I swore I would

-not go.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I went. Fear, <i>Mon Pere</i>, fear is the father

-of all. I went because there was that knife before

-my eyes. I believe that good girl followed

-into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me

-back at the last moment. I do not know.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I went because I must go. I must be there

-in case any one should see. If any of us that went

-was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be

-seen. I must be known to have been there. If

-any one was to be punished, I was that one.

-Rogers must be free, do you see. I would have

-to take the blame. I would not dare to

-speak.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain.

-We were seven. And of the seven I alone

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>

-was to take the blame. They would swear it upon

-me. I knew.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the

-reach of his tongue. And his speech was, &lsquo;You

-owe me this. Now you must pay.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;In the first light the torches were got ready.

-We scattered along the fringe of the highest trees.

-Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went

-out into the clearing. Then he came running

-back. He had seen other men watching for us.

-I ran a little way. He came running behind with

-a lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled

-to me to light my torch. Again I ran, deeper

-into the wood. Again he came after me, the red

-flare of the fire running after him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the

-wood! The red rush of fire in the air! The red

-flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate!

-Fire!&rdquo; With a terrible convulsion the man drew

-himself up in the Bishop&rsquo;s arms, gazing wildly at

-the fire all about them, and screaming:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot

-Rogers when he stopped!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He fell back as the scream died in his throat.</p>

-<p>The Bishop began the words of the Absolution.

-Some whisper of the well-remembered sound must

-have reached down to the soul of Rafe Gadbeau

-in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously,

-his lips began to form the words of the Act of

-Contrition.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span></div>

-<p>As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran

-through the body in his arms. He knelt there

-holding the empty shell of a man.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away,

-resting against the flank of her horse, had time to

-be awed and subdued by the terrific forces of this

-world and the other that were at work about her.

-This world, with the exception of this little island

-on which she stood, was on fire. The wind had

-almost entirely died out. On every side the flames

-rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance,

-place, all were blotted out. There was no

-east, no west; no north, no south. Only an impenetrable

-ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only

-these few bare rocks and this inverted bowl of

-lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out of which she must

-get the breath of life.</p>

-<p>Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst,

-just as she had seen a rabbit and a belated woodchuck

-bursting. And that man had lain himself

-down to die. And here, of all places, he had

-found the hand of the mighty, the omnipresent

-Catholic Church reached out ready to him!</p>

-<p>She was only a young girl. But since that night

-when the Bishop had come to her as she held her

-father dying in her arms she had thought much.

-Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had

-pressed themselves in upon her mind. The things

-that she had been hearing and reading since her

-childhood, the thoughts of the people among

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>

-whom she had grown up, the feeling of loyalty to

-her own kind, all these had fought in her against

-the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged

-them all.</p>

-<p>Because she had so recently come under its influence,

-the Catholic Church seemed ever to be unfolding

-new wonders to her. It seemed as though

-she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another

-more wonderful, more awesome. Yet always

-there seemed to be something just beyond,

-some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which

-she could not quite attain. Always a door opened,

-only to disclose another closed door beyond it.</p>

-<p>Here surely she stood as near to naked truth

-as it was possible to get. Here were none of the

-forms of words, none of the explanations, none

-of the ready-made answers of the catechism.

-Here were just two men. One was a bad man,

-a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few moments

-his soul must go&ndash;&ndash;somewhere. The other

-was a good man. To-day he had risked his life

-to save the lives of this man and others&ndash;&ndash;for

-Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been

-caught in the fire because other men were chasing

-him.</p>

-<p>Now these two men had a question to settle between

-them. In a very few minutes these two

-men must settle whether this bad man&rsquo;s soul was

-presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity.

-You see, she was a very direct young

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span>

-person. She took her religion at its word,

-straight in the eyes, literally.</p>

-<p>So far she had not needed to take any precautions

-against hearing anything that was said. The

-dull roar of the fire all about them effectually

-silenced every other sound. Then, without warning,

-high above the noise of the fire, came the

-shrill, breaking voice of Gadbeau, screaming:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot

-Rogers as he stopped!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Involuntarily she turned and started towards

-the men. Gadbeau had fallen back in the

-Bishop&rsquo;s arms and the Bishop was leaning over,

-apparently talking to him. She knew that she

-must not go near until the Bishop gave her leave.

-She turned back and putting her hands up to her

-ears buried her face in Brom Bones&rsquo; mane.</p>

-<p>But she could not put away the words that she

-had heard. Never, so long as she lived, was she

-able to forget them. Like the flash of the shot

-itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves

-there. Years afterwards she could shut

-her eyes and fairly see those words burning in her

-mind.</p>

-<p>When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and

-she went over timidly. She heard the Bishop say:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the

-light of the flames, the Prayers for the Departed.

-Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and among

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>

-the Mysteries she wept gently&ndash;&ndash;why, she knew

-not.</p>

-<p>When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while

-in silence, looking into the face of the dead.

-Then he arose and folded the long arms on the

-tattered breast and straightened the body.</p>

-<p>Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way.

-Once, twice she opened her lips to speak. But

-she did not know what to say or how to say it.

-Finally she began:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Bishop, I&ndash;&ndash;I heard&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, child. You heard nothing,&rdquo; the Bishop

-interrupted quietly, &ldquo;nothing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth understood. And for a little space the

-two stood there looking down. The dead man&rsquo;s

-secret lay between them, buried under God&rsquo;s awful

-seal.</p>

-<p>The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping

-Father Brady&rsquo;s storm coat which he had brought

-wrapped it gently over the head and body of the

-dead man as a protection from the showers of

-glowing cinders that rained down upon everything.</p>

-<p>Then they took up the interminable vigil of the

-night, standing at their horses&rsquo; heads, their faces

-buried in the manes, their arms thrown over the

-horses&rsquo; eyes.</p>

-<p>As the night wore on the fire, having consumed

-everything to the east and south, moved on deliberately

-into the west and north. But the sharp,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span>

-acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still

-kept them in exquisite, blinded torture.</p>

-<p>The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost

-to black as the fires to the east died almost out in

-that last, lifeless hour of the night. The light

-of the morning showed a faint, sickly white

-through the smoke banks on the high hills. When

-it was time for the sun to be rising over Bald

-Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting

-the heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead

-and away into the west. They saw the

-world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a

-land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and

-here and there a great tree still standing smoking

-like a burnt-out torch.</p>

-<p>They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at

-the figure of the man lying there on his rocky

-bier, picked their way down to the sloping hillside.

-The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives.

-Now they must reach Little Tupper and water if

-they would have their horses live. Intolerable,

-frightful thirst was already swelling their own

-lips and they knew that the plight of the horses

-was inevitably worse.</p>

-<p>Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country.

-They must travel circuitously, avoiding the places

-that had been wooded for the fallen trees would

-still be burning and would block them everywhere.

-The road was impossible because it had

-largely run through wooded places and the trees

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>

-would have fallen across it. Their situation was

-not desperate, but at any moment a horse might

-drop or turn mad for water.</p>

-<p>For two hours they plodded steadily over the

-hills through the hot, loose-lying ashes. In all the

-world it seemed that not man nor beast nor bird

-was alive. The top of the earth was one grey

-ruin, draped with the little sworls of dust and

-ashes that the playful wind sent drifting up into

-their mouths and eyes.</p>

-<p>They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the

-ashes had blown level over holes and traps of all

-sorts in which a galloping horse would surely break

-his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the

-horses to any rapid expenditure of energy. The

-little that was left in them must be doled out to the

-very last ounce. For they did not yet know what

-lay between them and French Village and the lake.

-If the fire had not reached the lake during the

-night then it was always a possibility that, with

-this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring

-up from the ashes of the old and place an impassable

-barrier between them and the water.</p>

-<p>When this thought came to them, as it must,

-they involuntarily quickened their pace. The impulse

-was to make one wild dash for the lake.

-But they knew that it would be nothing short of

-madness. They must go slowly and carefully, enduring

-the torture with what fortitude they could.</p>

-<p>The story which the Bishop had heard from the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>

-lips of the dying man had stirred him profoundly.

-He now knew definitely, what yesterday he had

-suspected, that men had been sent into the hills

-by the railroad people to set fire to the forests,

-thereby driving the people out of that part of the

-country which the railroad wished to possess. He

-was moved to anger by the knowledge, but he

-knew that he must try to drive that knowledge

-back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try

-to hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded

-moment, some time of stress and mental

-conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture

-or even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness

-of that knowledge. Now he knew that

-the situation which last night he had thought to

-meet in French Village would almost certainly

-confront him there this morning, if indeed he ever

-succeeded in reaching there. And he must be

-doubly on his guard lest the things which he might

-learn to-day should in his mind confuse themselves

-with what he had last night learned under the seal

-of the confessional.</p>

-<p>Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been

-hearing the words of that last cry of the dying

-man. She did not know how near they came to

-her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had

-stood with his gun levelled upon the man whom

-Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she would to

-keep back the knowledge which she knew she must

-never under any circumstances reveal, those words

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>

-came ringing upon her ears. And she knew that

-the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.</p>

-<p>As they came over the last of the ridges, the

-grey waste of the country sloping from all sides to

-the lake lay open before them. There was not a

-ruin, not a standing stick to show them where

-little French Village had once stood along the

-lake. The fire had gone completely around the

-lake to the very water edge and a back draught

-had drawn it up in a circle around the east slope.

-There it had burned itself out along the forest

-line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward

-the west, burning its way down to the settled farm

-lands. But there would be no more fire in this

-region.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Would the people make their way down the

-river,&rdquo; the Bishop asked; &ldquo;or did they escape back

-into the higher hills?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think they did either,&rdquo; Ruth answered

-as she scanned the lake sharply. &ldquo;There is something

-out there in the middle of the lake, and I

-wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if they made rafts out of the

-logs and went through the fire that way. They&rsquo;d

-be better off than we were, and that way they

-could save some things. If they had run away

-they would have had to drop everything.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake,

-pricked up their ears and started briskly down the

-slope. It was soon plain that Ruth was right in

-her conjecture. They could now make out five

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>

-or six large rafts which the people had evidently

-thrown together out of the logs that had been

-lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the sawmill.

-These were crowded with people, standing

-as they must have stood all through the night;

-and now the freshening wind, aided by such help

-as the people could give it with boards and poles,

-was moving all slowly toward the shore where

-their homes had been.</p>

-<p>The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he

-rode fetlock deep through the ashes of what had

-been the street of a happy little village and

-watched his people coming sadly back to land.

-There was nothing for them to come back to.

-They might as well have gone to the other side

-of the lake to begin life again. But they would

-inevitably, with that dumb loyalty to places, which

-people share with birds, come back and begin

-their nests over again.</p>

-<p>For nearly an hour they stood on the little

-beach, letting the horses drink a little now and

-then, and watching the approach of the rafts.

-When they came to the shallow water, men and

-boys jumped yelling from the rafts and came wading

-ashore. In a few moments the rafts were

-emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled

-who must be carried off.</p>

-<p>They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable

-Bishop and the girl with wonder and a little

-superstition, for it was plain that these two people

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>

-must have come straight through the fire. But

-when Father Ponfret came running forward and

-knelt at the Bishop&rsquo;s feet, a great glad cry of

-wondering recognition went up from all the French

-people. It was their Bishop! He who spoke

-the French of the most astonishing! His coming

-was a sign! A deliverance! They had come

-through horrors. Now all was well! The good

-God had hidden His face through the long night.

-Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger

-to say that all was well!</p>

-<p>Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of

-spirits that makes their race what it is, they threw

-themselves on their knees begging his blessing.

-The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand

-slowly. He was infinitely humbled by the quick,

-spontaneous outburst of their faith. He had done

-nothing for them; could do nothing for them.

-They were homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a

-stick of shelter. Yet it had needed but the sight

-of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded

-confidence that God was good, that the world was

-right again.</p>

-<p>The other people, the hill people of the Bishop&rsquo;s

-own blood and race, stood apart. They did not

-understand the scene. They were not a kind of

-people that could weep and laugh at once. But

-they were not unmoved. For years they had

-heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some two

-or three old men of them saw him now through

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>

-a mist of memory and battle smoke riding a mad

-horse across a field. They knew that this was the

-man. That he should appear out of the fire after

-the nightmare through which they had passed was

-not so much incredible as it was a part of the

-strange things that they had always half believed

-about him.</p>

-<p>Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues

-around the Bishop. Father Ponfret, a quick,

-eager little man of his people, would drag the

-Bishop&rsquo;s story from him by very force. Had he

-dropped from Heaven? How had he come to be

-in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the

-fire?</p>

-<p>The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the

-folly of his own imprudence, and how he had been

-saved from the consequences of it by the quickness

-and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret

-translated freely and with a fine flourish.

-Then the Bishop told of the coming of Rafe Gadbeau

-and how the man had died with the Sacrament.

-They nodded their heads in silence.

-There was nothing to be said. They knew who

-the man was. He had done wickedly. But the

-good God had stretched out the wing of His great

-Church over him at the last. Why say more?

-God was good. No?</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people,

-grouped on the outskirts of the crowd that pressed

-around the Bishop, answering their eager questions

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>

-and asking questions of her own. There was just

-one question that she wanted to ask, but something

-kept it back from her lips. There was no reason

-at all why she should not ask them about Jeffrey

-Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard

-news of him, must know in what direction he had

-gone to fight the fire. But some unnamed dread

-seemed to take possession of her so that she dared

-not put her crying question into words.</p>

-<p>Some one at her elbow, who had heard what

-the French people were saying, asked:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re sure that was Gadbeau that crawled

-out of the fire and died, Miss Lansing?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was

-Gadbeau, certainly,&rdquo; Ruth answered without looking

-up.</p>

-<p>Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s two of &rsquo;em done for. That was

-Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting shot Rogers.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He did not!&rdquo; Ruth blazed up in the young

-man&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Jeffrey Whiting did <i>not</i> shoot Rogers!

-Rafe&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The horror of the thing she had been about to

-do rushed upon her and blinded her. The blood

-came rushing up into her throat and brain, choking

-her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered.

-The young man, Perry Waite, caught her

-by the arm as she seemed about to fall. She

-struggled a moment for control of herself, then

-managed to gasp:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing&ndash;&ndash; Let me go.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Perry Waite looked sharply into her face.

-Then he took his hand from her arm.</p>

-<p>Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped

-away and crowded herself in among the people

-who stood around the Bishop. Here no one

-would be likely to speak to her. And here, too,

-she felt a certain relief, a sense of security, in being

-surrounded by people who would understand.

-Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet

-the mere feeling that she stood among those who

-could have understood gave her strength and a

-feeling of safety even against herself which she

-could not have had among her own kind.</p>

-<p>But she was not long left with her feeling of

-security. A wan, grey-faced girl with burning

-eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and drew her

-out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal,

-though Ruth found it difficult to recognise in her

-the red-cheeked, sprightly French girl she had met

-in the early summer.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You saw Rafe Gadbeau die,&rdquo; the girl said

-roughly, as she faced Ruth sharply at a little distance

-from the crowd. &ldquo;You were there, close?

-No?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, the fire was all around,&rdquo; Ruth answered,

-quaking.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How did he die? Tell me. How?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why&ndash;&ndash;why, he died quickly, in the Bishop&rsquo;s

-arms.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I know. Yes. But how? He <i>confessed</i>?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He&ndash;&ndash;he went to confession, you mean.

-Yes, I think so.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; she persisted. &ldquo;I heard

-M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop. But did he <i>confess</i>&ndash;&ndash;about

-Rogers?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know

-I didn&rsquo;t hear anything. I couldn&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t say nothing, except in confession?&rdquo;

-the girl questioned swiftly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Nothing at all,&rdquo; Ruth answered, relieved.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And you heard?&rdquo; the girl returned shrewdly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know

-that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know you are lying,&rdquo; Cynthe said slowly.

-&ldquo;That is right. But I do not know. Will you

-always be able to lie? I do not know. You are

-Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not

-like one of us. Sometime you will forget. It is

-not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in us.

-Sometime when you are not thinking some one will

-ask you a question and you will start and your

-tongue will slip, or you will be silent&ndash;&ndash;and that

-will be just as bad.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She

-dared not speak, did not even raise her eyes, for

-any assurance of silence or even a reassuring look

-to the girl would be an admission that she must not

-make.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did

-not hear a word! You cannot speak to me. But

-swear it to your soul,&rdquo; said the girl in a low, tense

-whisper; &ldquo;swear that you will never, sleeping or

-waking, laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let

-woman or man know that you heard. Swear it.

-And while you swear, remember.&rdquo; She drew

-Ruth close to her and almost hissed into her ear:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Remember&ndash;&ndash; You love Jeffrey Whiting!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She dropped Ruth&rsquo;s arm and turned quickly

-away.</p>

-<p>Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind

-lost in a whirl of fright and bewilderment. She

-did not know where to turn. She could not grapple

-with the racing thoughts that went hurtling

-through her mind.</p>

-<p>This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was

-half crazed with her love and her grief. And she

-was determined to protect his name from the dark

-blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is

-sometimes given to those beside themselves with

-some great grief or strain, the girl had seen Ruth&rsquo;s

-terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had

-plucked it out before Ruth&rsquo;s very eyes.</p>

-<p>The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened,

-thought Ruth. She had broken the seal of

-the confessional! She had been entrusted with

-the most terrible secret that a man could have to

-tell, under the most awful bond that God could put

-upon a secret. And the secret had escaped her!</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span></div>

-<p>She had said no word at all. But, just as surely

-as if she had repeated the cry of the dying man in

-the night, Ruth knew that the other girl had taken

-her secret from her.</p>

-<p>And with that same uncanny insight, too, the

-girl had looked into the future and had shown

-Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her.

-Nay, what a burden it was already becoming.

-For already she was afraid to speak to any one,

-afraid to go near any person that she had ever

-known.</p>

-<p>And that girl had stripped bare another of

-Ruth&rsquo;s secrets, one that had been hidden even

-from herself. She had said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Remember&ndash;&ndash; You love Jeffrey Whiting.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>In ways, she had always loved him. But she

-now realised that she had never known what love

-was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up

-in the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to

-clutch and tear for the dead name of the man

-whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it

-was, and it came burning up in her heart to protect

-the dear name of her own beloved one, her man.

-Already men were putting the brand of Cain upon

-him! Already the word was running from mouth

-to mouth over the hills&ndash;&ndash; The word of blood!

-And with it ran the name of her love! Jeffrey,

-the boy she had loved since always, the man she

-would love forever!</p>

-<p>He would hear it from other mouths. But,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>

-oh! the cruel, unbearable taunt was that only two

-days ago he had heard it first from her own lips!

-Why? Why? How? How had she ever said

-such a thing? Ever thought of such a thing?</p>

-<p>But she could not speak as the French girl had

-spoken for her man. She could not swear the

-mouths to silence. She could not cry out the

-bursting, torturing truth that alone would close

-those mouths. No, not even to Jeffrey himself

-could she ever by word, or even by the faintest

-whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew

-more than his and other living mouths could tell

-her! Never would she be able to look into his

-eyes and say:</p>

-<p>I <i>know</i> you did not do it.</p>

-<p>Only in her most secret heart of hearts could

-she be glad that she knew. And even that knowledge

-was the sacred property of the dead man.

-It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of

-her mind. Love, horror, and the awful weight of

-God&rsquo;s seal pressed in upon her to crush her.

-There was no way to turn, no step to take. She

-could not meet them, could not cope with them.</p>

-<p>Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd

-and down to where Brom Bones stood by the lake.

-There the kindly French women found her, her

-face buried in the colt&rsquo;s mane, crying hysterically.

-They bathed her hands and face and soothed her,

-and when she was a little quieted they gave her

-drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>

-that she would need strength above all things,

-took what was given and silently faced the galling

-weight of the burden that was hers.</p>

-<p>The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole

-situation. The first thing to be decided was

-whether the people should try to hold out where

-they were or should attempt at once to walk out

-to the villages on the north or west. To the west

-it would mean forty miles of walking over ashes

-with hardly any way of carrying water. To the

-north it would mean a longer walk, but they could

-follow the river and have water at hand. The

-danger in that direction was that they might come

-into the path of a new fire that would cut them

-off from all help.</p>

-<p>Even if they did come out safe to the villages,

-what would they do there? They would be scattered,

-penniless, homeless. There was nothing

-left for them here but the places where their

-homes had been, but at least they would be together.

-The cataclysm through which they had

-all passed, which had brought the prosperous and

-the poverty-stricken alike to the common level of

-just a few meals away from starvation, would here

-bind them together and give them a common

-strength for a new grip on life. If there was

-food enough to carry them over the four or five

-days that would be required to get supplies up

-from Lowville or from the head of the new railroad,

-then they should stay here.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span></div>

-<p>The Bishop went swiftly among them, where

-already mothers were drawing family groups aside

-and parcelling out the doles of food. Already

-these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree

-and drawing around them and theirs the circle of

-the hearth, even though it was a circle drawn only

-in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor

-kindly of eye and understanding of heart,

-but by no means to be evaded. Unsuspected

-stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came

-forth from nondescript bundles of clothing and

-were laid under his eye. It appeared that Arsene

-LaComb had stayed in his little provision store

-until the last moment portioning out what was his

-with even hand, to each one as much as could be

-carried. The Bishop saw that it was all pitifully

-little for those who had lived in the village and

-for those refugees who had been driven in from

-the surrounding hills. But, he thought, it would

-do. These were people born to frugality, inured

-to scanty living.</p>

-<p>The thing now was to give them work for their

-hands, to put something before them that was to

-be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all

-things it is not well for men to sit down in the

-ashes and merely wait. They had no tools left

-but the axes which they had carried in their hands

-to the rafts, but with these they could hew some

-sort of shelter out of the loose logs in the lake.

-A rough shack of any kind would cover at least

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span>

-the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up

-or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at

-the outlet of the lake. It would be slow work and

-hard and a makeshift at the best. But it would

-put heart into them to see at least something, anything,

-begin to rise from the hopeless level of the

-ashes.</p>

-<p>Three of the hill men had managed to keep

-their horses by holding desperately to them all

-through the day before and swimming and wading

-them through the night in the lake. These

-the Bishop despatched to what, as near as he could

-judge, were the nearest points from which messages

-could be gotten to the world outside the

-burnt district. They bore orders to dealers in the

-nearest towns for all the things that were immediately

-necessary for the life and rebuilding of the

-little village. With the orders went the notes of

-hand of all the men gathered here who had had

-a standing of credit or whose names would mean

-anything to the dealers. And, since the world

-outside would well know that these men had now

-nothing that would make the notes worth while,

-each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of

-Alden. For the Bishop knew that there was no

-time to wait for charity and its tardy relief.

-Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone

-makes the life of the world go on, must be established

-at once. And it was characteristic of

-Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>

-penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he

-was signing obligations upon himself and his diocese.

-He was simply writing down his gospel

-of his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men.

-And it is a commentary upon that faith of his that

-he was never presented with a single one of the

-notes he signed that day.</p>

-<p>All the day long men toiled with heart and will,

-dragging logs and driftwood from the lake and

-cutting, splitting, shaping planks and joists for a

-shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and

-spikes from the ruins of what had been their

-homes. So that when night came down over the

-hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of

-women and children. And the light spirited,

-sanguine people raised cheer after cheer as their

-imagination leaped ahead to the new French Village

-that would rise glorious out of the ashes of

-the old. Then Father Ponfret, catching their

-mood, raised for them the hymn to the Good

-Saint Anne. They were all men from below

-Beaupre and from far Chicothomi where the Good

-Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had

-never been out of their childhood hearing. They

-sang it now, old and young, good and bad, their

-eyes filling with the quick-welling tears, their

-hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence

-on the lilt of the air. Even the Bishop, whose

-singing voice approached a scandal and whose

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>

-French has been spoken of before, joined in loud

-and unashamed.</p>

-<p>Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring

-in the twilight brooded them in to shelter

-from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing

-odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to

-talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the

-hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.</p>

-<p>Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very

-old man to-night, laid his head upon a saddle and

-a folded blanket and considered the Mysteries of

-God and His world, as the beads slipped through

-his fingers and unfolded their story to him.</p>

-<p>Two men were stumbling fearfully down

-through the ashes of the far slope to the lake.

-All day long they had lain on their faces in the

-grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The

-fire had gone on past them leaving them safe.

-But behind them rose tier upon tier of barren

-rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly

-of unknown country. They could not go that

-way. They were not, in fact, fit for travel in any

-direction. For all the day before they had run,

-dodging like hunted rats, between a line of fire&ndash;&ndash;of

-their own making&ndash;&ndash;before them, and a line of

-armed men behind them. They had outrun the

-fire and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun

-the men and escaped them. They were free

-of those two enemies. But a third enemy had

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>

-run with them all through the day yesterday and

-had stayed with them through all the horror of

-last night and it had lain with them through all the

-blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable,

-scorching thirst, drying their bones, splitting

-their lips, bulging their eyes. And all day long,

-down there before their very eyes, taunting them,

-torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and

-sweet and deep and wide. It was worse than the

-mirage of any desert, for they knew that it was

-real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense

-of sight. They could perhaps have stood the torture

-of one sense. But this lake came up to them

-through all their senses. They could feel the air

-from it cool upon their brows. The wind brought

-the smell of water up to taunt their nostrils.

-And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy

-that they heard the lapping of the little waves

-against the rocks. This last they knew was an

-illusion. But, for the matter of that, all might

-as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their

-enemies who had yesterday chased them with

-death in their hearts, were scattered around the

-shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one

-who might come out of the fringe of shrub and

-grass beyond the line of the burnt ground. No

-living thing could move down that bare and

-whitened hillside toward the lake without being

-marked by those armed men. And, for these two

-men, to be seen meant to die.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span></div>

-<p>So they had lain all day on their faces and raved

-in their torture. Now when they saw the fires on

-the shore where French Village had been beginning

-to die down they were stumbling painfully

-and crazily down to the water.</p>

-<p>They threw themselves down heavily in the

-burnt grass at the edge of the lake and drank

-greedily, feverishly until they could drink no

-more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the

-grass and rested until they could return to drink.

-When they had fully slaked their thirst and rested

-to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they

-realised now that thirst was not the only thing in

-the world. It had taken up so much of their recent

-thought that they had forgotten everything

-else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came

-upon them and they knew that if they would live

-and travel&ndash;&ndash;and they must travel&ndash;&ndash;they would

-have to have food at once.</p>

-<p>Over there at the end of the lake where the

-cooking fires had now died out there were men

-lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There

-was food over there, food in plenty, food to be

-had for the taking! Now it did not seem that

-thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any

-great thing to be feared. Hunger was the only

-real enemy. Food was the one thing that they

-must have, before all else and in spite of all else.

-They would go over there and take the food in

-the face of all the world!</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span></div>

-<p>Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water

-side picking drowsily at a few wisps of half-burnt

-grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself.

-There was a great deal wrong with the world.

-He had not, it seemed, seen a spear of fresh grass

-for an age. And as for oats, he did not remember

-when he had had any. It was true that Ruth

-had dug up some baked potatoes out of a field for

-him and he had been glad to eat them, but&ndash;&ndash;Fresh

-grass! Or oats!</p>

-<p>Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his

-hobbles. It was nothing to be alarmed at, of

-course. But he did not like strange hands around

-him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and

-thought no more of the matter.</p>

-<p>A few moments later a man went running softly

-toward the horse. He carried a bundle of tinned

-meats and preserves slung in a coat. At peril of

-his life he had crept up and stolen them from the

-common pile that was stacked up at the very door

-of the shanty where the women and children

-slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom

-Bones&rsquo; bridle and tried to launch himself across

-the colt&rsquo;s back. In his leap a can of meat fell and

-a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom

-Bones&rsquo; hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.</p>

-<p>A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping

-a rifle and kicking the embers into a blaze.

-He saw the man struggling with the horse and

-fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>

-leaped and plunged head down towards the

-water, shot dead through his stout, faithful

-heart.</p>

-<p>In a moment twenty men were running into the

-dark, shouting and shooting at everything that

-seemed to move, while the women and children

-screamed and wailed their fright within the little

-building.</p>

-<p>The two men running with the food for which

-they had been willing to give their lives dropped

-flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men

-running wildly stumbled over them. They were

-quickly secured and hustled and kicked to their

-feet and brought back to the fire.</p>

-<p>They must die. And they must die now.

-They were in the hands of men whose homes they

-had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced

-with the most terrible of deaths; men who for

-thirty-six hours now had been thirsting to kill

-them. The hour had come.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Take them down to the gully. Build a fire

-and dig their graves.&rdquo; Old Erskine Beasley

-spoke the sentence.</p>

-<p>A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer.

-A cry that suggested the snapping of jaws

-let loose upon the prey.</p>

-<p>Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst

-of the crowd, laying hands upon the two cowering

-men, and spoke. A moment before he had

-caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>

-done. But he had cried to God against the sin

-that had whispered at his heart, and he spoke now

-calmly, as one assured.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do we do wisely, men?&rdquo; he questioned.

-&ldquo;These men are guilty. We know that, for you

-saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just,

-for they planned what might have been death for

-you and yours. But shall only these two be punished?

-Are there not others? And if we silence

-these two now forever, how shall we be ever able

-to find the others?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll be sure of these two,&rdquo; said a sullen

-voice in the crowd.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; returned the Bishop, raising his voice.

-&ldquo;But I tell you there are others greater than any

-of these who have come into the hills risking their

-lives. How shall we find and punish those other

-greater ones? And I tell you further there is one,

-for it is always one in the end. I tell you there is

-one man walking the world to-night without a

-thought of danger or disgrace from whose single

-mind came all this trouble upon us. That one

-man we must find. And I pledge you, my friends

-and my neighbours,&rdquo; he went on raising his hand,

-&ldquo;I pledge you that that one man will be found

-and that he will do right by you.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Before these men die, bring a justice&ndash;&ndash;there

-is one of the village&ndash;&ndash;and let them confess before

-the world and to him on paper what they

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>

-know of this crime and of those who commanded

-it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>A grudging silence was the only answer, but the

-Bishop had won for the time. Old Toussaint

-Derossier, the village justice, was brought forward,

-fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers,

-and made to sit upon an up-turned bucket with a

-slab across his knee and write in his long hand of

-the <i>rue Henri</i> the story that the men told.</p>

-<p>They were ready to tell. They were eager to

-spin out every detail of all they knew for they felt

-that men stood around them impatient for the

-ending of the story, that they might go on with

-their task.</p>

-<p>The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet

-to come. He must save these men, not only because

-it was his duty as a citizen and a Christian

-and a priest, but because he foresaw that his

-friend, Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused

-of the killing of a certain man, and that these

-men might in that day be able to tell something of

-that story which he himself could but must not

-tell.</p>

-<p>The temper of the crowd was perhaps running

-a little lower when the story of the men was

-finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure

-that he could hold them back from their purpose.

-Nevertheless he spoke simply and with a determination

-that was not to be mistaken. At the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span>

-first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry

-out their intention, he said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall

-not, I say. Shall not. I will prevent. I will

-put this old body of mine between. You shall

-not move these men from this spot. And if they

-are shot, then the bullets must pass through me.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You will call this thing justice. But you know

-in your hearts it is just one thing&ndash;&ndash;Revenge.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What business is it of yours?&rdquo; came an angry

-voice out of the crowd.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is <i>not</i> my business,&rdquo; said the Bishop solemnly.

-&ldquo;It is the business of God. Of your

-God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest?

-Have I no right to speak God&rsquo;s name to you, because

-we do not believe all the same things? My

-business is with the souls of men&ndash;&ndash;of all men.

-And never in my life have I so attended to my own

-business as I am doing this minute, when I say to

-you in the name of God, of the God of my fathers

-and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder

-upon your souls this night. Have you wives?

-Have you mothers? Have you sweethearts?

-Can you go back to them with blood upon your

-hands and say: A man warned us, but he had no

-<i>business</i>!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear

-not. Justice shall be done. And you will see

-right in the end. As you believe in your God,

-oh! believe me now! You shall see right!&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span></div>

-<p>The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw

-it in the faces of the men about him. God had

-spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his

-feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was

-glad.</p>

-<p>He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over

-them.</p>

-<p>Then he went down near to the lake where a

-girl kneeling beside her dead pet wept wildly.

-The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done

-his noble part in saving the life of Joseph

-Winthrop, Bishop of Alden. But that Bishop of

-Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful

-words, had now no word that he could dare to

-say in comfort to this grief.</p>

-<p>He covered his face and turned, walking away

-through the ashes into the dark. And as he

-walked, fingering his beads, he again considered

-the things of God and His world.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>

-<a name='VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL' id='VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL'></a>

-<h2>VII</h2>

-<h3>THE INNER CITADEL</h3>

-</div>

-<p>&ldquo;And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to

-prove to your absolute satisfaction that this defendant,

-Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and with

-prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the

-morning of August twentieth last. I shall not

-only prove to you the existence of a long-standing

-hatred harboured by this defendant against the

-murdered man, but I will show to you a direct motive

-for the crime. And I shall not only prove

-circumstantially to you that he and no other could

-have done the deed but I shall also convict him out

-of the unwilling mouths of his friends and neighbours

-who were, to all intents and purposes, actual

-eye-witnesses of the crime.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette

-County the District Attorney of the county was

-opening the case for the State against Jeffrey

-Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers,

-who had died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau

-that grim morning on the side of Bald Mountain.</p>

-<p>From early morning the streets of Danton, the

-little county seat of Racquette County, had been

-filled with the wagons and horses of the hill people

-who had come down for this, the second day

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>

-of the trial. Yesterday the jury had been selected.

-They were all men of the villages and of

-the one little city of Racquette County, men whose

-lives or property had never been endangered by

-forest fires. Judge Leslie in questioning them and

-in ruling their selection had made it plain that the

-circumstances surrounding the killing of the man

-Rogers must have no weight in their minds.

-They must be prepared to judge the guilt or innocence

-of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder

-itself, with no regard for what rumour might

-say the victim had been doing at the time.</p>

-<p>For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the

-man had been killed just a mile or so within the

-line of Racquette County. Only a little of the extreme

-southeastern corner of that county had been

-burned over in the recent fire and in general it had

-meant very little to these people. In Tupper

-County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which

-had suffered terribly from the fire it should have

-been nearly impossible to select a jury which would

-have been willing to convict the slayer of Rogers

-under the circumstances. But to the people of

-the villages of Racquette County the matter did

-not come home. They only knew that a man had

-been killed up the corner of the county. A forest

-fire had started at about the same time and place.

-But few people had any clear version of the story.

-And there seemed to be little doubt as to the identity

-of the slayer.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span></div>

-<p>There was another and far more potent reason

-why it was unfortunate for Jeffrey Whiting that

-Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of

-Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the

-bench was the same man who only a few weeks

-before had pleaded so unctuously before the Senate

-committee for the rights of the downtrodden U.

-&amp; M. Railroad against the lawless people of the

-hills. He had given the District Attorney every

-possible assistance toward the selection of a jury

-who would be at least thoughtful of the interests

-of the railroad. For this was not merely a murder

-trial. It was the case of the people of the

-hills against the U. &amp; M. Railroad.</p>

-<p>Racquette County was a &ldquo;railroad&rdquo; county.

-The life of every one of its rising villages depended

-absolutely upon the good will of the railroad

-system that had spread itself beneficently

-over the county and that had given it a prosperity

-beyond that of any other county of the North.

-Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad,

-and it was not in the disposition or the plans

-of the railroad to leave the county in a position

-where it might forget the debt. So the railroad

-saw to it that only men personally known to its

-officials should have public office in the county.

-It had put this judge upon this bench. And the

-railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid

-him well for the very timely and valuable services

-which he was able to render it.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span></div>

-<p>The grip which the railroad corporation had

-upon the life of Racquette County was so complex

-and varied that it extended to every money-making

-affair in the community. It was an intangible

-but impenetrable mesh of interests and influences

-that extended in every direction and crossed and

-intercrossed so that no man could tell where it

-ended. But all men could surely tell that these

-lines of influence ran from all ends of the county

-into the hand of the attorney for the railroad in

-Alden and that from his hand they passed on into

-the hands of the single great man in New York

-whose money and brain dominated the whole

-transportation business of the State. All men

-knew, too, that those lines passed through the

-Capitol at Albany and that no man there, from

-the Executive down to the youngest page in the

-legislative corridors, was entirely immune from

-their influence.</p>

-<p>Now the U. &amp; M. Railroad had been openly

-charged with having procured the setting of the

-fire that had left five hundred hill people homeless

-in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would,

-of course, be impossible to bring the railroad to

-trial on such a charge in any county of the State.

-The company had really nothing to fear in the way

-of criminal prosecution. But the matter had

-touched the temper and roused the suspicions of

-the great, headless body called the public. The

-railroad felt that it must not be silent under even

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span>

-a muttered and vague charge of such nature. It

-must strike first, and in a spectacular manner. It

-must divert the public mind by a counter charge.</p>

-<p>Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes

-of the fire, the Grand Jury of Racquette County

-had been prepared to find an indictment against

-Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers.

-They had found that Samuel Rogers was an agent

-of the railroad engaged upon a peaceable and lawful

-journey through the hills in the interests of his

-company. He had been found shot through the

-back of the head and the circumstances surrounding

-his death were of such a nature and disposition

-as to warrant the finding of a bill against the

-young man who for months had been leading a

-stubborn fight against the railroad.</p>

-<p>The case had been advanced over all others on

-the calendar in Judge Leslie&rsquo;s court, for the railroad

-was determined to occupy the mind of the

-public with this case until the people should have

-had time to forget the sensation of the fire. The

-mind at the head of the railroad&rsquo;s affairs argued

-that the mind of the public could hold only one

-thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put

-this murder case into that mind and keep it there

-until some new thing should arise.</p>

-<p>The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had

-been brought to trial; the well-oiled smoothness

-with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had

-done its work, and the efficient way in which judge

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>

-and prosecuting attorney had worked together for

-the selection of what was patently a &ldquo;railroad&rdquo;

-jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident

-power was moving its forces to an assured and

-definite end. This judge and this jury would

-allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in

-the way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the

-man had been caught in the act of setting fire to the

-forests, if the Judge allowed it to appear in the

-record at all, would not stand with the jury as

-justification, or even extenuation of the deed of

-murder charged. The fate of the accused must

-hang solely on the question of fact, whether or

-not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other

-question would be allowed to enter.</p>

-<p>And on that question it seemed that the minds

-of all men were already made up. The prisoner&rsquo;s

-friends and associates in the hills had been at first

-loud in their commendation of the act which they

-had no doubt was his. Now, though they talked

-less and less, they still did not deny their belief.

-It was known that they had congratulated him on

-the very scene of the murder. What room was

-there in the mind of any one for doubt as to the

-actual facts of the killing? And since his conviction

-or acquittal must hinge on that single question,

-what room was there to hope for his acquittal?</p>

-<p>The hill people had come down from their

-ruined homes, where they had been working night

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>

-and day to put a roof over their families before

-the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen

-and nervous. They had no doubt whatever

-that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and they

-had been forced to come down here to tell what

-they knew&ndash;&ndash;every word of which would count

-against them. They had come down determined

-that he should not suffer for his act, which had

-been done, as it were, in the name of all of them.

-But the rapid certainty in which the machinery

-of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved

-them. There was nothing for them to do, it

-seemed, but to sit there, idle and glum, waiting

-for the end.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the

-opening arraignment by the District Attorney.

-He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of

-circumstances which had begun to wrap itself

-around him that morning on Bald Mountain had

-never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold

-upon him. He had followed his friends that day

-and all of that night and had reached Lowville

-early the next day. He had found his mother

-there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom,

-but had been horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing

-had turned back into the face of the fire in an effort

-to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No

-word had been had of either of them. He had

-told his mother exactly what had happened in the

-hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span>

-had wished to do so. But another had fired before

-he did. He had not, in fact, used his gun at

-all. She had believed him implicitly, of course.

-Why should she not? If he had actually shot the

-man he would have told her that just as exactly

-and truthfully. But Jeffrey was aware that she

-was the only person who did or would believe him.</p>

-<p>He was just on the point of mounting one of his

-mother&rsquo;s horses, to go up into the lower hills in

-the hope of finding Ruth wandering somewhere,

-when he was placed under arrest for the murder of

-Rogers. The two men who had escaped down

-the line of the chain had gotten quickly to a telegraph

-line and had made their report. The railroad

-people had taken their decision and had acted

-on the instant. The warrant was ready and waiting

-for Jeffrey before he even reached Lowville.</p>

-<p>When he had been taken out of his own county

-and brought before the Grand Jury in Racquette

-County, he realised that any hope he might have

-had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was

-thereby lost. Unless he could find and actually

-produce that other man, whoever he was, who had

-fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless.

-His own friends who had been there at hand

-would not believe his oath.</p>

-<p>His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in

-the front seats just to the right of him. From time

-to time he turned to smile reassuringly at them

-with a confidence that he was far from feeling.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>

-His mother smiled back through glistening grey

-eyes, all the while marking with a twinge at her

-heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep

-into the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she

-was thinking of the morning, just a few months

-ago when her little boy, suddenly and unaccountably

-grown to the size of a tall man, had been

-obliged to lift up her face to kiss her. He was

-going down into the big world, to conquer it and

-bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness

-of everything but his own plans of conquest,

-which is at once the pride and the heart-stab

-of every mother with her man child, he had kissed

-her and told her the old, old lie that we all have

-told&ndash;&ndash;that he would be back in a little while, that

-all would be the same again. And she had smiled

-up into his face and had compounded the lie with

-him.</p>

-<p>Then in that very moment the man Rogers had

-come. And the mother heart in her was not

-gentle at the thought of him. He had come like

-a trail of evil across their lives, embittering the

-hearts of all of them. Never since she had seen

-him had she slept a good night. Never had she

-been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of

-him. Even now, the thought of him lying in an

-unhonoured grave among the ashes of the hills

-could not soften her heart toward him. The

-gentle, kindly heart of her was very near to hating

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>

-even the dead as she thought of her boy brought

-to this pass because of that man.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail

-in Danton with his mother to see Jeffrey. They

-had not been left alone, but she had clung to him

-and kissed him boldly as though by her right before

-all men. The first time he had watched her

-sharply, looking almost savagely to see her shrink

-away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as

-he had seen men who had been his friends shrink

-away from him. But there had been not a shadow

-of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he

-remembered how she had walked unafraid into

-his arms, looking him squarely and bravely in the

-eyes and crying to him to forget the foolish words

-that she had said to him that last day in the hills.

-In that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into

-her eyes and had seen there not the love of the

-little girl that he had known but the unbounded

-love and confidence of the woman who would give

-herself to him for life or death. He had seen

-it; the look of all the women of earth who love,

-whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying

-pity, whose hands are fashioned for the healing of

-torn hearts.</p>

-<p>It was only when she had gone, and when he in

-the loneliness of his cell was reliving the hour,

-that he remembered that she had scarcely listened

-to his story of the morning in the hills. Of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>

-course, she had heard his story from his mother

-and was probably already so familiar with it that

-it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not

-like Ruth. She was always a direct little person,

-who wanted to know the exact how and why of

-everything first hand. She would not have been

-satisfied with anybody&rsquo;s telling of the matter but

-his own.</p>

-<p>Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind

-and struck at his heart. Could it be that she had

-over-acted it all? Could it be that she had

-brushed aside his story because she really did not

-believe it and could not listen to it without betraying

-her doubt? And had she blinded him

-with her pity? Had she acted all&ndash;&ndash;!</p>

-<p>He threw himself down on his cot and writhed

-in blind despair. Might not even his mother have

-deceived him! Might not she too have been acting!

-What did he care now for name or liberty,

-or life itself! The girl had mocked him with

-what he thought was love, when it was only&ndash;&ndash;!</p>

-<p>But his good sense brought him back and set

-him on his feet. Ruth was no actress. And if

-she had been the greatest actress the world had

-ever seen she could not have acted that flooding

-love light into her eyes.</p>

-<p>He threw back his head, laughing softly, and

-began to pace his cell rapidly. There was some

-other explanation. Either she had deliberately

-put his story aside in order to keep the whole of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>

-their little time together entirely to themselves, or

-Ruth knew something that made his story unimportant.</p>

-<p>She had been through the fire herself. Both

-she and the Bishop must have gone straight

-through it from their home in its front line to the

-rear of it at French Village. How, no one could

-tell. Jeffrey had heard wild tales of the exploit&ndash;&ndash; The

-French people had made many

-wonders of the coming of these two to them in

-the hour of their deliverance, the one the Bishop

-of their souls, the other the young girl just baptised

-by Holy Church and but little differing from

-the angels.</p>

-<p>Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire

-might have revealed to one or both of these two

-as they went through it. Perhaps there were

-other men who had not been accounted for.

-Then he remembered Rafe Gadbeau. He had

-been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey

-at Rogers&rsquo; command. Might it not be that the

-bullet which killed Rogers was intended for

-Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in

-the line of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing

-him squarely and the bullet had struck Rogers

-fairly in the back of the head.</p>

-<p>Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed

-some sort of mysterious hold over Rafe

-Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding unwillingly,

-under a pressure of fear. What if

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>

-Gadbeau there under the excitement of the fire,

-and certain that another man would be charged

-with the killing, had decided that here was the

-time and place to rid himself of the man who had

-made him his slave!</p>

-<p>The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and,

-pacing his cell, stopping between mouthfuls of his

-food as he sat at the jail table, sitting up in his cot

-in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey caught

-at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact

-that would fit into the story as it must have happened.

-He wandered into many blind trails of

-theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he

-at last came upon the truth&ndash;&ndash;and stuck to it.</p>

-<p>Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had

-been caught in the fire and had almost burned to

-death. He had managed to reach the place where

-Ruth and the Bishop had found refuge. He had

-died there in their presence. He had confessed.

-The Catholics always told the truth when they

-were going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had

-heard him. Ruth <i>knew</i>. The Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>

-<p>When Ruth came again, he watched her closely;

-and saw&ndash;&ndash;just what he had expected to see.

-Ruth <i>knew</i>. It was not only her love and her

-confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering,

-torturing doubts that must sometimes, unbidden,

-rise to frighten even his mother. Ruth

-<i>knew</i>.</p>

-<p>That she should not tell him, or give him any

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>

-outward hint of what she was hiding in her mind,

-did not surprise him. It was a very serious matter

-this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter

-with anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man.

-Ruth would not speak unnecessarily of it. When

-the proper time came, and there was need, she

-would speak. For the present&ndash;&ndash;Ruth <i>knew</i>.

-That was enough.</p>

-<p>When the Bishop came down from Alden to see

-him, Jeffrey watched him as he had watched Ruth.

-He had never been very observant. He had

-never had more than a boy&rsquo;s careless indifference

-and disregard of details in his way of looking at

-men and things. But much thinking in the dark

-had now given him intuitions that were now sharp

-and sensitive as those of a woman. He was

-quick to know that the grip of the Bishop&rsquo;s hand

-on his, the look of the Bishop&rsquo;s eye into his, were

-not those of a man who had been obliged to fight

-against doubts in order to keep his faith in him.

-That grip and that look were not those of a man

-who wished to believe, who tried to believe, who

-told himself and was obliged to keep on telling

-himself that he believed in spite of all. No.

-Those were the grip and the look of a man who

-<i>knew</i>. The Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>

-<p>It was even easier to understand the Bishop&rsquo;s

-silence than it had been to see why Ruth might not

-speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an

-official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>

-He must not speak of such things without a very

-serious cause. But, of course, there was nothing

-in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent

-man. Of course, when the time and the need

-came, the Bishop would speak.</p>

-<p>So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of

-fact and deduction. So he had watched and discovered

-and reasoned and debated with himself.

-He had not, of course, said a word of these things

-to any one. The result was that, while he listened

-to the plans which his lawyer, young Emmet

-Dardis, laid for his defence&ndash;&ndash;plans which, in

-the face of the incontestable facts which would be

-brought against them, would certainly amount to

-little or nothing&ndash;&ndash;he really paid little attention

-to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of

-the things his heart felt, he had built up around

-himself an inner citadel, as it were, of defence

-which no attack could shake. He had come to

-feel, had made himself feel, that his life and his

-name were absolutely safe in the keeping of these

-two people&ndash;&ndash;the one a girl who loved him and

-who would give her life for him, and the other a

-true friend, a man of God, a true man. He had

-nothing to fear. When the time came these two

-would speak. It was true that he was outwardly

-depressed by the concise and bitter conviction in

-the words of the prosecuting attorney. For

-Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes

-the most terrible of criminal prosecutors&ndash;&ndash;an

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>

-honest, narrow man who was always absolutely

-convinced of the guilt of the accused from the

-moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly

-he had no fear.</p>

-<p>The weight of evidence that would be brought

-against him, the fact that his own best friends

-would be obliged to give their oaths against him,

-the very feeling of being accused and of having

-to scheme and plan to prove his innocence to a

-world that&ndash;&ndash;except here and there&ndash;&ndash;cared not

-a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these

-things bowed his head and brought his eyes down

-to the floor. But they could not touch that inner

-wall that he had built around himself. Ruth

-<i>knew</i>; the Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>

-<p>The rasping speech of the prosecutor was

-finished at last.</p>

-<p>Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.</p>

-<p>The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in

-hand at once for though he had been called as a

-witness for the prosecution it was well known

-that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney

-had made no attempt to school him beforehand,

-and he was determined now to allow him

-to give only direct answers to the questions put to

-him.</p>

-<p>Two or three times the old man attempted to

-explain, at the end of an answer, just why he had

-gone up into the high hills the night before the

-twentieth of August&ndash;&ndash;that he had heard that

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>

-Rogers and a band of men had gone into the

-woods to start fires. But he was ordered to stop,

-and these parts of his answers were kept out of the

-record. Finally he was rebuked savagely by the

-Judge and ordered to confine himself to answering

-the lawyer&rsquo;s questions, on pain of being arrested

-for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding

-that showed the temper and the intention of the

-Judge and a stir of protest ran around the courtroom.

-But old Erskine Beasley was quelled.

-He gave only the answers that the prosecutor

-forced from him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you hear a shot fired?&rdquo; he was asked.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you hear two shots fired?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you see Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s gun?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you examine it?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Had it been fired off?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Excused,&rdquo; snapped the prosecutor. And the

-old man, almost in tears, came down from the

-stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers

-had made the most damaging sort of evidence.</p>

-<p>Then the prosecutor went back in the story to

-establish a motive. He called several witnesses

-who had been agents of the railroad and associated

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>

-in one way or another with the murdered

-man in his efforts to get options on the farm lands

-in the hills. Even these witnesses, though they

-were ready to give details and opinions which

-might have been favorable to his side of the case,

-he held down strictly to answering with a word

-his own carefully thought out questions.</p>

-<p>With these answers the prosecutor built up a

-solid continuity of cause and effect from the day

-when Rogers had first come into the hills to offer

-Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself

-right up to the moment when the two had faced

-each other that morning on Bald Mountain.</p>

-<p>He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to

-undermine and oppose Rogers&rsquo; work from the

-first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of

-a family well known and trusted in the hills. The

-young man had been quick to grasp the situation

-and to believe that he could keep the people from

-dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers&rsquo; work would

-then be a failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then

-be pointed to as the only man who could get the

-options from the people. They would sell or

-hold out at his word. The railroad would have

-to deal with him direct, and at his terms.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from

-many of the owners that they would not sell or

-even sign any paper until such time as he gave

-them the word. Did those promises bind the

-people to him? They did. Did they have the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>

-same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained

-actual options on the property? Yes. Would

-the people stand by their promises? Yes. Then

-Whiting had actually been obtaining what were

-really options to himself, while pretending to hold

-the people back in their own interest? Yes.</p>

-<p>The prosecutor went on to draw out answer

-after answer tending to show that it was not really

-a conflict between the people and the railroad

-that had been making trouble in the hills all summer;

-that it was, in fact, merely a personal struggle

-for influence and gain between Jeffrey Whiting

-and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully

-done and drawn out with all the exaggerated

-effect of truth which bald negative and affirmative

-answers invariably carry.</p>

-<p>He went on to show that a bitter hatred had

-grown up between the two men. Rogers had been

-accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the

-way at a time in the early summer when many of

-the people about French Village had been prepared

-to sign Rogers&rsquo; options. Rogers had been

-obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account

-of Whiting&rsquo;s anger. He had not returned to the

-hills until the day before he was killed.</p>

-<p>The people in the hills had talked freely of

-what had happened on Bald Mountain on the

-morning of August twentieth and in the hills during

-the afternoon and night preceding. The

-prosecutor knew the incidents and knew what men

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>

-had said to each other. He now called Myron

-Stocking.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon

-of August nineteenth?&rdquo; was the question.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I went lookin&rsquo; for him, to tell&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Answer, yes or no?&rdquo; shouted the attorney.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the witness admitted sullenly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you tell him that Rogers was in the

-hills?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He followed me,&rdquo; the witness began. But

-the Judge rapped warningly and the attorney

-yelled:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes or no?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you see Rogers in the morning?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, he was settin&rsquo; fire to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; The Judge

-hammering furiously with his gavel drowned his

-words. The attorney went on:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you hear a shot?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you hear two shots?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The fire&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;was making a lot of noise, he

-tried to say. But his voice was smothered by

-eruptions from the court and the attorney. He

-was finally obliged to say that he had heard but

-one shot. Then he was asked:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;What did you say when you came up and saw

-the dead man?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;Mine got away, Jeff.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What else did you say?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the difference, any of us

-would&rsquo;ve done it if we had the chance.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Whiting&rsquo;s gun had been fired?&rdquo; asked the attorney,

-working back.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;One question more and I will excuse you,&rdquo;

-said the attorney, with a show of friendliness&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;I

-see it is hard for you to testify against your

-friend. Did you, standing there with the facts

-fresh before you, conclude that Jeffrey Whiting

-had fired the shot which killed Rogers?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that

-it was not proper, that the answer would not be

-evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply,

-reminding him that this witness had been called

-by the prosecution, that it was not the business of

-opposing counsel to protect him. The witness

-found himself forced to answer a simple yes.</p>

-<p>One by one the other men who had been present

-that fatal morning were called. Their answers

-were identical, and as each one was forced

-to give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning

-Jeffrey Whiting out of the mouths of his

-friends who had stood on the very ground of the

-murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for

-him was closing.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span></div>

-<p>On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do

-little with the witnesses. He was gruffly reminded

-by the Judge that the witnesses were not

-his, that he must not attempt to draw any fresh

-stories from them, that he might only examine

-them on the facts which they had stated to the

-District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had

-pinned his witnesses down absolutely to answers

-of known fact, there was really nothing in their

-testimony that could be attacked.</p>

-<p>With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet

-Dardis let the last witness go. The State

-promptly rested its case.</p>

-<p>Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised

-how pitifully inadequate their testimony

-would be when placed beside the chain of facts

-which the District Attorney had pieced together.

-They were in the main character witnesses, hardly

-more. They could tell only of their long acquaintance

-with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in

-him, of their firm faith that in holding the people

-back from giving the options to Rogers and the

-railroad he had been acting in absolute good faith

-and purely in the interests of the people. Not

-one of these men had been near the scene of the

-murder, for the railroad had planned its campaign

-comprehensively and had subp&oelig;naed for its

-side every man who could have had any direct

-knowledge of the events leading up to the tragedy.

-As line after line of their testimony was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>

-stricken from the record, as being irrelevant, it

-was seen that the defence had little or no case.

-Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single

-objections, made a general ruling that no testimony

-which did not tend to reveal the identity

-of the man who had shot Rogers could go into the

-record.</p>

-<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously

-watching the course of the trial. Beside

-him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village.

-The little French priest looked up from

-time to time and guardedly studied the long angular

-white head of his bishop as it towered above

-him. He did not know, but he could guess some

-of the struggle that was going on in the mind and

-the heart of the Bishop.</p>

-<p>The Bishop had come down to the trial to give

-what aid he could, in the way of showing his confidence

-and faith, to the case of the boy who stood

-in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he

-had first heard of Jeffrey&rsquo;s arrest, he had not

-thought it possible that, even had he been guilty

-of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be convicted

-under such circumstances. Men must see

-that the act was in defence of life and property.

-But as he listened to the progress of the trial he

-realised sadly that he had very much underestimated

-the seriousness of the railroad people in the

-matter and the hold which they had upon the machinery

-of justice in Racquette County.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span></div>

-<p>He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and

-tell the reason why Jeffrey Whiting had entered

-into this fight against the railroad. He would associate

-himself and his own good name with the

-things that Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the

-two might stand before men together. But he

-now saw that it would be of no avail. His words

-would be swept aside as irrelevant.</p>

-<p>One thing and only one thing would now avail

-Jeffrey Whiting. This morning on his arrival in

-Danton, the Bishop had been angered at learning

-that the two men whose lives he had

-saved that night by the lake at French Village

-had escaped from the train as they were being

-brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at

-this trial.</p>

-<p>Whether they could have told anything of value

-to Jeffrey Whiting was not known. Certainly

-they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the

-connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop

-had their confession in his pocket at this minute,

-but there was nothing in it concerning the murder.

-He had intended to read it into the record of the

-trial. He saw that he would not be allowed to

-do so.</p>

-<p>One thing and only one thing would now avail

-Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey Whiting would be condemned

-to death, unless, within the hour, a man

-or woman should rise up in this room and swear:

-Jeffrey Whiting did not kill Samuel Rogers.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>

-Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or&ndash;&ndash;He

-told me so.</p>

-<p>The Bishop remembered how that day last winter

-he had set the boy upon this course which had

-brought him here into this court and into the

-shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey

-Whiting had actually fired the shot that had cut

-off a human life, would not he, Joseph, Bishop of

-Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility?

-He would.</p>

-<p>And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of

-his own, but through a chain of circumstances,

-stood now in danger of death, was not he, Joseph

-Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst

-of these circumstances, in a way responsible? He

-was.</p>

-<p>Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this

-court and saying: &ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau killed Samuel

-Rogers&ndash;&ndash;He told me so&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;could he thus

-save Jeffrey Whiting from a felon&rsquo;s fate? He

-could. Nine words, no more, would do.</p>

-<p>And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and

-did not do what was necessary&ndash;&ndash;did not speak

-those nine words&ndash;&ndash;would he, Joseph Winthrop,

-be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment

-and ruin of Jeffrey Whiting? He

-would.</p>

-<p>Then what would Joseph Winthrop do?

-Would he speak those nine words? He would

-not.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span></div>

-<p>There was no claim of life or death that had

-the force to break the seal and let those nine words

-escape his lips.</p>

-<p>There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision

-in the Bishop&rsquo;s mind as he sat there waiting for

-his name to be called. He loved the boy who sat

-there in the prisoner&rsquo;s stand before him. He felt

-responsible for him and the situation in which he

-was. He cared nothing for the dead man or the

-dead man&rsquo;s secret, as such. Yet he would go

-up there and defy the law of humanity and the

-law of men, because he was bound by the law that

-is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal salvation

-of men&rsquo;s souls.</p>

-<p>But there was no reasoning, no weighing of

-the issue in his mind. His course was fixed by the

-eternal Institution of God. There was nothing

-to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was

-caught between the greater and the lesser law and

-he could only stand and be ground between the

-working of the two.</p>

-<p>If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty

-God had ordained the salvation of men

-through the confession of sin. Therefore the salvation

-of men depended on the inviolability of the

-seal of the confessional. But he did not reason.

-He merely sat through his torture, waiting.</p>

-<p>When his name was called, he walked heavily

-forward and took his place standing beside the

-chair that was set for him.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span></div>

-<p>At Dardis&rsquo; question, the Bishop began to speak

-freely and rapidly. He told of the coming of

-Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated

-what he had said to the boy, and from that point

-went on to sketch the things that had been happening

-in the hills. He wanted to get clearly before

-the minds of the jurymen the fact that he

-had advised and directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything

-that the boy had done.</p>

-<p>The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy

-to the Bishop. But he saw that he must

-stop him. His story could not but have a powerful

-effect upon even this jury. Looking past the

-Bishop and addressing Dardis, he said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is this testimony pertinent?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is, if Your Honor pardon me,&rdquo; said

-the Bishop, turning quickly. &ldquo;It goes to prove

-that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed

-the crime charged, any more than I could have

-done so.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully

-the logic or the legal phraseology of his answer.

-He hurried on with his story to the jury. He

-related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting.

-He told of his ride into the hills. He told

-of the capture of the two men in the night at

-French Village. They should be here now as

-witnesses. They had escaped. But he held in his

-hand a written confession, written and sealed by a

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>

-justice of the peace, made by the two men. He

-would read this to the jury.</p>

-<p>He began reading rapidly. But before he had

-gotten much past the opening sentences, the Judge

-saw that this would not do. It was the story of

-the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in

-court.</p>

-<p>He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when

-the Bishop stopped, he asked:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned

-in that paper?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, Your Honor. But there are&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is irrelevant,&rdquo; interrupted the Judge

-shortly. &ldquo;It cannot go before the jury.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do

-no more.</p>

-<p>Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not

-the slightest hope for his client&ndash;&ndash;unless&ndash;&ndash;unless.

-He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession

-to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask

-the Bishop this morning, if there was not some

-way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The

-Bishop stood waiting for his further questions.

-There might be some way or some help, thought

-Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was

-not a part of the real confession. He said

-quickly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;What did he say to you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair,

-his eyes eager and confident. His heart shouting

-that here was his deliverance. Here was the

-hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!</p>

-<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s eyes fell upon the prisoner for

-an instant. Then he looked full into the eyes of

-his questioner and he answered:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That will do. Thank you, Bishop,&rdquo; said

-Dardis in a low, broken voice.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The

-light of confidence died slowly, reluctantly out of

-his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop

-had <i>lied</i>! He <i>knew</i>! And he had <i>lied</i>!</p>

-<p>As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat,

-Ruth Lansing saw the terrible suffering of the

-spirit reflected in his face. If she were questioned

-about that night, she must do as he had done.</p>

-<p>Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must

-I do that? <i>Can</i> I do that?</p>

-<p>Oh! She had never thought it would come to

-this. How <i>could</i> it happen like this! How could

-any one think that she would ever stand like this,

-alone in all the world, with the fate of her love

-in her hands, and not be able to speak the few

-little words that would save him to her and life!</p>

-<p>She <i>would</i> save him! She <i>would</i> speak the

-words! What did she care for that wicked man

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span>

-who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?

-Why should she keep a secret of his? One night

-in the early summer she had lain all through the

-night in the woods outside a cabin and wished

-for a way to kill that man. Why should she

-guard a secret that was no good to him or to any

-one now?</p>

-<p>Who was it that said she must not speak?

-The Catholic Church. Then she would be a Catholic

-no longer. She would renounce it this minute.

-She had never promised anything like this.

-But, on the instant, she knew that that would not

-free her. She knew that she could throw off the

-outward garment of the Church, but still she

-would not be free to speak the words. The

-Church itself could not free her from the seal of

-the secret. What use, then, to fly from the

-Church, to throw off the Church, when the bands

-of silence would still lie mighty and unbreakable

-across her lips.</p>

-<p>That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up

-before her, and what she saw held her.</p>

-<p>What she saw was not merely a church giving

-a sacrament. It was not the dramatic falling of

-a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not a

-poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his

-crime in the agony and fear of death.</p>

-<p>What she saw was a world, herself standing all

-alone in it. What she saw was the soul of the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>

-world giving up its sin into the scale of God from

-which&ndash;&ndash;Heart break or world burn!&ndash;&ndash;that sin

-must never be disturbed.</p>

-<p>As she went slowly across the front of the room

-in answer to her name, a girl came out of one of

-the aisles and stood almost in her path. Ruth

-looked up and found herself staring dully into

-the fierce, piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She

-saw the look in those eyes which she had recognised

-for the first time that day at French Village&ndash;&ndash;the

-terrible mother-hunger look of love,

-ready to die for its own. And though the girl

-said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:

-Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.</p>

-<p>How well that girl knew!</p>

-<p>Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a

-point which he had not been able to correct in the

-testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he had

-dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to

-the Bishop, he had become more desperate, and

-bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was always

-a chance that the dying man had said something

-to her.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon

-when word was brought to him that suspicious

-men had been seen in the hills?&rdquo; he

-asked.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either

-Stocking or Whiting?&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then he flashed the question upon her:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was

-dying?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve.

-The impact of the sudden, startling question leaping

-upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to

-what followed. For, in answer to the question,

-there came a scream, a terrified, agonised scream,

-mingled of fright and remorse and&ndash;&ndash;relief. A

-scream out of the fire. A scream from death.

-<i>On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers

-as he stood.</i></p>

-<p>Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling.

-Again the inner citadel of his hope stood

-strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the

-word that would free him! Her love would set

-him free! It was the time. Ruth <i>knew</i>. He

-would rather have it this way. He was almost

-glad that the Bishop had lied. Ruth <i>knew</i>.

-Ruth would speak.</p>

-<p>The words of that terrible scream went searing

-through Ruth&rsquo;s brain and down into the very

-roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout

-them out to the ends of the earth!</p>

-<p>But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear

-voice answered:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of

-the stand.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span></div>

-<p>Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.</p>

-<p><i>Ruth</i> had <i>lied</i>!</p>

-<p>The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and

-crushed him.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>

-<a name='VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I' id='VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I'></a>

-<h2>VIII</h2>

-<h3>SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse

-and turned up the street toward the little

-church. He had not been the same man since his

-experience of those two terrible nights in the

-hills. They had aged him and shaken him visibly.

-But those nights of suffering and superhuman effort

-had only attacked him physically. They had

-broken the spring of his step and had drawn

-heavily upon the vigour and the vital reserves

-which his years of simple living had left stored

-up in him. He had fought with fire. He had

-looked death in the face. He had roused his soul

-to master the passions of men. No man who has

-already reached almost the full allotted span of

-life may do these things without showing the outward

-effects of them. But these things had struck

-only at the clay of the body. They had not

-touched the quick spirit of the man within.</p>

-<p>The trial through which he had passed to-day

-had cut deep into the spiritual fibre of his being.

-If Joseph Winthrop had been given the alternative

-of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he

-would have offered the few years that might be

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>

-his, without question or halting. For he was a

-man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled

-or thought of taking back any of the things which

-he had given to Christ. Thirty years ago he had

-made his compact with the Master, and he had

-never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts

-on a stole to receive the secret of another&rsquo;s soul

-he puts his life in pledge for the sanctity of that

-secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by

-any perplexities or confusion.</p>

-<p>Never had he thought of the alternative which

-had this day been forced upon him. Years ago

-he had given his own life entire to Christ. The

-snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces

-farther on would be a matter of no more moment

-than the length of a thread. This world had

-nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from

-him. But to guard his secret at the cost of another

-life, and that a young, vigorous, battling

-life full of future and promise, full of youth and

-the glory of living, the life of a boy he loved&ndash;&ndash;that

-was another matter. Never had he reckoned

-with a thing such as that. Life had always been

-so direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To

-think right, to do right, to serve God; these things

-had always seemed very simple. But the thing

-that he had done to-day was breaking his heart.

-He could not have done otherwise. He had been

-given no choice, to be sure.</p>

-<p>But was it possible that God would have allowed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>

-things to come to that issue, if somewhere,

-at some turn in that line of circumstances which

-had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not

-done a wrong? It did not seem possible. Somewhere

-he had done wrong or he had done foolishly&ndash;&ndash;and,

-where men go to direct the lives of

-others, to do unwisely is much the same as to do

-wickedly.</p>

-<p>What use to go over the things that he had

-done, the things that he had advised? What use

-to say, here he had done his best, there he thought

-only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere

-he had spoken foolishly, or he had been headstrong

-in his interference, or he had acted without

-thought and prayer. What use to go over the

-record? He could only carry this matter to God

-and let Him see his heart.</p>

-<p>He stumbled in the half light of the darkened

-little church and sank heavily into the last pew.

-Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart he

-cried out from afar to the Presence on the little

-altar, where he, Bishop of Alden, had often

-spoken with much authority.</p>

-<p>When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up

-into the witness stand she sank down quietly into

-a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the other

-girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes.

-She hung upon every fleeting wave of the contending

-emotions that showed themselves on Ruth&rsquo;s

-face. She was convinced that this girl knew that

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>

-Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of

-Samuel Rogers and that Jeffrey Whiting was innocent.

-She had not thought that Ruth would be

-called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only

-decided upon it at the last moment.</p>

-<p>Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to

-hating this girl, for she had seen Rafe Gadbeau

-leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very long

-time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon

-talking gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe

-Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing left of

-him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory.

-But that memory was as much to her as was

-the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this other girl. She

-was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be?

-What would that girl do? If the question was not

-asked directly, it was not likely that the girl would

-tell what she knew. She would not wish to tell.

-She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the

-question came to her of a sudden, without warning,

-without time for thought? What then?

-Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny

-and to keep on denying?</p>

-<p>Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic.

-But she was a convert. She did not know the

-terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it

-who had been born to the Faith.</p>

-<p>Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from

-this trial. She knew it was no place for her to

-carry the awful secret that she had hidden away

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>

-in her heart. No matter how deeply she might

-have it hidden, the fear hung over her that men

-would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint might

-be enough to set some on the search for it and

-she had had a superstition that it was a secret of a

-nature that it could not be hidden forever. Some

-day some one would tear it from her heart. She

-knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton

-during these days when the hill people were

-talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers and

-hunting for any possible fact that might make

-Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s story believable. But she had

-been drawn irresistibly to the trial and had sat all

-day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly,

-avidly to every word that was said, waiting to

-hear, and praying against hearing the name of

-the man she had loved. The idea of protecting

-his name and his memory from the blight of his

-deed had become more than a religion, more than

-a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own

-thought and life but it seemed even to take up that

-great void in her world which Rafe Gadbeau had

-filled.</p>

-<p>When she had heard his name mentioned in that

-sudden questioning of the Bishop, she had almost

-jumped from her seat to cry out to him that he

-must know nothing. But that was foolish, she

-reflected. They might as well have asked the

-stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell Rafe

-Gadbeau&rsquo;s secret as to ask it from the Bishop.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span></div>

-<p>But this girl was different. You could not tell

-what she might do under the test. If she stood

-the test, if she kept the seal unbroken upon her

-lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for

-life. She would love that girl, she would fetch

-for her, work for her, die for her!</p>

-<p>When that point-blank question came leaping

-upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose

-to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer

-and blurt out something that would give them

-a chance to ask her further questions. But when

-she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she

-saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she

-saw the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light

-broke in upon the heart of Cynthe Cardinal.

-Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could

-not know what love was! Here was a woman,

-a sister woman, who could suffer, who for the sake

-of one greater thing could trample her love under

-foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one

-steady word&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened

-heart could not look at the torture of the other

-girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself

-at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering

-down from the stand and implore her pardon.

-She wanted to cry out to her that she must

-tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth

-all this! For Cynthe Cardinal knew that truth

-bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>

-frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the

-street.</p>

-<p>She had seen the Bishop come direct from the

-little church to the court. And as she watched

-his face when he came down from the stand, she

-knew instinctively that he was going back there.

-Cynthe understood. Even M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop

-who was so wise and strong, he was troubled. He

-thought much of the young Whiting. He would

-have business with God.</p>

-<p>She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the

-church and saw the Bishop kneeling there at the

-end of the pew, bowed and broken.</p>

-<p>He was first aware of her when he heard a

-frightened, hurrying whisper at his elbow. Some

-one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:</p>

-<p><i>Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse.</i></p>

-<p>The ritual would have told him to rise and go to

-the confessional. But here was a soul that was

-pouring its secret out to him in a torrential rush of

-words and sobs that would not wait for ritual.

-The Bishop listened without raising his head. He

-had neither the will nor the power to break in upon

-that cruel story that had been torturing its keeper

-night and day. He knew that it was true, knew

-what the end of it would be. But still he must be

-careful to give no word that would show that he

-knew what was coming. The French of the hills

-and of Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but

-it was easy to follow the thread of the story.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span>

-When she had finished and was weeping quietly,

-the Bishop prompted gently.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And now? my daughter.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And now, <i>Mon Pere</i>, must I tell? I would

-not tell. I loved Rafe Gadbeau. As long as I

-shall live I shall love him. For his good name

-I would die. But I cannot see the suffering of

-that girl, Ruth. <i>Mon Pere</i>, it is too much! I

-cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before

-men and call my love a murderer. Consider,

-<i>Mon Pere</i>. There is another way. I, too, am

-guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I

-would have killed him myself, for he had made

-Rafe Gadbeau do many things that he would not

-have done. He made my love a murderer. I

-went to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of

-the fire. But I would have killed that man myself

-with the gun if I could. So I hated him.

-When I saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee.

-See, <i>Mon Pere</i>, I am guilty. And I called joyfully

-to my love to run with me and save himself,

-for he was now free from that man forever. But

-he ran in the path of the fire because he feared

-those other men.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But see, <i>Mon Pere</i>, I am guilty. I will go

-and tell the court that I am the guilty one. I will

-say that my hand shot that man. See, I will tell

-the story. I have told it many times to myself.

-Such a straight story I shall tell. And they will

-believe. I will make them believe. And they

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>

-will not hurt a girl much,&rdquo; she said, dropping back

-upon her native shrewdness to strengthen her plea.

-&ldquo;The railroad does not care who killed Rogers.

-They want only to punish the young Whiting.

-And the court will believe, as I shall tell it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But, my daughter,&rdquo; said the Bishop, temporising.

-&ldquo;It would not be true. We must not lie.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop, himself,&rdquo; the girl

-argued swiftly, evidently separating the priest in

-the confessional from the great bishop in his public

-walk, &ldquo;he himself, on the stand&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl stopped abruptly.</p>

-<p>The Bishop held the silence of the grave.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i> will make me tell, then&ndash;&ndash;the

-truth,&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, I cannot!

-I&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Let us consider,&rdquo; the Bishop broke in deliberately.

-&ldquo;Suppose he had told this thing to you

-when he was dying. You would have said to him:

-Your soul may not rest if you leave another to

-suffer for your deed. Would he not have told

-you to tell and clear the other man?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;To escape Hell,&rdquo; said the girl quickly, &ldquo;yes.

-He would have said: Tell everything; tell anything!&rdquo;

-In the desolate forlornness of her grief

-she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as

-he was, she had known the man, good and bad,

-brave and cowardly&ndash;&ndash;and had loved him.

-Would always love him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We will not speak of Hell,&rdquo; said the Bishop

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>

-gently. &ldquo;In that hour he would have seen the

-right. He would have told you to tell.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But he confessed to M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop himself,&rdquo;

-she retorted quickly, still seeming to forget

-that she was talking to the prelate in person, but

-springing the trap of her quick wit and sound

-Moral Theology back upon him with a vengeance,

-&ldquo;and he gave <i>him</i> no leave to speak.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous

-ground.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him,

-my daughter?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, with the bones of my hands!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Consider, then, he is not now the man that

-you knew. The man who was blind and walked

-in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where

-a great light shines about him. He knows now

-that which he did not know here&ndash;&ndash;Truth.

-He sees the things which here he did not see. He

-stands alone in the great open space of the Beyond.

-He looks up to God and cries: <i>Seigneur

-Dieu</i>, whither go I?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate,

-standing in the open place. Would he come

-back to the world?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And he answers: &lsquo;No, my God; but I have

-left a debt behind and another man&rsquo;s life stands

-in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward with

-that debt unpaid.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then God: &lsquo;And is there none to cancel the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>

-debt? Is there not one in all that world who

-loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none

-loved you who will pay the debt?&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And he will answer with a lifted heart: &lsquo;My

-God, yes; there was one, a girl; in spite of me, she

-loved me; she will make the debt right; only because

-she loved me may I be saved; she will speak

-and the debt will be right; my God, let me go.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s French was sometimes wonderfully

-and fearfully put together. But the girl

-saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to

-her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with

-almost a little break of joy among the tears. For

-she saw the man, whom she had loved in spite of

-what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and

-sins of life. And her love leaped up quickly to

-the ideal and the illusions that every woman craves

-for and clings to.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; the Bishop was going on quietly, &ldquo;is

-the new man we are to consider; the one who

-stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not

-hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he

-care for the opinions or the words that are said

-here? See, he stands in the great open space,

-all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God

-and tell Him all. Will you be afraid to stand in

-the court and tell these people, who do not matter

-at all?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It

-is not for the sake of Ruth Lansing. It is because

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>

-the man you loved calls back to you, from

-where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom

-he has now learned tells him must be done.

-He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He

-would have you tell.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, I will tell the tale,&rdquo; said the girl

-simply as she rose from her knees. &ldquo;I will go

-quickly, while I have yet the courage.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel

-rooms in the courthouse and sent for Dardis.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This girl,&rdquo; he told the lawyer, &ldquo;has a story

-to tell. I think you would do wisely to put her

-on the stand and let her tell it in her own way.

-She will make no mistakes. They will not be able

-to break her down.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then the Bishop went back to take up again his

-business with God.</p>

-<p>As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey

-Whiting had been put upon the stand in his own

-defence. There was nothing he could tell which

-the jurors had not already heard in one form or

-another. Everybody had heard what he had said

-that morning on Bald Mountain. He had not

-been believed even then, by men who had never

-had a reason to doubt his simple word. There

-was little likelihood that he would be believed here

-now by these jurors, whose minds were already

-fixed by the facts and the half truths which they

-had been hearing. But there was some hope that

-his youth and the manly sincerity with which he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>

-clung to his simple story might have some effect.

-It might be that a single man on that jury would

-be so struck with his single sturdy tale that he

-would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You

-could never tell what might strike a man on a jury.

-So Dardis argued.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel

-wished him to tell his story he would do so. It

-would not matter. His own friends did not believe

-his story. Nobody believed it. Two people

-<i>knew</i> that it was true. And those two people

-had stood up there upon the stand and sworn that

-they did not know. One of them was a good man,

-a man of God, a man he would have trusted with

-every dear thing that life held. That man had

-stood up there and lied. The other was a girl

-whom he loved, and who, he was sure, loved him.</p>

-<p>It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie&ndash;&ndash;or

-maybe she did not consider it a lie: he had seen

-her suffer terribly in the telling of it. He was

-beginning to feel that he did not care much what

-was the outcome of the trial. Life was a good

-thing, it was true. And death, or a life of death,

-as a murderer, was worse than twenty common

-deaths. But that had all dropped into the background.

-Only one big thing stood before him.

-It laid hold upon him and shook him and took

-from him his interest in every other fact in the

-world.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>

-never before in her life told a lie. Why should

-she have ever told a lie. She had never had reason

-to fear any one; and they only lie who fear.

-He would have said that the fear of death could

-not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she had

-stood up there and lied.</p>

-<p>For what? For a church. For a religion to

-which she had foolishly given herself. For that

-she had given up him. For that she had given up

-her conscience. For that she had given up her

-own truth!</p>

-<p>It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and

-listened to it.</p>

-<p>He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer

-to a question which meant life or death to

-him. She had known that. She could not have

-escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was

-no way in which she could have fooled herself or

-been persuaded into believing that she was not

-lying or that she was not taking from him his last

-hope of life.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason

-with the fact. What was the use? It was the

-end of all things. He merely sat and gazed

-dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole

-mental vision.</p>

-<p>He went forward to the witness chair and stood

-woodenly until some one told him to be seated.

-He answered the questions put him automatically,

-without looking either at the questioner or at the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>

-jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who

-had been watching the alert, keen-faced boy all day

-yesterday and through to-day wondered what had

-happened to him. Was he breaking down?

-Would he confess? Or had he merely ceased

-hoping and turned sullen and dumb?</p>

-<p>Without any trace of emotion or interest, he

-told how he had raced forward, charging upon the

-man who was setting the fire. He looked vacantly

-at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of

-his words stricken out which told what the man

-was doing. He showed no resentment, no feeling

-of any kind. He related how the man had run

-away from him, trailing the torch through the

-brush, and again he did not seem to notice the

-Judge&rsquo;s anger in cautioning him not to mention

-the fire again.</p>

-<p>At his counsel&rsquo;s direction, he went through a

-lifeless pantomime of falling upon one knee and

-pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now the

-man turned and faced him. Then he heard the

-shot which killed Rogers come from the woods.

-He dropped his own rifle and went forward to

-look at the dying man. He picked up the torch

-and threw it away.</p>

-<p>Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time

-the Judge did not rule out the word.) Then his

-rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet going

-just past his ear. The charge had scorched his

-neck. It was a simple story. The thing <i>might</i>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>

-have happened. It was entirely credible. There

-were no contradictions in it. But the manner of

-Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of

-reality. It was not the manner of a man telling

-one of the most stirring things of his life. He

-was not telling what he saw and remembered and

-felt and was now living through. Rather, he

-seemed to be going over a wearying, many-times-told

-tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A

-sleeping man might have told it so. The jury

-was left entirely unconvinced, though puzzled by

-the manner of the recital.</p>

-<p>Even Lemuel Squires&rsquo; harping cross questions

-did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story

-that he had told. At each question he went back

-to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully

-and evenly without any thought of what the District

-Attorney was trying to make him say. He

-was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of

-the story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid

-wonder at the horrible fact that Ruth Lansing had

-lied his life away at the word of her church.</p>

-<p>When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure

-where he was again the prisoner, he sat

-down heavily to wait for the end of this wholly

-irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness

-was called. He did not know that there was another.

-He had expected that Squires would begin

-his speech at once.</p>

-<p>He noticed that this witness was a girl from

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span>

-French Village whom he had seen several times.

-Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s

-girl. What did they bring her here for? She

-could not know anything, and why did they want

-to pester the poor thing? Didn&rsquo;t the poor little

-thing look sorry and troubled enough without

-fetching her down here to bring it all up to her?

-He roused himself to look reassuringly at the girl,

-as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not

-matter anyway, that he knew she could not help

-him, and that she must not let them hurt her.</p>

-<p>Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure

-Cynthe against interruptions from the prosecutor

-or the Judge, had told her to say nothing about

-fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers

-and nothing else. So when, after she had been

-sworn, he told her to relate the things that led up

-to the killing, she began at the very beginning:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Four years ago,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau

-was in Utica. A man was killed in a crowd.

-His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe

-Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn

-to me that he did not know who had done it. But

-a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife

-and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest

-him. No, he kept the knife, saying that some day

-he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the price

-of his silence.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Last summer this man Rogers came into the

-woods looking for some one to help get the people

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>

-to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He

-showed him the knife. He told him that whatever

-he laid upon him to do, that he must do. He

-made him lie to the people. He made him attack

-the young Whiting. He made him do many

-things that he would not do, for Rafe Gadbeau

-was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And

-Rafe Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear

-that this man had put upon him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;At times he said to me, &lsquo;Cynthe, I will kill

-this man one day, and that will be the end of all.&rsquo;

-But I said, &lsquo;<i>Non, non, mon Rafe</i>, we will marry in

-the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will

-never see you again, and we will not know that he

-ever lived.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was

-telling over to herself the tragedy of her little life

-and her great love. Genius could not have told

-her how better to tell it for the purpose for which

-her story was here needed. Dardis thanked his

-stars that he had taken the Bishop&rsquo;s advice, to let

-her get through with it in her own way.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But it was not time for us to marry yet,&rdquo; she

-went on. &ldquo;Then came the morning of the nineteenth

-August. I was sitting on the back steps

-of my aunt&rsquo;s house by the Little Tupper, putting

-apples on a string to hang up in the hot sun to

-dry.&rdquo; The Judge turned impatiently on his bench

-and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and

-her eyes blazed angrily at him. Who was he to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>

-shrug his shoulders! Was it not important, this

-story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter

-the Judge gave her the most rigid attention.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps

-at my feet. I saw that he was troubled. &lsquo;What

-is it, <i>mon Rafe</i>?&rsquo; I asked. He groaned and said

-one bad word. Then he told me that he had just

-had a message from Rogers to meet him at the

-head of the rail with three men and six horses.

-&lsquo;What to do, <i>mon Rafe</i>?&rsquo; &lsquo;I do not know,&rsquo; he

-said, &lsquo;though I can guess. But I will not tell you,

-Cynthe.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You will not go, <i>mon Rafe</i>. Promise me

-you will not go. Hide away, and we will slip

-down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married&ndash;&ndash;me,

-I do not care for the grand wedding in the

-church here&ndash;&ndash;and then we will get away to

-Beaupre. Promise me.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;<i>Bien</i>, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to

-him.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But it was a man&rsquo;s promise. I knew he would

-go in the end.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I watched and followed. I did not know

-what I could do. But I followed, hoping that

-somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done

-what they intended and we could run away together

-with clean hands.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;When I saw that they had gone toward the

-railroad I turned aside and climbed up to the Bald

-Mountain. I knew they would all come back

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span>

-there together. I waited until it was dark and

-they came. They would do nothing in the night.

-I waited for the morning. Then I would find

-Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I

-was a wild girl that night. If I could have found

-that Rogers and come near him I would have killed

-him myself. I hated him, for he had made me

-much suffering.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;In the morning I was in the woods near them.

-I saw Rafe. But that Rogers kept him always

-near him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to

-look. Rafe was a little way from him and coming

-slowly toward me. I called to him. He did

-not hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the

-look of one who has made up his mind to kill.

-Again I called to him. But he did not hear.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the

-wood. Now he came running back toward Rafe.

-He stopped and turned.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The young Whiting was on his knee with the

-rifle raised to shoot. I looked to Rafe. The

-sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face.

-The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head.

-I saw. The young Whiting had not fired at all.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me.

-&lsquo;Come with me, <i>mon Rafe</i>,&rsquo; I called. &lsquo;I, too, am

-guilty. I would have killed him in the night.

-Come with me. We will escape. The fire will

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>

-cover all. None will ever know but you and me,

-and I am guilty as you. Come.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But he did not hear. And I wished him to

-hear. Oh! I wished him at least to hear me say

-that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not

-wish to be separated from him in this world or the

-next.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But he ran back always into the path of the

-fire, for those other men, the old M&rsquo;sieur Beasley

-and the others, were closing behind him and the

-fire.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She was speaking freely of the fire now, but

-it did not matter. Her story was told. The big,

-hot tears were flowing freely and her voice rose

-into a cry of farewell as she told the end.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over

-him. Oh, the great God, who is good, was cruel

-that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and

-running on again. Then the fire shut him out

-from my sight, and God took him away.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and

-was safe.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Dardis did not try to draw another word from

-her on any part of the story. He was artist

-enough to know that the story was complete in its

-na&iuml;ve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge

-enough of human nature to understand that the

-jury would remember better and hold more easily

-her own unthought, clipped expressions than they

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>

-would any more connected elaborations he might

-try to make her give.</p>

-<p>Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor.

-He had always been a useful officer to the

-railroad powers because he was convinced of the

-guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to

-bring into court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal

-as hardly less than a personal insult. He

-denied that there were ever two sides to any case.

-But his very narrowness now confounded him

-here. This girl&rsquo;s story was true. It was astounding,

-impossible, subversive of all things. But it

-was true.</p>

-<p>His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room

-for only the one thing. The story was true. He

-asked her a few unimportant questions, leading

-nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing

-up to the jury.</p>

-<p>It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them

-to remember the facts by which the prisoner had

-already been convicted and to put aside the girl&rsquo;s

-dramatic story. He was still convinced that the

-prisoner was guilty. But&ndash;&ndash;the girl&rsquo;s story was

-true. His mind was not nimble enough to escape

-the shock of that fact. He was helpless under it.

-His pleading was spiritless and wandering while

-his mind stood aside to grapple with that one

-astounding thing.</p>

-<p>The Judge, however, in charging the jury was

-troubled by none of these hampering limitations

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>

-of mind. He had always regarded the taking and

-discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and

-windy business. All democracy was full of such

-wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to a conclusion.

-The boy was guilty. The powers who

-controlled the county had said he was guilty.

-Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.</p>

-<p>He charged the jury that the girl&rsquo;s testimony

-was no more credible than that of a dozen other

-witnesses&ndash;&ndash;which was quite true. All had told

-the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But

-he glided smoothly over the one important difference.

-The girl had seen the act. No other, not

-even the accused himself, had been able to say that.</p>

-<p>He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly

-false lecture on the comparative force of evidence,

-intended only to befog the minds of the jurors.

-But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that

-which he had intended, for, whereas they had up

-to now held a fairly clear view of the things that

-had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts

-by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that

-structure of guilt which he so laboriously built up

-and remembered only one thing clearly. And

-that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.</p>

-<p>Without leaving their seats, they intimated that

-they had come to an agreement.</p>

-<p>The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded

-to know what it was.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood up.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span></div>

-<p>The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly,

-saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Not guilty.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at

-each man as his name was called, but one after

-another the men arose and answered gruffly for

-acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse,

-running for their horses and shouting the

-verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little Danton

-awoke from its September drowse and was aware

-that something real had happened. The elaborate

-machinery of prosecution, the whole political

-power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure

-of the railroad power had all been set at nothing

-by the tragic little love story of an ignorant French

-girl from the hills.</p>

-<p>Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place

-where he had been a prisoner and brought him to

-his mother.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into

-his mother&rsquo;s eyes as he stooped to kiss her. What

-he saw filled him with a bitterness that all the

-years of his life would not efface. What he saw

-was not the sprightly, cheery, capable woman who

-had been his mother, but a grey, trembling old

-woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to

-him fainting and crying weakly. What men had

-done to him, he could shake off. They had not

-hurt him. He could still defy them. But what

-they had done to his little mother, that would

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span>

-rankle and turn in his heart forever. He would

-never forgive them for the things they had done

-to her in these four weeks and in these two days.</p>

-<p>And here at his elbow stood the one person who

-had to-day done more to hurt his mother and himself

-than any other in the world could have done.

-She could have told his mother weeks ago, and

-have saved her all that racking sorrow and anxiety.

-But no, for the sake of that religion of hers, for

-the sake of what some priest told her, she had

-stuck to what had turned out to be a useless lie,

-to save a dead man&rsquo;s name.</p>

-<p>Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him.

-But he turned upon her with a look of savage,

-fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl as

-a blow in the face would have done. Then in a

-strange, hard voice he said brutally:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You lied!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock

-of his look and words. Even now she could not

-speak, could not appeal to his reason, could not

-tell him that she had heard nothing but what had

-come under the awful seal of the confessional.

-The secret was out. She had risked his life and

-lost his love to guard that secret, and now the

-world knew it. All the world could talk freely

-about what she had done except only herself.

-Even if she could have reached up and drawn his

-head down to her lips, even then she could not so

-much as whisper into his ear that he was right, or

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>

-try to tell him why she had not been able to

-speak. She saw the secret standing forever between

-their two lives, unacknowledged, embittering

-both those lives, yet impassable as the line of

-death.</p>

-<p>When she looked up, he was gone out to his

-freedom in the sunlight.</p>

-<p>The hill people were jammed about the door

-and in the street as he came out. Twenty hands

-reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into

-the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his

-own horse which they had caught wandering in

-the high hills and had brought down for him.

-They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them&ndash;&ndash;the

-hill people were not much given to noise or

-demonstration. But under their triumph and their

-noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness

-which he was quick to notice.</p>

-<p>During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had

-absorbed most of his waking moments, he had let

-slip from him the thought of the battle that yet

-must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people

-again, and once more their unquestioned

-leader, his mind went back with a click into the

-grooves in which it had been working so long.

-He pushed his horse forward and led the men at

-a gallop over the Racquette bridge and out toward

-the hills, the families who had come down from

-the nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span></div>

-<p>When they were well clear of the town, he

-halted and demanded the full news of the last four

-weeks.</p>

-<p>It must not be forgotten that while this account

-of these happenings has been obliged to turn aside

-here and there, following the vicissitudes and doings

-of individuals, the railroad powers had never

-for a moment turned a step aside from the single,

-unemotional course upon which they had set out.

-Orders had gone out that the railroad must get

-title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide

-lying along the right of way. These orders must

-be executed. The titles must be gotten. Failures

-or successes here or there were of no account.

-The incidents made use of or the methods employed

-were of importance only as they contributed

-to the general result.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once.

-That was nothing. There were other plans.

-The Shepherd of the North before the Senate

-committee had blocked another set of plans.

-That was merely an obstacle to be gone around.

-The railroad people had gone around it by procuring

-the burning of the country. The people, left

-homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined,

-would be glad now to take anything they could

-get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness,

-no animus on the part of the railroad.

-Its programme had been as impersonal and detached

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span>

-as the details in any business transaction.

-Certain aims were to be accomplished. The

-means were purely incidental.</p>

-<p>Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an

-agent and afterwards as an instrument, was now

-gone&ndash;&ndash;a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had

-been Rogers&rsquo; assistant, was gone&ndash;&ndash;another broken

-tool. The fire had been used for its purpose.

-The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey Whiting

-had been put out of the way&ndash;&ndash;definitely, the railroad

-had hoped. He was now free again to make

-difficulties. All these things were but changes

-and moves and temporary checks in the carrying

-through of the business. In the end the railroad

-must attain its end.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat

-his horse on the old Piercefield road and listened

-to what had been happening in the hills during the

-four weeks of his removal from the scene.</p>

-<p>The fire, because it had seemed the end of all

-things to the people of the hills, had put out of

-their minds all thought of what the railroad would

-do next. Now they were realising that the railroad

-had moved right on about its purpose in the

-wake of the fire. It had learned instantly of Rogers&rsquo;

-death and had instantly set to work to use that

-as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its

-path. But that was only a side line of activity.

-It had gone right on with its main business.

-Other men had been sent at once into the hills with

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>

-what seemed like liberal offers for six-month

-options on all the lands which the railroad

-coveted.</p>

-<p>They had gotten hold of discouraged families

-who had not yet begun to rebuild. The offer of

-any little money was welcome to these. The

-whole people were disorganised and demoralised

-as a result of the scattering which the fire had

-forced upon them. They were not sure that it

-was worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire

-had burned through the thin soil in many places

-so that the land would be useless for farming for

-many years to come. They had no leader, and

-the fact that Jeffrey Whiting was in jail charged

-with murder, and, as they heard, likely to be convicted,

-forced upon them the feeling that the railroad

-would win in the end. Where was the use

-to struggle against an enemy they could not see

-and who could not be hurt by anything they might

-do?</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had

-gone before, to keep the people in line and prevent

-them from signing enough options to suit the railroad&rsquo;s

-purpose, had been easy in comparison with

-the one that was now before him. The people

-were disheartened. They had begun to fear the

-mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It

-was an enemy of a kind to which their lives and

-training had not accustomed them. It struck in

-the dark, and no man&rsquo;s hand could be raised to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>

-punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law

-and a bulwark of officials.</p>

-<p>The people were for the large part still homeless.

-Many were still down in the villages, living

-upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant help

-of public charity. Only the comparative few who

-could obtain ready credit had been able even to

-begin rebuilding. If they were not roused to

-prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be

-upon them before the hills were resettled. And

-with the coming of the pinch of winter men would

-be ready to sell anything upon which they had a

-claim, for the mere privilege of living.</p>

-<p>When they came up into the burnt country, the

-bitterness which had been boiling up in his heart

-through those weeks and which he had thought

-had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day

-now ran over completely. His heart raved

-in an agony of impotent anger and a thirst for revenge.

-His life had been in danger. Gladly

-would he now put it ten times in danger for the

-power to strike one free, crushing blow at this insolent

-enemy. He would grapple with it, die with

-it only for the power to bring it to the ground

-with himself!</p>

-<p>The others had become accustomed to the look

-of the country, but the full desolation of it broke

-upon his eyes now for the first time. The hills

-that should have glowed in their wonderful russets

-from the red sun going down in the west,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>

-were nothing but streaked ash heaps, where the

-rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between,

-where the autumn greens should have run

-deep and fresh, where snug homes should have

-stood, where happy people should now be living,

-were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution.

-From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far,

-low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a

-circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the

-mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the

-food of hate in the heart!</p>

-<p>Very late in the night they came to French Village.

-The people here were still practically living

-in the barrack which the Bishop had seen built,

-the women and children sleeping in it, the men

-finding what shelter they could in the new houses

-that were going up. There were enough of these

-latter to show that French Village would live

-again, for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed

-had carried credit and good faith to men

-who were judges of paper on which men&rsquo;s names

-were written and they had brought back supplies

-of all that was strictly needful.</p>

-<p>Here was food and water for man and beast.

-Men roused themselves from sleep to cheer the

-young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and

-feed them. And shrill, voluminous women came

-forth to get food for the men and to wave hands

-and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe

-Cardinal.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span></div>

-<p>The mention of the girl&rsquo;s name brought things

-back to Jeffrey Whiting. Till now he had hardly

-given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible sacrifice

-of the man she loved, had saved him. He

-owed that girl a great deal. And the thought

-brought to his mind another girl. He struck himself

-viciously across the eyes as though he would

-crush the memory, and went out to tramp among

-the ashes till the dawn. His body had no need of

-rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had

-merely served to throw off the lethargy of the jail;

-and sleep was beyond him.</p>

-<p>At the first light he roused the hill men and told

-them what the night had told him. Unless they

-struck one desperate, destroying blow at the railroad,

-it would come up mile by mile and farm by

-farm and take from them the little that was left

-to them. They had been fools that they had not

-struck in the beginning when they had first found

-that they were being played falsely. If they had

-begun to fight in the early summer their homes

-would not have been burned and they would not

-be now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered,

-unprovided winter.</p>

-<p>Why had they not struck? Because they were

-afraid? No. They had not struck because their

-fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the

-law. They had depended upon law. And here

-was law for them: the hills in ashes, their families

-scattered and going hungry!</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span></div>

-<p>If no man would go with him, he would ride

-alone down to the end of the rails and sell his life

-singly to drive back the work as far as he could,

-to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and

-their own.</p>

-<p>If ten men would come with him they could

-drive back the workmen for days, days in which

-the hill people would come rallying back into the

-hills to them. The people were giving up in

-despair because nothing was being done. Show

-them that even ten men were ready to fight for

-them and their rights and they would come

-trooping back, eager to fight and to hold their

-homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If

-the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law

-and right to get it, were there not men in the

-hills who would fight for it because it was their

-own?</p>

-<p>If fifty men would come with him they could

-destroy the railroad clear down below the line of

-the hills and put the work back for months.

-They would have sheriffs&rsquo; posses out against them.

-They would have to fight with hired fighters that

-the railroad would bring up against them. In the

-end they would perhaps have to fight the State

-militia, but there were men among them, he

-shouted, who had fought more than militia.

-Would they not dare face it now for their homes

-and their people!</p>

-<p>Some men would die. But some men always

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>

-died, in every cause. And in the end the people

-of the whole State would judge the cause!</p>

-<p>Would one man come? Would ten? Would

-fifty?</p>

-<p>Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the

-knobs and valleys of ashes where their homes had

-been, took what food the French people could

-spare them, and mounted silently behind him.</p>

-<p>Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars

-of the homes of many of them, for half the

-day they rode, saving every strain they could upon

-their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the

-southern divide and down the slope they thundered

-to strike the railroad at Leavit&rsquo;s bridge.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>

-<a name='IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD' id='IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'></a>

-<h2>IX</h2>

-<h3>THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The wires coming down from the north were

-flashing the railroad&rsquo;s call for help. A band of

-madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit&rsquo;s

-Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge.

-They had raced down the line, driving the frightened

-labourers before them, tearing up the ties and

-making huge fires of them on which they threw

-the new rails, heating and twisting these beyond

-any hope of future usefulness.</p>

-<p>Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction

-had fled literally for their lives. The men

-of the hills had no quarrel with them. They preferred

-not to injure them. But they were infuriated

-men with their wrongs fresh in mind and

-with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The workmen

-on the line needed no second warning. They

-would take no chances with an enemy of this kind.

-They were used to violence and rioting in their own

-labour troubles, but this was different. This was

-war. They threw themselves headlong upon

-handcars and work engines and bolted down the

-line, carrying panic before them.</p>

-<p>In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting

-at their head had ridden down and destroyed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>

-nearly twenty miles of very costly construction

-work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left

-in the hills and if the men were not stopped they

-would not leave a single rail in all the hill country

-where they were masters.</p>

-<p>The call of the railroad was at first frantic with

-panic and fright. That was while little men who

-had lost their wits were nominally in charge of a

-situation in which nobody knew what to do.

-Then suddenly the tone of the railroad&rsquo;s call

-changed. Big men, used to meeting all sorts of

-things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold.

-They had the telegraph lines of the State in their

-hands. There was no more frightened appeal.

-Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in

-Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties.

-They were told to swear in as many deputies as

-they could lead. They were to forget the consideration

-of expense. The railroad would pay and

-feed the men. They were to think of nothing but

-to get the greatest possible number of fighting men

-upon the line at once.</p>

-<p>Then a single great man, a man who sat in a

-great office building in New York and held his

-hand upon every activity in the State, saw the gravity

-of the business in the hills and put himself to

-work upon it. He took no half measures. He

-had no faith in little local authorities, who would

-be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill

-people in this battle.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span></div>

-<p>He called the Governor of the State from Albany

-to his office. He ordered the Governor to

-turn out the State&rsquo;s armed forces and set them in

-motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically

-that the Governor had not had the sense

-to do this of himself. The Governor bridled and

-hesitated. The Governor had been living on the

-fiction that he was the executive head of the State.

-It took Clifford W. Stanton just three minutes to

-disabuse him completely and forever of this illusion.

-He explained to him just why he was Governor

-and by whose permission. Also he pointed

-out that the permission of the great railroad system

-that covered the State would again be necessary

-in order that Governor Foster might succeed

-himself. Then the great man sent Wilbur Foster

-back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment

-of the National Guard for service in the hills.</p>

-<p>Before the second night three companies of the

-militia had passed through Utica and had gone up

-the line of the U. &amp; M. Their orders were to

-avoid killing where possible and to capture all of

-the hill men that they could. The railroad wished

-to have them tried and imprisoned by the impartial

-law of the land. For it was characteristic of the

-great power which in those days ruled the State

-that when it had outraged every sense of fair play

-and common humanity to attain its ends it was then

-ready to spend much money creating public opinion

-in favour of itself.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span></div>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the

-cover of the woods above Milton&rsquo;s Crossing and

-watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars come

-creeping up the grade from the south. This was

-the last of the hills. He had refused to let his

-men go farther. Behind him lay fifty miles of

-new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open,

-settled country. His men, once the fever of destruction

-had begun to run in their blood, had

-wished to sweep on down into the villages and

-carry their work through them. But he had stood

-firm. This was their own country where they belonged

-and where the railroad was the interloper.

-Here they were at home. Here there was a certain

-measure of safety for them even in the destructive

-and lawless work that they had begun.

-They had done enough. They had pushed the

-railroad back to the edge of the hills. They had

-roused the men of the hills behind them. Where

-he had started with his seventy-two friends, there

-were now three hundred well-armed men in the

-woods around him. Here in their cover they

-could hold the line of the railroad indefinitely

-against almost any force that might be sent against

-them.</p>

-<p>But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership

-and responsibility was already at work upon him.

-The burning, rankling anger that had driven him

-onward so that he had carried everything and

-everybody near him into this business of destruction

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>

-was now dulled down to a slow, dull hate that

-while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave

-him time to think. Those men coming up there

-on the cars were not professional soldiers, paid

-to fight wherever there was fighting to be done.

-Neither did they care anything for the railroad

-that they should come up here to fight for it.

-Why did they come?</p>

-<p>They had joined their organisation for various

-reasons that usually had very little to do with fighting.

-They were clerks and office men, for the

-most part, from the villages and factories of the

-central part of the State. The militia companies

-had attracted them because the armouries in the

-towns had social advantages to offer, because uniforms

-and parade appeal to all boys, because they

-were sons of veterans and the military tradition

-was strong in them. Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s strong

-natural sense told him the substance of these

-things. He could not regard these boys as deadly

-enemies to be shot down without mercy or warning.

-They had taken their arms at a word of command

-and had come up here to uphold the arm of

-the State. If the railroad was able to control the

-politics of the State and so was able to send these

-boys up here on its own business, then other people

-were to blame for the situation. Certainly these

-boys, coming up here to do nothing but what their

-duty to the State compelled them to do; they were

-not to be blamed.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span></div>

-<p>His men were now urging him to withdraw a

-little distance into the hills to where the bed of the

-road ran through a defile between two hills. The

-soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the

-line of what had been the railroad, covering the

-workmen and engineers who would be coming on

-behind them. If they were allowed to go on up

-into the defile without warning or opposition they

-could be shot down by the hill men from almost absolute

-safety. If he had been dealing with a hated

-enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed

-to that. But to shoot down from ambush these

-boys, who had come up here many of them probably

-thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic

-or outing in the September woods, was a thing

-which he could not contemplate. Before he would

-attack them these boys must know just what they

-were to expect.</p>

-<p>He saw them leave the cars at the end of the

-broken line and take up their march in a rough

-column of fours along the roadbed. He was surprised

-and puzzled. He had expected them to

-work along the line only as fast as the men repaired

-the rails behind them. He had not thought

-that they would go away from their cars.</p>

-<p>Then he understood. They were not coming

-merely to protect the rebuilding of the railroad.

-They had their orders to come straight into the

-hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The

-railroad was not only able to call the State to protect

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>

-itself. It had called upon the State to avenge

-its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His men

-had understood this better than he. Probably

-they were right. This thing might as well be

-fought out from the first. In the end there would

-be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of

-troops and drive them back out of the hills with

-an ease that would be almost ridiculous. But that

-would not be the end.</p>

-<p>The State would send other men, unlimited

-numbers of them, for it must and would uphold

-the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did

-not deceive himself. Probably he had not from

-the beginning had any doubt as to what would be

-the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The

-railroad itself had broken the law of the State

-and the law of humanity. It had defied every

-principle of justice and common decency. It had

-burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in

-the hills. Yet the law had not raised a hand to

-punish it. But now when the railroad itself had

-suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to

-be set in motion to punish the men of the hills

-who had merely paid their debt.</p>

-<p>But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself

-that he had not foreseen all this from the outset.

-Those days of thinking in jail had given him an

-insight into realities that years of growth and observation

-of things outside might not have produced

-in him. He had been given time to see that

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>

-some things are insurmountable, that things may

-be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still

-persist and go on indefinitely. Youth does not

-readily admit this. Jeffrey Whiting had recognised

-it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had

-led these men, his friends, men who trusted him,

-upon this mad raid. They had come without the

-clear vision of the end which he now realised had

-been his from the start. They had thought that

-they could accomplish something, that they had

-some chance of winning a victory over the railroad.

-They had believed that the power of the

-State would intervene to settle the differences between

-them and their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting

-knew, must have known all along, that the moment

-a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength

-of the State would be put forth to capture these

-men and punish them. There would be no compromise.

-There would be no bargaining. If

-they surrendered and gave themselves up now they

-would be jailed for varying terms. If they did

-not, if they stayed here and fought, some of them

-would be killed and injured and in one way or another

-all would suffer in the end.</p>

-<p>He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth

-of this struck him with startling clearness now.

-He had led them into this without letting them see

-the full extent of what they were doing, as he must

-have seen it.</p>

-<p>There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>

-now and scattered themselves through the

-hills few of them would ever be identified. And

-if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad

-would be almost satisfied with punishing him.

-It was the one just and right thing to do.</p>

-<p>He went swiftly among the men where they

-stood among the trees, waiting with poised rifles

-for the word to fire upon the advancing soldiers,

-and told them what they must do. He had deceived

-them. He had not told them the whole

-truth as he himself knew it. They must leave at

-once, scattering up among the hills and keeping

-close mouths as to where they had been and what

-they had done. He would go down and give himself

-up, for if the railroad people once had him in

-custody they would not bother so very much about

-bringing the others to punishment.</p>

-<p>His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder.

-They did not understand, unless it might be

-that he had suddenly gone crazy. There was an

-enemy marching up the line toward them, bent

-upon killing or capturing them. They turned

-from him and without a spoken word, without a

-signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the

-front of the oncoming troops. The battle was

-on!</p>

-<p>The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed

-to shoot deer and foxes from distances

-greater than this. The first two ranks of the

-soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>

-scythes. Not one of them was hit above the

-knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had begun.

-The hill men had given a terse, emphatic

-warning. It was as though they had marked a

-dead line beyond which there must be no advance.</p>

-<p>These soldiers had never before been shot at.

-The very restraint which the hill men had shown

-in not killing any of them in that volley proved

-to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise

-how deadly was the aim and the judgment of the

-invisible enemy somewhere in the woods there before

-them. To their credit, they did not drop

-their arms or run. They stood stunned and

-paralysed, as much by the suddenness with which

-the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.</p>

-<p>Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous

-command for them to halt, and ordering

-them to carry the wounded men back to the cars.

-For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they

-would again advance or would put themselves into

-some kind of defence formation and hold the

-ground on which they stood.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two

-other trains come slowly creeping up the line.

-From the second train he saw men leaping down

-who did not take up any sort of military formation.

-These he knew were sheriffs&rsquo; posses, fighting

-men sworn in because they were known to be

-fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>

-in the chase of the human animal. He had

-often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and he

-knew that they were an enemy of a character far

-different from those harmless boys who could not

-hit a mark smaller than the side of a hill. These

-men would follow doggedly, persistently into the

-highest of the hills, saving themselves, but never

-letting the prey slip from their sight, dividing the

-hill men, separating them, cornering them until

-they should have tracked them down one by one

-and either captured or killed them all.</p>

-<p>These men did not attempt to advance along the

-line of the road. They stepped quickly out into

-the undergrowth and began spreading a thin line

-of men to either side.</p>

-<p>Then he saw that the third train, although they

-were soldiers, took their lesson from the men who

-had just preceded them. They left the tracks

-and spreading still farther out took up the wings

-of a long line that was now stretching east to west

-along the fringe of the hills. The soldiers in the

-centre retired a little way down the roadbed, stood

-bunched together for a little time while their officers

-evidently conferred together, then left the

-road by twos and fours and began spreading out

-and pushing the other lines out still farther. It

-was perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that

-could not have been better done if he and his companions

-had planned it for their own capture.</p>

-<p>There were easily eight hundred men there in

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>

-front, he judged; men well armed and ready for

-an indefinite stay in the hills, with a railroad at

-their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire

-State behind them. And the State was ready to

-send more and more men after these if it should be

-necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of

-other men were being held in readiness to follow

-these or were perhaps already on their way. He

-saw the end.</p>

-<p>Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly

-and surround his men. If they stood together

-they would be massacred. If they separated

-they would be hunted down one by one.</p>

-<p>Their only chance was to scatter at once and

-ride back to where their homes had been. This

-time he implored them to take their chance,

-begged them to save themselves while they could.

-But he might have known that they would do nothing

-of the kind. Already they were breaking

-away and spreading out to meet that distending

-line in front of them. Nothing short of a miracle

-could now save them from annihilation, and

-Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle.

-There was nothing to be done but to take command

-and sell his life along with theirs as dearly

-as possible.</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up

-and down the State. Men who had followed the

-course of things through the past months, men who

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>

-knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which

-no newspaper had dared to print openly, understood

-just what it meant. The men up there had

-been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men

-agreed quietly with each other that they had done

-the very worst thing that could have been done.

-The injury they had done the railroad would

-amount to very little, comparatively, in the end,

-while it would give the railroad an absolutely free

-hand from now on. The people would be driven

-forever out of the lands which the railroad wished

-to possess. There would be no legislative hindrances

-now. The people had doomed themselves.</p>

-<p>The echoes reached also to two million other

-men throughout the State who did not understand

-the matter in the least. These looked up a moment

-from the work of living and earning a living

-to sympathise vaguely with the foolish men up

-there in the hills who had attacked the sacred and

-awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad.

-Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the

-case. But who could tell? And the two million,

-the rulers and sovereigns of the State, went back

-again to their business.</p>

-<p>The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of

-Alden, almost before a blow had been struck. It

-is hardly too much to say that he was listening for

-it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech,

-slow to anger; but, once past a certain point of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span>

-aggravation, absolutely heedless and reckless of

-consequences.</p>

-<p>He did not stop to compute just how much he

-himself was bound up in the causes and consequences

-of what had happened and what was happening

-in the hills. He had given advice. He

-had thought with the people and only for the

-people.</p>

-<p>He saw, long before it was told him in words,

-the wild ride down through the hills to strike the

-railroad, the fury of destruction, the gathering

-of the forces of the State to punish.</p>

-<p>Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment.

-Wherein Joseph Winthrop had done

-well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no

-moment now.</p>

-<p>One man there was in all the State, in all the

-nation, who could give the word that would now

-save the people of the hills. Clifford W. Stanton

-who had sat months ago in his office in New York

-and had set all these things going, whose ruthless

-hand was to be recognised in every act of those

-which had driven the people to this madness, his

-will and his alone could stay the storm that was

-now raging in the hills.</p>

-<p>Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act

-of supreme and unselfish bravery. It was an act

-of both physical and moral courage the like of

-which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>

-an act which had revealed in Clifford W. Stanton

-a depth of strong fineness that no man would have

-suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of

-faraway youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten.

-And he knew that men do not rise to such heights

-without having very deep in them the nobility to

-make it possible and at times inevitable that they

-should rise to those heights.</p>

-<p>After these years and the encrusting strata of

-compromise and cowardice and selfishness which

-years and life lay upon the fresh heart of the youth

-of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul of

-Clifford W. Stanton again be touched?</p>

-<p>Almost before the forces of the State were in

-motion against the people of the hills, the Bishop,

-early of a morning, walked into the office of Clifford

-Stanton.</p>

-<p>Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and

-though younger than the latter by some half-dozen

-years, it was evident that he had burned up the fuel

-of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked

-and spoke and moved with the deliberate fixity of

-the settling years, Stanton acted with a quick nervousness

-that shook just a perceptible little. The

-spiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking

-which had chiselled the Bishop&rsquo;s face into a single,

-simple expression of will power was not to be

-found in the other&rsquo;s face. In its stead there was

-a certain steel-trap impression, as though the man

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>

-behind the face had all his life refused to be certain

-of anything until the jaws of the trap had set upon

-the accomplished fact.</p>

-<p>Physically the two men were much of a type.

-You would have known them anywhere for New

-Englanders of the generation that has disappeared

-almost completely in the last twenty years. They

-had been boys at Harvard together, though not of

-the same class. They had been together in the

-Civil War, though the nature of their services had

-been infinitely diverse. They had met here and

-there casually and incidentally in the business of

-life. But they faced each other now virtually as

-strangers, and with a certain tightening grip upon

-himself each man realised that he was about to

-grapple with one of the strongest willed men that

-he had ever met, and that he must test out the

-other man to the depths and be himself tried out

-to the limit of his strength.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is some years since I&rsquo;ve seen you, Bishop.

-But we are both busy men. And&ndash;&ndash;well&ndash;&ndash; You

-know I am glad to have you come to see me.

-I need not tell you that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop accepted the other man&rsquo;s frank

-courtesy and took a chair quietly. Stanton

-watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing

-the last few years a good deal, he thought. In

-reality it was the last month that the Bishop was

-showing. But it did not show in the steady, untroubled

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span>

-glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no

-time on preliminaries.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have come on business, of course, Mr.

-Stanton,&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;It is a very strange and

-unusual business. And to come at it rightly I

-must tell you a story. At the end of the story I

-will ask you a question. That will be my whole

-business.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The other man said nothing. He did not understand

-and he never spoke until he was sure that

-he understood. The Bishop plunged into his

-story.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;One January day in &lsquo;Sixty-five&rsquo; I was going

-up the Shenandoah alone. My command had left

-me behind for two days of hospital service at Cross

-Keys. They were probably some twenty miles

-ahead of me and would be crossing over the divide

-towards Five Forks and the east. I thought I

-knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of

-the distance that separated me from them, so I

-started across the Ridge by a path which would

-have been impossible for troops in order.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was right. I did cut off the distance which

-I had expected and came down in the early afternoon

-upon a good road that ran up the eastern side

-of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself

-that I would be with my men before dark, when

-a troop of Confederate cavalry came pelting over

-a rise in the road behind me.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I leaped my horse back into the brush at the

-side of the road and waited. They would sweep

-on past and allow me to go on my way. Behind

-them came a troop of our own horse pursuing

-hotly. The Confederate horses were well spent.

-I saw that the end of the pursuit was not far off.

-The Confederates&ndash;&ndash;some detached band of

-Early&rsquo;s men, I imagine&ndash;&ndash;realised that they would

-soon be run down. Just where I had left the road

-there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates

-threw themselves from their horses and drew

-themselves across the road. They were in perfect

-ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen

-yards back on the narrow road.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I broke from the bush and fled back along the

-road to warn our men. But I did no good.

-They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even,

-as they came yelling around the turn of the

-road.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;For three minutes there was some of the

-sharpest fighting I ever saw, there in the narrow

-road, before what remained of the Confederates

-broke after their horses and made off again. In

-the very middle of the fight I noticed two young

-officers. One was a captain, the other a lieutenant.

-I knew them. I knew their story. I

-believe I was the only man living who knew that

-story. Probably <i>I</i> did not know the whole of

-that story.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The lieutenant had maligned the captain.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>

-He had said of him the one thing that a soldier

-may not say of another. They had fought once.

-Why they had been kept in the same command I

-do not know.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now in the very hottest of this fight, without

-apparently the slightest warning, the lieutenant

-threw himself upon the captain, attacking

-him viciously with his sword. For a moment

-they struggled there, unnoticed in the dust of the

-conflict. Then the captain, swinging free, struck

-the lieutenant&rsquo;s sword from his hand. The latter

-drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It

-missed. By what miracle I do not know. All

-this time the captain had held his sword poised to

-lunge, within easy striking distance of the other&rsquo;s

-throat. But he had made no attempt to thrust.

-As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his arm to

-strike. Instead he looked a long moment into

-the lieutenant&rsquo;s eyes. The latter was screaming

-what were evidently taunts into his face. The

-captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at

-the now breaking line of Confederates.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have

-seen brave men bravely refrain from killing.

-That was the bravest thing I ever saw.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of

-him. He gave no sign of hearing. He was living

-over for himself that scene on a lonely, forgotten

-Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;The lieutenant died, a soldier&rsquo;s death, the

-next day.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly. &ldquo;My

-question is: Are you the same brave man with

-a soldier&rsquo;s brave, great heart that you were that

-day?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring

-directly at something that was not in the visible

-world. The question had sprung upon him out

-of the dead past. What right had this man, what

-right had any man to face him with it?</p>

-<p>He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of

-the tragedy of my life as it whirled by you on

-the road! How dare you come here to tell me the

-little bit of it you saw?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said the Bishop swiftly, &ldquo;you have

-forgotten how great and brave a man you are.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He

-was stirred to the depths of feelings that he had

-not known for years. But even in his emotion

-and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set

-upon his face. His lifetime of never speaking

-until he knew what he was going to say kept him

-waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious

-caution; it was merely the instinct of self-defence.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;For months,&rdquo; the Bishop was going on

-quietly, &ldquo;the people of my hills have been harassed

-by you in your unfair efforts to get possession

-of the lands upon which their fathers built

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>

-their homes. You have tried to cheat them.

-You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to

-debauch a legislature in your attempt to overcome

-them. I have here in my pocket the sworn

-confessions of two men who stood in the shadow

-of death and said that they had been sent to burn

-a whole countryside that you and your associates

-coveted&ndash;&ndash;to burn the people in their homes like

-the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that

-act to within two men of you. And I can sit here,

-Clifford Stanton, and look you in the eye man to

-man and tell you that I <i>know</i> you gave the suggestion.

-And you cannot look back and deny it.

-I cannot take you into a court of law in this State

-and prove it. We both know the futility of talking

-of that. But I can take you, I do take you

-this minute into the court of your own heart&ndash;&ndash;where

-I know a brave man lives&ndash;&ndash;and convict

-you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If

-the whole world stood here accusing you would

-we know it any the better?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now my people have made a terrible mistake.

-They have taken the law into their own hands and

-have thought to punish you themselves. They

-have done wrong, they have done foolishly.

-Who can punish you? You have power above the

-law. Your interests are above the courts of the

-land. They did not understand. They did not

-know you. They have been misled. They have

-listened to men like me preaching: &lsquo;Right shall

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>

-prevail: Justice shall conquer.&rsquo; And where

-does right prevail? And when shall justice conquer?

-No doubt you have said these phrases

-yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers

-taught us to say them. But are they true? Does

-justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can

-say. I ask you, who have the answer in your

-power. Does right prevail? Then give my

-stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?

-Then see that they come to no harm.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I dare to put this thing raw to your face because

-I know the man that once lived within you.

-I saw you&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t harp on that,&rdquo; Stanton cut in viciously.

-&ldquo;You know nothing about it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I <i>do</i> harp on that. I have come here to

-harp on that. Do you think that if I had not

-with my eyes seen that thing I would have come

-near you at all? No. I would have branded

-you before all men for the thing that you have

-done. I would have given these confessions

-which I hold to the world. I would have denounced

-you as far as tongue and pen would go

-to every man who through four years gave blood

-at your side. I would have braved the rebuke

-of my superiors and maybe the discipline of my

-Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of

-men. I would have made your name hated in

-the ears of little children. But I would not have

-come to you.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;If I had not seen that thing I would not have

-come to you, for I would have said: What

-good? The man is a coward without a heart.

-A <i>coward</i>, do you remember that word?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The man groaned and struck out with his hand

-as though to drive away a ghastly thing that would

-leap upon him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;A coward without a heart,&rdquo; the Bishop repeated

-remorselessly, &ldquo;who has men and women

-and children in his power and who, because he has

-no heart, can use his power to crush them.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;If I had not seen, I would have said that.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I saw. I <i>saw</i>. And I have come here

-to ask you: Are you the same brave man with a

-heart that I saw on that day?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You shall not evade me. Do you think you

-can put me off with defences and puling arguments

-of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of

-property? No. You and I are here looking at

-naked truth. I will go down into your very soul

-and have it out by the roots, the naked truth.

-But I will have my answer. Are you that same

-man?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;If you are not that same man; if you have

-killed that in you which gave life to that man;

-if that man no longer lives in you; if you are not

-capable of being that same man with the heart

-of a great and tender hero, then tell me and I

-will go. But you shall answer me. I will have

-my answer.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span></div>

-<p>Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair

-and stood trembling as though in an overpowering

-rage, and visibly struggling for his command

-of mind and tongue.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Words, words, words,&rdquo; he groaned at last.

-&ldquo;Your life is made of words. Words are your

-coin. What do you know?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you think that words can go down into

-my soul to find the man that was once there? Do

-you think that words can call him up? When

-did words ever mean anything to a man&rsquo;s real

-heart! You come here with your question. It&rsquo;s

-made of words.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;When did men ever do anything for <i>words</i>?

-Honour is a word. Truth is a word. Bravery

-is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word.

-Do you think men do things for words? No!

-What do you know? What <i>could</i> you know?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Men do things and you call them by words.

-But do they do them for the words? No!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They do them&ndash;&ndash; Because <i>some woman

-lives, or once lived!</i> What do <i>you</i> know?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Go out there. Stay there.&rdquo; He pointed.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to think.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against

-his desk. The Bishop rose and walked from the

-room.</p>

-<p>When he heard the door close, the man got up

-and going to the door barred it.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span></div>

-<p>He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning

-heavily upon his propped hands.</p>

-<p>He opened a drawer of his desk and looked

-at a smooth, glinting black and steel thing that

-lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang

-that went out to the Bishop listening in the

-outer office. It was a sinister, suggestive noise,

-and for an instant it chilled that good man&rsquo;s

-heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he

-knew immediately that he had been mistaken.</p>

-<p>Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked

-a smaller compartment within it, and from the

-latter took a small gold-framed picture. He set

-it up on the desk between his hands and looked

-long at it, questioning the face in the frame with

-a tender, diffident expression of a wonder that

-never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled.</p>

-<p>The face that looked out of the picture was

-one of a quiet, translucent beauty. At first

-glance the face had none of the striking features

-that men associate with great beauty. But behind

-the eyes there seemed to glow, and to grow

-gradually, and softly stronger, a light, as though

-diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly radiated

-from the whole countenance an impression of

-indescribable, gentle loveliness.</p>

-<p>Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was

-that light from within. He wondered now, and

-questioned. Never before had that light seemed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>

-so wonderful and so real. Now there came to

-him an answer. An answer that shook him, for

-it was the last answer he would have expected.

-The light within was truth&ndash;&ndash;truth. It seemed

-that in a world of sham and illusions and evasions

-this one woman had understood, had lived with

-truth.</p>

-<p>The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry

-laugh that was nearer to a sob.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Was that it, Lucy?&rdquo; he queried. &ldquo;Truth?

-Then let us have a little truth, for once! I&rsquo;ll tell

-you some truth!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I lied a while ago. He did <i>not</i> die a soldier&rsquo;s

-death. I told the same lie to you long ago.

-Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven

-happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to

-you. Words. And yet you died a happy woman,

-because of that lie.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He lied to you. He took you from me with

-lies. Words. Lies. And yet they made you

-happy. Where is truth?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You lived happy and died happy with a lie.

-Because I lied like what they call a man and a

-gentleman. <i>Truth!</i>&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face

-before him. Did he expect to see the light fade

-out, to see the face wither under the bitter

-revelation?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been everything,&rdquo; he went on, still trying

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>

-to make his point, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done everything,

-that men say I&rsquo;ve been and done. Why?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well&ndash;&ndash;Why?&rdquo; he asked sharply. &ldquo;Did

-it make any difference?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my

-face&ndash;&ndash;sometimes. Well&ndash;&ndash;Why not? Does

-it make any difference? Did it make any difference

-with you? If I had thought it would&ndash;&ndash; But

-it didn&rsquo;t. Lies, trickery, words! They

-served with you. They made you happy.

-<i>Truth!</i>&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But as he looked into the face and the smiling

-light of truth persisted in it, there came over

-his soul the dawn of a wonder. And the dawn

-glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and

-looked out wondering at a world remade.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is it true, Lucy?&rdquo; he asked gently. &ldquo;Can

-that be <i>truth</i>, at last? Is that what you mean?

-Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words

-and beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand&ndash;&ndash;a

-little? And do you, somewhere,

-understand now?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then tell me. Was it worth the lies?

-Down underneath, when you understood, which

-was the truth? The thing I did&ndash;&ndash;which men

-would call fine? Or was it the words?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was

-it the fine thing that was really the truth, and

-did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>

-truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were

-made of truth, did you somehow understand all

-the time?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally

-believing. Then he said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I

-will not speak it to him. But I&rsquo;ll say it to you:

-Yes, I am that same man who once did what they

-call a fine, brave thing. I didn&rsquo;t do it because

-it was a great thing, a brave thing. I did it for

-you.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ll do this for you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He looked again at the face in the picture, as

-if to make sure. Then he locked it away quickly

-in its place.</p>

-<p>He thought for a moment, then drew a pad

-abruptly to him and began writing. He wrote

-two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State,

-the other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then

-he took another pad and wrote a note, this to his

-personal representative who was following the

-state troops into the hills.</p>

-<p>He rose and walked briskly to the door.

-Throwing it open he called a clerk and gave him

-the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand

-and asked the Bishop back into the office.</p>

-<p>Closing the door quickly, he said without

-preface:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This note will put my man up there at your

-service. You will prefer to go up into the hills

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>

-yourself, I think. The officers in command of the

-troops will know that you are empowered to act

-for all parties. The Governor will have seen to

-that before you get there, I think. There will

-be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards.

-You can settle the whole matter in no time.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We will not buy the land, but we&rsquo;ll give a

-fair rental, based on what ores we find to take

-out. You can give <i>your</i> word&ndash;&ndash;mine wouldn&rsquo;t

-go for much up there, I guess,&rdquo; he put in grimly&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;that

-it will be fair. You can make that the

-basis of settlement.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They can go back and rebuild. I will help,

-where it will do the most good. Our operations

-won&rsquo;t interfere much with their farm land, I find.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You will want to start at once. That is all,

-I guess, Bishop,&rdquo; he concluded abruptly.</p>

-<p>The Bishop reached for the smaller man&rsquo;s hand

-and wrung it with a sudden, unwonted emotion.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I will not cheapen this, sir,&rdquo; he said evenly,

-&ldquo;by attempting to thank you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;A mere whim of mine, that&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; Stanton

-cut in almost curtly, the steel-trap expression snapping

-into place over his face. &ldquo;A mere whim.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly, looking him

-squarely in the eyes, &ldquo;I only came to ask a question,

-anyhow.&rdquo; Then he turned and walked

-briskly from the office. He had no right and no

-wish to know what the other man chose to conceal

-beneath that curt and incisive manner.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span></div>

-<p>So these two men parted. In words, they had

-not understood each other. Neither had come

-near the depths of the other. But then, what man

-does ever let another man see what is in his

-heart?</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>All day long the line of armed men had gone

-spreading itself wider and wider, to draw itself

-around the edges of the shorter line of men hidden

-in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day

-long clearly and more clearly Jeffrey Whiting

-had been seeing the inevitable end. His line was

-already stretched almost to the breaking point.

-If the enemy had known, there were dangerous

-gaps in it now through which a few daring men

-might have pushed and have begun to divide up

-the strength of the men with him.</p>

-<p>All the afternoon as he watched he saw other

-and yet other groups and troops of men come

-up the railroad, detrain and push out ever

-farther upon the enveloping wings to east and

-west.</p>

-<p>Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line

-had been driven in and almost surrounded.

-They had decided in the beginning to leave their

-horses in the rear, and so use them only at the

-last. But the spreading line in front had become

-too long to be covered on foot by the few men he

-had. They were forced to use the speed of the

-animals to make a show of greater force than

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span>

-they really had. The horses furnished marks that

-even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the

-afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams

-of terrified, wounded horses rang horribly through

-the woods above the pattering crackle of the irregular

-rifle fire. Old men who years before had

-learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and

-fell asleep grumbling. Young men and boys who

-had never heard such sounds turned sick with horror

-or wandered frightened through the dark,

-nervously ready to fire on any moving twig or

-scraping branch.</p>

-<p>In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the

-line, talking aside to every man; telling them to

-slip quietly away through the dark. They could

-make their way out through the loose lines of

-soldiers and sheriffs&rsquo; men and get down to the villages

-where they would be unknown and where

-nobody would bother with them.</p>

-<p>The inevitable few took his word&ndash;&ndash; There is

-always the inevitable few. They slipped away

-one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly

-good reason for going, several good reasons, in

-fact; any reason, indeed, but that they were afraid.

-Most of them were gathered in by the soldier

-pickets and sent down to jail.</p>

-<p>Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with

-a grim, ugly suggestion in it of the coming winter.

-Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily

-out to their posts, munching dryly at the last of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span>

-the stores which they had taken from the construction

-depots along the line which they had destroyed.

-This was the end. It was not far from

-the mind of each man that this would probably be

-his last meal.</p>

-<p>The firing began again as the outer line came

-creeping in upon them. They had still the great

-advantage of the shelter of the woods and the

-formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship

-kept those directly in front of them almost

-out of range. But there was nothing in sight before

-them but that they would certainly all be surrounded

-and shot down or taken.</p>

-<p>Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those

-who had been watching the most distant of the

-two wings creeping around them saw these men

-halt and slowly begin to gather back together.

-What was it? Were they going to rush at last?

-Here would be a fight in earnest!</p>

-<p>But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation,

-merely walked back in their tracks until

-they were entirely out of range. It must be a

-ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their

-shelter, puzzled, but determined not to be drawn

-out.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of

-the line, saw an old man walking, barehead, up

-over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted

-rails. That white head with the high, wide brow,

-the slightly stooping, spare shoulders, the long,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span>

-swinging walk&ndash;&ndash; That was the Bishop of Alden!</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to

-the men on either side to stay where they were,

-jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet the

-Bishop.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Are any men killed?&rdquo; the Bishop asked before

-Jeffrey had time to speak as they met.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the

-chest&ndash;&ndash;we don&rsquo;t know how bad it is,&rdquo; said

-Jeffrey, stopping short. &ldquo;Ten other men are

-wounded. I don&rsquo;t think any of them are bad.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Call in your men,&rdquo; said the Bishop briefly.

-&ldquo;The soldiers are going back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>At Jeffrey&rsquo;s call the men came running from

-all sides as he and the Bishop reached the line.

-Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered

-round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance

-of the White Horse Chaplain, for so one

-and all they knew and remembered him. Men

-who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped

-back into the scene of that day and looked about

-blankly for the white horse. And young men who

-had heard that tale many times and had seen and

-heard of his coming through the fire to French

-Village stared round-eyed at him. What did this

-coming mean?</p>

-<p>He told them shortly the terms that Clifford

-W. Stanton, their enemy, was willing to make with

-them. And in the end he added:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;You have only my word that these things will

-be done as I say. <i>I</i> believe. If you believe, you

-will take your horses and get back to your families

-at once.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief,

-the men for the first time knew what they had

-been through. Their knees gave under them.

-They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking

-quaver. Many who had thought never to see

-loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying

-over the names of those they were saved to.</p>

-<p>The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him,

-walked slowly back down the roadbed. Suddenly

-Jeffrey remembered something that had gone

-completely out of his mind in these last hours.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Bishop,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;that day&ndash;&ndash;that

-day in court. I&ndash;&ndash;I said you lied. Now I know

-you didn&rsquo;t. You told the truth, of course.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My boy,&rdquo; said the Bishop queerly, &ldquo;yesterday

-I asked a man, on his soul, for the truth&ndash;&ndash;the

-truth. I got no answer.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the

-name of the Emperor of all the World, once

-asked what was truth. And <i>he</i> got no answer.

-Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that

-there are things bigger than we are. We get no

-answer.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span>

-<a name='X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID' id='X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID'></a>

-<h2>X</h2>

-<h3>THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID</h3>

-</div>

-<p>It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring

-and the bud of Promise.</p>

-<p>The snow had been gone from the sunny places

-for three weeks now. He still lingered three feet

-deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from which

-only the hot June sun and the warm rains would

-drive him. He still held fastnesses on the northerly

-side of high hills, where the sun could not

-come at him and only the trickling rain-wash

-running down the hill could eat him out from

-underneath. But the sun had chased him away

-from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to

-the grass and the germinant life beneath to come

-boldly forth, for the enemy was gone.</p>

-<p>But the grass was timid. And the hardy little

-wild flowers, the forget-me-nots and the little

-wild pansies held back fearfully. Even the

-bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys

-of meadow and hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection

-that belied their nature. For all of

-them had been burned to the very roots of the

-roots. But the sun came warmer, more insistent,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span>

-and kissed the scarred, brown body of earth and

-warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and

-the little flowers took courage out of their very

-craving for life and pushed resolutely forth.

-And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The

-world was born again!</p>

-<p>Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run

-on her way back to French Village. She had been

-to put the first flowers of the Spring on the grave

-of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had

-blessed the ground for him and they had laid him,

-there under the sunny side of the Gaunt Rocks

-that had given him his last breathing space that

-he might die in peace. They had put him here,

-for there was no way in that time to carry him

-to the little cemetery in French Village. And

-Cynthe was well satisfied that it was so. Here,

-under the Gaunt Rocks, she would not have to

-share him with any one. And she would not have

-to hear people pointing out the grave to each other

-and to see them staring.</p>

-<p>The water tumbling down the Run out of the

-hills sang a glad, uproarious song, as is the way

-of all brooks at their beginnings, concerning the

-necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible

-to the big, wide life of the sea. The sea would

-not care at all if that brook never came down to

-it. But the brook did not know that. Would not

-have believed it if it had been told.</p>

-<p>And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span>

-of old Beaupre&ndash;&ndash;which she had never seen, for

-Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was

-sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time,

-and&ndash;&ndash; But Cynthe was not unhappy. The

-Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good.

-Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet.

-There was work in the world to do. And&ndash;&ndash;when

-all was said and done&ndash;&ndash;Rafe Gadbeau was

-in Heaven.</p>

-<p>As she left the Run and was crossing up to

-the divide she met Jeffrey Whiting coming down.

-He had been over in the Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork country

-and was returning home. He stopped and

-showed that he was anxious to talk with her.

-Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty,

-sociable little person, and, besides, for some time

-she had had it in mind that she would some day

-take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this

-scowling young gentleman with the big face.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;

-he said, after some verbal beating about the bush;

-&ldquo;how is she?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you come see, if you want to

-know?&rdquo; retorted Cynthe sharply.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went

-on:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;If you wanted to know why didn&rsquo;t you come

-up all Winter and see? Why didn&rsquo;t you come

-up when she was nursing the dirty French babies

-through the black diphtheria, when their own

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span>

-mothers were afraid of them? Why didn&rsquo;t you

-come see when she was helping the mothers up

-there to get into their houses and make the houses

-warm before the coming of the Winter, though

-she had no house of her own? Why didn&rsquo;t you

-come see when she nearly got her death from

-the &rsquo;mmonia caring for old Robbideau Laclair

-in his house that had no roof on it, till she shamed

-the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you

-ask somebody then? Why didn&rsquo;t you come

-see?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Jeffrey defended, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know

-about any of those things. And we had plenty

-to do here&ndash;&ndash;our place and my mother and all.

-I didn&rsquo;t see her at all till Easter Sunday. I

-sneaked up to your church, just to get a look at

-her. She saw me. But she didn&rsquo;t seem to want

-to.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But she should have been delighted to see

-you,&rdquo; Cynthe snapped back. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think

-so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed.

-She should have flown to your arms! Not so?

-You remember what you said to her the last time

-you saw her before that. No? I will tell you.

-You called her &lsquo;liar&rsquo; before the whole court, even

-the Judge! Of one certainty, she should have

-flown to you. No?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have

-gone away, with all haste. But he was not wise.

-He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span>

-that some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed

-to argue.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But she&ndash;&ndash;she cared for me,&rdquo; he blurted out.

-&ldquo;I know she did. I couldn&rsquo;t understand why she

-couldn&rsquo;t tell&ndash;&ndash;the truth; when you&ndash;&ndash;you did so

-much for me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;For you? For <i>you</i>!&rdquo; the girl flamed up in

-his face. &ldquo;Oh, villainous monster of vanity! For

-<i>you</i>! Ha! I could laugh! For <i>you</i>! I put

-<i>mon Rafe</i>&ndash;&ndash;dead in his grave&ndash;&ndash;to shame before

-all the world, called him murderer, blackened

-his name, for <i>you</i>!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No! No! <i>No!</i> <i>Never!</i></p>

-<p>&ldquo;I would not have said a word against him to

-save you from the death. <i>Never!</i></p>

-<p>&ldquo;I did what I did, because there was a debt.

-A debt which <i>mon Rafe</i> had forgotten to pay.

-He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay

-that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made

-straight. He could go in. I did it for <i>you</i>!

-Ha!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And

-the girl had talked so rapidly and so fiercely that

-he could not gather even the context of the matter.

-He gave up trying to follow it and went back

-to his main argument.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But why couldn&rsquo;t she have told the truth?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The truth, eh! You must have the truth!

-The girl must tell the truth for you! No matter

-if she was to blacken her soul before God,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span>

-you must have the truth told for you. The truth!

-It was not enough for you to know that the

-girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that

-she would have died for you if she might! No.

-The poor girl must tear out the secret lining of her

-heart for you, to save you!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Think you that if <i>mon Rafe</i> was alive and

-stood there where you stood, in peril of his life;

-think you that he would ask me to give up the

-secret of the Holy Confession to save him. <i>Non!</i>

-<i>Mon Rafe</i> was a <i>man</i>! He would die, telling me

-to keep that which God had trusted me with!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to

-be saved; that the Good God must come down

-from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened

-Book for <i>you</i>!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You ask for truth! <i>Tiens!</i> I will tell you

-truth!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried

-that you were an innocent man. <i>Mon Rafe</i> was

-the guilty man. The whole world must come

-forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth

-to declare you innocent and him guilty! You

-were innocent! You were persecuted! The

-earth and the Heaven must come to show that you

-were innocent and he was guilty! <i>Bah!</i> <i>You

-were as guilty as he!</i></p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was there. I saw. Your finger was on

-the trigger. You only waited for the man to stop

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span>

-moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder

-was in your soul. Murder was in your finger.

-But you were innocent and <i>mon Rafe</i> was guilty.

-By how much?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;By one second. That was the difference between

-<i>mon Rafe</i> and you. Just that second that

-he shot before you were ready. <i>That</i> was the

-difference between you the innocent man and <i>mon

-Rafe</i>!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were guilty. In your heart you were

-guilty. In your soul you were guilty. M&rsquo;sieur

-Cain himself was not more guilty than you!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were more guilty than <i>mon Rafe</i>, for he

-had suffered more from that man. He was

-hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were

-cool. You were ready. Only <i>mon Rafe</i> was a

-little quicker, because he was desperate. Before

-the Good God you were more guilty.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And <i>mon Rafe</i> must be blackened more than

-the fire had blackened his poor body. And the

-poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the

-good M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop must break his holiest

-oath. All to make you innocent!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Bah! <i>Innocent!</i>&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She flung away from him and ran up the hill.

-Cynthe had not said quite all that she intended to

-say to this young gentleman. But then, also, she

-had said a good deal more than she had intended

-to say. So it was about even. She had

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span>

-said enough. And it would do him no harm.

-She had felt that she owed <i>mon Rafe</i> a little plain

-speaking. She was much relieved.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him

-digging up the tender roots of the new grass with

-his toe. He did not look after the girl. He had

-forgotten her.</p>

-<p>He felt no resentment at the things that she had

-said. He did not argue with himself as to

-whether these things were just or unjust. Of all

-the things that she had said only one thing mattered.

-And that not because she had said it. It

-mattered because it was true. The quick, jabbing

-sentences from the girl had driven home to him

-just one thing.</p>

-<p>Guilty? He <i>was</i> guilty. He was as guilty as&ndash;&ndash;Rafe

-Gadbeau.</p>

-<p>Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation,

-bitter, blinding provocation. But so had Rafe

-Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau

-as anything but guilty of murder.</p>

-<p>He turned on his heel and walked down the

-Run with swift, swinging strides, fighting this conviction

-that was settling upon him. He fought it

-viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a

-man, that the thing was done and past, that men

-have no time for remorse and sickish, mawkish

-repentance. Those things were for brooding

-women, and Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably,

-sagaciously; contending that he had not, in

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span>

-fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that

-he would ever have done so? Maybe he had not

-really intended to kill at all. Maybe he would not

-have killed. The man might have spoken to him.

-Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned

-that time. Who could tell? Ten thousand

-things might have happened, any one of which

-would have stood between him and killing the man.

-He fought it defiantly. Suppose he had killed the

-man? What about it? The man deserved it.

-He had a right to kill him.</p>

-<p>But he knew that he was losing at every angle

-of the fight. For the conviction answered not a

-word to any of these things. It merely fastened

-itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment:

-&ldquo;As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>And when he came over the top of the hill,

-from where he could look down upon the grave of

-Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the

-conviction pointed out to him just one enduring

-fact. It said: &ldquo;There is the grave of Rafe

-Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything

-about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried

-here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then he fought no more with the conviction.

-It gripped his spirit and cowed him. It sat upon

-his shoulders and rode home with him. His

-mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding,

-began to look for some fresh trouble.</p>

-<p>She need not have looked for new trouble, so

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span>

-far as concerned things outside himself. For

-Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men.

-He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable

-and finer home than it had ever been.

-He had secured an excellent contract from the railroad

-to supply thousands of ties out of the timber

-of the high hills. He had made money out

-of that. And once he had gotten a taste of money-making,

-in a business that was his by the traditions

-of his people and his own liking, he knew that he

-had found himself a career.</p>

-<p>He was working now on a far bigger project,

-the reforesting of thirty thousand acres of the

-higher hill country. In time there would be unlimited

-money in that. But there was more than

-money in it. It was a game and a life which he

-knew and which he loved. To make money by

-making things more abundant, by covering the

-naked peaks of the hill country with sturdy, growing

-timber, that was a thing that appealed to him.</p>

-<p>All the Winter nights he had spent learning the

-things that men had done in Germany and elsewhere

-in this direction, and in adding this knowledge

-to what he knew could be done here in the

-hills. Already he knew it was being said that

-he was a young fellow who knew more about growing

-timber than any two old men in the hills.

-And he knew how much this meant, coming from

-among a people who are not prone to give youth

-more than its due. Already he was being picked

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span>

-as an expert. Next week he was going down to

-Albany to give answers to a legislative committee

-for the Forest Commission, which was trying to

-get appropriations from the State for cleaning up

-brush and deadfalls from out of standing timber&ndash;&ndash;a

-thing that if well done would render forest

-fires almost harmless.</p>

-<p>He was getting a standing and a recognition

-which now made that law school diploma&ndash;&ndash;the

-thing that he had once regarded as the portal of

-the world&ndash;&ndash;look cheap and little.</p>

-<p>But, as he sat late that night working on his

-forestry calculations, the roadway of his dreams

-fell away from under him. The high colour of

-his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before

-him and across the grey wall in letters of

-black he could only see the word&ndash;&ndash;<i>guilty</i>.</p>

-<p>What was it all worth? Why work? Why

-fight? Why dream? Why anything? when at

-the end and the beginning of all things there stood

-that wall with the word written across it.

-Guilty&ndash;&ndash;guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And Ruth

-Lansing&ndash;&ndash;!</p>

-<p>A flash of sudden insight caught him and held

-him in its glaring light. He had been doing all

-this work. He had built this home. He had

-fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills

-and the raging winter for money. He had

-dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built them

-higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span></div>

-<p>He had fought the thought of her. He had

-put her out of his mind. He had said that she

-had failed him in need. He had even, in the

-blackest time of the night, called her liar. He

-had forgotten her, he said.</p>

-<p>Now he knew that not for an instant had she

-been out of his mind. Every stroke of work had

-been for her. She had stood at the top of the

-high path of every struggling dream.</p>

-<p>Between him and her now rose that grey wall

-with the one word written on it. Was that what

-they had meant that day there in the court, she

-and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all?

-Was there some sort of uncanny truth or insight

-or hidden justice in that secret confessional of

-theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting

-truth, while it hid the momentary, accidental

-truth of mere words? In effect, they had

-said that he was guilty. And he <i>was</i> guilty!</p>

-<p>What was that the Bishop had said when he

-had asked for truth that day on the railroad line?

-&ldquo;Sooner or later we have to learn that there is

-something bigger than we are.&rdquo; Was this what

-it meant? Was this the thing bigger than he was?

-The thing that had seen through him, had looked

-down into his heart, had measured him; was this

-the thing that was bigger than he?</p>

-<p>He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting

-maze of imagination, misinformation, and

-some unreadable facts.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span></div>

-<p>He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that

-he was guilty. That was why she had acted as

-she had. He would go to her. He would&ndash;&ndash;!

-But what was the use? She would not talk to

-him about this. She would merely deny, as she

-had done before, that she knew anything at all.

-What could he do? Where could he turn?

-They, he and Ruth, could never speak of that

-thing. They could never come to any understanding

-of anything. This thing, this wall&ndash;&ndash;with

-that word written on it&ndash;&ndash;would stand between

-them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that

-was sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the

-thing that was stronger than he. There was no

-answer. There was no way out.</p>

-<p>Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!</p>

-<p>But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He

-was not guilty any more. Cynthe had said so.

-He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow.

-He had merely come through the fire and thrown

-himself at a man&rsquo;s feet and had his guilt wiped

-away. What was there in that uncanny thing they

-called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as&ndash;&ndash;as

-Rafe Gadbeau, could come to another man,

-and, by the saying of a few words, turn over and

-face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?</p>

-<p>It was a delusion, of course. The saying of

-words could never wipe away Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s

-guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt

-from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span>

-But Rafe Gadbeau <i>believed</i> it! Cynthe believed

-it! And Cynthe was no fool. <i>Ruth</i> believed it!</p>

-<p>It was a delusion, yes. But&ndash;&ndash;<i>What</i> a delusion!

-What a magnificent, soul-stirring delusion!

-A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau

-out of the misery of his guilt, that carried the

-souls of millions of guilty people through all the

-world up out of the depths of their crimes to a

-confidence of relief and freedom!</p>

-<p>Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down

-into the abyss of despairing loneliness. It trod

-the dark ways in which there was no guidance.

-It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or

-to what it might appeal. It travelled an endless

-round of memory, from cause to effect and back

-again to cause, looking for the single act, or

-thought, that must have been the starting point,

-that must have held the germ of his guilt.</p>

-<p>Somewhere there must have been a beginning.

-He knew that he was not in any particular a different

-person, capable of anything different, likely

-to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain

-from what he had been on any other morning

-since he had become a man. There was never

-a time, so far as he could see, when he would not

-have been ready to do the thing which he was

-ready to do that morning&ndash;&ndash;given the circumstances.

-Nor had he changed in any way since

-that morning. What had been essentially his act,

-his thought, a part of him, that morning was just

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span>

-as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this

-minute. There was no thing in the succession

-of incidents to which he could point and say:

-That was not I who did that: I did not mean

-that: I am sorry I did that. Nor would there

-ever be a time when he could say any of these

-things. It seemed that he must always have been

-guilty of that thing; that in all his life to come

-he must always be guilty of it. There had been

-no change in him to make him capable of it, to

-make him wish it; there had been no later change

-in him by which he would undo it. It seemed

-that his guilt was something which must have begun

-away back in the formation of his character,

-and which would persist as long as he was the

-being that he was. There was no beginning of

-it. There was no way that it might ever end.</p>

-<p>And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing

-had seen that guilt, too. She had seen it in his

-eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in

-his mind.</p>

-<p>What had she seen? What was that thing written

-so clear in his eyes that she could read and

-tell him of it that day on the road from French

-Village?</p>

-<p>He would go to her and ask her. She should

-tell him what was that thing she had seen. He

-would make her tell. He would have it from

-her!</p>

-<p>But, no. Where was the use? It would only

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span>

-bring them to that whole, impossible, bewildering

-business of the confessional. And he did not

-want to hear any more of that. His heart was

-sick of it. It had made him suffer enough. And

-he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered

-equally, or maybe more, from it.</p>

-<p>Where could he go? He must tell this thing.

-He <i>must</i> talk of it to some one! That resistless,

-irrepressible impulse for confession, that call

-of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon

-him. He must find some other soul to share with

-him the burden of this conviction. He must find

-some one who would understand and to whom he

-could speak.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not

-have analysed what this craving meant. He only

-knew that it was very real, that his soul was staggering

-alone and blind under the weight of this

-thing.</p>

-<p>There was one man who would understand.

-The man who had looked upon the faces of life

-and death these many years, the man of strange

-comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him

-on the way of all this, and who from what he had

-said in his house in Alden, that day so long ago

-when all this began, may have foreseen this very

-thing, the man who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry

-out his guilt; that man would understand. He

-would go to him.</p>

-<p>He wrote a note which his mother would find in

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span>

-the morning, and slipping quietly out of the

-house he saddled his horse for the ride to Lowville.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I came because I had to come,&rdquo; Jeffrey began,

-when the Bishop had seated him. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know

-why I should come to you. I know you cannot

-do anything. There is nothing for any one to do.

-But I had to tell some one. I <i>had</i> to say it to

-somebody.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I sat that day in the courtroom,&rdquo; he went on

-as the Bishop waited, &ldquo;and thought that the whole

-world was against me. It seemed that everybody

-was determined to make me guilty&ndash;&ndash;even you,

-even Ruth. And I was innocent. I had done

-nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the idea

-that everybody was trying to make me out guilty,

-when I was innocent. I had done nothing. I had

-not killed a man. I told the men there on the

-mountain that I was innocent and they would not

-believe me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts

-that I had not done the thing, but you would not

-say a word for me, an innocent man.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was that as much as anything, that feeling

-that the whole world wanted to condemn me knowing

-that I was innocent, that drove me on to the

-wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting

-back, fighting back against everybody.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And&ndash;&ndash;this is what I came to say&ndash;&ndash;all the

-time I was guilty&ndash;&ndash;guilty: guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I am not sure I understand,&rdquo; said the Bishop

-slowly, as Jeffrey stopped.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s nothing to understand. It is just

-as I say. I was guilty of that man&rsquo;s death before

-I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty of it

-that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am

-guilty now. I will always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau

-could say a few words to you and turn over

-into the next world, free. I cannot,&rdquo; he ended,

-with a sort of grim finality as though he saw again

-before him that wall against which he had come

-the night before.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; the Bishop began slowly.

-Then he asked suddenly, &ldquo;What brought your

-mind to this view of the matter?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;A girl,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;the girl that saved me;

-that French girl that loved Rafe Gadbeau. She

-showed me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving

-her mind with some plain speaking. But he

-did not feel at all easy. He knew better than to

-treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not

-a boy to be laughed out of a morbid notion, or to

-be told to grow older and forget the thing. His

-was a man&rsquo;s soul, standing in the dark, grappling

-with a thing with which it could not cope. The

-wrong word here might mar his whole life. Here

-was no place for softening away the realities with

-reasoning. The man&rsquo;s soul demanded a man&rsquo;s

-straight answer.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Before you could be guilty,&rdquo; said the Bishop

-decisively, &ldquo;you must have injured some one by

-your thought, your intention. Whom did you injure?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought,

-to follow it out from the maze which his mind

-had been treading. Here was the answer. This

-would clear the way. Whom had he injured?</p>

-<p>Well, <i>whom</i> had he injured? <i>Who</i> had been

-hurt by his thought, his wish, to kill a man? Had

-it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was

-none the worse of it.</p>

-<p>Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not

-enter into this at all.</p>

-<p>Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till

-yesterday; and not in the way meant.</p>

-<p>Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then&ndash;&ndash;then

-why all this&ndash;&ndash;? Jeffrey Whiting rose

-from his chair as though to go. He did not look

-at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing

-upon the floor, asking:</p>

-<p>Whom?</p>

-<p>Suddenly, from within, just barely audible

-through his lips there came the answer; a single

-word:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>God!</i>&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Your business is with Him, then,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop, rising with what almost seemed brusqueness.

-&ldquo;You wanted to see Him.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;but,&rdquo; Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span>

-argue, &ldquo;men come to you, to confess. Rafe Gadbeau&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Bishop quickly, &ldquo;you are

-wrong. Men come to me to <i>confession</i>. They

-come to <i>confess</i> to God.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He took the young man&rsquo;s hand, saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I will not say another word. You have found

-your own answer. You would not understand better

-if I talked forever. Find God, and tell Him,

-what you have told me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the

-long way to the hills and home. He was still bewildered,

-disappointed, and a little resentful of the

-Bishop&rsquo;s brief manners with him. He had gone

-looking for sympathy, understanding, help. And

-he had been told to find God.</p>

-<p>Find God? How did men go about to find

-God? Wasn&rsquo;t all the world continually on the

-lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did

-the preachers find Him? Did the priests find

-Him? And if they did, what did they say to

-Him? Did people who were sick, and people who

-said God had answered their prayers and punished

-their enemies for them; did they find God?</p>

-<p>Did they find Him when they prayed? Did

-they find Him when they were in trouble? What

-did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must

-have meant something? How did the Bishop

-himself find God? Was there some word, some

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span>

-key, some hidden portal by which men found God?

-Was God to be found here on the hills, in the

-night, in the open?</p>

-<p>God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how

-can I come, how can I find! A wordless, baffled,

-impotent cry, that reached nowhere.</p>

-<p>The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.</p>

-<p>Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable

-guilt, swept down upon him again and

-beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It

-left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to

-face this thing. It was too big for him. He was

-after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling alone in

-the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had

-been caught and crushed between forces and passions

-that were too much for him. He was little

-and these things were very great.</p>

-<p>Unconsciously the heart within him, the child

-heart that somehow lives ever in every man, began

-to speak, to speak, without knowing it, direct

-to God.</p>

-<p>It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was

-not an excuse. It was the simple unfolding of the

-heart of a child to the Father who made it. The

-heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It

-could not lift itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness

-complete, of dependence utter and unreasoning.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span></div>

-<p>Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at

-the stars, blinking at him through the starting

-tears.</p>

-<p>Was that God? Had some one spoken?

-Where was the load that had lain upon him all

-these weary hours?</p>

-<p>He stopped his horse and looked about him,

-breathing in great, free, hungry breaths of God&rsquo;s

-air about him. For it <i>was</i> God&rsquo;s air. That was

-the wonder of it. The world was God&rsquo;s! And it

-was new made for him to live in!</p>

-<p>He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer

-of thanks, as simple and unreasoning, unquestioning,

-as had been the unfolding of his heart. He

-had been bound: he was free!</p>

-<p>Then his horse went flying up the hill road,

-beating a tattoo of new life upon the soft, breathing

-air of the spring night.</p>

-<p>With the inconsequence of all of us children

-when God has lifted the stone from our hearts,

-Jeffrey had already left everything of the last thirty-six

-hours behind him as completely as if he had

-never lived through those hours. (That He lets

-us forget so easily, shows that He is the Royal

-God in very deed.)</p>

-<p>Before the sun was well up in the morning

-Jeffrey was on his way to French Village, to look

-out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old Robbideau

-Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into

-fixing that roof.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span></div>

-<p>What he had heard the other day from Cynthe

-was by no means all that he had heard of the

-doings of Ruth during the last seven months.

-For the French people had taken her to their

-hearts and had made of her a wonderful new kind

-of saint. They had seen her come to them out of

-the fire. They had heard of her silence at the

-trial of the man she loved. They had seen her

-devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to

-their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria

-had frightened the wits out of the best of

-women. All the while they knew that she was not

-happy. And they had explained fully to the

-countryside just what was their opinion of the

-whole matter.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly

-understanding many things that had been hidden

-from him, was very humble as he wondered what

-he could say to Ruth.</p>

-<p>At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he

-met Cynthe.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; he asked without preface.</p>

-<p>Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching

-look, and was amazed at the change she

-saw.</p>

-<p>Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to

-whom she had talked the other day. Here was a

-man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and

-had learned some things out of unknown places of

-his heart.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span></div>

-<p>I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too

-much. But I am not sorry. <i>Non.</i></p>

-<p>&ldquo;The last house,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;by the crook

-of the lake there. She will be glad,&rdquo; she remarked

-simply, and turned on her way.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl

-heartily for the word that she had thought to add.

-It was a warrant, it seemed, of forgiveness&ndash;&ndash;and

-of all things.</p>

-<p>Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife

-Philomena sat in the sun by the side of the house

-watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms bare

-above the elbow was working away contentedly

-in their little patch of garden. They nudged each

-other as Jeffrey rode up and left his horse, but

-they made no sign to Ruth.</p>

-<p>So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth

-came to her unseen and unheard. He took the

-hoe from her hand as she turned to face him. Up

-to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he

-was to say to her. What was there to say? But

-as he looked into her startled, pain-clouded eyes

-he found himself saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I hurt God once, very much. I did not know

-what to say to Him. Last night He taught me

-what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will

-you tell me what to say to you, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting.

-But Ruth quickly understood. There was no irreverence

-in it, only a man&rsquo;s stumbling, wholehearted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span>

-confession. It was a plea that she had no

-will to deny. The quick, warm tears of joy came

-welling to her eyes as she silently took his hand

-and led him out of the little garden and to where

-his horse stood.</p>

-<p>There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers

-slipping softly through the big bay&rsquo;s mane, Jeffrey

-standing stiff and anxious before her, with the glad

-morning and the high hills and all French Village

-observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced

-their question.</p>

-<p>But after all there was no question. For

-when Jeffrey had told all, down to that moment in

-the dark road when he had found God in his heart,

-Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness

-that is born in every woman, said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Poor boy, you have suffered too much!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What I suffered was that I made for myself,&rdquo;

-he said thickly. &ldquo;Cynthe Cardinal told me what

-a fool I was.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What did Cynthe tell you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;She told me that you loved me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?&rdquo; said

-the girl very quietly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, it seems so. I&rsquo;d known your little white

-soul ever since you were a baby. I knew that in

-all your life you&rsquo;d never had a thought that was

-not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I

-knew that there was never a time when you

-wouldn&rsquo;t have given everything, even life, for me.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span>

-I knew it that day in the Bishop&rsquo;s house. I knew

-it that morning when you came to me in the sugar

-cabin.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, I knew all that,&rdquo; he went on bitterly.

-&ldquo;I knew you loved me, and I knew what a love it

-was. I knew it. And yet that day&ndash;&ndash;that day

-in the courtroom, the only thing I could do was

-to call you liar!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him,

-but he went on doggedly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, I did. That was all I could think of.

-I threw it at you like a blow in the face. I saw

-you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck you.

-And even that sight wasn&rsquo;t enough for me. I

-kept on saying it, when I knew in my heart it

-wasn&rsquo;t so. I couldn&rsquo;t help but know it. I knew

-you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied;

-kept on till yesterday. I wasn&rsquo;t big enough. I

-wasn&rsquo;t man enough to see that you were just facing

-something that was bigger than both of us&ndash;&ndash;something

-that was bigger and truer than words&ndash;&ndash;that

-there was no way out for you but to do

-what you did.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey, dear,&rdquo; the girl hurried to say, &ldquo;you

-know that&rsquo;s a thing we can&rsquo;t speak about&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand.

-You needn&rsquo;t say anything. I <i>understand</i>.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And I understand a lot more,&rdquo; he began

-again. &ldquo;It took that little French girl to tell me

-what was the truth. I know it now. There was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span>

-a deeper, a truer truth under everything. That

-was why you had to do as you did. That&rsquo;s why

-everything was so. I wasn&rsquo;t innocent. Things

-don&rsquo;t <i>happen</i> as those things did. They work out,

-because they have to.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl was watching him with fright and

-wonder in her eyes. What was he going to say?

-But she let him go on.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, I wasn&rsquo;t innocent,&rdquo; he said, as though to

-himself now. &ldquo;I fooled myself into thinking that

-I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man.

-I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but

-Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s quickness prevented me. No, I

-wasn&rsquo;t innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was

-a murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as

-Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as Ca&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl had suddenly sprung forward and

-thrown her arms around his neck. She caught

-the word that was on his lips and stopped it with

-a kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say

-what he had been going to say.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You shall not say that!&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;I

-will not let you say it! Nobody shall say it! I

-defy the whole world to say it!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;it&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said the boy brokenly as

-he held her.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is not true! Never! Nothing&rsquo;s true, only

-the truth that God has hidden in His heart!

-And that is hidden! How can we say? How

-dare we say what we would have done, when we

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span>

-didn&rsquo;t do it? How do we know what&rsquo;s really in

-our hearts? Don&rsquo;t you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot

-say things like that! We don&rsquo;t know! I

-won&rsquo;t let you say it.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And if you do say it,&rdquo; she argued, &ldquo;why, I&rsquo;ll

-have to say it, too.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, I. Do you remember that night you

-were in the sugar cabin? I was outside looking

-through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was

-I thinking? What was in my heart? I&rsquo;ll tell

-you. I was out there stalking like a panther. I

-wanted just one thing out of all the world. Just

-one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would

-have done it gladly&ndash;&ndash;with joy in my heart! I

-could have sung while I was doing it!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she gasped, &ldquo;now, if you&rsquo;re going to

-say that thing, why, we&rsquo;ll say it together!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer

-in his arms, understood nothing but that she

-wanted to stand with him, to put herself in whatever

-place was his, to take that black, terrible

-shadow that had fallen on him and wrap it around

-herself too.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My poor little white-souled darling,&rdquo; he said

-through tears that choked him, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t take this

-from you! It&rsquo;s too much, I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against

-his shoulder and argued dreamily:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what you can do. You&rsquo;ll have to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span>

-take <i>me</i>. And I don&rsquo;t see how you can take me

-any way but just as I am.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then she was suddenly conscious that the world

-was observing. She drew quickly away, and

-Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go.</p>

-<p>Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered

-and adored, he began to speak in wonder and

-self-abasement.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;After all I&rsquo;ve made you suffer&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But Ruth would have none of this. It had been

-nothing, she declared. She had found work to

-do. She had been happy, in a way. God had

-been very kind.</p>

-<p>At length Jeffrey said: &ldquo;Well, I guess we&rsquo;ll

-never have to misunderstand again, anyway, Ruth.

-I had to find God because I was&ndash;&ndash;I needed Him.

-Now I want to find Him&ndash;&ndash;your way.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;you mean that you <i>believe</i>!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jeffrey slowly. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think I

-ever would. I certainly didn&rsquo;t want to. But I

-do. And it isn&rsquo;t just to win with you, Ruth, or

-to make you happier. I can&rsquo;t help it. It&rsquo;s the

-thing the Bishop once told me about&ndash;&ndash;the thing

-that&rsquo;s bigger than I am.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for

-leading him forthwith to Father Ponfret, that he

-might begin at once his course of instructions

-which she assured him was essential.</p>

-<p>But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading

-books all winter, he said. Though he admitted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span>

-that until last night he had not understood much

-of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God!

-Could she not come home, then, to his mother,

-who was pining for her&ndash;&ndash;and&ndash;&ndash;and they would

-have all their lives to finish the instructions.</p>

-<p>On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she

-would stay, among these good people where she

-had made for herself a place and a home. He

-must come every week to Father Ponfret for his

-instructions, like any other convert. If on those

-occasions he also came to see her, well, she would,

-of course, be glad to see him and to know how he

-was progressing.</p>

-<p>Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would

-see.</p>

-<p>And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree.</p>

-<p>Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this

-arrangement, grumbled that the way of the heretic

-was indeed made easy in these days. But his wife

-Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed

-him that if the good Ruth saw fit to convert

-even a heathen Turk into a husband for herself

-she would no doubt make a good job of it.</p>

-<p>So love came and went through the summer,

-practically unrebuked.</p>

-<p>Again the Bishop came riding up to French

-Village with Arsene LaComb. But this time they

-rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up

-over the new line of railroad that came into the

-hills from Welden Junction. And Arsene was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span>

-very glad of this, for as he looked at his beloved

-M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque he saw that he was not now the

-man to have faced the long road up over the hills.

-He was not two, he was many years older and less

-sturdy.</p>

-<p>The Bishop practised his French a little, but

-mostly he was silent and thoughtful. He was

-remembering that day, nearly two years ago now,

-when he had set two ambitious young souls upon

-a way which they did not like. What a coil of

-good and bad had come out of that doing of his.

-And again he wondered, as he had wondered then,

-whether he had done right. Who was to tell?</p>

-<p>And again to-morrow he was to set those two

-again upon their way of life, for he was coming up

-to French Village to the wedding of Ruth Lansing

-to Jeffrey Whiting.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing&rsquo;s side in

-the little rough-finished sanctuary of the chapel

-which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to

-raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer.

-But Jeffrey Whiting saw none of the poor makeshifts

-out of which the little priest had contrived

-a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again,

-in the night, on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned

-stars, crying out to find God. Then

-God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch

-and lifted him out of the dust and agony of the

-road, and, finally, had brought him here, to this

-moment.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span></div>

-<p>He had just received into his body the God of

-life. His soul stood trembling at its portal, receiving

-its Guest for the first time. He was

-amazed with a great wonder, for here was the

-very God of the dark night speaking to him in

-words that beat upon his heart. And his wonder

-was that from this he should ever arise and go on

-with any other business whatever.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to

-the music of that <i>choir unseen</i> which had once

-given her the call of life. She had followed it, not

-always in the perfect way, but at least bravely, unquestioningly.

-And it had brought her now to a

-holy and awed happiness. Neither life nor death

-would ever rob her of this moment.</p>

-<p>Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop.

-And as the Shepherd blessed their joined hands he

-prayed for these two who were dear to him, as

-well as for his other little ones, and, as always,

-for those &ldquo;other sheep.&rdquo; And the breathing of

-his prayer was:</p>

-<p>That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear;

-but trust long in Thee and in each other.</p>

-<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em'>THE END</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;'>Printed in the United States of America.</p>

-

-<!-- generated by ppg.rb version: 3.15 -->

-<!-- timestamp: Sat Sep 26 03:46:52 -0400 2009 -->

-

-<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30093 ***</div>

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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Shepherd of the North, by Richard Aumerle Maher.</title>
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30093 ***</div>
+
+<p class='tp' style='margin-top:30px;font-size:2.2em;margin-bottom:50px;'>THE SHEPHERD OF<br />THE NORTH</p>
+<p class='tp' >BY</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.4em;margin-bottom:20px;'>RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER</p>
+<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:120px;'>Author of<br />&ldquo;The Heart of a Man,&rdquo; etc.</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:larger;'>M. A. DONOHUE &amp; COMPANY</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:larger;margin-bottom:30px;'>CHICAGO&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW YORK</p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<p class='tp' style='margin-top:20px;'>Copyright 1916</p>
+<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:10px;'><span class='smcap'>By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;'>Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916.</p>
+<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:20px;font-size:smaller;'>Reprinted March, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;June, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;October, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;February, 1917.</p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'><span style='font-size:0.8em'>CHAPTER</span></td>
+  <td />
+  <td valign='top' align='right'><span style='font-size:0.8em;'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>I</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The White Horse Chaplain</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN'>3</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>II</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Choir Unseen</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN'>35</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>III</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Glow of Dawn</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#III_GLOW_OF_DAWN'>64</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Answer</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IV_THE_ANSWER'>103</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>V</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Mon Pere Je Me &rsquo;Cuse</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE'>137</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Business of the Shepherd</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'>174</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Inner Citadel</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL'>210</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Seigneur Dieu, Whither Go I?</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I'>243</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Coming of the Shepherd</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'>277</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>X</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>That They Be Not Afraid</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID'>311</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<h1>THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH</h1>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span></div>
+<h2>THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH</h2>
+<div class='chsp' style='padding-top:0'>
+<a name='I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN' id='I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN'></a>
+<h2>I</h2>
+<h3>THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The Bishop of Alden was practising his French
+upon Arsene LaComb. It was undoubtedly good
+French, this of M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop, Arsene assured
+himself. It must be. But it certainly was
+not any kind of French that had ever been spoken
+by the folks back in Three Rivers.</p>
+<p>Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not
+understand all that the Bishop said, it was equally
+certain that the Bishop could not understand all
+that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a
+cheery companion for the long road. He took
+his upsets into six feet of Adirondack snow, as
+man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft
+and the road is uncertain.</p>
+<p>In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and
+the railroad behind and had headed into the hills.
+For thirty miles, with only one stop for a bite
+of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded
+along up the half-broken, logging roads. Now
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>
+they were in the high country and there were no
+roads.</p>
+<p>Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a
+drifting storm had followed him down from Little
+Tupper, covering the road that he had made
+and leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped
+driving and held only a steady, even rein to keep
+his ponies from stumbling, while he let the tough,
+willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road.</p>
+<p>Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene
+had been tossed off the single bobsled out into
+the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting all
+day long on the swaying bumper, with no back
+rest, feet braced stiffly against the draw bar in
+front to keep the dizzy balance. But it was the
+only way that this trip could be made.</p>
+<p>The Bishop knew that he should not have let
+the confirmation in French Village on Little Tupper
+go to this late date in the season. He had
+arranged to come a month before. But Father
+Ponfret&rsquo;s illness had put him back at that time.</p>
+<p>Now he was worried. The early December
+dark was upon them. There was no road. The
+ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve
+bad miles to go.</p>
+<p>Still, things might be worse. The cold was not
+bad. He had the bulkier of his vestments and regalia
+in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to the
+sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils
+and the other sacred essentials were slung securely
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>
+about his body. And a tumble more or less in
+the snow was a part of the day&rsquo;s work. They
+would break their way through somehow.</p>
+<p>So, with the occasional interruptions, he was
+practising his amazing French upon Arsene.</p>
+<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old
+Massachusetts stock. He had learned the French
+that was taught at Harvard in the fifties. Afterwards,
+after his conversion to the Catholic
+Church, he had gone to Louvain for his seminary
+studies. There he had heard French of another
+kind. But to the day he died he spoke his
+French just as it was written in the book, and with
+an aggressive New England accent.</p>
+<p>He must speak French to the children in French
+Village to-morrow, not because the children would
+understand, but because it would please Father
+Ponfret and the parents.</p>
+<p>They were struggling around the shoulder of
+Lansing Mountain and the Bishop was rounding
+out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration
+of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a
+sharp:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jomp, M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque, <i>jomp</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop jumped&ndash;&ndash;or was thrown&ndash;&ndash;ten
+feet into a snow-bank.</p>
+<p>While he gathered himself out of the snow and
+felt carefully his bulging breast pockets to make
+sure that everything was safe, he saw what had
+happened.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span></div>
+<p>The star-faced pony on the near side had
+slipped off the trail and rolled down a little bank,
+dragging the other pony and Arsene and the sled
+with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies,
+man and sled at the bottom of a little gully, and
+as the Bishop floundered through the snow to help
+he feared that it was serious.</p>
+<p>Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under
+the sled, his head just clear of the ponies&rsquo;
+heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in
+the <i>patois</i> that they understood. He was within
+inches of having his brains beaten out by the quivering
+hoofs; he could not, literally, move his head
+to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with
+them as quietly as if he stood at their heads.</p>
+<p>They kicked and fought each other and the sled,
+until the influence of the calm voice behind them
+began to work upon them. Then their own craft
+came back to them and they remembered the many
+bitter lessons they had gotten from kicking and
+fighting in deep snow. They lay still and waited
+for the voice to come and get them out of this.</p>
+<p>As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to
+release Arsene, he remembered that he had seen
+men under fire. And he said to himself that he
+had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this
+little French-Canadian storekeeper.</p>
+<p>The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had
+been soft under him, and lunged for the ponies&rsquo;
+heads.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now!
+Ah-a! Bien!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He had them both by their bridles and dragged
+them skilfully to their feet and up the bank.
+With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all
+safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail.</p>
+<p>Arsene now looked around for the Bishop.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ba Golly! M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque, dat&rsquo;s one fine
+jomp. You got hurt, you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop declared that he was not in any
+way the worse from the tumble, and Arsene turned
+to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up
+the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection
+of his harness and said ruefully:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s bad, M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque. She&rsquo;s gone
+bust.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his
+hand. The trouble was quite evident.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What can we do?&rdquo; asked the Bishop.
+&ldquo;Have you any rope?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. Dat&rsquo;s how I been one big fool, me.
+I lef&rsquo; new rope on de sled las&rsquo; night on Lowville.
+Dis morning she&rsquo;s gone. Some t&rsquo;ief.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We must get on somehow,&rdquo; said the Bishop,
+as he unbuckled part of the lashing from his bag
+and handed the strap to Arsene. &ldquo;That will hold
+until we get to the first house where we can get the
+loan of a trace. We can walk behind. We&rsquo;re
+both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is it
+far?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks,
+&rsquo;bout quarter mile, maybe.&rdquo; The little man
+looked up from his work long enough to point
+out a clump of hemlocks that stood out black and
+sharp against the white world around them. As
+the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among
+the trees, showing where life and a home
+fought their battle against the desolation of the
+hills.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I donno,&rdquo; said Arsene speculatively, as he and
+the Bishop took up their tramp behind the sled;
+&ldquo;Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don&rsquo; like Canuck.
+Maybe he don&rsquo; lend no harness, I donno.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes; he will surely,&rdquo; answered the Bishop
+easily. &ldquo;Nobody would refuse a bit of harness
+in a case like this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was full dark when they came to where
+Tom Lansing&rsquo;s cabin hid itself among the hemlocks.
+Arsene did not dare trust his team off the
+road where they had footing, so the Bishop
+floundered his way through the heavy snow to
+find the cabin door.</p>
+<p>It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out
+of the hemlocks that had stood around it and
+belonged to a generation already past. But it
+was still serviceable and tight, and it was a home.</p>
+<p>The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was
+no response from within. It was strange. For
+there was every sign of life about the place.
+After knocking a second time without result, he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+lifted the heavy wooden latch and pushed quietly
+into the cabin.</p>
+<p>A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite
+the door. On the hearth stood a big black
+and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not the
+slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his
+four legs planted squarely under him, his whole
+body quivering with fear. His nose was pointed
+upward as though ready for the howl to which
+he dared not give voice. His great brown eyes
+rolled in an ecstasy of fright but seemed unable
+to tear themselves from the side of the room
+where he was looking.</p>
+<p>Along the side of the room ran a long, low
+couch covered with soft, well worn hides. On it
+lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out awkwardly
+and unnaturally, showing that he had been
+dragged unconscious to where he was. A candle
+stood on the low window ledge and shone down
+full into the man&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>At the head of the couch knelt a young girl,
+her arm supporting the man&rsquo;s head and shoulder,
+her wildly tossed hair falling down across his
+chest.</p>
+<p>She was speaking to the man in a voice low
+and even, but so tense that her whole slim body
+seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as
+though her very soul came to the portals of her lips
+and shouted its message to the man. The power
+of her voice, the breathless, compelling strength
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+of her soul need seemed to hold everything between
+heaven and earth, as she pleaded to the
+man. The Bishop stood spellbound.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My
+Father!&rdquo; she was saying over and over. &ldquo;Come
+back, come back, Daddy Tom! It&rsquo;s not true!
+God doesn&rsquo;t want you! He doesn&rsquo;t want to take
+you from Ruth! How could He! It&rsquo;s not never
+true! A tree couldn&rsquo;t kill my Daddy Tom!
+Never, never! Why, he&rsquo;s felled whole slopes of
+trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a time which he could not measure the
+Bishop stood listening to the pleading of the girl&rsquo;s
+voice. But in reality he was not listening to the
+sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She
+was fighting bitterly with death. She was calling
+all the forces of love and life to aid her in her
+struggle. She was following the soul of her
+loved one down to the very door of death. She
+would pull him back out of the very clutches of
+the unknown.</p>
+<p>And the Bishop found that he was not merely
+listening to what the girl said. He was going
+down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing
+every word of her pleading. The force of
+her will and her prayer swept him along so that
+with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed
+for the man to open his eyes.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible
+fear seemed to grip and crush her, so that she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>
+cowered and hid her face against the big, grizzled
+white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed
+in terror.</p>
+<p>The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched
+the girl on the head, saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do not give up yet, child. I once had some
+skill. Let me try.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl turned and looked up blankly at him.
+She did not question who he was or whence he
+had come. She turned again and wrapped her
+arms jealously about the head and shoulders of
+her father. Plainly she was afraid and resentful
+of any interference. But the Bishop insisted
+gently and in the end she gave him place beside
+her.</p>
+<p>He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he
+knelt quickly to listen at the man&rsquo;s breast.</p>
+<p>Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but
+there was life, certainly. While the Bishop fumbled
+through the man&rsquo;s pockets for the knife that
+he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl
+quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was just a little while ago,&rdquo; she answered,
+in short, frightened sentences. &ldquo;My dog came
+yelping down from the mountain where Father
+had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran
+up there. He was pinned down under a limb.
+I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and
+told me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away
+with his axe. But it must be I hurt him; he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+fainted. I can&rsquo;t make him speak. I cut boughs
+and made a sledge and dragged him down here.
+But I can&rsquo;t make him speak. Is he?&ndash;&ndash; Is
+he?&ndash;&ndash; Tell me,&rdquo; she appealed.</p>
+<p>The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and
+shoulder of the man&rsquo;s jacket and shirt.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were all alone, child?&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Where could you get the strength for all this?
+My driver is out on the road,&rdquo; he continued, as
+he worked on. &ldquo;Call him and send him for the
+nearest help.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking
+look back at the man on the couch, went out
+into the snow.</p>
+<p>The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.</p>
+<p>The man&rsquo;s shoulder was crushed hopelessly,
+but there was nothing there to constitute a fatal
+injury. It was only when he came to the upper
+ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage.
+Several of them were caved in frightfully, and it
+seemed certain that one or two of them must have
+been shattered and the splinters driven into the
+lung on that side.</p>
+<p>The cold had driven back the blood, so that
+the wounds had bled outwardly very little. The
+Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little, and
+something black showed out of a torn muscle under
+the scapula.</p>
+<p>He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in
+his hand. It was a little black ball of steel.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span></div>
+<p>While the Bishop stood there wondering at the
+thing in his hand, a long tremor ran through the
+body on the couch. The man stirred ever so
+slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from
+his lips. His eyes opened and fixed themselves
+searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop
+thought it best not to speak, but to give the man
+time to come back naturally to a realisation of
+things.</p>
+<p>While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly,
+and the Bishop stood holding the little black ball
+between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth Lansing
+came back into the room.</p>
+<p>Seeing her father&rsquo;s eyes open, the girl rushed
+across the room and was about to throw herself
+down by the side of the couch when her father&rsquo;s
+voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible
+and clear, stopped her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The White Horse Chaplain!&rdquo; he said in a
+voice of slow wonder. &ldquo;But I always knew he&rsquo;d
+come for me sometime. And I suppose it&rsquo;s
+time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop started. He had not heard the
+name for twenty-five years.</p>
+<p>The girl stopped by the table, trembling and
+frightened. She had heard the tale of the White
+Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her
+that her father was delirious and raving. But he
+spoke so calmly and so certainly. He seemed so
+certain that the man he saw was an apparition
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+that she could not think or reason herself out of
+her fright.</p>
+<p>The Bishop answered easily and quietly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did
+not think anybody remembered now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Tom Lansing&rsquo;s eyes leaped wide with doubt
+and question. They stared full at the Bishop.
+Then they turned and saw the table standing in
+its right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the
+table; saw the dog at the fireplace. The man
+there was real!</p>
+<p>Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle
+to rise, then fell back gasping.</p>
+<p>The Bishop put his hand gently under the man&rsquo;s
+head and eased him to a better position, saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving
+past and had broken a trace, and came in to
+borrow one from you. You got a bad blow.
+But your girl has just sent my driver for help.
+They will get a doctor somewhere. We cannot
+tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not so
+bad as it looks.&rdquo; But, even as he spoke, the
+Bishop saw a drop of blood appear at the corner
+of the man&rsquo;s white mouth; and he knew that it was
+as bad as the worst.</p>
+<p>The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes
+moved again from the Bishop to the girl and the
+everyday things of the room.</p>
+<p>It was evident that his mind was clearing
+sharply. He had rallied quickly. But the Bishop
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>
+knew instinctively that it was the last, flashing rally
+of the forces of life&ndash;&ndash;in the face of the on-crowding
+darkness. The shock and the internal
+hemorrhage were doing their work fast. The
+time was short.</p>
+<p>Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with
+a look, he called the girl to him.</p>
+<p>Through the seventeen years of her life, since
+the night when her mother had laid her in her
+father&rsquo;s arms and died, Ruth Lansing had hardly
+ever been beyond the reach of her father&rsquo;s voice.
+They had grown very close together, these two.
+They had little need of clumsy words between
+them.</p>
+<p>As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild,
+eager, rebellious, seared her father with their terror-stricken,
+unbelieving question.</p>
+<p>But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her
+wild questioning had given him. She crushed
+back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely with
+herself until she was able to force into her eyes
+a look of understanding and great mothering tenderness.</p>
+<p>Her father saw the struggle and the look,
+and blessed her for it with his eyes. Then he
+said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you?
+I know I&rsquo;m desertin&rsquo; you, little comrade, right in
+the mornin&rsquo; of your battle with life. But you
+won&rsquo;t be afraid. I know you won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span></div>
+<p>The girl shook her head bravely, but it was
+clear that she dared not trust herself to speak.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to ask this man here to look to you.
+He came here for a sign to me. I see it. I see
+it plain. I will trust him with your life. And so
+will you, little comrade. I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;m droppin&rsquo; out.
+He&rsquo;ll take you on.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He saved my life once. So he gave you your
+life. It&rsquo;s a sign, my Ruth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl slipped her hands gently under his head
+and looked deep and long into the glazing eyes.</p>
+<p>Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was
+facing death&ndash;&ndash;and life alone.</p>
+<p>Obedient to her father&rsquo;s look, she rose and
+walked across the room. She saw that he had
+something to say to this strange man and that the
+time was short.</p>
+<p>In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin
+she stood, and throwing one arm up against the
+frame of the door she buried her face in it. She
+did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty
+of time for that.</p>
+<p>The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant
+an irrevocable change had come over her.
+She had knelt a frightened, wondering, protesting
+child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of
+death and its infinite certainty, of life and its infinite
+chance, had risen from her knees.</p>
+<p>As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke
+hurriedly:</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I
+did I forgot it, and it don&rsquo;t matter.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m dying. I don&rsquo;t need any doctor to tell
+me. I&rsquo;ll be gone before he gets here.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when
+Curtis&rsquo; men were cut to pieces in the second charge
+on the trenches. They left me there, because it
+was every man for himself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg.
+And you came drivin&rsquo; mad across the field on a
+big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me
+where I lay. You threw me across your saddle
+and walked that wild horse back into our lines.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you remember? Dying men got up on
+their elbows and cheered you. I lay six weeks in
+fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do, now,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;Our troop
+came back to the Shenandoah, and I never knew
+what&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back
+upon him. He was just a few months ordained.
+He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union
+army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the
+ways and business of a battlefield, he had found
+himself that day in the sand dunes before Fort
+Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about
+him. Hail, fumes, lightning and thunder of battle
+rolled over him and sickened him. He saw
+his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+the Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself,
+and fade away back into the smoke. He lost it,
+and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered
+blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead
+man, now speaking to a living stricken one: Here
+straightening a torn body and giving water; there
+hearing the confession of a Catholic.</p>
+<p>Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis&rsquo; troops
+came yelling across the flat land. Once, twice
+they tried the trenches and were driven back into
+the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a
+big white horse. The animal, mad with fright and
+blood scent, charged down upon him as he bent
+over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and
+fought the horse. Before he realised what he was
+doing, he was in the saddle riding back and forth
+across the field. Right up to the trenches the
+horse carried him.</p>
+<p>Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy,
+a thin, long-legged boy with a long beardless face.
+He lay there marking the high tide of the last
+charge&ndash;&ndash;the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain,
+tumbling down somehow from his mount,
+picked up the writhing boy and bundled him across
+the saddle. Then he started walking back looking
+for his own lines.</p>
+<p>Now here was the boy talking to him across
+the mists of twenty-five years. And the boy, the
+man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom
+Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+died from fever bloat or been trampled to death
+in the succeeding charges. He had given him life.
+And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he
+had given that daughter life. Now he knew what
+Lansing was going to say.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know you then,&rdquo; said Lansing. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t know who you are now, Chaplain, or what
+you are.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; he went on slowly, &ldquo;if I&rsquo;d agiven you a
+message that day you&rsquo;d have taken it on for me,
+wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I would.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose it had been to my mother, say:
+You&rsquo;da risked your life to get it on to her?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hope I would,&rdquo; said the Bishop evenly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believe you would. That&rsquo;s what I think
+of you,&rdquo; said Tom Lansing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I went back South after the war,&rdquo; he began
+again. &ldquo;I stole my girl&rsquo;s mother from her grandfather,
+an old, broken-down Confederate colonel
+that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on
+me. I brought her up here into the hills and she
+died when the baby was just a few weeks old.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There ain&rsquo;t a relation in the world that my
+little girl could go to. I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to die in half
+an hour. But what better would she be if I lived?
+What would I do with her? Keep her here and
+let her marry some fightin&rsquo; lumber jack that&rsquo;d beat
+her? Or see her break her heart tryin&rsquo; to make
+a livin&rsquo; on one of these rock hills? She&rsquo;d fret
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+herself to death. She knows more now than I
+do and she&rsquo;d soon be wantin&rsquo; to know more.
+She&rsquo;s that kind.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;d ought to have her chance the way I&rsquo;ve
+seen girls in towns havin&rsquo; a chance. A chance to
+study and learn and grow the way she wants to.
+And now I&rsquo;m desertin&rsquo;; goin&rsquo; out like a smoky
+lamp.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was a crime, a crime!&rdquo; he groaned, &ldquo;ever
+to bring her mother up into this place!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You could not think of all that then. No
+man ever does,&rdquo; said the Bishop calmly. &ldquo;And
+I will do my best to see that she gets her chance.
+I think that&rsquo;s what you want to ask me, isn&rsquo;t it,
+Lansing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you swear it?&rdquo; gasped Lansing, struggling
+and choking in an effort to raise his head.
+&ldquo;Do you swear to try and see that she gets a
+chance?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God will help me to do the best for her,&rdquo; said
+the Bishop quietly. &ldquo;I am the Bishop of Alden.
+I can do something.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With the definiteness of a man who has heard a
+final word, Tom Lansing&rsquo;s eyes turned to his
+daughter.</p>
+<p>Obediently she came again and knelt at his side,
+holding his head.</p>
+<p>To the very last, as long as his eyes could see,
+they saw her smiling bravely and sweetly down
+into them; giving her sacrament and holding her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.</p>
+<p>When the last twinging tremour had run
+through the racked body, she leaned over and
+kissed her father full on the lips.</p>
+<p>Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into
+the night.</p>
+<p>While the Bishop was straightening the body
+on the couch, a young man and two women came
+into the room.</p>
+<p>They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and
+her sister, neighbours whom Arsene had brought.</p>
+<p>The Bishop was much relieved with their coming.
+He could do nothing more now, and the
+long night ride was still ahead of him.</p>
+<p>He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had
+gone out into the cold, and asked him to find her.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had
+played with Ruth Lansing since she was a baby,
+for they were the only children on Lansing Mountain.
+He knew where he would find her.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of
+the hills, where people had to meet their problems
+and burdens alone, took command at once.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; she replied to the Bishop&rsquo;s question,
+&ldquo;there&rsquo;s nobody to send for. The Lansings
+didn&rsquo;t have a relation living that anybody
+ever heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom
+Lansing&rsquo;s father and mother. They&rsquo;re buried out
+there on the hill where he&rsquo;ll be buried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s some old soldiers down the West
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+Slope towards Beaver River. They&rsquo;ll want to
+take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on
+Monday,&rdquo; she went on rapidly, sketching in the
+programme. &ldquo;We have a preacher if we can
+get one. But when we can&rsquo;t my sister Letty here
+sings something.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a
+way,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly. &ldquo;At least, I was
+at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like
+to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Were you at Fort Fisher?&rdquo; broke in the
+sister Letty, speaking for the first time. &ldquo;And
+did you see Curtis&rsquo; colour bearer? He was killed
+in the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton,
+with long, black hair?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He had an old scar over his eye-brow.&rdquo;
+The Bishop supplemented the description out of
+the memory of that day.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five
+years ago to-morrow,&rdquo; said the woman trembling.
+&ldquo;You saw him die?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was dead when I came to him,&rdquo; said the
+Bishop quietly, &ldquo;with the stock of the colour
+standard still clenched in his hand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was my&ndash;&ndash;my&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; Sweetheart, she
+wanted to say. But the hill women do not say
+things easily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said the Bishop gently. &ldquo;I understand.&rdquo;
+She was a woman of his people.
+Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+could read the years of her faithfulness to the
+memory of that lean, dark face which he had once
+seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about
+her sister.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are you&ndash;&ndash;?&rdquo; she questioned, hesitating
+strangely. &ldquo;Are you the White Horse Chaplain?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The boys called me that,&rdquo; said the Bishop.
+&ldquo;Though it was only a name for a day,&rdquo; he
+added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was true, then?&rdquo; she said slowly, as if
+still unready to believe. &ldquo;We never half believed
+our boys when they came home from the
+war&ndash;&ndash;the ones that did come home&ndash;&ndash;and told
+about the white horse and the priest riding the
+field. We thought it was one of the things men
+see when they&rsquo;re fighting and dying.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room
+leading Ruth Lansing by the hand.</p>
+<p>The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The
+Bishop drew her over to the fire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must go now, child,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;To-morrow
+I must be in French Village. Monday I will
+be here again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he
+said to me, about you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the
+Bishop&rsquo;s face, then nodded her head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then, we must think and pray, child, that we
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>
+may know how to do what he wanted us to do.
+God will show us what is the best. That is what
+he wanted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God keep you brave now. Your friends here
+will see to everything for you. I have to go
+now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He crossed the room and laid his hand for a
+moment on the brow of the dead man, renewing in
+his heart the promise he had made.</p>
+<p>Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting
+that he would be back before noon Monday, he
+went out to where Arsene and his horses were
+stamping in the snow.</p>
+<p>The little man had replaced the broken trace,
+and the ponies, fretting with the cold and eager
+to get home, took hungrily to the trail.</p>
+<p>But the Bishop forgot to practise his French
+further upon Arsene. He told him briefly what
+had happened, then lapsed into silence.</p>
+<p>Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing
+had said about the girl. She knew more now
+than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew
+now. But more than Tom Lansing had known
+half an hour ago.</p>
+<p>She would want to see the world. She would
+want to know life and ask her own questions from
+life and the world. In the broad open space between
+her eye-brows it was written that she would
+never take anybody&rsquo;s word for the puzzles of the
+world. She was marked a seeker; one of those
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand
+to know what it means. They never find
+out. But, heart break or sparrow fall, they must
+go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own
+way. The world is infinitely the better through
+them. But their own way is hard and lonely.</p>
+<p>She must go out. She must have education.
+She must have a chance to face life and wrest its
+lessons from it in her own way. It did not
+promise happiness for her. But she could go no
+other way. For hers was the high, stony way of
+those who demand more than jealous life is ready
+to give.</p>
+<p>The Bishop only knew that he had this night
+given a promise which had sent a man contentedly
+on his way. Somehow, God would show him how
+best to keep that promise.</p>
+<p>And when they halloed at Father Ponfret&rsquo;s
+house in French Village he had gotten no farther
+than that.</p>
+<p>Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his
+couch. Clean white sheets had been draped over
+the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking
+in through the west window picked out every
+bare thread of his service coat and glinted on the
+polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung
+into the belt at his side.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head
+of the couch, listening to the comments and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>
+stumbling condolences of neighbours from the
+high hills and the lower valleys. They were good,
+kindly people, she knew. But why, why, must
+every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous
+lie&ndash;&ndash; How natural he looked!</p>
+<p>He did not. He did not. He did <i>not</i> look
+natural. How could her Daddy Tom look natural,
+when he lay there all still and cold, and would
+not speak to his Ruth!</p>
+<p>He was dead. And what was death&ndash;&ndash; And
+why? <i>Why?</i></p>
+<p>Who had ordered this? And <i>why?</i></p>
+<p>And still they came with that set, borrowed
+phrase&ndash;&ndash;the only thing they could think to say&ndash;&ndash;upon
+their lips.</p>
+<p>Out in Tom Lansing&rsquo;s workshop on the horse-barn
+floor, Jacque Lafitte, the wright, was nailing
+soft pine boards together.</p>
+<p>Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not
+leave Daddy Tom to her? She wanted to ask him
+things. She knew that she could make him understand
+and answer.</p>
+<p>She slipped away from the couch and out of
+the house. At the corner of the house her dog
+joined her and together they circled away from the
+horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where
+her father had been working yesterday.</p>
+<p>She found her father&rsquo;s cap where it had been
+left in her fright of yesterday, and sat down
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+fondling it in her hands. The dog came and slid
+his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle
+into the cap between her hands.</p>
+<p>So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following
+her with her coat and hood.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You better put these on, Ruth,&rdquo; he said, as
+he dropped the coat across her shoulder. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+too cold here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl drew the coat around her obediently,
+but did not look up at him. She was grateful for
+his thought of her, but she was not ready to speak
+to any one.</p>
+<p>He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and
+drew the dog over to him.</p>
+<p>After a little he asked timidly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do, Ruth? You can&rsquo;t
+stay here. I&rsquo;ll tend your stock and look after the
+place for you. But you just can&rsquo;t stay here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You?&rdquo; she questioned finally. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re going
+to that Albany school next week. You said
+you were all ready.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was all ready. But I ain&rsquo;t going. I&rsquo;ll stay
+here and work the two farms for you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For me?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And not be a lawyer
+at all?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&ndash;&ndash;I don&rsquo;t care anything about it any more,&rdquo;
+he lied. &ldquo;I told mother this morning that I
+wasn&rsquo;t going. She said she&rsquo;d have you come and
+stay with her till Spring.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;And then?&rdquo; the girl faced the matter, looking
+straight and unafraid into his eyes. &ldquo;And
+then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; he hesitated. &ldquo;You see, then
+I&rsquo;ll be twenty. And you&rsquo;ll be old enough to
+marry me,&rdquo; he hurried. &ldquo;Your father, you
+know, he always wanted me to take care of you,
+didn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; he pleaded, awkwardly but subtly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know you don&rsquo;t want to talk about it now,&rdquo;
+he went on hastily. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;ll come home with
+mother to-morrow, won&rsquo;t you? You know she
+wants you, and I&ndash;&ndash;I never had to tell you that I
+love you. You knew it when you wasn&rsquo;t any
+higher than Prince here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. I always knew it, and I&rsquo;m glad,&rdquo; the
+girl answered levelly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad now, Jeff. But
+I can&rsquo;t let you do it. Some day you&rsquo;d hate me
+for it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ruth! You know better than that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;d never tell me; I know that. You&rsquo;d
+do your best to hide it from me. But some day
+when your chance was gone you&rsquo;d look back and
+see what you might have been, &rsquo;stead of a humpbacked
+farmer in the hills. Oh, I know. You&rsquo;ve
+told me all your dreams and plans, how you&rsquo;re
+going down to the law school, and going to be a
+great lawyer and go to Albany and maybe to
+Washington.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s it all good for?&rdquo; said the boy
+sturdily. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather stay here with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span></div>
+<p>The girl did not answer. In the strain of the
+night and the day, she had almost forgotten the
+things that she had heard her father say to the
+White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call
+the Bishop.</p>
+<p>Now she remembered those things and tried to
+tell them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That strange man that said he was the
+Bishop of Alden told my father that he would see
+that I got a chance. My father called him the
+White Horse Chaplain and said that he had been
+sent here just on purpose to look after me. I
+didn&rsquo;t know there were bishops in this country. I
+thought it was only in books about Europe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did they say?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My father said that I would want to go out
+and see things and know things; that I mustn&rsquo;t be
+married to a&ndash;&ndash;a lumber jack. He said it was
+no place for me in the hills.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And this man, this bishop, is going to send
+you away somewhere, to school?&rdquo; he guessed
+shrewdly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, I suppose that was it,&rdquo; said
+the girl slowly. &ldquo;Yesterday I wanted to go so
+much. It was just as father said. He had
+taught me all he knew. And I thought the world
+outside the hills was full of just the most wonderful
+things, all ready for me to go and see and pick
+up. And to-day I don&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+dog at her feet, and down the hillside to the little
+cabin in the hemlocks. They were all she had
+in the world.</p>
+<p>The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look
+and read it rightly.</p>
+<p>He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to count me, Ruth. You&rsquo;ve got
+me, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Perhaps it was because he had so answered
+her unspoken thought. Perhaps it was because
+she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it was
+just the eternal surrender of woman.</p>
+<p>When she looked up at him her eyes were full
+of great, shining tears, the first that they had
+known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run
+out into the night.</p>
+<p>He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they
+faced the white, desolate world all below them
+and plighted to each other their untried troth.</p>
+<p>When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white
+bosom of the hillside, and the people were dispersing
+from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting
+came and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop&rsquo;s
+sharp old eyes had told him to expect something of
+what was coming. He liked the look of the boy&rsquo;s
+clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance
+of his eyes. They told of dependableness and
+plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was not a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be
+his.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ruth told me that you were going to take
+her away from the hills,&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;To a
+school, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I made a promise to her father,&rdquo; said the
+Bishop, &ldquo;that I would try to see that she got the
+chance that she will want in the world.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I love her. She&rsquo;s going to marry me in
+the Spring.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop was surprised. He had not
+thought matters had gone so far.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; he asked thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Twenty in April.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have some education?&rdquo; the Bishop suggested.
+&ldquo;You have been at school?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth.
+And last Winter at the Academy in Lowville. I
+was going to Albany to law school next week.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you are giving it all up for Ruth,&rdquo; said
+the Bishop incisively. &ldquo;Does it hurt?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The boy winced, but caught himself at once.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It don&rsquo;t make any difference about that. I
+want Ruth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And Ruth? What does she want?&rdquo; the
+Bishop asked. &ldquo;You are offering to make a sacrifice
+for her. You are willing to give up your
+hopes and work yourself to the bone here on these
+hills for her. And you would be man enough
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe
+that. But what of her? You find it hard
+enough to give up your chance, for her, for love.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know that you are asking her to give
+up her chance, for nothing, for less than nothing;
+because in giving up her chance she would
+know that she had taken away yours, too. She
+would be a good and loving companion to you
+through all of a hard life. But, for both your
+sakes, she would never forgive you. Never.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re asking me to give her up. If she went
+out and got a start, she&rsquo;d go faster than I could.
+I know it,&rdquo; said the boy bitterly. &ldquo;She&rsquo;d go away
+above me. I&rsquo;d lose her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am not asking you to give her up,&rdquo; the
+Bishop returned steadily. &ldquo;If you are the man
+I think you are, you will never give her up. But
+are you afraid to let her have her chance in the
+sun? Are you afraid to let her have what you
+want for yourself? Are you afraid?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The boy looked steadily into the Bishop&rsquo;s eyes
+for a moment. Then he turned quickly and
+walked across the room to where Ruth sat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t give it up, Ruth,&rdquo; he said gruffly.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to Albany to school. I can&rsquo;t give it
+up.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t have tried to lie, Jeff; though
+it&rsquo;s just like you to put the blame on yourself. I
+know what he said. I must think.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span></div>
+<p>The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He
+saw them suddenly light up. He knew what that
+meant. She was seeing the great world with all
+its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he
+himself had seen it. Now he knew that he had
+lost.</p>
+<p>The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready
+to go. The day was slipping away and before
+him there were thirty miles and a train to be
+caught.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We must not be hurried, my children,&rdquo; he
+said, standing by the boy and girl. &ldquo;The Sacred
+Heart Academy at Athens is the best school
+this side of Albany. The Mother Superior will
+write you in a few days, telling you when and
+how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go
+as she directs.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have been a good, brave little girl. A
+soldier&rsquo;s daughter could be no more, nor less.
+God bless you now, and you, too, my boy,&rdquo; he
+added.</p>
+<p>When he was settled on the sled with Arsene
+and they were rounding the shoulder of Lansing
+Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace,
+he turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To-day,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;I have set two
+ambitious, eager souls upon the high and stony
+paths of the great world. Should I have left them
+where they were?</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall never know whether I did right or not.
+Even time will mix things up so that I&rsquo;ll never be
+able to tell. Maybe some day God will let me
+see. But why should he? One can only aim
+right, and trust in Him.&rdquo;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+<a name='II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN' id='II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN'></a>
+<h2>II</h2>
+<h3>THE CHOIR UNSEEN</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms
+of the Sacred Heart convent in Athens thrumming
+out a finger exercise that a child of six would have
+been able to do as well as she.</p>
+<p>It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world,
+this, into which she had been suddenly transplanted.
+It was as different from the great world
+that she had come out to see as it was from the
+wild, sweet life of the hills where she had ruled
+and managed everything within reach. Mainly it
+was full of girls of her own age whose talk and
+thoughts were of a range entirely new to her.</p>
+<p>She compared herself with them and knew that
+they were really children in the comparison.
+Their talk was of dress and manners and society
+and the thousand little and big things that growing
+girls look forward to. She knew that in any
+real test, anything that demanded common sense
+and action, she was years older than they. But
+they had things that she did not have.</p>
+<p>They talked of things that she knew nothing
+about. They could walk across waxed floors as
+though waxed floors were meant to be walked on.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+They could rise to recite lessons without stammering
+or choking as she did. They could take reproof
+jauntily, where she, who had never in her
+life received a scolding, would have been driven
+into hysterics. They could wear new dresses just
+as though all dresses were supposed to be new.
+She knew that these were not things that they had
+learned by studying. They just grew up to them,
+just as she knew how to throw a fishing line and
+hold a rifle.</p>
+<p>But she wanted all those things that they had;
+wanted them all passionately. She had the sense
+to know that those were not great things. But
+they were the things that would make her like
+these other girls. And she wanted to be like
+them.</p>
+<p>Because she had not grown up with other girls,
+because she had never even had a girl playmate,
+she wanted not to miss any of the things that they
+had and were.</p>
+<p>They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick,
+eager mind sprang at books and fairly tore the
+lessons from them. She ran away from the girls
+in anything that could be learned in that way.
+But when she found herself with two or three of
+them they talked a language that she did not know.
+She could not keep up with them. And she
+was stupid and awkward, and felt it. It was not
+easy to break into their world and be one of them.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span></div>
+<p>Then there was that other world, touching the
+world of the girls but infinitely removed from it&ndash;&ndash;the
+world of the sisters.</p>
+<p>That mysterious cloister from which the sisters
+came and gave their hours of teaching or duty and
+to which they retreated back again was a world all
+by itself.</p>
+<p>What was there in there behind those doors
+that never banged? What was there in there
+that made the sisters all so very much alike?
+They must once have been as different as every
+girl is different from every other girl.</p>
+<p>How was it that they could carry with them
+all day long that air of never being tired or fretted
+or worried? What wonderful presence was there
+behind the doors of that cloistered house that
+seemed to come out with them and stay with them
+all the time? What was the light that shone in
+their faces?</p>
+<p>Was it just because they were always contented
+and happy? What did they have to be happy
+about?</p>
+<p>Ruth had tried to question the other girls about
+this. They were Catholics. They ought to
+know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her
+question aside with a stare:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sisters always look like that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind
+kept prying at that world of the sisters behind
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+those walls. What did they do in there? Did
+they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people?
+Or did they just pray all the time? Or
+did they see wonderful, starry visions of God and
+Heaven that they were always talking about?
+They seemed so familiar with God. They knew
+just when He was pleased and especially when He
+was displeased.</p>
+<p>She had come down out of her hills where
+everything was so open, where there were no mysteries,
+where everything from the bark on the trees
+to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away,
+was as clear as a printed book. Everything up
+there told its plain lesson. She could read the
+storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had
+been hidden. Nothing in nature or life up there
+had ever shut itself away from her.</p>
+<p>Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of
+them closing its door in the face of her sharp,
+hungry mind.</p>
+<p>And there was that other world, enveloping all
+the other lesser worlds about her&ndash;&ndash;the world of
+the Catholic Church.</p>
+<p>Three weeks ago those two words had meant
+to her a little green building in French Village
+where the &ldquo;Canucks&rdquo; went to church.</p>
+<p>Now her day began and ended with it. It was
+on all sides of her. The pictures and the images
+on every wall, the signs on every classroom door.
+The books she read, the talk she heard was all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+filled with it. It came and went through every
+door of life.</p>
+<p>All the inherited prejudices of her line of New
+England fathers were alive and stirring in her
+against this religion that demanded so much.
+The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given
+her fought against it. It was so absolute. It was
+so sure of everything. She wanted to argue with
+it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must
+be wrong sometimes.</p>
+<p>But just when she was sure that she had found
+something false, something that she knew was not
+right in the things they taught her, she was always
+told that she had not understood. Some one was
+always ready to tell her, in an easy, patient,
+amused way, that she had gotten the thing wrong.
+How could they always be so sure? And what
+was wrong with her that she could not understand?
+She could learn everything else faster and more
+easily than the other girls could.</p>
+<p>Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her
+hands fell nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were
+blinded with great, burning tears. A wave of intolerable
+longing and loneliness swept over her.</p>
+<p>The wonderful, enchanting world that she had
+come out of her hills to conquer was cut down
+to the four little grey walls that enclosed her.
+Everything was shut away from her. She did not
+understand these strange women about her.
+Would never understand them.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span></div>
+<p>Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where
+Daddy Tom was near her, where there was love
+for her, where the people and even the snow and
+the wild winds were her friends?</p>
+<p>She threw herself forward on her arms and
+gave way utterly, crying in great, heart-breaking,
+breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her home,
+for her hills.</p>
+<p>At five o&rsquo;clock Sister Rose, coming to see that
+the music rooms were aired for the evening use,
+found Ruth an inert, shapeless little bundle of
+broken nerves lying across the piano.</p>
+<p>She took the girl to her room and sent for the
+sister infirmarian.</p>
+<p>But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only
+to leave her alone.</p>
+<p>The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness
+that every new pupil in a boarding school
+is liable to, sent some of the other girls in during
+the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she
+drove them away. She was not cross nor pettish.
+But her soul was sick for the sweeping freedom
+of her hills and for people who could understand
+her.</p>
+<p>She rose and dragged her little couch over to
+the window, where she could look out and up to
+the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped down
+upon her in the hills.</p>
+<p>She did not know the names that they had in
+books, but she had framed little pet names for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+them all out of her baby fancies and the names had
+clung to them all the years.</p>
+<p>She recognised them, although they did not
+stand in the places where they belonged when she
+looked at them from the hills.</p>
+<p>Out among them somewhere was Heaven.
+Daddy Tom was there, and her mother whom she
+had never seen.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it
+seemed, there came stealing into her sense a sound.
+Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so illusive.
+It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear
+as other sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to
+steal past the clumsy senses directly into the spirit
+and the heart.</p>
+<p>It was music. Yes. But it was as though the
+Soul of Music had freed itself of the bondage and
+the body of sound and notes and came carrying its
+unutterable message straight to the soul of the
+world.</p>
+<p>It was only the sisters in their chapel gently
+hymning the <i>Salve</i> of the Compline to their Queen
+in Heaven.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued,
+sweetly poignant evensong on every other
+night. Other nights, her mind filled with books
+and its other business, the music had scarcely
+reached her. To-night her soul was alive. Her
+every sense was like a nerve laid bare, ready to be
+thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span></div>
+<p>She did not think of the sisters. She saw the
+deep rose flush of the windows in the dimly lighted
+chapel across the court, and knew vaguely, perhaps,
+that the music came from there. But it carried
+her beyond all thought.</p>
+<p>She did not hear the words of the hymn.
+Would not have understood them if she had heard.
+But the lifting of hearts to <i>Our Life, our Sweetness
+and our Hope</i> caught her heart up into a
+world where words were never needed.</p>
+<p>She heard the cry of the <i>Banished children of
+Eve</i>. The <i>Mourning and weeping in this vale
+of tears</i> swept into her soul like the flood-tide of
+all the sorrow of all the world.</p>
+<p>On and upwards the music carried her, until she
+could hear the triumph, until her soul rang with
+the glory and the victory of <i>The Promises of
+Christ</i>.</p>
+<p>The music ceased. She saw the light fade from
+the chapel windows, leaving only the one little
+blood-red spot of light before the altar. She lay
+there trembling, not daring to move, while the
+echo of that unseen choir caught her heartstrings
+and set them ringing to the measure of the heart
+of the world.</p>
+<p>It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and
+helplessness but the undying hope of the world
+that she had heard. It was the cry of the little
+blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of
+martyrs on their pyres. It was the cry of strong
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+men and valiant women crushed under the forces
+of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic
+Church, which knows what the soul of the world
+is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this. She realised
+it as she lay there trembling.</p>
+<p>Always, as long as life was in her; always,
+whether she worked or laughed, cried or played;
+always that voice would grip her heart and play
+upon it and lead her whether she would or no.</p>
+<p>It would lead her. It would carry her. It
+would send her.</p>
+<p>Through all the long night she fought it. She
+would not! She would not give up her life, her
+will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?</p>
+<p>It would take her spirit out of the freedom of
+the hills and make it follow a trodden way. It
+would take her life out of her hands and maybe
+ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and
+the wind, in a darkened convent. It would take
+her will, the will of a soldier&rsquo;s daughter, and break
+it into little pieces to make a path for her to walk
+upon!</p>
+<p>No! No! No! Through all the endless
+night she moaned her protest. She would not!
+She would not give in to it.</p>
+<p>It would never let her rest. Through all her
+life that voice of the Choir Unseen would strike
+the strings of her heart. She knew it.</p>
+<p>But she would not. Never would she give in
+to it.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span></div>
+<p>In the morning, even before the coming of the
+dawn, the music came again; and it beat upon her
+worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched at
+her heart until she could stand it no longer.</p>
+<p>The sisters were taking up again the burden and
+the way of the day.</p>
+<p>She could not stand it! She could not stay
+here! She must go back to her hills, where there
+was peace for her.</p>
+<p>She heard the sister going down to unlock the
+street door so that Father Tenney could walk in
+when it was time and go up to the chapel for the
+sisters&rsquo; early mass.</p>
+<p>That was her chance! The sisters would be in
+chapel. The girls would be still in their rooms.</p>
+<p>She dressed hastily and threw her books into a
+bag. She would take only these and her money.
+She had enough to get home on. The rest did
+not matter.</p>
+<p>When she heard the priest&rsquo;s step pass in the
+hall, she slipped out and down the dim, broad
+stairs.</p>
+<p>The great, heavy door of the convent stood
+like the gate of the world. It swung slowly, deliberately,
+on its well-oiled, silent hinges.</p>
+<p>She stood in the portal a moment, drinking
+hungrily the fresh, free air of the morning that
+had come down from her hills. Then she fled
+away into the dawn.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span></div>
+<p>The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain
+as Jeffrey Whiting came out of his mother&rsquo;s
+house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His
+uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn
+with the team and sled. Jeffrey threw his trunk
+upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe. It
+was twenty-five miles of half broken road and
+snowdrifts to Lowville and the railroad.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical
+American farm boy has been doing for the last
+hundred years and what he will probably continue
+to do as long as we Americans are what we are.
+He is not always a dreamer, your farm boy, when
+he starts down from his hills or his cross-roads
+farm to see the big world and conquer it. More
+often than you would think, he knows that he is
+not going to conquer it at all. And he is not, on
+the other hand, merely running away from the
+drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will
+probably have to work harder than he would ever
+have worked on the farm. But he knows that he
+has things to sell. And he is going down into the
+markets of men. He has a good head and a
+strong body. He has a power of work in him.
+He has grit and energy.</p>
+<p>He is going down into the markets where men
+pay the price for these things that he has. He is
+going to fight men for that price which he knows
+his things are worth.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span></div>
+<p>Jeffrey&rsquo;s mother came out carrying a canvas
+satchel which she put on the sled under Cassius
+Bascom&rsquo;s feet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t kick that, Catty,&rdquo; she warned, &ldquo;Jeff&rsquo;s
+lunch is in it. And, Jeff, don&rsquo;t you go and check
+it with the trunk.&rdquo; There was just a little catch
+in the laugh with which she said this. She was
+remembering a day more than twenty years before
+when she had started, a bride, with big, lumbering,
+slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting, Jeffrey&rsquo;s
+father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with
+their lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting
+checked the satchel through from Lowville to Buffalo,
+and they had nearly starved on the way. It
+was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity.
+But she never quite forgave him for telling it on
+himself when they got back. It had been a standing
+joke in the hills all these years.</p>
+<p>She was just a typical mother of the hills. She
+loved her boy. She needed him. She knew that
+she would never have him again. The boys do
+not come back from the market place. She knew
+that she would cry for him through many a lonely
+night, as she had cried all last night. But she was
+not crying now.</p>
+<p>Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his
+as she stretched her arms up around the neck of
+her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss her.</p>
+<p>He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart.
+He knew his mother very well. So he began with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span>
+the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to tell
+when we were leaving.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll only be a little while, Mother. You
+won&rsquo;t find the time slipping by, and I&rsquo;ll be back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys
+always knew it was a lie. But she backed him up
+sturdily:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, of course, Jeff. Don&rsquo;t worry about me.
+You&rsquo;ll be back in no time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the
+house with a dark, oblong object in her hands.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just
+tried to forget this on purpose. It&rsquo;s too late to
+put it in the trunk now; so you&rsquo;ll just have to put
+it in your overcoat pocket.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown
+brick covered with felt, a foot warmer. Aunt
+Letty had made him take one with him when he
+went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter,
+and he and his brick had furnished much of the
+winter&rsquo;s amusement there. The memory of his
+humiliations on account of that brick would last a
+lifetime. He wondered why maiden aunts could
+not understand. His mother, now, would have
+known better. But he dutifully put the thing into
+the pocket of his big coat&ndash;&ndash;he could drop it into
+the first snowback&ndash;&ndash;and turned to kiss his aunt.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany,&rdquo;
+she lectured. &ldquo;Make your landlady heat
+it for you every night.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span></div>
+<p>A noise in the road made them all turn.</p>
+<p>Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were
+driving into the yard.</p>
+<p>It was evident from the signs that the men
+had been having a hard time on the road. They
+must have been out all night, for they could not
+have started from anywhere early enough to be
+here now at sunrise.</p>
+<p>Their harness had been broken and mended in
+several places. The cutter had a runner broken.
+The horses were cut and bloody, where they had
+kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.</p>
+<p>As they drove up beside the group in the yard,
+one of the men shouted:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say, is there any place we can put in here?
+We&rsquo;ve been on that road all night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and
+warm yourselves,&rdquo; said Mrs. Whiting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rogers,&rdquo; said the man who had spoken, addressing
+the other, &ldquo;if I ever get into a place that&rsquo;s
+warm, I&rsquo;ll stay there till spring.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of
+the cutter and stepped stiffly out into the snow.
+He swept the group with a sharp, a praising eye,
+and asked:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s the one to talk to here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and
+replied with another question.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+grey moustache and cold grey eyes, looked the
+youth over carefully as he spoke.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I want a man that knows this country and can
+get around in it in this season. I was brought up
+in the country, but I never saw anything like this.
+I wouldn&rsquo;t take a trip like this again for any
+money. I can&rsquo;t do this sort of thing. I want a
+man that knows the country and the people and
+can do it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going away now,&rdquo; said Jeffrey
+slowly, &ldquo;but Uncle Catty here knows the people
+and the country better than most and he can go
+anywhere.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish
+man on the sled. Then he turned away decisively.
+Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old face
+all withered and puckered to one side, where a
+splinter of shell from Fort Fisher had taken away
+his right eye, was evidently not the kind of man
+that the big man wanted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo; he asked Jeffrey
+sharply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Albany Law School,&rdquo; said Jeffrey promptly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Unstrap the trunk, young man. You&rsquo;re not
+going. I&rsquo;ve got something for you right here at
+home that&rsquo;ll teach you more than ten law schools.
+Put both teams into the barn,&rdquo; the big man commanded
+loudly.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would
+oppose the will of this brusque stranger. But he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+knew that he would not do so. In that moment
+something told him that he would not go to law
+school; would never go there; that his life was
+about to take a twist away from everything that he
+had ever intended.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come into the house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom
+poured boiling tea for the two men, Rogers, cup
+in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and explained
+himself. The other man, whose name
+does not matter, sank into a great wooden chair
+at the side of the fire and seemed to be ready to
+make good his threat of staying until spring.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I represent the U. &amp; M. railroad. We are
+coming up through here in the spring. All these
+farms have to be given up. We have eminent domain
+for this whole section,&rdquo; said Rogers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Jeffrey. &ldquo;The
+railroad can&rsquo;t run <i>all over</i> the country.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. But the road will need the whole strip
+of hills for timber. They&rsquo;ll cut off what is standing
+and then they&rsquo;ll stock the whole country with
+cedar, for ties. That&rsquo;s all the land&rsquo;s good for,
+anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s mouth opened for an answer
+to this, but his mother&rsquo;s sharp, warning glance
+stopped him. He understood that it was his place
+to listen and learn. There would be time enough
+for questions and arguments afterward.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Now these people here won&rsquo;t understand what
+eminent domain means,&rdquo; the big man went on.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to make it clear to you, young man.
+I know who you are and I know more about you
+than you think. I&rsquo;m going to make it clear to you
+and then I&rsquo;m going to send you out among them
+to make them see it. They wouldn&rsquo;t understand
+me and they wouldn&rsquo;t believe me. You can make
+them see it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How do you know that I&rsquo;ll believe you?&rdquo;
+asked Jeffrey.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got brains. You don&rsquo;t have to <i>believe</i>.
+I can <i>show</i> it to you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed
+to taking responsibilities upon himself.
+He had never been afraid of anything and this
+perhaps had given him more than the average
+boy&rsquo;s good opinion of himself. Nothing could
+have appealed to him more subtly than this man&rsquo;s
+bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to
+man by a man of the world. No boy is proof
+against the compliment that he is a man, to be
+dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced
+men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know what an option is?&rdquo; the man
+began again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; said Rogers, in a manner that
+seemed to confirm his previous judgment of
+Jeffrey&rsquo;s brains. &ldquo;Now then, the railroad has got
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+to have all these farms from Beaver River right
+up to the head of Little Tupper Lake. I say these
+people won&rsquo;t know what eminent domain means.
+You&rsquo;re going to tell them. It means that they can
+sell at the railroad&rsquo;s price or they can hold off
+and a referee will be appointed to name a price.
+The railroad will have a big say in appointing
+those referees. Do you understand me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. I see,&rdquo; said Jeffrey. &ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No buts at all about it, young man,&rdquo; said Rogers,
+waving his hand. &ldquo;The people have got to
+sell. If they give options at once&ndash;&ndash;within thirty
+days&ndash;&ndash;they&rsquo;ll get more than a fair price for their
+land. If they don&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;if they hold off&ndash;&ndash;their
+farms will be condemned as forest land. And you
+know how much that brings.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You people will be the first. You can ask almost
+anything for your land. You&rsquo;ll get it.
+And, what is more, I am able to offer you, Whiting,
+a very liberal commission on every option
+you can get me within the time I have said. This
+is the thing that I can&rsquo;t do. It&rsquo;s the thing that I
+want you to do.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll do it. I know you will, when you get
+time to think it over. Here are the options,&rdquo; said
+the big man, pulling a packet of folded papers
+out of his pocket. &ldquo;They cover every farm in
+the section. All you have to do is to get the
+people to write their names once. Then your
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+work is done. We&rsquo;ll do the rest and your commissions
+will be waiting for you. Some better
+than law school, eh?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But say,&rdquo; Jeffrey stammered, &ldquo;say, that
+means, why, that means my mother and the folks
+here, why, they&rsquo;d have to get out; they&rsquo;d have to
+leave their home!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Rogers easily. &ldquo;A man
+like you isn&rsquo;t going to keep his family up on top of
+this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you&rsquo;ll
+have the best home in Lowville for them, where
+they can live in style, in less than six months. Do
+you think your mother wants to stay here after
+you&rsquo;re gone. You were going away. Did you
+think,&rdquo; he said shrewdly, &ldquo;what life up here would
+be worth to your mother while you were away.
+No, you&rsquo;re just like all boys. You wanted to get
+away yourself. But you never thought what a
+life this is for her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, boy, she&rsquo;s a young woman yet. You
+can take her out and give her a chance to live.
+Do you hear, a chance to live.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Think it over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than
+he had ever tried to think in his life. But he could
+make nothing of it.</p>
+<p>He thought of the people, old and young, on
+the hills, suddenly set adrift from their homes.
+He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back
+to. And he thought of money&ndash;&ndash;illimitable
+money: money that could do everything.</p>
+<p>He did not want to look at his mother for counsel.
+The man&rsquo;s talk had gone to his head. But,
+slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his mother&rsquo;s,
+and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look
+which told him to wait, wait. He caught the
+meaning and spoke it brusquely:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right. Leave the options here. I&rsquo;ll see
+what we&rsquo;ll do. And I&rsquo;ll write to you next week.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>No. That would not do. The big man must
+have his answer at once. He stormed at Jeffrey.
+He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished
+Miss Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius,
+but that guileless man led him off into such a discussion
+of cross grafting and reforestation that he
+was glad to drop him.</p>
+<p>In the end, he saw that, having committed himself,
+he could do no better than leave the matter
+to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for thought,
+the boy could not refuse his offer.</p>
+<p>So the two men, having breakfasted and rested
+their horses, set out on the down trip to Lowville.</p>
+<p>Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother
+came to a decision.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is too big for us, Jeff,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We do
+not know what it means. Nobody up here can tell
+us. The man was lying. But we do not know
+why, or what about.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;There is one man that could tell us. The
+White Horse Chaplain, do you remember him,
+Jeffrey?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only to give her her chance, my son. Do
+not forget that. He could tell us what this means.
+I don&rsquo;t care anything about his religion. Your
+Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day
+at Fort Fisher. I don&rsquo;t. He is the Catholic
+Bishop of Alden. You&rsquo;ll go to him to-morrow.
+He&rsquo;ll tell you what it means.&rdquo;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very
+much worried. For the third time he picked up
+and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of
+the Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him
+that Ruth Lansing had left the convent that morning.
+But the third perusal of the message did not
+give him any more light on the matter than the
+two previous readings had done.</p>
+<p>Why should the girl have gone away? What
+could have happened? Only the other day he
+had received a letter from her telling of her studies
+and her progress and of every new thing that was
+interesting her.</p>
+<p>The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home
+where he had found her &ldquo;Daddy Tom&rdquo; dying,
+and where he had buried him on the hillside.
+Probably the girl would go back and try to live
+there. And he thought of the boy who had told
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>
+him of his love and that he wanted to keep Ruth
+there in the hills.</p>
+<p>As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary
+came to the door to tell him that the boy,
+Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking
+to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature
+of his business to any one but the Bishop himself.</p>
+<p>The Bishop was startled. He had understood
+that the young man was in Albany at school.
+Now he thought that he would get a very clear
+light upon Ruth Lansing&rsquo;s disappearance.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I came to you, sir,&rdquo; said Jeffrey when the
+Bishop had given him a chair, &ldquo;because you could
+tell us what to do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean you and your&ndash;&ndash;neighbour, Ruth
+Lansing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, no, sir. What about her?&rdquo; said
+Jeffrey quickly.</p>
+<p>The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching
+look, and saw his mistake. The boy knew nothing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; the Bishop answered, as he handed
+Jeffrey the open telegram.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But where&rsquo;s she gone? Why did she go?&rdquo;
+Jeffrey broke out, as he read the message.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you were coming to tell me that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop&rsquo;s
+meaning quickly. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t write to me, not
+at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn&rsquo;t have it.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>
+But she wrote to my mother and she didn&rsquo;t say
+anything about leaving there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose not,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;She seems
+to have gone away suddenly. But, I am forgetting.
+You came to talk to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly
+and shortly, of the coming of Rogers and his
+proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to
+tell how he had been carried away by the man&rsquo;s
+offer and his flattery. He made it plain that it
+was only his mother&rsquo;s insight and caution that had
+held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.</p>
+<p>The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness
+of the young fellow. It was good to
+hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his
+old-fashioned, stiff way and said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise
+woman. You will convey to her my deepest respect.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do not know what it all means,&rdquo; he went on,
+in another tone. &ldquo;But I can soon find out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the
+door the Bishop said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you see, please, if General Chandler is
+in his office across the street. If he is, give him
+my respects and ask him to step over here a moment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the
+doorway.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked the Bishop.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She
+says she must see you, but she will not give a name.
+She seems to be in trouble, or frightened.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for
+the door.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sit down where you were, young man,&rdquo; said
+the Bishop sharply. If Ruth Lansing were out
+there&ndash;&ndash;and the Bishop half believed that she was&ndash;&ndash;well,
+it <i>might</i> be coincidence. But it was too
+much for the Bishop&rsquo;s credulity.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Send the girl in here,&rdquo; he said shortly.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went
+straight to the Bishop. She did not see Jeffrey.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I came straight here all the way,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;to tell you, Bishop, that I couldn&rsquo;t stay in the
+convent any longer. I am going home. I could
+not stay there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am very glad to see you, Ruth,&rdquo; said the
+Bishop easily, &ldquo;and if you&rsquo;ll just turn around, I
+think you&rsquo;ll see some one who is even more
+pleased.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at
+sight of Jeffrey was abundant proof to the Bishop
+that the coming of these two to his door was indeed
+a coincidence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the Bishop quickly, &ldquo;you will
+both sit down and listen. It concerns both of you
+deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General
+Chandler. You have both heard of him.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>
+He is the political power of this part of the State.
+He can, if he will, tell us just how serious your situation
+is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just
+listen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise
+and perhaps a little resentment. For hours
+she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal
+of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely
+told to sit down and listen to something, she did
+not know what.</p>
+<p>The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler
+was ushered into the room and the two veterans
+saluted each other with the stiffest of military precision.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;These are two young friends of mine from
+the hills, General,&rdquo; said the Bishop, as he seated
+his old friend. &ldquo;They both own farms in the
+Beaver Run country. They have come to me to
+find out what the U. &amp; M. Railroad wants with
+options on all that country. Can you, will you
+tell them?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The General plucked for a moment at the empty
+left sleeve of his coat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, Bishop,&rdquo; he said finally, &ldquo;I cannot give
+out what I know of that matter. The interests
+behind it are too large for me. I would not dare.
+I do not often have to say that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly, &ldquo;I never heard
+you say that before.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can do this, Bishop,&rdquo; said the General,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>
+rising. &ldquo;If you will come over here to the end
+of the room, I can tell you, privately, what I know.
+You can then use your own prudence to judge
+how much you can tell these young people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop followed to the window at the other
+end of the room, where the two men stood and
+talked in undertones.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey,&rdquo; said Ruth through teeth that gritted
+with impatience, &ldquo;if you don&rsquo;t tell me this instant
+what it&rsquo;s all about, I&rsquo;ll&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ll <i>bite</i> you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little
+wild outbreak of hers to convince him that the
+young lady who had swept into the room and faced
+the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth,
+after all.</p>
+<p>In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.</p>
+<p>The Bishop walked to the door with the General,
+thanking him. From the door the General
+saluted gravely and stalked away.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The answer,&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly, as he
+came back to them, &ldquo;is one word&ndash;&ndash;Iron.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making
+a mysterious fuss about nothing. But Jeffrey saw
+the whole matter instantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No one knows how much there is, or how little
+there is,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;The man lied to you,
+Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain. But
+they can get it if they get the options on a large
+part of the farms. Then, when they have the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+right of eminent domain, they will let the options
+lapse and buy the properties at their own prices.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll start back to warn the people to-night,&rdquo;
+said Jeffrey, jumping up. &ldquo;Maybe they made
+that offer to other people besides me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; said the Bishop, &ldquo;there is more to
+think of. The railroad, if you serve it well, will,
+no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it is
+worth to you. There is your mother to be considered
+first. And they will, very likely, give you
+a chance to make a small fortune in your commissions,
+if you are faithful to them. If you go to
+fight them, they will probably crush you all in the
+end, and you will be left with little or nothing.
+Better go slowly, young man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried Jeffrey. &ldquo;Take their bribe!
+Take their money, for fooling and cheating the
+other people out of their homes! Why, before
+I&rsquo;d do that, I&rsquo;d leave that farm and everything
+that&rsquo;s there and go up into the big woods with
+only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my
+mother would follow me! You know that! My
+mother would be glad to go with me, with nothing,
+nothing in her hands!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And so would I!&rdquo; said Ruth, springing to her
+feet. &ldquo;I <i>would</i>! I <i>would</i>!&rdquo; she chanted defiantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, well, well!&rdquo; said the Bishop, smiling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you are not going up into the big woods,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+Jeffrey,&rdquo; Ruth said demurely. &ldquo;You are going
+back home to fight them. If I could help you I
+would go back with you. I would not be of any
+use. So, I&rsquo;m going back, to the convent, to face
+my fight.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But, but,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;I thought you were
+running away.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did. I was,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;Last night I
+heard the voice of something calling to me. It
+was such a big thing,&rdquo; she went on, turning to the
+Bishop; &ldquo;it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing
+that I thought it would crush me. It would take
+my life and make me do what <i>it</i> wanted, not what
+I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It
+was like a Choir Unseen singing to me to follow,
+and I didn&rsquo;t dare follow.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey
+spoke that way. Now I know what it was. It
+was the call of life to everybody to face life, to
+take our souls in our hands and go forward. I
+thought I could turn back. I can&rsquo;t. God, or
+life won&rsquo;t let us turn back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing,&rdquo;
+said the Bishop. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you came away,
+to have it out with yourself. And you will be
+very glad now to go back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As for you, young man,&rdquo; he turned to
+Jeffrey, &ldquo;I should say that your mother <i>would</i> be
+proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you.
+Remember that, when you are in the worst of this
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>
+fight that is before you. When you are tempted,
+as you will be tempted, remember it. When you
+are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed,
+<i>remember it</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+<a name='III_GLOW_OF_DAWN' id='III_GLOW_OF_DAWN'></a>
+<h2>III</h2>
+<h3>GLOW OF DAWN</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to
+his breakfast. It was past the middle of June, or,
+as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was the
+time when the snow water and the water from the
+spring rains had already gone down to the Big
+River: Beaver Run was still a fresh, rushing
+stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon
+there would not be enough water in it to make it
+safe for a trout as large as he. Then he would
+have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver
+River, where the saw-dust came to bother him.</p>
+<p>He was going up to lie all the morning in the
+shallow little pond at the very head of Beaver
+Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and drew
+the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very
+fond of flies and the pond was his own. He had
+made it his own now through four seasons, by his
+speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,
+quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below
+did not dispute with him this sweet upper stretch
+of his own stream. No large fish ever came up
+this way now, and he did not bother with the little
+ones. He liked flies better.</p>
+<p>His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>
+cool yet, for the sun was not high enough to have
+heated it through: a beautiful breakfast room at
+the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that
+ran away up on every side to the rim of the high
+hills.</p>
+<p>Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast.
+The sun had not yet begun to draw the flies from
+their hiding places to buzz over the surface of
+the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool
+only one fly was in sight. A rather decrepit looking
+black fly was doddering about a cat-tail stalk
+at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his
+body, and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and
+took the fly in his leap. But that was no breakfast.
+He would have to settle down by the cat-tails,
+in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.</p>
+<p>Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond
+this season. Always, in other years, two people,
+a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as he
+ate his breakfast. The girl had called him
+Twinkle-tail the very first time they had seen him.
+But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They were not
+friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow
+of the cat-tails and watch them as they crept along
+the edge of the bank. But he knew they came to
+catch him. When they were there the most
+tempting flies seemed to appear. Some of those
+flies fell into the water, others just skimmed the
+surface in the most aggravating and challenging
+manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>
+the cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl
+came to his side of the pond, then a lightning
+twinkle of his tail was all that told them that he
+had scooted out of the pool and down into the
+stream. Once the girl had trailed a piece of
+flashing red flannel across the water, and Twinkle-tail
+could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible
+hook caught him in the side of the mouth!
+In his fury and terror he dove and fought until he
+broke the hook. He had never forgotten that
+lesson.</p>
+<p>But he was forgetting a little this season. No
+one came to his pool. He was growing big and
+fat, and a little careless.</p>
+<p>As he lay there in the warming sand by the
+cat-tails, the biggest, juiciest green bottle fly that
+Twinkle-tail had ever seen came skimming down
+to the very line of the water. It circled once.
+Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not
+an inch from the water!</p>
+<p>A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and
+Twinkle-tail was out of the water! He had the
+fly in his mouth.</p>
+<p>Then the struggle began.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the
+shoulder of the bank behind which she had been
+hiding.</p>
+<p>The trout dove and started for the stream, the
+line ripping through the water like a shot.</p>
+<p>The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span>
+strong, slender, boy-like body giving and swaying
+cunningly to every tug of the fish.</p>
+<p>He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool,
+throwing her off her balance and down into the
+water. She rose wet and angry, clinging grimly
+to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side
+of the pond. She did not dare to stand and pull
+against him, for fear of breaking the hook. She
+could only race around, giving him all the line she
+could until he should tire a little.</p>
+<p>Three times they fought around the circle of the
+pool, the taut line singing like a wire in the wind.
+Ruth&rsquo;s hand was cut where she had fallen on the
+rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head
+to foot. Her breath came in great, gulping sobs.
+But she fought on.</p>
+<p>Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down
+the Run, but she headed him back each time to the
+pond where she could handle him better. She
+had never before fought so big a fish all alone.
+Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had always been with her.
+Now she found herself calling desperately under
+her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She
+bit back the words and took a new hold on the
+pole.</p>
+<p>The trout was running blindly now from side
+to side of the pond. He had lost his cunning.
+He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her
+strength was nearly gone too. She must use her
+head quickly.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span></div>
+<p>She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate
+effort. She must catch him as he ran
+toward her and try to flick him out of the water.
+It was her only chance. She might break the line
+or the pole and lose him entirely, but she would
+try it.</p>
+<p>Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water,
+directly at her. She suddenly threw her strength
+on the pole. It bent nearly double but it held.
+And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her
+strength, was whipped clear out on to the grass.
+Dropping the pole, she dove desperately at him
+where he fought on the very edge of the bank.
+Finally she caught the line a few inches above his
+mouth, and her prize was secure.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you, Twinkle-tail,&rdquo; she panted, as she held
+him up for a good look, &ldquo;sure enough!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She carried him back to a large stone and
+despatched him painlessly with a blunt stick.
+Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and
+dizzy from her struggle.</p>
+<p>Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she
+said aloud:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish Jeffrey was here. He&rsquo;ll never believe
+it was you unless he sees you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s him all right,&rdquo; said a voice behind
+her. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d know him in a thousand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, where did you come from? Your mother
+told me you wouldn&rsquo;t be back till to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow
+if you want me to,&rdquo; said Jeffrey,
+smiling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Jeff, you know I&rsquo;m glad to see you. I
+was awfully disappointed when I got home and
+found that you were away up in the hills. How
+is your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail,&rdquo;
+she hurried on a little nervously, for Jeffrey
+had her hand and was drawing her determinedly
+to him. She reached for the trout and held him
+up strategically between them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, <i>Fish</i>!&rdquo; said Jeffrey discontentedly as he
+saw himself beaten by her ruse.</p>
+<p>The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly
+handsome face. Then she seemed to relent,
+and with a friendly little tug at his arm led
+him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit
+down.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now tell me,&rdquo; she commanded, &ldquo;all about
+your battle with the railroad people. Your
+mother told me some things, but I want it all,
+from yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked
+at her dress and shoes and said with a show of
+meanness:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ruth, you didn&rsquo;t catch Twinkle-tail fair, on
+your line. You just walked into the pond and got
+him in a corner and kicked him to death brutally.
+I know you did. You&rsquo;re always cruel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+cut in her hand where she had fallen on the
+rocks.</p>
+<p>Instantly he was all interest and contrition.
+He must wash the hand and dress it! But she
+made him sit where he was, while she knelt down
+by the water and bathed the smarting hand and
+bound it with her handkerchief.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;tell me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he began, when he saw that there was
+nothing to be gained by delay, &ldquo;the very night that
+the Bishop of Alden told me that they had found
+iron in the hills here and that they were going to
+try to push us all out of our homes, I started out
+to warn the people. I found I wasn&rsquo;t the only
+man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had
+Rafe Gadbeau, you know he&rsquo;s a kind of a political
+boss of the French around French Village; and a
+man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but
+he&rsquo;d been spending money around free, and I knew
+the railroad must have given it to him outright.
+I told him what I had found out, about the iron
+and what the land would be worth if the farmers
+held on to it. But I might as well have held my
+breath. He didn&rsquo;t care anything about the interests
+of the people that had land. He was getting
+paid well for every option that he could get. And
+he was going to get all he could. I will have
+trouble with that man yet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+and a good man. They had fooled him, just as
+that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He
+had started out in good faith to help the railroad
+get the properties over on that side of the mountains,
+thinking it was the best thing for the people
+to do to sell out at once. When I told him about
+their finding iron, he saw that they had made a
+catspaw of him; and he was the maddest man you
+ever saw.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He is a big man over that way, and his word
+was worth ten of mine. He went right out with
+me to warn every man who had a piece of land
+not to sign anything.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling
+the whole business for the railroad, came up here
+and had me arrested on charges of extortion and
+conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They
+took me down to Lowville, but Judge Clemmons
+couldn&rsquo;t find anything in the charges. So I was let
+go. But they are not through. They will find
+some way to get me away from here yet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How does it stand now?&rdquo; said Ruth thoughtfully.
+&ldquo;Have they actually started to build the
+railroad?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes. You know they have the right of
+way to run the road through. But they wouldn&rsquo;t
+build it, at least not for years yet, only that they
+want to get this iron property opened up. Why,
+the road is to run from Welden to French Village
+and there is not a single town on the whole line!
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+The road wouldn&rsquo;t have business enough to keep
+the rust off. They&rsquo;re building the road just the
+same, so that shows that they intend to get our
+property some way, no matter what we do. And
+I suppose they will, somehow,&rdquo; he added sullenly.
+&ldquo;They always do, I guess.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the people,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;can&rsquo;t you get
+them all to join and agree to sell at a fair price?
+Wouldn&rsquo;t that be all right?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t want to buy. They won&rsquo;t buy
+at any fair price. They only want to get options
+enough to show the Legislature and the Governor,
+and then they will be granted eminent domain and
+they can have the land condemned and can buy it
+at the price of wild land.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes; I remember now. That&rsquo;s what the
+Bishop said. Isn&rsquo;t it strange,&rdquo; she went on
+slowly, &ldquo;how he seems to come into everything
+we do. How he saved my Daddy Tom&rsquo;s life that
+time at Fort Fisher. And how he came here that
+night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked
+us up and turned us around and sent me off to
+convent. And now how he seems to come into all
+this.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the
+North,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;I wonder if he comes
+into the lives of <i>all</i> the people that way. At the
+convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging
+to them personally. I resented it at first,
+because I thought I had more reason to know him
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+than anybody. But I found that everybody felt
+the same way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s just like the Catholic Church,&rdquo; said
+Jeffrey suddenly, and a little sharply; &ldquo;he comes
+into everything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeffrey,&rdquo; said Ruth in surprise, &ldquo;what
+do you know about the Church?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve read some.
+And I&rsquo;ve had to deal a lot with the French people
+up toward French Village. And I&rsquo;ve talked with
+their priest up there. You know you have to talk
+to the priest before it&rsquo;s any use talking to them.
+That&rsquo;s the way with the Catholic Church. It
+comes into everything. I don&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He sat looking across the pool for a moment,
+while Ruth quietly studied the stubborn, settling
+lines of his face. She saw that a few months had
+made a big change in the boy and playmate that
+she had known. He was no longer the bright-faced,
+clear-eyed boy. His face was turning into
+a man&rsquo;s face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and
+of harshness were coming into it. It showed
+strength and doggedness and will, along with some
+of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not
+dislike the change altogether. But it began to
+make her a little timid. She was quick to see from
+it that there would be certain limits beyond which
+she could not play with this new man that she
+found.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right to be religious,&rdquo; he went on argumentatively.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>
+&ldquo;Mother&rsquo;s religious. And Aunt
+Letty&rsquo;s just full of it. But it don&rsquo;t interfere with
+their lives. It&rsquo;s all right to have a preacher for
+marrying or dying or something like that; and to
+go to hear him if you want to. But the Catholic
+Church comes right in to where those people live.
+It tells them what to do and what to think about
+everything. They don&rsquo;t dare speak without looking
+back to it to find out what they must say. I
+don&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeffrey, I&rsquo;m a Catholic!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I <i>knew</i> it!&rdquo; he said stubbornly. &ldquo;I knew it!
+I knew there was something that had changed you.
+And I might have known it was that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s funny!&rdquo; said the girl, breaking in
+quickly. &ldquo;When you came I was just wondering
+to myself why it had not seemed to change me at
+all. I think I was half disappointed with myself,
+to think that I had gone through a wonderful
+experience and it had left me just the same as I
+was before.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it has changed you,&rdquo; he persisted. &ldquo;And
+it&rsquo;s going to change you a lot more. I can see it.
+Please, Ruth,&rdquo; he said, suddenly softening, &ldquo;you
+won&rsquo;t let it change you? You won&rsquo;t let it make
+any difference, with us, I mean?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his
+face, and said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, Jeffrey. It won&rsquo;t make any difference
+with us, in the way you mean.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;So long as we are what we are,&rdquo; she said again
+after a pause, &ldquo;we will be just the same to each
+other. If it should make something different out
+of me than what I am, then, of course, I would
+not be the same to you. Or if you should change
+into something else, then you would not be the
+same to me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s too soon,&rdquo; she continued decisively.
+&ldquo;Nothing is clear to me, yet. I&rsquo;ve just entered
+into a great, wonderful world of thought and feeling
+that I never knew existed. Where it leads
+to, I do not know. When I do know, Jeffrey
+dear, I&rsquo;ll tell you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her
+feet, and he understood that she had said the last
+word that was to be said. He saw something in
+her face with which he did not dare to argue.</p>
+<p>He got up saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have to be gone. I&rsquo;m glad I found you here
+at the old place. I&rsquo;ll be back to-night to help you
+eat the trout.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. There&rsquo;s a couple of
+men over there that are shaky. I&rsquo;ve had to keep
+after them or they&rsquo;d be listening to Rafe Gadbeau
+and letting their land go.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; Ruth exclaimed, &ldquo;now when they
+know, can&rsquo;t they see what is to their own interest!
+Are they blind?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Jeffrey dully. &ldquo;But you know
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+how it is with those people. Their land is hard
+to work. It is poor land. They have to scratch
+and scrape for a little money. They don&rsquo;t see
+many dollars together from one year&rsquo;s end to the
+other. Even a little money, ready, green money,
+shaken in their faces looks awful big to them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Good luck, then, Jeff,&rdquo; she said cheerily;
+&ldquo;and get back early if you can.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; he said easily as he picked up his hat.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And, say, Ruth.&rdquo; He turned back quietly to
+her. &ldquo;If&ndash;&ndash;if I shouldn&rsquo;t be back to-night, or to-morrow;
+why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you?
+I wouldn&rsquo;t say anything to mother. And Uncle
+Catty, well, he&rsquo;s not very sharp sometimes. Will
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff,
+please.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, sure,&rdquo; he sang back, as he walked quickly
+around the edge of the pond and slipped into the
+alder bushes through which ran the trail that went
+up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on
+the other side.</p>
+<p>Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily
+up the opposite slope, his grey felt hat and wide
+shoulders showing above the undergrowth.</p>
+<p>This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey
+that she had left when she went down to the convent
+five months before. She could see it in his
+walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside
+just as she had seen it in his face and his talk.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+He was fighting with a power that he had found
+to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was
+not discouraged. He had no thought of giving
+up. But the airy edge of his boyish confidence
+in himself was gone. He had become grim and
+thoughtful and determined. He had settled
+down to a long, dogged struggle.</p>
+<p>He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau.
+How much did he mean? Why should he have
+said this to her? Would it not have been better
+to have warned some of the men that were associated
+with him in his fight? And what was
+there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of
+physical fear in connection with Jeffrey. Why,
+nothing ever happened in the hills, anyway.
+Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was
+true, the lumber jacks were rough when they came
+down with the log drives in the spring. But they
+only fought among themselves. And they did not
+stop in the hills. They hurried on down to the
+towns where they could spend their money.</p>
+<p>What had Jeffrey to fear?</p>
+<p>Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He
+would not have spoken to her unless he had good
+reason to think that something might happen to
+him.</p>
+<p>Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the
+temper of the hills. The men were easy-going.
+They were slow of speech. They were generally
+ruled by their more energetic women. But they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>
+or their fathers had all been fighting men, like her
+own father. And they were rooted in the soil of
+the hills. Any man or any power that attempted
+to drive them from the land which their hands had
+cleared and made into homes, where the bones of
+their fathers and mothers lay, would have to
+reckon with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top
+of the ridge. In another moment he would drop
+down the other side out of sight. She wondered
+whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he
+forgotten that she would surely be standing where
+he had left her?</p>
+<p>He had not forgotten. He turned and waved
+briskly to her. Then he stepped down quickly
+out of sight. His act was brusque and businesslike.
+It showed that he remembered. He could
+hardly have seen her standing there in all the
+green by the pond. He had just known that she
+was there. But it showed something else, too.
+He had plunged down over the edge of the hill
+upon a business with which his mind was filled, to
+the exclusion, almost, of her and of everything
+else.</p>
+<p>The girl did not feel any of the little pique or
+resentment that might have been very natural.
+It was so that she would wish him to go about the
+business that was going to be so serious for all of
+them. But it gave her a new and startling flash
+of insight into what was coming.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span></div>
+<p>She had always thought of her hills as the place
+where peace lived. Out in the great crowded
+market places of the world she knew men fought
+each other for money. But why do that in the
+hills? There was a little for all. And a man
+could only get as much as his own labour and good
+judgment would make for him out of the land.</p>
+<p>Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills
+or of cities. Wherever, in the hills or the city or
+in the farthest desert, there was wealth or the hope
+of wealth, there greedy men with power would
+surely come to look for it and take it. That was
+why men fought. Wealth, even the scent of
+wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on
+to battle.</p>
+<p>A cloud passed between her and the morning
+sun. She felt the premonition of tragedy and suffering
+lowering down like a storm on her hills.
+How foolishly she had thought that all life and all
+the great, seething business of life was to be done
+down in the towns and the cities. Here was life
+now, with its pressure and its ugly passions, pushing
+right into the very hills.</p>
+<p>She shivered as she picked up her prize of the
+morning and her fishing tackle and started slowly
+up the hill toward her home.</p>
+<p>Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth
+with the understanding that Ruth was to spend the
+summer there in her own home. The rent was
+enough to give Ruth what little money she needed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+for clothes and to pay her modest expenses at the
+convent at Athens. So her life was arranged for
+her at least up to the time when she should have
+finished school.</p>
+<p>It seemed very strange to come home and find
+her home in the hands of strangers. It was odd
+to be a sort of guest in the house that she had
+ruled and managed from almost the time that she
+was a baby. It would be very hard to keep from
+telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged and
+how other things should be done. It would be
+hard to stand by and see others driving the horses
+that had never known a hand but hers and Daddy
+Tom&rsquo;s. Still she had been very glad to come
+home. It was her place. It held all the memories
+and all the things that connected her with
+her own people. She wanted to be able always
+to come back to it and call it her own. Looking
+down over it from the crest of the hill, at the little
+clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom
+and her mother, at the little house that had seen
+their love and in which she had been born, she
+could understand the fierceness with which men
+would fight to hold the farms and homes which
+were threatened.</p>
+<p>Until now she had hardly realised that those
+men whom people vaguely called &ldquo;the railroad&rdquo;
+would want to take <i>her</i> home and farm away from
+her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span>
+felt a swelling rage of indignation rising in her
+throat. She hurried down the hill to the house,
+as though she saw it already threatened.</p>
+<p>She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof
+of the wood shed and went around to the front of
+the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth weeding
+in what had been Ruth&rsquo;s own flower beds.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss
+Ruth!&rdquo; the woman exclaimed at sight of her.
+&ldquo;I called you <i>three</i> times, and when you didn&rsquo;t
+answer I went to your door; and there you were
+gone! I told Norman Apgarth somebody must
+have took you off in the night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;No danger. I&rsquo;m
+used to getting up early, you see. So I just took
+some cakes&ndash;&ndash;Didn&rsquo;t you miss them?&ndash;&ndash;and
+some milk and slipped out without waking any one.
+I wanted to catch this fish. Jeffrey Whiting and I
+tried to catch him for four years. And I had to
+do it myself this morning.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So young Whiting&rsquo;s gone away, eh?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, no,&rdquo; said Ruth quickly. &ldquo;He went
+over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork about half an hour ago.
+Who said he&rsquo;d gone away?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, nobody,&rdquo; said the woman hastily; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+only what they was sayin&rsquo; up at French Village
+yesterday.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What were they saying?&rdquo; Ruth demanded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, just talk, I suppose,&rdquo; Mrs. Apgarth
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+evaded. &ldquo;Still, I dunno&rsquo;s I blame him. I guess
+if I got as much money as they say he&rsquo;s got out of
+it, I&rsquo;d skedaddle, too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth stepped over and caught the woman
+sharply by the arm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did they say? Tell me, please.
+Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl was trembling
+with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she
+herself had said too much, or too little. She
+could not stop at that. She must tell everything
+now.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;they say he&rsquo;s just fooled
+the people up over their eyes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo; said Ruth impatiently. &ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been agoin&rsquo; round holdin&rsquo; the people
+back and gettin&rsquo; them to swear that they won&rsquo;t
+sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the railroad.
+Now it turns out he was just keepin&rsquo; the rest of
+the people back till he could get a good big lot of
+money from the railroad for his own farm and
+for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he&rsquo;s sold
+this farm and his own and five other ones that he&rsquo;d
+got hold of, for four times what they&rsquo;re worth.
+And that gives the railroad enough to work on,
+so the rest of the people&rsquo;ll just have to sell for
+what they can get. He&rsquo;s gone now; skipped out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he has <i>not</i> gone!&rdquo; Ruth snapped out indignantly.
+&ldquo;I saw him only half an hour ago.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, of course,&rdquo; said the woman knowingly,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>
+&ldquo;you&rsquo;d know more about it than anybody
+else. It&rsquo;s all talk, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten
+on the grass. She said shortly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, then, don&rsquo;t say a word to her about this.
+She&rsquo;s an awful good neighbour. I wouldn&rsquo;t for
+the world have her think that I&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, it doesn&rsquo;t matter at all,&rdquo; said Ruth, as
+she turned toward the road. &ldquo;You only said
+what people were saying.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I wouldn&rsquo;t for anything,&rdquo; the woman
+called nervously after her, &ldquo;have her think that&ndash;&ndash; And
+what&rsquo;ll I do with this?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Eat it,&rdquo; said Ruth over her shoulder. The
+prize for which she had fought so desperately in
+the early morning meant nothing to her now.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night.
+Through the long twilight of one of the longest
+days of the year, Ruth sat reading in the old place
+on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find
+her. Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew
+that he would not come.</p>
+<p>She did not try to argue with herself. She did
+not fight back the nervous feeling that something
+had happened. She was sure that she had been
+all day expecting it. When the moon came up
+over the hill and the long purple shadows of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span>
+elm trees on the crest came stalking down in the
+white light, she went miserably into the house and
+up to the little room they had fitted up for her in
+the loft of her own home.</p>
+<p>She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep.
+But with the elasticity of youth and health she was
+awake at the first hint of morning, and the cloud
+of the night had passed.</p>
+<p>She dressed and hurried down into the yard
+where Norman Apgarth was just stirring about
+with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight
+and action. A man had put his trust in her before
+all others. She was eager to answer to his
+faith.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is Brom Bones?&rdquo; she demanded of the
+still drowsy Apgarth as she caught him crossing
+the yard from the milk house.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The colt? He&rsquo;s up in the back pasture, just
+around the knob of the mountain. What was you
+calc&rsquo;latin&rsquo; to do with him, Miss?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I want to use him,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;May I?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But,
+say, Miss, that colt ain&rsquo;t been driv&rsquo; since the
+Spring&rsquo;s work. An&rsquo; he&rsquo;s so fat an&rsquo; silky he&rsquo;s liable
+to act foolish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to <i>ride</i> him,&rdquo; said Ruth briefly, as
+she stepped to the horse barn door for a bridle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, say, Miss,&rdquo; the man opposed feebly,
+&ldquo;you could take the brown pony just as well; I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+don&rsquo;t need her a bit. And I tell you that colt is
+just a lun-<i>at</i>-ic, when he&rsquo;s been idle so long.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Ruth, as she started up the
+hill. &ldquo;But I think I&rsquo;ll find work enough to satisfy
+even Brom Bones to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The big black colt followed her peaceably down
+the mountain, and stood champing at the door
+while she went in to get something to eat. When
+she brought out a shining new side saddle he
+looked suspiciously at the strange thing, but he
+made no serious objection as she fastened it on.
+Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood
+looking doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as
+new to her as it was to the horse. She had bought
+it on her way home the other day, as a concession
+to the fact that she was now a young lady who
+could no longer go stampeding over the hills on a
+bare-backed horse.</p>
+<p>She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming
+to know in the way of his kind that she was uneasy
+and uncomfortable, began at once to act badly.
+His intention seemed to be to walk into the open
+well on his hind feet. The girl caught a short
+hold on her lines and cut him sharply across the
+ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the
+hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.</p>
+<p>The path led straight up to the top of the slope.
+Ruth did not try to hold him. The sooner he ran
+the conceit out of himself, she thought, the better.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span></div>
+<p>He hurled himself down the other slope, past
+the pool, and into the trail which Jeffrey had taken
+yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in a strange
+saddle. But the girl&rsquo;s anxiety rose with the excitement
+of the horse&rsquo;s wild rush, so that when
+they reached the top of the divide where she had
+last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl
+that was ready to settle down to a sober and safer
+pace.</p>
+<p>Her common sense told her that she was probably
+foolish; that Jeffrey had merely stayed over
+night somewhere and that she would meet him on
+the way. But another and a subtler sense kept
+whispering to her to hurry on, that she was
+needed, that the good name, if not the life, of the
+boy she loved was in danger!</p>
+<p>She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just
+who were the men whom Jeffrey had gone to see.
+But she did not know how she could dash up to
+their doors and demand to know where he was.
+It was eleven miles up the stony trail that followed
+Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork, and the girl&rsquo;s nerves now keyed
+up to expect she knew not what jangled at every
+turn of the road. Jeffrey had meant to come
+straight back this way to her. That he had not
+done so meant that <i>something</i> had stopped him on
+the way. What was it?</p>
+<p>On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks
+and the underbrush was grown into an impenetrable
+wall. On the other it ran sheer along
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+the edge of Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing
+stream that tumbled and brawled its way down
+the long slope of the country.</p>
+<p>Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped
+her saddle as she pushed on past a place where the
+undergrowth came right down to the trail, and
+six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to
+the rock bed of the stream. She caught herself
+leaning across the saddle to look down. A man
+might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came
+carelessly along. And that man might have
+swung a cant-stick once&ndash;&ndash;a single blow at the
+back of the head&ndash;&ndash;and Jeffrey would have gone
+stumbling and falling over the edge of the path.
+There would not be even the sign of a struggle.</p>
+<p>Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ruth Lansing,&rdquo; she scolded aloud, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re
+making a little fool of yourself. You&rsquo;ve been
+down there in that convent living among a lot of
+girls, and you&rsquo;re forgetting that these hills are
+your own, that there never was and never is any
+danger in them for us who belong here. Just
+keep that in your mind and hustle on about your
+business.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>When she came out into the open country near
+the head of the Fork she met old Darius Wilbur
+turning his cattle to pasture. The old man
+did not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing
+colt and he looked sharply at the steaming withers
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+of Brom Bones before he would give any attention
+to her question.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the tarnation hurry, young lady?&rdquo; he
+inquired exasperatingly. &ldquo;Jeff Whiting? Yes,
+he was here yest&rsquo;day. Why?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did he start home by this trail?&rdquo; asked Ruth
+eagerly. &ldquo;Or did he go on up country?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He went on up country.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again
+without a word.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But stay!&rdquo; the old man yelled after her,
+when she had gone twenty yards. &ldquo;He came
+back again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly
+threw Brom Bones to his knees.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t ask me that,&rdquo; the old man chortled, as
+she came back, &ldquo;but if I didn&rsquo;t tell you I reckon
+you&rsquo;d run that colt to death up the hills.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then he <i>did</i> take the Forks trail back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t do that, nuther.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then where <i>did</i> he go? Please tell me!&rdquo;
+cried the girl, the tears of vexation rising into her
+voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter, girl? He crossed
+the Fork just there,&rdquo; said the old man, pointing,
+&ldquo;and he took over the hill for French Village.
+You his wife? You&rsquo;re mighty young.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones
+were already slipping down the rough bank in a
+shower of dirt and stones.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span></div>
+<p>In the middle of the ford she stopped and
+loosened the bridle, let the colt drink a little, then
+drove him across, up the other bank and on up the
+stiff slope.</p>
+<p>She did not know the trail, but she knew the
+general run of the country that way and had no
+doubt of finding her road.</p>
+<p>Now she told herself that it was certainly a
+wild goose chase. Jeffrey had merely found that
+he had to see some one in French Village and had
+gone there and, of course, had spent the night
+there.</p>
+<p>By the time she had come over the ridge of the
+hill and was dropping down through the heavily
+wooded country toward French Village, she had
+begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly
+remembered that it was Saint John the Baptist&rsquo;s
+day. It was not a holy day of obligation
+but she knew it was a feast day in French Village.
+There would be Mass. She should have gone,
+anyway. And she would hear with her own ears
+the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.</p>
+<p>Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store
+in French Village in the glory of a stiff white shirt
+and a festal red vest. The store was closed, of
+course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he
+would put on his black coat, in his official capacity
+of trustee of the church, and march solemnly over
+to ring the bell for Mass.</p>
+<p>The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>
+whom he seemed to know vaguely, riding down
+the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on
+the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made
+the little man reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle Lansing!&rdquo; he said, bowing in
+friendly pomp as Ruth drove up.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came
+down to go to Mass. Can you tell me what time
+it begins?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall ring the bell when I have put away
+your horse, M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle.&rdquo; Now no earthly power
+could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute
+from the exact time for ringing that bell.
+But, he was a Frenchman. His manner intimated
+that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must await
+her convenience.</p>
+<p>He stepped forward jauntily to help her down.
+Ruth kicked her feet loose and slid down
+deftly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb,&rdquo;
+said Ruth as she took his hand. &ldquo;Did you see
+Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A girl of about Ruth&rsquo;s own age had come
+quietly up the street and stood beside them, recording
+in one swift inspection every detail of
+Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her
+brown boots.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Cynthe,&rdquo; said the little man briskly, &ldquo;you
+show Miss Lansing on my pew for Mass.&rdquo; He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>
+took the bridle from Ruth&rsquo;s hand and led the horse
+away to the shed in the rear of the store.</p>
+<p>The fear and uneasiness of the early morning
+leaped back to Ruth. The little man had certainly
+run away from her question. Why should
+he not answer?</p>
+<p>She would have liked to linger a while among
+the people standing about the church door. She
+knew some of them. She might have asked questions
+of them. But her escort led her straight into
+the church and up to a front pew.</p>
+<p>At the end of the Mass the people filed out
+quietly, but at the church door they broke into volleys
+of rapid-fire French chatter of which Ruth
+could only catch a little here and there.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will come by the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>, M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle. You
+will not dance <i>non</i>, I s&rsquo;pose. But you will eat,
+and you will see the fun they make, one <i>jolie</i> time!
+Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance.&rdquo;
+Arsene led Ruth and the other girl, whom she
+now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal, across the
+road to a little wood that stood opposite the
+church. There were tables, on which the women
+had already begun to spread the food that they had
+brought from home, and a dancing platform. On
+a great stump which had been carved rudely into
+a chair sat Soriel Brouchard, the fiddler of the
+hills, twiddling critically at his strings.</p>
+<p>It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who
+had a moment before been so devout and concentrated
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+in church should in an instant switch
+their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking.
+But she soon found their light-hearted
+gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it, she
+was sputtering away in the best French she had
+and entering into the fun with all her heart.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Which is Rafe Gadbeau?&rdquo; she suddenly
+asked Cynthe Cardinal. &ldquo;I want to know him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why for you want to know him?&rdquo; the girl
+asked sharply in English.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, nothing,&rdquo; said Ruth carelessly, &ldquo;only
+I&rsquo;ve heard of him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The other girl reached out into the crowd and
+plucked at the sleeve of a tall, beak-nosed man.
+The man was evidently flattered by Ruth&rsquo;s request,
+and wanted her to dance with him immediately.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;I do not know how to dance
+your dances, and we&rsquo;d only break up the sets if
+I tried to learn now. We&rsquo;ve heard a lot about
+you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to
+know you. And we&rsquo;ve heard some things about
+Jeffrey Whiting. I&rsquo;m sure you could tell me if
+they are true.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo; dance? Well, we sit then. I tell
+you. One rascal, this young Whiting!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled
+herself to listen quietly as he led her to a seat.</p>
+<p>As they left the other girl standing in the middle
+of the platform, Ruth, looking back, caught
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>
+a swift glance of what she knew was jealous anger
+in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want
+to make an enemy of this girl. But she felt that
+she must use every effort to get this man to tell
+her all he would.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One rascal, I tell you,&rdquo; repeated Gadbeau.
+&ldquo;First he stop all the people. He say don&rsquo; sell
+nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He
+sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip
+the country, right out. An&rsquo; he leave these poor
+French people in the soup.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;he sat back tapping himself on the
+chest&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;I got hinfluence with that railroad.
+They buy now from us. To-morrow morning,
+nine o&rsquo;clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on
+French Village. We sell out everything on the
+option to him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; objected Ruth, trying to draw him out,
+&ldquo;if Jeffrey Whiting should come back before
+then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He don&rsquo; come back, that fellow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know, I&ndash;&ndash; He don&rsquo; come back. I tell
+you that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine
+o&rsquo;clock to-morrow,&rdquo; she said, turning suddenly
+upon him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Eh? M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle, what you mean? What
+you know?&rdquo; he questioned excitedly.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at
+us,&rdquo; she smiled as she arose, &ldquo;and I think you are
+in for a lecture.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Through all the long day, while she ate and
+listened to the fun and talked to Father Ponfret
+about her convent life, she did not let Rafe Gadbeau
+out of her sight or mind for an instant. She
+knew that she had alarmed him. She was certain
+that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey
+Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray
+himself in some way.</p>
+<p>When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers,
+she waited by the bell ringer to see that
+Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place
+among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly
+into a pew near the door. When the people rose
+to sing the <i>Tantum Ergo</i>, she saw Gadbeau slip
+unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely
+until the singing was finished, then she almost ran
+to the door.</p>
+<p>Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that
+had been standing all day in the little woods, was
+riding away in the direction of the trail which she
+had come down this morning. She fairly flew
+down the street to Arsene LaComb&rsquo;s store.
+There was not a pony in the hills that Brom Bones
+could not overtake easily, but she must see by what
+trail the man left the Village.</p>
+<p>Brom Bones was very willing to make a race
+for home, and she let him have his head until she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>
+again caught sight of the man. She pulled up
+sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The
+man was still on the main road, and he might turn
+any moment. Finally she saw him pull into the
+trail that led over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. Then she
+knew. Jeffrey was somewhere on the trail between
+French Village and Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. And
+he was alive! The man was going now to make
+sure that he was still there.</p>
+<p>For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough
+to assure her that the man was still following
+the trail. Then, just when the real darkness had
+fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at
+her left. The man had turned off into the woods!
+She had almost passed him! She threw herself
+out upon Brom Bones&rsquo; neck and caught him by
+the nose. He threw up his head indignantly and
+tried to bolt, but she blessed him for making no
+noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred
+yards, slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into
+the bushes away from the road and tied him. She
+talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading
+with him to be quiet. Then she left him and
+stole back to where she had heard the pony.</p>
+<p>In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing.
+But her feet found themselves on what
+seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly.
+She almost walked into a square black thing that
+suddenly confronted her. Within what seemed a
+foot of her she heard voices. Her heart stopped
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she
+could not distinguish a word. One of the voices
+was certainly Gadbeau&rsquo;s. The other&ndash;&ndash; It
+was!&ndash;&ndash; It was! Though it was only a mumble,
+she knew it was Jeffrey Whiting who tried to
+speak!</p>
+<p>She took a step forward, ready to dash into
+the place, whatever it was. But the caution of the
+hills made her back away noiselessly into the
+brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, <i>why</i>
+had she not brought a rifle? Gadbeau was sure to
+be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably
+wounded and bound.</p>
+<p>She backed farther into the bushes and started
+to make a circuit of the place. She understood
+now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely of logs,
+even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse.
+She knew that she was helpless. And she knew
+that Jeffrey would not be a prisoner there unless
+he were hurt.</p>
+<p>She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come
+to injure Jeffrey further. He had merely come to
+make himself sure that his prisoner was secure.
+He would not stay long.</p>
+<p>As she stole around away from the path and
+the pony she saw a little stream of light shoot
+out through a chink between the logs of the hut.
+Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had
+brought something for Jeffrey to eat. She pulled
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>
+off the white collar of her jacket, the only white
+thing that showed about her and settled down for
+a long wait.</p>
+<p>First she had thought that she ought to steal
+away to her horse and ride for help. But she
+could not bear the thought of even getting beyond
+the sound of Jeffrey&rsquo;s voice. She knew
+where he was now. He might be taken away
+while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing
+had always learned to do things for herself. She
+had always disliked appealing for help.</p>
+<p>Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place
+she could find, leaning against the bole of a great
+tree. The light, candles, of course, burned on;
+and the voices came irregularly through the living
+silence of the woods. She did not dare to
+creep nearer to hear what was being said. That
+did not matter. The important thing was to have
+Gadbeau go away without any suspicion that he
+had been followed. Then she would be free to
+release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she
+would be able to get him down to French Village
+in the morning. She could easily have him there
+before nine o&rsquo;clock.</p>
+<p>When she saw by the stars that it was long
+past midnight she began to be worried. Just then
+the light went out. Ah! The man was going
+away at last! She waited a long, nervous half
+hour. But there was no sound. She dared not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>
+move, for even when she shifted her position
+against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to
+crackle with her motion.</p>
+<p>Would he never come out? It seemed not.
+Was he going to stay there all night?</p>
+<p>Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the
+door of the cabin. Apparently both men were
+asleep within. She pushed the door ever so
+quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.</p>
+<p>What could she do? Nothing, absolutely
+nothing! Oh, why, <i>why</i> had she not brought a
+rifle? She would shoot. She <i>would</i>, if she had
+it now, and that man opened the door! It was
+too late now to think of riding for help, too late!</p>
+<p>She sank down again beside her tree and raged
+helplessly at herself, at her conceit in herself that
+would not let her go for help in the first place,
+at her foolishness in coming on this business without
+a gun. The hours dragged out their weary
+minutes, every minute an age to the taut, ragged
+nerves of the girl.</p>
+<p>The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops,
+while the ground still lay in utter darkness. Ruth
+rose and slipped farther back into the bushes.</p>
+<p>Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in
+the soft grass, and the hot, angry tears of desperation
+and rage at herself were softened. Her
+heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and
+sang its prayer to God; a thrilling, lifting little
+prayer of confidence and wonder. The words
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+that the night before would not form themselves
+for her now sprang up ready in her soul&ndash;&ndash;the
+words of all the children of earth, to Our Father
+Who Art in Heaven&ndash;&ndash;paused an instant to bless
+her lips, then sped away to God in His Heaven.
+Fear was gone, and doubt, and anxiety. She
+would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor,
+befooled people from ruin. God had told her so,
+as He walked abroad in the <i>Glow</i> of <i>Dawn</i>.</p>
+<p>Two long hours more she waited, but now with
+patience and a sure confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau
+came out of the hut and strode down the
+path to his pony.</p>
+<p>Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and
+ran to the door, and called to Jeffrey. The only
+answer was a moan. The door was locked with
+a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy
+padlock. She reached for the nearest stone and
+attacked the lock frantically. She beat it out of
+all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her.
+There was no window in the hut. She had to
+come back again to the lock. Her hands, softened
+by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on
+the tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave,
+and she threw herself against the door.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk
+beside the furnace where they boiled the sugar
+sap. His arms were stretched out and tied together
+down under the narrow bunk. She saw
+that his left arm was broken. For an instant the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>
+girl&rsquo;s heart leaped back to the rage of the night
+when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But
+pity swallowed up every other feeling as she cut
+the cords from his hands and loosened the rope
+that they had bound in between his teeth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk, Jeff,&rdquo; she commanded. &ldquo;I can
+see just what happened. Lie easy and get your
+strength. I&rsquo;ve got to take you to French Village
+at once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She ran out to bring water. When she returned
+he was sitting dizzily on the edge of the bunk.
+While she bathed his head with the water and
+gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and
+crooned over him as she would over a baby for
+she saw that he was shaken and half delirious with
+pain.</p>
+<p>Brom Bones was standing munching twigs
+where she had left him. He had never before
+been asked to carry double and he did not like it.
+But the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into
+his silky black ear that he finally gave in.</p>
+<p>When they were mounted, she fastened the
+white collar of her jacket into a sling for the
+boy&rsquo;s broken arm, and with a prayer to the heathen
+Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down
+the trail.</p>
+<p>When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey
+spoke suddenly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say, Ruth, what&rsquo;s the use trying to save these
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+people? Let&rsquo;s sell out while we can and take
+mother and go away.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeff, dear,&rdquo; she said lightly, &ldquo;this fight
+hasn&rsquo;t begun yet. Wait till we get to French Village.
+You&rsquo;ll say something different. You&rsquo;ll say
+just what you said to the Shepherd of the North;
+remember?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey said no more. The girl&rsquo;s heart was
+weak with the pain she knew he was bearing, but
+she knew that they must go through with this.</p>
+<p>All French Village and the farmers of Little
+Tupper country were gathered in front of Arsene
+Lacomb&rsquo;s store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing on
+the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with
+his prisoner as he thought up to the last possible
+moment, so he stammered in his speech when he
+saw a big black horse come tearing down the street
+carrying a girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy
+behind her. Rogers, the railroad lawyer beside
+him, said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go on, man. What&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl drove the horse right in through the
+crowd until Jeffrey Whiting faced Rogers. Then
+Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain, took up his
+fight again.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rogers,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;you did this. You
+got Rafe Gadbeau and the others to knock me on
+the head and put me out of the way, so that you
+could spread your lies about me. And you&rsquo;d have
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>
+won out, too, if it hadn&rsquo;t been for this brave girl
+here.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Rogers, you liar,&rdquo; he shouted louder,
+&ldquo;I dare you, dare you, to tell these people here
+that I or any of our people have sold you a foot
+of land. I dare you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau
+pulled him away. Gadbeau knew that crowd.
+They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and
+full of potential fury. They were already cheering
+the brave girl. In a few minutes they would
+be hunting the life of the man who had lied to
+them and nearly ruined them.</p>
+<p>A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from
+the saddle, but she waved them away and pointed
+to Jeffrey&rsquo;s broken arm. They helped him down
+and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough&rsquo;s
+little office.</p>
+<p>Ruth saw that her business was finished. She
+wheeled Brom Bones toward home, and gave him
+his head.</p>
+<p>For three glorious miles they fairly flew through
+the pearly morning air along the hard mountain
+road, and the girl never pulled a line. Breakfastless
+and weary in body, her heart sang the
+song that it had learned in the Glow of Dawn.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+<a name='IV_THE_ANSWER' id='IV_THE_ANSWER'></a>
+<h2>IV</h2>
+<h3>THE ANSWER</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The Committee on Franchises was in session in
+one of the committee rooms outside the chamber
+of the New York State Senate. It was not a routine
+session. A bill was before it, the purpose of
+which was virtually to dispossess some four or
+five hundred families of their homes in the counties
+of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The
+bill did not say this. It cited the need of adequate
+transportation in that part of the State and
+proposed that the U. &amp; M. Railroad should be
+granted the right of eminent domain over three
+thousand square miles of the region, in order to
+help the development of the country.</p>
+<p>The committee was composed of five members,
+three of the majority party in the Senate and two
+of the minority. A political agent of the railroad
+who drew a salary from Racquette County as a
+judge had just finished presenting to the committee
+the reasons why the people of that part of
+the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill
+should become a law. He had drawn a pathetic
+picture of the condition of the farmers, so long
+deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>
+almost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce
+left to rot up there in the hills because the men
+who toiled to produce it had no means of bringing
+it down to the starving thousands of the cities.
+The scraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that
+region became in his picture vast reservoirs of
+cheap food, only waiting to be tapped by the
+beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world&rsquo;s
+poor.</p>
+<p>When the judge had finished, one minority
+member of the committee looked at his colleague,
+the other minority member, and winked. It was
+a grave and respectful wink. It meant that the
+committee was not often privileged to listen to
+quite such bare-faced effrontery. If the hearing
+had been a secret one they would not have listened
+to it. But the bill had already aroused a storm.
+So the leader of the majority had given orders
+that the hearing should be public.</p>
+<p>So far not a word had been said as to the fact
+which underlay the motives of the bill. Iron had
+been found in workable quantities in those three
+thousand square miles of hill country. Not a
+word had been said about iron.</p>
+<p>No one in the room had listened to the speech
+with any degree of interest. It was intended entirely
+for the consumption of the outside public.
+Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during
+its delivery. They had been furnished with
+advance copies of it and had already turned them
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+in to their papers. But with the naming of the
+next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around
+the room.</p>
+<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from
+his place in the rear of the room and walked
+briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall,
+spare figure of a man coming to his sixty years,
+his hair as white as the snow of his hills, with a
+large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan governor,
+he would have attracted attention under almost
+any circumstances.</p>
+<p>Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee,
+had received his orders from the leader of the
+majority in the Senate that the bill should be reported
+back favourably to that body before night.
+He had anticipated no difficulty. The form of a
+public hearing had to be gone through with. It
+was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions
+that had been aroused as to the nature of
+the bill. The speech of the Racquette County
+Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The
+chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising
+reformers of the opposition would come before
+the committee with time-honoured, stock diatribes
+against the rapacity and greed of railroads
+in general and this one in particular. Then he
+and his two majority colleagues would vote to report
+the bill favourably, while the two members
+of the minority would vote to report adversely.
+This, the chairman said, was about all a public
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted
+on the coming of the Bishop of Alden.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The committee would like to hear, sir,&rdquo; began
+the chairman, as the Bishop took his place, &ldquo;whom
+you represent in the matter of this bill.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in
+what had been a dull session of a dull committee,
+sat with poised pencils while the Bishop turned a
+look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of
+Racquette County.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee
+quite understands that you do not come here in the
+interest of any one. But the gentleman who has
+just been before us spoke for the farmers who
+would be most directly affected by the prosperity
+of the railroad, including those of your county.
+Are we to understand that there is opposition in
+your county to the proposed grant?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your committee,&rdquo; said the Bishop, &ldquo;cannot be
+ignorant that there is the most stubborn opposition
+to this grant in all three counties. If there had
+not been that opposition, there would have been no
+call for the bill which you are now considering.
+If the railroad could have gotten the options which
+it tried to get on those farms the grant would have
+been given without question. Your committee
+knows this better than I.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; returned the chairman, &ldquo;we have been
+advised that the railroad was not able to get those
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+options because a boy up there in the Beaver River
+country, who fancied that he had some grievance
+against the railroad people, banded the people together
+to oppose the options in unfair and unlawful
+ways.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The chairman paused an impressive moment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In fact,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;from what this committee
+has been able to gather, it looks very much
+as though there were conspiracy in the matter,
+against the U. &amp; M. Railroad. It almost would
+seem that some rival of the railroad in question
+had used the boy and his fancied grievance to
+manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be
+proven, but there was every appearance.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his
+challenge quietly at the feet of the committee.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The boy, Jeffrey Whiting,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;was
+guided by me. I directed his movements from the
+beginning.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The whole room sat up and leaned forward as
+one man, alive to the fact that a novel and stirring
+situation was being developed. Everybody had
+understood that the Bishop had come to plead the
+cause of the French-Canadian farmers of the
+hills.</p>
+<p>They had supposed that he would speak only
+on what was a side issue of the case. No one had
+expected that he would attack the main question
+of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming
+himself the principal in that silent, stubborn
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>
+fight that had been going on up in the hills
+for six months!</p>
+<p>The reporters doubled down to their work and
+wrote furiously. They were trying to throw this
+unusual man upon a screen before their readers.
+It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product
+of New England, and what was more he had been
+one of the leaders of that collection of striking
+men who made the Brook Farm &ldquo;Experiment.&rdquo;
+He had endeared himself to the old generation of
+Americans by his war record as a chaplain. To
+some of the new generation he was known as the
+Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from
+the Mohawk Valley to the Canadian line and to
+Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd
+of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to
+North Creek men knew his ways and felt the beating
+of the great heart of him behind the stern,
+ascetic set of his countenance.</p>
+<p>As much as they could of this the reporters
+were trying to put into their notes while Nathan
+Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That
+well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself
+into a trap. He had been too zealous in announcing
+his impression that the opposition to the
+U. &amp; M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival.
+The Bishop had taken that ground from under
+him by a simple stroke of truth. He could
+neither go forward with his charge nor could he
+retract it.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this
+committee,&rdquo; he temporised, &ldquo;just why you wished
+to arouse this opposition to the railroad?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is not and has never been any opposition
+whatever to the railroad,&rdquo; said the Bishop.
+&ldquo;The bill before your committee has nothing to
+do with the right of way of the railroad. That
+has already been granted. Your bill proposes to
+confiscate, practically, from the present owners a
+strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly
+eighty miles long. That land is valuable because
+the experts of the railroad know, and the people
+up there know, and, I think, this committee knows
+that there is iron ore in these hills.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have said that I do not represent any one
+here,&rdquo; the Bishop went on. &ldquo;But there are four
+hundred families up there in our hills who stand
+to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people.
+They have no voice to reach the world. I have
+asked to speak before your committee because
+only in this way can the case of my people reach
+the great, final trial court of publicity before the
+whole State.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They are a silent people, the people of the
+hills. You will have heard that they are a stubborn
+people. They are a stubborn people, for
+they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside
+homes that their hands have made just as do the
+hardy trees of the hills. You cannot uproot them
+by the stroke of a pen.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;These people are my friends and my neighbours.
+Many of them were once my comrades.
+I know what they think. I know what they feel.
+I would beg your committee to consider very
+earnestly this question before bringing to bear
+against these people the sovereign power of the
+State. They love their State. Many of them
+have loved their country to the peril of their
+lives. They live on the little farms that their
+fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not through prejudice or ignorance are they
+opposing this development, which will in the end
+be for the good of the whole region. They are
+opposed to this bill before you because it would
+give a corporation power to drive them from the
+homes they love, and that without fair compensation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They are opposed to it because they are
+Americans. They know what it has meant and
+what it still means to be Americans. And they
+know that this bill is directly against everything
+that is American.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They are ever ready to submit themselves to
+the sovereign will of the State, but you will never
+convince them that this bill is the real will of the
+State. They are fighting men and the sons of
+fighting men. They have fought the course of the
+railroad in trying to get options from them by
+coercion and trickery. They have been aroused.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>
+Their homes, poor and wretched as they often
+are, mean more to them than any law you can set
+on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it.
+It will set a ring of fire and murder about our
+peaceful hills.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the name of high justice, in the name of
+common honesty, in the name&ndash;&ndash;to come to lower
+levels&ndash;&ndash;of political common sense, I tell you this
+bill should never go back to the Senate.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound
+upon those who are found weak enough to
+let it pass here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils
+of the reporters could be plainly heard in the
+hush of the room.</p>
+<p>Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating
+question which he had been wanting to put
+from the beginning.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps the committee has been badly informed,&rdquo;
+he began to the Bishop; &ldquo;we understood
+that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian
+immigrants and not usually owners of land.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it necessary for me to repeat,&rdquo; said the
+Bishop, turning sharply, &ldquo;that I am here, Joseph
+Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours and
+my friends? Does it matter to them or to this
+committee that I wear the badge of a service that
+they do not understand? I do not come before
+you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come
+as an owner of property. I come because I think
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+the cause of my friends will be served by my coming.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The facts I have laid before you, the warning
+I have given might as well have been sent out
+direct through the press. But I have chosen to
+come before you, with your permission, because
+these facts will get a wider hearing and a more
+eager reading coming from this room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do not seek to create sensation here. I
+have no doubt that some of you are thinking that
+the place for a churchman to speak is in his church.
+But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing
+to create sensation. I am willing that you
+should say that I have gone far beyond the privilege
+of a witness invited to come before your
+committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should
+put any interpretation you like upon my use of my
+privilege here, only so that my neighbours of the
+hills shall have their matter put squarely and fully
+before all the people of the State.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When this matter is once thoroughly understood
+by the people, then I know that no branch
+of the lawmaking power will dare make itself responsible
+for the passage of this bill.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further
+questions. When he saw that none were
+forthcoming, he thanked the committee and
+begged leave to retire.</p>
+<p>As the Bishop passed out of the room the
+chairman arose and declared the public hearing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>
+closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporters
+crowded out of the room and scattered through
+the corridors of the Capitol. Four or five reporters
+bunched themselves about the elevator
+shaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired
+boy of twenty, summed up the matter with
+irreverent brevity.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Not every bad bill has a bishop at the obsequies.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t tell,&rdquo; said the Associated Press
+man slowly; &ldquo;they might report it out in spite
+of all that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No use,&rdquo; said the youngster shortly. &ldquo;The
+Senate wouldn&rsquo;t dare touch it once this stuff is
+in the papers.&rdquo; And he jammed a wad of flimsy
+down into his pocket.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Three weeks of a blistering August sun had
+withered the grasses of the hills almost to a powder.
+The thin soil of the north country, where
+the trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture;
+so that the heat of the short, vicious summer
+goes down through the roots of the vegetation to
+the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone.</p>
+<p>Since June there had been no rain. The
+tumbling hill streams were reduced to a trickle
+among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were
+covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The
+second growth of stunted timber, showing everywhere
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>
+the scars of the wasting rapacity of man,
+stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving
+life, from the cattle to the woodchucks and even
+the field mice, had moved down to hide itself in
+the thicker growths near the water courses or had
+stolen away into the depths of the thick woods.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a
+scarred pine on the French Village road and sat
+looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up
+away from the road on either side. Every child
+of the hills knew the menace that a hot dry summer
+brought to us in those days. The first, ruthless
+cutting of the timber had followed the water
+courses. Men had cut and slashed their way up
+through the hills without thought of what they
+were leaving behind. They had taken only the
+prime, sound trees that stood handiest to the roll-ways.
+They had left dead and dying trees standing.
+Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of
+brush and trimmings. The farmers had come
+pushing into the hills in the wake of the lumbermen
+and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes
+and hay land. But around every piece of
+cleared land there was an ever-encroaching ring of
+brush and undergrowth and fallen timber that held
+a constant threat for the little home within the
+ring.</p>
+<p>A summer without rain meant a season of grim
+and unrelenting watchfulness. Men armed themselves
+and tramped through the woods on unbidden
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+sentry duty, to see that no campfires were
+made. Strangers and outsiders who were likely
+to be careless were watched from the moment they
+came into the hills until they were seen safely out
+of them again. Where other children scouted for
+and fought imaginary Indians, the children of our
+hills hunted and fought imaginary fires. The
+forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo.
+It was an enemy that lurked just outside the
+little clearing of the farm, out there in the underbrush
+and fallen timber.</p>
+<p>Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had
+ridden up to French Village for mail. For some
+weeks they had known that the railroad would try
+to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the
+special session of the Legislature. And they
+knew that the session would probably come to a
+close this week.</p>
+<p>If that bill became a law, then the resistance of
+the people of the hills had been in vain: Jeffrey
+had merely led them into a bitter and useless fight
+against a power with which they could not cope.
+They would have to leave their homes, taking
+whatever a corrupted board of condemnation
+would grant for them. It would be hard on all,
+but it would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness.
+He would have to remember that he had
+had the chance to make his mother and himself
+independently rich. He had thrown away that
+chance, and now if his fight had failed he would
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>
+have nothing to bring back to his mother but his
+own miserable failure.</p>
+<p>Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop&rsquo;s house
+in Alden when Jeffrey had said proudly that his
+mother would be glad to follow him into poverty.
+And she smiled now at her own outburst at that
+time. They had both meant it, every word; but
+the ashes of failure are bitter. And she had seen
+the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through
+all the summer.</p>
+<p>She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad
+had succeeded. She would not be able to go back
+to school, and would probably have to go somewhere
+to get work of some kind, for the little that
+she would get for her farm now would not keep
+her any time. But that was a little matter, or at
+least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence
+of Jeffrey&rsquo;s failure and what he would
+consider his disgrace. She did not know how he
+would take it, for during the summer she had seen
+him in vicious moods when he seemed capable of
+everything.</p>
+<p>She saw the speck which he made against the
+horizon as he came over Argyle Mountain three
+miles away and she saw that he was riding fast.
+He was bringing good news!</p>
+<p>It needed only the excited, happy touch of her
+hand to set Brom Bones whirling up the road, for
+the big colt understood her ways and moods and
+followed them better than he would have followed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+whip or rein of another. Half-way, she pulled
+the big fellow down to a decorous canter and
+gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came
+thundering down upon them. He pulled up
+sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two
+horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected
+to do and their two riders gave them no
+more heed than if they had been wooden horses.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did you know it was all right, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain,&rdquo;
+Ruth laughed. &ldquo;You looked as though you were
+riding Victory down the top side of the earth.
+How did it all come out?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the paper,&rdquo; he said, handing her an
+Albany newspaper of the day previous; &ldquo;it tells
+the story right off. But I got a letter from the
+Bishop, too,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, did you?&rdquo; she exclaimed, looking up
+from the headline&ndash;&ndash;U. &amp; M. Grab Killed in
+Committee&ndash;&ndash;which she had been feverishly trying
+to translate into her own language. &ldquo;Please
+let me hear. I&rsquo;m never sure what headlines mean
+till I go down to the fine print, and then it&rsquo;s generally
+something else. I can understand what the
+Bishop says, I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s only short,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, unfolding
+the letter. &ldquo;He leaves out all the part that he
+did himself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Ruth simply. &ldquo;He always
+does.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;He says:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You will see from the Albany papers, which
+will probably reach you before this does, that the
+special session of the Legislature closed to-night
+and that the railroad&rsquo;s bill was not reported to
+the Senate. It had passed the Assembly, as you
+know. The bill aroused a measure of just public
+anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently
+thought it the part of wisdom not to risk
+a contest over it in the open Senate. So there can
+be no legislative action in favour of the railroad
+before December at the earliest, and I regard it as
+doubtful that the matter will be brought up even
+then.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;from this you&rsquo;d never
+know that he was there present at all. And
+it was just his speech before the committee
+that aroused that public anger. Then he goes
+on:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But we must not make the mistake of presuming
+that the matter ends here. You and your
+people are just where you were in the beginning.
+Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not
+in the nature of things that a corporation which
+has spent an enormous amount of money in constructing
+a line with the one purpose of getting
+to your lands should now give up the idea of getting
+them by reason of a mere legislative setback.
+They have not entered into this business
+in any half-hearted manner. They are bound to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+carry it through somehow&ndash;&ndash;anyhow. We must
+realise that.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;We need not speculate upon the soul or the
+conscience of a corporation or the lack of those
+things. We know that this corporation will have
+an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must
+watch for that answer. What their future methods
+or their plans may be I think no man can tell.
+Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed.
+But there will be an answer. While rejoicing that
+a fear of sound public opinion has been on your
+side, we must never forget that there will be an
+answer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond
+the limits which men set for the proper activities
+of a priest of the church. I do not apologise.
+I have done this, partly because your
+people are my own, my friends and my comrades
+of old, partly because you yourself came to me in
+a confidence which I do not forget, partly&ndash;&ndash;and
+most, perhaps&ndash;&ndash;because where my people and
+their rights are in question I have never greatly
+respected those limits which men set. I put these
+things before you so that when the answer comes
+you will remember that you engaged yourself in
+this business solely in defence of the right. So it
+is not your personal fight and you must try to
+keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a
+quarrel. The struggle is a larger thing than that
+and you must keep your heart larger still and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+above it. I fear that you will sorely need to remember
+this.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;My sincerest regards to your family and to
+all my friends in the hills, not forgetting your
+friend Ruth.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, folding
+the letter. &ldquo;I wish he&rsquo;d said more about how he
+managed the thing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it enough to know that he did manage it,
+without bothering about how? That is the way
+he does everything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose I ought to be satisfied,&rdquo; said Jeffrey
+as he gathered up his reins. &ldquo;But I wonder what
+he means by that last part of the letter. It sounds
+like a warning to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is a warning to you,&rdquo; said Ruth thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, what does it mean? What does he
+think I&rsquo;m likely to do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe he does not mean what you are likely
+to do exactly,&rdquo; said Ruth, trying to choose her
+words wisely; &ldquo;maybe he is thinking more of what
+you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to
+your heart rather than to your head or about your
+actions.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now I don&rsquo;t know what you mean, either,&rdquo;
+said Jeffrey a little discontentedly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know I oughtn&rsquo;t to try to tell you what the
+Bishop means, for I don&rsquo;t know myself. But I&rsquo;ve
+been worried and I&rsquo;m sure your mother has too,&rdquo;
+said Ruth reluctantly.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;But what is it?&rdquo; said Jeffrey quickly.
+&ldquo;What have I been doing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it isn&rsquo;t anything you&rsquo;ve done, nor
+anything maybe that you&rsquo;re likely to do. I don&rsquo;t
+know just what it is, or how to say it. But,
+Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in
+the Bishop&rsquo;s house at Alden?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, and I remember what you said, too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We both meant it,&rdquo; Ruth returned gravely,
+not attempting to evade any of the meaning that
+he had thrown into his words. &ldquo;And we both
+mean it now, I&rsquo;m sure. But there&rsquo;s a difference,
+Jeffrey, a difference with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know it,&rdquo; he said a little shortly.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m still doing just the thing I started out to do
+that day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. But that day you started out to fight
+for the people. Now you are fighting for yourself&ndash;&ndash; Oh,
+not for anything selfish! Not for
+anything you want for yourself! I know that.
+But you have made the fight your own. It is your
+own quarrel now. You are fighting because you
+have come to hate the railroad people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you wouldn&rsquo;t expect me to love them?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. I&rsquo;m not blaming you, Jeff. But&ndash;&ndash;but,
+I&rsquo;m afraid. Hate is a terrible thing. I wish you
+were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you. I&rsquo;m
+afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through
+all the long, long years of life. Can you see?
+I&rsquo;m afraid of something that might go deeper
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+than all this, something that might go as deep as
+life. After all, that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid of, I
+guess&ndash;&ndash;Life, great, big, terrible, menacing,
+Life!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My life?&rdquo; Jeffrey asked gruffly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have faced that,&rdquo; the girl answered evenly,
+&ldquo;just as you have faced it. And I am not afraid
+of that. No. It&rsquo;s what you might do in anger&ndash;&ndash;if
+they hurt you again. Something that would
+scar your heart and your soul. Jeffrey, do you
+know that sometimes I&rsquo;ve seen the worst, the worst&ndash;&ndash;even
+<i>murder</i> in your eyes!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; the boy returned shortly, &ldquo;the
+Bishop would keep his religion out of all this.
+He&rsquo;s a good man and a good friend,&rdquo; he went on,
+&ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t like this religion coming into everything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how can he? He cannot keep religion
+apart from life and right and wrong. What
+good would religion be if it did not go ahead of
+us in life and show us the way?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s the use?&rdquo; the boy said grudgingly.
+&ldquo;What good does it do? You wouldn&rsquo;t have
+thought of any of this only for that last part of
+his letter. Why does that have to come into
+everything? It&rsquo;s the Catholic Church all over
+again, always pushing in everywhere.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t that funny,&rdquo; the girl said, brightening;
+&ldquo;I have cried myself sick thinking just that same
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+thing. I have gone almost frantic thinking that
+if I once gave in to the Church it would crush
+me and make me do everything that I didn&rsquo;t want
+to do. And now I never think of it. Life goes
+along really just as though being a Catholic didn&rsquo;t
+make any difference at all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve given in to it altogether.
+You don&rsquo;t even know that you want to
+resist. You&rsquo;re swallowed up in it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before
+she answered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the queerest thing, isn&rsquo;t it, Jeff,&rdquo; she said
+finally in a thoughtful, friendly way, &ldquo;how two
+people can fight about religion? Now you don&rsquo;t
+care a particle about it one way or the other.
+And I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;d rather not talk about it. And yet,
+we were just now within an inch of quarrelling bitterly
+about it. Why is it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;m sorry, Ruth,&rdquo; the boy
+apologised slowly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s none of my business,
+anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They were just coming over the long hill above
+Ruth&rsquo;s home. Below them stretched the long
+sweep of the road down past her house and up
+the other slope until it lost itself around the
+shoulder of Lansing Mountain.</p>
+<p>Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his
+big roan horse up the hill towards them at a heart-breaking
+pace.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s &lsquo;My&rsquo; Stocking&rsquo;s roan,&rdquo; said Jeffrey,
+straightening in his saddle; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d know that horse
+three miles away.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s he carrying?&rdquo; cried Ruth excitedly,
+as she peered eagerly from under her
+shading hand. &ldquo;Look. Across his saddle.
+Rifles! <i>Two</i> of them!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Brom Bones, sensing the girl&rsquo;s excitement, was
+already pulling at his bit, eager for a wild race
+down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long, sharp
+look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly
+to the side of the road. And Ruth did the same.
+She was too well trained in the things of the hills
+not to know that if there was trouble, then it was
+no time to be weakening horses&rsquo; knees in mad and
+useless dashes downhill.</p>
+<p>The rider was Myron Stocking from over in
+the Crooked Lake country, as Jeffrey had supposed.
+He pulled up as he recognised the two
+who waited for him by the roadside, and when
+he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew by sight,
+he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as
+she was to hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces
+farther away from them. They would not talk
+freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey
+would tell her all that she needed to know.</p>
+<p>The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences
+and Ruth heard Stocking conclude:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun
+o&rsquo; yours. Your Ma didn&rsquo;t see.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span></div>
+<p>Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he
+came to Ruth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s some strangers over in the hills that
+maybe ought to be watched. The country&rsquo;s awful
+dry,&rdquo; he added quietly. He knew that Ruth
+would need no further explanation.</p>
+<p>He pulled the Bishop&rsquo;s letter from his pocket
+and handed it to Ruth, saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Take this and the paper along to Mother.
+She&rsquo;ll want to see them right away. And say,
+Ruth,&rdquo; he went on, as he looked anxiously at the
+great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that
+lay between them and his home on the hill three
+miles away, &ldquo;the country&rsquo;s awful dry. If anything
+happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down
+out of this country. You can make them go.
+Nobody else could.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl had not yet spoken. There was no
+need for her to ask questions. She knew what
+lay under every one of Jeffrey&rsquo;s pauses and
+silences. It was no time for many words. He
+was laying upon her a trust to look after the ones
+whom he loved.</p>
+<p>She put out her hand to his and said simply:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad we didn&rsquo;t quarrel, Jeff.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was a fool,&rdquo; said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung
+her hand. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ll remember. Forgive me,
+please, Ruth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to forgive&ndash;&ndash;ever&ndash;&ndash;between
+us, Jeffrey. Go now,&rdquo; she said softly.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span></div>
+<p>Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the
+other man back over the hill on the road which
+he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they
+were out of sight. At the very last she saw
+Jeffrey swing his rifle across the saddle in front of
+him, and a shadow fell across her heart. She
+would have given everything in her world to have
+had back what she had said of seeing murder in
+Jeffrey&rsquo;s eyes.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up
+the French Village road for an hour or so. Then
+they turned off from the road and began a long
+winding climb up into the higher levels of the
+Racquette country.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We might as well head for Bald Mountain
+right away,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, as they came about sundown
+to a fork in their trail. &ldquo;The breeze comes
+straight down from the east. That&rsquo;s where the
+danger is, if there is any.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re right, Jeff. But it means
+we&rsquo;ll have to sleep out if we go that way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I guess that won&rsquo;t hurt us,&rdquo; Jeffrey returned.
+&ldquo;If anything happens we might have to sleep out
+a good many nights&ndash;&ndash;and a lot of other people
+would have to do the same.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right then,&rdquo; Stocking agreed. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll
+get a bite and give the horses a feed and a rest at
+Hosmer&rsquo;s, that&rsquo;s about two miles over the hills
+here; and then we can go on as far as you like.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At Hosmer&rsquo;s they got food enough for two
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>
+days in the hills, and having fed and breathed the
+horses they rode on up into the higher woods.
+They were now in the region of the uncut timber
+where the great trees were standing from the beginning,
+because they had been too high up to be
+accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the
+lower levels. Though the long summer twilight
+of the North still lighted the tops of the trees, the
+two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving
+the horses to pick their own canny footing up the
+trail.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?&rdquo;
+Jeffrey asked as they rode along. &ldquo;You know,
+the man that was in French Village this summer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Stocking answered. &ldquo;You
+see they came up to the end of the rails, at Grafton,
+on a handcar. And then they scattered.
+Nobody&rsquo;s sure that he&rsquo;s seen any of &rsquo;em since.
+But they must be in the hills somewhere. And
+Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s with &rsquo;em. You can bet on that.
+That&rsquo;s all we&rsquo;ve got to go on. But it may be
+a-plenty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s enough to set us on the move, anyway,&rdquo;
+said Jeffrey. &ldquo;They have no business in the
+hills. They&rsquo;re bound to be up to mischief of some
+sort. And there&rsquo;s just one big mischief that they
+can do. Can we make Bald Mountain before daylight?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, certainly; that&rsquo;ll be easy. We&rsquo;ll get a
+little light when we&rsquo;re through this belt of heavy
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+woods and then we can push along. We ought
+to get up there by two o&rsquo;clock. It ain&rsquo;t light till
+near five. That&rsquo;ll give us a little sleep, if we feel
+like it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>True to Stocking&rsquo;s calculation they came out
+upon the rocky, thinly grassed knobs of Bald
+Mountain shortly before two o&rsquo;clock. It was a
+soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain
+in the air somewhere, for there was no dew; but
+it might be on the other side of the divide or it
+might be miles below on the lowlands.</p>
+<p>Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in
+the vicinity of the mountain, or were heading
+toward here. For the word of the menace had
+gone through the hills that day, and men would decide,
+as Jeffrey had done, that the danger would
+come from this direction. But they had not
+heard anything to show the presence of others,
+nor did they care to give any signals of their own
+whereabouts.</p>
+<p>As for those others, the possible enemy, who
+had left the railroad that morning and had scattered
+into the hills, if their purpose was the one
+that men feared, they, too, would be near here.
+But it was useless to look for them in the dark:
+neither was anything to be feared from them before
+morning. Men do not start forest fires in
+the night. There is little wind. A fire would
+probably die out of itself. And the first blaze
+would rouse the whole country.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span></div>
+<p>The two hobbled their horses with the bridle
+reins and lay down in the open to wait for morning.
+Neither had any thought of sleep. But the
+softness of the night, the pungent odour of the
+tamarack trees floating up to them from below,
+and their long ride, soon began to tell on them.
+Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Curl up and go to sleep, &lsquo;My,&rsquo;&rdquo; he said,
+shaking himself. &ldquo;You might as well. I&rsquo;ll wake
+you in an hour.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A ready snore was the only answer.</p>
+<p>Morning coming over the higher eastern hills
+found them stiff and weary, but alert. The
+woods below them were still banked in darkness
+as they ate their dry food and caught their horses
+for the day that was before them. There was
+no water to be had up here, and they knew their
+horses must be gotten down to some water course
+before night.</p>
+<p>A half circle of open country belted by heavy
+woods lay just below them. Eagerly, as the light
+crept down the hill, they scanned the area for sign
+of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently
+they had the world to themselves. A fresh morning
+breeze came down over the mountain and
+watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops
+of the distant trees. The same thought made
+both men grip their rifles and search more carefully
+the ground below them, for that innocent
+breeze blowing straight down towards their homes
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+and loved ones was a potential enemy more to be
+feared than all the doings of men.</p>
+<p>Down to the right, two miles or more away, a
+man came out of the shadow of the woods. They
+could only see that he was a big man and stout.
+There was nothing about him to tell them whether
+he was friend or foe, of the hills or a stranger.
+Without waiting to see who he was or what he
+did, the two dove for their saddles and started
+their horses pell-mell down the hill towards him.</p>
+<p>He saw them at once against the bare brow of
+the hill, and ran back into the wood.</p>
+<p>In another instant they knew what he was and
+what was his business.</p>
+<p>They saw a light moving swiftly along the
+fringe of the woods. Behind the light rose a trail
+of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a
+line of living fire. The man was running, dragging
+a flaming torch through the long dried grass
+and brush!</p>
+<p>The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks,
+regardless of paths or horses&rsquo; legs, would gladly
+have killed the man as he ran. But it was too far
+for even a random shot. They could only ride on
+in reckless rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat
+it to death with their hands, to stamp it into the
+earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and
+a fair shot at the fiend there within the wood.</p>
+<p>Before they had stumbled half the distance
+down the hill, a wave of leaping flame a hundred
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>
+feet long was hurling itself upon the forest.
+They could not stamp that fire out. But they
+could kill that man!</p>
+<p>The man ran back behind the wall of fire to
+where he had started and began to run another
+line of fire in the other direction. At that moment
+Stocking yelled:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s another starting, straight in front!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Get him,&rdquo; Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to kill this one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Stocking turned slightly and made for a second
+light which he had seen starting. Jeffrey rode on
+alone, unslinging his rifle and driving madly. His
+horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down
+the hill, now saw the fire and started to bolt off at
+a tangent. Jeffrey fought with him a furious
+moment, trying to force him toward the fire and
+the man. Then, seeing that he could not conquer
+the fright of the horse and that his man was
+escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and
+leaping free with his gun ran towards the
+man.</p>
+<p>The man was dodging in and out now among
+the trees, but still using his torch and moving
+rapidly away.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man
+in his zigzag until he was within easy distance.
+But the man continued weaving his way among the
+trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim.
+Jeffrey dropped to one knee and steadied the sights
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>
+of his rifle until they closed upon the running
+man and clung to him.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the man turned in an open space and
+faced about. It was Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He
+was unarmed, but he must be killed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am going to kill him,&rdquo; said Jeffrey under
+his breath, as he again fixed the sights of his rifle,
+this time full on the man&rsquo;s breast.</p>
+<p>A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers
+threw up his hands, took a half step forward, and
+fell on his face.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger
+which he had not pulled, ran forward to where
+the man lay.</p>
+<p>He was lying face down, his arms stretched out
+wide at either side, his fingers convulsively clutching
+at tufts of grass.</p>
+<p>He was dying. No need for a second look.</p>
+<p>His hat had fallen off to a little distance.
+There was a clean round hole in the back of the
+skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair showed
+just the merest streak of red.</p>
+<p>Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still
+flaming railroad torch, with which he had done his
+work.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction
+from which the shot had come. There was
+no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no
+sign of another human being anywhere.</p>
+<p>Away back of him he heard shots, one, two,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+three; Stocking, probably, or some of the other
+men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at
+other fleeing figures in the woods.</p>
+<p>He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the
+wick and stamped it into a patch of burnt ground,
+threw the torch back from the fire line, and started
+clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of
+his rifle.</p>
+<p>He was quickly brought to his senses, when the
+forgotten cartridge in his gun accidentally exploded
+and the bullet went whizzing past his ear.
+He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp
+piece of sapling he began to work furiously, but
+systematically at the line of fire.</p>
+<p>The line was thin here, where it had really only
+that moment been started, and he made some
+headway. But as he worked along to where it
+had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless.
+Still he clung to his work. It was the only thing
+that his numbed brain could think of to do for the
+moment.</p>
+<p>He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the
+loose dirt furiously after the fire as it ran away
+from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire
+and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept
+up his trousers and shirt and up even to his hair.
+And still the fire ran away from him, away down
+the hill after its real prey. He looked farther
+on along the line and saw that it was not now a line
+but a charging, rushing river of flame that ran
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+down the hill, twenty feet at a jump. Nothing,
+nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain
+could now stop that torrent of fire.</p>
+<p>He stepped back. There was nothing to be
+done here now, behind the fire. Nothing to be
+done but to get ahead of it and save what could
+be saved. He looked around for his horse.</p>
+<p>Just then men came riding along the back of the
+line, Stocking and old Erskine Beasley in the lead.
+They came up to where Jeffrey was standing and
+looked on beyond moodily to where the body of
+Rogers lay.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell
+upon the little group of horsemen and upon the
+boy standing there.</p>
+<p>Myron Stocking spoke at last:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mine got away, Jeff,&rdquo; he said slowly.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the
+meaning of the words flashed upon him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t do that!&rdquo; he exclaimed hastily.
+&ldquo;Somebody else shot him from the woods. My
+gun went off accidental.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Silence fell again upon the little group of men.
+They did not look at Jeffrey. They had heard
+but one shot. The shot from the woods had been
+too muffled for them to hear.</p>
+<p>Again Stocking broke the silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What difference does it make,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Any of us would have done it if we could.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t! I tell you I didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; shouted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>
+Jeffrey. &ldquo;The shot from the woods got ahead of
+me. That man was facing me. He was shot
+from behind!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Old Erskine Beasley took command.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What difference does it make, as Stocking
+says. We&rsquo;ve got live men and women and children
+to think about to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Straighten
+him out decent. Then divide and go around the
+fire both ways. The alarm can&rsquo;t travel half fast
+enough for this breeze, and it&rsquo;s rising, too,&rdquo; he
+added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I tell you&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo; Jeffrey began again.
+Then he saw how useless it was.</p>
+<p>He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which
+even in the face of this unheard-of terror had preferred
+to venture back toward his master.</p>
+<p>He caught the horse, mounted, and started to
+ride south with the party that was to try to get
+around the fire from that side.</p>
+<p>He rode with them. They were his friends.
+But he was not with them. There was a circle
+drawn around him. He was separated from
+them. They probably did not feel it, but he felt
+it. It is a circle which draws itself ever around
+a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of
+blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may
+say that they themselves would wish to have done
+it. But the circle is there.</p>
+<p>Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She
+would not see that circle.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span></div>
+<p>Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a
+few hours before said that she had sometimes seen
+even murder in his eyes.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>
+<a name='V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE' id='V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE'></a>
+<h2>V</h2>
+<h3>MON PERE JE ME &rsquo;CUSE</h3>
+</div>
+<p>Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the
+fire raved exultingly, leaping and skipping fantastically
+as it ran. It was a prisoner released
+from the bondage of the elements that had held
+it. It was a spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom.
+It was a flood raging down a valley. It
+was a maniac at large.</p>
+<p>The broad base of the mountain where it sat
+upon the backs of the lower hills spread out fanwise
+to a width of five miles. The fire spread its
+wings as it came down until it swept the whole
+apron of the mountain. A five-mile wave of solid
+flame rolled down upon the hills.</p>
+<p>Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early
+browse missed the juicy dew from the grass.
+They looked to where the sun should be coming
+over the mountain and instead they saw the sun
+coming down the side of the mountain in a blanket
+of white smoke. They left their feed and began
+to huddle together, mooing nervously to each
+other about this thing and sniffing the air and
+pawing the earth.</p>
+<p>Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+in to milking looked blinking up at the mountain,
+stood a moment before their numb minds understood
+what their senses were telling them, then
+ran shouting back to the farm houses, throwing
+open pasture gates and knocking down lengths of
+fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear
+in their hearts, ran straight to the barns and
+mounting the best horses fled down the roads to
+the west. For the hireling flees because he is a
+hireling.</p>
+<p>Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children
+came tumbling out of the houses, to look up
+at the death that was coming down to them.
+Some cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and
+shook foolish fists at the oncoming enemy. Some
+fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God
+of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the
+house for his or her treasure; a little bag of money
+under a mattress, or a babe in its crib, or a little
+rifle, or a dolly of rags.</p>
+<p>Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm
+wagons. The treasures were quickly bundled in.
+Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into
+the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at
+the heads of the sweating horses, then climbed to
+their places in the wagons and took the reins.
+For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind
+mad horses, they would have to hold the lives of
+the children, the horses, and, incidentally, of themselves
+in their hands. But they were capable
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>
+hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother
+hearts that went with them.</p>
+<p>They would have preferred to stay with the
+men, these women. But it was the law that they
+should take the brood and run to safety.</p>
+<p>Men stood watching the wagons until they shot
+out of sight behind the trees of the road. Then
+they turned back to the hopeless, probably useless
+fight. They could do little or nothing. But it
+was the law that men must stay and make the
+fight. They must go out with shovels to the very
+edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of
+new earth which the running fire could not cross.
+Thus they might divert the fire a little. They
+might even divide it, if the wind died down a little,
+so that it would roll on to either side of their
+homes.</p>
+<p>This was their business. There was little
+chance that they would succeed. Probably they
+would have to drop shovels at the last moment
+and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But
+this was the law, that every man must stay and try
+to make his own little clearing the point of an entering
+wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No
+man, no ten thousand men could stop the fire.
+But, against all probabilities, some one man might
+be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground,
+or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of
+it. That sector might be fought and narrowed
+down by other men until it was beaten. And so
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+something would be gained. For this men stayed,
+stifled and blinded, and fought on until the last
+possible moment, and then ran past their already
+smoking homes and down the wind for life.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake
+of four other men down a long spiral course
+towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he
+would have ridden at their head. He would have
+taken the place of leadership and command among
+them which he had for months been taking in the
+fight against the railroad. Probably he could still
+have had that place among them if he had tried to
+assert himself, for men had come to have a habit
+of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear,
+dispirited and miserable.</p>
+<p>They were trying to get around the fire, so that
+they might hang upon its flank and beat it in upon
+itself. There was no thought now of getting
+ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm.
+That rolling curtain of smoke would have already
+aroused every living thing ahead of it.
+They could only hope to get to the end of the line
+of fire and fight it inch by inch to narrow the path
+of destruction that it was making for itself.</p>
+<p>If the wind had held stiff and straight down the
+mountain it would have driven the fire ahead in a
+line only a little wider than its original front.
+But the shape of the mountain caught the light
+breeze as it came down and twisted it away always
+to the side. So that the end of the fire line was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+not a thin edge of scattered fire that could be
+fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted
+funnel of flame that leaped and danced ever
+outward and onward.</p>
+<p>Half way down the mountain they thought that
+they had outflanked it. They slid from their
+horses and began to beat desperately at the brush
+and grasses among the trees. They gained upon
+it. They were doing something. They shouted
+to each other when they had driven it back even a
+foot. They fought it madly for the possession of
+a single tree. They were gaining. They were
+turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat began to
+streak the caking grime upon their faces. There
+was no air to breathe, only the hot breath of fire.
+But it was heartsome work, for they were surely
+pushing the fire in upon itself.</p>
+<p>A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud
+of hot white smoke about them. They stood still
+with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves pressed over
+eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.</p>
+<p>When they could look they saw a wall of fire
+bearing down upon them from three sides. The
+wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise
+so that it had surrounded the meagre little space
+that they had cleared and had now outflanked
+them. Their own man&oelig;uvre had been turned
+against them. There was but one way to run,
+straight down the hill with the fire roaring and
+panting after them. It was a playful, tricky
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing
+at their puny efforts.</p>
+<p>Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves
+out of the path of the flames and dropped
+exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by
+them on its way.</p>
+<p>Their horses were gone, of course. The fire
+in its side leap had caught them and they had fled
+shrieking down the hill, following their instinct
+to hunt water.</p>
+<p>The men now began to understand the work
+that was theirs. They were five already weary
+men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must
+follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they
+could run at their best. And they must hang upon
+its edge and fight every inch of the way to fold
+that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from
+spreading out upon them. A hundred men who
+could have flanked the fire shoulder to shoulder for
+a long space might have accomplished what these
+five were trying to do. For them it was impossible.
+But they hung on in desperation.</p>
+<p>Three times more they made a stand and
+pushed the edge of the fire back a little, each time
+daring to hope that they had done something.
+And three times more the treacherous wind
+whirled the fire back behind and around them so
+that they had to race for life.</p>
+<p>Now they were down off the straight slope of
+the mountain and among the broken hills. Here
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>
+their work was entirely hopeless and they knew it.
+They knew also that they were in almost momentary
+danger of being cut off and completely surrounded.
+Here the fire did not keep any steady
+edge that they could follow and attack. The
+wind eddied and whirled about among the broken
+peaks of the hills in every direction and with it
+the fire ran apparently at will.</p>
+<p>When they tried to hold it to one side of a
+hill and were just beginning to think that they had
+won, a sudden sweep of the wind would send a
+ring of fire around to the other side so that they
+saw themselves again and again surrounded and
+almost cut off.</p>
+<p>Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold
+the fire to the north side of the Chain. The
+Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly east
+and west. It divides the hill country into fairly
+even portions. If they could keep the fire north
+of the lakes they would save the southern half of
+the country. Their own homes all lay to the
+north of the lakes and they were now doomed.
+But that was a matter that did not enter here.
+What was gone was gone. Their loved ones
+would have had plenty of warning and would be
+out of the way by now. The men were fighting
+the enemy merely to save what could be saved.
+And as is the way of men in fight they began to
+make it a personal quarrel with the fire.</p>
+<p>They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>
+It was no longer an impersonal, natural
+creature of the elements, that fire. It was a cunning,
+a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them.
+They hated it. Its eyes were red with gloating
+over them. Their eyes were red and bloodshot
+with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse
+with the roar of its laughing at them. Their
+voices were thick and their lips were cracking with
+the hot curses they hurled back at it.</p>
+<p>They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel.
+All but one of them had forgotten the men
+whom they had tracked into the hills last night
+and who had started the fire. All but one of them
+had forgotten those other men, far away and safe
+and cowardly, who had sent those men into the
+hills to do this thing.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the
+day wore on and the fight waxed more bitter and
+more hopeless, even he began to lose sight of the
+beginning and to make it his own single feud with
+the fire. He fought and was beaten back and
+ran and went back to fight again, until there was
+but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in
+his brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without
+mercy, without quarter given or asked with the
+demon of the fire.</p>
+<p>Now other men came from scattered, far-flung
+homes to the south and joined the five. Two hills
+stood between them and Sixth Lake, where the
+Chain began and stretched away to the west. If
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+they could hold the fire to the north of these two
+hills then it would sweep along the north side of
+the lakes and the other half of the country would
+be safe.</p>
+<p>The first hill was easy. They took their stand
+along its crest. The five weary, scarred, singed
+men, their voices gone, their swollen tongues protruding
+through their splitting lips, took new
+strength from the help that had come to them.
+They fought the enemy back down the north side
+of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with
+charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones
+down upon it.</p>
+<p>They were beating it at last! Only another
+hill like this and their work would be done. They
+would strike the lake and water. Water! God
+in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it!
+To throw themselves into it! To sink into its
+cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and
+<i>drink</i>!</p>
+<p>Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy
+with undergrowth. Here was the worst place.
+Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder,
+fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass,
+the hated breath of the fire in their nostrils. And
+they held their line. They pushed the fire on past
+the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill.
+They had won! It could not beat them now!</p>
+<p>As he came around the brow of the hill and saw
+the shining body of the placid lake below him one
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>
+of the new men, who still had voice, raised a shout.
+It ran back along the line, even the five who had
+no voice croaking out what would have been a
+cry of triumph.</p>
+<p>But the wind heard them and laughed.
+Through the ravine which they had safely crossed
+with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a
+merry, flirting little gust, a draught. On the
+draught the lingering flames went dancing swiftly
+through the brush of the ravine and spread out
+around the southern side of the hill. Before the
+men could turn, the thing was done. The hill
+made itself into a chimney and the flames went
+roaring to the top of it.</p>
+<p>The men fled over the ridge of the hill and
+down to the south, to get themselves out of that
+encircling death.</p>
+<p>When they were beyond the circle of fire on
+that side, they saw the full extent of what had befallen
+them in what had been their moment of
+victory.</p>
+<p>Not only would the fire come south of the lake
+and the Chain&ndash;&ndash;but they themselves could not
+get near the lake.</p>
+<p>Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet
+almost! And they could not reach it! The fire
+was marching in a swift, widening line between
+them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger
+might they wet in the lake.</p>
+<p>Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+silent teeth, according to the nature that was in
+each.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the
+lake. He saw two men pushing a boat into the
+lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke and
+waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes.
+They were not men of the hills.</p>
+<p>They were!&ndash;&ndash;They were the real enemy!&ndash;&ndash;They
+were two of those who had set the fire!
+They had not stopped to fight fire. They had
+headed straight for the lake and had gotten there.
+<i>They</i> were safe. And <i>they</i> had <i>water</i>!</p>
+<p>All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him
+by the fighting fire fury of the day, rushed back
+upon him.</p>
+<p>He had not killed a man this morning. Men
+said he had, but he had not.</p>
+<p>Now he would kill. The fire should not stop
+him. He would kill those two there in the water.
+<i>In the water!</i></p>
+<p>He ran madly down the slope and into the
+flaming, fuming maw of the fire. He went blind.
+His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward,
+his face buried in a patch of bare earth.</p>
+<p>Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged
+him out by the feet. When they had brought him
+back to safety and had fanned breath into him with
+their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at
+them. As he understood, he turned on his face
+moaning:</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t kill Rogers. I wish I had&ndash;&ndash;I wish
+I had.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled
+away into the west.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of
+the window as the intolerable, sooty train jolted
+its slow way northward along the canal and the
+Black River. He had left Albany in the very
+early hours of the morning. Now it was nearing
+noon and there were yet eighty miles, four hours,
+of this interminable journey before he could find
+a good wash and rest and some clean food. But
+he was not hungry, neither was he querulous.
+There were worse ways of travel than even by a
+slow and dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn
+diocese the Bishop had found plenty of
+them. He was never one to complain. A gentle
+philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and
+understood the faults of high and low, a slow,
+quiet gleam of New England humour at the back
+of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these
+things, Joseph Winthrop contrived to be a very
+good man and a very good bishop.</p>
+<p>But to-day he was not content with things. He
+had done one thing in Albany, or rather, he would
+have said, he had seen it done. He had appealed
+to the conscience of the people of the State. And
+the conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable
+terms that the U. &amp; M. Railroad must not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+dare to drive the people of the hills from their
+homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their
+land. Then the conscience of the people of the
+State had gone off about its business, as the public
+conscience has a way of doing. The public would
+forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished
+it with a mild sensation which had aroused
+it for a time, a matter of a few days at most.
+He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days.
+But the railroad would not forget. It never slept.
+For there were men behind it who said, and kept
+on saying, that they must have results.</p>
+<p>He was sure that the railroad would strike back.
+And it would strike in some way that would be effective,
+but that yet would hide the hand that
+struck.</p>
+<p>Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode
+north lay the line of the first hills. Beyond them
+stood the softly etched outlines of the mountains,
+their white-blue tones blending gently into the
+deep blue of the sky behind them.</p>
+<p>Forty miles away he could make out the break
+in the line where Old Forge lay and the Chain began.
+Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the divide.
+But he could not see Bald Mountain.
+That was strange. The day was very clear. He
+had noticed that there had been no dew that morning.
+There might have been a little haze on the
+hills in the early morning. But this sun would
+have cleared that all away by now.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span></div>
+<p>Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the
+compass on his journey up this side of his diocese.
+He had never before missed it on a fair
+day. It was something more to him than a mere
+bare rock set on the top of other rocks. It was
+one of his marking posts. And when you remember
+that his was a charge of souls scattered
+over twenty thousand square miles of broken
+country, you will see that he had need of marking
+posts.</p>
+<p>Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory
+which he could reach from the western side of his
+diocese. When he had to go into the country to
+the east of the mountain he must go all the way
+south to Albany and around by North Creek or
+he must go all the way north and east by Malone
+and Rouses Point and then south and west again
+into the mountains. The mountain was set in almost
+the geographical centre of his diocese and
+he had travelled towards it from north, east, south
+and west.</p>
+<p>He missed his mountain now and rubbed his
+eyes in a troubled, perplexed way. When the
+train stopped at the next little station he went out
+on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.</p>
+<p>Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between
+the hills where he knew Old Forge nestled
+was gone. The open rift of sky that he had
+recognised a few moments before was now filled,
+as though a mountain had suddenly been moved
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+into the gap. He went back to his seat and sat
+watching the line of the mountains. As he
+watched, the whole contour of the hills that he
+had known was changed under his very eyes.
+Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and
+rounded, smooth skulls of mountains showed
+against the sky where sharp peaks should have
+been.</p>
+<p>He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion
+shot into his mind, and stayed. Then a
+just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of
+Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a
+man of gentle heart whose passions ran deep below
+a placid surface.</p>
+<p>At Booneville he stepped off the train before
+it had stopped and hurried to the operator&rsquo;s window
+to ask if any news had gone down the wire of
+a fire in the hills.</p>
+<p>Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over
+his table &ldquo;listening in&rdquo; with shameless glee to
+a flirtatious conversation that was going over the
+wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the
+Company, between the young lady operator at
+Snowden and the man in the office at Steuben.</p>
+<p>The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.</p>
+<p>Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This ain&rsquo;t the bulletin board. We&rsquo;re busy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop stood quiet a moment.</p>
+<p>Then Jerry looked up. The face looking
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>
+calmly through the window was the face of one
+who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder
+of certain things.</p>
+<p>Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously,
+on his feet. He grabbed at his front lock
+of curly red hair and gasped:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;m sorry, Bishop! I&ndash;&ndash;I&ndash;&ndash;didn&rsquo;t hear
+what you said.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop&ndash;&ndash;if one might say it&ndash;&ndash;grinned.
+Then he said quickly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills.
+Have you heard anything on the wire?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop&rsquo;s
+mouth. The beet red colour of his face had gone
+down several degrees. The freckles were coming
+back. He was now coherent.</p>
+<p>No he had not heard anything. He was sure
+nothing had come down the wire. Just then the
+rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed
+abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a
+&ldquo;call.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jerry held up his hand. &ldquo;Lowville calling
+Utica,&rdquo; he said. They waited a little and then:
+&ldquo;Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country.
+Call everything,&rdquo; Jerry repeated from the
+sounder, punctuating for the benefit of the Bishop.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It must be big, Bishop,&rdquo; he said, turning, &ldquo;or
+they wouldn&rsquo;t call&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the Bishop was already running for the
+steps of his departing train.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span></div>
+<p>At Lowville he left the train and hurried to
+Father Brady&rsquo;s house. Finding the priest out on
+a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the housekeeper,
+and, commandeering some riding clothes
+and Father Brady&rsquo;s saddle horse, he was soon on
+the road to French Village and the hills.</p>
+<p>It was before the days of the rural telephone
+and there was no telegraph up the hill road. A
+messenger had come down from the hills a half
+hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was
+no alarm among the people of Lowville, for there
+lay twenty miles of well cultivated country between
+them and the hills. If they noticed Father
+Brady&rsquo;s clothes riding furiously out toward
+the hill road, they gave the matter no more than
+a mild wonder.</p>
+<p>For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily
+up the hard dirt road over which he and Arsene
+LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the
+winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who
+had died that night. He thought of the many
+things that had in some way had their beginning
+on that night, all leading up, more or less, to this
+present moment. But more than all he thought
+of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up
+there in the hills fighting for their lives and their
+little all.</p>
+<p>He did not know who had started this fire. It
+might well have started accidentally. He did not
+know that the railroad people had sent men into
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those
+men were caught by the men of the hills, then
+there would be swift and bloody justice done.
+The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father
+Brady&rsquo;s horse as that good animal had never been
+ridden in the course of his well fed life.</p>
+<p>Nearing Corben&rsquo;s, he saw that the horse could
+go but little farther. Registering a remonstrance
+to Father Brady, anent the matter of keeping
+his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with
+Corben for a fresh horse. Corben looked at the
+horse from which the Bishop had just slid
+swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop&rsquo;s
+destination in the hills&ndash;&ndash;which was vague,
+and his business&ndash;&ndash;which was still more vague.
+He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and
+reviewed the whole matter critically. Finally he
+guessed that the Bishop could have the fresh
+horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.</p>
+<p>The Bishop explained that he did not have the
+money about him. Corben believed that. The
+Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the
+diocese. Corben did not believe that.</p>
+<p>In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay,
+persuaded the man to believe him and to accept
+his surety for the horse. And taking food in his
+pockets he pressed on into the high hills.</p>
+<p>Already he had met wagons loaded with women
+and children on the road. But he knew that they
+would be of those who lived nearest the fringe of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+the hills. They would know little more than he
+did himself of the origin of the fire or of what
+was going on up there under and beyond that pall
+of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.</p>
+<p>Now the road began to be dotted with these
+wagons of the fleeing ones, and some seemed to
+have come far. Twice he stopped long enough
+to ask a question or two. But their replies gave
+him no real knowledge of the situation. They
+had been called from their beds in the early morning
+by the fire. Their men had stayed, the
+women had fled with the children. That was all
+they could tell.</p>
+<p>As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth
+Lansing on Brom Bones escorting Mrs. Whiting
+and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew
+without asking that the fire was now coming near,
+for these women would not have left their homes
+except in the nearness of danger.</p>
+<p>In fact the two older women had only yielded
+to the most peremptory authority, exercised by
+Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to
+the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously
+against the idea that Cassius Bascom, who
+was notoriously unable to look after himself in
+the most ordinary things of life, should now be
+left behind on the mere argument that he was a
+man.</p>
+<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s first question concerned Jeffrey
+Whiting. Ruth told what she knew. That a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road yesterday;
+that the man had brought news of strange
+men being seen in the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden
+away with him toward Bald Mountain.</p>
+<p>The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain
+would be the place to be watched. He could even
+conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and
+the breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could
+see the desperate and futile struggle with the fire
+as it reached down to the hills. Back of that
+screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy
+darker even than the one of the fire itself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He had my letter?&rdquo; the Bishop asked, when
+he had heard all that Ruth had to tell.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. We had just read it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He went armed?&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey&rsquo;s gun to
+him,&rdquo; the girl answered simply, with a full knowledge
+of all that the question and answer implied.
+The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They will all be driven in upon French Village,&rdquo;
+said the Bishop slowly. &ldquo;The wind will
+not hold any one direction in the high hills. Little
+Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all
+in the end. The road from here there, is it open,
+do you know?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No one has come down from that far,&rdquo; said
+Ruth. &ldquo;We have watched the people on the
+road all day. But probably they would not leave
+the lake. And if they did they would go north
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+by the river. But the road certainly won&rsquo;t be
+open long. The fire is spreading north as it
+comes down.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must hurry, then,&rdquo; said the Bishop, gripping
+his reins.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but you cannot, you must not!&rdquo; exclaimed
+Ruth. &ldquo;You will be trapped. You can never go
+through. We are the last to leave, except a few
+men with fast horses who know the country every
+step. You cannot go through on the road, and if
+you leave it you will be lost.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I can always come back,&rdquo; said the
+Bishop lightly, as he set his horse up the hill.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you cannot. Won&rsquo;t you listen, please,
+Bishop,&rdquo; Ruth pleaded after him. &ldquo;The fire may
+cross behind you, and you&rsquo;ll be trapped on the
+road!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up
+the hill. Whether he heard or not, he did not
+answer or look back.</p>
+<p>Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after
+him. She did not know whether or not he realised
+his danger. Probably he did, for he was a
+quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge
+of his danger would not drive him back. She
+knew that.</p>
+<p>She knew the business upon which he went.
+No doubt it was one in which he was ready to
+risk his life. He had said that they would all
+be driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+meant hunters and hunted alike. For there were
+the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills
+would be up there behind the wall of fire or working
+along down beside it. But while they fought
+the fire they would be hunting the brush and the
+smoke for the traces of other men. Those other
+men would maybe be trapped by the swift running
+of the fire. All might be driven to seek safety
+together. The hunted men would flee from the
+fire to a death just as certain but which they would
+prefer to face.</p>
+<p>The Bishop was riding to save the lives of
+those men. Also he was riding to keep the men
+of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be
+among them. Only yesterday she had spoken
+that word to him.</p>
+<p>But he can do neither, she thought. He will
+be caught on the road, and before he will give in
+and turn back he will be trapped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am going back to the top of the hill,&rdquo; she
+said suddenly to Mrs. Whiting. &ldquo;I want to see
+what it looks like now. Go on down. I will
+catch you before long.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No. We will pull in at the side of the road
+here and wait for you. Don&rsquo;t go past the hill.
+We&rsquo;ll wait. There&rsquo;s no danger down here yet,
+and won&rsquo;t be for some time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for
+he was fresh and all day long he had been held
+in tight when he had wanted to run away. He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>
+did not know what that thing was from which he
+had all day been wanting to run. But he knew
+that if he had been his own master he would have
+run very far, hunting water. So now he bolted
+quickly to the top of the hill.</p>
+<p>But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse
+and was not sparing him. When Ruth came to
+the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a
+mile away, already past her own home and mounting
+the long hill.</p>
+<p>She stood watching him, undecided what to do.
+The chances were all against him. Perhaps he
+did not understand how certainly those chances
+stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode
+like a man who knew the chances and was ready
+to measure himself against them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Brom Bones could catch him, I think,&rdquo; she
+said as she watched him up the long hill. &ldquo;But
+we could not make him come back until it was too
+late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I
+don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m afraid. Only somehow he seems&ndash;&ndash;seems
+different. He doesn&rsquo;t seem just like a
+man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger.
+No. He knows all about it. But it doesn&rsquo;t
+count. He is a man going on business&ndash;&ndash;God&rsquo;s
+business. I wonder.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Now she saw him against the rim of the sky
+as he went over the brow of the hill, where
+Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was
+not a pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+for he was very tired from the unusual ride, and
+he crouched forward, saving his horse all that he
+could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten
+as he disappeared over the crown of the hill,
+seeming to ride right on into the sky.</p>
+<p>Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her.
+He was looking away to the right of the long, terraced
+hill before her. The fire was coming,
+sweeping diagonally down across the face of the
+hill straight toward her home.</p>
+<p>All her life she had been hearing of forest fires.
+Hardly a summer had passed within her memory
+when the menace of them had not been present
+among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill
+children did, expecting to some day have to fly
+for her life before one. But she had never before
+seen a wall of breathing fire marching down
+a hill toward her.</p>
+<p>For moments the sight held her enthralled in
+wonder and awe. It was a living thing, moving
+down the hillside with an intelligent, defined
+course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer
+and a silver fox down the hill. It could not catch
+those timid, fleet animals in the open chase. But
+if they halted or turned aside it might come upon
+them and surround them.</p>
+<p>While she looked, one part of her brain was
+numbed by the sight, but the other part was thinking
+rapidly. This was not the real fire. This
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+was only one great paw of fire that shot out before
+the body, to sweep in any foolish thing that
+did not at first alarm hurry down to the level lands
+and safety.</p>
+<p>The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming
+on in a solid front beyond the hill. It would not
+yet have struck the road up which the Bishop was
+hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past
+it and get into French Village before it should
+cross the road. But she was sure he could not
+do so. He would go on until he found it
+squarely before him. Then he would have to turn
+back. And here was this great limb of fire already
+stretching out behind him. In five minutes
+he would be cut off. The formation of the
+hills had sent the wind whirling down through a
+gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead
+of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country
+to the north of the road. If he left the road
+he could only flounder about and wander aimlessly
+until the fire closed in upon him.</p>
+<p>Ruth&rsquo;s decision was taken on the instant. The
+two women did not need her. They would
+know enough to drive on down to safety when
+they saw the fire surely coming. There was a
+man gone unblinking into a peril from which he
+would not know how to escape. He had gone to
+save life. He had gone to prevent crime. If he
+stayed in the road she could find him and lead him
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+out to the north and probably to safety. If he did
+not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only
+make the attempt.</p>
+<p>Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the
+road towards his home. For the first time in his
+life, he felt the cut of a whip on his flanks&ndash;&ndash;to
+make him go faster. He did not know what it
+meant. Nothing like that had ever been a part
+of Brom Bones&rsquo; scheme of life, for he had always
+gone as fast as he was let go. But it did
+not need the stroke of the whip to madden him.</p>
+<p>Down across the slope of the hill in front of
+him he saw a great, red terror racing towards the
+road which he travelled. If he could not understand
+the girl&rsquo;s words, he could feel the thrill of
+rising excitement in her voice as she urged him
+on, saying over and over:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can make it, Brom! I know you can!
+I never struck you this way before, did I? But
+it&rsquo;s for life&ndash;&ndash;a good man&rsquo;s life! You can make
+it. I know you can make it. I wouldn&rsquo;t ask you
+to if I didn&rsquo;t know. You can make it! It won&rsquo;t
+hurt us a bit. It <i>can&rsquo;t</i> hurt us! Bromie, dear,
+I tell you it can&rsquo;t hurt us. It just can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She crouched out over the horse&rsquo;s shoulder,
+laying her weight upon her hands to even it for
+the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw
+that neither terror nor punishment could drive him
+faster than he was going. He was giving her the
+best of his willing heart and fleet body.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span></div>
+<p>But would it be enough? Fast as she raced
+along the road she saw that red death whirling
+down the hillside, to cross the road at a
+point just above her home. Could she pass that
+point before the fire came? She did not know.
+And when she came to within a hundred yards of
+where the fire would strike the road she still did
+not know whether she could pass it. Already she
+could feel the hot breath of it panting down upon
+her. Already showers of burning leaves and
+branches were whirling down upon her head and
+shoulders. If her horse should hesitate or bolt
+sidewise now they would both be burned to death.
+The girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking
+into his mane, she told him so. Perhaps he, too,
+knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he
+plunged straight into the blinding blast that swept
+across the road.</p>
+<p>A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in
+the face. He reeled and reared a little, and a
+moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But
+he felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane
+and he plunged on again, through the smoke and
+out into the good air.</p>
+<p>The fire laughed and leaped across the road
+behind them. It had missed them, but it did not
+care. The other way, it would not have cared,
+either.</p>
+<p>Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long
+slope of the hill, and turning looked back at her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>
+home. The farmer had long since gone away
+with his family. The place was not his. The
+flames were already leaping up from the grass
+to the windows and the roof was taking fire from
+the cinders and burning branches in the air. But,
+where everything was burning, where a whole
+countryside was being swept with the broom of
+destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter
+much.</p>
+<p>Only when she saw the flames sweep on past
+the house and across the hillside and attack the
+trees that stood guard over the graves of her
+loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul.
+She revolted at the cruel wickedness of it all.
+Her heart hated the fire. Hated the men who
+had set it. (She was sure that men <i>had</i> set it.)
+She wanted vengeance. The Bishop was wrong.
+Why should he interfere? Let men take revenge
+in the way of men.</p>
+<p>But on the instant she was sorry and breathed
+a little prayer of and for forgiveness. You see,
+she was rather a downright young person. And
+she took her religion at its word. When she
+said, &ldquo;Forgive us our trespasses,&rdquo; she meant just
+that. And when she said, &ldquo;As we forgive those
+who trespass against us,&rdquo; she meant that, too.</p>
+<p>The Bishop was right, of course. One horror,
+one sin, would not heal another.</p>
+<p>Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder
+and horror of the fire burst upon her with appalling
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>
+force. What she had so far seen was but
+a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill.
+Now in front and to the right of her, in an unbroken
+quarter circle of the whole horizon, there
+ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed
+to be coming down upon the whole world.</p>
+<p>She knew that it was already behind her. If
+she had thought of herself, she would have turned
+Brom Bones to the left, away from the road and
+have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the
+north and out of the range of the moving terror.
+But only for one quaking little moment did she
+think of herself. Along that road ahead of her
+there was a man, a good man, who rode bravely,
+unquestioningly, to almost certain death, for
+others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as
+she could see, the fire was not yet crossing the
+road in front. The Bishop would still be on the
+road. She was sure of that. Again she asked
+Brom Bones for his brave best.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>The Bishop was beginning to think that he
+might yet get through to French Village. His
+watch told him that it was six o&rsquo;clock. Soon the
+sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable
+tenting of white smoke that had spread high
+over all the air there was nothing to show that
+a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the
+going down of the sun the wind, too, would probably
+die away. The fire had not yet come to the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>
+road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire
+would advance but slowly, and would hardly
+spread to the north at all.</p>
+<p>He was not discrediting the enemy in front.
+He had seen the mighty sweep of the fire and
+he knew that it would need but the slightest shift
+of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon
+him from which he would have to run for his
+life. He did not, of course, know that the fire
+had already crossed the road behind him. But
+even if he had, he would probably have kept on
+trusting to the chance of getting through somehow.</p>
+<p>He was ascending another long slope of country
+where the road ran straight up to the east.
+The fire was already to the right of him, sweeping
+along in a steady march to the west. It was
+spreading steadily northward, toward the road;
+but he was hoping that the hill before him had
+served to hold it back, that it had not really
+crossed the road at any point, and that when he
+came to the top of this hill he would be able to
+see the road clear before him up to French Village.
+He was wearied to the point of exhaustion,
+and his nervous horse fought him constantly in
+an effort to bolt from the road and make off to
+the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing
+so far from the fire; and there was no real
+reason to be discouraged.</p>
+<p>Then he came to the top of the hill.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span></div>
+<p>He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long
+time before on that same day. Five hundred
+yards before him as he looked down a slight
+slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to
+the sky. The road ran straight through that.
+Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could see
+the whole country banked in terraces of flame.
+There was no road. This hill had divided the
+wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided the
+fire. Already the fire had run away to the north,
+and it was still moving northward as it also advanced
+more slowly to the top of the hill where
+he stood.</p>
+<p>Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing
+worse had happened than he had, in reason, anticipated.
+He must go back. He turned the
+horse and looked.</p>
+<p>Across the ridge of the last hill that he had
+passed the fire was marching majestically. The
+daylight, such as it had been, had given its place
+to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago
+he could not have distinguished anything back
+there. Now he could see the road clearly marked,
+nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid
+wall of fire.</p>
+<p>There were no moments to be lost. He was cut
+off on three sides. The way out lay to the north,
+over he knew not what sort of country. But at
+least it was a way out. He must not altogether
+run away from the fire, for in that way he might
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+easily be caught and hemmed in entirely. He
+must ride along as near as he could in front of
+it. So, if he were fast enough, he might turn the
+edge of it and be safe again. He might even
+be able to go on his way again to French Village.</p>
+<p>Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the
+fire played no new trick upon him.</p>
+<p>His horse turned willingly from the road and
+ran along under the shelter of the ridge of the hill
+for a full mile as fast as the Bishop dared let
+him go. He could not drive. He was obliged
+to trust the horse to pick his own footing. It
+was mad riding over rough pasture land and brush,
+but it was better to let the horse have his own
+way.</p>
+<p>Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge
+where the Bishop might have expected to be able
+to go around the edge of the fire. The horse
+stood stock still. The Bishop took one quiet,
+comprehensive look.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am sorry, boy,&rdquo; he said gently to the horse.
+&ldquo;You have done your best. And I&ndash;&ndash;have done
+my worst. You did not deserve this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was looking down toward Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork,
+a dry water course, two miles away and a thousand
+feet below.</p>
+<p>The fire had come clear around the hill and
+had been driven down into the heavy timber along
+the water course. There it was raging away to
+the west down through the great trees, travelling
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>
+faster than any horse could have been driven.</p>
+<p>The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in
+his saddle, thinking mechanically. To the east
+the fire was coming over the ridge in an unbroken
+line&ndash;&ndash;death. From the south it was advancing
+slowly but with a calm and certain steadiness of
+purpose&ndash;&ndash;death. On the hill to the west it was
+burning brightly and running speedily to meet that
+swift line of fire coming down the northern side
+of the square&ndash;&ndash;death. One narrowing avenue
+of escape was for the moment open. The lines
+on the north and the west had not met. For some
+minutes, a pitifully few minutes, there would be
+a gap between them. The horse, riderless and
+running by the instinct of his kind might make
+that gap in time. With a rider and stumbling
+under weight, it was useless to think of it.</p>
+<p>With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop
+slid a tired leg over the horse and came heavily
+to the ground.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have done well, boy, you shall have your
+chance,&rdquo; he said, as he hurried to loosen the heavy
+saddle and slip the bridle.</p>
+<p>He looked again. There was no chance. The
+square of fire was closed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We stay together, then.&rdquo; And the Bishop
+mounted again.</p>
+<p>Within the four walls of breathing death that
+were now closing around them there was one
+slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>
+No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe
+of life. Still it was to be played with to the
+last. For that again is the law, applying equally
+to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things
+that ran through the grass by his horse&rsquo;s feet.</p>
+<p>One fire was burning behind the other. There
+was just a possibility that a place might be found
+where the first fire would have burned away a
+breathing place before the other fire came up to
+it. It might be possible to live in that place until
+the second fire, finding nothing to eat, should
+die. It might be possible. Thinking of this, the
+Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the
+west.</p>
+<p>Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden,
+thought of death. How should a bishop die?
+He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But
+there seemed to be nothing in those passages that
+bore on the matter immediately in hand.</p>
+<p>Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid,
+guessed that he would die very much as
+another man would die, with his rosary in his
+hand.</p>
+<p>But was there not a certain ignominy in being
+trapped here as the dumb and senseless brute creatures
+were being trapped? For the life of him,
+the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the
+matter or the manner of the thing than he could
+see heroism.</p>
+<p>He had come out on a bootless errand, to save
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>
+the lives of certain men, if it might be. God had
+not seen wisdom in his plan. That was all. He
+had meant well. God meant better.</p>
+<p>Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl
+broke insistently with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere
+neighed to his horse, and the Bishop realised
+with a start of horror that a woman was here
+in this square of fire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you, Bishop, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; the voice cried
+frantically. &ldquo;I thought I&rsquo;d never find you.
+Over here to the right. Let your horse come.
+He&rsquo;ll follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks,&rdquo; she
+yelled back over her shoulder, &ldquo;we can make them
+yet! There&rsquo;s nothing there to burn. We may
+smother. But we won&rsquo;t <i>burn</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse
+taken swiftly under command. It was Ruth
+Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to
+think how she had gotten into this fortress of
+death. His horse followed Brom Bones through
+a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck path of
+loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get
+a fair breath or any knowledge of where he was
+going, he found himself on the top of what seemed
+to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.</p>
+<p>They stopped, and Ruth was already down and
+talking soothingly to Brom Bones when the Bishop
+got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he
+saw that they were on a plateau of rock at least
+several acres in extent and perhaps a hundred feet
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+above the ground about them. Looking down he
+saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot
+of the rocks below. They had not been an instant
+too soon. As he turned to speak to the
+girl, his eye was caught by something that ran
+out of one of the lines of fire. It ran and fell
+headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it
+stirred and began crawling up the rocks.</p>
+<p>It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands
+and knees up the side of the refuge. The Bishop
+went down a little to help. As the two came
+slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there
+waiting. The Bishop brought the man to his feet
+and stood there holding him in the light. The
+face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond
+any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed
+figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe Gadbeau.</p>
+<p>The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop&rsquo;s
+arms for a moment, then crumpled down inert.
+The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck
+and holding the head of what he was quick to fear
+was a dying man.</p>
+<p>The man&rsquo;s eyes opened and in the strong light
+he evidently recognised the Bishop&rsquo;s grimy collar,
+for out of his cracked and swollen lips there came
+the moan:</p>
+<p><i>&ldquo;Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</i></p>
+<p>With a start, Ruth recognised the words.
+They were the form in which the French people
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>
+began the telling of their sins in confession. And
+she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.</p>
+<p>She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom
+Bones, thinking of Jeffrey Whiting. Here was
+one of the things that he did not like&ndash;&ndash;the Catholic
+Church always turning up in everything.</p>
+<p>She wondered where he was and what he was
+doing and thinking, up there behind that awful
+veil of red.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+<a name='VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD' id='VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'></a>
+<h2>VI</h2>
+<h3>THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The Bishop laid the man&rsquo;s head back so that
+he lay as easy as it was possible and spoke a word
+or two in that astonishing French of his which
+was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the
+North Country.</p>
+<p>But for a long time the man seemed unable to
+go farther. He saw the Bishop slip the little
+pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know
+what it was and what it was for. The swollen
+lips, however, only continued to mumble the words
+with which they had begun:</p>
+<p><i>&ldquo;Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse</i>&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or
+better than he could speak French. But there
+are times when a man reverts to the tongue of his
+mother. And confession, especially in the face
+of death, is one of these.</p>
+<p>Again the Bishop lowered the man&rsquo;s head and
+changed the position of the body, while he fanned
+what air there was across the gasping mouth with
+his hat.</p>
+<p>Now the man tried to gather his straying wits
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+to him. With a sharp effort that seemed to send
+a tremor through his whole long body he forced
+his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered
+word of encouragement from the Bishop,
+he began hoarsely that precise, recitative form of
+confession that the good priests of Lower Canada
+have been drilling into the children for the last
+three hundred years.</p>
+<p>Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed
+way it worked easily, mechanically.
+Since five years he had not confessed. At that
+time he had received the Sacrament. He went
+through the &ldquo;table of sins&rdquo; with the methodical
+care of a man who knows that if he misses a step
+in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the
+story of the young men of his people in the hills,
+in the lumber camps, in the sawmills, in the
+towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill
+country would have told the same story, of hard
+work and anger and fighting in the camps, of
+drink and debauch in the towns when they went
+down to spend their money; and would have told
+it in exactly the same way. The Bishop had
+heard the story ten thousand times.</p>
+<p>But now&ndash;&ndash;<i>Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse</i>&ndash;&ndash;there
+was something more, something that would not
+fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day.
+It had begun a long time ago and it was just coming
+to an end here at the feet of the Bishop.
+Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+the Bishop had found blood caked on the man&rsquo;s
+shirt, in the back, just below the shoulder blade.
+There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a
+wound from which ordinarily the man would have
+fallen and stayed lying where he fell.</p>
+<p>He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards,
+as it unrolled itself to his mind.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I die, Mon Pere, I die,&rdquo; he began between
+gasps. &ldquo;I die. Since the afternoon I have been
+dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down,
+if I could have had two minutes free from the
+fire, I would have lain down to die. But shall a
+man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All day I have run from the fire. I could
+not lie down to die till I had found a free place
+where my soul could breathe out. Here I
+breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes
+and the deer ran out from the fire, and they ran
+no faster than I ran. But I could not run out of
+its way. All day long men followed the line of
+the fire and fought around its edge. They fought
+the fire, but they hunted me. All the day long
+they hunted me and drove me always back into the
+fire when I would run out.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They hunted me because in the early morning
+they had seen me with the men who set the
+fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand
+to the fire. Why was I with those men? Why
+did I go with them when they went to set the fire?
+Ah, that is a longer tale.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in
+a drinking place. All were drinking. There was
+a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow.
+<i>Mon Pere</i>, I struck no blow. But my knife&ndash;&ndash;my
+knife was found in the man&rsquo;s heart. Who
+struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad
+that comes now into the hills found my knife.
+He traced it to me. He showed the knife to me.
+It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no
+word to the law. With the knife he could hang
+me. But he said no word. Only to me he said,
+&lsquo;Some day I may need you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Last winter that man the detective came into
+the hills. Now he was not a detective. He was
+Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He
+would buy the land from the people.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The people would not sell. You know of
+the matter. In June he came again. He was
+angry, because other men above him were angry.
+He must force the people to sell. He must trick
+the people. He saw me. &lsquo;You,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I
+need you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, that man owned me. On the
+point of my knife, like a pinch of salt, he held my
+life. Never a moment when I could say, I will
+do this, I will do that. Always I must do his
+bidding. For him I lied to my own people. For
+him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed
+the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told.
+He called and I came. He bade me do and I did.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;M&rsquo;sieur does not know the sin of hate. It
+is the wild beast of all sins. And fear, too, that
+is the father of sin. For fear begets hate. And
+hate goes raging to do all sin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before
+my eyes was always the face of this man,
+threatening with that knife of mine.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yesterday, in the morning came a message
+that I must meet him at the railroad. He would
+come to the end of the rail and we would go up
+into the high hills. I knew what was to be done.
+To myself, I rebelled. I would not go. I swore
+I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved me,
+begged me not to go. To her I swore I would
+not go.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I went. Fear, <i>Mon Pere</i>, fear is the father
+of all. I went because there was that knife before
+my eyes. I believe that good girl followed
+into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me
+back at the last moment. I do not know.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I went because I must go. I must be there
+in case any one should see. If any of us that went
+was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be
+seen. I must be known to have been there. If
+any one was to be punished, I was that one.
+Rogers must be free, do you see. I would have
+to take the blame. I would not dare to
+speak.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain.
+We were seven. And of the seven I alone
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+was to take the blame. They would swear it upon
+me. I knew.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the
+reach of his tongue. And his speech was, &lsquo;You
+owe me this. Now you must pay.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the first light the torches were got ready.
+We scattered along the fringe of the highest trees.
+Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went
+out into the clearing. Then he came running
+back. He had seen other men watching for us.
+I ran a little way. He came running behind with
+a lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled
+to me to light my torch. Again I ran, deeper
+into the wood. Again he came after me, the red
+flare of the fire running after him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the
+wood! The red rush of fire in the air! The red
+flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate!
+Fire!&rdquo; With a terrible convulsion the man drew
+himself up in the Bishop&rsquo;s arms, gazing wildly at
+the fire all about them, and screaming:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot
+Rogers when he stopped!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He fell back as the scream died in his throat.</p>
+<p>The Bishop began the words of the Absolution.
+Some whisper of the well-remembered sound must
+have reached down to the soul of Rafe Gadbeau
+in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously,
+his lips began to form the words of the Act of
+Contrition.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span></div>
+<p>As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran
+through the body in his arms. He knelt there
+holding the empty shell of a man.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away,
+resting against the flank of her horse, had time to
+be awed and subdued by the terrific forces of this
+world and the other that were at work about her.
+This world, with the exception of this little island
+on which she stood, was on fire. The wind had
+almost entirely died out. On every side the flames
+rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance,
+place, all were blotted out. There was no
+east, no west; no north, no south. Only an impenetrable
+ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only
+these few bare rocks and this inverted bowl of
+lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out of which she must
+get the breath of life.</p>
+<p>Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst,
+just as she had seen a rabbit and a belated woodchuck
+bursting. And that man had lain himself
+down to die. And here, of all places, he had
+found the hand of the mighty, the omnipresent
+Catholic Church reached out ready to him!</p>
+<p>She was only a young girl. But since that night
+when the Bishop had come to her as she held her
+father dying in her arms she had thought much.
+Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had
+pressed themselves in upon her mind. The things
+that she had been hearing and reading since her
+childhood, the thoughts of the people among
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>
+whom she had grown up, the feeling of loyalty to
+her own kind, all these had fought in her against
+the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged
+them all.</p>
+<p>Because she had so recently come under its influence,
+the Catholic Church seemed ever to be unfolding
+new wonders to her. It seemed as though
+she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another
+more wonderful, more awesome. Yet always
+there seemed to be something just beyond,
+some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which
+she could not quite attain. Always a door opened,
+only to disclose another closed door beyond it.</p>
+<p>Here surely she stood as near to naked truth
+as it was possible to get. Here were none of the
+forms of words, none of the explanations, none
+of the ready-made answers of the catechism.
+Here were just two men. One was a bad man,
+a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few moments
+his soul must go&ndash;&ndash;somewhere. The other
+was a good man. To-day he had risked his life
+to save the lives of this man and others&ndash;&ndash;for
+Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been
+caught in the fire because other men were chasing
+him.</p>
+<p>Now these two men had a question to settle between
+them. In a very few minutes these two
+men must settle whether this bad man&rsquo;s soul was
+presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity.
+You see, she was a very direct young
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span>
+person. She took her religion at its word,
+straight in the eyes, literally.</p>
+<p>So far she had not needed to take any precautions
+against hearing anything that was said. The
+dull roar of the fire all about them effectually
+silenced every other sound. Then, without warning,
+high above the noise of the fire, came the
+shrill, breaking voice of Gadbeau, screaming:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot
+Rogers as he stopped!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Involuntarily she turned and started towards
+the men. Gadbeau had fallen back in the
+Bishop&rsquo;s arms and the Bishop was leaning over,
+apparently talking to him. She knew that she
+must not go near until the Bishop gave her leave.
+She turned back and putting her hands up to her
+ears buried her face in Brom Bones&rsquo; mane.</p>
+<p>But she could not put away the words that she
+had heard. Never, so long as she lived, was she
+able to forget them. Like the flash of the shot
+itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves
+there. Years afterwards she could shut
+her eyes and fairly see those words burning in her
+mind.</p>
+<p>When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and
+she went over timidly. She heard the Bishop say:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the
+light of the flames, the Prayers for the Departed.
+Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and among
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>
+the Mysteries she wept gently&ndash;&ndash;why, she knew
+not.</p>
+<p>When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while
+in silence, looking into the face of the dead.
+Then he arose and folded the long arms on the
+tattered breast and straightened the body.</p>
+<p>Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way.
+Once, twice she opened her lips to speak. But
+she did not know what to say or how to say it.
+Finally she began:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bishop, I&ndash;&ndash;I heard&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, child. You heard nothing,&rdquo; the Bishop
+interrupted quietly, &ldquo;nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth understood. And for a little space the
+two stood there looking down. The dead man&rsquo;s
+secret lay between them, buried under God&rsquo;s awful
+seal.</p>
+<p>The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping
+Father Brady&rsquo;s storm coat which he had brought
+wrapped it gently over the head and body of the
+dead man as a protection from the showers of
+glowing cinders that rained down upon everything.</p>
+<p>Then they took up the interminable vigil of the
+night, standing at their horses&rsquo; heads, their faces
+buried in the manes, their arms thrown over the
+horses&rsquo; eyes.</p>
+<p>As the night wore on the fire, having consumed
+everything to the east and south, moved on deliberately
+into the west and north. But the sharp,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span>
+acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still
+kept them in exquisite, blinded torture.</p>
+<p>The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost
+to black as the fires to the east died almost out in
+that last, lifeless hour of the night. The light
+of the morning showed a faint, sickly white
+through the smoke banks on the high hills. When
+it was time for the sun to be rising over Bald
+Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting
+the heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead
+and away into the west. They saw the
+world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a
+land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and
+here and there a great tree still standing smoking
+like a burnt-out torch.</p>
+<p>They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at
+the figure of the man lying there on his rocky
+bier, picked their way down to the sloping hillside.
+The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives.
+Now they must reach Little Tupper and water if
+they would have their horses live. Intolerable,
+frightful thirst was already swelling their own
+lips and they knew that the plight of the horses
+was inevitably worse.</p>
+<p>Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country.
+They must travel circuitously, avoiding the places
+that had been wooded for the fallen trees would
+still be burning and would block them everywhere.
+The road was impossible because it had
+largely run through wooded places and the trees
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>
+would have fallen across it. Their situation was
+not desperate, but at any moment a horse might
+drop or turn mad for water.</p>
+<p>For two hours they plodded steadily over the
+hills through the hot, loose-lying ashes. In all the
+world it seemed that not man nor beast nor bird
+was alive. The top of the earth was one grey
+ruin, draped with the little sworls of dust and
+ashes that the playful wind sent drifting up into
+their mouths and eyes.</p>
+<p>They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the
+ashes had blown level over holes and traps of all
+sorts in which a galloping horse would surely break
+his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the
+horses to any rapid expenditure of energy. The
+little that was left in them must be doled out to the
+very last ounce. For they did not yet know what
+lay between them and French Village and the lake.
+If the fire had not reached the lake during the
+night then it was always a possibility that, with
+this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring
+up from the ashes of the old and place an impassable
+barrier between them and the water.</p>
+<p>When this thought came to them, as it must,
+they involuntarily quickened their pace. The impulse
+was to make one wild dash for the lake.
+But they knew that it would be nothing short of
+madness. They must go slowly and carefully, enduring
+the torture with what fortitude they could.</p>
+<p>The story which the Bishop had heard from the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+lips of the dying man had stirred him profoundly.
+He now knew definitely, what yesterday he had
+suspected, that men had been sent into the hills
+by the railroad people to set fire to the forests,
+thereby driving the people out of that part of the
+country which the railroad wished to possess. He
+was moved to anger by the knowledge, but he
+knew that he must try to drive that knowledge
+back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try
+to hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded
+moment, some time of stress and mental
+conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture
+or even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness
+of that knowledge. Now he knew that
+the situation which last night he had thought to
+meet in French Village would almost certainly
+confront him there this morning, if indeed he ever
+succeeded in reaching there. And he must be
+doubly on his guard lest the things which he might
+learn to-day should in his mind confuse themselves
+with what he had last night learned under the seal
+of the confessional.</p>
+<p>Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been
+hearing the words of that last cry of the dying
+man. She did not know how near they came to
+her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had
+stood with his gun levelled upon the man whom
+Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she would to
+keep back the knowledge which she knew she must
+never under any circumstances reveal, those words
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+came ringing upon her ears. And she knew that
+the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.</p>
+<p>As they came over the last of the ridges, the
+grey waste of the country sloping from all sides to
+the lake lay open before them. There was not a
+ruin, not a standing stick to show them where
+little French Village had once stood along the
+lake. The fire had gone completely around the
+lake to the very water edge and a back draught
+had drawn it up in a circle around the east slope.
+There it had burned itself out along the forest
+line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward
+the west, burning its way down to the settled farm
+lands. But there would be no more fire in this
+region.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Would the people make their way down the
+river,&rdquo; the Bishop asked; &ldquo;or did they escape back
+into the higher hills?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think they did either,&rdquo; Ruth answered
+as she scanned the lake sharply. &ldquo;There is something
+out there in the middle of the lake, and I
+wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if they made rafts out of the
+logs and went through the fire that way. They&rsquo;d
+be better off than we were, and that way they
+could save some things. If they had run away
+they would have had to drop everything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake,
+pricked up their ears and started briskly down the
+slope. It was soon plain that Ruth was right in
+her conjecture. They could now make out five
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+or six large rafts which the people had evidently
+thrown together out of the logs that had been
+lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the sawmill.
+These were crowded with people, standing
+as they must have stood all through the night;
+and now the freshening wind, aided by such help
+as the people could give it with boards and poles,
+was moving all slowly toward the shore where
+their homes had been.</p>
+<p>The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he
+rode fetlock deep through the ashes of what had
+been the street of a happy little village and
+watched his people coming sadly back to land.
+There was nothing for them to come back to.
+They might as well have gone to the other side
+of the lake to begin life again. But they would
+inevitably, with that dumb loyalty to places, which
+people share with birds, come back and begin
+their nests over again.</p>
+<p>For nearly an hour they stood on the little
+beach, letting the horses drink a little now and
+then, and watching the approach of the rafts.
+When they came to the shallow water, men and
+boys jumped yelling from the rafts and came wading
+ashore. In a few moments the rafts were
+emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled
+who must be carried off.</p>
+<p>They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable
+Bishop and the girl with wonder and a little
+superstition, for it was plain that these two people
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+must have come straight through the fire. But
+when Father Ponfret came running forward and
+knelt at the Bishop&rsquo;s feet, a great glad cry of
+wondering recognition went up from all the French
+people. It was their Bishop! He who spoke
+the French of the most astonishing! His coming
+was a sign! A deliverance! They had come
+through horrors. Now all was well! The good
+God had hidden His face through the long night.
+Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger
+to say that all was well!</p>
+<p>Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of
+spirits that makes their race what it is, they threw
+themselves on their knees begging his blessing.
+The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand
+slowly. He was infinitely humbled by the quick,
+spontaneous outburst of their faith. He had done
+nothing for them; could do nothing for them.
+They were homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a
+stick of shelter. Yet it had needed but the sight
+of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded
+confidence that God was good, that the world was
+right again.</p>
+<p>The other people, the hill people of the Bishop&rsquo;s
+own blood and race, stood apart. They did not
+understand the scene. They were not a kind of
+people that could weep and laugh at once. But
+they were not unmoved. For years they had
+heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some two
+or three old men of them saw him now through
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>
+a mist of memory and battle smoke riding a mad
+horse across a field. They knew that this was the
+man. That he should appear out of the fire after
+the nightmare through which they had passed was
+not so much incredible as it was a part of the
+strange things that they had always half believed
+about him.</p>
+<p>Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues
+around the Bishop. Father Ponfret, a quick,
+eager little man of his people, would drag the
+Bishop&rsquo;s story from him by very force. Had he
+dropped from Heaven? How had he come to be
+in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the
+fire?</p>
+<p>The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the
+folly of his own imprudence, and how he had been
+saved from the consequences of it by the quickness
+and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret
+translated freely and with a fine flourish.
+Then the Bishop told of the coming of Rafe Gadbeau
+and how the man had died with the Sacrament.
+They nodded their heads in silence.
+There was nothing to be said. They knew who
+the man was. He had done wickedly. But the
+good God had stretched out the wing of His great
+Church over him at the last. Why say more?
+God was good. No?</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people,
+grouped on the outskirts of the crowd that pressed
+around the Bishop, answering their eager questions
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>
+and asking questions of her own. There was just
+one question that she wanted to ask, but something
+kept it back from her lips. There was no reason
+at all why she should not ask them about Jeffrey
+Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard
+news of him, must know in what direction he had
+gone to fight the fire. But some unnamed dread
+seemed to take possession of her so that she dared
+not put her crying question into words.</p>
+<p>Some one at her elbow, who had heard what
+the French people were saying, asked:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re sure that was Gadbeau that crawled
+out of the fire and died, Miss Lansing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was
+Gadbeau, certainly,&rdquo; Ruth answered without looking
+up.</p>
+<p>Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s two of &rsquo;em done for. That was
+Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting shot Rogers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He did not!&rdquo; Ruth blazed up in the young
+man&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Jeffrey Whiting did <i>not</i> shoot Rogers!
+Rafe&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The horror of the thing she had been about to
+do rushed upon her and blinded her. The blood
+came rushing up into her throat and brain, choking
+her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered.
+The young man, Perry Waite, caught her
+by the arm as she seemed about to fall. She
+struggled a moment for control of herself, then
+managed to gasp:</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing&ndash;&ndash; Let me go.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Perry Waite looked sharply into her face.
+Then he took his hand from her arm.</p>
+<p>Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped
+away and crowded herself in among the people
+who stood around the Bishop. Here no one
+would be likely to speak to her. And here, too,
+she felt a certain relief, a sense of security, in being
+surrounded by people who would understand.
+Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet
+the mere feeling that she stood among those who
+could have understood gave her strength and a
+feeling of safety even against herself which she
+could not have had among her own kind.</p>
+<p>But she was not long left with her feeling of
+security. A wan, grey-faced girl with burning
+eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and drew her
+out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal,
+though Ruth found it difficult to recognise in her
+the red-cheeked, sprightly French girl she had met
+in the early summer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You saw Rafe Gadbeau die,&rdquo; the girl said
+roughly, as she faced Ruth sharply at a little distance
+from the crowd. &ldquo;You were there, close?
+No?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, the fire was all around,&rdquo; Ruth answered,
+quaking.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did he die? Tell me. How?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why&ndash;&ndash;why, he died quickly, in the Bishop&rsquo;s
+arms.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I know. Yes. But how? He <i>confessed</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&ndash;&ndash;he went to confession, you mean.
+Yes, I think so.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; she persisted. &ldquo;I heard
+M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop. But did he <i>confess</i>&ndash;&ndash;about
+Rogers?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know
+I didn&rsquo;t hear anything. I couldn&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t say nothing, except in confession?&rdquo;
+the girl questioned swiftly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing at all,&rdquo; Ruth answered, relieved.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you heard?&rdquo; the girl returned shrewdly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know
+that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know you are lying,&rdquo; Cynthe said slowly.
+&ldquo;That is right. But I do not know. Will you
+always be able to lie? I do not know. You are
+Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not
+like one of us. Sometime you will forget. It is
+not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in us.
+Sometime when you are not thinking some one will
+ask you a question and you will start and your
+tongue will slip, or you will be silent&ndash;&ndash;and that
+will be just as bad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She
+dared not speak, did not even raise her eyes, for
+any assurance of silence or even a reassuring look
+to the girl would be an admission that she must not
+make.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did
+not hear a word! You cannot speak to me. But
+swear it to your soul,&rdquo; said the girl in a low, tense
+whisper; &ldquo;swear that you will never, sleeping or
+waking, laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let
+woman or man know that you heard. Swear it.
+And while you swear, remember.&rdquo; She drew
+Ruth close to her and almost hissed into her ear:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Remember&ndash;&ndash; You love Jeffrey Whiting!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She dropped Ruth&rsquo;s arm and turned quickly
+away.</p>
+<p>Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind
+lost in a whirl of fright and bewilderment. She
+did not know where to turn. She could not grapple
+with the racing thoughts that went hurtling
+through her mind.</p>
+<p>This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was
+half crazed with her love and her grief. And she
+was determined to protect his name from the dark
+blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is
+sometimes given to those beside themselves with
+some great grief or strain, the girl had seen Ruth&rsquo;s
+terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had
+plucked it out before Ruth&rsquo;s very eyes.</p>
+<p>The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened,
+thought Ruth. She had broken the seal of
+the confessional! She had been entrusted with
+the most terrible secret that a man could have to
+tell, under the most awful bond that God could put
+upon a secret. And the secret had escaped her!</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span></div>
+<p>She had said no word at all. But, just as surely
+as if she had repeated the cry of the dying man in
+the night, Ruth knew that the other girl had taken
+her secret from her.</p>
+<p>And with that same uncanny insight, too, the
+girl had looked into the future and had shown
+Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her.
+Nay, what a burden it was already becoming.
+For already she was afraid to speak to any one,
+afraid to go near any person that she had ever
+known.</p>
+<p>And that girl had stripped bare another of
+Ruth&rsquo;s secrets, one that had been hidden even
+from herself. She had said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Remember&ndash;&ndash; You love Jeffrey Whiting.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In ways, she had always loved him. But she
+now realised that she had never known what love
+was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up
+in the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to
+clutch and tear for the dead name of the man
+whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it
+was, and it came burning up in her heart to protect
+the dear name of her own beloved one, her man.
+Already men were putting the brand of Cain upon
+him! Already the word was running from mouth
+to mouth over the hills&ndash;&ndash; The word of blood!
+And with it ran the name of her love! Jeffrey,
+the boy she had loved since always, the man she
+would love forever!</p>
+<p>He would hear it from other mouths. But,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+oh! the cruel, unbearable taunt was that only two
+days ago he had heard it first from her own lips!
+Why? Why? How? How had she ever said
+such a thing? Ever thought of such a thing?</p>
+<p>But she could not speak as the French girl had
+spoken for her man. She could not swear the
+mouths to silence. She could not cry out the
+bursting, torturing truth that alone would close
+those mouths. No, not even to Jeffrey himself
+could she ever by word, or even by the faintest
+whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew
+more than his and other living mouths could tell
+her! Never would she be able to look into his
+eyes and say:</p>
+<p>I <i>know</i> you did not do it.</p>
+<p>Only in her most secret heart of hearts could
+she be glad that she knew. And even that knowledge
+was the sacred property of the dead man.
+It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of
+her mind. Love, horror, and the awful weight of
+God&rsquo;s seal pressed in upon her to crush her.
+There was no way to turn, no step to take. She
+could not meet them, could not cope with them.</p>
+<p>Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd
+and down to where Brom Bones stood by the lake.
+There the kindly French women found her, her
+face buried in the colt&rsquo;s mane, crying hysterically.
+They bathed her hands and face and soothed her,
+and when she was a little quieted they gave her
+drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>
+that she would need strength above all things,
+took what was given and silently faced the galling
+weight of the burden that was hers.</p>
+<p>The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole
+situation. The first thing to be decided was
+whether the people should try to hold out where
+they were or should attempt at once to walk out
+to the villages on the north or west. To the west
+it would mean forty miles of walking over ashes
+with hardly any way of carrying water. To the
+north it would mean a longer walk, but they could
+follow the river and have water at hand. The
+danger in that direction was that they might come
+into the path of a new fire that would cut them
+off from all help.</p>
+<p>Even if they did come out safe to the villages,
+what would they do there? They would be scattered,
+penniless, homeless. There was nothing
+left for them here but the places where their
+homes had been, but at least they would be together.
+The cataclysm through which they had
+all passed, which had brought the prosperous and
+the poverty-stricken alike to the common level of
+just a few meals away from starvation, would here
+bind them together and give them a common
+strength for a new grip on life. If there was
+food enough to carry them over the four or five
+days that would be required to get supplies up
+from Lowville or from the head of the new railroad,
+then they should stay here.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span></div>
+<p>The Bishop went swiftly among them, where
+already mothers were drawing family groups aside
+and parcelling out the doles of food. Already
+these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree
+and drawing around them and theirs the circle of
+the hearth, even though it was a circle drawn only
+in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor
+kindly of eye and understanding of heart,
+but by no means to be evaded. Unsuspected
+stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came
+forth from nondescript bundles of clothing and
+were laid under his eye. It appeared that Arsene
+LaComb had stayed in his little provision store
+until the last moment portioning out what was his
+with even hand, to each one as much as could be
+carried. The Bishop saw that it was all pitifully
+little for those who had lived in the village and
+for those refugees who had been driven in from
+the surrounding hills. But, he thought, it would
+do. These were people born to frugality, inured
+to scanty living.</p>
+<p>The thing now was to give them work for their
+hands, to put something before them that was to
+be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all
+things it is not well for men to sit down in the
+ashes and merely wait. They had no tools left
+but the axes which they had carried in their hands
+to the rafts, but with these they could hew some
+sort of shelter out of the loose logs in the lake.
+A rough shack of any kind would cover at least
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span>
+the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up
+or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at
+the outlet of the lake. It would be slow work and
+hard and a makeshift at the best. But it would
+put heart into them to see at least something, anything,
+begin to rise from the hopeless level of the
+ashes.</p>
+<p>Three of the hill men had managed to keep
+their horses by holding desperately to them all
+through the day before and swimming and wading
+them through the night in the lake. These
+the Bishop despatched to what, as near as he could
+judge, were the nearest points from which messages
+could be gotten to the world outside the
+burnt district. They bore orders to dealers in the
+nearest towns for all the things that were immediately
+necessary for the life and rebuilding of the
+little village. With the orders went the notes of
+hand of all the men gathered here who had had
+a standing of credit or whose names would mean
+anything to the dealers. And, since the world
+outside would well know that these men had now
+nothing that would make the notes worth while,
+each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of
+Alden. For the Bishop knew that there was no
+time to wait for charity and its tardy relief.
+Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone
+makes the life of the world go on, must be established
+at once. And it was characteristic of
+Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>
+penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he
+was signing obligations upon himself and his diocese.
+He was simply writing down his gospel
+of his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men.
+And it is a commentary upon that faith of his that
+he was never presented with a single one of the
+notes he signed that day.</p>
+<p>All the day long men toiled with heart and will,
+dragging logs and driftwood from the lake and
+cutting, splitting, shaping planks and joists for a
+shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and
+spikes from the ruins of what had been their
+homes. So that when night came down over the
+hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of
+women and children. And the light spirited,
+sanguine people raised cheer after cheer as their
+imagination leaped ahead to the new French Village
+that would rise glorious out of the ashes of
+the old. Then Father Ponfret, catching their
+mood, raised for them the hymn to the Good
+Saint Anne. They were all men from below
+Beaupre and from far Chicothomi where the Good
+Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had
+never been out of their childhood hearing. They
+sang it now, old and young, good and bad, their
+eyes filling with the quick-welling tears, their
+hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence
+on the lilt of the air. Even the Bishop, whose
+singing voice approached a scandal and whose
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>
+French has been spoken of before, joined in loud
+and unashamed.</p>
+<p>Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring
+in the twilight brooded them in to shelter
+from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing
+odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to
+talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the
+hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.</p>
+<p>Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very
+old man to-night, laid his head upon a saddle and
+a folded blanket and considered the Mysteries of
+God and His world, as the beads slipped through
+his fingers and unfolded their story to him.</p>
+<p>Two men were stumbling fearfully down
+through the ashes of the far slope to the lake.
+All day long they had lain on their faces in the
+grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The
+fire had gone on past them leaving them safe.
+But behind them rose tier upon tier of barren
+rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly
+of unknown country. They could not go that
+way. They were not, in fact, fit for travel in any
+direction. For all the day before they had run,
+dodging like hunted rats, between a line of fire&ndash;&ndash;of
+their own making&ndash;&ndash;before them, and a line of
+armed men behind them. They had outrun the
+fire and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun
+the men and escaped them. They were free
+of those two enemies. But a third enemy had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+run with them all through the day yesterday and
+had stayed with them through all the horror of
+last night and it had lain with them through all the
+blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable,
+scorching thirst, drying their bones, splitting
+their lips, bulging their eyes. And all day long,
+down there before their very eyes, taunting them,
+torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and
+sweet and deep and wide. It was worse than the
+mirage of any desert, for they knew that it was
+real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense
+of sight. They could perhaps have stood the torture
+of one sense. But this lake came up to them
+through all their senses. They could feel the air
+from it cool upon their brows. The wind brought
+the smell of water up to taunt their nostrils.
+And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy
+that they heard the lapping of the little waves
+against the rocks. This last they knew was an
+illusion. But, for the matter of that, all might
+as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their
+enemies who had yesterday chased them with
+death in their hearts, were scattered around the
+shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one
+who might come out of the fringe of shrub and
+grass beyond the line of the burnt ground. No
+living thing could move down that bare and
+whitened hillside toward the lake without being
+marked by those armed men. And, for these two
+men, to be seen meant to die.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span></div>
+<p>So they had lain all day on their faces and raved
+in their torture. Now when they saw the fires on
+the shore where French Village had been beginning
+to die down they were stumbling painfully
+and crazily down to the water.</p>
+<p>They threw themselves down heavily in the
+burnt grass at the edge of the lake and drank
+greedily, feverishly until they could drink no
+more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the
+grass and rested until they could return to drink.
+When they had fully slaked their thirst and rested
+to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they
+realised now that thirst was not the only thing in
+the world. It had taken up so much of their recent
+thought that they had forgotten everything
+else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came
+upon them and they knew that if they would live
+and travel&ndash;&ndash;and they must travel&ndash;&ndash;they would
+have to have food at once.</p>
+<p>Over there at the end of the lake where the
+cooking fires had now died out there were men
+lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There
+was food over there, food in plenty, food to be
+had for the taking! Now it did not seem that
+thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any
+great thing to be feared. Hunger was the only
+real enemy. Food was the one thing that they
+must have, before all else and in spite of all else.
+They would go over there and take the food in
+the face of all the world!</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span></div>
+<p>Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water
+side picking drowsily at a few wisps of half-burnt
+grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself.
+There was a great deal wrong with the world.
+He had not, it seemed, seen a spear of fresh grass
+for an age. And as for oats, he did not remember
+when he had had any. It was true that Ruth
+had dug up some baked potatoes out of a field for
+him and he had been glad to eat them, but&ndash;&ndash;Fresh
+grass! Or oats!</p>
+<p>Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his
+hobbles. It was nothing to be alarmed at, of
+course. But he did not like strange hands around
+him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and
+thought no more of the matter.</p>
+<p>A few moments later a man went running softly
+toward the horse. He carried a bundle of tinned
+meats and preserves slung in a coat. At peril of
+his life he had crept up and stolen them from the
+common pile that was stacked up at the very door
+of the shanty where the women and children
+slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom
+Bones&rsquo; bridle and tried to launch himself across
+the colt&rsquo;s back. In his leap a can of meat fell and
+a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom
+Bones&rsquo; hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.</p>
+<p>A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping
+a rifle and kicking the embers into a blaze.
+He saw the man struggling with the horse and
+fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>
+leaped and plunged head down towards the
+water, shot dead through his stout, faithful
+heart.</p>
+<p>In a moment twenty men were running into the
+dark, shouting and shooting at everything that
+seemed to move, while the women and children
+screamed and wailed their fright within the little
+building.</p>
+<p>The two men running with the food for which
+they had been willing to give their lives dropped
+flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men
+running wildly stumbled over them. They were
+quickly secured and hustled and kicked to their
+feet and brought back to the fire.</p>
+<p>They must die. And they must die now.
+They were in the hands of men whose homes they
+had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced
+with the most terrible of deaths; men who for
+thirty-six hours now had been thirsting to kill
+them. The hour had come.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Take them down to the gully. Build a fire
+and dig their graves.&rdquo; Old Erskine Beasley
+spoke the sentence.</p>
+<p>A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer.
+A cry that suggested the snapping of jaws
+let loose upon the prey.</p>
+<p>Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst
+of the crowd, laying hands upon the two cowering
+men, and spoke. A moment before he had
+caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+done. But he had cried to God against the sin
+that had whispered at his heart, and he spoke now
+calmly, as one assured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do we do wisely, men?&rdquo; he questioned.
+&ldquo;These men are guilty. We know that, for you
+saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just,
+for they planned what might have been death for
+you and yours. But shall only these two be punished?
+Are there not others? And if we silence
+these two now forever, how shall we be ever able
+to find the others?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll be sure of these two,&rdquo; said a sullen
+voice in the crowd.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; returned the Bishop, raising his voice.
+&ldquo;But I tell you there are others greater than any
+of these who have come into the hills risking their
+lives. How shall we find and punish those other
+greater ones? And I tell you further there is one,
+for it is always one in the end. I tell you there is
+one man walking the world to-night without a
+thought of danger or disgrace from whose single
+mind came all this trouble upon us. That one
+man we must find. And I pledge you, my friends
+and my neighbours,&rdquo; he went on raising his hand,
+&ldquo;I pledge you that that one man will be found
+and that he will do right by you.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Before these men die, bring a justice&ndash;&ndash;there
+is one of the village&ndash;&ndash;and let them confess before
+the world and to him on paper what they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>
+know of this crime and of those who commanded
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A grudging silence was the only answer, but the
+Bishop had won for the time. Old Toussaint
+Derossier, the village justice, was brought forward,
+fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers,
+and made to sit upon an up-turned bucket with a
+slab across his knee and write in his long hand of
+the <i>rue Henri</i> the story that the men told.</p>
+<p>They were ready to tell. They were eager to
+spin out every detail of all they knew for they felt
+that men stood around them impatient for the
+ending of the story, that they might go on with
+their task.</p>
+<p>The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet
+to come. He must save these men, not only because
+it was his duty as a citizen and a Christian
+and a priest, but because he foresaw that his
+friend, Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused
+of the killing of a certain man, and that these
+men might in that day be able to tell something of
+that story which he himself could but must not
+tell.</p>
+<p>The temper of the crowd was perhaps running
+a little lower when the story of the men was
+finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure
+that he could hold them back from their purpose.
+Nevertheless he spoke simply and with a determination
+that was not to be mistaken. At the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span>
+first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry
+out their intention, he said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall
+not, I say. Shall not. I will prevent. I will
+put this old body of mine between. You shall
+not move these men from this spot. And if they
+are shot, then the bullets must pass through me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will call this thing justice. But you know
+in your hearts it is just one thing&ndash;&ndash;Revenge.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What business is it of yours?&rdquo; came an angry
+voice out of the crowd.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is <i>not</i> my business,&rdquo; said the Bishop solemnly.
+&ldquo;It is the business of God. Of your
+God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest?
+Have I no right to speak God&rsquo;s name to you, because
+we do not believe all the same things? My
+business is with the souls of men&ndash;&ndash;of all men.
+And never in my life have I so attended to my own
+business as I am doing this minute, when I say to
+you in the name of God, of the God of my fathers
+and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder
+upon your souls this night. Have you wives?
+Have you mothers? Have you sweethearts?
+Can you go back to them with blood upon your
+hands and say: A man warned us, but he had no
+<i>business</i>!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear
+not. Justice shall be done. And you will see
+right in the end. As you believe in your God,
+oh! believe me now! You shall see right!&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span></div>
+<p>The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw
+it in the faces of the men about him. God had
+spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his
+feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was
+glad.</p>
+<p>He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over
+them.</p>
+<p>Then he went down near to the lake where a
+girl kneeling beside her dead pet wept wildly.
+The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done
+his noble part in saving the life of Joseph
+Winthrop, Bishop of Alden. But that Bishop of
+Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful
+words, had now no word that he could dare to
+say in comfort to this grief.</p>
+<p>He covered his face and turned, walking away
+through the ashes into the dark. And as he
+walked, fingering his beads, he again considered
+the things of God and His world.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+<a name='VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL' id='VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL'></a>
+<h2>VII</h2>
+<h3>THE INNER CITADEL</h3>
+</div>
+<p>&ldquo;And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to
+prove to your absolute satisfaction that this defendant,
+Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and with
+prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the
+morning of August twentieth last. I shall not
+only prove to you the existence of a long-standing
+hatred harboured by this defendant against the
+murdered man, but I will show to you a direct motive
+for the crime. And I shall not only prove
+circumstantially to you that he and no other could
+have done the deed but I shall also convict him out
+of the unwilling mouths of his friends and neighbours
+who were, to all intents and purposes, actual
+eye-witnesses of the crime.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette
+County the District Attorney of the county was
+opening the case for the State against Jeffrey
+Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers,
+who had died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau
+that grim morning on the side of Bald Mountain.</p>
+<p>From early morning the streets of Danton, the
+little county seat of Racquette County, had been
+filled with the wagons and horses of the hill people
+who had come down for this, the second day
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+of the trial. Yesterday the jury had been selected.
+They were all men of the villages and of
+the one little city of Racquette County, men whose
+lives or property had never been endangered by
+forest fires. Judge Leslie in questioning them and
+in ruling their selection had made it plain that the
+circumstances surrounding the killing of the man
+Rogers must have no weight in their minds.
+They must be prepared to judge the guilt or innocence
+of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder
+itself, with no regard for what rumour might
+say the victim had been doing at the time.</p>
+<p>For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the
+man had been killed just a mile or so within the
+line of Racquette County. Only a little of the extreme
+southeastern corner of that county had been
+burned over in the recent fire and in general it had
+meant very little to these people. In Tupper
+County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which
+had suffered terribly from the fire it should have
+been nearly impossible to select a jury which would
+have been willing to convict the slayer of Rogers
+under the circumstances. But to the people of
+the villages of Racquette County the matter did
+not come home. They only knew that a man had
+been killed up the corner of the county. A forest
+fire had started at about the same time and place.
+But few people had any clear version of the story.
+And there seemed to be little doubt as to the identity
+of the slayer.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span></div>
+<p>There was another and far more potent reason
+why it was unfortunate for Jeffrey Whiting that
+Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of
+Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the
+bench was the same man who only a few weeks
+before had pleaded so unctuously before the Senate
+committee for the rights of the downtrodden U.
+&amp; M. Railroad against the lawless people of the
+hills. He had given the District Attorney every
+possible assistance toward the selection of a jury
+who would be at least thoughtful of the interests
+of the railroad. For this was not merely a murder
+trial. It was the case of the people of the
+hills against the U. &amp; M. Railroad.</p>
+<p>Racquette County was a &ldquo;railroad&rdquo; county.
+The life of every one of its rising villages depended
+absolutely upon the good will of the railroad
+system that had spread itself beneficently
+over the county and that had given it a prosperity
+beyond that of any other county of the North.
+Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad,
+and it was not in the disposition or the plans
+of the railroad to leave the county in a position
+where it might forget the debt. So the railroad
+saw to it that only men personally known to its
+officials should have public office in the county.
+It had put this judge upon this bench. And the
+railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid
+him well for the very timely and valuable services
+which he was able to render it.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span></div>
+<p>The grip which the railroad corporation had
+upon the life of Racquette County was so complex
+and varied that it extended to every money-making
+affair in the community. It was an intangible
+but impenetrable mesh of interests and influences
+that extended in every direction and crossed and
+intercrossed so that no man could tell where it
+ended. But all men could surely tell that these
+lines of influence ran from all ends of the county
+into the hand of the attorney for the railroad in
+Alden and that from his hand they passed on into
+the hands of the single great man in New York
+whose money and brain dominated the whole
+transportation business of the State. All men
+knew, too, that those lines passed through the
+Capitol at Albany and that no man there, from
+the Executive down to the youngest page in the
+legislative corridors, was entirely immune from
+their influence.</p>
+<p>Now the U. &amp; M. Railroad had been openly
+charged with having procured the setting of the
+fire that had left five hundred hill people homeless
+in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would,
+of course, be impossible to bring the railroad to
+trial on such a charge in any county of the State.
+The company had really nothing to fear in the way
+of criminal prosecution. But the matter had
+touched the temper and roused the suspicions of
+the great, headless body called the public. The
+railroad felt that it must not be silent under even
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span>
+a muttered and vague charge of such nature. It
+must strike first, and in a spectacular manner. It
+must divert the public mind by a counter charge.</p>
+<p>Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes
+of the fire, the Grand Jury of Racquette County
+had been prepared to find an indictment against
+Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers.
+They had found that Samuel Rogers was an agent
+of the railroad engaged upon a peaceable and lawful
+journey through the hills in the interests of his
+company. He had been found shot through the
+back of the head and the circumstances surrounding
+his death were of such a nature and disposition
+as to warrant the finding of a bill against the
+young man who for months had been leading a
+stubborn fight against the railroad.</p>
+<p>The case had been advanced over all others on
+the calendar in Judge Leslie&rsquo;s court, for the railroad
+was determined to occupy the mind of the
+public with this case until the people should have
+had time to forget the sensation of the fire. The
+mind at the head of the railroad&rsquo;s affairs argued
+that the mind of the public could hold only one
+thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put
+this murder case into that mind and keep it there
+until some new thing should arise.</p>
+<p>The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had
+been brought to trial; the well-oiled smoothness
+with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had
+done its work, and the efficient way in which judge
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+and prosecuting attorney had worked together for
+the selection of what was patently a &ldquo;railroad&rdquo;
+jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident
+power was moving its forces to an assured and
+definite end. This judge and this jury would
+allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in
+the way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the
+man had been caught in the act of setting fire to the
+forests, if the Judge allowed it to appear in the
+record at all, would not stand with the jury as
+justification, or even extenuation of the deed of
+murder charged. The fate of the accused must
+hang solely on the question of fact, whether or
+not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other
+question would be allowed to enter.</p>
+<p>And on that question it seemed that the minds
+of all men were already made up. The prisoner&rsquo;s
+friends and associates in the hills had been at first
+loud in their commendation of the act which they
+had no doubt was his. Now, though they talked
+less and less, they still did not deny their belief.
+It was known that they had congratulated him on
+the very scene of the murder. What room was
+there in the mind of any one for doubt as to the
+actual facts of the killing? And since his conviction
+or acquittal must hinge on that single question,
+what room was there to hope for his acquittal?</p>
+<p>The hill people had come down from their
+ruined homes, where they had been working night
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+and day to put a roof over their families before
+the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen
+and nervous. They had no doubt whatever
+that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and they
+had been forced to come down here to tell what
+they knew&ndash;&ndash;every word of which would count
+against them. They had come down determined
+that he should not suffer for his act, which had
+been done, as it were, in the name of all of them.
+But the rapid certainty in which the machinery
+of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved
+them. There was nothing for them to do, it
+seemed, but to sit there, idle and glum, waiting
+for the end.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the
+opening arraignment by the District Attorney.
+He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of
+circumstances which had begun to wrap itself
+around him that morning on Bald Mountain had
+never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold
+upon him. He had followed his friends that day
+and all of that night and had reached Lowville
+early the next day. He had found his mother
+there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom,
+but had been horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing
+had turned back into the face of the fire in an effort
+to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No
+word had been had of either of them. He had
+told his mother exactly what had happened in the
+hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span>
+had wished to do so. But another had fired before
+he did. He had not, in fact, used his gun at
+all. She had believed him implicitly, of course.
+Why should she not? If he had actually shot the
+man he would have told her that just as exactly
+and truthfully. But Jeffrey was aware that she
+was the only person who did or would believe him.</p>
+<p>He was just on the point of mounting one of his
+mother&rsquo;s horses, to go up into the lower hills in
+the hope of finding Ruth wandering somewhere,
+when he was placed under arrest for the murder of
+Rogers. The two men who had escaped down
+the line of the chain had gotten quickly to a telegraph
+line and had made their report. The railroad
+people had taken their decision and had acted
+on the instant. The warrant was ready and waiting
+for Jeffrey before he even reached Lowville.</p>
+<p>When he had been taken out of his own county
+and brought before the Grand Jury in Racquette
+County, he realised that any hope he might have
+had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was
+thereby lost. Unless he could find and actually
+produce that other man, whoever he was, who had
+fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless.
+His own friends who had been there at hand
+would not believe his oath.</p>
+<p>His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in
+the front seats just to the right of him. From time
+to time he turned to smile reassuringly at them
+with a confidence that he was far from feeling.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+His mother smiled back through glistening grey
+eyes, all the while marking with a twinge at her
+heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep
+into the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she
+was thinking of the morning, just a few months
+ago when her little boy, suddenly and unaccountably
+grown to the size of a tall man, had been
+obliged to lift up her face to kiss her. He was
+going down into the big world, to conquer it and
+bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness
+of everything but his own plans of conquest,
+which is at once the pride and the heart-stab
+of every mother with her man child, he had kissed
+her and told her the old, old lie that we all have
+told&ndash;&ndash;that he would be back in a little while, that
+all would be the same again. And she had smiled
+up into his face and had compounded the lie with
+him.</p>
+<p>Then in that very moment the man Rogers had
+come. And the mother heart in her was not
+gentle at the thought of him. He had come like
+a trail of evil across their lives, embittering the
+hearts of all of them. Never since she had seen
+him had she slept a good night. Never had she
+been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of
+him. Even now, the thought of him lying in an
+unhonoured grave among the ashes of the hills
+could not soften her heart toward him. The
+gentle, kindly heart of her was very near to hating
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+even the dead as she thought of her boy brought
+to this pass because of that man.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail
+in Danton with his mother to see Jeffrey. They
+had not been left alone, but she had clung to him
+and kissed him boldly as though by her right before
+all men. The first time he had watched her
+sharply, looking almost savagely to see her shrink
+away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as
+he had seen men who had been his friends shrink
+away from him. But there had been not a shadow
+of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he
+remembered how she had walked unafraid into
+his arms, looking him squarely and bravely in the
+eyes and crying to him to forget the foolish words
+that she had said to him that last day in the hills.
+In that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into
+her eyes and had seen there not the love of the
+little girl that he had known but the unbounded
+love and confidence of the woman who would give
+herself to him for life or death. He had seen
+it; the look of all the women of earth who love,
+whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying
+pity, whose hands are fashioned for the healing of
+torn hearts.</p>
+<p>It was only when she had gone, and when he in
+the loneliness of his cell was reliving the hour,
+that he remembered that she had scarcely listened
+to his story of the morning in the hills. Of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>
+course, she had heard his story from his mother
+and was probably already so familiar with it that
+it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not
+like Ruth. She was always a direct little person,
+who wanted to know the exact how and why of
+everything first hand. She would not have been
+satisfied with anybody&rsquo;s telling of the matter but
+his own.</p>
+<p>Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind
+and struck at his heart. Could it be that she had
+over-acted it all? Could it be that she had
+brushed aside his story because she really did not
+believe it and could not listen to it without betraying
+her doubt? And had she blinded him
+with her pity? Had she acted all&ndash;&ndash;!</p>
+<p>He threw himself down on his cot and writhed
+in blind despair. Might not even his mother have
+deceived him! Might not she too have been acting!
+What did he care now for name or liberty,
+or life itself! The girl had mocked him with
+what he thought was love, when it was only&ndash;&ndash;!</p>
+<p>But his good sense brought him back and set
+him on his feet. Ruth was no actress. And if
+she had been the greatest actress the world had
+ever seen she could not have acted that flooding
+love light into her eyes.</p>
+<p>He threw back his head, laughing softly, and
+began to pace his cell rapidly. There was some
+other explanation. Either she had deliberately
+put his story aside in order to keep the whole of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+their little time together entirely to themselves, or
+Ruth knew something that made his story unimportant.</p>
+<p>She had been through the fire herself. Both
+she and the Bishop must have gone straight
+through it from their home in its front line to the
+rear of it at French Village. How, no one could
+tell. Jeffrey had heard wild tales of the exploit&ndash;&ndash; The
+French people had made many
+wonders of the coming of these two to them in
+the hour of their deliverance, the one the Bishop
+of their souls, the other the young girl just baptised
+by Holy Church and but little differing from
+the angels.</p>
+<p>Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire
+might have revealed to one or both of these two
+as they went through it. Perhaps there were
+other men who had not been accounted for.
+Then he remembered Rafe Gadbeau. He had
+been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey
+at Rogers&rsquo; command. Might it not be that the
+bullet which killed Rogers was intended for
+Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in
+the line of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing
+him squarely and the bullet had struck Rogers
+fairly in the back of the head.</p>
+<p>Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed
+some sort of mysterious hold over Rafe
+Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding unwillingly,
+under a pressure of fear. What if
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+Gadbeau there under the excitement of the fire,
+and certain that another man would be charged
+with the killing, had decided that here was the
+time and place to rid himself of the man who had
+made him his slave!</p>
+<p>The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and,
+pacing his cell, stopping between mouthfuls of his
+food as he sat at the jail table, sitting up in his cot
+in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey caught
+at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact
+that would fit into the story as it must have happened.
+He wandered into many blind trails of
+theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he
+at last came upon the truth&ndash;&ndash;and stuck to it.</p>
+<p>Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had
+been caught in the fire and had almost burned to
+death. He had managed to reach the place where
+Ruth and the Bishop had found refuge. He had
+died there in their presence. He had confessed.
+The Catholics always told the truth when they
+were going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had
+heard him. Ruth <i>knew</i>. The Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>
+<p>When Ruth came again, he watched her closely;
+and saw&ndash;&ndash;just what he had expected to see.
+Ruth <i>knew</i>. It was not only her love and her
+confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering,
+torturing doubts that must sometimes, unbidden,
+rise to frighten even his mother. Ruth
+<i>knew</i>.</p>
+<p>That she should not tell him, or give him any
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>
+outward hint of what she was hiding in her mind,
+did not surprise him. It was a very serious matter
+this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter
+with anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man.
+Ruth would not speak unnecessarily of it. When
+the proper time came, and there was need, she
+would speak. For the present&ndash;&ndash;Ruth <i>knew</i>.
+That was enough.</p>
+<p>When the Bishop came down from Alden to see
+him, Jeffrey watched him as he had watched Ruth.
+He had never been very observant. He had
+never had more than a boy&rsquo;s careless indifference
+and disregard of details in his way of looking at
+men and things. But much thinking in the dark
+had now given him intuitions that were now sharp
+and sensitive as those of a woman. He was
+quick to know that the grip of the Bishop&rsquo;s hand
+on his, the look of the Bishop&rsquo;s eye into his, were
+not those of a man who had been obliged to fight
+against doubts in order to keep his faith in him.
+That grip and that look were not those of a man
+who wished to believe, who tried to believe, who
+told himself and was obliged to keep on telling
+himself that he believed in spite of all. No.
+Those were the grip and the look of a man who
+<i>knew</i>. The Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>
+<p>It was even easier to understand the Bishop&rsquo;s
+silence than it had been to see why Ruth might not
+speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an
+official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>
+He must not speak of such things without a very
+serious cause. But, of course, there was nothing
+in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent
+man. Of course, when the time and the need
+came, the Bishop would speak.</p>
+<p>So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of
+fact and deduction. So he had watched and discovered
+and reasoned and debated with himself.
+He had not, of course, said a word of these things
+to any one. The result was that, while he listened
+to the plans which his lawyer, young Emmet
+Dardis, laid for his defence&ndash;&ndash;plans which, in
+the face of the incontestable facts which would be
+brought against them, would certainly amount to
+little or nothing&ndash;&ndash;he really paid little attention
+to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of
+the things his heart felt, he had built up around
+himself an inner citadel, as it were, of defence
+which no attack could shake. He had come to
+feel, had made himself feel, that his life and his
+name were absolutely safe in the keeping of these
+two people&ndash;&ndash;the one a girl who loved him and
+who would give her life for him, and the other a
+true friend, a man of God, a true man. He had
+nothing to fear. When the time came these two
+would speak. It was true that he was outwardly
+depressed by the concise and bitter conviction in
+the words of the prosecuting attorney. For
+Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes
+the most terrible of criminal prosecutors&ndash;&ndash;an
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+honest, narrow man who was always absolutely
+convinced of the guilt of the accused from the
+moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly
+he had no fear.</p>
+<p>The weight of evidence that would be brought
+against him, the fact that his own best friends
+would be obliged to give their oaths against him,
+the very feeling of being accused and of having
+to scheme and plan to prove his innocence to a
+world that&ndash;&ndash;except here and there&ndash;&ndash;cared not
+a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these
+things bowed his head and brought his eyes down
+to the floor. But they could not touch that inner
+wall that he had built around himself. Ruth
+<i>knew</i>; the Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>
+<p>The rasping speech of the prosecutor was
+finished at last.</p>
+<p>Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.</p>
+<p>The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in
+hand at once for though he had been called as a
+witness for the prosecution it was well known
+that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney
+had made no attempt to school him beforehand,
+and he was determined now to allow him
+to give only direct answers to the questions put to
+him.</p>
+<p>Two or three times the old man attempted to
+explain, at the end of an answer, just why he had
+gone up into the high hills the night before the
+twentieth of August&ndash;&ndash;that he had heard that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>
+Rogers and a band of men had gone into the
+woods to start fires. But he was ordered to stop,
+and these parts of his answers were kept out of the
+record. Finally he was rebuked savagely by the
+Judge and ordered to confine himself to answering
+the lawyer&rsquo;s questions, on pain of being arrested
+for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding
+that showed the temper and the intention of the
+Judge and a stir of protest ran around the courtroom.
+But old Erskine Beasley was quelled.
+He gave only the answers that the prosecutor
+forced from him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you hear a shot fired?&rdquo; he was asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you hear two shots fired?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you see Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s gun?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you examine it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Had it been fired off?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Excused,&rdquo; snapped the prosecutor. And the
+old man, almost in tears, came down from the
+stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers
+had made the most damaging sort of evidence.</p>
+<p>Then the prosecutor went back in the story to
+establish a motive. He called several witnesses
+who had been agents of the railroad and associated
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>
+in one way or another with the murdered
+man in his efforts to get options on the farm lands
+in the hills. Even these witnesses, though they
+were ready to give details and opinions which
+might have been favorable to his side of the case,
+he held down strictly to answering with a word
+his own carefully thought out questions.</p>
+<p>With these answers the prosecutor built up a
+solid continuity of cause and effect from the day
+when Rogers had first come into the hills to offer
+Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself
+right up to the moment when the two had faced
+each other that morning on Bald Mountain.</p>
+<p>He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to
+undermine and oppose Rogers&rsquo; work from the
+first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of
+a family well known and trusted in the hills. The
+young man had been quick to grasp the situation
+and to believe that he could keep the people from
+dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers&rsquo; work would
+then be a failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then
+be pointed to as the only man who could get the
+options from the people. They would sell or
+hold out at his word. The railroad would have
+to deal with him direct, and at his terms.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from
+many of the owners that they would not sell or
+even sign any paper until such time as he gave
+them the word. Did those promises bind the
+people to him? They did. Did they have the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>
+same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained
+actual options on the property? Yes. Would
+the people stand by their promises? Yes. Then
+Whiting had actually been obtaining what were
+really options to himself, while pretending to hold
+the people back in their own interest? Yes.</p>
+<p>The prosecutor went on to draw out answer
+after answer tending to show that it was not really
+a conflict between the people and the railroad
+that had been making trouble in the hills all summer;
+that it was, in fact, merely a personal struggle
+for influence and gain between Jeffrey Whiting
+and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully
+done and drawn out with all the exaggerated
+effect of truth which bald negative and affirmative
+answers invariably carry.</p>
+<p>He went on to show that a bitter hatred had
+grown up between the two men. Rogers had been
+accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the
+way at a time in the early summer when many of
+the people about French Village had been prepared
+to sign Rogers&rsquo; options. Rogers had been
+obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account
+of Whiting&rsquo;s anger. He had not returned to the
+hills until the day before he was killed.</p>
+<p>The people in the hills had talked freely of
+what had happened on Bald Mountain on the
+morning of August twentieth and in the hills during
+the afternoon and night preceding. The
+prosecutor knew the incidents and knew what men
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>
+had said to each other. He now called Myron
+Stocking.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon
+of August nineteenth?&rdquo; was the question.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I went lookin&rsquo; for him, to tell&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Answer, yes or no?&rdquo; shouted the attorney.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the witness admitted sullenly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you tell him that Rogers was in the
+hills?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He followed me,&rdquo; the witness began. But
+the Judge rapped warningly and the attorney
+yelled:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes or no?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you see Rogers in the morning?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, he was settin&rsquo; fire to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; The Judge
+hammering furiously with his gavel drowned his
+words. The attorney went on:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you hear a shot?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you hear two shots?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The fire&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;was making a lot of noise, he
+tried to say. But his voice was smothered by
+eruptions from the court and the attorney. He
+was finally obliged to say that he had heard but
+one shot. Then he was asked:</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;What did you say when you came up and saw
+the dead man?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;Mine got away, Jeff.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What else did you say?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the difference, any of us
+would&rsquo;ve done it if we had the chance.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whiting&rsquo;s gun had been fired?&rdquo; asked the attorney,
+working back.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One question more and I will excuse you,&rdquo;
+said the attorney, with a show of friendliness&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;I
+see it is hard for you to testify against your
+friend. Did you, standing there with the facts
+fresh before you, conclude that Jeffrey Whiting
+had fired the shot which killed Rogers?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that
+it was not proper, that the answer would not be
+evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply,
+reminding him that this witness had been called
+by the prosecution, that it was not the business of
+opposing counsel to protect him. The witness
+found himself forced to answer a simple yes.</p>
+<p>One by one the other men who had been present
+that fatal morning were called. Their answers
+were identical, and as each one was forced
+to give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning
+Jeffrey Whiting out of the mouths of his
+friends who had stood on the very ground of the
+murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for
+him was closing.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span></div>
+<p>On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do
+little with the witnesses. He was gruffly reminded
+by the Judge that the witnesses were not
+his, that he must not attempt to draw any fresh
+stories from them, that he might only examine
+them on the facts which they had stated to the
+District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had
+pinned his witnesses down absolutely to answers
+of known fact, there was really nothing in their
+testimony that could be attacked.</p>
+<p>With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet
+Dardis let the last witness go. The State
+promptly rested its case.</p>
+<p>Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised
+how pitifully inadequate their testimony
+would be when placed beside the chain of facts
+which the District Attorney had pieced together.
+They were in the main character witnesses, hardly
+more. They could tell only of their long acquaintance
+with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in
+him, of their firm faith that in holding the people
+back from giving the options to Rogers and the
+railroad he had been acting in absolute good faith
+and purely in the interests of the people. Not
+one of these men had been near the scene of the
+murder, for the railroad had planned its campaign
+comprehensively and had subp&oelig;naed for its
+side every man who could have had any direct
+knowledge of the events leading up to the tragedy.
+As line after line of their testimony was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>
+stricken from the record, as being irrelevant, it
+was seen that the defence had little or no case.
+Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single
+objections, made a general ruling that no testimony
+which did not tend to reveal the identity
+of the man who had shot Rogers could go into the
+record.</p>
+<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously
+watching the course of the trial. Beside
+him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village.
+The little French priest looked up from
+time to time and guardedly studied the long angular
+white head of his bishop as it towered above
+him. He did not know, but he could guess some
+of the struggle that was going on in the mind and
+the heart of the Bishop.</p>
+<p>The Bishop had come down to the trial to give
+what aid he could, in the way of showing his confidence
+and faith, to the case of the boy who stood
+in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he
+had first heard of Jeffrey&rsquo;s arrest, he had not
+thought it possible that, even had he been guilty
+of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be convicted
+under such circumstances. Men must see
+that the act was in defence of life and property.
+But as he listened to the progress of the trial he
+realised sadly that he had very much underestimated
+the seriousness of the railroad people in the
+matter and the hold which they had upon the machinery
+of justice in Racquette County.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span></div>
+<p>He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and
+tell the reason why Jeffrey Whiting had entered
+into this fight against the railroad. He would associate
+himself and his own good name with the
+things that Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the
+two might stand before men together. But he
+now saw that it would be of no avail. His words
+would be swept aside as irrelevant.</p>
+<p>One thing and only one thing would now avail
+Jeffrey Whiting. This morning on his arrival in
+Danton, the Bishop had been angered at learning
+that the two men whose lives he had
+saved that night by the lake at French Village
+had escaped from the train as they were being
+brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at
+this trial.</p>
+<p>Whether they could have told anything of value
+to Jeffrey Whiting was not known. Certainly
+they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the
+connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop
+had their confession in his pocket at this minute,
+but there was nothing in it concerning the murder.
+He had intended to read it into the record of the
+trial. He saw that he would not be allowed to
+do so.</p>
+<p>One thing and only one thing would now avail
+Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey Whiting would be condemned
+to death, unless, within the hour, a man
+or woman should rise up in this room and swear:
+Jeffrey Whiting did not kill Samuel Rogers.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>
+Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or&ndash;&ndash;He
+told me so.</p>
+<p>The Bishop remembered how that day last winter
+he had set the boy upon this course which had
+brought him here into this court and into the
+shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey
+Whiting had actually fired the shot that had cut
+off a human life, would not he, Joseph, Bishop of
+Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility?
+He would.</p>
+<p>And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of
+his own, but through a chain of circumstances,
+stood now in danger of death, was not he, Joseph
+Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst
+of these circumstances, in a way responsible? He
+was.</p>
+<p>Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this
+court and saying: &ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau killed Samuel
+Rogers&ndash;&ndash;He told me so&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;could he thus
+save Jeffrey Whiting from a felon&rsquo;s fate? He
+could. Nine words, no more, would do.</p>
+<p>And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and
+did not do what was necessary&ndash;&ndash;did not speak
+those nine words&ndash;&ndash;would he, Joseph Winthrop,
+be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment
+and ruin of Jeffrey Whiting? He
+would.</p>
+<p>Then what would Joseph Winthrop do?
+Would he speak those nine words? He would
+not.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span></div>
+<p>There was no claim of life or death that had
+the force to break the seal and let those nine words
+escape his lips.</p>
+<p>There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision
+in the Bishop&rsquo;s mind as he sat there waiting for
+his name to be called. He loved the boy who sat
+there in the prisoner&rsquo;s stand before him. He felt
+responsible for him and the situation in which he
+was. He cared nothing for the dead man or the
+dead man&rsquo;s secret, as such. Yet he would go
+up there and defy the law of humanity and the
+law of men, because he was bound by the law that
+is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal salvation
+of men&rsquo;s souls.</p>
+<p>But there was no reasoning, no weighing of
+the issue in his mind. His course was fixed by the
+eternal Institution of God. There was nothing
+to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was
+caught between the greater and the lesser law and
+he could only stand and be ground between the
+working of the two.</p>
+<p>If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty
+God had ordained the salvation of men
+through the confession of sin. Therefore the salvation
+of men depended on the inviolability of the
+seal of the confessional. But he did not reason.
+He merely sat through his torture, waiting.</p>
+<p>When his name was called, he walked heavily
+forward and took his place standing beside the
+chair that was set for him.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span></div>
+<p>At Dardis&rsquo; question, the Bishop began to speak
+freely and rapidly. He told of the coming of
+Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated
+what he had said to the boy, and from that point
+went on to sketch the things that had been happening
+in the hills. He wanted to get clearly before
+the minds of the jurymen the fact that he
+had advised and directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything
+that the boy had done.</p>
+<p>The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy
+to the Bishop. But he saw that he must
+stop him. His story could not but have a powerful
+effect upon even this jury. Looking past the
+Bishop and addressing Dardis, he said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is this testimony pertinent?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is, if Your Honor pardon me,&rdquo; said
+the Bishop, turning quickly. &ldquo;It goes to prove
+that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed
+the crime charged, any more than I could have
+done so.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully
+the logic or the legal phraseology of his answer.
+He hurried on with his story to the jury. He
+related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting.
+He told of his ride into the hills. He told
+of the capture of the two men in the night at
+French Village. They should be here now as
+witnesses. They had escaped. But he held in his
+hand a written confession, written and sealed by a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>
+justice of the peace, made by the two men. He
+would read this to the jury.</p>
+<p>He began reading rapidly. But before he had
+gotten much past the opening sentences, the Judge
+saw that this would not do. It was the story of
+the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in
+court.</p>
+<p>He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when
+the Bishop stopped, he asked:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned
+in that paper?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, Your Honor. But there are&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is irrelevant,&rdquo; interrupted the Judge
+shortly. &ldquo;It cannot go before the jury.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do
+no more.</p>
+<p>Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not
+the slightest hope for his client&ndash;&ndash;unless&ndash;&ndash;unless.
+He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession
+to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask
+the Bishop this morning, if there was not some
+way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The
+Bishop stood waiting for his further questions.
+There might be some way or some help, thought
+Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was
+not a part of the real confession. He said
+quickly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;What did he say to you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair,
+his eyes eager and confident. His heart shouting
+that here was his deliverance. Here was the
+hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!</p>
+<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s eyes fell upon the prisoner for
+an instant. Then he looked full into the eyes of
+his questioner and he answered:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That will do. Thank you, Bishop,&rdquo; said
+Dardis in a low, broken voice.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The
+light of confidence died slowly, reluctantly out of
+his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop
+had <i>lied</i>! He <i>knew</i>! And he had <i>lied</i>!</p>
+<p>As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat,
+Ruth Lansing saw the terrible suffering of the
+spirit reflected in his face. If she were questioned
+about that night, she must do as he had done.</p>
+<p>Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must
+I do that? <i>Can</i> I do that?</p>
+<p>Oh! She had never thought it would come to
+this. How <i>could</i> it happen like this! How could
+any one think that she would ever stand like this,
+alone in all the world, with the fate of her love
+in her hands, and not be able to speak the few
+little words that would save him to her and life!</p>
+<p>She <i>would</i> save him! She <i>would</i> speak the
+words! What did she care for that wicked man
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span>
+who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?
+Why should she keep a secret of his? One night
+in the early summer she had lain all through the
+night in the woods outside a cabin and wished
+for a way to kill that man. Why should she
+guard a secret that was no good to him or to any
+one now?</p>
+<p>Who was it that said she must not speak?
+The Catholic Church. Then she would be a Catholic
+no longer. She would renounce it this minute.
+She had never promised anything like this.
+But, on the instant, she knew that that would not
+free her. She knew that she could throw off the
+outward garment of the Church, but still she
+would not be free to speak the words. The
+Church itself could not free her from the seal of
+the secret. What use, then, to fly from the
+Church, to throw off the Church, when the bands
+of silence would still lie mighty and unbreakable
+across her lips.</p>
+<p>That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up
+before her, and what she saw held her.</p>
+<p>What she saw was not merely a church giving
+a sacrament. It was not the dramatic falling of
+a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not a
+poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his
+crime in the agony and fear of death.</p>
+<p>What she saw was a world, herself standing all
+alone in it. What she saw was the soul of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+world giving up its sin into the scale of God from
+which&ndash;&ndash;Heart break or world burn!&ndash;&ndash;that sin
+must never be disturbed.</p>
+<p>As she went slowly across the front of the room
+in answer to her name, a girl came out of one of
+the aisles and stood almost in her path. Ruth
+looked up and found herself staring dully into
+the fierce, piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She
+saw the look in those eyes which she had recognised
+for the first time that day at French Village&ndash;&ndash;the
+terrible mother-hunger look of love,
+ready to die for its own. And though the girl
+said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:
+Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.</p>
+<p>How well that girl knew!</p>
+<p>Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a
+point which he had not been able to correct in the
+testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he had
+dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to
+the Bishop, he had become more desperate, and
+bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was always
+a chance that the dying man had said something
+to her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon
+when word was brought to him that suspicious
+men had been seen in the hills?&rdquo; he
+asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either
+Stocking or Whiting?&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then he flashed the question upon her:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was
+dying?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve.
+The impact of the sudden, startling question leaping
+upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to
+what followed. For, in answer to the question,
+there came a scream, a terrified, agonised scream,
+mingled of fright and remorse and&ndash;&ndash;relief. A
+scream out of the fire. A scream from death.
+<i>On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers
+as he stood.</i></p>
+<p>Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling.
+Again the inner citadel of his hope stood
+strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the
+word that would free him! Her love would set
+him free! It was the time. Ruth <i>knew</i>. He
+would rather have it this way. He was almost
+glad that the Bishop had lied. Ruth <i>knew</i>.
+Ruth would speak.</p>
+<p>The words of that terrible scream went searing
+through Ruth&rsquo;s brain and down into the very
+roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout
+them out to the ends of the earth!</p>
+<p>But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear
+voice answered:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of
+the stand.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span></div>
+<p>Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.</p>
+<p><i>Ruth</i> had <i>lied</i>!</p>
+<p>The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and
+crushed him.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+<a name='VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I' id='VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I'></a>
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+<h3>SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse
+and turned up the street toward the little
+church. He had not been the same man since his
+experience of those two terrible nights in the
+hills. They had aged him and shaken him visibly.
+But those nights of suffering and superhuman effort
+had only attacked him physically. They had
+broken the spring of his step and had drawn
+heavily upon the vigour and the vital reserves
+which his years of simple living had left stored
+up in him. He had fought with fire. He had
+looked death in the face. He had roused his soul
+to master the passions of men. No man who has
+already reached almost the full allotted span of
+life may do these things without showing the outward
+effects of them. But these things had struck
+only at the clay of the body. They had not
+touched the quick spirit of the man within.</p>
+<p>The trial through which he had passed to-day
+had cut deep into the spiritual fibre of his being.
+If Joseph Winthrop had been given the alternative
+of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he
+would have offered the few years that might be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+his, without question or halting. For he was a
+man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled
+or thought of taking back any of the things which
+he had given to Christ. Thirty years ago he had
+made his compact with the Master, and he had
+never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts
+on a stole to receive the secret of another&rsquo;s soul
+he puts his life in pledge for the sanctity of that
+secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by
+any perplexities or confusion.</p>
+<p>Never had he thought of the alternative which
+had this day been forced upon him. Years ago
+he had given his own life entire to Christ. The
+snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces
+farther on would be a matter of no more moment
+than the length of a thread. This world had
+nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from
+him. But to guard his secret at the cost of another
+life, and that a young, vigorous, battling
+life full of future and promise, full of youth and
+the glory of living, the life of a boy he loved&ndash;&ndash;that
+was another matter. Never had he reckoned
+with a thing such as that. Life had always been
+so direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To
+think right, to do right, to serve God; these things
+had always seemed very simple. But the thing
+that he had done to-day was breaking his heart.
+He could not have done otherwise. He had been
+given no choice, to be sure.</p>
+<p>But was it possible that God would have allowed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>
+things to come to that issue, if somewhere,
+at some turn in that line of circumstances which
+had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not
+done a wrong? It did not seem possible. Somewhere
+he had done wrong or he had done foolishly&ndash;&ndash;and,
+where men go to direct the lives of
+others, to do unwisely is much the same as to do
+wickedly.</p>
+<p>What use to go over the things that he had
+done, the things that he had advised? What use
+to say, here he had done his best, there he thought
+only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere
+he had spoken foolishly, or he had been headstrong
+in his interference, or he had acted without
+thought and prayer. What use to go over the
+record? He could only carry this matter to God
+and let Him see his heart.</p>
+<p>He stumbled in the half light of the darkened
+little church and sank heavily into the last pew.
+Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart he
+cried out from afar to the Presence on the little
+altar, where he, Bishop of Alden, had often
+spoken with much authority.</p>
+<p>When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up
+into the witness stand she sank down quietly into
+a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the other
+girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes.
+She hung upon every fleeting wave of the contending
+emotions that showed themselves on Ruth&rsquo;s
+face. She was convinced that this girl knew that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of
+Samuel Rogers and that Jeffrey Whiting was innocent.
+She had not thought that Ruth would be
+called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only
+decided upon it at the last moment.</p>
+<p>Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to
+hating this girl, for she had seen Rafe Gadbeau
+leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very long
+time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon
+talking gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe
+Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing left of
+him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory.
+But that memory was as much to her as was
+the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this other girl. She
+was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be?
+What would that girl do? If the question was not
+asked directly, it was not likely that the girl would
+tell what she knew. She would not wish to tell.
+She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the
+question came to her of a sudden, without warning,
+without time for thought? What then?
+Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny
+and to keep on denying?</p>
+<p>Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic.
+But she was a convert. She did not know the
+terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it
+who had been born to the Faith.</p>
+<p>Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from
+this trial. She knew it was no place for her to
+carry the awful secret that she had hidden away
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>
+in her heart. No matter how deeply she might
+have it hidden, the fear hung over her that men
+would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint might
+be enough to set some on the search for it and
+she had had a superstition that it was a secret of a
+nature that it could not be hidden forever. Some
+day some one would tear it from her heart. She
+knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton
+during these days when the hill people were
+talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers and
+hunting for any possible fact that might make
+Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s story believable. But she had
+been drawn irresistibly to the trial and had sat all
+day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly,
+avidly to every word that was said, waiting to
+hear, and praying against hearing the name of
+the man she had loved. The idea of protecting
+his name and his memory from the blight of his
+deed had become more than a religion, more than
+a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own
+thought and life but it seemed even to take up that
+great void in her world which Rafe Gadbeau had
+filled.</p>
+<p>When she had heard his name mentioned in that
+sudden questioning of the Bishop, she had almost
+jumped from her seat to cry out to him that he
+must know nothing. But that was foolish, she
+reflected. They might as well have asked the
+stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell Rafe
+Gadbeau&rsquo;s secret as to ask it from the Bishop.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span></div>
+<p>But this girl was different. You could not tell
+what she might do under the test. If she stood
+the test, if she kept the seal unbroken upon her
+lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for
+life. She would love that girl, she would fetch
+for her, work for her, die for her!</p>
+<p>When that point-blank question came leaping
+upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose
+to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer
+and blurt out something that would give them
+a chance to ask her further questions. But when
+she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she
+saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she
+saw the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light
+broke in upon the heart of Cynthe Cardinal.
+Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could
+not know what love was! Here was a woman,
+a sister woman, who could suffer, who for the sake
+of one greater thing could trample her love under
+foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one
+steady word&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened
+heart could not look at the torture of the other
+girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself
+at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering
+down from the stand and implore her pardon.
+She wanted to cry out to her that she must
+tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth
+all this! For Cynthe Cardinal knew that truth
+bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the
+street.</p>
+<p>She had seen the Bishop come direct from the
+little church to the court. And as she watched
+his face when he came down from the stand, she
+knew instinctively that he was going back there.
+Cynthe understood. Even M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop
+who was so wise and strong, he was troubled. He
+thought much of the young Whiting. He would
+have business with God.</p>
+<p>She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the
+church and saw the Bishop kneeling there at the
+end of the pew, bowed and broken.</p>
+<p>He was first aware of her when he heard a
+frightened, hurrying whisper at his elbow. Some
+one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:</p>
+<p><i>Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse.</i></p>
+<p>The ritual would have told him to rise and go to
+the confessional. But here was a soul that was
+pouring its secret out to him in a torrential rush of
+words and sobs that would not wait for ritual.
+The Bishop listened without raising his head. He
+had neither the will nor the power to break in upon
+that cruel story that had been torturing its keeper
+night and day. He knew that it was true, knew
+what the end of it would be. But still he must be
+careful to give no word that would show that he
+knew what was coming. The French of the hills
+and of Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but
+it was easy to follow the thread of the story.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span>
+When she had finished and was weeping quietly,
+the Bishop prompted gently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And now? my daughter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And now, <i>Mon Pere</i>, must I tell? I would
+not tell. I loved Rafe Gadbeau. As long as I
+shall live I shall love him. For his good name
+I would die. But I cannot see the suffering of
+that girl, Ruth. <i>Mon Pere</i>, it is too much! I
+cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before
+men and call my love a murderer. Consider,
+<i>Mon Pere</i>. There is another way. I, too, am
+guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I
+would have killed him myself, for he had made
+Rafe Gadbeau do many things that he would not
+have done. He made my love a murderer. I
+went to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of
+the fire. But I would have killed that man myself
+with the gun if I could. So I hated him.
+When I saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee.
+See, <i>Mon Pere</i>, I am guilty. And I called joyfully
+to my love to run with me and save himself,
+for he was now free from that man forever. But
+he ran in the path of the fire because he feared
+those other men.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But see, <i>Mon Pere</i>, I am guilty. I will go
+and tell the court that I am the guilty one. I will
+say that my hand shot that man. See, I will tell
+the story. I have told it many times to myself.
+Such a straight story I shall tell. And they will
+believe. I will make them believe. And they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>
+will not hurt a girl much,&rdquo; she said, dropping back
+upon her native shrewdness to strengthen her plea.
+&ldquo;The railroad does not care who killed Rogers.
+They want only to punish the young Whiting.
+And the court will believe, as I shall tell it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But, my daughter,&rdquo; said the Bishop, temporising.
+&ldquo;It would not be true. We must not lie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop, himself,&rdquo; the girl
+argued swiftly, evidently separating the priest in
+the confessional from the great bishop in his public
+walk, &ldquo;he himself, on the stand&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl stopped abruptly.</p>
+<p>The Bishop held the silence of the grave.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i> will make me tell, then&ndash;&ndash;the
+truth,&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, I cannot!
+I&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let us consider,&rdquo; the Bishop broke in deliberately.
+&ldquo;Suppose he had told this thing to you
+when he was dying. You would have said to him:
+Your soul may not rest if you leave another to
+suffer for your deed. Would he not have told
+you to tell and clear the other man?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To escape Hell,&rdquo; said the girl quickly, &ldquo;yes.
+He would have said: Tell everything; tell anything!&rdquo;
+In the desolate forlornness of her grief
+she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as
+he was, she had known the man, good and bad,
+brave and cowardly&ndash;&ndash;and had loved him.
+Would always love him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We will not speak of Hell,&rdquo; said the Bishop
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+gently. &ldquo;In that hour he would have seen the
+right. He would have told you to tell.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he confessed to M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop himself,&rdquo;
+she retorted quickly, still seeming to forget
+that she was talking to the prelate in person, but
+springing the trap of her quick wit and sound
+Moral Theology back upon him with a vengeance,
+&ldquo;and he gave <i>him</i> no leave to speak.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous
+ground.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him,
+my daughter?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, with the bones of my hands!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Consider, then, he is not now the man that
+you knew. The man who was blind and walked
+in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where
+a great light shines about him. He knows now
+that which he did not know here&ndash;&ndash;Truth.
+He sees the things which here he did not see. He
+stands alone in the great open space of the Beyond.
+He looks up to God and cries: <i>Seigneur
+Dieu</i>, whither go I?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate,
+standing in the open place. Would he come
+back to the world?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And he answers: &lsquo;No, my God; but I have
+left a debt behind and another man&rsquo;s life stands
+in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward with
+that debt unpaid.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then God: &lsquo;And is there none to cancel the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+debt? Is there not one in all that world who
+loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none
+loved you who will pay the debt?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And he will answer with a lifted heart: &lsquo;My
+God, yes; there was one, a girl; in spite of me, she
+loved me; she will make the debt right; only because
+she loved me may I be saved; she will speak
+and the debt will be right; my God, let me go.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s French was sometimes wonderfully
+and fearfully put together. But the girl
+saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to
+her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with
+almost a little break of joy among the tears. For
+she saw the man, whom she had loved in spite of
+what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and
+sins of life. And her love leaped up quickly to
+the ideal and the illusions that every woman craves
+for and clings to.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; the Bishop was going on quietly, &ldquo;is
+the new man we are to consider; the one who
+stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not
+hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he
+care for the opinions or the words that are said
+here? See, he stands in the great open space,
+all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God
+and tell Him all. Will you be afraid to stand in
+the court and tell these people, who do not matter
+at all?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It
+is not for the sake of Ruth Lansing. It is because
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>
+the man you loved calls back to you, from
+where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom
+he has now learned tells him must be done.
+He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He
+would have you tell.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, I will tell the tale,&rdquo; said the girl
+simply as she rose from her knees. &ldquo;I will go
+quickly, while I have yet the courage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel
+rooms in the courthouse and sent for Dardis.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This girl,&rdquo; he told the lawyer, &ldquo;has a story
+to tell. I think you would do wisely to put her
+on the stand and let her tell it in her own way.
+She will make no mistakes. They will not be able
+to break her down.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then the Bishop went back to take up again his
+business with God.</p>
+<p>As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey
+Whiting had been put upon the stand in his own
+defence. There was nothing he could tell which
+the jurors had not already heard in one form or
+another. Everybody had heard what he had said
+that morning on Bald Mountain. He had not
+been believed even then, by men who had never
+had a reason to doubt his simple word. There
+was little likelihood that he would be believed here
+now by these jurors, whose minds were already
+fixed by the facts and the half truths which they
+had been hearing. But there was some hope that
+his youth and the manly sincerity with which he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+clung to his simple story might have some effect.
+It might be that a single man on that jury would
+be so struck with his single sturdy tale that he
+would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You
+could never tell what might strike a man on a jury.
+So Dardis argued.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel
+wished him to tell his story he would do so. It
+would not matter. His own friends did not believe
+his story. Nobody believed it. Two people
+<i>knew</i> that it was true. And those two people
+had stood up there upon the stand and sworn that
+they did not know. One of them was a good man,
+a man of God, a man he would have trusted with
+every dear thing that life held. That man had
+stood up there and lied. The other was a girl
+whom he loved, and who, he was sure, loved him.</p>
+<p>It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie&ndash;&ndash;or
+maybe she did not consider it a lie: he had seen
+her suffer terribly in the telling of it. He was
+beginning to feel that he did not care much what
+was the outcome of the trial. Life was a good
+thing, it was true. And death, or a life of death,
+as a murderer, was worse than twenty common
+deaths. But that had all dropped into the background.
+Only one big thing stood before him.
+It laid hold upon him and shook him and took
+from him his interest in every other fact in the
+world.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>
+never before in her life told a lie. Why should
+she have ever told a lie. She had never had reason
+to fear any one; and they only lie who fear.
+He would have said that the fear of death could
+not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she had
+stood up there and lied.</p>
+<p>For what? For a church. For a religion to
+which she had foolishly given herself. For that
+she had given up him. For that she had given up
+her conscience. For that she had given up her
+own truth!</p>
+<p>It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and
+listened to it.</p>
+<p>He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer
+to a question which meant life or death to
+him. She had known that. She could not have
+escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was
+no way in which she could have fooled herself or
+been persuaded into believing that she was not
+lying or that she was not taking from him his last
+hope of life.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason
+with the fact. What was the use? It was the
+end of all things. He merely sat and gazed
+dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole
+mental vision.</p>
+<p>He went forward to the witness chair and stood
+woodenly until some one told him to be seated.
+He answered the questions put him automatically,
+without looking either at the questioner or at the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>
+jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who
+had been watching the alert, keen-faced boy all day
+yesterday and through to-day wondered what had
+happened to him. Was he breaking down?
+Would he confess? Or had he merely ceased
+hoping and turned sullen and dumb?</p>
+<p>Without any trace of emotion or interest, he
+told how he had raced forward, charging upon the
+man who was setting the fire. He looked vacantly
+at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of
+his words stricken out which told what the man
+was doing. He showed no resentment, no feeling
+of any kind. He related how the man had run
+away from him, trailing the torch through the
+brush, and again he did not seem to notice the
+Judge&rsquo;s anger in cautioning him not to mention
+the fire again.</p>
+<p>At his counsel&rsquo;s direction, he went through a
+lifeless pantomime of falling upon one knee and
+pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now the
+man turned and faced him. Then he heard the
+shot which killed Rogers come from the woods.
+He dropped his own rifle and went forward to
+look at the dying man. He picked up the torch
+and threw it away.</p>
+<p>Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time
+the Judge did not rule out the word.) Then his
+rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet going
+just past his ear. The charge had scorched his
+neck. It was a simple story. The thing <i>might</i>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>
+have happened. It was entirely credible. There
+were no contradictions in it. But the manner of
+Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of
+reality. It was not the manner of a man telling
+one of the most stirring things of his life. He
+was not telling what he saw and remembered and
+felt and was now living through. Rather, he
+seemed to be going over a wearying, many-times-told
+tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A
+sleeping man might have told it so. The jury
+was left entirely unconvinced, though puzzled by
+the manner of the recital.</p>
+<p>Even Lemuel Squires&rsquo; harping cross questions
+did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story
+that he had told. At each question he went back
+to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully
+and evenly without any thought of what the District
+Attorney was trying to make him say. He
+was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of
+the story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid
+wonder at the horrible fact that Ruth Lansing had
+lied his life away at the word of her church.</p>
+<p>When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure
+where he was again the prisoner, he sat
+down heavily to wait for the end of this wholly
+irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness
+was called. He did not know that there was another.
+He had expected that Squires would begin
+his speech at once.</p>
+<p>He noticed that this witness was a girl from
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span>
+French Village whom he had seen several times.
+Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s
+girl. What did they bring her here for? She
+could not know anything, and why did they want
+to pester the poor thing? Didn&rsquo;t the poor little
+thing look sorry and troubled enough without
+fetching her down here to bring it all up to her?
+He roused himself to look reassuringly at the girl,
+as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not
+matter anyway, that he knew she could not help
+him, and that she must not let them hurt her.</p>
+<p>Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure
+Cynthe against interruptions from the prosecutor
+or the Judge, had told her to say nothing about
+fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers
+and nothing else. So when, after she had been
+sworn, he told her to relate the things that led up
+to the killing, she began at the very beginning:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Four years ago,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau
+was in Utica. A man was killed in a crowd.
+His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe
+Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn
+to me that he did not know who had done it. But
+a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife
+and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest
+him. No, he kept the knife, saying that some day
+he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the price
+of his silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Last summer this man Rogers came into the
+woods looking for some one to help get the people
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He
+showed him the knife. He told him that whatever
+he laid upon him to do, that he must do. He
+made him lie to the people. He made him attack
+the young Whiting. He made him do many
+things that he would not do, for Rafe Gadbeau
+was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And
+Rafe Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear
+that this man had put upon him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;At times he said to me, &lsquo;Cynthe, I will kill
+this man one day, and that will be the end of all.&rsquo;
+But I said, &lsquo;<i>Non, non, mon Rafe</i>, we will marry in
+the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will
+never see you again, and we will not know that he
+ever lived.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was
+telling over to herself the tragedy of her little life
+and her great love. Genius could not have told
+her how better to tell it for the purpose for which
+her story was here needed. Dardis thanked his
+stars that he had taken the Bishop&rsquo;s advice, to let
+her get through with it in her own way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it was not time for us to marry yet,&rdquo; she
+went on. &ldquo;Then came the morning of the nineteenth
+August. I was sitting on the back steps
+of my aunt&rsquo;s house by the Little Tupper, putting
+apples on a string to hang up in the hot sun to
+dry.&rdquo; The Judge turned impatiently on his bench
+and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and
+her eyes blazed angrily at him. Who was he to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+shrug his shoulders! Was it not important, this
+story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter
+the Judge gave her the most rigid attention.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps
+at my feet. I saw that he was troubled. &lsquo;What
+is it, <i>mon Rafe</i>?&rsquo; I asked. He groaned and said
+one bad word. Then he told me that he had just
+had a message from Rogers to meet him at the
+head of the rail with three men and six horses.
+&lsquo;What to do, <i>mon Rafe</i>?&rsquo; &lsquo;I do not know,&rsquo; he
+said, &lsquo;though I can guess. But I will not tell you,
+Cynthe.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You will not go, <i>mon Rafe</i>. Promise me
+you will not go. Hide away, and we will slip
+down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married&ndash;&ndash;me,
+I do not care for the grand wedding in the
+church here&ndash;&ndash;and then we will get away to
+Beaupre. Promise me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;<i>Bien</i>, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to
+him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it was a man&rsquo;s promise. I knew he would
+go in the end.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I watched and followed. I did not know
+what I could do. But I followed, hoping that
+somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done
+what they intended and we could run away together
+with clean hands.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When I saw that they had gone toward the
+railroad I turned aside and climbed up to the Bald
+Mountain. I knew they would all come back
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span>
+there together. I waited until it was dark and
+they came. They would do nothing in the night.
+I waited for the morning. Then I would find
+Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I
+was a wild girl that night. If I could have found
+that Rogers and come near him I would have killed
+him myself. I hated him, for he had made me
+much suffering.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the morning I was in the woods near them.
+I saw Rafe. But that Rogers kept him always
+near him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to
+look. Rafe was a little way from him and coming
+slowly toward me. I called to him. He did
+not hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the
+look of one who has made up his mind to kill.
+Again I called to him. But he did not hear.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the
+wood. Now he came running back toward Rafe.
+He stopped and turned.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The young Whiting was on his knee with the
+rifle raised to shoot. I looked to Rafe. The
+sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face.
+The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head.
+I saw. The young Whiting had not fired at all.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me.
+&lsquo;Come with me, <i>mon Rafe</i>,&rsquo; I called. &lsquo;I, too, am
+guilty. I would have killed him in the night.
+Come with me. We will escape. The fire will
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+cover all. None will ever know but you and me,
+and I am guilty as you. Come.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he did not hear. And I wished him to
+hear. Oh! I wished him at least to hear me say
+that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not
+wish to be separated from him in this world or the
+next.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he ran back always into the path of the
+fire, for those other men, the old M&rsquo;sieur Beasley
+and the others, were closing behind him and the
+fire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She was speaking freely of the fire now, but
+it did not matter. Her story was told. The big,
+hot tears were flowing freely and her voice rose
+into a cry of farewell as she told the end.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over
+him. Oh, the great God, who is good, was cruel
+that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and
+running on again. Then the fire shut him out
+from my sight, and God took him away.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and
+was safe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dardis did not try to draw another word from
+her on any part of the story. He was artist
+enough to know that the story was complete in its
+na&iuml;ve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge
+enough of human nature to understand that the
+jury would remember better and hold more easily
+her own unthought, clipped expressions than they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>
+would any more connected elaborations he might
+try to make her give.</p>
+<p>Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor.
+He had always been a useful officer to the
+railroad powers because he was convinced of the
+guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to
+bring into court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal
+as hardly less than a personal insult. He
+denied that there were ever two sides to any case.
+But his very narrowness now confounded him
+here. This girl&rsquo;s story was true. It was astounding,
+impossible, subversive of all things. But it
+was true.</p>
+<p>His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room
+for only the one thing. The story was true. He
+asked her a few unimportant questions, leading
+nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing
+up to the jury.</p>
+<p>It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them
+to remember the facts by which the prisoner had
+already been convicted and to put aside the girl&rsquo;s
+dramatic story. He was still convinced that the
+prisoner was guilty. But&ndash;&ndash;the girl&rsquo;s story was
+true. His mind was not nimble enough to escape
+the shock of that fact. He was helpless under it.
+His pleading was spiritless and wandering while
+his mind stood aside to grapple with that one
+astounding thing.</p>
+<p>The Judge, however, in charging the jury was
+troubled by none of these hampering limitations
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>
+of mind. He had always regarded the taking and
+discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and
+windy business. All democracy was full of such
+wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to a conclusion.
+The boy was guilty. The powers who
+controlled the county had said he was guilty.
+Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.</p>
+<p>He charged the jury that the girl&rsquo;s testimony
+was no more credible than that of a dozen other
+witnesses&ndash;&ndash;which was quite true. All had told
+the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But
+he glided smoothly over the one important difference.
+The girl had seen the act. No other, not
+even the accused himself, had been able to say that.</p>
+<p>He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly
+false lecture on the comparative force of evidence,
+intended only to befog the minds of the jurors.
+But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that
+which he had intended, for, whereas they had up
+to now held a fairly clear view of the things that
+had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts
+by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that
+structure of guilt which he so laboriously built up
+and remembered only one thing clearly. And
+that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.</p>
+<p>Without leaving their seats, they intimated that
+they had come to an agreement.</p>
+<p>The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded
+to know what it was.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood up.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span></div>
+<p>The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly,
+saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not guilty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at
+each man as his name was called, but one after
+another the men arose and answered gruffly for
+acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse,
+running for their horses and shouting the
+verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little Danton
+awoke from its September drowse and was aware
+that something real had happened. The elaborate
+machinery of prosecution, the whole political
+power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure
+of the railroad power had all been set at nothing
+by the tragic little love story of an ignorant French
+girl from the hills.</p>
+<p>Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place
+where he had been a prisoner and brought him to
+his mother.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into
+his mother&rsquo;s eyes as he stooped to kiss her. What
+he saw filled him with a bitterness that all the
+years of his life would not efface. What he saw
+was not the sprightly, cheery, capable woman who
+had been his mother, but a grey, trembling old
+woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to
+him fainting and crying weakly. What men had
+done to him, he could shake off. They had not
+hurt him. He could still defy them. But what
+they had done to his little mother, that would
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span>
+rankle and turn in his heart forever. He would
+never forgive them for the things they had done
+to her in these four weeks and in these two days.</p>
+<p>And here at his elbow stood the one person who
+had to-day done more to hurt his mother and himself
+than any other in the world could have done.
+She could have told his mother weeks ago, and
+have saved her all that racking sorrow and anxiety.
+But no, for the sake of that religion of hers, for
+the sake of what some priest told her, she had
+stuck to what had turned out to be a useless lie,
+to save a dead man&rsquo;s name.</p>
+<p>Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him.
+But he turned upon her with a look of savage,
+fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl as
+a blow in the face would have done. Then in a
+strange, hard voice he said brutally:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You lied!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock
+of his look and words. Even now she could not
+speak, could not appeal to his reason, could not
+tell him that she had heard nothing but what had
+come under the awful seal of the confessional.
+The secret was out. She had risked his life and
+lost his love to guard that secret, and now the
+world knew it. All the world could talk freely
+about what she had done except only herself.
+Even if she could have reached up and drawn his
+head down to her lips, even then she could not so
+much as whisper into his ear that he was right, or
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>
+try to tell him why she had not been able to
+speak. She saw the secret standing forever between
+their two lives, unacknowledged, embittering
+both those lives, yet impassable as the line of
+death.</p>
+<p>When she looked up, he was gone out to his
+freedom in the sunlight.</p>
+<p>The hill people were jammed about the door
+and in the street as he came out. Twenty hands
+reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into
+the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his
+own horse which they had caught wandering in
+the high hills and had brought down for him.
+They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them&ndash;&ndash;the
+hill people were not much given to noise or
+demonstration. But under their triumph and their
+noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness
+which he was quick to notice.</p>
+<p>During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had
+absorbed most of his waking moments, he had let
+slip from him the thought of the battle that yet
+must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people
+again, and once more their unquestioned
+leader, his mind went back with a click into the
+grooves in which it had been working so long.
+He pushed his horse forward and led the men at
+a gallop over the Racquette bridge and out toward
+the hills, the families who had come down from
+the nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span></div>
+<p>When they were well clear of the town, he
+halted and demanded the full news of the last four
+weeks.</p>
+<p>It must not be forgotten that while this account
+of these happenings has been obliged to turn aside
+here and there, following the vicissitudes and doings
+of individuals, the railroad powers had never
+for a moment turned a step aside from the single,
+unemotional course upon which they had set out.
+Orders had gone out that the railroad must get
+title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide
+lying along the right of way. These orders must
+be executed. The titles must be gotten. Failures
+or successes here or there were of no account.
+The incidents made use of or the methods employed
+were of importance only as they contributed
+to the general result.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once.
+That was nothing. There were other plans.
+The Shepherd of the North before the Senate
+committee had blocked another set of plans.
+That was merely an obstacle to be gone around.
+The railroad people had gone around it by procuring
+the burning of the country. The people, left
+homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined,
+would be glad now to take anything they could
+get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness,
+no animus on the part of the railroad.
+Its programme had been as impersonal and detached
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span>
+as the details in any business transaction.
+Certain aims were to be accomplished. The
+means were purely incidental.</p>
+<p>Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an
+agent and afterwards as an instrument, was now
+gone&ndash;&ndash;a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had
+been Rogers&rsquo; assistant, was gone&ndash;&ndash;another broken
+tool. The fire had been used for its purpose.
+The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey Whiting
+had been put out of the way&ndash;&ndash;definitely, the railroad
+had hoped. He was now free again to make
+difficulties. All these things were but changes
+and moves and temporary checks in the carrying
+through of the business. In the end the railroad
+must attain its end.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat
+his horse on the old Piercefield road and listened
+to what had been happening in the hills during the
+four weeks of his removal from the scene.</p>
+<p>The fire, because it had seemed the end of all
+things to the people of the hills, had put out of
+their minds all thought of what the railroad would
+do next. Now they were realising that the railroad
+had moved right on about its purpose in the
+wake of the fire. It had learned instantly of Rogers&rsquo;
+death and had instantly set to work to use that
+as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its
+path. But that was only a side line of activity.
+It had gone right on with its main business.
+Other men had been sent at once into the hills with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>
+what seemed like liberal offers for six-month
+options on all the lands which the railroad
+coveted.</p>
+<p>They had gotten hold of discouraged families
+who had not yet begun to rebuild. The offer of
+any little money was welcome to these. The
+whole people were disorganised and demoralised
+as a result of the scattering which the fire had
+forced upon them. They were not sure that it
+was worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire
+had burned through the thin soil in many places
+so that the land would be useless for farming for
+many years to come. They had no leader, and
+the fact that Jeffrey Whiting was in jail charged
+with murder, and, as they heard, likely to be convicted,
+forced upon them the feeling that the railroad
+would win in the end. Where was the use
+to struggle against an enemy they could not see
+and who could not be hurt by anything they might
+do?</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had
+gone before, to keep the people in line and prevent
+them from signing enough options to suit the railroad&rsquo;s
+purpose, had been easy in comparison with
+the one that was now before him. The people
+were disheartened. They had begun to fear the
+mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It
+was an enemy of a kind to which their lives and
+training had not accustomed them. It struck in
+the dark, and no man&rsquo;s hand could be raised to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law
+and a bulwark of officials.</p>
+<p>The people were for the large part still homeless.
+Many were still down in the villages, living
+upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant help
+of public charity. Only the comparative few who
+could obtain ready credit had been able even to
+begin rebuilding. If they were not roused to
+prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be
+upon them before the hills were resettled. And
+with the coming of the pinch of winter men would
+be ready to sell anything upon which they had a
+claim, for the mere privilege of living.</p>
+<p>When they came up into the burnt country, the
+bitterness which had been boiling up in his heart
+through those weeks and which he had thought
+had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day
+now ran over completely. His heart raved
+in an agony of impotent anger and a thirst for revenge.
+His life had been in danger. Gladly
+would he now put it ten times in danger for the
+power to strike one free, crushing blow at this insolent
+enemy. He would grapple with it, die with
+it only for the power to bring it to the ground
+with himself!</p>
+<p>The others had become accustomed to the look
+of the country, but the full desolation of it broke
+upon his eyes now for the first time. The hills
+that should have glowed in their wonderful russets
+from the red sun going down in the west,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+were nothing but streaked ash heaps, where the
+rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between,
+where the autumn greens should have run
+deep and fresh, where snug homes should have
+stood, where happy people should now be living,
+were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution.
+From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far,
+low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a
+circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the
+mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the
+food of hate in the heart!</p>
+<p>Very late in the night they came to French Village.
+The people here were still practically living
+in the barrack which the Bishop had seen built,
+the women and children sleeping in it, the men
+finding what shelter they could in the new houses
+that were going up. There were enough of these
+latter to show that French Village would live
+again, for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed
+had carried credit and good faith to men
+who were judges of paper on which men&rsquo;s names
+were written and they had brought back supplies
+of all that was strictly needful.</p>
+<p>Here was food and water for man and beast.
+Men roused themselves from sleep to cheer the
+young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and
+feed them. And shrill, voluminous women came
+forth to get food for the men and to wave hands
+and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe
+Cardinal.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span></div>
+<p>The mention of the girl&rsquo;s name brought things
+back to Jeffrey Whiting. Till now he had hardly
+given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible sacrifice
+of the man she loved, had saved him. He
+owed that girl a great deal. And the thought
+brought to his mind another girl. He struck himself
+viciously across the eyes as though he would
+crush the memory, and went out to tramp among
+the ashes till the dawn. His body had no need of
+rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had
+merely served to throw off the lethargy of the jail;
+and sleep was beyond him.</p>
+<p>At the first light he roused the hill men and told
+them what the night had told him. Unless they
+struck one desperate, destroying blow at the railroad,
+it would come up mile by mile and farm by
+farm and take from them the little that was left
+to them. They had been fools that they had not
+struck in the beginning when they had first found
+that they were being played falsely. If they had
+begun to fight in the early summer their homes
+would not have been burned and they would not
+be now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered,
+unprovided winter.</p>
+<p>Why had they not struck? Because they were
+afraid? No. They had not struck because their
+fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the
+law. They had depended upon law. And here
+was law for them: the hills in ashes, their families
+scattered and going hungry!</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span></div>
+<p>If no man would go with him, he would ride
+alone down to the end of the rails and sell his life
+singly to drive back the work as far as he could,
+to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and
+their own.</p>
+<p>If ten men would come with him they could
+drive back the workmen for days, days in which
+the hill people would come rallying back into the
+hills to them. The people were giving up in
+despair because nothing was being done. Show
+them that even ten men were ready to fight for
+them and their rights and they would come
+trooping back, eager to fight and to hold their
+homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If
+the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law
+and right to get it, were there not men in the
+hills who would fight for it because it was their
+own?</p>
+<p>If fifty men would come with him they could
+destroy the railroad clear down below the line of
+the hills and put the work back for months.
+They would have sheriffs&rsquo; posses out against them.
+They would have to fight with hired fighters that
+the railroad would bring up against them. In the
+end they would perhaps have to fight the State
+militia, but there were men among them, he
+shouted, who had fought more than militia.
+Would they not dare face it now for their homes
+and their people!</p>
+<p>Some men would die. But some men always
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+died, in every cause. And in the end the people
+of the whole State would judge the cause!</p>
+<p>Would one man come? Would ten? Would
+fifty?</p>
+<p>Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the
+knobs and valleys of ashes where their homes had
+been, took what food the French people could
+spare them, and mounted silently behind him.</p>
+<p>Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars
+of the homes of many of them, for half the
+day they rode, saving every strain they could upon
+their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the
+southern divide and down the slope they thundered
+to strike the railroad at Leavit&rsquo;s bridge.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>
+<a name='IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD' id='IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'></a>
+<h2>IX</h2>
+<h3>THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD</h3>
+</div>
+<p>The wires coming down from the north were
+flashing the railroad&rsquo;s call for help. A band of
+madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit&rsquo;s
+Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge.
+They had raced down the line, driving the frightened
+labourers before them, tearing up the ties and
+making huge fires of them on which they threw
+the new rails, heating and twisting these beyond
+any hope of future usefulness.</p>
+<p>Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction
+had fled literally for their lives. The men
+of the hills had no quarrel with them. They preferred
+not to injure them. But they were infuriated
+men with their wrongs fresh in mind and
+with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The workmen
+on the line needed no second warning. They
+would take no chances with an enemy of this kind.
+They were used to violence and rioting in their own
+labour troubles, but this was different. This was
+war. They threw themselves headlong upon
+handcars and work engines and bolted down the
+line, carrying panic before them.</p>
+<p>In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting
+at their head had ridden down and destroyed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+nearly twenty miles of very costly construction
+work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left
+in the hills and if the men were not stopped they
+would not leave a single rail in all the hill country
+where they were masters.</p>
+<p>The call of the railroad was at first frantic with
+panic and fright. That was while little men who
+had lost their wits were nominally in charge of a
+situation in which nobody knew what to do.
+Then suddenly the tone of the railroad&rsquo;s call
+changed. Big men, used to meeting all sorts of
+things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold.
+They had the telegraph lines of the State in their
+hands. There was no more frightened appeal.
+Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in
+Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties.
+They were told to swear in as many deputies as
+they could lead. They were to forget the consideration
+of expense. The railroad would pay and
+feed the men. They were to think of nothing but
+to get the greatest possible number of fighting men
+upon the line at once.</p>
+<p>Then a single great man, a man who sat in a
+great office building in New York and held his
+hand upon every activity in the State, saw the gravity
+of the business in the hills and put himself to
+work upon it. He took no half measures. He
+had no faith in little local authorities, who would
+be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill
+people in this battle.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span></div>
+<p>He called the Governor of the State from Albany
+to his office. He ordered the Governor to
+turn out the State&rsquo;s armed forces and set them in
+motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically
+that the Governor had not had the sense
+to do this of himself. The Governor bridled and
+hesitated. The Governor had been living on the
+fiction that he was the executive head of the State.
+It took Clifford W. Stanton just three minutes to
+disabuse him completely and forever of this illusion.
+He explained to him just why he was Governor
+and by whose permission. Also he pointed
+out that the permission of the great railroad system
+that covered the State would again be necessary
+in order that Governor Foster might succeed
+himself. Then the great man sent Wilbur Foster
+back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment
+of the National Guard for service in the hills.</p>
+<p>Before the second night three companies of the
+militia had passed through Utica and had gone up
+the line of the U. &amp; M. Their orders were to
+avoid killing where possible and to capture all of
+the hill men that they could. The railroad wished
+to have them tried and imprisoned by the impartial
+law of the land. For it was characteristic of the
+great power which in those days ruled the State
+that when it had outraged every sense of fair play
+and common humanity to attain its ends it was then
+ready to spend much money creating public opinion
+in favour of itself.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span></div>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the
+cover of the woods above Milton&rsquo;s Crossing and
+watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars come
+creeping up the grade from the south. This was
+the last of the hills. He had refused to let his
+men go farther. Behind him lay fifty miles of
+new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open,
+settled country. His men, once the fever of destruction
+had begun to run in their blood, had
+wished to sweep on down into the villages and
+carry their work through them. But he had stood
+firm. This was their own country where they belonged
+and where the railroad was the interloper.
+Here they were at home. Here there was a certain
+measure of safety for them even in the destructive
+and lawless work that they had begun.
+They had done enough. They had pushed the
+railroad back to the edge of the hills. They had
+roused the men of the hills behind them. Where
+he had started with his seventy-two friends, there
+were now three hundred well-armed men in the
+woods around him. Here in their cover they
+could hold the line of the railroad indefinitely
+against almost any force that might be sent against
+them.</p>
+<p>But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership
+and responsibility was already at work upon him.
+The burning, rankling anger that had driven him
+onward so that he had carried everything and
+everybody near him into this business of destruction
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+was now dulled down to a slow, dull hate that
+while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave
+him time to think. Those men coming up there
+on the cars were not professional soldiers, paid
+to fight wherever there was fighting to be done.
+Neither did they care anything for the railroad
+that they should come up here to fight for it.
+Why did they come?</p>
+<p>They had joined their organisation for various
+reasons that usually had very little to do with fighting.
+They were clerks and office men, for the
+most part, from the villages and factories of the
+central part of the State. The militia companies
+had attracted them because the armouries in the
+towns had social advantages to offer, because uniforms
+and parade appeal to all boys, because they
+were sons of veterans and the military tradition
+was strong in them. Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s strong
+natural sense told him the substance of these
+things. He could not regard these boys as deadly
+enemies to be shot down without mercy or warning.
+They had taken their arms at a word of command
+and had come up here to uphold the arm of
+the State. If the railroad was able to control the
+politics of the State and so was able to send these
+boys up here on its own business, then other people
+were to blame for the situation. Certainly these
+boys, coming up here to do nothing but what their
+duty to the State compelled them to do; they were
+not to be blamed.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span></div>
+<p>His men were now urging him to withdraw a
+little distance into the hills to where the bed of the
+road ran through a defile between two hills. The
+soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the
+line of what had been the railroad, covering the
+workmen and engineers who would be coming on
+behind them. If they were allowed to go on up
+into the defile without warning or opposition they
+could be shot down by the hill men from almost absolute
+safety. If he had been dealing with a hated
+enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed
+to that. But to shoot down from ambush these
+boys, who had come up here many of them probably
+thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic
+or outing in the September woods, was a thing
+which he could not contemplate. Before he would
+attack them these boys must know just what they
+were to expect.</p>
+<p>He saw them leave the cars at the end of the
+broken line and take up their march in a rough
+column of fours along the roadbed. He was surprised
+and puzzled. He had expected them to
+work along the line only as fast as the men repaired
+the rails behind them. He had not thought
+that they would go away from their cars.</p>
+<p>Then he understood. They were not coming
+merely to protect the rebuilding of the railroad.
+They had their orders to come straight into the
+hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The
+railroad was not only able to call the State to protect
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+itself. It had called upon the State to avenge
+its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His men
+had understood this better than he. Probably
+they were right. This thing might as well be
+fought out from the first. In the end there would
+be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of
+troops and drive them back out of the hills with
+an ease that would be almost ridiculous. But that
+would not be the end.</p>
+<p>The State would send other men, unlimited
+numbers of them, for it must and would uphold
+the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did
+not deceive himself. Probably he had not from
+the beginning had any doubt as to what would be
+the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The
+railroad itself had broken the law of the State
+and the law of humanity. It had defied every
+principle of justice and common decency. It had
+burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in
+the hills. Yet the law had not raised a hand to
+punish it. But now when the railroad itself had
+suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to
+be set in motion to punish the men of the hills
+who had merely paid their debt.</p>
+<p>But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself
+that he had not foreseen all this from the outset.
+Those days of thinking in jail had given him an
+insight into realities that years of growth and observation
+of things outside might not have produced
+in him. He had been given time to see that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>
+some things are insurmountable, that things may
+be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still
+persist and go on indefinitely. Youth does not
+readily admit this. Jeffrey Whiting had recognised
+it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had
+led these men, his friends, men who trusted him,
+upon this mad raid. They had come without the
+clear vision of the end which he now realised had
+been his from the start. They had thought that
+they could accomplish something, that they had
+some chance of winning a victory over the railroad.
+They had believed that the power of the
+State would intervene to settle the differences between
+them and their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting
+knew, must have known all along, that the moment
+a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength
+of the State would be put forth to capture these
+men and punish them. There would be no compromise.
+There would be no bargaining. If
+they surrendered and gave themselves up now they
+would be jailed for varying terms. If they did
+not, if they stayed here and fought, some of them
+would be killed and injured and in one way or another
+all would suffer in the end.</p>
+<p>He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth
+of this struck him with startling clearness now.
+He had led them into this without letting them see
+the full extent of what they were doing, as he must
+have seen it.</p>
+<p>There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>
+now and scattered themselves through the
+hills few of them would ever be identified. And
+if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad
+would be almost satisfied with punishing him.
+It was the one just and right thing to do.</p>
+<p>He went swiftly among the men where they
+stood among the trees, waiting with poised rifles
+for the word to fire upon the advancing soldiers,
+and told them what they must do. He had deceived
+them. He had not told them the whole
+truth as he himself knew it. They must leave at
+once, scattering up among the hills and keeping
+close mouths as to where they had been and what
+they had done. He would go down and give himself
+up, for if the railroad people once had him in
+custody they would not bother so very much about
+bringing the others to punishment.</p>
+<p>His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder.
+They did not understand, unless it might be
+that he had suddenly gone crazy. There was an
+enemy marching up the line toward them, bent
+upon killing or capturing them. They turned
+from him and without a spoken word, without a
+signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the
+front of the oncoming troops. The battle was
+on!</p>
+<p>The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed
+to shoot deer and foxes from distances
+greater than this. The first two ranks of the
+soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>
+scythes. Not one of them was hit above the
+knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had begun.
+The hill men had given a terse, emphatic
+warning. It was as though they had marked a
+dead line beyond which there must be no advance.</p>
+<p>These soldiers had never before been shot at.
+The very restraint which the hill men had shown
+in not killing any of them in that volley proved
+to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise
+how deadly was the aim and the judgment of the
+invisible enemy somewhere in the woods there before
+them. To their credit, they did not drop
+their arms or run. They stood stunned and
+paralysed, as much by the suddenness with which
+the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.</p>
+<p>Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous
+command for them to halt, and ordering
+them to carry the wounded men back to the cars.
+For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they
+would again advance or would put themselves into
+some kind of defence formation and hold the
+ground on which they stood.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two
+other trains come slowly creeping up the line.
+From the second train he saw men leaping down
+who did not take up any sort of military formation.
+These he knew were sheriffs&rsquo; posses, fighting
+men sworn in because they were known to be
+fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>
+in the chase of the human animal. He had
+often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and he
+knew that they were an enemy of a character far
+different from those harmless boys who could not
+hit a mark smaller than the side of a hill. These
+men would follow doggedly, persistently into the
+highest of the hills, saving themselves, but never
+letting the prey slip from their sight, dividing the
+hill men, separating them, cornering them until
+they should have tracked them down one by one
+and either captured or killed them all.</p>
+<p>These men did not attempt to advance along the
+line of the road. They stepped quickly out into
+the undergrowth and began spreading a thin line
+of men to either side.</p>
+<p>Then he saw that the third train, although they
+were soldiers, took their lesson from the men who
+had just preceded them. They left the tracks
+and spreading still farther out took up the wings
+of a long line that was now stretching east to west
+along the fringe of the hills. The soldiers in the
+centre retired a little way down the roadbed, stood
+bunched together for a little time while their officers
+evidently conferred together, then left the
+road by twos and fours and began spreading out
+and pushing the other lines out still farther. It
+was perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that
+could not have been better done if he and his companions
+had planned it for their own capture.</p>
+<p>There were easily eight hundred men there in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>
+front, he judged; men well armed and ready for
+an indefinite stay in the hills, with a railroad at
+their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire
+State behind them. And the State was ready to
+send more and more men after these if it should be
+necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of
+other men were being held in readiness to follow
+these or were perhaps already on their way. He
+saw the end.</p>
+<p>Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly
+and surround his men. If they stood together
+they would be massacred. If they separated
+they would be hunted down one by one.</p>
+<p>Their only chance was to scatter at once and
+ride back to where their homes had been. This
+time he implored them to take their chance,
+begged them to save themselves while they could.
+But he might have known that they would do nothing
+of the kind. Already they were breaking
+away and spreading out to meet that distending
+line in front of them. Nothing short of a miracle
+could now save them from annihilation, and
+Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle.
+There was nothing to be done but to take command
+and sell his life along with theirs as dearly
+as possible.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up
+and down the State. Men who had followed the
+course of things through the past months, men who
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>
+knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which
+no newspaper had dared to print openly, understood
+just what it meant. The men up there had
+been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men
+agreed quietly with each other that they had done
+the very worst thing that could have been done.
+The injury they had done the railroad would
+amount to very little, comparatively, in the end,
+while it would give the railroad an absolutely free
+hand from now on. The people would be driven
+forever out of the lands which the railroad wished
+to possess. There would be no legislative hindrances
+now. The people had doomed themselves.</p>
+<p>The echoes reached also to two million other
+men throughout the State who did not understand
+the matter in the least. These looked up a moment
+from the work of living and earning a living
+to sympathise vaguely with the foolish men up
+there in the hills who had attacked the sacred and
+awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad.
+Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the
+case. But who could tell? And the two million,
+the rulers and sovereigns of the State, went back
+again to their business.</p>
+<p>The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of
+Alden, almost before a blow had been struck. It
+is hardly too much to say that he was listening for
+it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech,
+slow to anger; but, once past a certain point of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span>
+aggravation, absolutely heedless and reckless of
+consequences.</p>
+<p>He did not stop to compute just how much he
+himself was bound up in the causes and consequences
+of what had happened and what was happening
+in the hills. He had given advice. He
+had thought with the people and only for the
+people.</p>
+<p>He saw, long before it was told him in words,
+the wild ride down through the hills to strike the
+railroad, the fury of destruction, the gathering
+of the forces of the State to punish.</p>
+<p>Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment.
+Wherein Joseph Winthrop had done
+well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no
+moment now.</p>
+<p>One man there was in all the State, in all the
+nation, who could give the word that would now
+save the people of the hills. Clifford W. Stanton
+who had sat months ago in his office in New York
+and had set all these things going, whose ruthless
+hand was to be recognised in every act of those
+which had driven the people to this madness, his
+will and his alone could stay the storm that was
+now raging in the hills.</p>
+<p>Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act
+of supreme and unselfish bravery. It was an act
+of both physical and moral courage the like of
+which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>
+an act which had revealed in Clifford W. Stanton
+a depth of strong fineness that no man would have
+suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of
+faraway youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten.
+And he knew that men do not rise to such heights
+without having very deep in them the nobility to
+make it possible and at times inevitable that they
+should rise to those heights.</p>
+<p>After these years and the encrusting strata of
+compromise and cowardice and selfishness which
+years and life lay upon the fresh heart of the youth
+of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul of
+Clifford W. Stanton again be touched?</p>
+<p>Almost before the forces of the State were in
+motion against the people of the hills, the Bishop,
+early of a morning, walked into the office of Clifford
+Stanton.</p>
+<p>Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and
+though younger than the latter by some half-dozen
+years, it was evident that he had burned up the fuel
+of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked
+and spoke and moved with the deliberate fixity of
+the settling years, Stanton acted with a quick nervousness
+that shook just a perceptible little. The
+spiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking
+which had chiselled the Bishop&rsquo;s face into a single,
+simple expression of will power was not to be
+found in the other&rsquo;s face. In its stead there was
+a certain steel-trap impression, as though the man
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>
+behind the face had all his life refused to be certain
+of anything until the jaws of the trap had set upon
+the accomplished fact.</p>
+<p>Physically the two men were much of a type.
+You would have known them anywhere for New
+Englanders of the generation that has disappeared
+almost completely in the last twenty years. They
+had been boys at Harvard together, though not of
+the same class. They had been together in the
+Civil War, though the nature of their services had
+been infinitely diverse. They had met here and
+there casually and incidentally in the business of
+life. But they faced each other now virtually as
+strangers, and with a certain tightening grip upon
+himself each man realised that he was about to
+grapple with one of the strongest willed men that
+he had ever met, and that he must test out the
+other man to the depths and be himself tried out
+to the limit of his strength.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is some years since I&rsquo;ve seen you, Bishop.
+But we are both busy men. And&ndash;&ndash;well&ndash;&ndash; You
+know I am glad to have you come to see me.
+I need not tell you that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Bishop accepted the other man&rsquo;s frank
+courtesy and took a chair quietly. Stanton
+watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing
+the last few years a good deal, he thought. In
+reality it was the last month that the Bishop was
+showing. But it did not show in the steady, untroubled
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span>
+glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no
+time on preliminaries.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have come on business, of course, Mr.
+Stanton,&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;It is a very strange and
+unusual business. And to come at it rightly I
+must tell you a story. At the end of the story I
+will ask you a question. That will be my whole
+business.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The other man said nothing. He did not understand
+and he never spoke until he was sure that
+he understood. The Bishop plunged into his
+story.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One January day in &lsquo;Sixty-five&rsquo; I was going
+up the Shenandoah alone. My command had left
+me behind for two days of hospital service at Cross
+Keys. They were probably some twenty miles
+ahead of me and would be crossing over the divide
+towards Five Forks and the east. I thought I
+knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of
+the distance that separated me from them, so I
+started across the Ridge by a path which would
+have been impossible for troops in order.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was right. I did cut off the distance which
+I had expected and came down in the early afternoon
+upon a good road that ran up the eastern side
+of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself
+that I would be with my men before dark, when
+a troop of Confederate cavalry came pelting over
+a rise in the road behind me.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I leaped my horse back into the brush at the
+side of the road and waited. They would sweep
+on past and allow me to go on my way. Behind
+them came a troop of our own horse pursuing
+hotly. The Confederate horses were well spent.
+I saw that the end of the pursuit was not far off.
+The Confederates&ndash;&ndash;some detached band of
+Early&rsquo;s men, I imagine&ndash;&ndash;realised that they would
+soon be run down. Just where I had left the road
+there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates
+threw themselves from their horses and drew
+themselves across the road. They were in perfect
+ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen
+yards back on the narrow road.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I broke from the bush and fled back along the
+road to warn our men. But I did no good.
+They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even,
+as they came yelling around the turn of the
+road.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For three minutes there was some of the
+sharpest fighting I ever saw, there in the narrow
+road, before what remained of the Confederates
+broke after their horses and made off again. In
+the very middle of the fight I noticed two young
+officers. One was a captain, the other a lieutenant.
+I knew them. I knew their story. I
+believe I was the only man living who knew that
+story. Probably <i>I</i> did not know the whole of
+that story.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The lieutenant had maligned the captain.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>
+He had said of him the one thing that a soldier
+may not say of another. They had fought once.
+Why they had been kept in the same command I
+do not know.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now in the very hottest of this fight, without
+apparently the slightest warning, the lieutenant
+threw himself upon the captain, attacking
+him viciously with his sword. For a moment
+they struggled there, unnoticed in the dust of the
+conflict. Then the captain, swinging free, struck
+the lieutenant&rsquo;s sword from his hand. The latter
+drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It
+missed. By what miracle I do not know. All
+this time the captain had held his sword poised to
+lunge, within easy striking distance of the other&rsquo;s
+throat. But he had made no attempt to thrust.
+As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his arm to
+strike. Instead he looked a long moment into
+the lieutenant&rsquo;s eyes. The latter was screaming
+what were evidently taunts into his face. The
+captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at
+the now breaking line of Confederates.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have
+seen brave men bravely refrain from killing.
+That was the bravest thing I ever saw.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of
+him. He gave no sign of hearing. He was living
+over for himself that scene on a lonely, forgotten
+Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;The lieutenant died, a soldier&rsquo;s death, the
+next day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly. &ldquo;My
+question is: Are you the same brave man with
+a soldier&rsquo;s brave, great heart that you were that
+day?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring
+directly at something that was not in the visible
+world. The question had sprung upon him out
+of the dead past. What right had this man, what
+right had any man to face him with it?</p>
+<p>He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of
+the tragedy of my life as it whirled by you on
+the road! How dare you come here to tell me the
+little bit of it you saw?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said the Bishop swiftly, &ldquo;you have
+forgotten how great and brave a man you are.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He
+was stirred to the depths of feelings that he had
+not known for years. But even in his emotion
+and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set
+upon his face. His lifetime of never speaking
+until he knew what he was going to say kept him
+waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious
+caution; it was merely the instinct of self-defence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For months,&rdquo; the Bishop was going on
+quietly, &ldquo;the people of my hills have been harassed
+by you in your unfair efforts to get possession
+of the lands upon which their fathers built
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+their homes. You have tried to cheat them.
+You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to
+debauch a legislature in your attempt to overcome
+them. I have here in my pocket the sworn
+confessions of two men who stood in the shadow
+of death and said that they had been sent to burn
+a whole countryside that you and your associates
+coveted&ndash;&ndash;to burn the people in their homes like
+the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that
+act to within two men of you. And I can sit here,
+Clifford Stanton, and look you in the eye man to
+man and tell you that I <i>know</i> you gave the suggestion.
+And you cannot look back and deny it.
+I cannot take you into a court of law in this State
+and prove it. We both know the futility of talking
+of that. But I can take you, I do take you
+this minute into the court of your own heart&ndash;&ndash;where
+I know a brave man lives&ndash;&ndash;and convict
+you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If
+the whole world stood here accusing you would
+we know it any the better?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now my people have made a terrible mistake.
+They have taken the law into their own hands and
+have thought to punish you themselves. They
+have done wrong, they have done foolishly.
+Who can punish you? You have power above the
+law. Your interests are above the courts of the
+land. They did not understand. They did not
+know you. They have been misled. They have
+listened to men like me preaching: &lsquo;Right shall
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>
+prevail: Justice shall conquer.&rsquo; And where
+does right prevail? And when shall justice conquer?
+No doubt you have said these phrases
+yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers
+taught us to say them. But are they true? Does
+justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can
+say. I ask you, who have the answer in your
+power. Does right prevail? Then give my
+stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?
+Then see that they come to no harm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I dare to put this thing raw to your face because
+I know the man that once lived within you.
+I saw you&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t harp on that,&rdquo; Stanton cut in viciously.
+&ldquo;You know nothing about it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I <i>do</i> harp on that. I have come here to
+harp on that. Do you think that if I had not
+with my eyes seen that thing I would have come
+near you at all? No. I would have branded
+you before all men for the thing that you have
+done. I would have given these confessions
+which I hold to the world. I would have denounced
+you as far as tongue and pen would go
+to every man who through four years gave blood
+at your side. I would have braved the rebuke
+of my superiors and maybe the discipline of my
+Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of
+men. I would have made your name hated in
+the ears of little children. But I would not have
+come to you.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;If I had not seen that thing I would not have
+come to you, for I would have said: What
+good? The man is a coward without a heart.
+A <i>coward</i>, do you remember that word?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man groaned and struck out with his hand
+as though to drive away a ghastly thing that would
+leap upon him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A coward without a heart,&rdquo; the Bishop repeated
+remorselessly, &ldquo;who has men and women
+and children in his power and who, because he has
+no heart, can use his power to crush them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I had not seen, I would have said that.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I saw. I <i>saw</i>. And I have come here
+to ask you: Are you the same brave man with a
+heart that I saw on that day?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You shall not evade me. Do you think you
+can put me off with defences and puling arguments
+of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of
+property? No. You and I are here looking at
+naked truth. I will go down into your very soul
+and have it out by the roots, the naked truth.
+But I will have my answer. Are you that same
+man?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you are not that same man; if you have
+killed that in you which gave life to that man;
+if that man no longer lives in you; if you are not
+capable of being that same man with the heart
+of a great and tender hero, then tell me and I
+will go. But you shall answer me. I will have
+my answer.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span></div>
+<p>Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair
+and stood trembling as though in an overpowering
+rage, and visibly struggling for his command
+of mind and tongue.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Words, words, words,&rdquo; he groaned at last.
+&ldquo;Your life is made of words. Words are your
+coin. What do you know?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think that words can go down into
+my soul to find the man that was once there? Do
+you think that words can call him up? When
+did words ever mean anything to a man&rsquo;s real
+heart! You come here with your question. It&rsquo;s
+made of words.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When did men ever do anything for <i>words</i>?
+Honour is a word. Truth is a word. Bravery
+is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word.
+Do you think men do things for words? No!
+What do you know? What <i>could</i> you know?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Men do things and you call them by words.
+But do they do them for the words? No!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They do them&ndash;&ndash; Because <i>some woman
+lives, or once lived!</i> What do <i>you</i> know?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go out there. Stay there.&rdquo; He pointed.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to think.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against
+his desk. The Bishop rose and walked from the
+room.</p>
+<p>When he heard the door close, the man got up
+and going to the door barred it.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span></div>
+<p>He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning
+heavily upon his propped hands.</p>
+<p>He opened a drawer of his desk and looked
+at a smooth, glinting black and steel thing that
+lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang
+that went out to the Bishop listening in the
+outer office. It was a sinister, suggestive noise,
+and for an instant it chilled that good man&rsquo;s
+heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he
+knew immediately that he had been mistaken.</p>
+<p>Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked
+a smaller compartment within it, and from the
+latter took a small gold-framed picture. He set
+it up on the desk between his hands and looked
+long at it, questioning the face in the frame with
+a tender, diffident expression of a wonder that
+never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled.</p>
+<p>The face that looked out of the picture was
+one of a quiet, translucent beauty. At first
+glance the face had none of the striking features
+that men associate with great beauty. But behind
+the eyes there seemed to glow, and to grow
+gradually, and softly stronger, a light, as though
+diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly radiated
+from the whole countenance an impression of
+indescribable, gentle loveliness.</p>
+<p>Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was
+that light from within. He wondered now, and
+questioned. Never before had that light seemed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+so wonderful and so real. Now there came to
+him an answer. An answer that shook him, for
+it was the last answer he would have expected.
+The light within was truth&ndash;&ndash;truth. It seemed
+that in a world of sham and illusions and evasions
+this one woman had understood, had lived with
+truth.</p>
+<p>The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry
+laugh that was nearer to a sob.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was that it, Lucy?&rdquo; he queried. &ldquo;Truth?
+Then let us have a little truth, for once! I&rsquo;ll tell
+you some truth!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I lied a while ago. He did <i>not</i> die a soldier&rsquo;s
+death. I told the same lie to you long ago.
+Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven
+happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to
+you. Words. And yet you died a happy woman,
+because of that lie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He lied to you. He took you from me with
+lies. Words. Lies. And yet they made you
+happy. Where is truth?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You lived happy and died happy with a lie.
+Because I lied like what they call a man and a
+gentleman. <i>Truth!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face
+before him. Did he expect to see the light fade
+out, to see the face wither under the bitter
+revelation?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been everything,&rdquo; he went on, still trying
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+to make his point, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done everything,
+that men say I&rsquo;ve been and done. Why?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well&ndash;&ndash;Why?&rdquo; he asked sharply. &ldquo;Did
+it make any difference?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my
+face&ndash;&ndash;sometimes. Well&ndash;&ndash;Why not? Does
+it make any difference? Did it make any difference
+with you? If I had thought it would&ndash;&ndash; But
+it didn&rsquo;t. Lies, trickery, words! They
+served with you. They made you happy.
+<i>Truth!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But as he looked into the face and the smiling
+light of truth persisted in it, there came over
+his soul the dawn of a wonder. And the dawn
+glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and
+looked out wondering at a world remade.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it true, Lucy?&rdquo; he asked gently. &ldquo;Can
+that be <i>truth</i>, at last? Is that what you mean?
+Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words
+and beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand&ndash;&ndash;a
+little? And do you, somewhere,
+understand now?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then tell me. Was it worth the lies?
+Down underneath, when you understood, which
+was the truth? The thing I did&ndash;&ndash;which men
+would call fine? Or was it the words?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was
+it the fine thing that was really the truth, and
+did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>
+truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were
+made of truth, did you somehow understand all
+the time?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally
+believing. Then he said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I
+will not speak it to him. But I&rsquo;ll say it to you:
+Yes, I am that same man who once did what they
+call a fine, brave thing. I didn&rsquo;t do it because
+it was a great thing, a brave thing. I did it for
+you.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ll do this for you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked again at the face in the picture, as
+if to make sure. Then he locked it away quickly
+in its place.</p>
+<p>He thought for a moment, then drew a pad
+abruptly to him and began writing. He wrote
+two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State,
+the other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then
+he took another pad and wrote a note, this to his
+personal representative who was following the
+state troops into the hills.</p>
+<p>He rose and walked briskly to the door.
+Throwing it open he called a clerk and gave him
+the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand
+and asked the Bishop back into the office.</p>
+<p>Closing the door quickly, he said without
+preface:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This note will put my man up there at your
+service. You will prefer to go up into the hills
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>
+yourself, I think. The officers in command of the
+troops will know that you are empowered to act
+for all parties. The Governor will have seen to
+that before you get there, I think. There will
+be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards.
+You can settle the whole matter in no time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We will not buy the land, but we&rsquo;ll give a
+fair rental, based on what ores we find to take
+out. You can give <i>your</i> word&ndash;&ndash;mine wouldn&rsquo;t
+go for much up there, I guess,&rdquo; he put in grimly&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;that
+it will be fair. You can make that the
+basis of settlement.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They can go back and rebuild. I will help,
+where it will do the most good. Our operations
+won&rsquo;t interfere much with their farm land, I find.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will want to start at once. That is all,
+I guess, Bishop,&rdquo; he concluded abruptly.</p>
+<p>The Bishop reached for the smaller man&rsquo;s hand
+and wrung it with a sudden, unwonted emotion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will not cheapen this, sir,&rdquo; he said evenly,
+&ldquo;by attempting to thank you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A mere whim of mine, that&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; Stanton
+cut in almost curtly, the steel-trap expression snapping
+into place over his face. &ldquo;A mere whim.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly, looking him
+squarely in the eyes, &ldquo;I only came to ask a question,
+anyhow.&rdquo; Then he turned and walked
+briskly from the office. He had no right and no
+wish to know what the other man chose to conceal
+beneath that curt and incisive manner.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span></div>
+<p>So these two men parted. In words, they had
+not understood each other. Neither had come
+near the depths of the other. But then, what man
+does ever let another man see what is in his
+heart?</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>All day long the line of armed men had gone
+spreading itself wider and wider, to draw itself
+around the edges of the shorter line of men hidden
+in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day
+long clearly and more clearly Jeffrey Whiting
+had been seeing the inevitable end. His line was
+already stretched almost to the breaking point.
+If the enemy had known, there were dangerous
+gaps in it now through which a few daring men
+might have pushed and have begun to divide up
+the strength of the men with him.</p>
+<p>All the afternoon as he watched he saw other
+and yet other groups and troops of men come
+up the railroad, detrain and push out ever
+farther upon the enveloping wings to east and
+west.</p>
+<p>Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line
+had been driven in and almost surrounded.
+They had decided in the beginning to leave their
+horses in the rear, and so use them only at the
+last. But the spreading line in front had become
+too long to be covered on foot by the few men he
+had. They were forced to use the speed of the
+animals to make a show of greater force than
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span>
+they really had. The horses furnished marks that
+even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the
+afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams
+of terrified, wounded horses rang horribly through
+the woods above the pattering crackle of the irregular
+rifle fire. Old men who years before had
+learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and
+fell asleep grumbling. Young men and boys who
+had never heard such sounds turned sick with horror
+or wandered frightened through the dark,
+nervously ready to fire on any moving twig or
+scraping branch.</p>
+<p>In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the
+line, talking aside to every man; telling them to
+slip quietly away through the dark. They could
+make their way out through the loose lines of
+soldiers and sheriffs&rsquo; men and get down to the villages
+where they would be unknown and where
+nobody would bother with them.</p>
+<p>The inevitable few took his word&ndash;&ndash; There is
+always the inevitable few. They slipped away
+one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly
+good reason for going, several good reasons, in
+fact; any reason, indeed, but that they were afraid.
+Most of them were gathered in by the soldier
+pickets and sent down to jail.</p>
+<p>Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with
+a grim, ugly suggestion in it of the coming winter.
+Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily
+out to their posts, munching dryly at the last of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span>
+the stores which they had taken from the construction
+depots along the line which they had destroyed.
+This was the end. It was not far from
+the mind of each man that this would probably be
+his last meal.</p>
+<p>The firing began again as the outer line came
+creeping in upon them. They had still the great
+advantage of the shelter of the woods and the
+formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship
+kept those directly in front of them almost
+out of range. But there was nothing in sight before
+them but that they would certainly all be surrounded
+and shot down or taken.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those
+who had been watching the most distant of the
+two wings creeping around them saw these men
+halt and slowly begin to gather back together.
+What was it? Were they going to rush at last?
+Here would be a fight in earnest!</p>
+<p>But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation,
+merely walked back in their tracks until
+they were entirely out of range. It must be a
+ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their
+shelter, puzzled, but determined not to be drawn
+out.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of
+the line, saw an old man walking, barehead, up
+over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted
+rails. That white head with the high, wide brow,
+the slightly stooping, spare shoulders, the long,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span>
+swinging walk&ndash;&ndash; That was the Bishop of Alden!</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to
+the men on either side to stay where they were,
+jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet the
+Bishop.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are any men killed?&rdquo; the Bishop asked before
+Jeffrey had time to speak as they met.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the
+chest&ndash;&ndash;we don&rsquo;t know how bad it is,&rdquo; said
+Jeffrey, stopping short. &ldquo;Ten other men are
+wounded. I don&rsquo;t think any of them are bad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Call in your men,&rdquo; said the Bishop briefly.
+&ldquo;The soldiers are going back.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At Jeffrey&rsquo;s call the men came running from
+all sides as he and the Bishop reached the line.
+Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered
+round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance
+of the White Horse Chaplain, for so one
+and all they knew and remembered him. Men
+who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped
+back into the scene of that day and looked about
+blankly for the white horse. And young men who
+had heard that tale many times and had seen and
+heard of his coming through the fire to French
+Village stared round-eyed at him. What did this
+coming mean?</p>
+<p>He told them shortly the terms that Clifford
+W. Stanton, their enemy, was willing to make with
+them. And in the end he added:</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;You have only my word that these things will
+be done as I say. <i>I</i> believe. If you believe, you
+will take your horses and get back to your families
+at once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief,
+the men for the first time knew what they had
+been through. Their knees gave under them.
+They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking
+quaver. Many who had thought never to see
+loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying
+over the names of those they were saved to.</p>
+<p>The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him,
+walked slowly back down the roadbed. Suddenly
+Jeffrey remembered something that had gone
+completely out of his mind in these last hours.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bishop,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;that day&ndash;&ndash;that
+day in court. I&ndash;&ndash;I said you lied. Now I know
+you didn&rsquo;t. You told the truth, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My boy,&rdquo; said the Bishop queerly, &ldquo;yesterday
+I asked a man, on his soul, for the truth&ndash;&ndash;the
+truth. I got no answer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the
+name of the Emperor of all the World, once
+asked what was truth. And <i>he</i> got no answer.
+Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that
+there are things bigger than we are. We get no
+answer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span>
+<a name='X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID' id='X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID'></a>
+<h2>X</h2>
+<h3>THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID</h3>
+</div>
+<p>It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring
+and the bud of Promise.</p>
+<p>The snow had been gone from the sunny places
+for three weeks now. He still lingered three feet
+deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from which
+only the hot June sun and the warm rains would
+drive him. He still held fastnesses on the northerly
+side of high hills, where the sun could not
+come at him and only the trickling rain-wash
+running down the hill could eat him out from
+underneath. But the sun had chased him away
+from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to
+the grass and the germinant life beneath to come
+boldly forth, for the enemy was gone.</p>
+<p>But the grass was timid. And the hardy little
+wild flowers, the forget-me-nots and the little
+wild pansies held back fearfully. Even the
+bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys
+of meadow and hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection
+that belied their nature. For all of
+them had been burned to the very roots of the
+roots. But the sun came warmer, more insistent,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span>
+and kissed the scarred, brown body of earth and
+warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and
+the little flowers took courage out of their very
+craving for life and pushed resolutely forth.
+And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The
+world was born again!</p>
+<p>Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run
+on her way back to French Village. She had been
+to put the first flowers of the Spring on the grave
+of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had
+blessed the ground for him and they had laid him,
+there under the sunny side of the Gaunt Rocks
+that had given him his last breathing space that
+he might die in peace. They had put him here,
+for there was no way in that time to carry him
+to the little cemetery in French Village. And
+Cynthe was well satisfied that it was so. Here,
+under the Gaunt Rocks, she would not have to
+share him with any one. And she would not have
+to hear people pointing out the grave to each other
+and to see them staring.</p>
+<p>The water tumbling down the Run out of the
+hills sang a glad, uproarious song, as is the way
+of all brooks at their beginnings, concerning the
+necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible
+to the big, wide life of the sea. The sea would
+not care at all if that brook never came down to
+it. But the brook did not know that. Would not
+have believed it if it had been told.</p>
+<p>And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span>
+of old Beaupre&ndash;&ndash;which she had never seen, for
+Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was
+sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time,
+and&ndash;&ndash; But Cynthe was not unhappy. The
+Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good.
+Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet.
+There was work in the world to do. And&ndash;&ndash;when
+all was said and done&ndash;&ndash;Rafe Gadbeau was
+in Heaven.</p>
+<p>As she left the Run and was crossing up to
+the divide she met Jeffrey Whiting coming down.
+He had been over in the Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork country
+and was returning home. He stopped and
+showed that he was anxious to talk with her.
+Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty,
+sociable little person, and, besides, for some time
+she had had it in mind that she would some day
+take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this
+scowling young gentleman with the big face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+he said, after some verbal beating about the bush;
+&ldquo;how is she?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you come see, if you want to
+know?&rdquo; retorted Cynthe sharply.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went
+on:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you wanted to know why didn&rsquo;t you come
+up all Winter and see? Why didn&rsquo;t you come
+up when she was nursing the dirty French babies
+through the black diphtheria, when their own
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span>
+mothers were afraid of them? Why didn&rsquo;t you
+come see when she was helping the mothers up
+there to get into their houses and make the houses
+warm before the coming of the Winter, though
+she had no house of her own? Why didn&rsquo;t you
+come see when she nearly got her death from
+the &rsquo;mmonia caring for old Robbideau Laclair
+in his house that had no roof on it, till she shamed
+the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you
+ask somebody then? Why didn&rsquo;t you come
+see?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Jeffrey defended, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know
+about any of those things. And we had plenty
+to do here&ndash;&ndash;our place and my mother and all.
+I didn&rsquo;t see her at all till Easter Sunday. I
+sneaked up to your church, just to get a look at
+her. She saw me. But she didn&rsquo;t seem to want
+to.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But she should have been delighted to see
+you,&rdquo; Cynthe snapped back. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think
+so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed.
+She should have flown to your arms! Not so?
+You remember what you said to her the last time
+you saw her before that. No? I will tell you.
+You called her &lsquo;liar&rsquo; before the whole court, even
+the Judge! Of one certainty, she should have
+flown to you. No?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have
+gone away, with all haste. But he was not wise.
+He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span>
+that some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed
+to argue.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But she&ndash;&ndash;she cared for me,&rdquo; he blurted out.
+&ldquo;I know she did. I couldn&rsquo;t understand why she
+couldn&rsquo;t tell&ndash;&ndash;the truth; when you&ndash;&ndash;you did so
+much for me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For you? For <i>you</i>!&rdquo; the girl flamed up in
+his face. &ldquo;Oh, villainous monster of vanity! For
+<i>you</i>! Ha! I could laugh! For <i>you</i>! I put
+<i>mon Rafe</i>&ndash;&ndash;dead in his grave&ndash;&ndash;to shame before
+all the world, called him murderer, blackened
+his name, for <i>you</i>!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No! No! <i>No!</i> <i>Never!</i></p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would not have said a word against him to
+save you from the death. <i>Never!</i></p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did what I did, because there was a debt.
+A debt which <i>mon Rafe</i> had forgotten to pay.
+He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay
+that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made
+straight. He could go in. I did it for <i>you</i>!
+Ha!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And
+the girl had talked so rapidly and so fiercely that
+he could not gather even the context of the matter.
+He gave up trying to follow it and went back
+to his main argument.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But why couldn&rsquo;t she have told the truth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The truth, eh! You must have the truth!
+The girl must tell the truth for you! No matter
+if she was to blacken her soul before God,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span>
+you must have the truth told for you. The truth!
+It was not enough for you to know that the
+girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that
+she would have died for you if she might! No.
+The poor girl must tear out the secret lining of her
+heart for you, to save you!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Think you that if <i>mon Rafe</i> was alive and
+stood there where you stood, in peril of his life;
+think you that he would ask me to give up the
+secret of the Holy Confession to save him. <i>Non!</i>
+<i>Mon Rafe</i> was a <i>man</i>! He would die, telling me
+to keep that which God had trusted me with!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to
+be saved; that the Good God must come down
+from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened
+Book for <i>you</i>!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You ask for truth! <i>Tiens!</i> I will tell you
+truth!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried
+that you were an innocent man. <i>Mon Rafe</i> was
+the guilty man. The whole world must come
+forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth
+to declare you innocent and him guilty! You
+were innocent! You were persecuted! The
+earth and the Heaven must come to show that you
+were innocent and he was guilty! <i>Bah!</i> <i>You
+were as guilty as he!</i></p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was there. I saw. Your finger was on
+the trigger. You only waited for the man to stop
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span>
+moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder
+was in your soul. Murder was in your finger.
+But you were innocent and <i>mon Rafe</i> was guilty.
+By how much?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By one second. That was the difference between
+<i>mon Rafe</i> and you. Just that second that
+he shot before you were ready. <i>That</i> was the
+difference between you the innocent man and <i>mon
+Rafe</i>!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were guilty. In your heart you were
+guilty. In your soul you were guilty. M&rsquo;sieur
+Cain himself was not more guilty than you!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were more guilty than <i>mon Rafe</i>, for he
+had suffered more from that man. He was
+hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were
+cool. You were ready. Only <i>mon Rafe</i> was a
+little quicker, because he was desperate. Before
+the Good God you were more guilty.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And <i>mon Rafe</i> must be blackened more than
+the fire had blackened his poor body. And the
+poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the
+good M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop must break his holiest
+oath. All to make you innocent!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bah! <i>Innocent!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She flung away from him and ran up the hill.
+Cynthe had not said quite all that she intended to
+say to this young gentleman. But then, also, she
+had said a good deal more than she had intended
+to say. So it was about even. She had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span>
+said enough. And it would do him no harm.
+She had felt that she owed <i>mon Rafe</i> a little plain
+speaking. She was much relieved.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him
+digging up the tender roots of the new grass with
+his toe. He did not look after the girl. He had
+forgotten her.</p>
+<p>He felt no resentment at the things that she had
+said. He did not argue with himself as to
+whether these things were just or unjust. Of all
+the things that she had said only one thing mattered.
+And that not because she had said it. It
+mattered because it was true. The quick, jabbing
+sentences from the girl had driven home to him
+just one thing.</p>
+<p>Guilty? He <i>was</i> guilty. He was as guilty as&ndash;&ndash;Rafe
+Gadbeau.</p>
+<p>Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation,
+bitter, blinding provocation. But so had Rafe
+Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau
+as anything but guilty of murder.</p>
+<p>He turned on his heel and walked down the
+Run with swift, swinging strides, fighting this conviction
+that was settling upon him. He fought it
+viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a
+man, that the thing was done and past, that men
+have no time for remorse and sickish, mawkish
+repentance. Those things were for brooding
+women, and Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably,
+sagaciously; contending that he had not, in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span>
+fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that
+he would ever have done so? Maybe he had not
+really intended to kill at all. Maybe he would not
+have killed. The man might have spoken to him.
+Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned
+that time. Who could tell? Ten thousand
+things might have happened, any one of which
+would have stood between him and killing the man.
+He fought it defiantly. Suppose he had killed the
+man? What about it? The man deserved it.
+He had a right to kill him.</p>
+<p>But he knew that he was losing at every angle
+of the fight. For the conviction answered not a
+word to any of these things. It merely fastened
+itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment:
+&ldquo;As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And when he came over the top of the hill,
+from where he could look down upon the grave of
+Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the
+conviction pointed out to him just one enduring
+fact. It said: &ldquo;There is the grave of Rafe
+Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything
+about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried
+here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then he fought no more with the conviction.
+It gripped his spirit and cowed him. It sat upon
+his shoulders and rode home with him. His
+mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding,
+began to look for some fresh trouble.</p>
+<p>She need not have looked for new trouble, so
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span>
+far as concerned things outside himself. For
+Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men.
+He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable
+and finer home than it had ever been.
+He had secured an excellent contract from the railroad
+to supply thousands of ties out of the timber
+of the high hills. He had made money out
+of that. And once he had gotten a taste of money-making,
+in a business that was his by the traditions
+of his people and his own liking, he knew that he
+had found himself a career.</p>
+<p>He was working now on a far bigger project,
+the reforesting of thirty thousand acres of the
+higher hill country. In time there would be unlimited
+money in that. But there was more than
+money in it. It was a game and a life which he
+knew and which he loved. To make money by
+making things more abundant, by covering the
+naked peaks of the hill country with sturdy, growing
+timber, that was a thing that appealed to him.</p>
+<p>All the Winter nights he had spent learning the
+things that men had done in Germany and elsewhere
+in this direction, and in adding this knowledge
+to what he knew could be done here in the
+hills. Already he knew it was being said that
+he was a young fellow who knew more about growing
+timber than any two old men in the hills.
+And he knew how much this meant, coming from
+among a people who are not prone to give youth
+more than its due. Already he was being picked
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span>
+as an expert. Next week he was going down to
+Albany to give answers to a legislative committee
+for the Forest Commission, which was trying to
+get appropriations from the State for cleaning up
+brush and deadfalls from out of standing timber&ndash;&ndash;a
+thing that if well done would render forest
+fires almost harmless.</p>
+<p>He was getting a standing and a recognition
+which now made that law school diploma&ndash;&ndash;the
+thing that he had once regarded as the portal of
+the world&ndash;&ndash;look cheap and little.</p>
+<p>But, as he sat late that night working on his
+forestry calculations, the roadway of his dreams
+fell away from under him. The high colour of
+his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before
+him and across the grey wall in letters of
+black he could only see the word&ndash;&ndash;<i>guilty</i>.</p>
+<p>What was it all worth? Why work? Why
+fight? Why dream? Why anything? when at
+the end and the beginning of all things there stood
+that wall with the word written across it.
+Guilty&ndash;&ndash;guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And Ruth
+Lansing&ndash;&ndash;!</p>
+<p>A flash of sudden insight caught him and held
+him in its glaring light. He had been doing all
+this work. He had built this home. He had
+fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills
+and the raging winter for money. He had
+dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built them
+higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span></div>
+<p>He had fought the thought of her. He had
+put her out of his mind. He had said that she
+had failed him in need. He had even, in the
+blackest time of the night, called her liar. He
+had forgotten her, he said.</p>
+<p>Now he knew that not for an instant had she
+been out of his mind. Every stroke of work had
+been for her. She had stood at the top of the
+high path of every struggling dream.</p>
+<p>Between him and her now rose that grey wall
+with the one word written on it. Was that what
+they had meant that day there in the court, she
+and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all?
+Was there some sort of uncanny truth or insight
+or hidden justice in that secret confessional of
+theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting
+truth, while it hid the momentary, accidental
+truth of mere words? In effect, they had
+said that he was guilty. And he <i>was</i> guilty!</p>
+<p>What was that the Bishop had said when he
+had asked for truth that day on the railroad line?
+&ldquo;Sooner or later we have to learn that there is
+something bigger than we are.&rdquo; Was this what
+it meant? Was this the thing bigger than he was?
+The thing that had seen through him, had looked
+down into his heart, had measured him; was this
+the thing that was bigger than he?</p>
+<p>He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting
+maze of imagination, misinformation, and
+some unreadable facts.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span></div>
+<p>He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that
+he was guilty. That was why she had acted as
+she had. He would go to her. He would&ndash;&ndash;!
+But what was the use? She would not talk to
+him about this. She would merely deny, as she
+had done before, that she knew anything at all.
+What could he do? Where could he turn?
+They, he and Ruth, could never speak of that
+thing. They could never come to any understanding
+of anything. This thing, this wall&ndash;&ndash;with
+that word written on it&ndash;&ndash;would stand between
+them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that
+was sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the
+thing that was stronger than he. There was no
+answer. There was no way out.</p>
+<p>Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!</p>
+<p>But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He
+was not guilty any more. Cynthe had said so.
+He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow.
+He had merely come through the fire and thrown
+himself at a man&rsquo;s feet and had his guilt wiped
+away. What was there in that uncanny thing they
+called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as&ndash;&ndash;as
+Rafe Gadbeau, could come to another man,
+and, by the saying of a few words, turn over and
+face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?</p>
+<p>It was a delusion, of course. The saying of
+words could never wipe away Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s
+guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt
+from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span>
+But Rafe Gadbeau <i>believed</i> it! Cynthe believed
+it! And Cynthe was no fool. <i>Ruth</i> believed it!</p>
+<p>It was a delusion, yes. But&ndash;&ndash;<i>What</i> a delusion!
+What a magnificent, soul-stirring delusion!
+A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau
+out of the misery of his guilt, that carried the
+souls of millions of guilty people through all the
+world up out of the depths of their crimes to a
+confidence of relief and freedom!</p>
+<p>Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down
+into the abyss of despairing loneliness. It trod
+the dark ways in which there was no guidance.
+It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or
+to what it might appeal. It travelled an endless
+round of memory, from cause to effect and back
+again to cause, looking for the single act, or
+thought, that must have been the starting point,
+that must have held the germ of his guilt.</p>
+<p>Somewhere there must have been a beginning.
+He knew that he was not in any particular a different
+person, capable of anything different, likely
+to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain
+from what he had been on any other morning
+since he had become a man. There was never
+a time, so far as he could see, when he would not
+have been ready to do the thing which he was
+ready to do that morning&ndash;&ndash;given the circumstances.
+Nor had he changed in any way since
+that morning. What had been essentially his act,
+his thought, a part of him, that morning was just
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span>
+as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this
+minute. There was no thing in the succession
+of incidents to which he could point and say:
+That was not I who did that: I did not mean
+that: I am sorry I did that. Nor would there
+ever be a time when he could say any of these
+things. It seemed that he must always have been
+guilty of that thing; that in all his life to come
+he must always be guilty of it. There had been
+no change in him to make him capable of it, to
+make him wish it; there had been no later change
+in him by which he would undo it. It seemed
+that his guilt was something which must have begun
+away back in the formation of his character,
+and which would persist as long as he was the
+being that he was. There was no beginning of
+it. There was no way that it might ever end.</p>
+<p>And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing
+had seen that guilt, too. She had seen it in his
+eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in
+his mind.</p>
+<p>What had she seen? What was that thing written
+so clear in his eyes that she could read and
+tell him of it that day on the road from French
+Village?</p>
+<p>He would go to her and ask her. She should
+tell him what was that thing she had seen. He
+would make her tell. He would have it from
+her!</p>
+<p>But, no. Where was the use? It would only
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span>
+bring them to that whole, impossible, bewildering
+business of the confessional. And he did not
+want to hear any more of that. His heart was
+sick of it. It had made him suffer enough. And
+he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered
+equally, or maybe more, from it.</p>
+<p>Where could he go? He must tell this thing.
+He <i>must</i> talk of it to some one! That resistless,
+irrepressible impulse for confession, that call
+of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon
+him. He must find some other soul to share with
+him the burden of this conviction. He must find
+some one who would understand and to whom he
+could speak.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not
+have analysed what this craving meant. He only
+knew that it was very real, that his soul was staggering
+alone and blind under the weight of this
+thing.</p>
+<p>There was one man who would understand.
+The man who had looked upon the faces of life
+and death these many years, the man of strange
+comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him
+on the way of all this, and who from what he had
+said in his house in Alden, that day so long ago
+when all this began, may have foreseen this very
+thing, the man who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry
+out his guilt; that man would understand. He
+would go to him.</p>
+<p>He wrote a note which his mother would find in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span>
+the morning, and slipping quietly out of the
+house he saddled his horse for the ride to Lowville.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I came because I had to come,&rdquo; Jeffrey began,
+when the Bishop had seated him. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+why I should come to you. I know you cannot
+do anything. There is nothing for any one to do.
+But I had to tell some one. I <i>had</i> to say it to
+somebody.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I sat that day in the courtroom,&rdquo; he went on
+as the Bishop waited, &ldquo;and thought that the whole
+world was against me. It seemed that everybody
+was determined to make me guilty&ndash;&ndash;even you,
+even Ruth. And I was innocent. I had done
+nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the idea
+that everybody was trying to make me out guilty,
+when I was innocent. I had done nothing. I had
+not killed a man. I told the men there on the
+mountain that I was innocent and they would not
+believe me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts
+that I had not done the thing, but you would not
+say a word for me, an innocent man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was that as much as anything, that feeling
+that the whole world wanted to condemn me knowing
+that I was innocent, that drove me on to the
+wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting
+back, fighting back against everybody.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And&ndash;&ndash;this is what I came to say&ndash;&ndash;all the
+time I was guilty&ndash;&ndash;guilty: guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I am not sure I understand,&rdquo; said the Bishop
+slowly, as Jeffrey stopped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s nothing to understand. It is just
+as I say. I was guilty of that man&rsquo;s death before
+I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty of it
+that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am
+guilty now. I will always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau
+could say a few words to you and turn over
+into the next world, free. I cannot,&rdquo; he ended,
+with a sort of grim finality as though he saw again
+before him that wall against which he had come
+the night before.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; the Bishop began slowly.
+Then he asked suddenly, &ldquo;What brought your
+mind to this view of the matter?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A girl,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;the girl that saved me;
+that French girl that loved Rafe Gadbeau. She
+showed me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving
+her mind with some plain speaking. But he
+did not feel at all easy. He knew better than to
+treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not
+a boy to be laughed out of a morbid notion, or to
+be told to grow older and forget the thing. His
+was a man&rsquo;s soul, standing in the dark, grappling
+with a thing with which it could not cope. The
+wrong word here might mar his whole life. Here
+was no place for softening away the realities with
+reasoning. The man&rsquo;s soul demanded a man&rsquo;s
+straight answer.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Before you could be guilty,&rdquo; said the Bishop
+decisively, &ldquo;you must have injured some one by
+your thought, your intention. Whom did you injure?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought,
+to follow it out from the maze which his mind
+had been treading. Here was the answer. This
+would clear the way. Whom had he injured?</p>
+<p>Well, <i>whom</i> had he injured? <i>Who</i> had been
+hurt by his thought, his wish, to kill a man? Had
+it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was
+none the worse of it.</p>
+<p>Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not
+enter into this at all.</p>
+<p>Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till
+yesterday; and not in the way meant.</p>
+<p>Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then&ndash;&ndash;then
+why all this&ndash;&ndash;? Jeffrey Whiting rose
+from his chair as though to go. He did not look
+at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing
+upon the floor, asking:</p>
+<p>Whom?</p>
+<p>Suddenly, from within, just barely audible
+through his lips there came the answer; a single
+word:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>God!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your business is with Him, then,&rdquo; said the
+Bishop, rising with what almost seemed brusqueness.
+&ldquo;You wanted to see Him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;but,&rdquo; Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span>
+argue, &ldquo;men come to you, to confess. Rafe Gadbeau&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Bishop quickly, &ldquo;you are
+wrong. Men come to me to <i>confession</i>. They
+come to <i>confess</i> to God.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He took the young man&rsquo;s hand, saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will not say another word. You have found
+your own answer. You would not understand better
+if I talked forever. Find God, and tell Him,
+what you have told me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the
+long way to the hills and home. He was still bewildered,
+disappointed, and a little resentful of the
+Bishop&rsquo;s brief manners with him. He had gone
+looking for sympathy, understanding, help. And
+he had been told to find God.</p>
+<p>Find God? How did men go about to find
+God? Wasn&rsquo;t all the world continually on the
+lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did
+the preachers find Him? Did the priests find
+Him? And if they did, what did they say to
+Him? Did people who were sick, and people who
+said God had answered their prayers and punished
+their enemies for them; did they find God?</p>
+<p>Did they find Him when they prayed? Did
+they find Him when they were in trouble? What
+did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must
+have meant something? How did the Bishop
+himself find God? Was there some word, some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span>
+key, some hidden portal by which men found God?
+Was God to be found here on the hills, in the
+night, in the open?</p>
+<p>God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how
+can I come, how can I find! A wordless, baffled,
+impotent cry, that reached nowhere.</p>
+<p>The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.</p>
+<p>Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable
+guilt, swept down upon him again and
+beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It
+left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to
+face this thing. It was too big for him. He was
+after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling alone in
+the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had
+been caught and crushed between forces and passions
+that were too much for him. He was little
+and these things were very great.</p>
+<p>Unconsciously the heart within him, the child
+heart that somehow lives ever in every man, began
+to speak, to speak, without knowing it, direct
+to God.</p>
+<p>It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was
+not an excuse. It was the simple unfolding of the
+heart of a child to the Father who made it. The
+heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It
+could not lift itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness
+complete, of dependence utter and unreasoning.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span></div>
+<p>Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at
+the stars, blinking at him through the starting
+tears.</p>
+<p>Was that God? Had some one spoken?
+Where was the load that had lain upon him all
+these weary hours?</p>
+<p>He stopped his horse and looked about him,
+breathing in great, free, hungry breaths of God&rsquo;s
+air about him. For it <i>was</i> God&rsquo;s air. That was
+the wonder of it. The world was God&rsquo;s! And it
+was new made for him to live in!</p>
+<p>He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer
+of thanks, as simple and unreasoning, unquestioning,
+as had been the unfolding of his heart. He
+had been bound: he was free!</p>
+<p>Then his horse went flying up the hill road,
+beating a tattoo of new life upon the soft, breathing
+air of the spring night.</p>
+<p>With the inconsequence of all of us children
+when God has lifted the stone from our hearts,
+Jeffrey had already left everything of the last thirty-six
+hours behind him as completely as if he had
+never lived through those hours. (That He lets
+us forget so easily, shows that He is the Royal
+God in very deed.)</p>
+<p>Before the sun was well up in the morning
+Jeffrey was on his way to French Village, to look
+out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old Robbideau
+Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into
+fixing that roof.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span></div>
+<p>What he had heard the other day from Cynthe
+was by no means all that he had heard of the
+doings of Ruth during the last seven months.
+For the French people had taken her to their
+hearts and had made of her a wonderful new kind
+of saint. They had seen her come to them out of
+the fire. They had heard of her silence at the
+trial of the man she loved. They had seen her
+devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to
+their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria
+had frightened the wits out of the best of
+women. All the while they knew that she was not
+happy. And they had explained fully to the
+countryside just what was their opinion of the
+whole matter.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly
+understanding many things that had been hidden
+from him, was very humble as he wondered what
+he could say to Ruth.</p>
+<p>At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he
+met Cynthe.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; he asked without preface.</p>
+<p>Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching
+look, and was amazed at the change she
+saw.</p>
+<p>Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to
+whom she had talked the other day. Here was a
+man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and
+had learned some things out of unknown places of
+his heart.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span></div>
+<p>I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too
+much. But I am not sorry. <i>Non.</i></p>
+<p>&ldquo;The last house,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;by the crook
+of the lake there. She will be glad,&rdquo; she remarked
+simply, and turned on her way.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl
+heartily for the word that she had thought to add.
+It was a warrant, it seemed, of forgiveness&ndash;&ndash;and
+of all things.</p>
+<p>Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife
+Philomena sat in the sun by the side of the house
+watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms bare
+above the elbow was working away contentedly
+in their little patch of garden. They nudged each
+other as Jeffrey rode up and left his horse, but
+they made no sign to Ruth.</p>
+<p>So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth
+came to her unseen and unheard. He took the
+hoe from her hand as she turned to face him. Up
+to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he
+was to say to her. What was there to say? But
+as he looked into her startled, pain-clouded eyes
+he found himself saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hurt God once, very much. I did not know
+what to say to Him. Last night He taught me
+what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will
+you tell me what to say to you, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting.
+But Ruth quickly understood. There was no irreverence
+in it, only a man&rsquo;s stumbling, wholehearted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span>
+confession. It was a plea that she had no
+will to deny. The quick, warm tears of joy came
+welling to her eyes as she silently took his hand
+and led him out of the little garden and to where
+his horse stood.</p>
+<p>There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers
+slipping softly through the big bay&rsquo;s mane, Jeffrey
+standing stiff and anxious before her, with the glad
+morning and the high hills and all French Village
+observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced
+their question.</p>
+<p>But after all there was no question. For
+when Jeffrey had told all, down to that moment in
+the dark road when he had found God in his heart,
+Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness
+that is born in every woman, said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poor boy, you have suffered too much!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What I suffered was that I made for myself,&rdquo;
+he said thickly. &ldquo;Cynthe Cardinal told me what
+a fool I was.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did Cynthe tell you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She told me that you loved me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?&rdquo; said
+the girl very quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it seems so. I&rsquo;d known your little white
+soul ever since you were a baby. I knew that in
+all your life you&rsquo;d never had a thought that was
+not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I
+knew that there was never a time when you
+wouldn&rsquo;t have given everything, even life, for me.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span>
+I knew it that day in the Bishop&rsquo;s house. I knew
+it that morning when you came to me in the sugar
+cabin.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I knew all that,&rdquo; he went on bitterly.
+&ldquo;I knew you loved me, and I knew what a love it
+was. I knew it. And yet that day&ndash;&ndash;that day
+in the courtroom, the only thing I could do was
+to call you liar!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him,
+but he went on doggedly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I did. That was all I could think of.
+I threw it at you like a blow in the face. I saw
+you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck you.
+And even that sight wasn&rsquo;t enough for me. I
+kept on saying it, when I knew in my heart it
+wasn&rsquo;t so. I couldn&rsquo;t help but know it. I knew
+you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied;
+kept on till yesterday. I wasn&rsquo;t big enough. I
+wasn&rsquo;t man enough to see that you were just facing
+something that was bigger than both of us&ndash;&ndash;something
+that was bigger and truer than words&ndash;&ndash;that
+there was no way out for you but to do
+what you did.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey, dear,&rdquo; the girl hurried to say, &ldquo;you
+know that&rsquo;s a thing we can&rsquo;t speak about&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand.
+You needn&rsquo;t say anything. I <i>understand</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I understand a lot more,&rdquo; he began
+again. &ldquo;It took that little French girl to tell me
+what was the truth. I know it now. There was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span>
+a deeper, a truer truth under everything. That
+was why you had to do as you did. That&rsquo;s why
+everything was so. I wasn&rsquo;t innocent. Things
+don&rsquo;t <i>happen</i> as those things did. They work out,
+because they have to.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl was watching him with fright and
+wonder in her eyes. What was he going to say?
+But she let him go on.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I wasn&rsquo;t innocent,&rdquo; he said, as though to
+himself now. &ldquo;I fooled myself into thinking that
+I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man.
+I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but
+Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s quickness prevented me. No, I
+wasn&rsquo;t innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was
+a murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as
+Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as Ca&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl had suddenly sprung forward and
+thrown her arms around his neck. She caught
+the word that was on his lips and stopped it with
+a kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say
+what he had been going to say.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You shall not say that!&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;I
+will not let you say it! Nobody shall say it! I
+defy the whole world to say it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;it&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said the boy brokenly as
+he held her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is not true! Never! Nothing&rsquo;s true, only
+the truth that God has hidden in His heart!
+And that is hidden! How can we say? How
+dare we say what we would have done, when we
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span>
+didn&rsquo;t do it? How do we know what&rsquo;s really in
+our hearts? Don&rsquo;t you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot
+say things like that! We don&rsquo;t know! I
+won&rsquo;t let you say it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And if you do say it,&rdquo; she argued, &ldquo;why, I&rsquo;ll
+have to say it, too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I. Do you remember that night you
+were in the sugar cabin? I was outside looking
+through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was
+I thinking? What was in my heart? I&rsquo;ll tell
+you. I was out there stalking like a panther. I
+wanted just one thing out of all the world. Just
+one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would
+have done it gladly&ndash;&ndash;with joy in my heart! I
+could have sung while I was doing it!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she gasped, &ldquo;now, if you&rsquo;re going to
+say that thing, why, we&rsquo;ll say it together!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer
+in his arms, understood nothing but that she
+wanted to stand with him, to put herself in whatever
+place was his, to take that black, terrible
+shadow that had fallen on him and wrap it around
+herself too.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My poor little white-souled darling,&rdquo; he said
+through tears that choked him, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t take this
+from you! It&rsquo;s too much, I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against
+his shoulder and argued dreamily:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what you can do. You&rsquo;ll have to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span>
+take <i>me</i>. And I don&rsquo;t see how you can take me
+any way but just as I am.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then she was suddenly conscious that the world
+was observing. She drew quickly away, and
+Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go.</p>
+<p>Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered
+and adored, he began to speak in wonder and
+self-abasement.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;After all I&rsquo;ve made you suffer&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Ruth would have none of this. It had been
+nothing, she declared. She had found work to
+do. She had been happy, in a way. God had
+been very kind.</p>
+<p>At length Jeffrey said: &ldquo;Well, I guess we&rsquo;ll
+never have to misunderstand again, anyway, Ruth.
+I had to find God because I was&ndash;&ndash;I needed Him.
+Now I want to find Him&ndash;&ndash;your way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;you mean that you <i>believe</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jeffrey slowly. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think I
+ever would. I certainly didn&rsquo;t want to. But I
+do. And it isn&rsquo;t just to win with you, Ruth, or
+to make you happier. I can&rsquo;t help it. It&rsquo;s the
+thing the Bishop once told me about&ndash;&ndash;the thing
+that&rsquo;s bigger than I am.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for
+leading him forthwith to Father Ponfret, that he
+might begin at once his course of instructions
+which she assured him was essential.</p>
+<p>But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading
+books all winter, he said. Though he admitted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span>
+that until last night he had not understood much
+of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God!
+Could she not come home, then, to his mother,
+who was pining for her&ndash;&ndash;and&ndash;&ndash;and they would
+have all their lives to finish the instructions.</p>
+<p>On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she
+would stay, among these good people where she
+had made for herself a place and a home. He
+must come every week to Father Ponfret for his
+instructions, like any other convert. If on those
+occasions he also came to see her, well, she would,
+of course, be glad to see him and to know how he
+was progressing.</p>
+<p>Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would
+see.</p>
+<p>And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree.</p>
+<p>Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this
+arrangement, grumbled that the way of the heretic
+was indeed made easy in these days. But his wife
+Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed
+him that if the good Ruth saw fit to convert
+even a heathen Turk into a husband for herself
+she would no doubt make a good job of it.</p>
+<p>So love came and went through the summer,
+practically unrebuked.</p>
+<p>Again the Bishop came riding up to French
+Village with Arsene LaComb. But this time they
+rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up
+over the new line of railroad that came into the
+hills from Welden Junction. And Arsene was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span>
+very glad of this, for as he looked at his beloved
+M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque he saw that he was not now the
+man to have faced the long road up over the hills.
+He was not two, he was many years older and less
+sturdy.</p>
+<p>The Bishop practised his French a little, but
+mostly he was silent and thoughtful. He was
+remembering that day, nearly two years ago now,
+when he had set two ambitious young souls upon
+a way which they did not like. What a coil of
+good and bad had come out of that doing of his.
+And again he wondered, as he had wondered then,
+whether he had done right. Who was to tell?</p>
+<p>And again to-morrow he was to set those two
+again upon their way of life, for he was coming up
+to French Village to the wedding of Ruth Lansing
+to Jeffrey Whiting.</p>
+<p>Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing&rsquo;s side in
+the little rough-finished sanctuary of the chapel
+which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to
+raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer.
+But Jeffrey Whiting saw none of the poor makeshifts
+out of which the little priest had contrived
+a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again,
+in the night, on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned
+stars, crying out to find God. Then
+God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch
+and lifted him out of the dust and agony of the
+road, and, finally, had brought him here, to this
+moment.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span></div>
+<p>He had just received into his body the God of
+life. His soul stood trembling at its portal, receiving
+its Guest for the first time. He was
+amazed with a great wonder, for here was the
+very God of the dark night speaking to him in
+words that beat upon his heart. And his wonder
+was that from this he should ever arise and go on
+with any other business whatever.</p>
+<p>Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to
+the music of that <i>choir unseen</i> which had once
+given her the call of life. She had followed it, not
+always in the perfect way, but at least bravely, unquestioningly.
+And it had brought her now to a
+holy and awed happiness. Neither life nor death
+would ever rob her of this moment.</p>
+<p>Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop.
+And as the Shepherd blessed their joined hands he
+prayed for these two who were dear to him, as
+well as for his other little ones, and, as always,
+for those &ldquo;other sheep.&rdquo; And the breathing of
+his prayer was:</p>
+<p>That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear;
+but trust long in Thee and in each other.</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em'>THE END</p>
+<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;'>Printed in the United States of America.</p>
+
+<!-- generated by ppg.rb version: 3.15 -->
+<!-- timestamp: Sat Sep 26 03:46:52 -0400 2009 -->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30093 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #30093 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30093)
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-Project Gutenberg's The Shepherd of the North, by Richard Aumerle Maher

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: The Shepherd of the North

-

-Author: Richard Aumerle Maher

-

-Release Date: September 26, 2009 [EBook #30093]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed

-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-BY RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER

-

-Author of "The Heart of a Man," etc.

-

-M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY

-

-CHICAGO--NEW YORK

-

-

-

-

-Copyright 1916

-

-By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

-

-Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916.

-

-Reprinted March, 1916 June, 1916 October, 1916.

-

-February, 1917.

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS

-

-  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE

-        I THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN                                   3

-       II THE CHOIR UNSEEN                                          35

-      III GLOW OF DAWN                                              64

-       IV THE ANSWER                                               103

-        V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE                                     137

-       VI THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD                             174

-      VII THE INNER CITADEL                                        210

-     VIII SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?                             243

-       IX THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD                               277

-        X THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID                                  311

-

-

-

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-

-

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-I

-

-THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN

-

-

-The Bishop of Alden was practising his French upon Arsene LaComb. It

-was undoubtedly good French, this of M'sieur the Bishop, Arsene

-assured himself. It must be. But it certainly was not any kind of

-French that had ever been spoken by the folks back in Three Rivers.

-

-Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not understand all that the

-Bishop said, it was equally certain that the Bishop could not

-understand all that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a cheery

-companion for the long road. He took his upsets into six feet of

-Adirondack snow, as man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft and

-the road is uncertain.

-

-In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and the railroad behind and

-had headed into the hills. For thirty miles, with only one stop for a

-bite of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded along up the

-half-broken, logging roads. Now they were in the high country and

-there were no roads.

-

-Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a drifting storm had followed

-him down from Little Tupper, covering the road that he had made and

-leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped driving and held only a

-steady, even rein to keep his ponies from stumbling, while he let the

-tough, willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road.

-

-Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene had been tossed off the

-single bobsled out into the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting

-all day long on the swaying bumper, with no back rest, feet braced

-stiffly against the draw bar in front to keep the dizzy balance. But

-it was the only way that this trip could be made.

-

-The Bishop knew that he should not have let the confirmation in French

-Village on Little Tupper go to this late date in the season. He had

-arranged to come a month before. But Father Ponfret's illness had put

-him back at that time.

-

-Now he was worried. The early December dark was upon them. There was

-no road. The ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve bad miles

-to go.

-

-Still, things might be worse. The cold was not bad. He had the bulkier

-of his vestments and regalia in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to

-the sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils and the other sacred

-essentials were slung securely about his body. And a tumble more or

-less in the snow was a part of the day's work. They would break their

-way through somehow.

-

-So, with the occasional interruptions, he was practising his amazing

-French upon Arsene.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old Massachusetts stock. He had

-learned the French that was taught at Harvard in the fifties.

-Afterwards, after his conversion to the Catholic Church, he had gone

-to Louvain for his seminary studies. There he had heard French of

-another kind. But to the day he died he spoke his French just as it

-was written in the book, and with an aggressive New England accent.

-

-He must speak French to the children in French Village to-morrow, not

-because the children would understand, but because it would please

-Father Ponfret and the parents.

-

-They were struggling around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain and the

-Bishop was rounding out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration

-of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a sharp:

-

-"Jomp, M'sieur l'Eveque, _jomp_!"

-

-The Bishop jumped--or was thrown--ten feet into a snow-bank.

-

-While he gathered himself out of the snow and felt carefully his

-bulging breast pockets to make sure that everything was safe, he saw

-what had happened.

-

-The star-faced pony on the near side had slipped off the trail and

-rolled down a little bank, dragging the other pony and Arsene and the

-sled with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies, man and sled at

-the bottom of a little gully, and as the Bishop floundered through the

-snow to help he feared that it was serious.

-

-Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under the sled, his head just

-clear of the ponies' heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in

-the _patois_ that they understood. He was within inches of having his

-brains beaten out by the quivering hoofs; he could not, literally,

-move his head to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with them

-as quietly as if he stood at their heads.

-

-They kicked and fought each other and the sled, until the influence of

-the calm voice behind them began to work upon them. Then their own

-craft came back to them and they remembered the many bitter lessons

-they had gotten from kicking and fighting in deep snow. They lay still

-and waited for the voice to come and get them out of this.

-

-As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to release Arsene, he

-remembered that he had seen men under fire. And he said to himself

-that he had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this little

-French-Canadian storekeeper.

-

-The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had been soft under him,

-and lunged for the ponies' heads.

-

-"Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now! Ah-a! Bien!"

-

-He had them both by their bridles and dragged them skilfully to their

-feet and up the bank. With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all

-safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail.

-

-Arsene now looked around for the Bishop.

-

-"Ba Golly! M'sieur l'Eveque, dat's one fine jomp. You got hurt, you?"

-

-The Bishop declared that he was not in any way the worse from the

-tumble, and Arsene turned to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up

-the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection of his harness

-and said ruefully:

-

-"Dat's bad, M'sieur l'Eveque. She's gone bust."

-

-He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his hand. The trouble was

-quite evident.

-

-"What can we do?" asked the Bishop. "Have you any rope?"

-

-"No. Dat's how I been one big fool, me. I lef' new rope on de sled

-las' night on Lowville. Dis morning she's gone. Some t'ief."

-

-"We must get on somehow," said the Bishop, as he unbuckled part of the

-lashing from his bag and handed the strap to Arsene. "That will hold

-until we get to the first house where we can get the loan of a trace.

-We can walk behind. We're both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is

-it far?"

-

-"Dat's Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks, 'bout quarter mile, maybe."

-The little man looked up from his work long enough to point out a

-clump of hemlocks that stood out black and sharp against the white

-world around them. As the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among

-the trees, showing where life and a home fought their battle against

-the desolation of the hills.

-

-"I donno," said Arsene speculatively, as he and the Bishop took up

-their tramp behind the sled; "Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don' like

-Canuck. Maybe he don' lend no harness, I donno."

-

-"Oh, yes; he will surely," answered the Bishop easily. "Nobody would

-refuse a bit of harness in a case like this."

-

-It was full dark when they came to where Tom Lansing's cabin hid

-itself among the hemlocks. Arsene did not dare trust his team off the

-road where they had footing, so the Bishop floundered his way through

-the heavy snow to find the cabin door.

-

-It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out of the hemlocks that had

-stood around it and belonged to a generation already past. But it was

-still serviceable and tight, and it was a home.

-

-The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was no response from within.

-It was strange. For there was every sign of life about the place.

-After knocking a second time without result, he lifted the heavy

-wooden latch and pushed quietly into the cabin.

-

-A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite the door. On

-the hearth stood a big black and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not

-the slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his four legs

-planted squarely under him, his whole body quivering with fear. His

-nose was pointed upward as though ready for the howl to which he dared

-not give voice. His great brown eyes rolled in an ecstasy of fright

-but seemed unable to tear themselves from the side of the room where

-he was looking.

-

-Along the side of the room ran a long, low couch covered with soft,

-well worn hides. On it lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out

-awkwardly and unnaturally, showing that he had been dragged

-unconscious to where he was. A candle stood on the low window ledge

-and shone down full into the man's face.

-

-At the head of the couch knelt a young girl, her arm supporting the

-man's head and shoulder, her wildly tossed hair falling down across

-his chest.

-

-She was speaking to the man in a voice low and even, but so tense that

-her whole slim body seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as

-though her very soul came to the portals of her lips and shouted its

-message to the man. The power of her voice, the breathless, compelling

-strength of her soul need seemed to hold everything between heaven

-and earth, as she pleaded to the man. The Bishop stood spellbound.

-

-"Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My Father!" she was saying over and

-over. "Come back, come back, Daddy Tom! It's not true! God doesn't

-want you! He doesn't want to take you from Ruth! How could He! It's

-not never true! A tree couldn't kill my Daddy Tom! Never, never! Why,

-he's felled whole slopes of trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!"

-

-For a time which he could not measure the Bishop stood listening to

-the pleading of the girl's voice. But in reality he was not listening

-to the sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She was fighting

-bitterly with death. She was calling all the forces of love and life

-to aid her in her struggle. She was following the soul of her loved

-one down to the very door of death. She would pull him back out of the

-very clutches of the unknown.

-

-And the Bishop found that he was not merely listening to what the girl

-said. He was going down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing

-every word of her pleading. The force of her will and her prayer swept

-him along so that with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed

-for the man to open his eyes.

-

-Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible fear seemed to grip and

-crush her, so that she cowered and hid her face against the big,

-grizzled white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed in terror.

-

-The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched the girl on the head,

-saying:

-

-"Do not give up yet, child. I once had some skill. Let me try."

-

-The girl turned and looked up blankly at him. She did not question who

-he was or whence he had come. She turned again and wrapped her arms

-jealously about the head and shoulders of her father. Plainly she was

-afraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insisted

-gently and in the end she gave him place beside her.

-

-He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listen

-at the man's breast.

-

-Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life,

-certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man's pockets for the

-knife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly.

-

-"It was just a little while ago," she answered, in short, frightened

-sentences. "My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Father

-had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinned

-down under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and told

-me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it must

-be I hurt him; he fainted. I can't make him speak. I cut boughs and

-made a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can't make him speak.

-Is he?-- Is he?-- Tell me," she appealed.

-

-The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man's

-jacket and shirt.

-

-"You were all alone, child?" he said. "Where could you get the

-strength for all this? My driver is out on the road," he continued, as

-he worked on. "Call him and send him for the nearest help."

-

-The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at the

-man on the couch, went out into the snow.

-

-The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.

-

-The man's shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing there

-to constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upper

-ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them were

-caved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of them

-must have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung on

-that side.

-

-The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bled

-outwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little,

-and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula.

-

-He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was a

-little black ball of steel.

-

-While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, a

-long tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever so

-slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyes

-opened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop

-thought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come back

-naturally to a realisation of things.

-

-While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly, and the Bishop stood

-holding the little black ball between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth

-Lansing came back into the room.

-

-Seeing her father's eyes open, the girl rushed across the room and was

-about to throw herself down by the side of the couch when her father's

-voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible and clear, stopped

-her.

-

-"The White Horse Chaplain!" he said in a voice of slow wonder. "But I

-always knew he'd come for me sometime. And I suppose it's time."

-

-The Bishop started. He had not heard the name for twenty-five years.

-

-The girl stopped by the table, trembling and frightened. She had heard

-the tale of the White Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her

-that her father was delirious and raving. But he spoke so calmly and

-so certainly. He seemed so certain that the man he saw was an

-apparition that she could not think or reason herself out of her

-fright.

-

-The Bishop answered easily and quietly:

-

-"Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did not think anybody

-remembered now."

-

-Tom Lansing's eyes leaped wide with doubt and question. They stared

-full at the Bishop. Then they turned and saw the table standing in its

-right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the table; saw the dog at

-the fireplace. The man there was real!

-

-Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle to rise, then fell back

-gasping.

-

-The Bishop put his hand gently under the man's head and eased him to a

-better position, saying:

-

-"It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving past and had broken a

-trace, and came in to borrow one from you. You got a bad blow. But

-your girl has just sent my driver for help. They will get a doctor

-somewhere. We cannot tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not

-so bad as it looks." But, even as he spoke, the Bishop saw a drop of

-blood appear at the corner of the man's white mouth; and he knew that

-it was as bad as the worst.

-

-The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes moved again from the

-Bishop to the girl and the everyday things of the room.

-

-It was evident that his mind was clearing sharply. He had rallied

-quickly. But the Bishop knew instinctively that it was the last,

-flashing rally of the forces of life--in the face of the on-crowding

-darkness. The shock and the internal hemorrhage were doing their work

-fast. The time was short.

-

-Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with a look, he called the

-girl to him.

-

-Through the seventeen years of her life, since the night when her

-mother had laid her in her father's arms and died, Ruth Lansing had

-hardly ever been beyond the reach of her father's voice. They had

-grown very close together, these two. They had little need of clumsy

-words between them.

-

-As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild, eager, rebellious,

-seared her father with their terror-stricken, unbelieving question.

-

-But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her wild questioning had

-given him. She crushed back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely

-with herself until she was able to force into her eyes a look of

-understanding and great mothering tenderness.

-

-Her father saw the struggle and the look, and blessed her for it with

-his eyes. Then he said:

-

-"You'll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you? I know I'm desertin'

-you, little comrade, right in the mornin' of your battle with life.

-But you won't be afraid. I know you won't."

-

-The girl shook her head bravely, but it was clear that she dared not

-trust herself to speak.

-

-"I'm goin' to ask this man here to look to you. He came here for a

-sign to me. I see it. I see it plain. I will trust him with your life.

-And so will you, little comrade. I--I'm droppin' out. He'll take you

-on.

-

-"He saved my life once. So he gave you your life. It's a sign, my

-Ruth."

-

-The girl slipped her hands gently under his head and looked deep and

-long into the glazing eyes.

-

-Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was facing death--and life

-alone.

-

-Obedient to her father's look, she rose and walked across the room.

-She saw that he had something to say to this strange man and that the

-time was short.

-

-In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin she stood, and throwing

-one arm up against the frame of the door she buried her face in it.

-She did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty of time for

-that.

-

-The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant an irrevocable

-change had come over her. She had knelt a frightened, wondering,

-protesting child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of death and its

-infinite certainty, of life and its infinite chance, had risen from

-her knees.

-

-As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke hurriedly:

-

-"I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I did I forgot it, and it

-don't matter.

-

-"I'm dying. I don't need any doctor to tell me. I'll be gone before he

-gets here.

-

-"You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when Curtis' men were cut to

-pieces in the second charge on the trenches. They left me there,

-because it was every man for himself.

-

-"A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg. And you came drivin' mad

-across the field on a big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me

-where I lay. You threw me across your saddle and walked that wild

-horse back into our lines.

-

-"Do you remember? Dying men got up on their elbows and cheered you. I

-lay six weeks in fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?"

-

-"I do, now," said the Bishop. "Our troop came back to the Shenandoah,

-and I never knew what--"

-

-That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back upon him. He was just a

-few months ordained. He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union

-army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the ways and business of a

-battlefield, he had found himself that day in the sand dunes before

-Fort Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about him. Hail, fumes,

-lightning and thunder of battle rolled over him and sickened him. He

-saw his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against the

-Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself, and fade away back into

-the smoke. He lost it, and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered

-blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead man, now speaking to

-a living stricken one: Here straightening a torn body and giving

-water; there hearing the confession of a Catholic.

-

-Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis' troops came yelling across the flat

-land. Once, twice they tried the trenches and were driven back into

-the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a big white horse. The

-animal, mad with fright and blood scent, charged down upon him as he

-bent over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and fought the horse.

-Before he realised what he was doing, he was in the saddle riding back

-and forth across the field. Right up to the trenches the horse carried

-him.

-

-Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy, a thin, long-legged boy

-with a long beardless face. He lay there marking the high tide of the

-last charge--the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain, tumbling down

-somehow from his mount, picked up the writhing boy and bundled him

-across the saddle. Then he started walking back looking for his own

-lines.

-

-Now here was the boy talking to him across the mists of twenty-five

-years. And the boy, the man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom

-Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have died from fever bloat

-or been trampled to death in the succeeding charges. He had given him

-life. And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he had given that

-daughter life. Now he knew what Lansing was going to say.

-

-"I didn't know you then," said Lansing. "I don't know who you are now,

-Chaplain, or what you are.

-

-"But," he went on slowly, "if I'd agiven you a message that day you'd

-have taken it on for me, wouldn't you?"

-

-"Of course I would."

-

-"Suppose it had been to my mother, say: You'da risked your life to get

-it on to her?"

-

-"I hope I would," said the Bishop evenly.

-

-"I believe you would. That's what I think of you," said Tom Lansing.

-

-"I went back South after the war," he began again. "I stole my girl's

-mother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonel

-that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her up

-here into the hills and she died when the baby was just a few weeks

-old.

-

-"There ain't a relation in the world that my little girl could go to.

-I'm goin' to die in half an hour. But what better would she be if I

-lived? What would I do with her? Keep her here and let her marry some

-fightin' lumber jack that'd beat her? Or see her break her heart

-tryin' to make a livin' on one of these rock hills? She'd fret

-herself to death. She knows more now than I do and she'd soon be

-wantin' to know more. She's that kind.

-

-"She'd ought to have her chance the way I've seen girls in towns

-havin' a chance. A chance to study and learn and grow the way she

-wants to. And now I'm desertin'; goin' out like a smoky lamp.

-

-"It was a crime, a crime!" he groaned, "ever to bring her mother up

-into this place!"

-

-"You could not think of all that then. No man ever does," said the

-Bishop calmly. "And I will do my best to see that she gets her chance.

-I think that's what you want to ask me, isn't it, Lansing?"

-

-"Do you swear it?" gasped Lansing, struggling and choking in an effort

-to raise his head. "Do you swear to try and see that she gets a

-chance?"

-

-"God will help me to do the best for her," said the Bishop quietly. "I

-am the Bishop of Alden. I can do something."

-

-With the definiteness of a man who has heard a final word, Tom

-Lansing's eyes turned to his daughter.

-

-Obediently she came again and knelt at his side, holding his head.

-

-To the very last, as long as his eyes could see, they saw her smiling

-bravely and sweetly down into them; giving her sacrament and holding

-her light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.

-

-When the last twinging tremour had run through the racked body, she

-leaned over and kissed her father full on the lips.

-

-Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into the night.

-

-While the Bishop was straightening the body on the couch, a young man

-and two women came into the room.

-

-They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and her sister, neighbours

-whom Arsene had brought.

-

-The Bishop was much relieved with their coming. He could do nothing

-more now, and the long night ride was still ahead of him.

-

-He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had gone out into the cold,

-and asked him to find her.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had played with Ruth Lansing

-since she was a baby, for they were the only children on Lansing

-Mountain. He knew where he would find her.

-

-Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of the hills, where people

-had to meet their problems and burdens alone, took command at once.

-

-"No, sir," she replied to the Bishop's question, "there's nobody to

-send for. The Lansings didn't have a relation living that anybody ever

-heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom Lansing's father and

-mother. They're buried out there on the hill where he'll be buried.

-

-"There's some old soldiers down the West Slope towards Beaver River.

-They'll want to take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on

-Monday," she went on rapidly, sketching in the programme. "We have a

-preacher if we can get one. But when we can't my sister Letty here

-sings something."

-

-"Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a way," said the Bishop slowly.

-"At least, I was at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like to--"

-

-"Were you at Fort Fisher?" broke in the sister Letty, speaking for the

-first time. "And did you see Curtis' colour bearer? He was killed in

-the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton, with long, black

-hair?"

-

-"He had an old scar over his eye-brow." The Bishop supplemented the

-description out of the memory of that day.

-

-"He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five years ago to-morrow,"

-said the woman trembling. "You saw him die?"

-

-"He was dead when I came to him," said the Bishop quietly, "with the

-stock of the colour standard still clenched in his hand."

-

-"He was my--my--" Sweetheart, she wanted to say. But the hill women do

-not say things easily.

-

-"Yes?" said the Bishop gently. "I understand." She was a woman of his

-people. Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he could read

-the years of her faithfulness to the memory of that lean, dark face

-which he had once seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow.

-

-Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about her sister.

-

-"Are you--?" she questioned, hesitating strangely. "Are you the White

-Horse Chaplain?"

-

-"The boys called me that," said the Bishop. "Though it was only a name

-for a day," he added.

-

-"It was true, then?" she said slowly, as if still unready to believe.

-"We never half believed our boys when they came home from the war--the

-ones that did come home--and told about the white horse and the priest

-riding the field. We thought it was one of the things men see when

-they're fighting and dying."

-

-Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room leading Ruth Lansing by

-the hand.

-

-The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The Bishop drew her over to

-the fire.

-

-"I must go now, child," he said. "To-morrow I must be in French

-Village. Monday I will be here again.

-

-"Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he said to me, about you?"

-

-The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the Bishop's face, then

-nodded her head.

-

-"Then, we must think and pray, child, that we may know how to do what

-he wanted us to do. God will show us what is the best. That is what he

-wanted.

-

-"God keep you brave now. Your friends here will see to everything for

-you. I have to go now."

-

-He crossed the room and laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the

-dead man, renewing in his heart the promise he had made.

-

-Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting that he would be back before

-noon Monday, he went out to where Arsene and his horses were stamping

-in the snow.

-

-The little man had replaced the broken trace, and the ponies, fretting

-with the cold and eager to get home, took hungrily to the trail.

-

-But the Bishop forgot to practise his French further upon Arsene. He

-told him briefly what had happened, then lapsed into silence.

-

-Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing had said about the girl.

-She knew more now than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew now. But

-more than Tom Lansing had known half an hour ago.

-

-She would want to see the world. She would want to know life and ask

-her own questions from life and the world. In the broad open space

-between her eye-brows it was written that she would never take

-anybody's word for the puzzles of the world. She was marked a seeker;

-one of those who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand to

-know what it means. They never find out. But, heart break or sparrow

-fall, they must go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own way.

-The world is infinitely the better through them. But their own way is

-hard and lonely.

-

-She must go out. She must have education. She must have a chance to

-face life and wrest its lessons from it in her own way. It did not

-promise happiness for her. But she could go no other way. For hers was

-the high, stony way of those who demand more than jealous life is

-ready to give.

-

-The Bishop only knew that he had this night given a promise which had

-sent a man contentedly on his way. Somehow, God would show him how

-best to keep that promise.

-

-And when they halloed at Father Ponfret's house in French Village he

-had gotten no farther than that.

-

-

-Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his couch. Clean white sheets

-had been draped over the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking

-in through the west window picked out every bare thread of his service

-coat and glinted on the polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung

-into the belt at his side.

-

-Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head of the couch, listening

-to the comments and stumbling condolences of neighbours from the high

-hills and the lower valleys. They were good, kindly people, she knew.

-But why, why, must every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous

-lie-- How natural he looked!

-

-He did not. He did not. He did _not_ look natural. How could her Daddy

-Tom look natural, when he lay there all still and cold, and would not

-speak to his Ruth!

-

-He was dead. And what was death-- And why? _Why?_

-

-Who had ordered this? And _why?_

-

-And still they came with that set, borrowed phrase--the only thing

-they could think to say--upon their lips.

-

-Out in Tom Lansing's workshop on the horse-barn floor, Jacque Lafitte,

-the wright, was nailing soft pine boards together.

-

-Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not leave Daddy Tom to her?

-She wanted to ask him things. She knew that she could make him

-understand and answer.

-

-She slipped away from the couch and out of the house. At the corner of

-the house her dog joined her and together they circled away from the

-horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where her father had been

-working yesterday.

-

-She found her father's cap where it had been left in her fright of

-yesterday, and sat down fondling it in her hands. The dog came and

-slid his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle into the cap

-between her hands.

-

-So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following her with her coat

-and hood.

-

-"You better put these on, Ruth," he said, as he dropped the coat

-across her shoulder. "It's too cold here."

-

-The girl drew the coat around her obediently, but did not look up at

-him. She was grateful for his thought of her, but she was not ready to

-speak to any one.

-

-He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and drew the dog over to

-him.

-

-After a little he asked timidly:

-

-"What are you going to do, Ruth? You can't stay here. I'll tend your

-stock and look after the place for you. But you just can't stay

-here."

-

-"You?" she questioned finally. "You're going to that Albany school

-next week. You said you were all ready."

-

-"I was all ready. But I ain't going. I'll stay here and work the two

-farms for you."

-

-"For me?" she said. "And not be a lawyer at all?"

-

-"I--I don't care anything about it any more," he lied. "I told mother

-this morning that I wasn't going. She said she'd have you come and

-stay with her till Spring."

-

-"And then?" the girl faced the matter, looking straight and unafraid

-into his eyes. "And then?"

-

-"Well, then," he hesitated. "You see, then I'll be twenty. And you'll

-be old enough to marry me," he hurried. "Your father, you know, he

-always wanted me to take care of you, didn't he?" he pleaded,

-awkwardly but subtly.

-

-"I know you don't want to talk about it now," he went on hastily. "But

-you'll come home with mother to-morrow, won't you? You know she wants

-you, and I--I never had to tell you that I love you. You knew it when

-you wasn't any higher than Prince here."

-

-"Yes. I always knew it, and I'm glad," the girl answered levelly. "I'm

-glad now, Jeff. But I can't let you do it. Some day you'd hate me for

-it."

-

-"Ruth! You know better than that!"

-

-"Oh, you'd never tell me; I know that. You'd do your best to hide it

-from me. But some day when your chance was gone you'd look back and

-see what you might have been, 'stead of a humpbacked farmer in the

-hills. Oh, I know. You've told me all your dreams and plans, how

-you're going down to the law school, and going to be a great lawyer

-and go to Albany and maybe to Washington."

-

-"What's it all good for?" said the boy sturdily. "I'd rather stay here

-with you."

-

-The girl did not answer. In the strain of the night and the day, she

-had almost forgotten the things that she had heard her father say to

-the White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call the Bishop.

-

-Now she remembered those things and tried to tell them.

-

-"That strange man that said he was the Bishop of Alden told my father

-that he would see that I got a chance. My father called him the White

-Horse Chaplain and said that he had been sent here just on purpose to

-look after me. I didn't know there were bishops in this country. I

-thought it was only in books about Europe."

-

-"What did they say?"

-

-"My father said that I would want to go out and see things and know

-things; that I mustn't be married to a--a lumber jack. He said it was

-no place for me in the hills."

-

-"And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, to

-school?" he guessed shrewdly.

-

-"I don't know, I suppose that was it," said the girl slowly.

-"Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He had

-taught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills was

-full of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and see

-and pick up. And to-day I don't care."

-

-She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the dog at her feet, and

-down the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were all

-she had in the world.

-

-The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly.

-

-He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:

-

-"Don't forget to count me, Ruth. You've got me, you know."

-

-Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought.

-Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it

-was just the eternal surrender of woman.

-

-When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears,

-the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run

-out into the night.

-

-He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white,

-desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untried

-troth.

-

-When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white bosom of the hillside, and

-the people were dispersing from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting came

-and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop's sharp old eyes had told him

-to expect something of what was coming. He liked the look of the boy's

-clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance of his eyes. They

-told of dependableness and plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was

-not a boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be his.

-

-"Ruth told me that you were going to take her away from the hills," he

-began. "To a school, I suppose."

-

-"I made a promise to her father," said the Bishop, "that I would try

-to see that she got the chance that she will want in the world."

-

-"But I love her. She's going to marry me in the Spring."

-

-The Bishop was surprised. He had not thought matters had gone so far.

-

-"How old are you?" he asked thoughtfully.

-

-"Twenty in April."

-

-"You have some education?" the Bishop suggested. "You have been at

-school?"

-

-"Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth. And last Winter at the

-Academy in Lowville. I was going to Albany to law school next week."

-

-"And you are giving it all up for Ruth," said the Bishop incisively.

-"Does it hurt?"

-

-The boy winced, but caught himself at once.

-

-"It don't make any difference about that. I want Ruth."

-

-"And Ruth? What does she want?" the Bishop asked. "You are offering to

-make a sacrifice for her. You are willing to give up your hopes and

-work yourself to the bone here on these hills for her. And you would

-be man enough never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe

-that. But what of her? You find it hard enough to give up your chance,

-for her, for love.

-

-"Do you know that you are asking her to give up her chance, for

-nothing, for less than nothing; because in giving up her chance she

-would know that she had taken away yours, too. She would be a good and

-loving companion to you through all of a hard life. But, for both your

-sakes, she would never forgive you. Never."

-

-"You're asking me to give her up. If she went out and got a start,

-she'd go faster than I could. I know it," said the boy bitterly.

-"She'd go away above me. I'd lose her."

-

-"I am not asking you to give her up," the Bishop returned steadily.

-"If you are the man I think you are, you will never give her up. But

-are you afraid to let her have her chance in the sun? Are you afraid

-to let her have what you want for yourself? Are you afraid?"

-

-The boy looked steadily into the Bishop's eyes for a moment. Then he

-turned quickly and walked across the room to where Ruth sat.

-

-"I can't give it up, Ruth," he said gruffly. "I'm going to Albany to

-school. I can't give it up."

-

-The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:

-

-"You needn't have tried to lie, Jeff; though it's just like you to put

-the blame on yourself. I know what he said. I must think."

-

-The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He saw them suddenly light

-up. He knew what that meant. She was seeing the great world with all

-its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he himself had seen it. Now

-he knew that he had lost.

-

-The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready to go. The day was

-slipping away and before him there were thirty miles and a train to be

-caught.

-

-"We must not be hurried, my children," he said, standing by the boy

-and girl. "The Sacred Heart Academy at Athens is the best school this

-side of Albany. The Mother Superior will write you in a few days,

-telling you when and how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go

-as she directs.

-

-"You have been a good, brave little girl. A soldier's daughter could

-be no more, nor less. God bless you now, and you, too, my boy," he

-added.

-

-When he was settled on the sled with Arsene and they were rounding the

-shoulder of Lansing Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace, he

-turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.

-

-"To-day," he said to himself, "I have set two ambitious, eager souls

-upon the high and stony paths of the great world. Should I have left

-them where they were?

-

-"I shall never know whether I did right or not. Even time will mix

-things up so that I'll never be able to tell. Maybe some day God will

-let me see. But why should he? One can only aim right, and trust in

-Him."

-

-

-

-

-II

-

-THE CHOIR UNSEEN

-

-

-Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms of the Sacred Heart convent

-in Athens thrumming out a finger exercise that a child of six would

-have been able to do as well as she.

-

-It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world, this, into which she

-had been suddenly transplanted. It was as different from the great

-world that she had come out to see as it was from the wild, sweet life

-of the hills where she had ruled and managed everything within reach.

-Mainly it was full of girls of her own age whose talk and thoughts

-were of a range entirely new to her.

-

-She compared herself with them and knew that they were really children

-in the comparison. Their talk was of dress and manners and society and

-the thousand little and big things that growing girls look forward to.

-She knew that in any real test, anything that demanded common sense

-and action, she was years older than they. But they had things that

-she did not have.

-

-They talked of things that she knew nothing about. They could walk

-across waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walked

-on. They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or choking

-as she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had never

-in her life received a scolding, would have been driven into

-hysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses were

-supposed to be new. She knew that these were not things that they had

-learned by studying. They just grew up to them, just as she knew how

-to throw a fishing line and hold a rifle.

-

-But she wanted all those things that they had; wanted them all

-passionately. She had the sense to know that those were not great

-things. But they were the things that would make her like these other

-girls. And she wanted to be like them.

-

-Because she had not grown up with other girls, because she had never

-even had a girl playmate, she wanted not to miss any of the things

-that they had and were.

-

-They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick, eager mind sprang at

-books and fairly tore the lessons from them. She ran away from the

-girls in anything that could be learned in that way. But when she

-found herself with two or three of them they talked a language that

-she did not know. She could not keep up with them. And she was stupid

-and awkward, and felt it. It was not easy to break into their world

-and be one of them.

-

-Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls but

-infinitely removed from it--the world of the sisters.

-

-That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave their

-hours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was a

-world all by itself.

-

-What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What was

-there in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They must

-once have been as different as every girl is different from every

-other girl.

-

-How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air of

-never being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence was

-there behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to come

-out with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light that

-shone in their faces?

-

-Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What did

-they have to be happy about?

-

-Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They were

-Catholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her

-question aside with a stare:

-

-"Sisters always look like that."

-

-So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world

-of the sisters behind those walls. What did they do in there? Did

-they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they

-just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of

-God and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed so

-familiar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especially

-when He was displeased.

-

-She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, where

-there were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the trees

-to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as a

-printed book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She could

-read the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden.

-Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away from

-her.

-

-Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its door

-in the face of her sharp, hungry mind.

-

-And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worlds

-about her--the world of the Catholic Church.

-

-Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little green

-building in French Village where the "Canucks" went to church.

-

-Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. The

-pictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroom

-door. The books she read, the talk she heard was all filled with it.

-It came and went through every door of life.

-

-All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers were

-alive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much.

-The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought against

-it. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted to

-argue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrong

-sometimes.

-

-But just when she was sure that she had found something false,

-something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her,

-she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was always

-ready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she had

-gotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what was

-wrong with her that she could not understand? She could learn

-everything else faster and more easily than the other girls could.

-

-Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fell

-nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burning

-tears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her.

-

-The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills to

-conquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her.

-Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand these

-strange women about her. Would never understand them.

-

-Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her,

-where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow and

-the wild winds were her friends?

-

-She threw herself forward on her arms and gave way utterly, crying in

-great, heart-breaking, breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her

-home, for her hills.

-

-At five o'clock Sister Rose, coming to see that the music rooms were

-aired for the evening use, found Ruth an inert, shapeless little

-bundle of broken nerves lying across the piano.

-

-She took the girl to her room and sent for the sister infirmarian.

-

-But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only to leave her alone.

-

-The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness that every

-new pupil in a boarding school is liable to, sent some of the other

-girls in during the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she drove

-them away. She was not cross nor pettish. But her soul was sick for

-the sweeping freedom of her hills and for people who could understand

-her.

-

-She rose and dragged her little couch over to the window, where she

-could look out and up to the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped

-down upon her in the hills.

-

-She did not know the names that they had in books, but she had framed

-little pet names for them all out of her baby fancies and the names

-had clung to them all the years.

-

-She recognised them, although they did not stand in the places where

-they belonged when she looked at them from the hills.

-

-Out among them somewhere was Heaven. Daddy Tom was there, and her

-mother whom she had never seen.

-

-Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it seemed, there came stealing

-into her sense a sound. Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so

-illusive. It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear as other

-sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to steal past the clumsy senses

-directly into the spirit and the heart.

-

-It was music. Yes. But it was as though the Soul of Music had freed

-itself of the bondage and the body of sound and notes and came

-carrying its unutterable message straight to the soul of the world.

-

-It was only the sisters in their chapel gently hymning the _Salve_ of

-the Compline to their Queen in Heaven.

-

-Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignant

-evensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled with

-books and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her.

-To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laid

-bare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.

-

-She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of the

-windows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knew

-vaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried her

-beyond all thought.

-

-She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood them

-if she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to _Our Life, our

-Sweetness and our Hope_ caught her heart up into a world where words

-were never needed.

-

-She heard the cry of the _Banished children of Eve_. The _Mourning and

-weeping in this vale of tears_ swept into her soul like the flood-tide

-of all the sorrow of all the world.

-

-On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear the

-triumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of _The

-Promises of Christ_.

-

-The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows,

-leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar.

-She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of that

-unseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to the

-measure of the heart of the world.

-

-It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but the

-undying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of the

-little blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on their

-pyres. It was the cry of strong men and valiant women crushed under

-the forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, which

-knows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this.

-She realised it as she lay there trembling.

-

-Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked or

-laughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart and

-play upon it and lead her whether she would or no.

-

-It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her.

-

-Through all the long night she fought it. She would not! She would not

-give up her life, her will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?

-

-It would take her spirit out of the freedom of the hills and make it

-follow a trodden way. It would take her life out of her hands and

-maybe ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and the wind, in a

-darkened convent. It would take her will, the will of a soldier's

-daughter, and break it into little pieces to make a path for her to

-walk upon!

-

-No! No! No! Through all the endless night she moaned her protest. She

-would not! She would not give in to it.

-

-It would never let her rest. Through all her life that voice of the

-Choir Unseen would strike the strings of her heart. She knew it.

-

-But she would not. Never would she give in to it.

-

-In the morning, even before the coming of the dawn, the music came

-again; and it beat upon her worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched

-at her heart until she could stand it no longer.

-

-The sisters were taking up again the burden and the way of the day.

-

-She could not stand it! She could not stay here! She must go back to

-her hills, where there was peace for her.

-

-She heard the sister going down to unlock the street door so that

-Father Tenney could walk in when it was time and go up to the chapel

-for the sisters' early mass.

-

-That was her chance! The sisters would be in chapel. The girls would

-be still in their rooms.

-

-She dressed hastily and threw her books into a bag. She would take

-only these and her money. She had enough to get home on. The rest did

-not matter.

-

-When she heard the priest's step pass in the hall, she slipped out and

-down the dim, broad stairs.

-

-The great, heavy door of the convent stood like the gate of the world.

-It swung slowly, deliberately, on its well-oiled, silent hinges.

-

-She stood in the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, free

-air of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fled

-away into the dawn.

-

-The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain as Jeffrey Whiting came

-out of his mother's house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His

-uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn with the team and sled.

-Jeffrey threw his trunk upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe.

-It was twenty-five miles of half broken road and snowdrifts to

-Lowville and the railroad.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical American farm boy has been

-doing for the last hundred years and what he will probably continue to

-do as long as we Americans are what we are. He is not always a

-dreamer, your farm boy, when he starts down from his hills or his

-cross-roads farm to see the big world and conquer it. More often than

-you would think, he knows that he is not going to conquer it at all.

-And he is not, on the other hand, merely running away from the

-drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will probably have to work

-harder than he would ever have worked on the farm. But he knows that

-he has things to sell. And he is going down into the markets of men.

-He has a good head and a strong body. He has a power of work in him.

-He has grit and energy.

-

-He is going down into the markets where men pay the price for these

-things that he has. He is going to fight men for that price which he

-knows his things are worth.

-

-Jeffrey's mother came out carrying a canvas satchel which she put on

-the sled under Cassius Bascom's feet.

-

-"Don't kick that, Catty," she warned, "Jeff's lunch is in it. And,

-Jeff, don't you go and check it with the trunk." There was just a

-little catch in the laugh with which she said this. She was

-remembering a day more than twenty years before when she had started,

-a bride, with big, lumbering, slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting,

-Jeffrey's father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with their

-lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting checked the satchel through

-from Lowville to Buffalo, and they had nearly starved on the way. It

-was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity. But she never quite

-forgave him for telling it on himself when they got back. It had been

-a standing joke in the hills all these years.

-

-She was just a typical mother of the hills. She loved her boy. She

-needed him. She knew that she would never have him again. The boys do

-not come back from the market place. She knew that she would cry for

-him through many a lonely night, as she had cried all last night. But

-she was not crying now.

-

-Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his as she stretched her

-arms up around the neck of her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss

-her.

-

-He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart. He knew his mother very

-well. So he began with the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to

-tell when we were leaving.

-

-"It'll only be a little while, Mother. You won't find the time

-slipping by, and I'll be back."

-

-She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys always knew it was a

-lie. But she backed him up sturdily:

-

-"Why, of course, Jeff. Don't worry about me. You'll be back in no

-time."

-

-Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the house with a dark, oblong

-object in her hands.

-

-"There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just tried to forget this on

-purpose. It's too late to put it in the trunk now; so you'll just have

-to put it in your overcoat pocket."

-

-Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown brick covered with

-felt, a foot warmer. Aunt Letty had made him take one with him when he

-went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter, and he and his brick

-had furnished much of the winter's amusement there. The memory of his

-humiliations on account of that brick would last a lifetime. He

-wondered why maiden aunts could not understand. His mother, now, would

-have known better. But he dutifully put the thing into the pocket of

-his big coat--he could drop it into the first snowback--and turned to

-kiss his aunt.

-

-"I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany," she lectured. "Make

-your landlady heat it for you every night."

-

-A noise in the road made them all turn.

-

-Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were driving into the yard.

-

-It was evident from the signs that the men had been having a hard time

-on the road. They must have been out all night, for they could not

-have started from anywhere early enough to be here now at sunrise.

-

-Their harness had been broken and mended in several places. The cutter

-had a runner broken. The horses were cut and bloody, where they had

-kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.

-

-As they drove up beside the group in the yard, one of the men

-shouted:

-

-"Say, is there any place we can put in here? We've been on that road

-all night."

-

-"Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and warm yourselves," said

-Mrs. Whiting.

-

-"Rogers," said the man who had spoken, addressing the other, "if I

-ever get into a place that's warm, I'll stay there till spring."

-

-Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of the cutter and stepped

-stiffly out into the snow. He swept the group with a sharp, a praising

-eye, and asked:

-

-"Who's the one to talk to here?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and replied with another

-question.

-

-"What do you want?"

-

-Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby grey moustache and

-cold grey eyes, looked the youth over carefully as he spoke.

-

-"I want a man that knows this country and can get around in it in this

-season. I was brought up in the country, but I never saw anything like

-this. I wouldn't take a trip like this again for any money. I can't do

-this sort of thing. I want a man that knows the country and the people

-and can do it."

-

-"Well, I'm going away now," said Jeffrey slowly, "but Uncle Catty here

-knows the people and the country better than most and he can go

-anywhere."

-

-The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish man on the sled.

-Then he turned away decisively. Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old

-face all withered and puckered to one side, where a splinter of shell

-from Fort Fisher had taken away his right eye, was evidently not the

-kind of man that the big man wanted.

-

-"Where are you going?" he asked Jeffrey sharply.

-

-"Albany Law School," said Jeffrey promptly.

-

-"Unstrap the trunk, young man. You're not going. I've got something

-for you right here at home that'll teach you more than ten law

-schools. Put both teams into the barn," the big man commanded loudly.

-

-Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would oppose the will of

-this brusque stranger. But he knew that he would not do so. In that

-moment something told him that he would not go to law school; would

-never go there; that his life was about to take a twist away from

-everything that he had ever intended.

-

-Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:

-

-"Come into the house."

-

-In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom poured boiling tea for

-the two men, Rogers, cup in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and

-explained himself. The other man, whose name does not matter, sank

-into a great wooden chair at the side of the fire and seemed to be

-ready to make good his threat of staying until spring.

-

-"I represent the U. & M. railroad. We are coming up through here in

-the spring. All these farms have to be given up. We have eminent

-domain for this whole section," said Rogers.

-

-"What do you mean?" asked Jeffrey. "The railroad can't run _all over_

-the country."

-

-"No. But the road will need the whole strip of hills for timber.

-They'll cut off what is standing and then they'll stock the whole

-country with cedar, for ties. That's all the land's good for,

-anyway."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting's mouth opened for an answer to this, but his mother's

-sharp, warning glance stopped him. He understood that it was his place

-to listen and learn. There would be time enough for questions and

-arguments afterward.

-

-"Now these people here won't understand what eminent domain means,"

-the big man went on. "I'm going to make it clear to you, young man. I

-know who you are and I know more about you than you think. I'm going

-to make it clear to you and then I'm going to send you out among them

-to make them see it. They wouldn't understand me and they wouldn't

-believe me. You can make them see it."

-

-"How do you know that I'll believe you?" asked Jeffrey.

-

-"You've got brains. You don't have to _believe_. I can _show_ it to

-you."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed to taking

-responsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anything

-and this perhaps had given him more than the average boy's good

-opinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtly

-than this man's bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by a

-man of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is a

-man, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced

-men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.

-

-"Do you know what an option is?" the man began again.

-

-"Of course I do."

-

-"I thought so," said Rogers, in a manner that seemed to confirm his

-previous judgment of Jeffrey's brains. "Now then, the railroad has

-got to have all these farms from Beaver River right up to the head of

-Little Tupper Lake. I say these people won't know what eminent domain

-means. You're going to tell them. It means that they can sell at the

-railroad's price or they can hold off and a referee will be appointed

-to name a price. The railroad will have a big say in appointing those

-referees. Do you understand me?"

-

-"Yes. I see," said Jeffrey. "But--"

-

-"No buts at all about it, young man," said Rogers, waving his hand.

-"The people have got to sell. If they give options at once--within

-thirty days--they'll get more than a fair price for their land. If

-they don't--if they hold off--their farms will be condemned as forest

-land. And you know how much that brings.

-

-"You people will be the first. You can ask almost anything for your

-land. You'll get it. And, what is more, I am able to offer you,

-Whiting, a very liberal commission on every option you can get me

-within the time I have said. This is the thing that I can't do. It's

-the thing that I want you to do.

-

-"You'll do it. I know you will, when you get time to think it over.

-Here are the options," said the big man, pulling a packet of folded

-papers out of his pocket. "They cover every farm in the section. All

-you have to do is to get the people to write their names once. Then

-your work is done. We'll do the rest and your commissions will be

-waiting for you. Some better than law school, eh?"

-

-"But say," Jeffrey stammered, "say, that means, why, that means my

-mother and the folks here, why, they'd have to get out; they'd have to

-leave their home!"

-

-"Of course," said Rogers easily. "A man like you isn't going to keep

-his family up on top of this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you'll

-have the best home in Lowville for them, where they can live in style,

-in less than six months. Do you think your mother wants to stay here

-after you're gone. You were going away. Did you think," he said

-shrewdly, "what life up here would be worth to your mother while you

-were away. No, you're just like all boys. You wanted to get away

-yourself. But you never thought what a life this is for her.

-

-"Why, boy, she's a young woman yet. You can take her out and give her

-a chance to live. Do you hear, a chance to live.

-

-"Think it over."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than he had ever tried to

-think in his life. But he could make nothing of it.

-

-He thought of the people, old and young, on the hills, suddenly set

-adrift from their homes. He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius

-and Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back to. And he

-thought of money--illimitable money: money that could do everything.

-

-He did not want to look at his mother for counsel. The man's talk had

-gone to his head. But, slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his

-mother's, and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look which told

-him to wait, wait. He caught the meaning and spoke it brusquely:

-

-"All right. Leave the options here. I'll see what we'll do. And I'll

-write to you next week."

-

-No. That would not do. The big man must have his answer at once. He

-stormed at Jeffrey. He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished Miss

-Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius, but that guileless man led

-him off into such a discussion of cross grafting and reforestation

-that he was glad to drop him.

-

-In the end, he saw that, having committed himself, he could do no

-better than leave the matter to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for

-thought, the boy could not refuse his offer.

-

-So the two men, having breakfasted and rested their horses, set out on

-the down trip to Lowville.

-

-Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother came to a decision.

-

-"It is too big for us, Jeff," she said. "We do not know what it means.

-Nobody up here can tell us. The man was lying. But we do not know why,

-or what about.

-

-"There is one man that could tell us. The White Horse Chaplain, do you

-remember him, Jeffrey?"

-

-"I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me."

-

-"Only to give her her chance, my son. Do not forget that. He could

-tell us what this means. I don't care anything about his religion.

-Your Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day at Fort Fisher. I

-don't. He is the Catholic Bishop of Alden. You'll go to him to-morrow.

-He'll tell you what it means."

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very much worried. For the third

-time he picked up and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of the

-Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him that Ruth Lansing had left

-the convent that morning. But the third perusal of the message did not

-give him any more light on the matter than the two previous readings

-had done.

-

-Why should the girl have gone away? What could have happened? Only the

-other day he had received a letter from her telling of her studies and

-her progress and of every new thing that was interesting her.

-

-The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home where he had found her

-"Daddy Tom" dying, and where he had buried him on the hillside.

-Probably the girl would go back and try to live there. And he thought

-of the boy who had told him of his love and that he wanted to keep

-Ruth there in the hills.

-

-As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary came to the door to

-tell him that the boy, Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking

-to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature of his business to

-any one but the Bishop himself.

-

-

-The Bishop was startled. He had understood that the young man was in

-Albany at school. Now he thought that he would get a very clear light

-upon Ruth Lansing's disappearance.

-

-"I came to you, sir," said Jeffrey when the Bishop had given him a

-chair, "because you could tell us what to do."

-

-"You mean you and your--neighbour, Ruth Lansing?"

-

-"Why, no, sir. What about her?" said Jeffrey quickly.

-

-The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching look, and saw his mistake.

-The boy knew nothing.

-

-

-"This," the Bishop answered, as he handed Jeffrey the open telegram.

-

-"But where's she gone? Why did she go?" Jeffrey broke out, as he read

-the message.

-

-"I thought you were coming to tell me that."

-

-"No," said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop's meaning quickly. "She didn't

-write to me, not at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn't have it. But

-she wrote to my mother and she didn't say anything about leaving

-there."

-

-"I suppose not," said the Bishop. "She seems to have gone away

-suddenly. But, I am forgetting. You came to talk to me."

-

-"Yes." And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly and shortly, of the coming

-of Rogers and his proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to tell

-how he had been carried away by the man's offer and his flattery. He

-made it plain that it was only his mother's insight and caution that

-had held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.

-

-The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness of the young

-fellow. It was good to hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his

-old-fashioned, stiff way and said:

-

-"Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise woman. You will convey to

-her my deepest respect.

-

-"I do not know what it all means," he went on, in another tone. "But I

-can soon find out."

-

-He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the door the Bishop said:

-

-"Will you see, please, if General Chandler is in his office across the

-street. If he is, give him my respects and ask him to step over here a

-moment."

-

-The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the doorway.

-

-"What is it?" asked the Bishop.

-

-"There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She says she must see you,

-but she will not give a name. She seems to be in trouble, or

-frightened."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for the door.

-

-"Sit down where you were, young man," said the Bishop sharply. If Ruth

-Lansing were out there--and the Bishop half believed that she

-was--well, it _might_ be coincidence. But it was too much for the

-Bishop's credulity.

-

-"Send the girl in here," he said shortly.

-

-Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went straight to the Bishop. She

-did not see Jeffrey.

-

-"I came straight here all the way," she said, "to tell you, Bishop,

-that I couldn't stay in the convent any longer. I am going home. I

-could not stay there."

-

-"I am very glad to see you, Ruth," said the Bishop easily, "and if

-you'll just turn around, I think you'll see some one who is even more

-pleased."

-

-Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at sight of Jeffrey was

-abundant proof to the Bishop that the coming of these two to his door

-was indeed a coincidence.

-

-"Now," said the Bishop quickly, "you will both sit down and listen. It

-concerns both of you deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General

-Chandler. You have both heard of him. He is the political power of

-this part of the State. He can, if he will, tell us just how serious

-your situation is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just listen."

-

-Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise and perhaps a little

-resentment. For hours she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal

-of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely told to sit down and

-listen to something, she did not know what.

-

-The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler was ushered into the room

-and the two veterans saluted each other with the stiffest of military

-precision.

-

-"These are two young friends of mine from the hills, General," said

-the Bishop, as he seated his old friend. "They both own farms in the

-Beaver Run country. They have come to me to find out what the U. & M.

-Railroad wants with options on all that country. Can you, will you

-tell them?"

-

-The General plucked for a moment at the empty left sleeve of his

-coat.

-

-"No, Bishop," he said finally, "I cannot give out what I know of that

-matter. The interests behind it are too large for me. I would not

-dare. I do not often have to say that."

-

-"No," said the Bishop slowly, "I never heard you say that before."

-

-"But I can do this, Bishop," said the General, rising. "If you will

-come over here to the end of the room, I can tell you, privately, what

-I know. You can then use your own prudence to judge how much you can

-tell these young people."

-

-The Bishop followed to the window at the other end of the room, where

-the two men stood and talked in undertones.

-

-"Jeffrey," said Ruth through teeth that gritted with impatience, "if

-you don't tell me this instant what it's all about, I'll--I'll _bite_

-you!"

-

-Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little wild outbreak of hers

-to convince him that the young lady who had swept into the room and

-faced the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth, after all.

-

-In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.

-

-The Bishop walked to the door with the General, thanking him. From the

-door the General saluted gravely and stalked away.

-

-"The answer," said the Bishop quietly, as he came back to them, "is

-one word--Iron."

-

-To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making a mysterious fuss about

-nothing. But Jeffrey saw the whole matter instantly.

-

-"No one knows how much there is, or how little there is," said the

-Bishop. "The man lied to you, Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain.

-But they can get it if they get the options on a large part of the

-farms. Then, when they have the right of eminent domain, they will

-let the options lapse and buy the properties at their own prices."

-

-"I'll start back to warn the people to-night," said Jeffrey, jumping

-up. "Maybe they made that offer to other people besides me!"

-

-"Wait," said the Bishop, "there is more to think of. The railroad, if

-you serve it well, will, no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it

-is worth to you. There is your mother to be considered first. And they

-will, very likely, give you a chance to make a small fortune in your

-commissions, if you are faithful to them. If you go to fight them,

-they will probably crush you all in the end, and you will be left with

-little or nothing. Better go slowly, young man."

-

-"What?" cried Jeffrey. "Take their bribe! Take their money, for

-fooling and cheating the other people out of their homes! Why, before

-I'd do that, I'd leave that farm and everything that's there and go up

-into the big woods with only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my

-mother would follow me! You know that! My mother would be glad to go

-with me, with nothing, nothing in her hands!"

-

-"And so would I!" said Ruth, springing to her feet. "I _would_! I

-_would_!" she chanted defiantly.

-

-"Well, well, well!" said the Bishop, smiling.

-

-"But you are not going up into the big woods, Jeffrey," Ruth said

-demurely. "You are going back home to fight them. If I could help you

-I would go back with you. I would not be of any use. So, I'm going

-back, to the convent, to face my fight."

-

-"But, but," said Jeffrey, "I thought you were running away."

-

-"I did. I was," said Ruth. "Last night I heard the voice of something

-calling to me. It was such a big thing," she went on, turning to the

-Bishop; "it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing that I thought it

-would crush me. It would take my life and make me do what _it_ wanted,

-not what I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It was like a Choir

-Unseen singing to me to follow, and I didn't dare follow.

-

-"But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey spoke that way. Now I

-know what it was. It was the call of life to everybody to face life,

-to take our souls in our hands and go forward. I thought I could turn

-back. I can't. God, or life won't let us turn back."

-

-"I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing," said the Bishop. "I'm

-glad you came away, to have it out with yourself. And you will be very

-glad now to go back."

-

-"As for you, young man," he turned to Jeffrey, "I should say that your

-mother _would_ be proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you.

-Remember that, when you are in the worst of this fight that is before

-you. When you are tempted, as you will be tempted, remember it. When

-you are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed, _remember it_."

-

-

-

-

-III

-

-GLOW OF DAWN

-

-

-Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to his breakfast. It was past

-the middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was

-the time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains had

-already gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh,

-rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would not

-be enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Then

-he would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River,

-where the saw-dust came to bother him.

-

-He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond at

-the very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and

-drew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of flies

-and the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through four

-seasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,

-quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not dispute

-with him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fish

-ever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones.

-He liked flies better.

-

-His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little cool yet, for the sun

-was not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfast

-room at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away up

-on every side to the rim of the high hills.

-

-Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begun

-to draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface of

-the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was in

-sight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about a

-cat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body,

-and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap.

-But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by the

-cat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.

-

-Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, in

-other years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as

-he ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the very

-first time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They

-were not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of the

-cat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. But

-he knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most tempting

-flies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water,

-others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating and

-challenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in the

-cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of the

-pond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told them that

-he had scooted out of the pool and down into the stream. Once the girl

-had trailed a piece of flashing red flannel across the water, and

-Twinkle-tail could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible hook

-caught him in the side of the mouth! In his fury and terror he dove

-and fought until he broke the hook. He had never forgotten that

-lesson.

-

-But he was forgetting a little this season. No one came to his pool.

-He was growing big and fat, and a little careless.

-

-As he lay there in the warming sand by the cat-tails, the biggest,

-juiciest green bottle fly that Twinkle-tail had ever seen came

-skimming down to the very line of the water. It circled once.

-Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not an inch from the

-water!

-

-A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and Twinkle-tail was out of

-the water! He had the fly in his mouth.

-

-Then the struggle began.

-

-Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the shoulder of the bank

-behind which she had been hiding.

-

-The trout dove and started for the stream, the line ripping through

-the water like a shot.

-

-The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her strong, slender,

-boy-like body giving and swaying cunningly to every tug of the fish.

-

-He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool, throwing her off her

-balance and down into the water. She rose wet and angry, clinging

-grimly to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side of the

-pond. She did not dare to stand and pull against him, for fear of

-breaking the hook. She could only race around, giving him all the line

-she could until he should tire a little.

-

-Three times they fought around the circle of the pool, the taut line

-singing like a wire in the wind. Ruth's hand was cut where she had

-fallen on the rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head to foot. Her

-breath came in great, gulping sobs. But she fought on.

-

-Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down the Run, but she headed him

-back each time to the pond where she could handle him better. She had

-never before fought so big a fish all alone. Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had

-always been with her. Now she found herself calling desperately under

-her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She bit back the words and

-took a new hold on the pole.

-

-The trout was running blindly now from side to side of the pond. He

-had lost his cunning. He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her

-strength was nearly gone too. She must use her head quickly.

-

-She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate effort. She must

-catch him as he ran toward her and try to flick him out of the water.

-It was her only chance. She might break the line or the pole and lose

-him entirely, but she would try it.

-

-Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water, directly at her. She

-suddenly threw her strength on the pole. It bent nearly double but it

-held. And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her strength, was

-whipped clear out on to the grass. Dropping the pole, she dove

-desperately at him where he fought on the very edge of the bank.

-Finally she caught the line a few inches above his mouth, and her

-prize was secure.

-

-"It's you, Twinkle-tail," she panted, as she held him up for a good

-look, "sure enough!"

-

-She carried him back to a large stone and despatched him painlessly

-with a blunt stick. Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and

-dizzy from her struggle.

-

-Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she said aloud:

-

-"I wish Jeffrey was here. He'll never believe it was you unless he

-sees you."

-

-"Yes, that's him all right," said a voice behind her. "I'd know him in

-a thousand."

-

-She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-"Why, where did you come from? Your mother told me you wouldn't be

-back till to-morrow."

-

-"Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow if you want me to,"

-said Jeffrey, smiling.

-

-"Oh, Jeff, you know I'm glad to see you. I was awfully disappointed

-when I got home and found that you were away up in the hills. How is

-your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail," she hurried on a

-little nervously, for Jeffrey had her hand and was drawing her

-determinedly to him. She reached for the trout and held him up

-strategically between them.

-

-"Oh, _Fish_!" said Jeffrey discontentedly as he saw himself beaten by

-her ruse.

-

-The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly handsome face. Then

-she seemed to relent, and with a friendly little tug at his arm led

-him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit down.

-

-"Now tell me," she commanded, "all about your battle with the railroad

-people. Your mother told me some things, but I want it all, from

-yourself."

-

-But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked at her dress and shoes and

-said with a show of meanness:

-

-"Ruth, you didn't catch Twinkle-tail fair, on your line. You just

-walked into the pond and got him in a corner and kicked him to death

-brutally. I know you did. You're always cruel."

-

-Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged cut in her hand where she had

-fallen on the rocks.

-

-Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the hand

-and dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt down

-by the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with her

-handkerchief.

-

-"Now," she said, "tell me."

-

-"Well," he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained by

-delay, "the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they had

-found iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to push

-us all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found I

-wasn't the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had Rafe

-Gadbeau, you know he's a kind of a political boss of the French around

-French Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.

-

-"Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he'd been spending money

-around free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to him

-outright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what the

-land would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as well

-have held my breath. He didn't care anything about the interests of

-the people that had land. He was getting paid well for every option

-that he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will have

-trouble with that man yet.

-

-"The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, and a good man. They had

-fooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He had

-started out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties over

-on that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for the

-people to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their finding

-iron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was the

-maddest man you ever saw.

-

-"He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He

-went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not

-to sign anything.

-

-"Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for the

-railroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion and

-conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down to

-Lowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn't find anything in the charges. So

-I was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to get

-me away from here yet."

-

-"How does it stand now?" said Ruth thoughtfully. "Have they actually

-started to build the railroad?"

-

-"Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through.

-But they wouldn't build it, at least not for years yet, only that they

-want to get this iron property opened up. Why, the road is to run from

-Welden to French Village and there is not a single town on the whole

-line! The road wouldn't have business enough to keep the rust off.

-They're building the road just the same, so that shows that they

-intend to get our property some way, no matter what we do. And I

-suppose they will, somehow," he added sullenly. "They always do, I

-guess."

-

-"But the people," said Ruth, "can't you get them all to join and agree

-to sell at a fair price? Wouldn't that be all right?"

-

-"They don't want to buy. They won't buy at any fair price. They only

-want to get options enough to show the Legislature and the Governor,

-and then they will be granted eminent domain and they can have the

-land condemned and can buy it at the price of wild land."

-

-"Oh, yes; I remember now. That's what the Bishop said. Isn't it

-strange," she went on slowly, "how he seems to come into everything we

-do. How he saved my Daddy Tom's life that time at Fort Fisher. And how

-he came here that night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked us up

-and turned us around and sent me off to convent. And now how he seems

-to come into all this.

-

-"Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the North," she went on. "I

-wonder if he comes into the lives of _all_ the people that way. At the

-convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging to them

-personally. I resented it at first, because I thought I had more

-reason to know him than anybody. But I found that everybody felt the

-same way."

-

-"He's just like the Catholic Church," said Jeffrey suddenly, and a

-little sharply; "he comes into everything."

-

-"Why, Jeffrey," said Ruth in surprise, "what do you know about the

-Church?"

-

-"I know," he answered. "I've read some. And I've had to deal a lot

-with the French people up toward French Village. And I've talked with

-their priest up there. You know you have to talk to the priest before

-it's any use talking to them. That's the way with the Catholic Church.

-It comes into everything. I don't like it."

-

-He sat looking across the pool for a moment, while Ruth quietly

-studied the stubborn, settling lines of his face. She saw that a few

-months had made a big change in the boy and playmate that she had

-known. He was no longer the bright-faced, clear-eyed boy. His face was

-turning into a man's face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and of

-harshness were coming into it. It showed strength and doggedness and

-will, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not

-dislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a little

-timid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limits

-beyond which she could not play with this new man that she found.

-

-"It's all right to be religious," he went on argumentatively.

-"Mother's religious. And Aunt Letty's just full of it. But it don't

-interfere with their lives. It's all right to have a preacher for

-marrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if you

-want to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those people

-live. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything.

-They don't dare speak without looking back to it to find out what they

-must say. I don't like it."

-

-"Why, Jeffrey, I'm a Catholic!"

-

-"I _knew_ it!" he said stubbornly. "I knew it! I knew there was

-something that had changed you. And I might have known it was that."

-

-"That's funny!" said the girl, breaking in quickly. "When you came I

-was just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me at

-all. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I had

-gone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the same

-as I was before."

-

-"But it has changed you," he persisted. "And it's going to change you

-a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth," he said, suddenly softening,

-"you won't let it change you? You won't let it make any difference,

-with us, I mean?"

-

-The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:

-

-"No, Jeffrey. It won't make any difference with us, in the way you

-mean.

-

-"So long as we are what we are," she said again after a pause, "we

-will be just the same to each other. If it should make something

-different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be

-the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you

-would not be the same to me.

-

-"It's too soon," she continued decisively. "Nothing is clear to me,

-yet. I've just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and

-feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know.

-When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I'll tell you."

-

-He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood

-that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something

-in her face with which he did not dare to argue.

-

-He got up saying:

-

-"I have to be gone. I'm glad I found you here at the old place. I'll

-be back to-night to help you eat the trout."

-

-"Where are you going?"

-

-"Over to Wilbur's Fork. There's a couple of men over there that are

-shaky. I've had to keep after them or they'd be listening to Rafe

-Gadbeau and letting their land go."

-

-"But," Ruth exclaimed, "now when they know, can't they see what is to

-their own interest! Are they blind?"

-

-"I know," said Jeffrey dully. "But you know how it is with those

-people. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have to

-scratch and scrape for a little money. They don't see many dollars

-together from one year's end to the other. Even a little money, ready,

-green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them."

-

-"Good luck, then, Jeff," she said cheerily; "and get back early if you

-can."

-

-"Sure," he said easily as he picked up his hat.

-

-"And, say, Ruth." He turned back quietly to her. "If--if I shouldn't

-be back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? I

-wouldn't say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he's not very

-sharp sometimes. Will you?"

-

-"Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please."

-

-"Oh, sure," he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of the

-pond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trail

-that went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the other

-side.

-

-Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope,

-his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth.

-

-This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left when

-she went down to the convent five months before. She could see it in

-his walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she had

-seen it in his face and his talk. He was fighting with a power that

-he had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was not

-discouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of his

-boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and

-thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged

-struggle.

-

-He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Why

-should he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to have

-warned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? And

-what was there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of physical fear

-in connection with Jeffrey. Why, nothing ever happened in the hills,

-anyway. Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was true, the

-lumber jacks were rough when they came down with the log drives in the

-spring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stop

-in the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spend

-their money.

-

-What had Jeffrey to fear?

-

-Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to her

-unless he had good reason to think that something might happen to

-him.

-

-Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. The

-men were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generally

-ruled by their more energetic women. But they or their fathers had

-all been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted in

-the soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drive

-them from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes,

-where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckon

-with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. In

-another moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. She

-wondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgotten

-that she would surely be standing where he had left her?

-

-He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Then

-he stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque and

-businesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly have

-seen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had just

-known that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He had

-plunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with which

-his mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and of

-everything else.

-

-The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that might

-have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about

-the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it

-gave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming.

-

-She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived.

-Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew men

-fought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was a

-little for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour and

-good judgment would make for him out of the land.

-

-Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever,

-in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealth

-or the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely come

-to look for it and take it. That was why men fought. Wealth, even the

-scent of wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on to battle.

-

-A cloud passed between her and the morning sun. She felt the

-premonition of tragedy and suffering lowering down like a storm on her

-hills. How foolishly she had thought that all life and all the great,

-seething business of life was to be done down in the towns and the

-cities. Here was life now, with its pressure and its ugly passions,

-pushing right into the very hills.

-

-She shivered as she picked up her prize of the morning and her fishing

-tackle and started slowly up the hill toward her home.

-

-Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth with the understanding that

-Ruth was to spend the summer there in her own home. The rent was

-enough to give Ruth what little money she needed for clothes and to

-pay her modest expenses at the convent at Athens. So her life was

-arranged for her at least up to the time when she should have finished

-school.

-

-It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands of

-strangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she had

-ruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It would

-be very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged

-and how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by and

-see others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers and

-Daddy Tom's. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was her

-place. It held all the memories and all the things that connected her

-with her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to it

-and call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill,

-at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and her

-mother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which she

-had been born, she could understand the fierceness with which men

-would fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened.

-

-Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguely

-called "the railroad" would want to take _her_ home and farm away from

-her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she felt a swelling rage of

-indignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to the

-house, as though she saw it already threatened.

-

-She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and

-went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth

-weeding in what had been Ruth's own flower beds.

-

-"Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!" the woman

-exclaimed at sight of her. "I called you _three_ times, and when you

-didn't answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I told

-Norman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night."

-

-"Oh, no," said Ruth. "No danger. I'm used to getting up early, you

-see. So I just took some cakes--Didn't you miss them?--and some milk

-and slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish.

-Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had to

-do it myself this morning."

-

-"So young Whiting's gone away, eh?"

-

-"Why, no," said Ruth quickly. "He went over to Wilbur's Fork about

-half an hour ago. Who said he'd gone away?"

-

-"Oh, nobody," said the woman hastily; "it's only what they was sayin'

-up at French Village yesterday."

-

-"What were they saying?" Ruth demanded.

-

-"Oh, just talk, I suppose," Mrs. Apgarth evaded. "Still, I dunno's I

-blame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he's got out of

-it, I'd skedaddle, too."

-

-Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm.

-

-"What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl

-was trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herself

-had said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She must

-tell everything now.

-

-"Well," she began, "they say he's just fooled the people up over their

-eyes."

-

-"How?" said Ruth impatiently. "Tell me."

-

-"He's been agoin' round holdin' the people back and gettin' them to

-swear that they won't sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the

-railroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin' the rest of the people

-back till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad for

-his own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he's sold

-this farm and his own and five other ones that he'd got hold of, for

-four times what they're worth. And that gives the railroad enough to

-work on, so the rest of the people'll just have to sell for what they

-can get. He's gone now; skipped out."

-

-"But he has _not_ gone!" Ruth snapped out indignantly. "I saw him only

-half an hour ago."

-

-"Oh, well, of course," said the woman knowingly, "you'd know more

-about it than anybody else. It's all talk, I suppose."

-

-Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She said

-shortly:

-

-"I'm going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting."

-

-"Oh, then, don't say a word to her about this. She's an awful good

-neighbour. I wouldn't for the world have her think that I--"

-

-"Why, it doesn't matter at all," said Ruth, as she turned toward the

-road. "You only said what people were saying."

-

-"But I wouldn't for anything," the woman called nervously after her,

-"have her think that-- And what'll I do with this?"

-

-"Eat it," said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she had

-fought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night. Through the long

-twilight of one of the longest days of the year, Ruth sat reading in

-the old place on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find her.

-Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew that he would not come.

-

-She did not try to argue with herself. She did not fight back the

-nervous feeling that something had happened. She was sure that she had

-been all day expecting it. When the moon came up over the hill and the

-long purple shadows of the elm trees on the crest came stalking down

-in the white light, she went miserably into the house and up to the

-little room they had fitted up for her in the loft of her own home.

-

-She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep. But with the

-elasticity of youth and health she was awake at the first hint of

-morning, and the cloud of the night had passed.

-

-She dressed and hurried down into the yard where Norman Apgarth was

-just stirring about with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight

-and action. A man had put his trust in her before all others. She was

-eager to answer to his faith.

-

-"Where is Brom Bones?" she demanded of the still drowsy Apgarth as she

-caught him crossing the yard from the milk house.

-

-"The colt? He's up in the back pasture, just around the knob of the

-mountain. What was you calc'latin' to do with him, Miss?"

-

-"I want to use him," said Ruth. "May I?"

-

-"Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But, say, Miss, that colt ain't

-been driv' since the Spring's work. An' he's so fat an' silky he's

-liable to act foolish."

-

-"I'm going to _ride_ him," said Ruth briefly, as she stepped to the

-horse barn door for a bridle.

-

-"Now, say, Miss," the man opposed feebly, "you could take the brown

-pony just as well; I don't need her a bit. And I tell you that colt

-is just a lun-_at_-ic, when he's been idle so long."

-

-"Thank you," said Ruth, as she started up the hill. "But I think I'll

-find work enough to satisfy even Brom Bones to-day."

-

-The big black colt followed her peaceably down the mountain, and stood

-champing at the door while she went in to get something to eat. When

-she brought out a shining new side saddle he looked suspiciously at

-the strange thing, but he made no serious objection as she fastened it

-on. Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood looking

-doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as new to her as it was to the

-horse. She had bought it on her way home the other day, as a

-concession to the fact that she was now a young lady who could no

-longer go stampeding over the hills on a bare-backed horse.

-

-She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming to know in the way of his

-kind that she was uneasy and uncomfortable, began at once to act

-badly. His intention seemed to be to walk into the open well on his

-hind feet. The girl caught a short hold on her lines and cut him

-sharply across the ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the

-hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.

-

-The path led straight up to the top of the slope. Ruth did not try to

-hold him. The sooner he ran the conceit out of himself, she thought,

-the better.

-

-He hurled himself down the other slope, past the pool, and into the

-trail which Jeffrey had taken yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in

-a strange saddle. But the girl's anxiety rose with the excitement of

-the horse's wild rush, so that when they reached the top of the divide

-where she had last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl that

-was ready to settle down to a sober and safer pace.

-

-Her common sense told her that she was probably foolish; that Jeffrey

-had merely stayed over night somewhere and that she would meet him on

-the way. But another and a subtler sense kept whispering to her to

-hurry on, that she was needed, that the good name, if not the life, of

-the boy she loved was in danger!

-

-She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just who were the men whom Jeffrey

-had gone to see. But she did not know how she could dash up to their

-doors and demand to know where he was. It was eleven miles up the

-stony trail that followed Wilbur's Fork, and the girl's nerves now

-keyed up to expect she knew not what jangled at every turn of the

-road. Jeffrey had meant to come straight back this way to her. That he

-had not done so meant that _something_ had stopped him on the way.

-What was it?

-

-On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks and the underbrush

-was grown into an impenetrable wall. On the other it ran sheer along

-the edge of Wilbur's Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing stream that

-tumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country.

-

-Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as she

-pushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to the

-trail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rock

-bed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle to

-look down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came

-carelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once--a

-single blow at the back of the head--and Jeffrey would have gone

-stumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not be

-even the sign of a struggle.

-

-Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.

-

-"Ruth Lansing," she scolded aloud, "you're making a little fool of

-yourself. You've been down there in that convent living among a lot of

-girls, and you're forgetting that these hills are your own, that there

-never was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Just

-keep that in your mind and hustle on about your business."

-

-When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork she

-met old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man did

-not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharply

-at the steaming withers of Brom Bones before he would give any

-attention to her question.

-

-"What's the tarnation hurry, young lady?" he inquired exasperatingly.

-"Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest'day. Why?"

-

-"Did he start home by this trail?" asked Ruth eagerly. "Or did he go

-on up country?"

-

-"He went on up country."

-

-Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word.

-

-"But stay!" the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twenty

-yards. "He came back again."

-

-Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to his

-knees.

-

-"Didn't ask me that," the old man chortled, as she came back, "but if

-I didn't tell you I reckon you'd run that colt to death up the

-hills."

-

-"Then he _did_ take the Forks trail back."

-

-"Didn't do that, nuther."

-

-"Then where _did_ he go? Please tell me!" cried the girl, the tears of

-vexation rising into her voice.

-

-"Why, what's the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there," said

-the old man, pointing, "and he took over the hill for French Village.

-You his wife? You're mighty young."

-

-But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping down

-the rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones.

-

-In the middle of the ford she stopped and loosened the bridle, let the

-colt drink a little, then drove him across, up the other bank and on

-up the stiff slope.

-

-She did not know the trail, but she knew the general run of the

-country that way and had no doubt of finding her road.

-

-Now she told herself that it was certainly a wild goose chase. Jeffrey

-had merely found that he had to see some one in French Village and had

-gone there and, of course, had spent the night there.

-

-By the time she had come over the ridge of the hill and was dropping

-down through the heavily wooded country toward French Village, she had

-begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly remembered

-that it was Saint John the Baptist's day. It was not a holy day of

-obligation but she knew it was a feast day in French Village. There

-would be Mass. She should have gone, anyway. And she would hear with

-her own ears the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store in French Village in the

-glory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store was

-closed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would put

-on his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church,

-and march solemnly over to ring the bell for Mass.

-

-The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady whom he seemed to know

-vaguely, riding down the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on

-the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made the little man

-reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.

-

-"M'm'selle Lansing!" he said, bowing in friendly pomp as Ruth drove

-up.

-

-"How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came down to go to Mass. Can you tell me

-what time it begins?"

-

-"I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M'm'selle."

-Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute

-from the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman.

-His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must

-await her convenience.

-

-He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feet

-loose and slid down deftly.

-

-"I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb," said Ruth as she took his

-hand. "Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?"

-

-A girl of about Ruth's own age had come quietly up the street and

-stood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail of

-Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots.

-

-"'Cynthe," said the little man briskly, "you show Miss Lansing on my

-pew for Mass." He took the bridle from Ruth's hand and led the horse

-away to the shed in the rear of the store.

-

-The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The

-little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not

-answer?

-

-She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing about

-the church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questions

-of them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to a

-front pew.

-

-At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the church

-door they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of which

-Ruth could only catch a little here and there.

-

-"You will come by the _fête_, M'm'selle. You will not dance _non_, I

-s'pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one

-_jolie_ time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance." Arsene led

-Ruth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal,

-across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. There

-were tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the food

-that they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a great

-stump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard,

-the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings.

-

-It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment before

-been so devout and concentrated in church should in an instant switch

-their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soon

-found their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it,

-she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into

-the fun with all her heart.

-

-"Which is Rafe Gadbeau?" she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. "I want

-to know him."

-

-"Why for you want to know him?" the girl asked sharply in English.

-

-"Oh, nothing," said Ruth carelessly, "only I've heard of him."

-

-The other girl reached out into the crowd and plucked at the sleeve of

-a tall, beak-nosed man. The man was evidently flattered by Ruth's

-request, and wanted her to dance with him immediately.

-

-"No," said Ruth, "I do not know how to dance your dances, and we'd

-only break up the sets if I tried to learn now. We've heard a lot

-about you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to know you. And we've

-heard some things about Jeffrey Whiting. I'm sure you could tell me if

-they are true."

-

-"You don' dance? Well, we sit then. I tell you. One rascal, this young

-Whiting!"

-

-Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietly

-as he led her to a seat.

-

-As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform,

-Ruth, looking back, caught a swift glance of what she knew was

-jealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make an

-enemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to get

-this man to tell her all he would.

-

-"One rascal, I tell you," repeated Gadbeau. "First he stop all the

-people. He say don' sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He

-sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out.

-An' he leave these poor French people in the soup.

-

-"But I"--he sat back tapping himself on the chest--"I got hinfluence

-with that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nine

-o'clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sell

-out everything on the option to him."

-

-"But," objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, "if Jeffrey Whiting

-should come back before then?"

-

-"He don' come back, that fellow."

-

-"How do you know?"

-

-"I know, I-- He don' come back. I tell you that."

-

-"Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o'clock to-morrow," she

-said, turning suddenly upon him.

-

-"Eh? M'm'selle, what you mean? What you know?" he questioned

-excitedly.

-

-"Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she

-arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture."

-

-Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and

-talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe

-Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had

-alarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey

-Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way.

-

-When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bell

-ringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place

-among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door.

-When the people rose to sing the _Tantum Ergo_, she saw Gadbeau slip

-unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing was

-finished, then she almost ran to the door.

-

-Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all day

-in the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trail

-which she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the street

-to Arsene LaComb's store. There was not a pony in the hills that Brom

-Bones could not overtake easily, but she must see by what trail the

-man left the Village.

-

-Brom Bones was very willing to make a race for home, and she let him

-have his head until she again caught sight of the man. She pulled up

-sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The man was still on the

-main road, and he might turn any moment. Finally she saw him pull into

-the trail that led over to Wilbur's Fork. Then she knew. Jeffrey was

-somewhere on the trail between French Village and Wilbur's Fork. And

-he was alive! The man was going now to make sure that he was still

-there.

-

-For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough to assure her that the

-man was still following the trail. Then, just when the real darkness

-had fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at her left. The man

-had turned off into the woods! She had almost passed him! She threw

-herself out upon Brom Bones' neck and caught him by the nose. He threw

-up his head indignantly and tried to bolt, but she blessed him for

-making no noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred yards,

-slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into the bushes away from the road

-and tied him. She talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading

-with him to be quiet. Then she left him and stole back to where she

-had heard the pony.

-

-In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing. But her feet found

-themselves on what seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly.

-She almost walked into a square black thing that suddenly confronted

-her. Within what seemed a foot of her she heard voices. Her heart

-stopped beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she could not

-distinguish a word. One of the voices was certainly Gadbeau's. The

-other-- It was!-- It was! Though it was only a mumble, she knew it was

-Jeffrey Whiting who tried to speak!

-

-She took a step forward, ready to dash into the place, whatever it

-was. But the caution of the hills made her back away noiselessly into

-the brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, _why_ had she not brought a

-rifle? Gadbeau was sure to be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably

-wounded and bound.

-

-She backed farther into the bushes and started to make a circuit of

-the place. She understood now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely

-of logs, even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse. She knew

-that she was helpless. And she knew that Jeffrey would not be a

-prisoner there unless he were hurt.

-

-She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come to injure Jeffrey further.

-He had merely come to make himself sure that his prisoner was secure.

-He would not stay long.

-

-As she stole around away from the path and the pony she saw a little

-stream of light shoot out through a chink between the logs of the hut.

-Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had brought something for

-Jeffrey to eat. She pulled off the white collar of her jacket, the

-only white thing that showed about her and settled down for a long

-wait.

-

-First she had thought that she ought to steal away to her horse and

-ride for help. But she could not bear the thought of even getting

-beyond the sound of Jeffrey's voice. She knew where he was now. He

-might be taken away while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing had

-always learned to do things for herself. She had always disliked

-appealing for help.

-

-Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place she could find, leaning

-against the bole of a great tree. The light, candles, of course,

-burned on; and the voices came irregularly through the living silence

-of the woods. She did not dare to creep nearer to hear what was being

-said. That did not matter. The important thing was to have Gadbeau go

-away without any suspicion that he had been followed. Then she would

-be free to release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she would be able

-to get him down to French Village in the morning. She could easily

-have him there before nine o'clock.

-

-When she saw by the stars that it was long past midnight she began to

-be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away

-at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound.

-She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against

-the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion.

-

-Would he never come out? It seemed not. Was he going to stay there all

-night?

-

-Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the door of the cabin.

-Apparently both men were asleep within. She pushed the door ever so

-quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.

-

-What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Oh, why, _why_ had she

-not brought a rifle? She would shoot. She _would_, if she had it now,

-and that man opened the door! It was too late now to think of riding

-for help, too late!

-

-She sank down again beside her tree and raged helplessly at herself,

-at her conceit in herself that would not let her go for help in the

-first place, at her foolishness in coming on this business without a

-gun. The hours dragged out their weary minutes, every minute an age to

-the taut, ragged nerves of the girl.

-

-The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops, while the ground still

-lay in utter darkness. Ruth rose and slipped farther back into the

-bushes.

-

-Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in the soft grass, and the

-hot, angry tears of desperation and rage at herself were softened. Her

-heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and sang its prayer to God;

-a thrilling, lifting little prayer of confidence and wonder. The

-words that the night before would not form themselves for her now

-sprang up ready in her soul--the words of all the children of earth,

-to Our Father Who Art in Heaven--paused an instant to bless her lips,

-then sped away to God in His Heaven. Fear was gone, and doubt, and

-anxiety. She would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor, befooled

-people from ruin. God had told her so, as He walked abroad in the

-_Glow_ of _Dawn_.

-

-Two long hours more she waited, but now with patience and a sure

-confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau came out of the hut and strode down the

-path to his pony.

-

-Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and ran to the door, and

-called to Jeffrey. The only answer was a moan. The door was locked

-with a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy padlock. She

-reached for the nearest stone and attacked the lock frantically. She

-beat it out of all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her. There

-was no window in the hut. She had to come back again to the lock. Her

-hands, softened by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on the

-tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave, and she threw herself

-against the door.

-

-Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk beside the furnace

-where they boiled the sugar sap. His arms were stretched out and tied

-together down under the narrow bunk. She saw that his left arm was

-broken. For an instant the girl's heart leaped back to the rage of

-the night when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But pity swallowed

-up every other feeling as she cut the cords from his hands and

-loosened the rope that they had bound in between his teeth.

-

-"Don't talk, Jeff," she commanded. "I can see just what happened. Lie

-easy and get your strength. I've got to take you to French Village at

-once."

-

-She ran out to bring water. When she returned he was sitting dizzily

-on the edge of the bunk. While she bathed his head with the water and

-gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and crooned over him as

-she would over a baby for she saw that he was shaken and half

-delirious with pain.

-

-Brom Bones was standing munching twigs where she had left him. He had

-never before been asked to carry double and he did not like it. But

-the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into his silky black ear

-that he finally gave in.

-

-When they were mounted, she fastened the white collar of her jacket

-into a sling for the boy's broken arm, and with a prayer to the

-heathen Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down the trail.

-

-When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey spoke suddenly:

-

-"Say, Ruth, what's the use trying to save these people? Let's sell

-out while we can and take mother and go away."

-

-"Why, Jeff, dear," she said lightly, "this fight hasn't begun yet.

-Wait till we get to French Village. You'll say something different.

-You'll say just what you said to the Shepherd of the North;

-remember?"

-

-Jeffrey said no more. The girl's heart was weak with the pain she knew

-he was bearing, but she knew that they must go through with this.

-

-All French Village and the farmers of Little Tupper country were

-gathered in front of Arsene Lacomb's store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing

-on the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with his prisoner as he

-thought up to the last possible moment, so he stammered in his speech

-when he saw a big black horse come tearing down the street carrying a

-girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy behind her. Rogers, the

-railroad lawyer beside him, said:

-

-"Go on, man. What's the matter with you?"

-

-The girl drove the horse right in through the crowd until Jeffrey

-Whiting faced Rogers. Then Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain,

-took up his fight again.

-

-"Rogers," he shouted, "you did this. You got Rafe Gadbeau and the

-others to knock me on the head and put me out of the way, so that you

-could spread your lies about me. And you'd have won out, too, if it

-hadn't been for this brave girl here.

-

-"Now, Rogers, you liar," he shouted louder, "I dare you, dare you, to

-tell these people here that I or any of our people have sold you a

-foot of land. I dare you!"

-

-Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau pulled him away. Gadbeau

-knew that crowd. They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and full of

-potential fury. They were already cheering the brave girl. In a few

-minutes they would be hunting the life of the man who had lied to them

-and nearly ruined them.

-

-A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from the saddle, but she waved

-them away and pointed to Jeffrey's broken arm. They helped him down

-and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough's little office.

-

-Ruth saw that her business was finished. She wheeled Brom Bones toward

-home, and gave him his head.

-

-For three glorious miles they fairly flew through the pearly morning

-air along the hard mountain road, and the girl never pulled a line.

-Breakfastless and weary in body, her heart sang the song that it had

-learned in the Glow of Dawn.

-

-

-

-

-IV

-

-THE ANSWER

-

-

-The Committee on Franchises was in session in one of the committee

-rooms outside the chamber of the New York State Senate. It was not a

-routine session. A bill was before it, the purpose of which was

-virtually to dispossess some four or five hundred families of their

-homes in the counties of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The bill did

-not say this. It cited the need of adequate transportation in that

-part of the State and proposed that the U. & M. Railroad should be

-granted the right of eminent domain over three thousand square miles

-of the region, in order to help the development of the country.

-

-The committee was composed of five members, three of the majority

-party in the Senate and two of the minority. A political agent of the

-railroad who drew a salary from Racquette County as a judge had just

-finished presenting to the committee the reasons why the people of

-that part of the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill should

-become a law. He had drawn a pathetic picture of the condition of the

-farmers, so long deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He had

-almost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce left to rot up

-there in the hills because the men who toiled to produce it had no

-means of bringing it down to the starving thousands of the cities. The

-scraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that region became in his

-picture vast reservoirs of cheap food, only waiting to be tapped by

-the beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world's poor.

-

-When the judge had finished, one minority member of the committee

-looked at his colleague, the other minority member, and winked. It was

-a grave and respectful wink. It meant that the committee was not often

-privileged to listen to quite such bare-faced effrontery. If the

-hearing had been a secret one they would not have listened to it. But

-the bill had already aroused a storm. So the leader of the majority

-had given orders that the hearing should be public.

-

-So far not a word had been said as to the fact which underlay the

-motives of the bill. Iron had been found in workable quantities in

-those three thousand square miles of hill country. Not a word had been

-said about iron.

-

-No one in the room had listened to the speech with any degree of

-interest. It was intended entirely for the consumption of the outside

-public. Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during its

-delivery. They had been furnished with advance copies of it and had

-already turned them in to their papers. But with the naming of the

-next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around the room.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from his place in the rear of the

-room and walked briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall, spare

-figure of a man coming to his sixty years, his hair as white as the

-snow of his hills, with a large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan

-governor, he would have attracted attention under almost any

-circumstances.

-

-Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee, had received his orders

-from the leader of the majority in the Senate that the bill should be

-reported back favourably to that body before night. He had anticipated

-no difficulty. The form of a public hearing had to be gone through

-with. It was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions that

-had been aroused as to the nature of the bill. The speech of the

-Racquette County Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The

-chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising reformers of

-the opposition would come before the committee with time-honoured,

-stock diatribes against the rapacity and greed of railroads in general

-and this one in particular. Then he and his two majority colleagues

-would vote to report the bill favourably, while the two members of the

-minority would vote to report adversely. This, the chairman said, was

-about all a public hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted on

-the coming of the Bishop of Alden.

-

-"The committee would like to hear, sir," began the chairman, as the

-Bishop took his place, "whom you represent in the matter of this

-bill."

-

-The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in what had been a dull

-session of a dull committee, sat with poised pencils while the Bishop

-turned a look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:

-

-"I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of Racquette County."

-

-"I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee quite understands that

-you do not come here in the interest of any one. But the gentleman who

-has just been before us spoke for the farmers who would be most

-directly affected by the prosperity of the railroad, including those

-of your county. Are we to understand that there is opposition in your

-county to the proposed grant?"

-

-"Your committee," said the Bishop, "cannot be ignorant that there is

-the most stubborn opposition to this grant in all three counties. If

-there had not been that opposition, there would have been no call for

-the bill which you are now considering. If the railroad could have

-gotten the options which it tried to get on those farms the grant

-would have been given without question. Your committee knows this

-better than I."

-

-"But," returned the chairman, "we have been advised that the railroad

-was not able to get those options because a boy up there in the

-Beaver River country, who fancied that he had some grievance against

-the railroad people, banded the people together to oppose the options

-in unfair and unlawful ways."

-

-The chairman paused an impressive moment.

-

-"In fact," he resumed, "from what this committee has been able to

-gather, it looks very much as though there were conspiracy in the

-matter, against the U. & M. Railroad. It almost would seem that some

-rival of the railroad in question had used the boy and his fancied

-grievance to manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be proven,

-but there was every appearance."

-

-The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his challenge quietly at the

-feet of the committee.

-

-"The boy, Jeffrey Whiting," he said, "was guided by me. I directed his

-movements from the beginning."

-

-The whole room sat up and leaned forward as one man, alive to the fact

-that a novel and stirring situation was being developed. Everybody had

-understood that the Bishop had come to plead the cause of the

-French-Canadian farmers of the hills.

-

-They had supposed that he would speak only on what was a side issue of

-the case. No one had expected that he would attack the main question

-of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming himself the

-principal in that silent, stubborn fight that had been going on up in

-the hills for six months!

-

-The reporters doubled down to their work and wrote furiously. They

-were trying to throw this unusual man upon a screen before their

-readers. It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product of New

-England, and what was more he had been one of the leaders of that

-collection of striking men who made the Brook Farm "Experiment." He

-had endeared himself to the old generation of Americans by his war

-record as a chaplain. To some of the new generation he was known as

-the Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from the Mohawk Valley to

-the Canadian line and to Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd

-of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to North Creek men knew his

-ways and felt the beating of the great heart of him behind the stern,

-ascetic set of his countenance.

-

-As much as they could of this the reporters were trying to put into

-their notes while Nathan Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That

-well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself into a trap. He had

-been too zealous in announcing his impression that the opposition to

-the U. & M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival. The Bishop had

-taken that ground from under him by a simple stroke of truth. He could

-neither go forward with his charge nor could he retract it.

-

-"Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this committee," he

-temporised, "just why you wished to arouse this opposition to the

-railroad?"

-

-"There is not and has never been any opposition whatever to the

-railroad," said the Bishop. "The bill before your committee has

-nothing to do with the right of way of the railroad. That has already

-been granted. Your bill proposes to confiscate, practically, from the

-present owners a strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly

-eighty miles long. That land is valuable because the experts of the

-railroad know, and the people up there know, and, I think, this

-committee knows that there is iron ore in these hills.

-

-"I have said that I do not represent any one here," the Bishop went

-on. "But there are four hundred families up there in our hills who

-stand to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people. They have no

-voice to reach the world. I have asked to speak before your committee

-because only in this way can the case of my people reach the great,

-final trial court of publicity before the whole State.

-

-"They are a silent people, the people of the hills. You will have

-heard that they are a stubborn people. They are a stubborn people, for

-they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside homes that their

-hands have made just as do the hardy trees of the hills. You cannot

-uproot them by the stroke of a pen.

-

-"These people are my friends and my neighbours. Many of them were once

-my comrades. I know what they think. I know what they feel. I would

-beg your committee to consider very earnestly this question before

-bringing to bear against these people the sovereign power of the

-State. They love their State. Many of them have loved their country to

-the peril of their lives. They live on the little farms that their

-fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness.

-

-"Not through prejudice or ignorance are they opposing this development,

-which will in the end be for the good of the whole region. They are

-opposed to this bill before you because it would give a corporation

-power to drive them from the homes they love, and that without fair

-compensation.

-

-"They are opposed to it because they are Americans. They know what it

-has meant and what it still means to be Americans. And they know that

-this bill is directly against everything that is American.

-

-"They are ever ready to submit themselves to the sovereign will of the

-State, but you will never convince them that this bill is the real

-will of the State. They are fighting men and the sons of fighting men.

-They have fought the course of the railroad in trying to get options

-from them by coercion and trickery. They have been aroused. Their

-homes, poor and wretched as they often are, mean more to them than any

-law you can set on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it. It

-will set a ring of fire and murder about our peaceful hills.

-

-"In the name of high justice, in the name of common honesty, in the

-name--to come to lower levels--of political common sense, I tell you

-this bill should never go back to the Senate.

-

-"It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound upon those who are

-found weak enough to let it pass here."

-

-The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils of the reporters

-could be plainly heard in the hush of the room.

-

-Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating question which he had

-been wanting to put from the beginning.

-

-"Perhaps the committee has been badly informed," he began to the

-Bishop; "we understood that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian

-immigrants and not usually owners of land."

-

-"Is it necessary for me to repeat," said the Bishop, turning sharply,

-"that I am here, Joseph Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours

-and my friends? Does it matter to them or to this committee that I

-wear the badge of a service that they do not understand? I do not come

-before you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come as an owner of

-property. I come because I think the cause of my friends will be

-served by my coming.

-

-"The facts I have laid before you, the warning I have given might as

-well have been sent out direct through the press. But I have chosen to

-come before you, with your permission, because these facts will get a

-wider hearing and a more eager reading coming from this room.

-

-"I do not seek to create sensation here. I have no doubt that some

-of you are thinking that the place for a churchman to speak is in

-his church. But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing to

-create sensation. I am willing that you should say that I have

-gone far beyond the privilege of a witness invited to come before

-your committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should put any

-interpretation you like upon my use of my privilege here, only so

-that my neighbours of the hills shall have their matter put squarely

-and fully before all the people of the State.

-

-"When this matter is once thoroughly understood by the people, then I

-know that no branch of the lawmaking power will dare make itself

-responsible for the passage of this bill."

-

-The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further questions. When he saw

-that none were forthcoming, he thanked the committee and begged leave

-to retire.

-

-As the Bishop passed out of the room the chairman arose and declared

-the public hearing closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporters

-crowded out of the room and scattered through the corridors of the

-Capitol. Four or five reporters bunched themselves about the elevator

-shaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired boy of twenty,

-summed up the matter with irreverent brevity.

-

-"Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway," he said. "Not every bad bill

-has a bishop at the obsequies."

-

-"You can't tell," said the Associated Press man slowly; "they might

-report it out in spite of all that."

-

-"No use," said the youngster shortly. "The Senate wouldn't dare touch

-it once this stuff is in the papers." And he jammed a wad of flimsy

-down into his pocket.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-Three weeks of a blistering August sun had withered the grasses of the

-hills almost to a powder. The thin soil of the north country, where

-the trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture; so that the heat

-of the short, vicious summer goes down through the roots of the

-vegetation to the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone.

-

-Since June there had been no rain. The tumbling hill streams were

-reduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were

-covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stunted

-timber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man,

-stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattle

-to the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hide

-itself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolen

-away into the depths of the thick woods.

-

-Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a scarred pine on the French

-Village road and sat looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up

-away from the road on either side. Every child of the hills knew the

-menace that a hot dry summer brought to us in those days. The first,

-ruthless cutting of the timber had followed the water courses. Men had

-cut and slashed their way up through the hills without thought of what

-they were leaving behind. They had taken only the prime, sound trees

-that stood handiest to the roll-ways. They had left dead and dying

-trees standing. Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of brush and

-trimmings. The farmers had come pushing into the hills in the wake of

-the lumbermen and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes and

-hay land. But around every piece of cleared land there was an

-ever-encroaching ring of brush and undergrowth and fallen timber that

-held a constant threat for the little home within the ring.

-

-A summer without rain meant a season of grim and unrelenting

-watchfulness. Men armed themselves and tramped through the woods on

-unbidden sentry duty, to see that no campfires were made. Strangers

-and outsiders who were likely to be careless were watched from the

-moment they came into the hills until they were seen safely out of

-them again. Where other children scouted for and fought imaginary

-Indians, the children of our hills hunted and fought imaginary fires.

-The forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo. It was an

-enemy that lurked just outside the little clearing of the farm, out

-there in the underbrush and fallen timber.

-

-Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had ridden up to French

-Village for mail. For some weeks they had known that the railroad

-would try to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the special

-session of the Legislature. And they knew that the session would

-probably come to a close this week.

-

-If that bill became a law, then the resistance of the people of the

-hills had been in vain: Jeffrey had merely led them into a bitter and

-useless fight against a power with which they could not cope. They

-would have to leave their homes, taking whatever a corrupted board of

-condemnation would grant for them. It would be hard on all, but it

-would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness. He would have to

-remember that he had had the chance to make his mother and himself

-independently rich. He had thrown away that chance, and now if his

-fight had failed he would have nothing to bring back to his mother

-but his own miserable failure.

-

-Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop's house in Alden when Jeffrey

-had said proudly that his mother would be glad to follow him into

-poverty. And she smiled now at her own outburst at that time. They had

-both meant it, every word; but the ashes of failure are bitter. And

-she had seen the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through all

-the summer.

-

-She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad had succeeded. She

-would not be able to go back to school, and would probably have to go

-somewhere to get work of some kind, for the little that she would get

-for her farm now would not keep her any time. But that was a little

-matter, or at least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence of

-Jeffrey's failure and what he would consider his disgrace. She did not

-know how he would take it, for during the summer she had seen him in

-vicious moods when he seemed capable of everything.

-

-She saw the speck which he made against the horizon as he came over

-Argyle Mountain three miles away and she saw that he was riding fast.

-He was bringing good news!

-

-It needed only the excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Bones

-whirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moods

-and followed them better than he would have followed whip or rein of

-another. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canter

-and gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came thundering down

-upon them. He pulled up sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two

-horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected to do and their

-two riders gave them no more heed than if they had been wooden

-horses.

-

-"How did you know it was all right, Ruth?"

-

-"I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain," Ruth laughed. "You looked as

-though you were riding Victory down the top side of the earth. How did

-it all come out?"

-

-"Here's the paper," he said, handing her an Albany newspaper of the

-day previous; "it tells the story right off. But I got a letter from

-the Bishop, too," he added.

-

-"Oh, did you?" she exclaimed, looking up from the headline--U. & M.

-Grab Killed in Committee--which she had been feverishly trying to

-translate into her own language. "Please let me hear. I'm never sure

-what headlines mean till I go down to the fine print, and then it's

-generally something else. I can understand what the Bishop says, I'm

-sure."

-

-"Well, it's only short," said Jeffrey, unfolding the letter. "He

-leaves out all the part that he did himself."

-

-"Of course," said Ruth simply. "He always does."

-

-"He says:

-

-"'You will see from the Albany papers, which will probably reach you

-before this does, that the special session of the Legislature closed

-to-night and that the railroad's bill was not reported to the Senate.

-It had passed the Assembly, as you know. The bill aroused a measure of

-just public anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently

-thought it the part of wisdom not to risk a contest over it in the

-open Senate. So there can be no legislative action in favour of the

-railroad before December at the earliest, and I regard it as doubtful

-that the matter will be brought up even then.'

-

-"You see," said Jeffrey, "from this you'd never know that he was there

-present at all. And it was just his speech before the committee that

-aroused that public anger. Then he goes on:

-

-"'But we must not make the mistake of presuming that the matter ends

-here. You and your people are just where you were in the beginning.

-Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not in the nature of

-things that a corporation which has spent an enormous amount of money

-in constructing a line with the one purpose of getting to your lands

-should now give up the idea of getting them by reason of a mere

-legislative setback. They have not entered into this business in

-any half-hearted manner. They are bound to carry it through

-somehow--anyhow. We must realise that.

-

-"'We need not speculate upon the soul or the conscience of a

-corporation or the lack of those things. We know that this corporation

-will have an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must watch for that

-answer. What their future methods or their plans may be I think no man

-can tell. Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed. But there will

-be an answer. While rejoicing that a fear of sound public opinion has

-been on your side, we must never forget that there will be an answer.

-

-"'In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond the limits which men

-set for the proper activities of a priest of the church. I do not

-apologise. I have done this, partly because your people are my own,

-my friends and my comrades of old, partly because you yourself

-came to me in a confidence which I do not forget, partly--and most,

-perhaps--because where my people and their rights are in question I

-have never greatly respected those limits which men set. I put

-these things before you so that when the answer comes you will

-remember that you engaged yourself in this business solely in

-defence of the right. So it is not your personal fight and you must

-try to keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a quarrel.

-The struggle is a larger thing than that and you must keep your heart

-larger still and above it. I fear that you will sorely need to

-remember this.

-

-"'My sincerest regards to your family and to all my friends in the

-hills, not forgetting your friend Ruth.' That's all," said Jeffrey,

-folding the letter. "I wish he'd said more about how he managed the

-thing."

-

-"Isn't it enough to know that he did manage it, without bothering

-about how? That is the way he does everything."

-

-"I suppose I ought to be satisfied," said Jeffrey as he gathered up

-his reins. "But I wonder what he means by that last part of the

-letter. It sounds like a warning to me."

-

-"It is a warning to you," said Ruth thoughtfully.

-

-"Why, what does it mean? What does he think I'm likely to do?"

-

-"Maybe he does not mean what you are likely to do exactly," said Ruth,

-trying to choose her words wisely; "maybe he is thinking more of what

-you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to your heart rather than

-to your head or about your actions."

-

-"Now I don't know what you mean, either," said Jeffrey a little

-discontentedly.

-

-"I know I oughtn't to try to tell you what the Bishop means, for I

-don't know myself. But I've been worried and I'm sure your mother has

-too," said Ruth reluctantly.

-

-"But what is it?" said Jeffrey quickly. "What have I been doing?"

-

-"I'm sure it isn't anything you've done, nor anything maybe that

-you're likely to do. I don't know just what it is, or how to say it.

-But, Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in the Bishop's

-house at Alden?"

-

-"Yes, and I remember what you said, too."

-

-"We both meant it," Ruth returned gravely, not attempting to evade any

-of the meaning that he had thrown into his words. "And we both mean it

-now, I'm sure. But there's a difference, Jeffrey, a difference with

-you."

-

-"I don't know it," he said a little shortly. "I'm still doing just the

-thing I started out to do that day."

-

-"Yes. But that day you started out to fight for the people. Now you

-are fighting for yourself-- Oh, not for anything selfish! Not for

-anything you want for yourself! I know that. But you have made the

-fight your own. It is your own quarrel now. You are fighting because

-you have come to hate the railroad people."

-

-"Well, you wouldn't expect me to love them?"

-

-"No. I'm not blaming you, Jeff. But--but, I'm afraid. Hate is a

-terrible thing. I wish you were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you.

-I'm afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through all the long,

-long years of life. Can you see? I'm afraid of something that might go

-deeper than all this, something that might go as deep as life. After

-all, that's what I'm afraid of, I guess--Life, great, big, terrible,

-menacing, Life!"

-

-"My life?" Jeffrey asked gruffly.

-

-"I have faced that," the girl answered evenly, "just as you have faced

-it. And I am not afraid of that. No. It's what you might do in

-anger--if they hurt you again. Something that would scar your heart

-and your soul. Jeffrey, do you know that sometimes I've seen the

-worst, the worst--even _murder_ in your eyes!"

-

-"I wish," the boy returned shortly, "the Bishop would keep his

-religion out of all this. He's a good man and a good friend," he went

-on, "but I don't like this religion coming into everything."

-

-"But how can he? He cannot keep religion apart from life and right and

-wrong. What good would religion be if it did not go ahead of us in

-life and show us the way?"

-

-"But what's the use?" the boy said grudgingly. "What good does it do?

-You wouldn't have thought of any of this only for that last part of

-his letter. Why does that have to come into everything? It's the

-Catholic Church all over again, always pushing in everywhere."

-

-"Isn't that funny," the girl said, brightening; "I have cried myself

-sick thinking just that same thing. I have gone almost frantic

-thinking that if I once gave in to the Church it would crush me and

-make me do everything that I didn't want to do. And now I never think

-of it. Life goes along really just as though being a Catholic didn't

-make any difference at all."

-

-"That's because you've given in to it altogether. You don't even know

-that you want to resist. You're swallowed up in it."

-

-The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before she answered.

-

-"It's the queerest thing, isn't it, Jeff," she said finally in a

-thoughtful, friendly way, "how two people can fight about religion?

-Now you don't care a particle about it one way or the other. And

-I--I'd rather not talk about it. And yet, we were just now within an

-inch of quarrelling bitterly about it. Why is it?"

-

-"I don't know. I'm sorry, Ruth," the boy apologised slowly. "It's none

-of my business, anyway."

-

-They were just coming over the long hill above Ruth's home. Below them

-stretched the long sweep of the road down past her house and up the

-other slope until it lost itself around the shoulder of Lansing

-Mountain.

-

-Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his big roan horse up the

-hill towards them at a heart-breaking pace.

-

-"That's 'My' Stocking's roan," said Jeffrey, straightening in his

-saddle; "I'd know that horse three miles away."

-

-"But what's he carrying?" cried Ruth excitedly, as she peered eagerly

-from under her shading hand. "Look. Across his saddle. Rifles! _Two_

-of them!"

-

-Brom Bones, sensing the girl's excitement, was already pulling at his

-bit, eager for a wild race down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long,

-sharp look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly to the side of

-the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the

-things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was

-no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes

-downhill.

-

-The rider was Myron Stocking from over in the Crooked Lake country, as

-Jeffrey had supposed. He pulled up as he recognised the two who waited

-for him by the roadside, and when he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew

-by sight, he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as she was to

-hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces farther away from them. They would

-not talk freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey would tell her

-all that she needed to know.

-

-The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences and Ruth heard

-Stocking conclude:

-

-"Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun o' yours. Your Ma didn't

-see."

-

-Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he came to Ruth.

-

-"There's some strangers over in the hills that maybe ought to be

-watched. The country's awful dry," he added quietly. He knew that Ruth

-would need no further explanation.

-

-He pulled the Bishop's letter from his pocket and handed it to Ruth,

-saying:

-

-"Take this and the paper along to Mother. She'll want to see them

-right away. And say, Ruth," he went on, as he looked anxiously at the

-great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between them

-and his home on the hill three miles away, "the country's awful dry.

-If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of this

-country. You can make them go. Nobody else could."

-

-The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to ask

-questions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey's pauses and

-silences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her a

-trust to look after the ones whom he loved.

-

-She put out her hand to his and said simply:

-

-"I'm glad we didn't quarrel, Jeff."

-

-"I was a fool," said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. "But I'll

-remember. Forgive me, please, Ruth."

-

-"There's nothing to forgive--ever--between us, Jeffrey. Go now," she

-said softly.

-

-Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over the

-hill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they

-were out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifle

-across the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart.

-She would have given everything in her world to have had back what she

-had said of seeing murder in Jeffrey's eyes.

-

-Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village road

-for an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a long

-winding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country.

-

-"We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away," said Jeffrey, as

-they came about sundown to a fork in their trail. "The breeze comes

-straight down from the east. That's where the danger is, if there is

-any."

-

-"I suppose you're right, Jeff. But it means we'll have to sleep out if

-we go that way."

-

-"I guess that won't hurt us," Jeffrey returned. "If anything happens

-we might have to sleep out a good many nights--and a lot of other

-people would have to do the same."

-

-"All right then," Stocking agreed. "We'll get a bite and give the

-horses a feed and a rest at Hosmer's, that's about two miles over the

-hills here; and then we can go on as far as you like."

-

-At Hosmer's they got food enough for two days in the hills, and

-having fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higher

-woods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the great

-trees were standing from the beginning, because they had been too high

-up to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels.

-Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops of

-the trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving the

-horses to pick their own canny footing up the trail.

-

-"Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?" Jeffrey asked as they rode

-along. "You know, the man that was in French Village this summer."

-

-"I don't know," Stocking answered. "You see they came up to the end of

-the rails, at Grafton, on a handcar. And then they scattered. Nobody's

-sure that he's seen any of 'em since. But they must be in the hills

-somewhere. And Rafe Gadbeau's with 'em. You can bet on that. That's

-all we've got to go on. But it may be a-plenty."

-

-"It's enough to set us on the move, anyway," said Jeffrey. "They have

-no business in the hills. They're bound to be up to mischief of some

-sort. And there's just one big mischief that they can do. Can we make

-Bald Mountain before daylight?"

-

-"Oh, certainly; that'll be easy. We'll get a little light when we're

-through this belt of heavy woods and then we can push along. We ought

-to get up there by two o'clock. It ain't light till near five. That'll

-give us a little sleep, if we feel like it."

-

-True to Stocking's calculation they came out upon the rocky, thinly

-grassed knobs of Bald Mountain shortly before two o'clock. It was a

-soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain in the air somewhere,

-for there was no dew; but it might be on the other side of the divide

-or it might be miles below on the lowlands.

-

-Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in the vicinity of the

-mountain, or were heading toward here. For the word of the menace had

-gone through the hills that day, and men would decide, as Jeffrey had

-done, that the danger would come from this direction. But they had not

-heard anything to show the presence of others, nor did they care to

-give any signals of their own whereabouts.

-

-As for those others, the possible enemy, who had left the railroad

-that morning and had scattered into the hills, if their purpose was

-the one that men feared, they, too, would be near here. But it was

-useless to look for them in the dark: neither was anything to be

-feared from them before morning. Men do not start forest fires in the

-night. There is little wind. A fire would probably die out of itself.

-And the first blaze would rouse the whole country.

-

-The two hobbled their horses with the bridle reins and lay down in the

-open to wait for morning. Neither had any thought of sleep. But the

-softness of the night, the pungent odour of the tamarack trees

-floating up to them from below, and their long ride, soon began to

-tell on them. Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch.

-

-"Curl up and go to sleep, 'My,'" he said, shaking himself. "You might

-as well. I'll wake you in an hour."

-

-A ready snore was the only answer.

-

-Morning coming over the higher eastern hills found them stiff and

-weary, but alert. The woods below them were still banked in darkness

-as they ate their dry food and caught their horses for the day that

-was before them. There was no water to be had up here, and they knew

-their horses must be gotten down to some water course before night.

-

-A half circle of open country belted by heavy woods lay just below

-them. Eagerly, as the light crept down the hill, they scanned the area

-for sign of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently they had the world

-to themselves. A fresh morning breeze came down over the mountain and

-watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops of the distant

-trees. The same thought made both men grip their rifles and search

-more carefully the ground below them, for that innocent breeze blowing

-straight down towards their homes and loved ones was a potential

-enemy more to be feared than all the doings of men.

-

-Down to the right, two miles or more away, a man came out of the

-shadow of the woods. They could only see that he was a big man and

-stout. There was nothing about him to tell them whether he was friend

-or foe, of the hills or a stranger. Without waiting to see who he was

-or what he did, the two dove for their saddles and started their

-horses pell-mell down the hill towards him.

-

-He saw them at once against the bare brow of the hill, and ran back

-into the wood.

-

-In another instant they knew what he was and what was his business.

-

-They saw a light moving swiftly along the fringe of the woods. Behind

-the light rose a trail of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a line

-of living fire. The man was running, dragging a flaming torch through

-the long dried grass and brush!

-

-The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks, regardless of paths or

-horses' legs, would gladly have killed the man as he ran. But it was

-too far for even a random shot. They could only ride on in reckless

-rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat it to death with their hands, to

-stamp it into the earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and a

-fair shot at the fiend there within the wood.

-

-Before they had stumbled half the distance down the hill, a wave of

-leaping flame a hundred feet long was hurling itself upon the forest.

-They could not stamp that fire out. But they could kill that man!

-

-The man ran back behind the wall of fire to where he had started and

-began to run another line of fire in the other direction. At that

-moment Stocking yelled:

-

-"There's another starting, straight in front!"

-

-"Get him," Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder. "I'm going to kill this

-one."

-

-Stocking turned slightly and made for a second light which he had seen

-starting. Jeffrey rode on alone, unslinging his rifle and driving

-madly. His horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down the hill, now

-saw the fire and started to bolt off at a tangent. Jeffrey fought with

-him a furious moment, trying to force him toward the fire and the man.

-Then, seeing that he could not conquer the fright of the horse and

-that his man was escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and

-leaping free with his gun ran towards the man.

-

-The man was dodging in and out now among the trees, but still using

-his torch and moving rapidly away.

-

-Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man in his zigzag until he

-was within easy distance. But the man continued weaving his way among

-the trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim. Jeffrey dropped

-to one knee and steadied the sights of his rifle until they closed

-upon the running man and clung to him.

-

-Suddenly the man turned in an open space and faced about. It was

-Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He was unarmed, but he must be killed.

-

-"I am going to kill him," said Jeffrey under his breath, as he again

-fixed the sights of his rifle, this time full on the man's breast.

-

-A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers threw up his hands, took a

-half step forward, and fell on his face.

-

-Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger which he had not

-pulled, ran forward to where the man lay.

-

-He was lying face down, his arms stretched out wide at either side,

-his fingers convulsively clutching at tufts of grass.

-

-He was dying. No need for a second look.

-

-His hat had fallen off to a little distance. There was a clean round

-hole in the back of the skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair

-showed just the merest streak of red.

-

-Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still flaming railroad

-torch, with which he had done his work.

-

-Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction from which the shot

-had come. There was no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no

-sign of another human being anywhere.

-

-Away back of him he heard shots, one, two, three; Stocking, probably,

-or some of the other men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at

-other fleeing figures in the woods.

-

-He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the wick and stamped it into

-a patch of burnt ground, threw the torch back from the fire line, and

-started clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of his

-rifle.

-

-He was quickly brought to his senses, when the forgotten cartridge in

-his gun accidentally exploded and the bullet went whizzing past his

-ear. He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp piece of sapling

-he began to work furiously, but systematically at the line of fire.

-

-The line was thin here, where it had really only that moment been

-started, and he made some headway. But as he worked along to where it

-had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless. Still he clung to

-his work. It was the only thing that his numbed brain could think of

-to do for the moment.

-

-He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the loose dirt furiously after

-the fire as it ran away from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire

-and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept up his trousers

-and shirt and up even to his hair. And still the fire ran away from

-him, away down the hill after its real prey. He looked farther on

-along the line and saw that it was not now a line but a charging,

-rushing river of flame that ran down the hill, twenty feet at a jump.

-Nothing, nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain could now

-stop that torrent of fire.

-

-He stepped back. There was nothing to be done here now, behind the

-fire. Nothing to be done but to get ahead of it and save what could be

-saved. He looked around for his horse.

-

-Just then men came riding along the back of the line, Stocking and old

-Erskine Beasley in the lead. They came up to where Jeffrey was

-standing and looked on beyond moodily to where the body of Rogers

-lay.

-

-Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell upon the little group

-of horsemen and upon the boy standing there.

-

-Myron Stocking spoke at last:

-

-"Mine got away, Jeff," he said slowly.

-

-Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the meaning of the words

-flashed upon him.

-

-"I didn't do that!" he exclaimed hastily. "Somebody else shot him from

-the woods. My gun went off accidental."

-

-Silence fell again upon the little group of men. They did not look at

-Jeffrey. They had heard but one shot. The shot from the woods had been

-too muffled for them to hear.

-

-Again Stocking broke the silence.

-

-"What difference does it make," he said. "Any of us would have done it

-if we could."

-

-"But I didn't! I tell you I didn't," shouted Jeffrey. "The shot from

-the woods got ahead of me. That man was facing me. He was shot from

-behind!"

-

-Old Erskine Beasley took command.

-

-"What difference does it make, as Stocking says. We've got live men

-and women and children to think about to-day," he said. "Straighten

-him out decent. Then divide and go around the fire both ways. The

-alarm can't travel half fast enough for this breeze, and it's rising,

-too," he added.

-

-"But I tell you--!" Jeffrey began again. Then he saw how useless it

-was.

-

-He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which even in the face of

-this unheard-of terror had preferred to venture back toward his

-master.

-

-He caught the horse, mounted, and started to ride south with the party

-that was to try to get around the fire from that side.

-

-He rode with them. They were his friends. But he was not with them.

-There was a circle drawn around him. He was separated from them. They

-probably did not feel it, but he felt it. It is a circle which draws

-itself ever around a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of

-blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may say that they themselves

-would wish to have done it. But the circle is there.

-

-Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She would not see that circle.

-

-Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a few hours before said

-that she had sometimes seen even murder in his eyes.

-

-

-

-

-V

-

-MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE

-

-

-Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the fire raved exultingly,

-leaping and skipping fantastically as it ran. It was a prisoner

-released from the bondage of the elements that had held it. It was a

-spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom. It was a flood raging down a

-valley. It was a maniac at large.

-

-The broad base of the mountain where it sat upon the backs of the

-lower hills spread out fanwise to a width of five miles. The fire

-spread its wings as it came down until it swept the whole apron of the

-mountain. A five-mile wave of solid flame rolled down upon the hills.

-

-Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early browse missed the

-juicy dew from the grass. They looked to where the sun should be

-coming over the mountain and instead they saw the sun coming down the

-side of the mountain in a blanket of white smoke. They left their feed

-and began to huddle together, mooing nervously to each other about

-this thing and sniffing the air and pawing the earth.

-

-Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle in to milking looked

-blinking up at the mountain, stood a moment before their numb minds

-understood what their senses were telling them, then ran shouting back

-to the farm houses, throwing open pasture gates and knocking down

-lengths of fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear in their

-hearts, ran straight to the barns and mounting the best horses fled

-down the roads to the west. For the hireling flees because he is a

-hireling.

-

-Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children came tumbling out of

-the houses, to look up at the death that was coming down to them. Some

-cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and shook foolish fists at the

-oncoming enemy. Some fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God

-of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the house for his or her

-treasure; a little bag of money under a mattress, or a babe in its

-crib, or a little rifle, or a dolly of rags.

-

-Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm wagons. The treasures were

-quickly bundled in. Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into

-the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at the heads of the

-sweating horses, then climbed to their places in the wagons and took

-the reins. For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind mad horses,

-they would have to hold the lives of the children, the horses, and,

-incidentally, of themselves in their hands. But they were capable

-hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother hearts that went

-with them.

-

-They would have preferred to stay with the men, these women. But it

-was the law that they should take the brood and run to safety.

-

-Men stood watching the wagons until they shot out of sight behind the

-trees of the road. Then they turned back to the hopeless, probably

-useless fight. They could do little or nothing. But it was the law

-that men must stay and make the fight. They must go out with shovels

-to the very edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of new earth

-which the running fire could not cross. Thus they might divert the

-fire a little. They might even divide it, if the wind died down a

-little, so that it would roll on to either side of their homes.

-

-This was their business. There was little chance that they would

-succeed. Probably they would have to drop shovels at the last moment

-and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But this was the law,

-that every man must stay and try to make his own little clearing the

-point of an entering wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No man, no

-ten thousand men could stop the fire. But, against all probabilities,

-some one man might be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground,

-or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of it. That sector

-might be fought and narrowed down by other men until it was beaten.

-And so something would be gained. For this men stayed, stifled and

-blinded, and fought on until the last possible moment, and then ran

-past their already smoking homes and down the wind for life.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake of four other men down a

-long spiral course towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he

-would have ridden at their head. He would have taken the place of

-leadership and command among them which he had for months been taking

-in the fight against the railroad. Probably he could still have had

-that place among them if he had tried to assert himself, for men had

-come to have a habit of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear,

-dispirited and miserable.

-

-They were trying to get around the fire, so that they might hang upon

-its flank and beat it in upon itself. There was no thought now of

-getting ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm. That rolling

-curtain of smoke would have already aroused every living thing ahead

-of it. They could only hope to get to the end of the line of fire and

-fight it inch by inch to narrow the path of destruction that it was

-making for itself.

-

-If the wind had held stiff and straight down the mountain it would

-have driven the fire ahead in a line only a little wider than its

-original front. But the shape of the mountain caught the light breeze

-as it came down and twisted it away always to the side. So that the

-end of the fire line was not a thin edge of scattered fire that could

-be fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted funnel of flame

-that leaped and danced ever outward and onward.

-

-Half way down the mountain they thought that they had outflanked it.

-They slid from their horses and began to beat desperately at the brush

-and grasses among the trees. They gained upon it. They were doing

-something. They shouted to each other when they had driven it back

-even a foot. They fought it madly for the possession of a single tree.

-They were gaining. They were turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat

-began to streak the caking grime upon their faces. There was no air to

-breathe, only the hot breath of fire. But it was heartsome work, for

-they were surely pushing the fire in upon itself.

-

-A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smoke

-about them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves

-pressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.

-

-When they could look they saw a wall of fire bearing down upon them

-from three sides. The wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise

-so that it had surrounded the meagre little space that they had

-cleared and had now outflanked them. Their own manoeuvre had been

-turned against them. There was but one way to run, straight down the

-hill with the fire roaring and panting after them. It was a playful,

-tricky monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing at their

-puny efforts.

-

-Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves out of the path of

-the flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by

-them on its way.

-

-Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap had

-caught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following their

-instinct to hunt water.

-

-The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They were

-five already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must

-follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run at

-their best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch of

-the way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from

-spreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fire

-shoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished what

-these five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But they

-hung on in desperation.

-

-Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fire

-back a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something.

-And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behind

-and around them so that they had to race for life.

-

-Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and among

-the broken hills. Here their work was entirely hopeless and they knew

-it. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of being

-cut off and completely surrounded. Here the fire did not keep any

-steady edge that they could follow and attack. The wind eddied and

-whirled about among the broken peaks of the hills in every direction

-and with it the fire ran apparently at will.

-

-When they tried to hold it to one side of a hill and were just

-beginning to think that they had won, a sudden sweep of the wind would

-send a ring of fire around to the other side so that they saw

-themselves again and again surrounded and almost cut off.

-

-Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold the fire to the north

-side of the Chain. The Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly

-east and west. It divides the hill country into fairly even portions.

-If they could keep the fire north of the lakes they would save the

-southern half of the country. Their own homes all lay to the north of

-the lakes and they were now doomed. But that was a matter that did not

-enter here. What was gone was gone. Their loved ones would have had

-plenty of warning and would be out of the way by now. The men were

-fighting the enemy merely to save what could be saved. And as is the

-way of men in fight they began to make it a personal quarrel with the

-fire.

-

-They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. It was no longer

-an impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was a

-cunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its

-eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and

-bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the

-roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips

-were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it.

-

-They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of them

-had forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last night

-and who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten those

-other men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men into

-the hills to do this thing.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and the

-fight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sight

-of the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. He

-fought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, until

-there was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in his

-brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quarter

-given or asked with the demon of the fire.

-

-Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south and

-joined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, where

-the Chain began and stretched away to the west. If they could hold

-the fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along the

-north side of the lakes and the other half of the country would be

-safe.

-

-The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. The

-five weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollen

-tongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strength

-from the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back down

-the north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with

-charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it.

-

-They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and their

-work would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! God

-in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it!

-To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and

-_drink_!

-

-Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Here

-was the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder,

-fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath of

-the fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed the

-fire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. They

-had won! It could not beat them now!

-

-As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of the

-placid lake below him one of the new men, who still had voice, raised

-a shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voice

-croaking out what would have been a cry of triumph.

-

-But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they had

-safely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry,

-flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flames

-went dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread out

-around the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, the

-thing was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flames

-went roaring to the top of it.

-

-The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to get

-themselves out of that encircling death.

-

-When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw the

-full extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment of

-victory.

-

-Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain--but they

-themselves could not get near the lake.

-

-Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they could

-not reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line between

-them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet in

-the lake.

-

-Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted silent teeth, according

-to the nature that was in each.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men

-pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke

-and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not

-men of the hills.

-

-They were!--They were the real enemy!--They were two of those who had

-set the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headed

-straight for the lake and had gotten there. _They_ were safe. And

-_they_ had _water_!

-

-All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting fire

-fury of the day, rushed back upon him.

-

-He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he had

-not.

-

-Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill those

-two there in the water. _In the water!_

-

-He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of the

-fire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward,

-his face buried in a patch of bare earth.

-

-Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. When

-they had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into him

-with their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As he

-understood, he turned on his face moaning:

-

-"I didn't kill Rogers. I wish I had--I wish I had."

-

-And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as the

-intolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canal

-and the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of the

-morning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, four

-hours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good wash

-and rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was he

-querulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow and

-dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop had

-found plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentle

-philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood the

-faults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour at

-the back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, Joseph

-Winthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop.

-

-But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing in

-Albany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He had

-appealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And the

-conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that the

-U. & M. Railroad must not dare to drive the people of the hills from

-their homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Then

-the conscience of the people of the State had gone off about its

-business, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The public

-would forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with a

-mild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few days

-at most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But the

-railroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behind

-it who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results.

-

-He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strike

-in some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the hand

-that struck.

-

-Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of the

-first hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of the

-mountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blue

-of the sky behind them.

-

-Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where Old

-Forge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the

-divide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The day

-was very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew that

-morning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the early

-morning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now.

-

-Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journey

-up this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fair

-day. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the top

-of other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you remember

-that his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand square

-miles of broken country, you will see that he had need of marking

-posts.

-

-Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach from

-the western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country to

-the east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany and

-around by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east by

-Malone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into the

-mountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre of

-his diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, south

-and west.

-

-He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled,

-perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station he

-went out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.

-

-Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where he

-knew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he had

-recognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountain

-had suddenly been moved into the gap. He went back to his seat and

-sat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the whole

-contour of the hills that he had known was changed under his very

-eyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smooth

-skulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks should

-have been.

-

-He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind,

-and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of

-Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heart

-whose passions ran deep below a placid surface.

-

-At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped and

-hurried to the operator's window to ask if any news had gone down the

-wire of a fire in the hills.

-

-Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table "listening in"

-with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going over

-the wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company,

-between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the office

-at Steuben.

-

-The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.

-

-Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:

-

-"This ain't the bulletin board. We're busy."

-

-The Bishop stood quiet a moment.

-

-Then Jerry looked up. The face looking calmly through the window was

-the face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder of

-certain things.

-

-Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. He

-grabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped:

-

-"I--I'm sorry, Bishop! I--I--didn't hear what you said."

-

-The Bishop--if one might say it--grinned. Then he said quickly:

-

-"I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anything

-on the wire?"

-

-Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop's mouth. The beet red

-colour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles were

-coming back. He was now coherent.

-

-No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the

-wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed

-abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call."

-

-Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica," he said. They waited

-a little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call

-everything," Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the

-benefit of the Bishop.

-

-"It must be big, Bishop," he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call--"

-

-But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing

-train.

-

-At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house.

-Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the

-housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady's

-saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the

-hills.

-

-It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no

-telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a

-half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among

-the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated

-country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady's

-clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the

-matter no more than a mild wonder.

-

-For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road

-over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the

-winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He

-thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on

-that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But

-more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up

-there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all.

-

-He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started

-accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men

-into the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were

-caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody

-justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady's

-horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his

-well fed life.

-

-Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther.

-Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of

-keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for a

-fresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had just

-slid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop's destination in the

-hills--which was vague, and his business--which was still more vague.

-He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the whole

-matter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have the

-fresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.

-

-The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corben

-believed that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the

-diocese. Corben did not believe that.

-

-In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to

-believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in

-his pockets he pressed on into the high hills.

-

-Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road.

-But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe

-of the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the

-origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond

-that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.

-

-Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones,

-and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask

-a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the

-situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning

-by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the

-children. That was all they could tell.

-

-As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones

-escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew

-without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women

-would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger.

-

-In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory

-authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to

-the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea

-that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself

-in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the

-mere argument that he was a man.

-

-The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what

-she knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road

-yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in

-the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald

-Mountain.

-

-The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched.

-He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the

-breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and

-futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of

-that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even

-than the one of the fire itself.

-

-"He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth

-had to tell.

-

-"Yes. We had just read it."

-

-"He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly.

-

-"Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him," the girl answered

-simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer

-implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.

-

-"They will all be driven in upon French Village," said the Bishop

-slowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills.

-Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road

-from here there, is it open, do you know?"

-

-"No one has come down from that far," said Ruth. "We have watched the

-people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the

-lake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the road

-certainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes

-down."

-

-"I must hurry, then," said the Bishop, gripping his reins.

-

-"Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will be

-trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a

-few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot

-go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost."

-

-"Well, I can always come back," said the Bishop lightly, as he set his

-horse up the hill.

-

-"But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop," Ruth pleaded after

-him. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on the

-road!"

-

-But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he

-heard or not, he did not answer or look back.

-

-Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know

-whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a

-quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not

-drive him back. She knew that.

-

-She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which

-he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be

-driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and hunted

-alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills

-would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside

-it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and

-the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be

-trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek

-safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death

-just as certain but which they would prefer to face.

-

-The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was

-riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be

-among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.

-

-But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and

-before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.

-

-"I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs.

-Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will

-catch you before long."

-

-"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you.

-Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet,

-and won't be for some time."

-

-Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day

-long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did

-not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to

-run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run

-very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the

-hill.

-

-But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him.

-When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile

-away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.

-

-She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all

-against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances

-stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the

-chances and was ready to measure himself against them.

-

-"Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up

-the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too

-late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid.

-Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like a

-man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all

-about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God's

-business. I wonder."

-

-Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of

-the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a

-pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired from

-the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that

-he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he

-disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into

-the sky.

-

-Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to

-the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming,

-sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward

-her home.

-

-All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had

-passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present

-among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting

-to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never

-before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her.

-

-For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a

-living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined

-course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down

-the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open

-chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and

-surround them.

-

-While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but

-the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This

-was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep

-in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the

-level lands and safety.

-

-The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid front

-beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the

-Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and

-get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was

-sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely

-before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great

-limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he

-would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind

-whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead

-of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the

-road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander

-aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him.

-

-Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need

-her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw

-the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril

-from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life.

-He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find

-him and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he did

-not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the

-attempt.

-

-Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home.

-For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his

-flanks--to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing

-like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for he

-had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the

-stroke of the whip to madden him.

-

-Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red

-terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not

-understand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of rising

-excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:

-

-"You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way

-before, did I? But it's for life--a good man's life! You can make it.

-I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. You

-can make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It _can't_ hurt us! Bromie, dear,

-I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!"

-

-She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon her

-hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw

-that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was

-going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet

-body.

-

-But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that

-red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point

-just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came?

-She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where

-the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she

-could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting

-down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were

-whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should

-hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The

-girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him

-so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged

-straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road.

-

-A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and

-reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he

-felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on

-again, through the smoke and out into the good air.

-

-The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed

-them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared,

-either.

-

-Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and

-turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away

-with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already

-leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire

-from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where

-everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with

-the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter

-much.

-

-Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the

-hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her

-loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at

-the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the

-men who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it.) She wanted

-vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take

-revenge in the way of men.

-

-But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and

-for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And

-she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our

-trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive

-those who trespass against us," she meant that, too.

-

-The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal

-another.

-

-Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire

-burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but

-a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and

-to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole

-horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be

-coming down upon the whole world.

-

-She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of

-herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the

-road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out

-of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little

-moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there

-was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost

-certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she

-could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop

-would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom

-Bones for his brave best.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to

-French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the

-sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white

-smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show

-that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the

-sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come

-to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance

-but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.

-

-He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty

-sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest

-shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he

-would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the

-fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he

-would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through

-somehow.

-

-He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran

-straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him,

-sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading

-steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill

-before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed

-the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill

-he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French

-Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous

-horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and

-make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far

-from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.

-

-Then he came to the top of the hill.

-

-He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that

-same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight

-slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran

-straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could

-see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road.

-This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided

-the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still

-moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the

-hill where he stood.

-

-Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than

-he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse

-and looked.

-

-Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was

-marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given

-its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not

-have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road

-clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid

-wall of fire.

-

-There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The

-way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But

-at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the

-fire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed in

-entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So,

-if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe

-again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French

-Village.

-

-Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick

-upon him.

-

-His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the

-shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop

-dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the

-horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture

-land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way.

-

-Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have

-expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood

-stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look.

-

-"I am sorry, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You have done your

-best. And I--have done my worst. You did not deserve this."

-

-He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, two

-miles away and a thousand feet below.

-

-The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into

-the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to

-the west down through the great trees, travelling faster than any

-horse could have been driven.

-

-The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking

-mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an

-unbroken line--death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with

-a calm and certain steadiness of purpose--death. On the hill to the

-west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift

-line of fire coming down the northern side of the square--death. One

-narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the

-north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few

-minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and

-running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With

-a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it.

-

-With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over

-the horse and came heavily to the ground.

-

-"You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance," he said, as he

-hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle.

-

-He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed.

-

-"We stay together, then." And the Bishop mounted again.

-

-Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around

-them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope.

-No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it

-was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying

-equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran

-through the grass by his horse's feet.

-

-One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility

-that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned

-away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might

-be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding

-nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this,

-the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west.

-

-Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a

-bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to

-be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in

-hand.

-

-Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he

-would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his

-hand.

-

-But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb

-and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him,

-the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of

-the thing than he could see heroism.

-

-He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certain

-men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was

-all. He had meant well. God meant better.

-

-Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently

-with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the

-Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this

-square of fire.

-

-"It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thought

-I'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'll

-follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks," she yelled back over her shoulder, "we

-can make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. But

-we won't _burn_!"

-

-Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under

-command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to

-think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse

-followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck

-path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath

-or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of

-what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.

-

-They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom

-Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw

-that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent

-and perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking down

-he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks

-below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to

-the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the

-lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks.

-Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.

-

-It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side

-of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came

-slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop

-brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light.

-The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing.

-But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe

-Gadbeau.

-

-The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, then

-crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck

-and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.

-

-The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised

-the Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips

-there came the moan:

-

-_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse--"_

-

-With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in which

-the French people began the telling of their sins in confession. And

-she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.

-

-She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking of

-Jeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like--the

-Catholic Church always turning up in everything.

-

-She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up there

-behind that awful veil of red.

-

-

-

-

-VI

-

-THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD

-

-

-The Bishop laid the man's head back so that he lay as easy as it was

-possible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of his

-which was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country.

-

-But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw the

-Bishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know

-what it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, only

-continued to mumble the words with which they had begun:

-

-_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--"

-

-Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he could

-speak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue of

-his mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one of

-these.

-

-Again the Bishop lowered the man's head and changed the position of

-the body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouth

-with his hat.

-

-Now the man tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp

-effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he

-forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of

-encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise,

-recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada

-have been drilling into the children for the last three hundred

-years.

-

-Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it worked

-easily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At that

-time he had received the Sacrament. He went through the "table of

-sins" with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses a

-step in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of the

-young men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in the

-sawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill country

-would have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting in

-the camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down to

-spend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. The

-Bishop had heard the story ten thousand times.

-

-But now--_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--there was something more, something

-that would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. It

-had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the

-feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For the

-Bishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, just

-below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a

-wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying

-where he fell.

-

-He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolled

-itself to his mind.

-

-"I die, Mon Pere, I die," he began between gasps. "I die. Since the

-afternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down,

-if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have lain

-down to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.

-

-"All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till I

-had found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here I

-breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran out

-from the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not run

-out of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire and

-fought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. All

-the day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the fire

-when I would run out.

-

-"They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with the

-men who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to the

-fire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they went

-to set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale.

-

-"Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All were

-drinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. _Mon

-Pere_, I struck no blow. But my knife--my knife was found in the man's

-heart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad that

-comes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showed

-the knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word to

-the law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only to

-me he said, 'Some day I may need you.'

-

-"Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he was

-not a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He

-would buy the land from the people.

-

-"The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he came

-again. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He must

-force the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. 'You,'

-he said, 'I need you.'

-

-"_Mon Pere_, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinch

-of salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will do

-this, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied to

-my own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed

-the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came.

-He bade me do and I did.

-

-"M'sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of all

-sins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate.

-And hate goes raging to do all sin.

-

-"So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was always

-the face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine.

-

-"Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at the

-railroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up into

-the high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. I

-would not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved

-me, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go.

-

-"I went. Fear, _Mon Pere_, fear is the father of all. I went because

-there was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followed

-into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the last

-moment. I do not know.

-

-"I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see.

-If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be

-seen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to be

-punished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I would

-have to take the blame. I would not dare to speak.

-

-"Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And of

-the seven I alone was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me.

-I knew.

-

-"Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. And

-his speech was, 'You owe me this. Now you must pay.'

-

-"In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along the

-fringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went

-out into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen other

-men watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with a

-lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light my

-torch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, the

-red flare of the fire running after him.

-

-"Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of fire

-in the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!" With

-a terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop's arms,

-gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming:

-

-"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!"

-

-He fell back as the scream died in his throat.

-

-The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of the

-well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe

-Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips

-began to form the words of the Act of Contrition.

-

-As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in

-his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man.

-

-Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against the

-flank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrific

-forces of this world and the other that were at work about her. This

-world, with the exception of this little island on which she stood,

-was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side the

-flames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place,

-all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south.

-Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these few

-bare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out

-of which she must get the breath of life.

-

-Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a

-rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself

-down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the

-mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him!

-

-She was only a young girl. But since that night when the Bishop had

-come to her as she held her father dying in her arms she had thought

-much. Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had pressed themselves

-in upon her mind. The things that she had been hearing and reading

-since her childhood, the thoughts of the people among whom she had

-grown up, the feeling of loyalty to her own kind, all these had fought

-in her against the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged

-them all.

-

-Because she had so recently come under its influence, the Catholic

-Church seemed ever to be unfolding new wonders to her. It seemed as

-though she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another more

-wonderful, more awesome. Yet always there seemed to be something just

-beyond, some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which she could not

-quite attain. Always a door opened, only to disclose another closed

-door beyond it.

-

-Here surely she stood as near to naked truth as it was possible to

-get. Here were none of the forms of words, none of the explanations,

-none of the ready-made answers of the catechism. Here were just two

-men. One was a bad man, a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few

-moments his soul must go--somewhere. The other was a good man. To-day

-he had risked his life to save the lives of this man and others--for

-Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been caught in the fire

-because other men were chasing him.

-

-Now these two men had a question to settle between them. In a very few

-minutes these two men must settle whether this bad man's soul was

-presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity. You see, she

-was a very direct young person. She took her religion at its word,

-straight in the eyes, literally.

-

-So far she had not needed to take any precautions against hearing

-anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them

-effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high

-above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, breaking voice of

-Gadbeau, screaming:

-

-"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stopped!"

-

-Involuntarily she turned and started towards the men. Gadbeau had

-fallen back in the Bishop's arms and the Bishop was leaning over,

-apparently talking to him. She knew that she must not go near until

-the Bishop gave her leave. She turned back and putting her hands up to

-her ears buried her face in Brom Bones' mane.

-

-But she could not put away the words that she had heard. Never, so

-long as she lived, was she able to forget them. Like the flash of the

-shot itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves there.

-Years afterwards she could shut her eyes and fairly see those words

-burning in her mind.

-

-When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and she went over timidly.

-She heard the Bishop say:

-

-"He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?"

-

-Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the light of the flames, the

-Prayers for the Departed. Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and

-among the Mysteries she wept gently--why, she knew not.

-

-When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while in silence, looking

-into the face of the dead. Then he arose and folded the long arms on

-the tattered breast and straightened the body.

-

-Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way. Once, twice she opened

-her lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it.

-Finally she began:

-

-"Bishop, I--I heard--"

-

-"No, child. You heard nothing," the Bishop interrupted quietly,

-"nothing."

-

-Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there looking

-down. The dead man's secret lay between them, buried under God's awful

-seal.

-

-The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady's storm coat

-which he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of the

-dead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders that

-rained down upon everything.

-

-Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing at

-their horses' heads, their faces buried in the manes, their arms

-thrown over the horses' eyes.

-

-As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the east

-and south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But the

-sharp, acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept them

-in exquisite, blinded torture.

-

-The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the fires

-to the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night.

-The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through the

-smoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to be

-rising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting the

-heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into the

-west. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a

-land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there a

-great tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch.

-

-They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the man

-lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping

-hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach

-Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live.

-Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and

-they knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse.

-

-Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travel

-circuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallen

-trees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The road

-was impossible because it had largely run through wooded places and

-the trees would have fallen across it. Their situation was not

-desperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad for

-water.

-

-For two hours they plodded steadily over the hills through the hot,

-loose-lying ashes. In all the world it seemed that not man nor beast

-nor bird was alive. The top of the earth was one grey ruin, draped

-with the little sworls of dust and ashes that the playful wind sent

-drifting up into their mouths and eyes.

-

-They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the ashes had blown level

-over holes and traps of all sorts in which a galloping horse would

-surely break his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the horses to

-any rapid expenditure of energy. The little that was left in them must

-be doled out to the very last ounce. For they did not yet know what

-lay between them and French Village and the lake. If the fire had not

-reached the lake during the night then it was always a possibility

-that, with this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring up from

-the ashes of the old and place an impassable barrier between them and

-the water.

-

-When this thought came to them, as it must, they involuntarily

-quickened their pace. The impulse was to make one wild dash for the

-lake. But they knew that it would be nothing short of madness. They

-must go slowly and carefully, enduring the torture with what fortitude

-they could.

-

-The story which the Bishop had heard from the lips of the dying man

-had stirred him profoundly. He now knew definitely, what yesterday he

-had suspected, that men had been sent into the hills by the railroad

-people to set fire to the forests, thereby driving the people out of

-that part of the country which the railroad wished to possess. He was

-moved to anger by the knowledge, but he knew that he must try to drive

-that knowledge back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try to

-hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded moment, some time of

-stress and mental conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture or

-even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness of that knowledge.

-Now he knew that the situation which last night he had thought to meet

-in French Village would almost certainly confront him there this

-morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be

-doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should

-in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned

-under the seal of the confessional.

-

-Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words of

-that last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near they

-came to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his

-gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she

-would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under

-any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears.

-And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.

-

-As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of the

-country sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. There

-was not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little French

-Village had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completely

-around the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn it

-up in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself out

-along the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward the

-west, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there would

-be no more fire in this region.

-

-"Would the people make their way down the river," the Bishop asked;

-"or did they escape back into the higher hills?"

-

-"I don't think they did either," Ruth answered as she scanned the lake

-sharply. "There is something out there in the middle of the lake, and

-I wouldn't be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and went

-through the fire that way. They'd be better off than we were, and that

-way they could save some things. If they had run away they would have

-had to drop everything."

-

-The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up their

-ears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruth

-was right in her conjecture. They could now make out five or six

-large rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of the

-logs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the

-sawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must have

-stood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided by

-such help as the people could give it with boards and poles, was

-moving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been.

-

-The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep through

-the ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village and

-watched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing for

-them to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other side

-of the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with that

-dumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back and

-begin their nests over again.

-

-For nearly an hour they stood on the little beach, letting the horses

-drink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts.

-When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling from

-the rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts were

-emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must be

-carried off.

-

-They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl with

-wonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these two

-people must have come straight through the fire. But when Father

-Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a great

-glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people.

-It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing!

-His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors.

-Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long

-night. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that all

-was well!

-

-Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes their

-race what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging his

-blessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He was

-infinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith.

-He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They were

-homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it had

-needed but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded

-confidence that God was good, that the world was right again.

-

-The other people, the hill people of the Bishop's own blood and race,

-stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kind

-of people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were not

-unmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some

-two or three old men of them saw him now through a mist of memory and

-battle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that this

-was the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare

-through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a

-part of the strange things that they had always half believed about

-him.

-

-Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop.

-Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag

-the Bishop's story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven?

-How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the

-fire?

-

-The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own

-imprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it by

-the quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translated

-freely and with a fine flourish. Then the Bishop told of the coming of

-Rafe Gadbeau and how the man had died with the Sacrament. They nodded

-their heads in silence. There was nothing to be said. They knew who

-the man was. He had done wickedly. But the good God had stretched out

-the wing of His great Church over him at the last. Why say more? God

-was good. No?

-

-Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people, grouped on the outskirts

-of the crowd that pressed around the Bishop, answering their eager

-questions and asking questions of her own. There was just one

-question that she wanted to ask, but something kept it back from her

-lips. There was no reason at all why she should not ask them about

-Jeffrey Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard news of him,

-must know in what direction he had gone to fight the fire. But some

-unnamed dread seemed to take possession of her so that she dared not

-put her crying question into words.

-

-Some one at her elbow, who had heard what the French people were

-saying, asked:

-

-"You're sure that was Gadbeau that crawled out of the fire and died,

-Miss Lansing?"

-

-"Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly," Ruth

-answered without looking up.

-

-Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:

-

-"Then that's two of 'em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting

-shot Rogers."

-

-"He did not!" Ruth blazed up in the young man's face. "Jeffrey Whiting

-did _not_ shoot Rogers! Rafe--!"

-

-The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her and

-blinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain,

-choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The young

-man, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall.

-She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp:

-

-"It's nothing-- Let me go."

-

-Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand from

-her arm.

-

-Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself

-in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be

-likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a

-sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand.

-Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling that

-she stood among those who could have understood gave her strength and

-a feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have had

-among her own kind.

-

-But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan,

-grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and

-drew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth found

-it difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly French

-girl she had met in the early summer.

-

-"You saw Rafe Gadbeau die," the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruth

-sharply at a little distance from the crowd. "You were there, close?

-No?"

-

-"Yes, the fire was all around," Ruth answered, quaking.

-

-"How did he die? Tell me. How?"

-

-"Why--why, he died quickly, in the Bishop's arms."

-

-"I know. Yes. But how? He _confessed_?"

-

-"He--he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so."

-

-But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.

-

-"I know that," she persisted. "I heard M'sieur the Bishop. But did he

-_confess_--about Rogers?"

-

-"Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn't hear anything. I

-couldn't--"

-

-"He didn't say nothing, except in confession?" the girl questioned

-swiftly.

-

-"Nothing at all," Ruth answered, relieved.

-

-"And you heard?" the girl returned shrewdly.

-

-"Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that."

-

-"I know you are lying," Cynthe said slowly. "That is right. But I do

-not know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You are

-Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometime

-you will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in

-us. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you a

-question and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will be

-silent--and that will be just as bad."

-

-Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did not

-even raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuring

-look to the girl would be an admission that she must not make.

-

-"Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! You

-cannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul," said the girl in a

-low, tense whisper; "swear that you will never, sleeping or waking,

-laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know that

-you heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember." She drew Ruth

-close to her and almost hissed into her ear:

-

-"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting!"

-

-She dropped Ruth's arm and turned quickly away.

-

-Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright

-and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not

-grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind.

-

-This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love

-and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the

-dark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes given

-to those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girl

-had seen Ruth's terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had

-plucked it out before Ruth's very eyes.

-

-The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She had

-broken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with the

-most terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the most

-awful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret had

-escaped her!

-

-She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she had

-repeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that the

-other girl had taken her secret from her.

-

-And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into the

-future and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her.

-Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraid

-to speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had ever

-known.

-

-And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth's secrets, one that

-had been hidden even from herself. She had said:

-

-"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting."

-

-In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she had

-never known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up in

-the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for the

-dead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was,

-and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of her

-own beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cain

-upon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over the

-hills-- The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love!

-Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would love

-forever!

-

-He would hear it from other mouths. But, oh! the cruel, unbearable

-taunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her own

-lips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thought

-of such a thing?

-

-But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She

-could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the

-bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not

-even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the

-faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his

-and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to

-look into his eyes and say:

-

-I _know_ you did not do it.

-

-Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that she

-knew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man.

-It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love,

-horror, and the awful weight of God's seal pressed in upon her to

-crush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could not

-meet them, could not cope with them.

-

-Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where Brom

-Bones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, her

-face buried in the colt's mane, crying hysterically. They bathed her

-hands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted they

-gave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing that she

-would need strength above all things, took what was given and silently

-faced the galling weight of the burden that was hers.

-

-The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The first

-thing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold out

-where they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villages

-on the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walking

-over ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north it

-would mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and have

-water at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might come

-into the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help.

-

-Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they do

-there? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothing

-left for them here but the places where their homes had been, but at

-least they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had all

-passed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-stricken

-alike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation,

-would here bind them together and give them a common strength for a

-new grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the four

-or five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowville

-or from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here.

-

-The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawing

-family groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Already

-these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing around

-them and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circle

-drawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindly

-of eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded.

-Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth from

-nondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. It

-appeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision store

-until the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, to

-each one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was all

-pitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for those

-refugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, he

-thought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured to

-scanty living.

-

-The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put something

-before them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all

-things it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merely

-wait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried in

-their hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort of

-shelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kind

-would cover at least the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up

-or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of the

-lake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. But

-it would put heart into them to see at least something, anything,

-begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes.

-

-Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holding

-desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading

-them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to

-what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which

-messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They

-bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that

-were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little

-village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men

-gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would

-mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well

-know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth

-while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the

-Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy

-relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes

-the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was

-characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of

-penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations

-upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of

-his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary

-upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one

-of the notes he signed that day.

-

-All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and

-driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and

-joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes

-from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came

-down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of

-women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised

-cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French

-Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then

-Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the

-Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far

-Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had

-never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and

-young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears,

-their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt

-of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal

-and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and

-unashamed.

-

-Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight

-brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men,

-sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and

-dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.

-

-Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid

-his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the

-Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his

-fingers and unfolded their story to him.

-

-Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far

-slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the

-grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on

-past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of

-barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown

-country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for

-travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging

-like hunted rats, between a line of fire--of their own making--before

-them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire

-and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them.

-They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run with

-them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through

-all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the

-blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching

-thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes.

-And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them,

-torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and

-wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that

-it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight.

-They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake

-came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from

-it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to

-taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy

-that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks.

-This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all

-might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had

-yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered

-around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might

-come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt

-ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened

-hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And,

-for these two men, to be seen meant to die.

-

-So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture.

-Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been

-beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down

-to the water.

-

-They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of

-the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no

-more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until

-they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst

-and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised

-now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up

-so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything

-else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew

-that if they would live and travel--and they must travel--they would

-have to have food at once.

-

-Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died

-out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was

-food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it

-did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great

-thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one

-thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else.

-They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the

-world!

-

-Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a

-few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself.

-There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed,

-seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not

-remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some

-baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat

-them, but--Fresh grass! Or oats!

-

-Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing

-to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around

-him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the

-matter.

-

-A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He

-carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At

-peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile

-that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and

-children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridle

-and tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a can

-of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom

-Bones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.

-

-A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking

-the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and

-fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and

-plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout,

-faithful heart.

-

-In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and

-shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and

-children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building.

-

-The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to

-give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men

-running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and

-hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire.

-

-They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men

-whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the

-most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been

-thirsting to kill them. The hour had come.

-

-"Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves." Old

-Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence.

-

-A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that

-suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey.

-

-Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying

-hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had

-caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he had

-cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he

-spoke now calmly, as one assured.

-

-"Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We know

-that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for

-they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall

-only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence

-these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?"

-

-"We'll be sure of these two," said a sullen voice in the crowd.

-

-"True," returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you there

-are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills

-risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater

-ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the

-end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a

-thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this

-trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my

-friends and my neighbours," he went on raising his hand, "I pledge you

-that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you.

-

-"Before these men die, bring a justice--there is one of the

-village--and let them confess before the world and to him on paper

-what they know of this crime and of those who commanded it."

-

-A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the

-time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought

-forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit

-upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his

-long hand of the _rue Henri_ the story that the men told.

-

-They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of

-all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for

-the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task.

-

-The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save

-these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a

-Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend,

-Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain

-man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of

-that story which he himself could but must not tell.

-

-The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the

-story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure

-that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke

-simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the

-first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their

-intention, he said:

-

-"My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I

-will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not

-move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets

-must pass through me.

-

-"You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is

-just one thing--Revenge."

-

-"What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd.

-

-"It is _not_ my business," said the Bishop solemnly. "It is the

-business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have

-I no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe all

-the same things? My business is with the souls of men--of all men. And

-never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing

-this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my

-fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your

-souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you

-sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and

-say: A man warned us, but he had no _business_!

-

-"Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done.

-And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh!

-believe me now! You shall see right!"

-

-The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men

-about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his

-feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.

-

-He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.

-

-Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her

-dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done

-his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden.

-But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful

-words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this

-grief.

-

-He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into

-the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered

-the things of God and His world.

-

-

-

-

-VII

-

-THE INNER CITADEL

-

-

-"And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute

-satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and

-with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August

-twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a

-long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered

-man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall

-not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have

-done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths

-of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes,

-actual eye-witnesses of the crime."

-

-In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District

-Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against

-Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had

-died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald

-Mountain.

-

-From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of

-Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the

-hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial.

-Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the

-villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose

-lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge

-Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it

-plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers

-must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the

-guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder

-itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been

-doing at the time.

-

-For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed

-just a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a little

-of the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned over

-in the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to these

-people. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had

-suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible

-to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer

-of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages

-of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that

-a man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire had

-started at about the same time and place. But few people had any clear

-version of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to the

-identity of the slayer.

-

-There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunate

-for Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of

-Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same man

-who only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before the

-Senate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroad

-against the lawless people of the hills. He had given the District

-Attorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury who

-would be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. For

-this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of

-the hills against the U. & M. Railroad.

-

-Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of its

-rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad

-system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that

-had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the

-North. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it was

-not in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave the

-county in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroad

-saw to it that only men personally known to its officials should have

-public office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench.

-And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well for

-the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it.

-

-The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of

-Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to

-every money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible but

-impenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in every

-direction and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tell

-where it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines of

-influence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of the

-attorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand they

-passed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whose

-money and brain dominated the whole transportation business of the

-State. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitol

-at Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to the

-youngest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune from

-their influence.

-

-Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procured

-the setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill people

-homeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, be

-impossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in any

-county of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the way

-of criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper and

-roused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public.

-The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even a muttered

-and vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in a

-spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter

-charge.

-

-Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand

-Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment

-against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They had

-found that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon a

-peaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of his

-company. He had been found shot through the back of the head and the

-circumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature and

-disposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young man

-who for months had been leading a stubborn fight against the

-railroad.

-

-The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in Judge

-Leslie's court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind of

-the public with this case until the people should have had time to

-forget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of the

-railroad's affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold only

-one thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder case

-into that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise.

-

-The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; the

-well-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had

-done its work, and the efficient way in which judge and prosecuting

-attorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a

-"railroad" jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident power

-was moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge and

-this jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in the

-way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in

-the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to

-appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as

-justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The

-fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether

-or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would be

-allowed to enter.

-

-And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were already

-made up. The prisoner's friends and associates in the hills had been

-at first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubt

-was his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did not

-deny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on the

-very scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any one

-for doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since his

-conviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what room

-was there to hope for his acquittal?

-

-The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they had

-been working night and day to put a roof over their families before

-the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. They

-had no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and

-they had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew--every

-word of which would count against them. They had come down determined

-that he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as it

-were, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which the

-machinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them.

-There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idle

-and glum, waiting for the end.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment by

-the District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of

-circumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morning

-on Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold

-upon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that night

-and had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his mother

-there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had been

-horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face of

-the fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No

-word had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactly

-what had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He

-had wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not,

-in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, of

-course. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he would

-have told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey was

-aware that she was the only person who did or would believe him.

-

-He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother's horses, to go

-up into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wandering

-somewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers.

-The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gotten

-quickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroad

-people had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. The

-warrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reached

-Lowville.

-

-When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before the

-Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might

-have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost.

-Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he

-was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His

-own friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath.

-

-His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in the front seats just to

-the right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly at

-them with a confidence that he was far from feeling. His mother

-smiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with a

-twinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep into

-the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of the

-morning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly and

-unaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged to

-lift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, to

-conquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness

-of everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once the

-pride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he had

-kissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told--that

-he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again.

-And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with

-him.

-

-Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart

-in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail

-of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them.

-Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she

-been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the

-thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the

-hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart

-of her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of her

-boy brought to this pass because of that man.

-

-Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with his

-mother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung

-to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men.

-The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to

-see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had

-seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had

-been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he

-remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him

-squarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget the

-foolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. In

-that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seen

-there not the love of the little girl that he had known but the

-unbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself to

-him for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women of

-earth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity,

-whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts.

-

-It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of his

-cell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcely

-listened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of course, she had

-heard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiar

-with it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not like

-Ruth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know the

-exact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have been

-satisfied with anybody's telling of the matter but his own.

-

-Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind and struck at his

-heart. Could it be that she had over-acted it all? Could it be that

-she had brushed aside his story because she really did not believe it

-and could not listen to it without betraying her doubt? And had she

-blinded him with her pity? Had she acted all--!

-

-He threw himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Might

-not even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have been

-acting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! The

-girl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it was

-only--!

-

-But his good sense brought him back and set him on his feet. Ruth was

-no actress. And if she had been the greatest actress the world had

-ever seen she could not have acted that flooding love light into her

-eyes.

-

-He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cell

-rapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberately

-put his story aside in order to keep the whole of their little time

-together entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made his

-story unimportant.

-

-She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop must

-have gone straight through it from their home in its front line to the

-rear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey had

-heard wild tales of the exploit-- The French people had made many

-wonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of their

-deliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the young

-girl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from the

-angels.

-

-Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed to

-one or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there were

-other men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered Rafe

-Gadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey at

-Rogers' command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogers

-was intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the line

-of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullet

-had struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head.

-

-Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort of

-mysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding

-unwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if Gadbeau there under

-the excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would be

-charged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and place

-to rid himself of the man who had made him his slave!

-

-The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell,

-stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table,

-sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey

-caught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that would

-fit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into many

-blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at

-last came upon the truth--and stuck to it.

-

-Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had

-almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth

-and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence.

-He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they were

-going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth _knew_. The

-Bishop _knew_.

-

-When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw--just what he

-had expected to see. Ruth _knew_. It was not only her love and her

-confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturing

-doubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even his

-mother. Ruth _knew_.

-

-That she should not tell him, or give him any outward hint of what

-she was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a very

-serious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter with

-anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speak

-unnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need,

-she would speak. For the present--Ruth _knew_. That was enough.

-

-When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched him

-as he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had never

-had more than a boy's careless indifference and disregard of details

-in his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the dark

-had now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive as

-those of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop's

-hand on his, the look of the Bishop's eye into his, were not those of

-a man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keep

-his faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man who

-wished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and was

-obliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all.

-No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who _knew_. The Bishop

-_knew_.

-

-It was even easier to understand the Bishop's silence than it had been

-to see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an

-official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. He must not

-speak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course,

-there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent

-man. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop would

-speak.

-

-So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of fact and deduction. So

-he had watched and discovered and reasoned and debated with himself.

-He had not, of course, said a word of these things to any one. The

-result was that, while he listened to the plans which his lawyer,

-young Emmet Dardis, laid for his defence--plans which, in the face of

-the incontestable facts which would be brought against them, would

-certainly amount to little or nothing--he really paid little attention

-to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of the things his heart

-felt, he had built up around himself an inner citadel, as it were, of

-defence which no attack could shake. He had come to feel, had made

-himself feel, that his life and his name were absolutely safe in the

-keeping of these two people--the one a girl who loved him and who

-would give her life for him, and the other a true friend, a man of

-God, a true man. He had nothing to fear. When the time came these two

-would speak. It was true that he was outwardly depressed by the

-concise and bitter conviction in the words of the prosecuting

-attorney. For Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes the most

-terrible of criminal prosecutors--an honest, narrow man who was

-always absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused from the

-moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly he had no fear.

-

-The weight of evidence that would be brought against him, the fact

-that his own best friends would be obliged to give their oaths against

-him, the very feeling of being accused and of having to scheme and

-plan to prove his innocence to a world that--except here and

-there--cared not a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these

-things bowed his head and brought his eyes down to the floor. But they

-could not touch that inner wall that he had built around himself. Ruth

-_knew_; the Bishop _knew_.

-

-The rasping speech of the prosecutor was finished at last.

-

-Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.

-

-The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in hand at once for though

-he had been called as a witness for the prosecution it was well known

-that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney had made no

-attempt to school him beforehand, and he was determined now to allow

-him to give only direct answers to the questions put to him.

-

-Two or three times the old man attempted to explain, at the end of an

-answer, just why he had gone up into the high hills the night before

-the twentieth of August--that he had heard that Rogers and a band of

-men had gone into the woods to start fires. But he was ordered to

-stop, and these parts of his answers were kept out of the record.

-Finally he was rebuked savagely by the Judge and ordered to confine

-himself to answering the lawyer's questions, on pain of being arrested

-for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding that showed the temper

-and the intention of the Judge and a stir of protest ran around the

-courtroom. But old Erskine Beasley was quelled. He gave only the

-answers that the prosecutor forced from him.

-

-"Did you hear a shot fired?" he was asked.

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you hear two shots fired?"

-

-"No."

-

-"Did you see Jeffrey Whiting's gun?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you examine it?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Had it been fired off?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Excused," snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears,

-came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers

-had made the most damaging sort of evidence.

-

-Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. He

-called several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad and

-associated in one way or another with the murdered man in his efforts

-to get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses,

-though they were ready to give details and opinions which might have

-been favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly to

-answering with a word his own carefully thought out questions.

-

-With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of cause

-and effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills to

-offer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to the

-moment when the two had faced each other that morning on Bald

-Mountain.

-

-He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and oppose

-Rogers' work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of a

-family well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had been

-quick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep the

-people from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers' work would then be a

-failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man who

-could get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out at

-his word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at his

-terms.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from many of the owners that they

-would not sell or even sign any paper until such time as he gave them

-the word. Did those promises bind the people to him? They did. Did

-they have the same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained actual

-options on the property? Yes. Would the people stand by their

-promises? Yes. Then Whiting had actually been obtaining what were

-really options to himself, while pretending to hold the people back in

-their own interest? Yes.

-

-The prosecutor went on to draw out answer after answer tending to show

-that it was not really a conflict between the people and the railroad

-that had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, in

-fact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain between

-Jeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully done

-and drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which bald

-negative and affirmative answers invariably carry.

-

-He went on to show that a bitter hatred had grown up between the two

-men. Rogers had been accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the

-way at a time in the early summer when many of the people about French

-Village had been prepared to sign Rogers' options. Rogers had been

-obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account of Whiting's anger.

-He had not returned to the hills until the day before he was killed.

-

-The people in the hills had talked freely of what had happened on Bald

-Mountain on the morning of August twentieth and in the hills during

-the afternoon and night preceding. The prosecutor knew the incidents

-and knew what men had said to each other. He now called Myron

-Stocking.

-

-"Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon of August nineteenth?"

-was the question.

-

-"I went lookin' for him, to tell--"

-

-"Answer, yes or no?" shouted the attorney.

-

-"Yes," the witness admitted sullenly.

-

-"Did you tell him that Rogers was in the hills?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?"

-

-"He followed me," the witness began. But the Judge rapped warningly

-and the attorney yelled:

-

-"Yes or no?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you see Rogers in the morning?"

-

-"Yes, he was settin' fire to--" The Judge hammering furiously with his

-gavel drowned his words. The attorney went on:

-

-"Did you hear a shot?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you hear two shots?"

-

-"The fire"--was making a lot of noise, he tried to say. But his voice

-was smothered by eruptions from the court and the attorney. He was

-finally obliged to say that he had heard but one shot. Then he was

-asked:

-

-"What did you say when you came up and saw the dead man?"

-

-"I said, 'Mine got away, Jeff.'"

-

-"What else did you say?"

-

-"I said, 'What's the difference, any of us would've done it if we had

-the chance.'"

-

-"Whiting's gun had been fired?" asked the attorney, working back.

-

-"Yes."

-

-"One question more and I will excuse you," said the attorney, with a

-show of friendliness--"I see it is hard for you to testify against

-your friend. Did you, standing there with the facts fresh before you,

-conclude that Jeffrey Whiting had fired the shot which killed

-Rogers?"

-

-To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that it was not proper, that

-the answer would not be evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply,

-reminding him that this witness had been called by the prosecution,

-that it was not the business of opposing counsel to protect him. The

-witness found himself forced to answer a simple yes.

-

-One by one the other men who had been present that fatal morning were

-called. Their answers were identical, and as each one was forced to

-give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning Jeffrey Whiting

-out of the mouths of his friends who had stood on the very ground of

-the murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for him was closing.

-

-On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do little with the witnesses.

-He was gruffly reminded by the Judge that the witnesses were not his,

-that he must not attempt to draw any fresh stories from them, that he

-might only examine them on the facts which they had stated to the

-District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had pinned his witnesses down

-absolutely to answers of known fact, there was really nothing in their

-testimony that could be attacked.

-

-With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet Dardis let the last

-witness go. The State promptly rested its case.

-

-Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised how pitifully

-inadequate their testimony would be when placed beside the chain of

-facts which the District Attorney had pieced together. They were in

-the main character witnesses, hardly more. They could tell only of

-their long acquaintance with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in him,

-of their firm faith that in holding the people back from giving the

-options to Rogers and the railroad he had been acting in absolute good

-faith and purely in the interests of the people. Not one of these men

-had been near the scene of the murder, for the railroad had planned

-its campaign comprehensively and had subpoenaed for its side every man

-who could have had any direct knowledge of the events leading up to

-the tragedy. As line after line of their testimony was stricken from

-the record, as being irrelevant, it was seen that the defence had

-little or no case. Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single

-objections, made a general ruling that no testimony which did not tend

-to reveal the identity of the man who had shot Rogers could go into

-the record.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously watching the course of

-the trial. Beside him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village.

-The little French priest looked up from time to time and guardedly

-studied the long angular white head of his bishop as it towered above

-him. He did not know, but he could guess some of the struggle that was

-going on in the mind and the heart of the Bishop.

-

-The Bishop had come down to the trial to give what aid he could, in

-the way of showing his confidence and faith, to the case of the boy

-who stood in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he had first

-heard of Jeffrey's arrest, he had not thought it possible that, even

-had he been guilty of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be

-convicted under such circumstances. Men must see that the act was in

-defence of life and property. But as he listened to the progress of

-the trial he realised sadly that he had very much underestimated the

-seriousness of the railroad people in the matter and the hold which

-they had upon the machinery of justice in Racquette County.

-

-He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and tell the reason why

-Jeffrey Whiting had entered into this fight against the railroad. He

-would associate himself and his own good name with the things that

-Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the two might stand before men

-together. But he now saw that it would be of no avail. His words would

-be swept aside as irrelevant.

-

-One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. This

-morning on his arrival in Danton, the Bishop had been angered at

-learning that the two men whose lives he had saved that night by the

-lake at French Village had escaped from the train as they were being

-brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at this trial.

-

-Whether they could have told anything of value to Jeffrey Whiting was

-not known. Certainly they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the

-connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop had their confession in

-his pocket at this minute, but there was nothing in it concerning the

-murder. He had intended to read it into the record of the trial. He

-saw that he would not be allowed to do so.

-

-One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey

-Whiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man or

-woman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did not

-kill Samuel Rogers. Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or--He told

-me so.

-

-The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy upon

-this course which had brought him here into this court and into the

-shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actually

-fired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph,

-Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? He

-would.

-

-And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through a

-chain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he,

-Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of these

-circumstances, in a way responsible? He was.

-

-Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: "Rafe

-Gadbeau killed Samuel Rogers--He told me so"--could he thus save

-Jeffrey Whiting from a felon's fate? He could. Nine words, no more,

-would do.

-

-And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what was

-necessary--did not speak those nine words--would he, Joseph Winthrop,

-be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin of

-Jeffrey Whiting? He would.

-

-Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words?

-He would not.

-

-There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break the

-seal and let those nine words escape his lips.

-

-There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop's mind

-as he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boy

-who sat there in the prisoner's stand before him. He felt responsible

-for him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for the

-dead man or the dead man's secret, as such. Yet he would go up there

-and defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was bound

-by the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal

-salvation of men's souls.

-

-But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. His

-course was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothing

-to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between the

-greater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be ground

-between the working of the two.

-

-If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty God had ordained

-the salvation of men through the confession of sin. Therefore the

-salvation of men depended on the inviolability of the seal of the

-confessional. But he did not reason. He merely sat through his

-torture, waiting.

-

-When his name was called, he walked heavily forward and took his place

-standing beside the chair that was set for him.

-

-At Dardis' question, the Bishop began to speak freely and rapidly. He

-told of the coming of Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated

-what he had said to the boy, and from that point went on to sketch the

-things that had been happening in the hills. He wanted to get clearly

-before the minds of the jurymen the fact that he had advised and

-directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything that the boy had done.

-

-The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy to the Bishop. But he

-saw that he must stop him. His story could not but have a powerful

-effect upon even this jury. Looking past the Bishop and addressing

-Dardis, he said:

-

-"Is this testimony pertinent?"

-

-"It is, if Your Honor pardon me," said the Bishop, turning quickly.

-"It goes to prove that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed the

-crime charged, any more than I could have done so."

-

-The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully the logic or the legal

-phraseology of his answer. He hurried on with his story to the jury.

-He related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting. He told of his

-ride into the hills. He told of the capture of the two men in the

-night at French Village. They should be here now as witnesses. They

-had escaped. But he held in his hand a written confession, written and

-sealed by a justice of the peace, made by the two men. He would read

-this to the jury.

-

-He began reading rapidly. But before he had gotten much past the

-opening sentences, the Judge saw that this would not do. It was the

-story of the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in court.

-

-He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when the Bishop stopped, he

-asked:

-

-"Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned in that paper?"

-

-"No, Your Honor. But there are--"

-

-"It is irrelevant," interrupted the Judge shortly. "It cannot go

-before the jury."

-

-The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do no more.

-

-Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not the slightest hope for his

-client--unless--unless. He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession

-to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask the Bishop this morning, if there

-was not some way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The Bishop stood

-waiting for his further questions. There might be some way or some

-help, thought Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was not a part

-of the real confession. He said quickly:

-

-"You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?"

-

-"I was."

-

-"What did he say to you?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair, his eyes eager and

-confident. His heart shouting that here was his deliverance. Here was

-the hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!

-

-The Bishop's eyes fell upon the prisoner for an instant. Then he

-looked full into the eyes of his questioner and he answered:

-

-"Nothing."

-

-"That will do. Thank you, Bishop," said Dardis in a low, broken

-voice.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The light of confidence died

-slowly, reluctantly out of his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop

-had _lied_! He _knew_! And he had _lied_!

-

-As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat, Ruth Lansing saw the

-terrible suffering of the spirit reflected in his face. If she were

-questioned about that night, she must do as he had done.

-

-Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must I do that? _Can_ I do

-that?

-

-Oh! She had never thought it would come to this. How _could_ it happen

-like this! How could any one think that she would ever stand like

-this, alone in all the world, with the fate of her love in her hands,

-and not be able to speak the few little words that would save him to

-her and life!

-

-She _would_ save him! She _would_ speak the words! What did she care

-for that wicked man who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?

-Why should she keep a secret of his? One night in the early summer she

-had lain all through the night in the woods outside a cabin and wished

-for a way to kill that man. Why should she guard a secret that was no

-good to him or to any one now?

-

-Who was it that said she must not speak? The Catholic Church. Then she

-would be a Catholic no longer. She would renounce it this minute. She

-had never promised anything like this. But, on the instant, she knew

-that that would not free her. She knew that she could throw off the

-outward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free to

-speak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal of

-the secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off the

-Church, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty and

-unbreakable across her lips.

-

-That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what she

-saw held her.

-

-What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not

-the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not

-a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and

-fear of death.

-

-What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she

-saw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of God

-from which--Heart break or world burn!--that sin must never be

-disturbed.

-

-As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name,

-a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path.

-Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce,

-piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which

-she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village--the

-terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And

-though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:

-Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-How well that girl knew!

-

-Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not

-been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he

-had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had

-become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was

-always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.

-

-"You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought

-to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?" he asked.

-

-"Yes, sir."

-

-"Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?"

-

-"No, sir."

-

-Then he flashed the question upon her:

-

-"What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?"

-

-Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden,

-startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to

-what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a

-terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and--relief.

-A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. _On my knee I dropped

-and shot him, shot Rogers as he stood._

-

-Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling. Again the inner citadel

-of his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the word

-that would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time.

-Ruth _knew_. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad that

-the Bishop had lied. Ruth _knew_. Ruth would speak.

-

-The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth's brain

-and down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout

-them out to the ends of the earth!

-

-But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered:

-

-"Nothing."

-

-Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand.

-

-Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.

-

-_Ruth_ had _lied_!

-

-The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him.

-

-

-

-

-VIII

-

-SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?

-

-

-The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up the

-street toward the little church. He had not been the same man since

-his experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They had

-aged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering and

-superhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had broken

-the spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and the

-vital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up in

-him. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He had

-roused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has already

-reached almost the full allotted span of life may do these things

-without showing the outward effects of them. But these things had

-struck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quick

-spirit of the man within.

-

-The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into the

-spiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given the

-alternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he would

-have offered the few years that might be his, without question or

-halting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled or

-thought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ.

-Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he had

-never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole to

-receive the secret of another's soul he puts his life in pledge for

-the sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by

-any perplexities or confusion.

-

-Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forced

-upon him. Years ago he had given his own life entire to Christ. The

-snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces farther on would be

-a matter of no more moment than the length of a thread. This world had

-nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from him. But to guard his

-secret at the cost of another life, and that a young, vigorous,

-battling life full of future and promise, full of youth and the glory

-of living, the life of a boy he loved--that was another matter. Never

-had he reckoned with a thing such as that. Life had always been so

-direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To think right, to do

-right, to serve God; these things had always seemed very simple. But

-the thing that he had done to-day was breaking his heart. He could not

-have done otherwise. He had been given no choice, to be sure.

-

-But was it possible that God would have allowed things to come to

-that issue, if somewhere, at some turn in that line of circumstances

-which had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not done a wrong? It

-did not seem possible. Somewhere he had done wrong or he had done

-foolishly--and, where men go to direct the lives of others, to do

-unwisely is much the same as to do wickedly.

-

-What use to go over the things that he had done, the things that he

-had advised? What use to say, here he had done his best, there he

-thought only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere he had spoken

-foolishly, or he had been headstrong in his interference, or he had

-acted without thought and prayer. What use to go over the record? He

-could only carry this matter to God and let Him see his heart.

-

-He stumbled in the half light of the darkened little church and sank

-heavily into the last pew. Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart

-he cried out from afar to the Presence on the little altar, where he,

-Bishop of Alden, had often spoken with much authority.

-

-When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up into the witness stand she

-sank down quietly into a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the

-other girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes. She hung

-upon every fleeting wave of the contending emotions that showed

-themselves on Ruth's face. She was convinced that this girl knew that

-Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and that

-Jeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would be

-called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it at

-the last moment.

-

-Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to hating this girl, for she

-had seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very

-long time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talking

-gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing

-left of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But that

-memory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this

-other girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? What

-would that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was not

-likely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish to

-tell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came to

-her of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then?

-Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep on

-denying?

-

-Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. She

-did not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it

-who had been born to the Faith.

-

-Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it was

-no place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden away

-in her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fear

-hung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint

-might be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had a

-superstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not be

-hidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. She

-knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these days

-when the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers

-and hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting's

-story believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial and

-had sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly to

-every word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearing

-the name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name and

-his memory from the blight of his deed had become more than a

-religion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own

-thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her

-world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled.

-

-When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of

-the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that

-he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They might

-as well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell

-Rafe Gadbeau's secret as to ask it from the Bishop.

-

-But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might do

-under the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbroken

-upon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. She

-would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for

-her!

-

-When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in

-the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl

-stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask

-her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in

-pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw

-the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of

-Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not

-know what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who could

-suffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her love

-under foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steady

-word--"Nothing."

-

-Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at the

-torture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself

-at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from the

-stand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that she

-must tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For Cynthe

-Cardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a

-frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street.

-

-She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to the

-court. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand,

-she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cynthe

-understood. Even M'sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he was

-troubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have business

-with God.

-

-She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw the

-Bishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken.

-

-He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisper

-at his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:

-

-_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse._

-

-The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. But

-here was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrential

-rush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishop

-listened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor the

-power to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing its

-keeper night and day. He knew that it was true, knew what the end of

-it would be. But still he must be careful to give no word that would

-show that he knew what was coming. The French of the hills and of

-Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but it was easy to follow the

-thread of the story. When she had finished and was weeping quietly,

-the Bishop prompted gently.

-

-"And now? my daughter."

-

-"And now, _Mon Pere_, must I tell? I would not tell. I loved Rafe

-Gadbeau. As long as I shall live I shall love him. For his good name I

-would die. But I cannot see the suffering of that girl, Ruth. _Mon

-Pere_, it is too much! I cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before

-men and call my love a murderer. Consider, _Mon Pere_. There is

-another way. I, too, am guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I

-would have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do many

-things that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I went

-to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would have

-killed that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When I

-saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, _Mon Pere_, I am

-guilty. And I called joyfully to my love to run with me and save

-himself, for he was now free from that man forever. But he ran in the

-path of the fire because he feared those other men.

-

-"But see, _Mon Pere_, I am guilty. I will go and tell the court that I

-am the guilty one. I will say that my hand shot that man. See, I will

-tell the story. I have told it many times to myself. Such a straight

-story I shall tell. And they will believe. I will make them believe.

-And they will not hurt a girl much," she said, dropping back upon her

-native shrewdness to strengthen her plea. "The railroad does not care

-who killed Rogers. They want only to punish the young Whiting. And the

-court will believe, as I shall tell it."

-

-"But, my daughter," said the Bishop, temporising. "It would not be

-true. We must not lie."

-

-"But M'sieur the Bishop, himself," the girl argued swiftly, evidently

-separating the priest in the confessional from the great bishop in his

-public walk, "he himself, on the stand--"

-

-The girl stopped abruptly.

-

-The Bishop held the silence of the grave.

-

-"_Mon Pere_ will make me tell, then--the truth," she began. "_Mon

-Pere_, I cannot! I--!"

-

-"Let us consider," the Bishop broke in deliberately. "Suppose he had

-told this thing to you when he was dying. You would have said to him:

-Your soul may not rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed.

-Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?"

-

-"To escape Hell," said the girl quickly, "yes. He would have said:

-Tell everything; tell anything!" In the desolate forlornness of her

-grief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, she

-had known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly--and had loved

-him. Would always love him.

-

-"We will not speak of Hell," said the Bishop gently. "In that hour he

-would have seen the right. He would have told you to tell."

-

-"But he confessed to M'sieur the Bishop himself," she retorted

-quickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelate

-in person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound Moral

-Theology back upon him with a vengeance, "and he gave _him_ no leave

-to speak."

-

-The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground.

-

-"If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?"

-

-"_Mon Pere_, with the bones of my hands!"

-

-"Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who was

-blind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where a

-great light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not know

-here--Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He stands

-alone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God and

-cries: _Seigneur Dieu_, whither go I?

-

-"And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the open

-place. Would he come back to the world?

-

-"And he answers: 'No, my God; but I have left a debt behind and

-another man's life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward

-with that debt unpaid.'

-

-"Then God: 'And is there none to cancel the debt? Is there not one in

-all that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none

-loved you who will pay the debt?'

-

-"And he will answer with a lifted heart: 'My God, yes; there was one,

-a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right;

-only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debt

-will be right; my God, let me go.'"

-

-The Bishop's French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully put

-together. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to

-her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little break

-of joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved in

-spite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins of

-life. And her love leaped up quickly to the ideal and the illusions

-that every woman craves for and clings to.

-

-"This," the Bishop was going on quietly, "is the new man we are to

-consider; the one who stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not

-hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he care for the opinions

-or the words that are said here? See, he stands in the great open

-space, all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God and tell Him

-all. Will you be afraid to stand in the court and tell these people,

-who do not matter at all?

-

-"Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It is not for the sake of

-Ruth Lansing. It is because the man you loved calls back to you, from

-where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom he has now learned

-tells him must be done. He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He

-would have you tell."

-

-"_Mon Pere_, I will tell the tale," said the girl simply as she rose

-from her knees. "I will go quickly, while I have yet the courage."

-

-The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel rooms in the courthouse

-and sent for Dardis.

-

-"This girl," he told the lawyer, "has a story to tell. I think you

-would do wisely to put her on the stand and let her tell it in her own

-way. She will make no mistakes. They will not be able to break her

-down."

-

-Then the Bishop went back to take up again his business with God.

-

-As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey Whiting had been put

-upon the stand in his own defence. There was nothing he could tell

-which the jurors had not already heard in one form or another.

-Everybody had heard what he had said that morning on Bald Mountain. He

-had not been believed even then, by men who had never had a reason to

-doubt his simple word. There was little likelihood that he would be

-believed here now by these jurors, whose minds were already fixed by

-the facts and the half truths which they had been hearing. But there

-was some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he

-clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a

-single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale

-that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell

-what might strike a man on a jury. So Dardis argued.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel wished him to tell his

-story he would do so. It would not matter. His own friends did not

-believe his story. Nobody believed it. Two people _knew_ that it was

-true. And those two people had stood up there upon the stand and sworn

-that they did not know. One of them was a good man, a man of God, a

-man he would have trusted with every dear thing that life held. That

-man had stood up there and lied. The other was a girl whom he loved,

-and who, he was sure, loved him.

-

-It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie--or maybe she did not

-consider it a lie: he had seen her suffer terribly in the telling of

-it. He was beginning to feel that he did not care much what was the

-outcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death,

-or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty common

-deaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one big

-thing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and took

-from him his interest in every other fact in the world.

-

-Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had never before in her life

-told a lie. Why should she have ever told a lie. She had never had

-reason to fear any one; and they only lie who fear. He would have said

-that the fear of death could not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she

-had stood up there and lied.

-

-For what? For a church. For a religion to which she had foolishly

-given herself. For that she had given up him. For that she had given

-up her conscience. For that she had given up her own truth!

-

-It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and listened to it.

-

-He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer to a question which

-meant life or death to him. She had known that. She could not have

-escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was no way in which she

-could have fooled herself or been persuaded into believing that she

-was not lying or that she was not taking from him his last hope of

-life.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What

-was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed

-dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision.

-

-He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until some

-one told him to be seated. He answered the questions put him

-automatically, without looking either at the questioner or at the

-jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watching

-the alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-day

-wondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would he

-confess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb?

-

-Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had raced

-forward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He looked

-vacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his words

-stricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed no

-resentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had run

-away from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he did

-not seem to notice the Judge's anger in cautioning him not to mention

-the fire again.

-

-At his counsel's direction, he went through a lifeless pantomime of

-falling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now

-the man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killed

-Rogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forward

-to look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away.

-

-Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule

-out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet

-going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a

-simple story. The thing _might_ have happened. It was entirely

-credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of

-Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not

-the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his

-life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was

-now living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying,

-many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping man

-might have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, though

-puzzled by the manner of the recital.

-

-Even Lemuel Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to

-any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went

-back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly

-without any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to make

-him say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of the

-story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horrible

-fact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of her

-church.

-

-When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he was

-again the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of this

-wholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called.

-He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squires

-would begin his speech at once.

-

-He noticed that this witness was a girl from French Village whom he

-had seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau's

-girl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything,

-and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn't the poor little

-thing look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here to

-bring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at the

-girl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matter

-anyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not let

-them hurt her.

-

-Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe against

-interruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to say

-nothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers

-and nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to

-relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very

-beginning:

-

-"Four years ago," she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was

-killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe

-Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know

-who had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife

-and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept the

-knife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the

-price of his silence.

-

-"Last summer this man Rogers came into the woods looking for some one

-to help get the people to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He

-showed him the knife. He told him that whatever he laid upon him to

-do, that he must do. He made him lie to the people. He made him attack

-the young Whiting. He made him do many things that he would not do,

-for Rafe Gadbeau was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And Rafe

-Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear that this man had put upon

-him.

-

-"At times he said to me, 'Cynthe, I will kill this man one day, and

-that will be the end of all.' But I said, '_Non, non, mon Rafe_, we

-will marry in the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will never

-see you again, and we will not know that he ever lived.'"

-

-Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was telling over to herself the

-tragedy of her little life and her great love. Genius could not have

-told her how better to tell it for the purpose for which her story was

-here needed. Dardis thanked his stars that he had taken the Bishop's

-advice, to let her get through with it in her own way.

-

-"But it was not time for us to marry yet," she went on. "Then came the

-morning of the nineteenth August. I was sitting on the back steps of

-my aunt's house by the Little Tupper, putting apples on a string to

-hang up in the hot sun to dry." The Judge turned impatiently on his

-bench and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and her eyes blazed

-angrily at him. Who was he to shrug his shoulders! Was it not

-important, this story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter the

-Judge gave her the most rigid attention.

-

-"Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that he

-was troubled. 'What is it, _mon Rafe_?' I asked. He groaned and said

-one bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message from

-Rogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and six

-horses. 'What to do, _mon Rafe_?' 'I do not know,' he said, 'though I

-can guess. But I will not tell you, Cynthe.'

-

-"'You will not go, _mon Rafe_. Promise me you will not go. Hide away,

-and we will slip down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married--me, I

-do not care for the grand wedding in the church here--and then we will

-get away to Beaupre. Promise me.'

-

-"'_Bien_, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to him.'

-

-"But it was a man's promise. I knew he would go in the end.

-

-"I watched and followed. I did not know what I could do. But I

-followed, hoping that somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done

-what they intended and we could run away together with clean hands.

-

-"When I saw that they had gone toward the railroad I turned aside and

-climbed up to the Bald Mountain. I knew they would all come back

-there together. I waited until it was dark and they came. They would

-do nothing in the night. I waited for the morning. Then I would find

-Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I was a wild girl that

-night. If I could have found that Rogers and come near him I would

-have killed him myself. I hated him, for he had made me much

-suffering.

-

-"In the morning I was in the woods near them. I saw Rafe. But that

-Rogers kept him always near him.

-

-"I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to look. Rafe was a little

-way from him and coming slowly toward me. I called to him. He did not

-hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the look of one who has made

-up his mind to kill. Again I called to him. But he did not hear.

-

-"I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the wood. Now he came

-running back toward Rafe. He stopped and turned.

-

-"The young Whiting was on his knee with the rifle raised to shoot. I

-looked to Rafe. The sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face.

-The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head. I saw. The young

-Whiting had not fired at all.

-

-"I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. 'Come with me, _mon

-Rafe_,' I called. 'I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in the

-night. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will cover all. None

-will ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come.'

-

-"But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him at

-least to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not

-wish to be separated from him in this world or the next.

-

-"But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those other

-men, the old M'sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind him

-and the fire."

-

-She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Her

-story was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voice

-rose into a cry of farewell as she told the end.

-

-"Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God,

-who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and

-running on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and God

-took him away.

-

-"That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe."

-

-Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the

-story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its

-naïve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature

-to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily

-her own unthought, clipped expressions than they would any more

-connected elaborations he might try to make her give.

-

-Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been

-a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of

-the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into

-court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a

-personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case.

-But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story was

-true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it

-was true.

-

-His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing.

-The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading

-nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury.

-

-It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the

-facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put

-aside the girl's dramatic story. He was still convinced that the

-prisoner was guilty. But--the girl's story was true. His mind was not

-nimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless under

-it. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stood

-aside to grapple with that one astounding thing.

-

-The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these

-hampering limitations of mind. He had always regarded the taking and

-discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All

-democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to

-a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county

-had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.

-

-He charged the jury that the girl's testimony was no more credible

-than that of a dozen other witnesses--which was quite true. All had

-told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided

-smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act.

-No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that.

-

-He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the

-comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the

-jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he

-had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view

-of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts

-by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt

-which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing

-clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.

-

-Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an

-agreement.

-

-The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood up.

-

-The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying:

-

-"Not guilty."

-

-The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his name

-was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly

-for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for

-their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little

-Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something

-real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole

-political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the

-railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love

-story of an ignorant French girl from the hills.

-

-Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been a

-prisoner and brought him to his mother.

-

-Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother's eyes as he

-stooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that all

-the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the

-sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey,

-trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him

-fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake

-off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they

-had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his

-heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had

-done to her in these four weeks and in these two days.

-

-And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to

-hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have

-done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all

-that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion

-of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to

-what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man's name.

-

-Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon her

-with a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl

-as a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voice

-he said brutally:

-

-"You lied!"

-

-Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words.

-Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, could

-not tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under the

-awful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked his

-life and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knew

-it. All the world could talk freely about what she had done except

-only herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his head

-down to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into his

-ear that he was right, or try to tell him why she had not been able

-to speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives,

-unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as the

-line of death.

-

-When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight.

-

-The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he

-came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into

-the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they

-had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him.

-They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people were

-not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and

-their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which

-he was quick to notice.

-

-During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his

-waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle

-that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and

-once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click

-into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his

-horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge

-and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the

-nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.

-

-When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full

-news of the last four weeks.

-

-It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings

-has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the

-vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never

-for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course

-upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad

-must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying

-along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must

-be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The

-incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only

-as they contributed to the general result.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There

-were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate

-committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an

-obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by

-procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for

-the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything

-they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no

-animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as

-impersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction.

-Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely

-incidental.

-

-Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as

-an instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been

-Rogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had been

-used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey

-Whiting had been put out of the way--definitely, the railroad had

-hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things

-were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying

-through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old

-Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills

-during the four weeks of his removal from the scene.

-

-The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of

-the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad

-would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved

-right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned

-instantly of Rogers' death and had instantly set to work to use that

-as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was

-only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main

-business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with what

-seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands

-which the railroad coveted.

-

-They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun to

-rebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The whole

-people were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scattering

-which the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it was

-worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through the

-thin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farming

-for many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that Jeffrey

-Whiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely to

-be convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would win

-in the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they could

-not see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do?

-

-Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep the

-people in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suit

-the railroad's purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one that

-was now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun to

-fear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was an

-enemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomed

-them. It struck in the dark, and no man's hand could be raised to

-punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark of

-officials.

-

-The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still

-down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant

-help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain

-ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not

-roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them

-before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of

-winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a

-claim, for the mere privilege of living.

-

-When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had

-been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had

-thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now

-ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and

-a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now

-put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing

-blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it

-only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!

-

-The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the

-full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The

-hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red

-sun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps,

-where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the

-autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should

-have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but

-blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the

-east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle

-of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the

-eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!

-

-Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here

-were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen

-built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what

-shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were

-enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again,

-for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and

-good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names were

-written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly

-needful.

-

-Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from

-sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed

-them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men

-and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe

-Cardinal.

-

-The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting.

-Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible

-sacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl a

-great deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. He

-struck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush the

-memory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His body

-had no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merely

-served to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyond

-him.

-

-At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the night

-had told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at the

-railroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take from

-them the little that was left to them. They had been fools that they

-had not struck in the beginning when they had first found that they

-were being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the early

-summer their homes would not have been burned and they would not be

-now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter.

-

-Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had not

-struck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the

-law. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hills

-in ashes, their families scattered and going hungry!

-

-If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end of

-the rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as he

-could, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and their

-own.

-

-If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen for

-days, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into the

-hills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothing

-was being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight for

-them and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager to

-fight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If

-the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it,

-were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it was

-their own?

-

-If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad clear

-down below the line of the hills and put the work back for months.

-They would have sheriffs' posses out against them. They would have to

-fight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up against

-them. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia,

-but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more than

-militia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and their

-people!

-

-Some men would die. But some men always died, in every cause. And in

-the end the people of the whole State would judge the cause!

-

-Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty?

-

-Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys of

-ashes where their homes had been, took what food the French people

-could spare them, and mounted silently behind him.

-

-Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars of the homes of

-many of them, for half the day they rode, saving every strain they

-could upon their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the southern

-divide and down the slope they thundered to strike the railroad at

-Leavit's bridge.

-

-

-

-

-IX

-

-THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD

-

-

-The wires coming down from the north were flashing the railroad's call

-for help. A band of madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit's

-Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge. They had raced down

-the line, driving the frightened labourers before them, tearing up the

-ties and making huge fires of them on which they threw the new rails,

-heating and twisting these beyond any hope of future usefulness.

-

-Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction had fled literally

-for their lives. The men of the hills had no quarrel with them. They

-preferred not to injure them. But they were infuriated men with their

-wrongs fresh in mind and with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The

-workmen on the line needed no second warning. They would take no

-chances with an enemy of this kind. They were used to violence and

-rioting in their own labour troubles, but this was different. This was

-war. They threw themselves headlong upon handcars and work engines and

-bolted down the line, carrying panic before them.

-

-In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting at their head had

-ridden down and destroyed nearly twenty miles of very costly

-construction work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left in the

-hills and if the men were not stopped they would not leave a single

-rail in all the hill country where they were masters.

-

-The call of the railroad was at first frantic with panic and fright.

-That was while little men who had lost their wits were nominally in

-charge of a situation in which nobody knew what to do. Then suddenly

-the tone of the railroad's call changed. Big men, used to meeting all

-sorts of things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold. They had the

-telegraph lines of the State in their hands. There was no more

-frightened appeal. Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in

-Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties. They were told to swear

-in as many deputies as they could lead. They were to forget the

-consideration of expense. The railroad would pay and feed the men.

-They were to think of nothing but to get the greatest possible number

-of fighting men upon the line at once.

-

-Then a single great man, a man who sat in a great office building in

-New York and held his hand upon every activity in the State, saw the

-gravity of the business in the hills and put himself to work upon it.

-He took no half measures. He had no faith in little local authorities,

-who would be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill people in this

-battle.

-

-He called the Governor of the State from Albany to his office. He

-ordered the Governor to turn out the State's armed forces and set them

-in motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically that the

-Governor had not had the sense to do this of himself. The Governor

-bridled and hesitated. The Governor had been living on the fiction

-that he was the executive head of the State. It took Clifford W.

-Stanton just three minutes to disabuse him completely and forever of

-this illusion. He explained to him just why he was Governor and by

-whose permission. Also he pointed out that the permission of the great

-railroad system that covered the State would again be necessary in

-order that Governor Foster might succeed himself. Then the great man

-sent Wilbur Foster back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment of

-the National Guard for service in the hills.

-

-Before the second night three companies of the militia had passed

-through Utica and had gone up the line of the U. & M. Their orders

-were to avoid killing where possible and to capture all of the hill

-men that they could. The railroad wished to have them tried and

-imprisoned by the impartial law of the land. For it was characteristic

-of the great power which in those days ruled the State that when it

-had outraged every sense of fair play and common humanity to attain

-its ends it was then ready to spend much money creating public opinion

-in favour of itself.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the cover of the woods above

-Milton's Crossing and watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars

-come creeping up the grade from the south. This was the last of the

-hills. He had refused to let his men go farther. Behind him lay fifty

-miles of new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open, settled

-country. His men, once the fever of destruction had begun to run in

-their blood, had wished to sweep on down into the villages and carry

-their work through them. But he had stood firm. This was their own

-country where they belonged and where the railroad was the interloper.

-Here they were at home. Here there was a certain measure of safety for

-them even in the destructive and lawless work that they had begun.

-They had done enough. They had pushed the railroad back to the edge of

-the hills. They had roused the men of the hills behind them. Where he

-had started with his seventy-two friends, there were now three hundred

-well-armed men in the woods around him. Here in their cover they could

-hold the line of the railroad indefinitely against almost any force

-that might be sent against them.

-

-But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership and responsibility was

-already at work upon him. The burning, rankling anger that had driven

-him onward so that he had carried everything and everybody near him

-into this business of destruction was now dulled down to a slow, dull

-hate that while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave him

-time to think. Those men coming up there on the cars were not

-professional soldiers, paid to fight wherever there was fighting to be

-done. Neither did they care anything for the railroad that they should

-come up here to fight for it. Why did they come?

-

-They had joined their organisation for various reasons that usually

-had very little to do with fighting. They were clerks and office men,

-for the most part, from the villages and factories of the central part

-of the State. The militia companies had attracted them because the

-armouries in the towns had social advantages to offer, because

-uniforms and parade appeal to all boys, because they were sons of

-veterans and the military tradition was strong in them. Jeffrey

-Whiting's strong natural sense told him the substance of these things.

-He could not regard these boys as deadly enemies to be shot down

-without mercy or warning. They had taken their arms at a word of

-command and had come up here to uphold the arm of the State. If the

-railroad was able to control the politics of the State and so was able

-to send these boys up here on its own business, then other people were

-to blame for the situation. Certainly these boys, coming up here to do

-nothing but what their duty to the State compelled them to do; they

-were not to be blamed.

-

-His men were now urging him to withdraw a little distance into the

-hills to where the bed of the road ran through a defile between two

-hills. The soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the line of

-what had been the railroad, covering the workmen and engineers who

-would be coming on behind them. If they were allowed to go on up into

-the defile without warning or opposition they could be shot down by

-the hill men from almost absolute safety. If he had been dealing with

-a hated enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed to that. But

-to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of

-them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing

-in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate.

-Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they were

-to expect.

-

-He saw them leave the cars at the end of the broken line and take up

-their march in a rough column of fours along the roadbed. He was

-surprised and puzzled. He had expected them to work along the line

-only as fast as the men repaired the rails behind them. He had not

-thought that they would go away from their cars.

-

-Then he understood. They were not coming merely to protect the

-rebuilding of the railroad. They had their orders to come straight

-into the hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The railroad

-was not only able to call the State to protect itself. It had called

-upon the State to avenge its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His

-men had understood this better than he. Probably they were right. This

-thing might as well be fought out from the first. In the end there

-would be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of troops and

-drive them back out of the hills with an ease that would be almost

-ridiculous. But that would not be the end.

-

-The State would send other men, unlimited numbers of them, for it must

-and would uphold the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did not

-deceive himself. Probably he had not from the beginning had any doubt

-as to what would be the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The

-railroad itself had broken the law of the State and the law of

-humanity. It had defied every principle of justice and common decency.

-It had burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in the hills. Yet

-the law had not raised a hand to punish it. But now when the railroad

-itself had suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to be set

-in motion to punish the men of the hills who had merely paid their

-debt.

-

-But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself that he had not

-foreseen all this from the outset. Those days of thinking in jail had

-given him an insight into realities that years of growth and

-observation of things outside might not have produced in him. He had

-been given time to see that some things are insurmountable, that

-things may be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still persist

-and go on indefinitely. Youth does not readily admit this. Jeffrey

-Whiting had recognised it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had

-led these men, his friends, men who trusted him, upon this mad

-raid. They had come without the clear vision of the end which he now

-realised had been his from the start. They had thought that they

-could accomplish something, that they had some chance of winning a

-victory over the railroad. They had believed that the power of the

-State would intervene to settle the differences between them and

-their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting knew, must have known all along, that the

-moment a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength of the

-State would be put forth to capture these men and punish them. There

-would be no compromise. There would be no bargaining. If they

-surrendered and gave themselves up now they would be jailed for

-varying terms. If they did not, if they stayed here and fought, some

-of them would be killed and injured and in one way or another all

-would suffer in the end.

-

-He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth of this struck him with

-startling clearness now. He had led them into this without letting

-them see the full extent of what they were doing, as he must have seen

-it.

-

-There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed now and scattered

-themselves through the hills few of them would ever be identified. And

-if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad would be almost

-satisfied with punishing him. It was the one just and right thing to

-do.

-

-He went swiftly among the men where they stood among the trees,

-waiting with poised rifles for the word to fire upon the advancing

-soldiers, and told them what they must do. He had deceived them. He

-had not told them the whole truth as he himself knew it. They must

-leave at once, scattering up among the hills and keeping close mouths

-as to where they had been and what they had done. He would go down and

-give himself up, for if the railroad people once had him in custody

-they would not bother so very much about bringing the others to

-punishment.

-

-His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder. They did not

-understand, unless it might be that he had suddenly gone crazy. There

-was an enemy marching up the line toward them, bent upon killing or

-capturing them. They turned from him and without a spoken word,

-without a signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the front

-of the oncoming troops. The battle was on!

-

-The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed to shoot deer and

-foxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of the

-soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with scythes. Not one of

-them was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had

-begun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was as

-though they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be no

-advance.

-

-These soldiers had never before been shot at. The very restraint which

-the hill men had shown in not killing any of them in that volley

-proved to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise how deadly

-was the aim and the judgment of the invisible enemy somewhere in the

-woods there before them. To their credit, they did not drop their arms

-or run. They stood stunned and paralysed, as much by the suddenness

-with which the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.

-

-Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous command for them

-to halt, and ordering them to carry the wounded men back to the cars.

-For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they would again advance or

-would put themselves into some kind of defence formation and hold the

-ground on which they stood.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two other trains come slowly

-creeping up the line. From the second train he saw men leaping down

-who did not take up any sort of military formation. These he knew were

-sheriffs' posses, fighting men sworn in because they were known to be

-fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted in the chase of

-the human animal. He had often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and

-he knew that they were an enemy of a character far different from

-those harmless boys who could not hit a mark smaller than the side of

-a hill. These men would follow doggedly, persistently into the highest

-of the hills, saving themselves, but never letting the prey slip from

-their sight, dividing the hill men, separating them, cornering them

-until they should have tracked them down one by one and either

-captured or killed them all.

-

-These men did not attempt to advance along the line of the road. They

-stepped quickly out into the undergrowth and began spreading a thin

-line of men to either side.

-

-Then he saw that the third train, although they were soldiers, took

-their lesson from the men who had just preceded them. They left the

-tracks and spreading still farther out took up the wings of a long

-line that was now stretching east to west along the fringe of the

-hills. The soldiers in the centre retired a little way down the

-roadbed, stood bunched together for a little time while their officers

-evidently conferred together, then left the road by twos and fours and

-began spreading out and pushing the other lines out still farther. It

-was perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that could not have been

-better done if he and his companions had planned it for their own

-capture.

-

-There were easily eight hundred men there in front, he judged; men

-well armed and ready for an indefinite stay in the hills, with a

-railroad at their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire State

-behind them. And the State was ready to send more and more men after

-these if it should be necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of

-other men were being held in readiness to follow these or were perhaps

-already on their way. He saw the end.

-

-Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly and surround his men.

-If they stood together they would be massacred. If they separated they

-would be hunted down one by one.

-

-Their only chance was to scatter at once and ride back to where their

-homes had been. This time he implored them to take their chance,

-begged them to save themselves while they could. But he might have

-known that they would do nothing of the kind. Already they were

-breaking away and spreading out to meet that distending line in front

-of them. Nothing short of a miracle could now save them from

-annihilation, and Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle. There

-was nothing to be done but to take command and sell his life along

-with theirs as dearly as possible.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up and down the State. Men

-who had followed the course of things through the past months, men

-who knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which no newspaper

-had dared to print openly, understood just what it meant. The men up

-there had been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men agreed

-quietly with each other that they had done the very worst thing that

-could have been done. The injury they had done the railroad would

-amount to very little, comparatively, in the end, while it would give

-the railroad an absolutely free hand from now on. The people would be

-driven forever out of the lands which the railroad wished to possess.

-There would be no legislative hindrances now. The people had doomed

-themselves.

-

-The echoes reached also to two million other men throughout the State

-who did not understand the matter in the least. These looked up a

-moment from the work of living and earning a living to sympathise

-vaguely with the foolish men up there in the hills who had attacked

-the sacred and awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad.

-Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the case. But who could

-tell? And the two million, the rulers and sovereigns of the State,

-went back again to their business.

-

-The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, almost before a

-blow had been struck. It is hardly too much to say that he was

-listening for it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech, slow

-to anger; but, once past a certain point of aggravation, absolutely

-heedless and reckless of consequences.

-

-He did not stop to compute just how much he himself was bound up in

-the causes and consequences of what had happened and what was

-happening in the hills. He had given advice. He had thought with the

-people and only for the people.

-

-He saw, long before it was told him in words, the wild ride down

-through the hills to strike the railroad, the fury of destruction, the

-gathering of the forces of the State to punish.

-

-Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein Joseph

-Winthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no

-moment now.

-

-One man there was in all the State, in all the nation, who could give

-the word that would now save the people of the hills. Clifford W.

-Stanton who had sat months ago in his office in New York and had set

-all these things going, whose ruthless hand was to be recognised in

-every act of those which had driven the people to this madness, his

-will and his alone could stay the storm that was now raging in the

-hills.

-

-Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act of supreme and unselfish

-bravery. It was an act of both physical and moral courage the like of

-which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was an act which had

-revealed in Clifford W. Stanton a depth of strong fineness that no man

-would have suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of faraway

-youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten. And he knew that men do not

-rise to such heights without having very deep in them the nobility to

-make it possible and at times inevitable that they should rise to

-those heights.

-

-After these years and the encrusting strata of compromise and

-cowardice and selfishness which years and life lay upon the fresh

-heart of the youth of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul of

-Clifford W. Stanton again be touched?

-

-Almost before the forces of the State were in motion against the

-people of the hills, the Bishop, early of a morning, walked into the

-office of Clifford Stanton.

-

-Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and though younger than the

-latter by some half-dozen years, it was evident that he had burned up

-the fuel of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked and spoke and

-moved with the deliberate fixity of the settling years, Stanton acted

-with a quick nervousness that shook just a perceptible little. The

-spiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking which had

-chiselled the Bishop's face into a single, simple expression of will

-power was not to be found in the other's face. In its stead there was

-a certain steel-trap impression, as though the man behind the face

-had all his life refused to be certain of anything until the jaws of

-the trap had set upon the accomplished fact.

-

-Physically the two men were much of a type. You would have known them

-anywhere for New Englanders of the generation that has disappeared

-almost completely in the last twenty years. They had been boys at

-Harvard together, though not of the same class. They had been together

-in the Civil War, though the nature of their services had been

-infinitely diverse. They had met here and there casually and

-incidentally in the business of life. But they faced each other now

-virtually as strangers, and with a certain tightening grip upon

-himself each man realised that he was about to grapple with one of the

-strongest willed men that he had ever met, and that he must test out

-the other man to the depths and be himself tried out to the limit of

-his strength.

-

-"It is some years since I've seen you, Bishop. But we are both busy

-men. And--well-- You know I am glad to have you come to see me. I need

-not tell you that."

-

-The Bishop accepted the other man's frank courtesy and took a chair

-quietly. Stanton watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing the

-last few years a good deal, he thought. In reality it was the last

-month that the Bishop was showing. But it did not show in the

-steady, untroubled glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no time on

-preliminaries.

-

-"I have come on business, of course, Mr. Stanton," he began. "It is a

-very strange and unusual business. And to come at it rightly I must

-tell you a story. At the end of the story I will ask you a question.

-That will be my whole business."

-

-The other man said nothing. He did not understand and he never spoke

-until he was sure that he understood. The Bishop plunged into his

-story.

-

-"One January day in 'Sixty-five' I was going up the Shenandoah alone.

-My command had left me behind for two days of hospital service at

-Cross Keys. They were probably some twenty miles ahead of me and would

-be crossing over the divide towards Five Forks and the east. I thought

-I knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of the distance that

-separated me from them, so I started across the Ridge by a path which

-would have been impossible for troops in order.

-

-"I was right. I did cut off the distance which I had expected and came

-down in the early afternoon upon a good road that ran up the eastern

-side of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself that I would be

-with my men before dark, when a troop of Confederate cavalry came

-pelting over a rise in the road behind me.

-

-"I leaped my horse back into the brush at the side of the road and

-waited. They would sweep on past and allow me to go on my way. Behind

-them came a troop of our own horse pursuing hotly. The Confederate

-horses were well spent. I saw that the end of the pursuit was not far

-off. The Confederates--some detached band of Early's men, I

-imagine--realised that they would soon be run down. Just where I had

-left the road there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates threw

-themselves from their horses and drew themselves across the road. They

-were in perfect ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen yards

-back on the narrow road.

-

-"I broke from the bush and fled back along the road to warn our men.

-But I did no good. They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even, as

-they came yelling around the turn of the road.

-

-"For three minutes there was some of the sharpest fighting I ever saw,

-there in the narrow road, before what remained of the Confederates

-broke after their horses and made off again. In the very middle of the

-fight I noticed two young officers. One was a captain, the other a

-lieutenant. I knew them. I knew their story. I believe I was the only

-man living who knew that story. Probably _I_ did not know the whole of

-that story.

-

-"The lieutenant had maligned the captain. He had said of him the one

-thing that a soldier may not say of another. They had fought once. Why

-they had been kept in the same command I do not know.

-

-"Now in the very hottest of this fight, without apparently the

-slightest warning, the lieutenant threw himself upon the captain,

-attacking him viciously with his sword. For a moment they struggled

-there, unnoticed in the dust of the conflict. Then the captain,

-swinging free, struck the lieutenant's sword from his hand. The latter

-drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It missed. By what miracle I

-do not know. All this time the captain had held his sword poised to

-lunge, within easy striking distance of the other's throat. But he had

-made no attempt to thrust. As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his

-arm to strike. Instead he looked a long moment into the lieutenant's

-eyes. The latter was screaming what were evidently taunts into his

-face. The captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at the now

-breaking line of Confederates.

-

-"I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have seen brave men bravely

-refrain from killing. That was the bravest thing I ever saw."

-

-Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of him. He gave no sign

-of hearing. He was living over for himself that scene on a lonely,

-forgotten Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:

-

-"The lieutenant died, a soldier's death, the next day."

-

-"I knew," said the Bishop quietly. "My question is: Are you the same

-brave man with a soldier's brave, great heart that you were that

-day?"

-

-For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring directly at something

-that was not in the visible world. The question had sprung upon him

-out of the dead past. What right had this man, what right had any man

-to face him with it?

-

-He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:

-

-"You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of the tragedy of my life

-as it whirled by you on the road! How dare you come here to tell me

-the little bit of it you saw?"

-

-"Because," said the Bishop swiftly, "you have forgotten how great and

-brave a man you are."

-

-Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He was stirred to the depths

-of feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotion

-and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. His

-lifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kept

-him waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it was

-merely the instinct of self-defence.

-

-"For months," the Bishop was going on quietly, "the people of my hills

-have been harassed by you in your unfair efforts to get possession of

-the lands upon which their fathers built their homes. You have tried

-to cheat them. You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to debauch

-a legislature in your attempt to overcome them. I have here in my

-pocket the sworn confessions of two men who stood in the shadow of

-death and said that they had been sent to burn a whole countryside

-that you and your associates coveted--to burn the people in their

-homes like the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that act to

-within two men of you. And I can sit here, Clifford Stanton, and look

-you in the eye man to man and tell you that I _know_ you gave the

-suggestion. And you cannot look back and deny it. I cannot take you

-into a court of law in this State and prove it. We both know the

-futility of talking of that. But I can take you, I do take you this

-minute into the court of your own heart--where I know a brave man

-lives--and convict you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If the

-whole world stood here accusing you would we know it any the better?

-

-"Now my people have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the law

-into their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. They

-have done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? You

-have power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of the

-land. They did not understand. They did not know you. They have been

-misled. They have listened to men like me preaching: 'Right shall

-prevail: Justice shall conquer.' And where does right prevail? And

-when shall justice conquer? No doubt you have said these phrases

-yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers taught us to say them.

-But are they true? Does justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can

-say. I ask you, who have the answer in your power. Does right prevail?

-Then give my stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?

-Then see that they come to no harm.

-

-"I dare to put this thing raw to your face because I know the man that

-once lived within you. I saw you--!"

-

-"Don't harp on that," Stanton cut in viciously. "You know nothing

-about it."

-

-"I _do_ harp on that. I have come here to harp on that. Do you think

-that if I had not with my eyes seen that thing I would have come near

-you at all? No. I would have branded you before all men for the thing

-that you have done. I would have given these confessions which I hold

-to the world. I would have denounced you as far as tongue and pen

-would go to every man who through four years gave blood at your side.

-I would have braved the rebuke of my superiors and maybe the

-discipline of my Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of men. I

-would have made your name hated in the ears of little children. But I

-would not have come to you.

-

-"If I had not seen that thing I would not have come to you, for I

-would have said: What good? The man is a coward without a heart. A

-_coward_, do you remember that word?"

-

-The man groaned and struck out with his hand as though to drive away a

-ghastly thing that would leap upon him.

-

-"A coward without a heart," the Bishop repeated remorselessly, "who

-has men and women and children in his power and who, because he has no

-heart, can use his power to crush them.

-

-"If I had not seen, I would have said that.

-

-"But I saw. I _saw_. And I have come here to ask you: Are you the same

-brave man with a heart that I saw on that day?

-

-"You shall not evade me. Do you think you can put me off with defences

-and puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of

-property? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will go

-down into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the naked

-truth. But I will have my answer. Are you that same man?

-

-"If you are not that same man; if you have killed that in you which

-gave life to that man; if that man no longer lives in you; if you are

-not capable of being that same man with the heart of a great and

-tender hero, then tell me and I will go. But you shall answer me. I

-will have my answer."

-

-Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair and stood trembling as

-though in an overpowering rage, and visibly struggling for his command

-of mind and tongue.

-

-"Words, words, words," he groaned at last. "Your life is made of

-words. Words are your coin. What do you know?

-

-"Do you think that words can go down into my soul to find the man that

-was once there? Do you think that words can call him up? When did

-words ever mean anything to a man's real heart! You come here with

-your question. It's made of words.

-

-"When did men ever do anything for _words_? Honour is a word. Truth is

-a word. Bravery is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word. Do you

-think men do things for words? No! What do you know? What _could_ you

-know?

-

-"Men do things and you call them by words. But do they do them for the

-words? No!

-

-"They do them-- Because _some woman lives, or once lived!_ What do

-_you_ know?

-

-"Go out there. Stay there." He pointed. "I've got to think."

-

-He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against his desk. The Bishop

-rose and walked from the room.

-

-When he heard the door close, the man got up and going to the door

-barred it.

-

-He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning heavily upon his propped

-hands.

-

-He opened a drawer of his desk and looked at a smooth, glinting black

-and steel thing that lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang

-that went out to the Bishop listening in the outer office. It was a

-sinister, suggestive noise, and for an instant it chilled that good

-man's heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he knew immediately

-that he had been mistaken.

-

-Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked a smaller compartment

-within it, and from the latter took a small gold-framed picture. He

-set it up on the desk between his hands and looked long at it,

-questioning the face in the frame with a tender, diffident expression

-of a wonder that never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled.

-

-The face that looked out of the picture was one of a quiet,

-translucent beauty. At first glance the face had none of the striking

-features that men associate with great beauty. But behind the eyes

-there seemed to glow, and to grow gradually, and softly stronger, a

-light, as though diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly

-radiated from the whole countenance an impression of indescribable,

-gentle loveliness.

-

-Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was that light from within.

-He wondered now, and questioned. Never before had that light seemed

-so wonderful and so real. Now there came to him an answer. An answer

-that shook him, for it was the last answer he would have expected. The

-light within was truth--truth. It seemed that in a world of sham and

-illusions and evasions this one woman had understood, had lived with

-truth.

-

-The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry laugh that was nearer to a

-sob.

-

-"Was that it, Lucy?" he queried. "Truth? Then let us have a little

-truth, for once! I'll tell you some truth!

-

-"I lied a while ago. He did _not_ die a soldier's death. I told the

-same lie to you long ago. Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven

-happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to you. Words. And yet

-you died a happy woman, because of that lie.

-

-"He lied to you. He took you from me with lies. Words. Lies. And yet

-they made you happy. Where is truth?

-

-"You lived happy and died happy with a lie. Because I lied like what

-they call a man and a gentleman. _Truth!_"

-

-He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face before him. Did he

-expect to see the light fade out, to see the face wither under the

-bitter revelation?

-

-"I've been everything," he went on, still trying to make his point,

-"I've done everything, that men say I've been and done. Why?

-

-"Well--Why?" he asked sharply. "Did it make any difference?

-

-"Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my face--sometimes.

-Well--Why not? Does it make any difference? Did it make any difference

-with you? If I had thought it would-- But it didn't. Lies, trickery,

-words! They served with you. They made you happy. _Truth!_"

-

-But as he looked into the face and the smiling light of truth

-persisted in it, there came over his soul the dawn of a wonder. And

-the dawn glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and looked out

-wondering at a world remade.

-

-"Is it true, Lucy?" he asked gently. "Can that be _truth_, at last? Is

-that what you mean? Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words and

-beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand--a little? And do

-you, somewhere, understand now?

-

-"Then tell me. Was it worth the lies? Down underneath, when you

-understood, which was the truth? The thing I did--which men would call

-fine? Or was it the words?

-

-"Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was it the fine thing that was

-really the truth, and did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there

-truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were made of truth, did

-you somehow understand all the time?"

-

-He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally believing. Then he

-said:

-

-"Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I will not speak it to him.

-But I'll say it to you: Yes, I am that same man who once did what they

-call a fine, brave thing. I didn't do it because it was a great thing,

-a brave thing. I did it for you.

-

-"And--I'll do this for you."

-

-He looked again at the face in the picture, as if to make sure. Then

-he locked it away quickly in its place.

-

-He thought for a moment, then drew a pad abruptly to him and began

-writing. He wrote two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State, the

-other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then he took another pad and

-wrote a note, this to his personal representative who was following

-the state troops into the hills.

-

-He rose and walked briskly to the door. Throwing it open he called a

-clerk and gave him the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand and

-asked the Bishop back into the office.

-

-Closing the door quickly, he said without preface:

-

-"This note will put my man up there at your service. You will prefer

-to go up into the hills yourself, I think. The officers in command of

-the troops will know that you are empowered to act for all parties.

-The Governor will have seen to that before you get there, I think.

-There will be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards. You can

-settle the whole matter in no time.

-

-"We will not buy the land, but we'll give a fair rental, based on what

-ores we find to take out. You can give _your_ word--mine wouldn't go

-for much up there, I guess," he put in grimly--"that it will be fair.

-You can make that the basis of settlement.

-

-"They can go back and rebuild. I will help, where it will do the most

-good. Our operations won't interfere much with their farm land, I

-find.

-

-"You will want to start at once. That is all, I guess, Bishop," he

-concluded abruptly.

-

-The Bishop reached for the smaller man's hand and wrung it with a

-sudden, unwonted emotion.

-

-"I will not cheapen this, sir," he said evenly, "by attempting to

-thank you."

-

-"A mere whim of mine, that's all," Stanton cut in almost curtly, the

-steel-trap expression snapping into place over his face. "A mere

-whim."

-

-"Well," said the Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I

-only came to ask a question, anyhow." Then he turned and walked

-briskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what the

-other man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner.

-

-So these two men parted. In words, they had not understood each other.

-Neither had come near the depths of the other. But then, what man does

-ever let another man see what is in his heart?

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider and

-wider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of men

-hidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly and

-more clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. His

-line was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemy

-had known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a few

-daring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strength

-of the men with him.

-

-All the afternoon as he watched he saw other and yet other groups and

-troops of men come up the railroad, detrain and push out ever farther

-upon the enveloping wings to east and west.

-

-Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line had been driven in and

-almost surrounded. They had decided in the beginning to leave their

-horses in the rear, and so use them only at the last. But the

-spreading line in front had become too long to be covered on foot by

-the few men he had. They were forced to use the speed of the animals

-to make a show of greater force than they really had. The horses

-furnished marks that even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the

-afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams of terrified,

-wounded horses rang horribly through the woods above the pattering

-crackle of the irregular rifle fire. Old men who years before had

-learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and fell asleep grumbling.

-Young men and boys who had never heard such sounds turned sick with

-horror or wandered frightened through the dark, nervously ready to

-fire on any moving twig or scraping branch.

-

-In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the line, talking aside to

-every man; telling them to slip quietly away through the dark. They

-could make their way out through the loose lines of soldiers and

-sheriffs' men and get down to the villages where they would be unknown

-and where nobody would bother with them.

-

-The inevitable few took his word-- There is always the inevitable few.

-They slipped away one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly

-good reason for going, several good reasons, in fact; any reason,

-indeed, but that they were afraid. Most of them were gathered in by

-the soldier pickets and sent down to jail.

-

-Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with a grim, ugly suggestion in

-it of the coming winter. Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily out

-to their posts, munching dryly at the last of the stores which they

-had taken from the construction depots along the line which they had

-destroyed. This was the end. It was not far from the mind of each man

-that this would probably be his last meal.

-

-The firing began again as the outer line came creeping in upon them.

-They had still the great advantage of the shelter of the woods and the

-formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship kept those

-directly in front of them almost out of range. But there was nothing

-in sight before them but that they would certainly all be surrounded

-and shot down or taken.

-

-Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those who had been watching the

-most distant of the two wings creeping around them saw these men halt

-and slowly begin to gather back together. What was it? Were they going

-to rush at last? Here would be a fight in earnest!

-

-But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation, merely walked

-back in their tracks until they were entirely out of range. It must be

-a ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their shelter, puzzled, but

-determined not to be drawn out.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of the line, saw an old man

-walking, barehead, up over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted

-rails. That white head with the high, wide brow, the slightly

-stooping, spare shoulders, the long, swinging walk-- That was the

-Bishop of Alden!

-

-Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to the men on either side

-to stay where they were, jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet

-the Bishop.

-

-"Are any men killed?" the Bishop asked before Jeffrey had time to

-speak as they met.

-

-"Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the chest--we don't know how bad

-it is," said Jeffrey, stopping short. "Ten other men are wounded. I

-don't think any of them are bad."

-

-"Call in your men," said the Bishop briefly. "The soldiers are going

-back."

-

-At Jeffrey's call the men came running from all sides as he and the

-Bishop reached the line. Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered

-round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance of the White

-Horse Chaplain, for so one and all they knew and remembered him. Men

-who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped back into the scene

-of that day and looked about blankly for the white horse. And young

-men who had heard that tale many times and had seen and heard of his

-coming through the fire to French Village stared round-eyed at him.

-What did this coming mean?

-

-He told them shortly the terms that Clifford W. Stanton, their enemy,

-was willing to make with them. And in the end he added:

-

-"You have only my word that these things will be done as I say. _I_

-believe. If you believe, you will take your horses and get back to

-your families at once."

-

-Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the first

-time knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them.

-They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many who

-had thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying

-over the names of those they were saved to.

-

-The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him, walked slowly back down

-the roadbed. Suddenly Jeffrey remembered something that had gone

-completely out of his mind in these last hours.

-

-"Bishop," he stammered, "that day--that day in court. I--I said you

-lied. Now I know you didn't. You told the truth, of course."

-

-"My boy," said the Bishop queerly, "yesterday I asked a man, on his

-soul, for the truth--the truth. I got no answer.

-

-"But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor of

-all the World, once asked what was truth. And _he_ got no answer.

-Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are things

-bigger than we are. We get no answer."

-

-Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.

-

-

-

-

-X

-

-THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID

-

-

-It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of

-Promise.

-

-The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He

-still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from

-which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He

-still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the

-sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running

-down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had

-chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the

-grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the

-enemy was gone.

-

-But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the

-forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even

-the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and

-hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature.

-For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But

-the sun came warmer, more insistent, and kissed the scarred, brown

-body of earth and warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and the

-little flowers took courage out of their very craving for life and

-pushed resolutely forth. And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The

-world was born again!

-

-Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run on her way back to French

-Village. She had been to put the first flowers of the Spring on the

-grave of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had blessed the ground for

-him and they had laid him, there under the sunny side of the Gaunt

-Rocks that had given him his last breathing space that he might die in

-peace. They had put him here, for there was no way in that time to

-carry him to the little cemetery in French Village. And Cynthe was

-well satisfied that it was so. Here, under the Gaunt Rocks, she would

-not have to share him with any one. And she would not have to hear

-people pointing out the grave to each other and to see them staring.

-

-The water tumbling down the Run out of the hills sang a glad,

-uproarious song, as is the way of all brooks at their beginnings,

-concerning the necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible to the

-big, wide life of the sea. The sea would not care at all if that brook

-never came down to it. But the brook did not know that. Would not have

-believed it if it had been told.

-

-And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song of old Beaupre--which

-she had never seen, for Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was

-sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time, and-- But Cynthe was

-not unhappy. The Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good.

-Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet. There was work in the

-world to do. And--when all was said and done--Rafe Gadbeau was in

-Heaven.

-

-As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey

-Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur's Fork country and

-was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk

-with her. Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty, sociable

-little person, and, besides, for some time she had had it in mind that

-she would some day take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this

-scowling young gentleman with the big face.

-

-"You're with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren't you?" he said, after some

-verbal beating about the bush; "how is she?"

-

-"Why don't you come see, if you want to know?" retorted Cynthe

-sharply.

-

-Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on:

-

-"If you wanted to know why didn't you come up all Winter and see? Why

-didn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies

-through the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid of

-them? Why didn't you come see when she was helping the mothers up

-there to get into their houses and make the houses warm before the

-coming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn't

-you come see when she nearly got her death from the 'mmonia caring for

-old Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till she

-shamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebody

-then? Why didn't you come see?"

-

-"Well," Jeffrey defended, "I didn't know about any of those things.

-And we had plenty to do here--our place and my mother and all. I

-didn't see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church,

-just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn't seem to want

-to."

-

-"But she should have been delighted to see you," Cynthe snapped back.

-"Don't you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. She

-should have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said to

-her the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. You

-called her 'liar' before the whole court, even the Judge! Of one

-certainty, she should have flown to you. No?"

-

-Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have gone away, with all haste.

-But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure that

-some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue.

-

-"But she--she cared for me," he blurted out. "I know she did. I

-couldn't understand why she couldn't tell--the truth; when you--you

-did so much for me."

-

-"For you? For _you_!" the girl flamed up in his face. "Oh, villainous

-monster of vanity! For _you_! Ha! I could laugh! For _you_! I put _mon

-Rafe_--dead in his grave--to shame before all the world, called him

-murderer, blackened his name, for _you_!

-

-"No! No! _No!_ _Never!_

-

-"I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death.

-_Never!_

-

-"I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which _mon Rafe_

-had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay

-that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in.

-I did it for _you_! Ha!"

-

-The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so

-rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of

-the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main

-argument.

-

-"But why couldn't she have told the truth?"

-

-"The truth, eh! You must have the truth! The girl must tell the truth

-for you! No matter if she was to blacken her soul before God, you

-must have the truth told for you. The truth! It was not enough for you

-to know that the girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that

-she would have died for you if she might! No. The poor girl must tear

-out the secret lining of her heart for you, to save you!

-

-"Think you that if _mon Rafe_ was alive and stood there where you

-stood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give up

-the secret of the Holy Confession to save him. _Non!_ _Mon Rafe_ was a

-_man_! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted me

-with!

-

-"Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to be saved; that the Good God must

-come down from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened Book for

-_you_!

-

-"You ask for truth! _Tiens!_ I will tell you truth!

-

-"You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried that you were an

-innocent man. _Mon Rafe_ was the guilty man. The whole world must come

-forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth to declare you

-innocent and him guilty! You were innocent! You were persecuted! The

-earth and the Heaven must come to show that you were innocent and he

-was guilty! _Bah!_ _You were as guilty as he!_

-

-"I was there. I saw. Your finger was on the trigger. You only waited

-for the man to stop moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder was in

-your soul. Murder was in your finger. But you were innocent and _mon

-Rafe_ was guilty. By how much?

-

-"By one second. That was the difference between _mon Rafe_ and you.

-Just that second that he shot before you were ready. _That_ was the

-difference between you the innocent man and _mon Rafe_!

-

-"You were guilty. In your heart you were guilty. In your soul you were

-guilty. M'sieur Cain himself was not more guilty than you!

-

-"You were more guilty than _mon Rafe_, for he had suffered more from

-that man. He was hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were cool. You

-were ready. Only _mon Rafe_ was a little quicker, because he was

-desperate. Before the Good God you were more guilty.

-

-"And _mon Rafe_ must be blackened more than the fire had blackened his

-poor body. And the poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the good

-M'sieur the Bishop must break his holiest oath. All to make you

-innocent!

-

-"Bah! _Innocent!_"

-

-She flung away from him and ran up the hill. Cynthe had not said quite

-all that she intended to say to this young gentleman. But then, also,

-she had said a good deal more than she had intended to say. So it was

-about even. She had said enough. And it would do him no harm. She had

-felt that she owed _mon Rafe_ a little plain speaking. She was much

-relieved.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him digging up the tender

-roots of the new grass with his toe. He did not look after the girl.

-He had forgotten her.

-

-He felt no resentment at the things that she had said. He did not

-argue with himself as to whether these things were just or unjust. Of

-all the things that she had said only one thing mattered. And that not

-because she had said it. It mattered because it was true. The quick,

-jabbing sentences from the girl had driven home to him just one

-thing.

-

-Guilty? He _was_ guilty. He was as guilty as--Rafe Gadbeau.

-

-Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation, bitter, blinding provocation.

-But so had Rafe Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau as

-anything but guilty of murder.

-

-He turned on his heel and walked down the Run with swift, swinging

-strides, fighting this conviction that was settling upon him. He

-fought it viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a man, that

-the thing was done and past, that men have no time for remorse and

-sickish, mawkish repentance. Those things were for brooding women, and

-Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably, sagaciously; contending that he

-had not, in fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that he would

-ever have done so? Maybe he had not really intended to kill at all.

-Maybe he would not have killed. The man might have spoken to him.

-Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned that time. Who could

-tell? Ten thousand things might have happened, any one of which would

-have stood between him and killing the man. He fought it defiantly.

-Suppose he had killed the man? What about it? The man deserved it. He

-had a right to kill him.

-

-But he knew that he was losing at every angle of the fight. For the

-conviction answered not a word to any of these things. It merely

-fastened itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment:

-"As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau."

-

-And when he came over the top of the hill, from where he could look

-down upon the grave of Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the

-conviction pointed out to him just one enduring fact. It said: "There

-is the grave of Rafe Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything

-about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried here."

-

-Then he fought no more with the conviction. It gripped his spirit and

-cowed him. It sat upon his shoulders and rode home with him. His

-mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding, began to look for

-some fresh trouble.

-

-She need not have looked for new trouble, so far as concerned things

-outside himself. For Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men.

-He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable and finer home than

-it had ever been. He had secured an excellent contract from the

-railroad to supply thousands of ties out of the timber of the high

-hills. He had made money out of that. And once he had gotten a taste

-of money-making, in a business that was his by the traditions of his

-people and his own liking, he knew that he had found himself a

-career.

-

-He was working now on a far bigger project, the reforesting of thirty

-thousand acres of the higher hill country. In time there would be

-unlimited money in that. But there was more than money in it. It was a

-game and a life which he knew and which he loved. To make money by

-making things more abundant, by covering the naked peaks of the hill

-country with sturdy, growing timber, that was a thing that appealed to

-him.

-

-All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men had

-done in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding this

-knowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already he

-knew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more about

-growing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how much

-this meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youth

-more than its due. Already he was being picked as an expert. Next

-week he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislative

-committee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to get

-appropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls from

-out of standing timber--a thing that if well done would render forest

-fires almost harmless.

-

-He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that law

-school diploma--the thing that he had once regarded as the portal of

-the world--look cheap and little.

-

-But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations,

-the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The high

-colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him

-and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the

-word--_guilty_.

-

-What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything?

-when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall

-with the word written across it. Guilty--guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And

-Ruth Lansing--!

-

-A flash of sudden insight caught him and held him in its glaring

-light. He had been doing all this work. He had built this home. He had

-fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills and the raging

-winter for money. He had dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built

-them higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.

-

-He had fought the thought of her. He had put her out of his mind. He

-had said that she had failed him in need. He had even, in the blackest

-time of the night, called her liar. He had forgotten her, he said.

-

-Now he knew that not for an instant had she been out of his mind.

-Every stroke of work had been for her. She had stood at the top of the

-high path of every struggling dream.

-

-Between him and her now rose that grey wall with the one word written

-on it. Was that what they had meant that day there in the court, she

-and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all? Was there some sort of

-uncanny truth or insight or hidden justice in that secret confessional

-of theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting truth,

-while it hid the momentary, accidental truth of mere words? In effect,

-they had said that he was guilty. And he _was_ guilty!

-

-What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that day

-on the railroad line? "Sooner or later we have to learn that there is

-something bigger than we are." Was this what it meant? Was this the

-thing bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, had

-looked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing that

-was bigger than he?

-

-He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting maze of imagination,

-misinformation, and some unreadable facts.

-

-He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that he was guilty. That was

-why she had acted as she had. He would go to her. He would--! But what

-was the use? She would not talk to him about this. She would merely

-deny, as she had done before, that she knew anything at all. What

-could he do? Where could he turn? They, he and Ruth, could never speak

-of that thing. They could never come to any understanding of anything.

-This thing, this wall--with that word written on it--would stand

-between them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that was

-sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the thing that was stronger

-than he. There was no answer. There was no way out.

-

-Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!

-

-But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He was not guilty any more.

-Cynthe had said so. He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow. He

-had merely come through the fire and thrown himself at a man's feet

-and had his guilt wiped away. What was there in that uncanny thing

-they called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as--as Rafe

-Gadbeau, could come to another man, and, by the saying of a few words,

-turn over and face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?

-

-It was a delusion, of course. The saying of words could never wipe

-away Rafe Gadbeau's guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt

-from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes. But Rafe Gadbeau

-_believed_ it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. _Ruth_

-believed it!

-

-It was a delusion, yes. But--_What_ a delusion! What a magnificent,

-soul-stirring delusion! A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau out of

-the misery of his guilt, that carried the souls of millions of guilty

-people through all the world up out of the depths of their crimes to a

-confidence of relief and freedom!

-

-Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down into the abyss of

-despairing loneliness. It trod the dark ways in which there was no

-guidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what it

-might appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause to

-effect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, or

-thought, that must have been the starting point, that must have held

-the germ of his guilt.

-

-Somewhere there must have been a beginning. He knew that he was not in

-any particular a different person, capable of anything different,

-likely to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain from what

-he had been on any other morning since he had become a man. There was

-never a time, so far as he could see, when he would not have been

-ready to do the thing which he was ready to do that morning--given the

-circumstances. Nor had he changed in any way since that morning. What

-had been essentially his act, his thought, a part of him, that morning

-was just as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this minute.

-There was no thing in the succession of incidents to which he could

-point and say: That was not I who did that: I did not mean that: I am

-sorry I did that. Nor would there ever be a time when he could say any

-of these things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty of

-that thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty of

-it. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to make

-him wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he would

-undo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begun

-away back in the formation of his character, and which would persist

-as long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it.

-There was no way that it might ever end.

-

-And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing had seen that guilt, too.

-She had seen it in his eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in

-his mind.

-

-What had she seen? What was that thing written so clear in his eyes

-that she could read and tell him of it that day on the road from

-French Village?

-

-He would go to her and ask her. She should tell him what was that

-thing she had seen. He would make her tell. He would have it from

-her!

-

-But, no. Where was the use? It would only bring them to that whole,

-impossible, bewildering business of the confessional. And he did not

-want to hear any more of that. His heart was sick of it. It had made

-him suffer enough. And he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered

-equally, or maybe more, from it.

-

-Where could he go? He must tell this thing. He _must_ talk of it to

-some one! That resistless, irrepressible impulse for confession, that

-call of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon him. He must find

-some other soul to share with him the burden of this conviction. He

-must find some one who would understand and to whom he could speak.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not have analysed what this

-craving meant. He only knew that it was very real, that his soul was

-staggering alone and blind under the weight of this thing.

-

-There was one man who would understand. The man who had looked upon

-the faces of life and death these many years, the man of strange

-comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him on the way of all this,

-and who from what he had said in his house in Alden, that day so long

-ago when all this began, may have foreseen this very thing, the man

-who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry out his guilt; that man would

-understand. He would go to him.

-

-He wrote a note which his mother would find in the morning, and

-slipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride to

-Lowville.

-

-"I came because I had to come," Jeffrey began, when the Bishop had

-seated him. "I don't know why I should come to you. I know you cannot

-do anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tell

-some one. I _had_ to say it to somebody."

-

-"I sat that day in the courtroom," he went on as the Bishop waited,

-"and thought that the whole world was against me. It seemed that

-everybody was determined to make me guilty--even you, even Ruth. And I

-was innocent. I had done nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the

-idea that everybody was trying to make me out guilty, when I was

-innocent. I had done nothing. I had not killed a man. I told the men

-there on the mountain that I was innocent and they would not believe

-me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts that I had not done the thing,

-but you would not say a word for me, an innocent man."

-

-"It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole world

-wanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on to

-the wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting back

-against everybody.

-

-"And--this is what I came to say--all the time I was guilty--guilty:

-guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!"

-

-"I am not sure I understand," said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey

-stopped.

-

-"Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty

-of that man's death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty

-of it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I will

-always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turn

-over into the next world, free. I cannot," he ended, with a sort of

-grim finality as though he saw again before him that wall against

-which he had come the night before.

-

-"You mean--" the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, "What

-brought your mind to this view of the matter?"

-

-"A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that

-loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me."

-

-Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some

-plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than

-to treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not a boy to be

-laughed out of a morbid notion, or to be told to grow older and forget

-the thing. His was a man's soul, standing in the dark, grappling with

-a thing with which it could not cope. The wrong word here might mar

-his whole life. Here was no place for softening away the realities

-with reasoning. The man's soul demanded a man's straight answer.

-

-"Before you could be guilty," said the Bishop decisively, "you must

-have injured some one by your thought, your intention. Whom did you

-injure?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought, to follow it out from

-the maze which his mind had been treading. Here was the answer. This

-would clear the way. Whom had he injured?

-

-Well, _whom_ had he injured? _Who_ had been hurt by his thought, his

-wish, to kill a man? Had it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was

-none the worse of it.

-

-Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not enter into this at all.

-

-Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till yesterday; and not in

-the way meant.

-

-Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then--then why all this--?

-Jeffrey Whiting rose from his chair as though to go. He did not look

-at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing upon the floor,

-asking:

-

-Whom?

-

-Suddenly, from within, just barely audible through his lips there came

-the answer; a single word:

-

-"_God!_"

-

-"Your business is with Him, then," said the Bishop, rising with what

-almost seemed brusqueness. "You wanted to see Him."

-

-"But--but," Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to argue, "men come to you, to

-confess. Rafe Gadbeau--!"

-

-"No," said the Bishop quickly, "you are wrong. Men come to me to

-_confession_. They come to _confess_ to God."

-

-He took the young man's hand, saying:

-

-"I will not say another word. You have found your own answer. You

-would not understand better if I talked forever. Find God, and tell

-Him, what you have told me."

-

-In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the long way to the hills

-and home. He was still bewildered, disappointed, and a little

-resentful of the Bishop's brief manners with him. He had gone looking

-for sympathy, understanding, help. And he had been told to find God.

-

-Find God? How did men go about to find God? Wasn't all the world

-continually on the lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did the

-preachers find Him? Did the priests find Him? And if they did, what

-did they say to Him? Did people who were sick, and people who said God

-had answered their prayers and punished their enemies for them; did

-they find God?

-

-Did they find Him when they prayed? Did they find Him when they were

-in trouble? What did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must have meant

-something? How did the Bishop himself find God? Was there some word,

-some key, some hidden portal by which men found God? Was God to be

-found here on the hills, in the night, in the open?

-

-God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how can I come, how can I find!

-A wordless, baffled, impotent cry, that reached nowhere.

-

-The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.

-

-Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable guilt, swept down

-upon him again and beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It

-left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to face this thing. It was

-too big for him. He was after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling

-alone in the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had been caught and

-crushed between forces and passions that were too much for him. He was

-little and these things were very great.

-

-Unconsciously the heart within him, the child heart that somehow lives

-ever in every man, began to speak, to speak, without knowing it,

-direct to God.

-

-It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was not an excuse. It was

-the simple unfolding of the heart of a child to the Father who made

-it. The heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It could not lift

-itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness complete, of dependence

-utter and unreasoning.

-

-Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at the stars, blinking at

-him through the starting tears.

-

-Was that God? Had some one spoken? Where was the load that had lain

-upon him all these weary hours?

-

-He stopped his horse and looked about him, breathing in great, free,

-hungry breaths of God's air about him. For it _was_ God's air. That

-was the wonder of it. The world was God's! And it was new made for him

-to live in!

-

-He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer of thanks, as simple and

-unreasoning, unquestioning, as had been the unfolding of his heart. He

-had been bound: he was free!

-

-Then his horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new

-life upon the soft, breathing air of the spring night.

-

-With the inconsequence of all of us children when God has lifted the

-stone from our hearts, Jeffrey had already left everything of the last

-thirty-six hours behind him as completely as if he had never lived

-through those hours. (That He lets us forget so easily, shows that He

-is the Royal God in very deed.)

-

-Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to

-French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old

-Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof.

-

-What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that

-he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months. For

-the French people had taken her to their hearts and had made of her a

-wonderful new kind of saint. They had seen her come to them out of the

-fire. They had heard of her silence at the trial of the man she loved.

-They had seen her devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to

-their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria had frightened

-the wits out of the best of women. All the while they knew that she

-was not happy. And they had explained fully to the countryside just

-what was their opinion of the whole matter.

-

-Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly understanding many

-things that had been hidden from him, was very humble as he wondered

-what he could say to Ruth.

-

-At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he met Cynthe.

-

-"Where is she?" he asked without preface.

-

-Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching look, and was amazed

-at the change she saw.

-

-Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to whom she had talked the

-other day. Here was a man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and

-had learned some things out of unknown places of his heart.

-

-I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too much. But I am not sorry.

-_Non._

-

-"The last house," she answered, "by the crook of the lake there. She

-will be glad," she remarked simply, and turned on her way.

-

-Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl heartily for the word

-that she had thought to add. It was a warrant, it seemed, of

-forgiveness--and of all things.

-

-Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife Philomena sat in the sun

-by the side of the house watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms

-bare above the elbow was working away contentedly in their little

-patch of garden. They nudged each other as Jeffrey rode up and left

-his horse, but they made no sign to Ruth.

-

-So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth came to her unseen

-and unheard. He took the hoe from her hand as she turned to face

-him. Up to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he was to say to

-her. What was there to say? But as he looked into her startled,

-pain-clouded eyes he found himself saying:

-

-"I hurt God once, very much. I did not know what to say to Him. Last

-night He taught me what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will you

-tell me what to say to you, Ruth?"

-

-It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting. But Ruth quickly

-understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man's stumbling,

-wholehearted confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny.

-The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently

-took his hand and led him out of the little garden and to where his

-horse stood.

-

-There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers slipping softly

-through the big bay's mane, Jeffrey standing stiff and anxious before

-her, with the glad morning and the high hills and all French Village

-observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced their question.

-

-But after all there was no question. For when Jeffrey had told all,

-down to that moment in the dark road when he had found God in his

-heart, Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness that is born

-in every woman, said:

-

-"Poor boy, you have suffered too much!"

-

-"What I suffered was that I made for myself," he said thickly. "Cynthe

-Cardinal told me what a fool I was."

-

-"What did Cynthe tell you?"

-

-"She told me that you loved me."

-

-"Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?" said the girl very quietly.

-

-"Yes, it seems so. I'd known your little white soul ever since you

-were a baby. I knew that in all your life you'd never had a thought

-that was not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I knew that

-there was never a time when you wouldn't have given everything, even

-life, for me. I knew it that day in the Bishop's house. I knew it

-that morning when you came to me in the sugar cabin."

-

-"Yes, I knew all that," he went on bitterly. "I knew you loved me, and

-I knew what a love it was. I knew it. And yet that day--that day in

-the courtroom, the only thing I could do was to call you liar!"

-

-She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him, but he went on

-doggedly.

-

-"Yes, I did. That was all I could think of. I threw it at you like a

-blow in the face. I saw you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck

-you. And even that sight wasn't enough for me. I kept on saying it,

-when I knew in my heart it wasn't so. I couldn't help but know it. I

-knew you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied; kept on till

-yesterday. I wasn't big enough. I wasn't man enough to see that you

-were just facing something that was bigger than both of us--something

-that was bigger and truer than words--that there was no way out for

-you but to do what you did."

-

-"Jeffrey, dear," the girl hurried to say, "you know that's a thing we

-can't speak about--"

-

-"Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand. You needn't say anything.

-I _understand_."

-

-"And I understand a lot more," he began again. "It took that little

-French girl to tell me what was the truth. I know it now. There was a

-deeper, a truer truth under everything. That was why you had to do as

-you did. That's why everything was so. I wasn't innocent. Things don't

-_happen_ as those things did. They work out, because they have to."

-

-The girl was watching him with fright and wonder in her eyes. What was

-he going to say? But she let him go on.

-

-"No, I wasn't innocent," he said, as though to himself now. "I fooled

-myself into thinking that I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man.

-I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but Rafe Gadbeau's quickness

-prevented me. No, I wasn't innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was a

-murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as

-Ca--!"

-

-The girl had suddenly sprung forward and thrown her arms around his

-neck. She caught the word that was on his lips and stopped it with a

-kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say what he had been

-going to say.

-

-"You shall not say that!" she panted. "I will not let you say it!

-Nobody shall say it! I defy the whole world to say it!"

-

-"But it's--it's true," said the boy brokenly as he held her.

-

-"It is not true! Never! Nothing's true, only the truth that God has

-hidden in His heart! And that is hidden! How can we say? How dare we

-say what we would have done, when we didn't do it? How do we know

-what's really in our hearts? Don't you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot say

-things like that! We don't know! I won't let you say it.

-

-"And if you do say it," she argued, "why, I'll have to say it, too."

-

-"You?"

-

-"Yes, I. Do you remember that night you were in the sugar cabin? I was

-outside looking through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was I

-thinking? What was in my heart? I'll tell you. I was out there

-stalking like a panther. I wanted just one thing out of all the world.

-Just one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would have done it

-gladly--with joy in my heart! I could have sung while I was doing it!

-

-"Now," she gasped, "now, if you're going to say that thing, why, we'll

-say it together!"

-

-The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer in his arms, understood

-nothing but that she wanted to stand with him, to put herself in

-whatever place was his, to take that black, terrible shadow that had

-fallen on him and wrap it around herself too.

-

-"My poor little white-souled darling," he said through tears that

-choked him, "I can't take this from you! It's too much, I can't!"

-

-After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against his shoulder and

-argued dreamily:

-

-"I don't see what you can do. You'll have to take _me_. And I don't

-see how you can take me any way but just as I am."

-

-Then she was suddenly conscious that the world was observing. She drew

-quickly away, and Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go.

-

-Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered and adored, he began

-to speak in wonder and self-abasement.

-

-"After all I've made you suffer--!"

-

-But Ruth would have none of this. It had been nothing, she declared.

-She had found work to do. She had been happy, in a way. God had been

-very kind.

-

-At length Jeffrey said: "Well, I guess we'll never have to misunderstand

-again, anyway, Ruth. I had to find God because I was--I needed Him.

-Now I want to find Him--your way."

-

-"You mean--you mean that you _believe_!"

-

-"Yes," said Jeffrey slowly. "I didn't think I ever would. I certainly

-didn't want to. But I do. And it isn't just to win with you, Ruth, or

-to make you happier. I can't help it. It's the thing the Bishop once

-told me about--the thing that's bigger than I am."

-

-Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for leading him forthwith to

-Father Ponfret, that he might begin at once his course of instructions

-which she assured him was essential.

-

-But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading books all winter, he said.

-Though he admitted that until last night he had not understood much

-of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God! Could she not come

-home, then, to his mother, who was pining for her--and--and they would

-have all their lives to finish the instructions.

-

-On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she would stay, among these good

-people where she had made for herself a place and a home. He must come

-every week to Father Ponfret for his instructions, like any other

-convert. If on those occasions he also came to see her, well, she

-would, of course, be glad to see him and to know how he was

-progressing.

-

-Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would see.

-

-And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree.

-

-Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this arrangement, grumbled

-that the way of the heretic was indeed made easy in these days. But

-his wife Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed him that

-if the good Ruth saw fit to convert even a heathen Turk into a husband

-for herself she would no doubt make a good job of it.

-

-So love came and went through the summer, practically unrebuked.

-

-Again the Bishop came riding up to French Village with Arsene LaComb.

-But this time they rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up

-over the new line of railroad that came into the hills from Welden

-Junction. And Arsene was very glad of this, for as he looked at his

-beloved M'sieur l'Eveque he saw that he was not now the man to have

-faced the long road up over the hills. He was not two, he was many

-years older and less sturdy.

-

-The Bishop practised his French a little, but mostly he was silent and

-thoughtful. He was remembering that day, nearly two years ago now,

-when he had set two ambitious young souls upon a way which they did

-not like. What a coil of good and bad had come out of that doing of

-his. And again he wondered, as he had wondered then, whether he had

-done right. Who was to tell?

-

-And again to-morrow he was to set those two again upon their way of

-life, for he was coming up to French Village to the wedding of Ruth

-Lansing to Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing's side in the little rough-finished

-sanctuary of the chapel which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to

-raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer. But Jeffrey Whiting

-saw none of the poor makeshifts out of which the little priest had

-contrived a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again, in the night,

-on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned stars, crying out to find

-God. Then God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch and lifted

-him out of the dust and agony of the road, and, finally, had brought him

-here, to this moment.

-

-He had just received into his body the God of life. His soul stood

-trembling at its portal, receiving its Guest for the first time. He

-was amazed with a great wonder, for here was the very God of the dark

-night speaking to him in words that beat upon his heart. And his

-wonder was that from this he should ever arise and go on with any

-other business whatever.

-

-Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to the music of that

-_choir unseen_ which had once given her the call of life. She had

-followed it, not always in the perfect way, but at least bravely,

-unquestioningly. And it had brought her now to a holy and awed

-happiness. Neither life nor death would ever rob her of this moment.

-

-Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop. And as the Shepherd

-blessed their joined hands he prayed for these two who were dear to

-him, as well as for his other little ones, and, as always, for those

-"other sheep." And the breathing of his prayer was:

-

-That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear; but trust long in Thee

-and in each other.

-

-THE END

-

-Printed in the United States of America.

-

-

-

-

-

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-

-Project Gutenberg's The Shepherd of the North, by Richard Aumerle Maher

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: The Shepherd of the North

-

-Author: Richard Aumerle Maher

-

-Release Date: September 26, 2009 [EBook #30093]

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-Language: English

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-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH ***

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-</pre>

-

-

-<p class='tp' style='margin-top:30px;font-size:2.2em;margin-bottom:50px;'>THE SHEPHERD OF<br />THE NORTH</p>

-<p class='tp' >BY</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.4em;margin-bottom:20px;'>RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER</p>

-<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:120px;'>Author of<br />&ldquo;The Heart of a Man,&rdquo; etc.</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:larger;'>M. A. DONOHUE &amp; COMPANY</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:larger;margin-bottom:30px;'>CHICAGO&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW YORK</p>

-<hr class='pb' />

-<p class='tp' style='margin-top:20px;'>Copyright 1916</p>

-<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:10px;'><span class='smcap'>By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;'>Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916.</p>

-<p class='tp' style='margin-bottom:20px;font-size:smaller;'>Reprinted March, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;June, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;October, 1916&nbsp;&nbsp;February, 1917.</p>

-<hr class='pb' />

-<h2>CONTENTS</h2>

-<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'><span style='font-size:0.8em'>CHAPTER</span></td>

-  <td />

-  <td valign='top' align='right'><span style='font-size:0.8em;'>PAGE</span></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>I</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The White Horse Chaplain</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN'>3</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>II</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Choir Unseen</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN'>35</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>III</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Glow of Dawn</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#III_GLOW_OF_DAWN'>64</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IV</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Answer</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IV_THE_ANSWER'>103</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>V</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Mon Pere Je Me &rsquo;Cuse</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE'>137</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VI</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Business of the Shepherd</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'>174</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VII</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Inner Citadel</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL'>210</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VIII</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Seigneur Dieu, Whither Go I?</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I'>243</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IX</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Coming of the Shepherd</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'>277</a></td>

-</tr>

-<tr>

-  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>X</td>

-  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>That They Be Not Afraid</span></td>

-  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID'>311</a></td>

-</tr>

-</table>

-<hr class='pb' />

-<h1>THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH</h1>

-<hr class='pb' />

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span></div>

-<h2>THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH</h2>

-<div class='chsp' style='padding-top:0'>

-<a name='I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN' id='I_THE_WHITE_HORSE_CHAPLAIN'></a>

-<h2>I</h2>

-<h3>THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The Bishop of Alden was practising his French

-upon Arsene LaComb. It was undoubtedly good

-French, this of M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop, Arsene assured

-himself. It must be. But it certainly was

-not any kind of French that had ever been spoken

-by the folks back in Three Rivers.</p>

-<p>Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not

-understand all that the Bishop said, it was equally

-certain that the Bishop could not understand all

-that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a

-cheery companion for the long road. He took

-his upsets into six feet of Adirondack snow, as

-man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft

-and the road is uncertain.</p>

-<p>In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and

-the railroad behind and had headed into the hills.

-For thirty miles, with only one stop for a bite

-of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded

-along up the half-broken, logging roads. Now

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>

-they were in the high country and there were no

-roads.</p>

-<p>Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a

-drifting storm had followed him down from Little

-Tupper, covering the road that he had made

-and leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped

-driving and held only a steady, even rein to keep

-his ponies from stumbling, while he let the tough,

-willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road.</p>

-<p>Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene

-had been tossed off the single bobsled out into

-the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting all

-day long on the swaying bumper, with no back

-rest, feet braced stiffly against the draw bar in

-front to keep the dizzy balance. But it was the

-only way that this trip could be made.</p>

-<p>The Bishop knew that he should not have let

-the confirmation in French Village on Little Tupper

-go to this late date in the season. He had

-arranged to come a month before. But Father

-Ponfret&rsquo;s illness had put him back at that time.</p>

-<p>Now he was worried. The early December

-dark was upon them. There was no road. The

-ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve

-bad miles to go.</p>

-<p>Still, things might be worse. The cold was not

-bad. He had the bulkier of his vestments and regalia

-in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to the

-sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils

-and the other sacred essentials were slung securely

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>

-about his body. And a tumble more or less in

-the snow was a part of the day&rsquo;s work. They

-would break their way through somehow.</p>

-<p>So, with the occasional interruptions, he was

-practising his amazing French upon Arsene.</p>

-<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old

-Massachusetts stock. He had learned the French

-that was taught at Harvard in the fifties. Afterwards,

-after his conversion to the Catholic

-Church, he had gone to Louvain for his seminary

-studies. There he had heard French of another

-kind. But to the day he died he spoke his

-French just as it was written in the book, and with

-an aggressive New England accent.</p>

-<p>He must speak French to the children in French

-Village to-morrow, not because the children would

-understand, but because it would please Father

-Ponfret and the parents.</p>

-<p>They were struggling around the shoulder of

-Lansing Mountain and the Bishop was rounding

-out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration

-of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a

-sharp:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Jomp, M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque, <i>jomp</i>!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop jumped&ndash;&ndash;or was thrown&ndash;&ndash;ten

-feet into a snow-bank.</p>

-<p>While he gathered himself out of the snow and

-felt carefully his bulging breast pockets to make

-sure that everything was safe, he saw what had

-happened.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span></div>

-<p>The star-faced pony on the near side had

-slipped off the trail and rolled down a little bank,

-dragging the other pony and Arsene and the sled

-with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies,

-man and sled at the bottom of a little gully, and

-as the Bishop floundered through the snow to help

-he feared that it was serious.</p>

-<p>Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under

-the sled, his head just clear of the ponies&rsquo;

-heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in

-the <i>patois</i> that they understood. He was within

-inches of having his brains beaten out by the quivering

-hoofs; he could not, literally, move his head

-to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with

-them as quietly as if he stood at their heads.</p>

-<p>They kicked and fought each other and the sled,

-until the influence of the calm voice behind them

-began to work upon them. Then their own craft

-came back to them and they remembered the many

-bitter lessons they had gotten from kicking and

-fighting in deep snow. They lay still and waited

-for the voice to come and get them out of this.</p>

-<p>As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to

-release Arsene, he remembered that he had seen

-men under fire. And he said to himself that he

-had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this

-little French-Canadian storekeeper.</p>

-<p>The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had

-been soft under him, and lunged for the ponies&rsquo;

-heads.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now!

-Ah-a! Bien!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He had them both by their bridles and dragged

-them skilfully to their feet and up the bank.

-With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all

-safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail.</p>

-<p>Arsene now looked around for the Bishop.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ba Golly! M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque, dat&rsquo;s one fine

-jomp. You got hurt, you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop declared that he was not in any

-way the worse from the tumble, and Arsene turned

-to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up

-the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection

-of his harness and said ruefully:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s bad, M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque. She&rsquo;s gone

-bust.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his

-hand. The trouble was quite evident.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What can we do?&rdquo; asked the Bishop.

-&ldquo;Have you any rope?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No. Dat&rsquo;s how I been one big fool, me.

-I lef&rsquo; new rope on de sled las&rsquo; night on Lowville.

-Dis morning she&rsquo;s gone. Some t&rsquo;ief.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We must get on somehow,&rdquo; said the Bishop,

-as he unbuckled part of the lashing from his bag

-and handed the strap to Arsene. &ldquo;That will hold

-until we get to the first house where we can get the

-loan of a trace. We can walk behind. We&rsquo;re

-both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is it

-far?&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks,

-&rsquo;bout quarter mile, maybe.&rdquo; The little man

-looked up from his work long enough to point

-out a clump of hemlocks that stood out black and

-sharp against the white world around them. As

-the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among

-the trees, showing where life and a home

-fought their battle against the desolation of the

-hills.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I donno,&rdquo; said Arsene speculatively, as he and

-the Bishop took up their tramp behind the sled;

-&ldquo;Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don&rsquo; like Canuck.

-Maybe he don&rsquo; lend no harness, I donno.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes; he will surely,&rdquo; answered the Bishop

-easily. &ldquo;Nobody would refuse a bit of harness

-in a case like this.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>It was full dark when they came to where

-Tom Lansing&rsquo;s cabin hid itself among the hemlocks.

-Arsene did not dare trust his team off the

-road where they had footing, so the Bishop

-floundered his way through the heavy snow to

-find the cabin door.</p>

-<p>It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out

-of the hemlocks that had stood around it and

-belonged to a generation already past. But it

-was still serviceable and tight, and it was a home.</p>

-<p>The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was

-no response from within. It was strange. For

-there was every sign of life about the place.

-After knocking a second time without result, he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>

-lifted the heavy wooden latch and pushed quietly

-into the cabin.</p>

-<p>A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite

-the door. On the hearth stood a big black

-and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not the

-slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his

-four legs planted squarely under him, his whole

-body quivering with fear. His nose was pointed

-upward as though ready for the howl to which

-he dared not give voice. His great brown eyes

-rolled in an ecstasy of fright but seemed unable

-to tear themselves from the side of the room

-where he was looking.</p>

-<p>Along the side of the room ran a long, low

-couch covered with soft, well worn hides. On it

-lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out awkwardly

-and unnaturally, showing that he had been

-dragged unconscious to where he was. A candle

-stood on the low window ledge and shone down

-full into the man&rsquo;s face.</p>

-<p>At the head of the couch knelt a young girl,

-her arm supporting the man&rsquo;s head and shoulder,

-her wildly tossed hair falling down across his

-chest.</p>

-<p>She was speaking to the man in a voice low

-and even, but so tense that her whole slim body

-seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as

-though her very soul came to the portals of her lips

-and shouted its message to the man. The power

-of her voice, the breathless, compelling strength

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>

-of her soul need seemed to hold everything between

-heaven and earth, as she pleaded to the

-man. The Bishop stood spellbound.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My

-Father!&rdquo; she was saying over and over. &ldquo;Come

-back, come back, Daddy Tom! It&rsquo;s not true!

-God doesn&rsquo;t want you! He doesn&rsquo;t want to take

-you from Ruth! How could He! It&rsquo;s not never

-true! A tree couldn&rsquo;t kill my Daddy Tom!

-Never, never! Why, he&rsquo;s felled whole slopes of

-trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>For a time which he could not measure the

-Bishop stood listening to the pleading of the girl&rsquo;s

-voice. But in reality he was not listening to the

-sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She

-was fighting bitterly with death. She was calling

-all the forces of love and life to aid her in her

-struggle. She was following the soul of her

-loved one down to the very door of death. She

-would pull him back out of the very clutches of

-the unknown.</p>

-<p>And the Bishop found that he was not merely

-listening to what the girl said. He was going

-down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing

-every word of her pleading. The force of

-her will and her prayer swept him along so that

-with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed

-for the man to open his eyes.</p>

-<p>Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible

-fear seemed to grip and crush her, so that she

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>

-cowered and hid her face against the big, grizzled

-white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed

-in terror.</p>

-<p>The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched

-the girl on the head, saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do not give up yet, child. I once had some

-skill. Let me try.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl turned and looked up blankly at him.

-She did not question who he was or whence he

-had come. She turned again and wrapped her

-arms jealously about the head and shoulders of

-her father. Plainly she was afraid and resentful

-of any interference. But the Bishop insisted

-gently and in the end she gave him place beside

-her.</p>

-<p>He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he

-knelt quickly to listen at the man&rsquo;s breast.</p>

-<p>Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but

-there was life, certainly. While the Bishop fumbled

-through the man&rsquo;s pockets for the knife that

-he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl

-quietly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was just a little while ago,&rdquo; she answered,

-in short, frightened sentences. &ldquo;My dog came

-yelping down from the mountain where Father

-had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran

-up there. He was pinned down under a limb.

-I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and

-told me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away

-with his axe. But it must be I hurt him; he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>

-fainted. I can&rsquo;t make him speak. I cut boughs

-and made a sledge and dragged him down here.

-But I can&rsquo;t make him speak. Is he?&ndash;&ndash; Is

-he?&ndash;&ndash; Tell me,&rdquo; she appealed.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and

-shoulder of the man&rsquo;s jacket and shirt.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were all alone, child?&rdquo; he said.

-&ldquo;Where could you get the strength for all this?

-My driver is out on the road,&rdquo; he continued, as

-he worked on. &ldquo;Call him and send him for the

-nearest help.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking

-look back at the man on the couch, went out

-into the snow.</p>

-<p>The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.</p>

-<p>The man&rsquo;s shoulder was crushed hopelessly,

-but there was nothing there to constitute a fatal

-injury. It was only when he came to the upper

-ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage.

-Several of them were caved in frightfully, and it

-seemed certain that one or two of them must have

-been shattered and the splinters driven into the

-lung on that side.</p>

-<p>The cold had driven back the blood, so that

-the wounds had bled outwardly very little. The

-Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little, and

-something black showed out of a torn muscle under

-the scapula.</p>

-<p>He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in

-his hand. It was a little black ball of steel.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span></div>

-<p>While the Bishop stood there wondering at the

-thing in his hand, a long tremor ran through the

-body on the couch. The man stirred ever so

-slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from

-his lips. His eyes opened and fixed themselves

-searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop

-thought it best not to speak, but to give the man

-time to come back naturally to a realisation of

-things.</p>

-<p>While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly,

-and the Bishop stood holding the little black ball

-between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth Lansing

-came back into the room.</p>

-<p>Seeing her father&rsquo;s eyes open, the girl rushed

-across the room and was about to throw herself

-down by the side of the couch when her father&rsquo;s

-voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible

-and clear, stopped her.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The White Horse Chaplain!&rdquo; he said in a

-voice of slow wonder. &ldquo;But I always knew he&rsquo;d

-come for me sometime. And I suppose it&rsquo;s

-time.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop started. He had not heard the

-name for twenty-five years.</p>

-<p>The girl stopped by the table, trembling and

-frightened. She had heard the tale of the White

-Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her

-that her father was delirious and raving. But he

-spoke so calmly and so certainly. He seemed so

-certain that the man he saw was an apparition

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>

-that she could not think or reason herself out of

-her fright.</p>

-<p>The Bishop answered easily and quietly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did

-not think anybody remembered now.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Tom Lansing&rsquo;s eyes leaped wide with doubt

-and question. They stared full at the Bishop.

-Then they turned and saw the table standing in

-its right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the

-table; saw the dog at the fireplace. The man

-there was real!</p>

-<p>Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle

-to rise, then fell back gasping.</p>

-<p>The Bishop put his hand gently under the man&rsquo;s

-head and eased him to a better position, saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving

-past and had broken a trace, and came in to

-borrow one from you. You got a bad blow.

-But your girl has just sent my driver for help.

-They will get a doctor somewhere. We cannot

-tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not so

-bad as it looks.&rdquo; But, even as he spoke, the

-Bishop saw a drop of blood appear at the corner

-of the man&rsquo;s white mouth; and he knew that it was

-as bad as the worst.</p>

-<p>The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes

-moved again from the Bishop to the girl and the

-everyday things of the room.</p>

-<p>It was evident that his mind was clearing

-sharply. He had rallied quickly. But the Bishop

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>

-knew instinctively that it was the last, flashing rally

-of the forces of life&ndash;&ndash;in the face of the on-crowding

-darkness. The shock and the internal

-hemorrhage were doing their work fast. The

-time was short.</p>

-<p>Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with

-a look, he called the girl to him.</p>

-<p>Through the seventeen years of her life, since

-the night when her mother had laid her in her

-father&rsquo;s arms and died, Ruth Lansing had hardly

-ever been beyond the reach of her father&rsquo;s voice.

-They had grown very close together, these two.

-They had little need of clumsy words between

-them.</p>

-<p>As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild,

-eager, rebellious, seared her father with their terror-stricken,

-unbelieving question.</p>

-<p>But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her

-wild questioning had given him. She crushed

-back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely with

-herself until she was able to force into her eyes

-a look of understanding and great mothering tenderness.</p>

-<p>Her father saw the struggle and the look,

-and blessed her for it with his eyes. Then he

-said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you?

-I know I&rsquo;m desertin&rsquo; you, little comrade, right in

-the mornin&rsquo; of your battle with life. But you

-won&rsquo;t be afraid. I know you won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span></div>

-<p>The girl shook her head bravely, but it was

-clear that she dared not trust herself to speak.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to ask this man here to look to you.

-He came here for a sign to me. I see it. I see

-it plain. I will trust him with your life. And so

-will you, little comrade. I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;m droppin&rsquo; out.

-He&rsquo;ll take you on.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He saved my life once. So he gave you your

-life. It&rsquo;s a sign, my Ruth.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl slipped her hands gently under his head

-and looked deep and long into the glazing eyes.</p>

-<p>Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was

-facing death&ndash;&ndash;and life alone.</p>

-<p>Obedient to her father&rsquo;s look, she rose and

-walked across the room. She saw that he had

-something to say to this strange man and that the

-time was short.</p>

-<p>In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin

-she stood, and throwing one arm up against the

-frame of the door she buried her face in it. She

-did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty

-of time for that.</p>

-<p>The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant

-an irrevocable change had come over her.

-She had knelt a frightened, wondering, protesting

-child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of

-death and its infinite certainty, of life and its infinite

-chance, had risen from her knees.</p>

-<p>As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke

-hurriedly:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I

-did I forgot it, and it don&rsquo;t matter.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m dying. I don&rsquo;t need any doctor to tell

-me. I&rsquo;ll be gone before he gets here.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when

-Curtis&rsquo; men were cut to pieces in the second charge

-on the trenches. They left me there, because it

-was every man for himself.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg.

-And you came drivin&rsquo; mad across the field on a

-big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me

-where I lay. You threw me across your saddle

-and walked that wild horse back into our lines.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you remember? Dying men got up on

-their elbows and cheered you. I lay six weeks in

-fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I do, now,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;Our troop

-came back to the Shenandoah, and I never knew

-what&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back

-upon him. He was just a few months ordained.

-He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union

-army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the

-ways and business of a battlefield, he had found

-himself that day in the sand dunes before Fort

-Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about

-him. Hail, fumes, lightning and thunder of battle

-rolled over him and sickened him. He saw

-his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>

-the Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself,

-and fade away back into the smoke. He lost it,

-and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered

-blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead

-man, now speaking to a living stricken one: Here

-straightening a torn body and giving water; there

-hearing the confession of a Catholic.</p>

-<p>Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis&rsquo; troops

-came yelling across the flat land. Once, twice

-they tried the trenches and were driven back into

-the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a

-big white horse. The animal, mad with fright and

-blood scent, charged down upon him as he bent

-over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and

-fought the horse. Before he realised what he was

-doing, he was in the saddle riding back and forth

-across the field. Right up to the trenches the

-horse carried him.</p>

-<p>Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy,

-a thin, long-legged boy with a long beardless face.

-He lay there marking the high tide of the last

-charge&ndash;&ndash;the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain,

-tumbling down somehow from his mount,

-picked up the writhing boy and bundled him across

-the saddle. Then he started walking back looking

-for his own lines.</p>

-<p>Now here was the boy talking to him across

-the mists of twenty-five years. And the boy, the

-man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom

-Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>

-died from fever bloat or been trampled to death

-in the succeeding charges. He had given him life.

-And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he

-had given that daughter life. Now he knew what

-Lansing was going to say.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know you then,&rdquo; said Lansing. &ldquo;I

-don&rsquo;t know who you are now, Chaplain, or what

-you are.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; he went on slowly, &ldquo;if I&rsquo;d agiven you a

-message that day you&rsquo;d have taken it on for me,

-wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course I would.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Suppose it had been to my mother, say:

-You&rsquo;da risked your life to get it on to her?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I hope I would,&rdquo; said the Bishop evenly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I believe you would. That&rsquo;s what I think

-of you,&rdquo; said Tom Lansing.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I went back South after the war,&rdquo; he began

-again. &ldquo;I stole my girl&rsquo;s mother from her grandfather,

-an old, broken-down Confederate colonel

-that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on

-me. I brought her up here into the hills and she

-died when the baby was just a few weeks old.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There ain&rsquo;t a relation in the world that my

-little girl could go to. I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to die in half

-an hour. But what better would she be if I lived?

-What would I do with her? Keep her here and

-let her marry some fightin&rsquo; lumber jack that&rsquo;d beat

-her? Or see her break her heart tryin&rsquo; to make

-a livin&rsquo; on one of these rock hills? She&rsquo;d fret

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>

-herself to death. She knows more now than I

-do and she&rsquo;d soon be wantin&rsquo; to know more.

-She&rsquo;s that kind.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;d ought to have her chance the way I&rsquo;ve

-seen girls in towns havin&rsquo; a chance. A chance to

-study and learn and grow the way she wants to.

-And now I&rsquo;m desertin&rsquo;; goin&rsquo; out like a smoky

-lamp.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was a crime, a crime!&rdquo; he groaned, &ldquo;ever

-to bring her mother up into this place!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You could not think of all that then. No

-man ever does,&rdquo; said the Bishop calmly. &ldquo;And

-I will do my best to see that she gets her chance.

-I think that&rsquo;s what you want to ask me, isn&rsquo;t it,

-Lansing?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you swear it?&rdquo; gasped Lansing, struggling

-and choking in an effort to raise his head.

-&ldquo;Do you swear to try and see that she gets a

-chance?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;God will help me to do the best for her,&rdquo; said

-the Bishop quietly. &ldquo;I am the Bishop of Alden.

-I can do something.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>With the definiteness of a man who has heard a

-final word, Tom Lansing&rsquo;s eyes turned to his

-daughter.</p>

-<p>Obediently she came again and knelt at his side,

-holding his head.</p>

-<p>To the very last, as long as his eyes could see,

-they saw her smiling bravely and sweetly down

-into them; giving her sacrament and holding her

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>

-light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.</p>

-<p>When the last twinging tremour had run

-through the racked body, she leaned over and

-kissed her father full on the lips.</p>

-<p>Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into

-the night.</p>

-<p>While the Bishop was straightening the body

-on the couch, a young man and two women came

-into the room.</p>

-<p>They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and

-her sister, neighbours whom Arsene had brought.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was much relieved with their coming.

-He could do nothing more now, and the

-long night ride was still ahead of him.</p>

-<p>He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had

-gone out into the cold, and asked him to find her.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had

-played with Ruth Lansing since she was a baby,

-for they were the only children on Lansing Mountain.

-He knew where he would find her.</p>

-<p>Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of

-the hills, where people had to meet their problems

-and burdens alone, took command at once.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; she replied to the Bishop&rsquo;s question,

-&ldquo;there&rsquo;s nobody to send for. The Lansings

-didn&rsquo;t have a relation living that anybody

-ever heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom

-Lansing&rsquo;s father and mother. They&rsquo;re buried out

-there on the hill where he&rsquo;ll be buried.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s some old soldiers down the West

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>

-Slope towards Beaver River. They&rsquo;ll want to

-take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on

-Monday,&rdquo; she went on rapidly, sketching in the

-programme. &ldquo;We have a preacher if we can

-get one. But when we can&rsquo;t my sister Letty here

-sings something.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a

-way,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly. &ldquo;At least, I was

-at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like

-to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Were you at Fort Fisher?&rdquo; broke in the

-sister Letty, speaking for the first time. &ldquo;And

-did you see Curtis&rsquo; colour bearer? He was killed

-in the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton,

-with long, black hair?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He had an old scar over his eye-brow.&rdquo;

-The Bishop supplemented the description out of

-the memory of that day.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five

-years ago to-morrow,&rdquo; said the woman trembling.

-&ldquo;You saw him die?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He was dead when I came to him,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop quietly, &ldquo;with the stock of the colour

-standard still clenched in his hand.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He was my&ndash;&ndash;my&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; Sweetheart, she

-wanted to say. But the hill women do not say

-things easily.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said the Bishop gently. &ldquo;I understand.&rdquo;

-She was a woman of his people.

-Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>

-could read the years of her faithfulness to the

-memory of that lean, dark face which he had once

-seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow.</p>

-<p>Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about

-her sister.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Are you&ndash;&ndash;?&rdquo; she questioned, hesitating

-strangely. &ldquo;Are you the White Horse Chaplain?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The boys called me that,&rdquo; said the Bishop.

-&ldquo;Though it was only a name for a day,&rdquo; he

-added.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was true, then?&rdquo; she said slowly, as if

-still unready to believe. &ldquo;We never half believed

-our boys when they came home from the

-war&ndash;&ndash;the ones that did come home&ndash;&ndash;and told

-about the white horse and the priest riding the

-field. We thought it was one of the things men

-see when they&rsquo;re fighting and dying.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room

-leading Ruth Lansing by the hand.</p>

-<p>The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The

-Bishop drew her over to the fire.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I must go now, child,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;To-morrow

-I must be in French Village. Monday I will

-be here again.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he

-said to me, about you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the

-Bishop&rsquo;s face, then nodded her head.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then, we must think and pray, child, that we

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>

-may know how to do what he wanted us to do.

-God will show us what is the best. That is what

-he wanted.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;God keep you brave now. Your friends here

-will see to everything for you. I have to go

-now.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He crossed the room and laid his hand for a

-moment on the brow of the dead man, renewing in

-his heart the promise he had made.</p>

-<p>Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting

-that he would be back before noon Monday, he

-went out to where Arsene and his horses were

-stamping in the snow.</p>

-<p>The little man had replaced the broken trace,

-and the ponies, fretting with the cold and eager

-to get home, took hungrily to the trail.</p>

-<p>But the Bishop forgot to practise his French

-further upon Arsene. He told him briefly what

-had happened, then lapsed into silence.</p>

-<p>Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing

-had said about the girl. She knew more now

-than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew

-now. But more than Tom Lansing had known

-half an hour ago.</p>

-<p>She would want to see the world. She would

-want to know life and ask her own questions from

-life and the world. In the broad open space between

-her eye-brows it was written that she would

-never take anybody&rsquo;s word for the puzzles of the

-world. She was marked a seeker; one of those

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>

-who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand

-to know what it means. They never find

-out. But, heart break or sparrow fall, they must

-go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own

-way. The world is infinitely the better through

-them. But their own way is hard and lonely.</p>

-<p>She must go out. She must have education.

-She must have a chance to face life and wrest its

-lessons from it in her own way. It did not

-promise happiness for her. But she could go no

-other way. For hers was the high, stony way of

-those who demand more than jealous life is ready

-to give.</p>

-<p>The Bishop only knew that he had this night

-given a promise which had sent a man contentedly

-on his way. Somehow, God would show him how

-best to keep that promise.</p>

-<p>And when they halloed at Father Ponfret&rsquo;s

-house in French Village he had gotten no farther

-than that.</p>

-<p>Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his

-couch. Clean white sheets had been draped over

-the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking

-in through the west window picked out every

-bare thread of his service coat and glinted on the

-polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung

-into the belt at his side.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head

-of the couch, listening to the comments and

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>

-stumbling condolences of neighbours from the

-high hills and the lower valleys. They were good,

-kindly people, she knew. But why, why, must

-every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous

-lie&ndash;&ndash; How natural he looked!</p>

-<p>He did not. He did not. He did <i>not</i> look

-natural. How could her Daddy Tom look natural,

-when he lay there all still and cold, and would

-not speak to his Ruth!</p>

-<p>He was dead. And what was death&ndash;&ndash; And

-why? <i>Why?</i></p>

-<p>Who had ordered this? And <i>why?</i></p>

-<p>And still they came with that set, borrowed

-phrase&ndash;&ndash;the only thing they could think to say&ndash;&ndash;upon

-their lips.</p>

-<p>Out in Tom Lansing&rsquo;s workshop on the horse-barn

-floor, Jacque Lafitte, the wright, was nailing

-soft pine boards together.</p>

-<p>Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not

-leave Daddy Tom to her? She wanted to ask him

-things. She knew that she could make him understand

-and answer.</p>

-<p>She slipped away from the couch and out of

-the house. At the corner of the house her dog

-joined her and together they circled away from the

-horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where

-her father had been working yesterday.</p>

-<p>She found her father&rsquo;s cap where it had been

-left in her fright of yesterday, and sat down

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>

-fondling it in her hands. The dog came and slid

-his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle

-into the cap between her hands.</p>

-<p>So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following

-her with her coat and hood.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You better put these on, Ruth,&rdquo; he said, as

-he dropped the coat across her shoulder. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s

-too cold here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl drew the coat around her obediently,

-but did not look up at him. She was grateful for

-his thought of her, but she was not ready to speak

-to any one.</p>

-<p>He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and

-drew the dog over to him.</p>

-<p>After a little he asked timidly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do, Ruth? You can&rsquo;t

-stay here. I&rsquo;ll tend your stock and look after the

-place for you. But you just can&rsquo;t stay here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You?&rdquo; she questioned finally. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re going

-to that Albany school next week. You said

-you were all ready.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was all ready. But I ain&rsquo;t going. I&rsquo;ll stay

-here and work the two farms for you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;For me?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And not be a lawyer

-at all?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&ndash;&ndash;I don&rsquo;t care anything about it any more,&rdquo;

-he lied. &ldquo;I told mother this morning that I

-wasn&rsquo;t going. She said she&rsquo;d have you come and

-stay with her till Spring.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;And then?&rdquo; the girl faced the matter, looking

-straight and unafraid into his eyes. &ldquo;And

-then?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; he hesitated. &ldquo;You see, then

-I&rsquo;ll be twenty. And you&rsquo;ll be old enough to

-marry me,&rdquo; he hurried. &ldquo;Your father, you

-know, he always wanted me to take care of you,

-didn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; he pleaded, awkwardly but subtly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know you don&rsquo;t want to talk about it now,&rdquo;

-he went on hastily. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;ll come home with

-mother to-morrow, won&rsquo;t you? You know she

-wants you, and I&ndash;&ndash;I never had to tell you that I

-love you. You knew it when you wasn&rsquo;t any

-higher than Prince here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. I always knew it, and I&rsquo;m glad,&rdquo; the

-girl answered levelly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad now, Jeff. But

-I can&rsquo;t let you do it. Some day you&rsquo;d hate me

-for it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ruth! You know better than that!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;d never tell me; I know that. You&rsquo;d

-do your best to hide it from me. But some day

-when your chance was gone you&rsquo;d look back and

-see what you might have been, &rsquo;stead of a humpbacked

-farmer in the hills. Oh, I know. You&rsquo;ve

-told me all your dreams and plans, how you&rsquo;re

-going down to the law school, and going to be a

-great lawyer and go to Albany and maybe to

-Washington.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s it all good for?&rdquo; said the boy

-sturdily. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather stay here with you.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span></div>

-<p>The girl did not answer. In the strain of the

-night and the day, she had almost forgotten the

-things that she had heard her father say to the

-White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call

-the Bishop.</p>

-<p>Now she remembered those things and tried to

-tell them.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That strange man that said he was the

-Bishop of Alden told my father that he would see

-that I got a chance. My father called him the

-White Horse Chaplain and said that he had been

-sent here just on purpose to look after me. I

-didn&rsquo;t know there were bishops in this country. I

-thought it was only in books about Europe.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What did they say?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My father said that I would want to go out

-and see things and know things; that I mustn&rsquo;t be

-married to a&ndash;&ndash;a lumber jack. He said it was

-no place for me in the hills.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And this man, this bishop, is going to send

-you away somewhere, to school?&rdquo; he guessed

-shrewdly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, I suppose that was it,&rdquo; said

-the girl slowly. &ldquo;Yesterday I wanted to go so

-much. It was just as father said. He had

-taught me all he knew. And I thought the world

-outside the hills was full of just the most wonderful

-things, all ready for me to go and see and pick

-up. And to-day I don&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>

-dog at her feet, and down the hillside to the little

-cabin in the hemlocks. They were all she had

-in the world.</p>

-<p>The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look

-and read it rightly.</p>

-<p>He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to count me, Ruth. You&rsquo;ve got

-me, you know.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Perhaps it was because he had so answered

-her unspoken thought. Perhaps it was because

-she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it was

-just the eternal surrender of woman.</p>

-<p>When she looked up at him her eyes were full

-of great, shining tears, the first that they had

-known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run

-out into the night.</p>

-<p>He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they

-faced the white, desolate world all below them

-and plighted to each other their untried troth.</p>

-<p>When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white

-bosom of the hillside, and the people were dispersing

-from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting

-came and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop&rsquo;s

-sharp old eyes had told him to expect something of

-what was coming. He liked the look of the boy&rsquo;s

-clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance

-of his eyes. They told of dependableness and

-plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was not a

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>

-boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be

-his.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ruth told me that you were going to take

-her away from the hills,&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;To a

-school, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I made a promise to her father,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop, &ldquo;that I would try to see that she got the

-chance that she will want in the world.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I love her. She&rsquo;s going to marry me in

-the Spring.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop was surprised. He had not

-thought matters had gone so far.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; he asked thoughtfully.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Twenty in April.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You have some education?&rdquo; the Bishop suggested.

-&ldquo;You have been at school?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth.

-And last Winter at the Academy in Lowville. I

-was going to Albany to law school next week.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And you are giving it all up for Ruth,&rdquo; said

-the Bishop incisively. &ldquo;Does it hurt?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The boy winced, but caught himself at once.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It don&rsquo;t make any difference about that. I

-want Ruth.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And Ruth? What does she want?&rdquo; the

-Bishop asked. &ldquo;You are offering to make a sacrifice

-for her. You are willing to give up your

-hopes and work yourself to the bone here on these

-hills for her. And you would be man enough

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>

-never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe

-that. But what of her? You find it hard

-enough to give up your chance, for her, for love.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you know that you are asking her to give

-up her chance, for nothing, for less than nothing;

-because in giving up her chance she would

-know that she had taken away yours, too. She

-would be a good and loving companion to you

-through all of a hard life. But, for both your

-sakes, she would never forgive you. Never.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re asking me to give her up. If she went

-out and got a start, she&rsquo;d go faster than I could.

-I know it,&rdquo; said the boy bitterly. &ldquo;She&rsquo;d go away

-above me. I&rsquo;d lose her.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am not asking you to give her up,&rdquo; the

-Bishop returned steadily. &ldquo;If you are the man

-I think you are, you will never give her up. But

-are you afraid to let her have her chance in the

-sun? Are you afraid to let her have what you

-want for yourself? Are you afraid?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The boy looked steadily into the Bishop&rsquo;s eyes

-for a moment. Then he turned quickly and

-walked across the room to where Ruth sat.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t give it up, Ruth,&rdquo; he said gruffly.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to Albany to school. I can&rsquo;t give it

-up.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t have tried to lie, Jeff; though

-it&rsquo;s just like you to put the blame on yourself. I

-know what he said. I must think.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span></div>

-<p>The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He

-saw them suddenly light up. He knew what that

-meant. She was seeing the great world with all

-its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he

-himself had seen it. Now he knew that he had

-lost.</p>

-<p>The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready

-to go. The day was slipping away and before

-him there were thirty miles and a train to be

-caught.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We must not be hurried, my children,&rdquo; he

-said, standing by the boy and girl. &ldquo;The Sacred

-Heart Academy at Athens is the best school

-this side of Albany. The Mother Superior will

-write you in a few days, telling you when and

-how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go

-as she directs.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You have been a good, brave little girl. A

-soldier&rsquo;s daughter could be no more, nor less.

-God bless you now, and you, too, my boy,&rdquo; he

-added.</p>

-<p>When he was settled on the sled with Arsene

-and they were rounding the shoulder of Lansing

-Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace,

-he turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;To-day,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;I have set two

-ambitious, eager souls upon the high and stony

-paths of the great world. Should I have left them

-where they were?</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I shall never know whether I did right or not.

-Even time will mix things up so that I&rsquo;ll never be

-able to tell. Maybe some day God will let me

-see. But why should he? One can only aim

-right, and trust in Him.&rdquo;</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>

-<a name='II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN' id='II_THE_CHOIR_UNSEEN'></a>

-<h2>II</h2>

-<h3>THE CHOIR UNSEEN</h3>

-</div>

-<p>Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms

-of the Sacred Heart convent in Athens thrumming

-out a finger exercise that a child of six would have

-been able to do as well as she.</p>

-<p>It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world,

-this, into which she had been suddenly transplanted.

-It was as different from the great world

-that she had come out to see as it was from the

-wild, sweet life of the hills where she had ruled

-and managed everything within reach. Mainly it

-was full of girls of her own age whose talk and

-thoughts were of a range entirely new to her.</p>

-<p>She compared herself with them and knew that

-they were really children in the comparison.

-Their talk was of dress and manners and society

-and the thousand little and big things that growing

-girls look forward to. She knew that in any

-real test, anything that demanded common sense

-and action, she was years older than they. But

-they had things that she did not have.</p>

-<p>They talked of things that she knew nothing

-about. They could walk across waxed floors as

-though waxed floors were meant to be walked on.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>

-They could rise to recite lessons without stammering

-or choking as she did. They could take reproof

-jauntily, where she, who had never in her

-life received a scolding, would have been driven

-into hysterics. They could wear new dresses just

-as though all dresses were supposed to be new.

-She knew that these were not things that they had

-learned by studying. They just grew up to them,

-just as she knew how to throw a fishing line and

-hold a rifle.</p>

-<p>But she wanted all those things that they had;

-wanted them all passionately. She had the sense

-to know that those were not great things. But

-they were the things that would make her like

-these other girls. And she wanted to be like

-them.</p>

-<p>Because she had not grown up with other girls,

-because she had never even had a girl playmate,

-she wanted not to miss any of the things that they

-had and were.</p>

-<p>They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick,

-eager mind sprang at books and fairly tore the

-lessons from them. She ran away from the girls

-in anything that could be learned in that way.

-But when she found herself with two or three of

-them they talked a language that she did not know.

-She could not keep up with them. And she

-was stupid and awkward, and felt it. It was not

-easy to break into their world and be one of them.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span></div>

-<p>Then there was that other world, touching the

-world of the girls but infinitely removed from it&ndash;&ndash;the

-world of the sisters.</p>

-<p>That mysterious cloister from which the sisters

-came and gave their hours of teaching or duty and

-to which they retreated back again was a world all

-by itself.</p>

-<p>What was there in there behind those doors

-that never banged? What was there in there

-that made the sisters all so very much alike?

-They must once have been as different as every

-girl is different from every other girl.</p>

-<p>How was it that they could carry with them

-all day long that air of never being tired or fretted

-or worried? What wonderful presence was there

-behind the doors of that cloistered house that

-seemed to come out with them and stay with them

-all the time? What was the light that shone in

-their faces?</p>

-<p>Was it just because they were always contented

-and happy? What did they have to be happy

-about?</p>

-<p>Ruth had tried to question the other girls about

-this. They were Catholics. They ought to

-know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her

-question aside with a stare:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Sisters always look like that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind

-kept prying at that world of the sisters behind

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>

-those walls. What did they do in there? Did

-they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people?

-Or did they just pray all the time? Or

-did they see wonderful, starry visions of God and

-Heaven that they were always talking about?

-They seemed so familiar with God. They knew

-just when He was pleased and especially when He

-was displeased.</p>

-<p>She had come down out of her hills where

-everything was so open, where there were no mysteries,

-where everything from the bark on the trees

-to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away,

-was as clear as a printed book. Everything up

-there told its plain lesson. She could read the

-storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had

-been hidden. Nothing in nature or life up there

-had ever shut itself away from her.</p>

-<p>Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of

-them closing its door in the face of her sharp,

-hungry mind.</p>

-<p>And there was that other world, enveloping all

-the other lesser worlds about her&ndash;&ndash;the world of

-the Catholic Church.</p>

-<p>Three weeks ago those two words had meant

-to her a little green building in French Village

-where the &ldquo;Canucks&rdquo; went to church.</p>

-<p>Now her day began and ended with it. It was

-on all sides of her. The pictures and the images

-on every wall, the signs on every classroom door.

-The books she read, the talk she heard was all

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>

-filled with it. It came and went through every

-door of life.</p>

-<p>All the inherited prejudices of her line of New

-England fathers were alive and stirring in her

-against this religion that demanded so much.

-The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given

-her fought against it. It was so absolute. It was

-so sure of everything. She wanted to argue with

-it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must

-be wrong sometimes.</p>

-<p>But just when she was sure that she had found

-something false, something that she knew was not

-right in the things they taught her, she was always

-told that she had not understood. Some one was

-always ready to tell her, in an easy, patient,

-amused way, that she had gotten the thing wrong.

-How could they always be so sure? And what

-was wrong with her that she could not understand?

-She could learn everything else faster and more

-easily than the other girls could.</p>

-<p>Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her

-hands fell nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were

-blinded with great, burning tears. A wave of intolerable

-longing and loneliness swept over her.</p>

-<p>The wonderful, enchanting world that she had

-come out of her hills to conquer was cut down

-to the four little grey walls that enclosed her.

-Everything was shut away from her. She did not

-understand these strange women about her.

-Would never understand them.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span></div>

-<p>Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where

-Daddy Tom was near her, where there was love

-for her, where the people and even the snow and

-the wild winds were her friends?</p>

-<p>She threw herself forward on her arms and

-gave way utterly, crying in great, heart-breaking,

-breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her home,

-for her hills.</p>

-<p>At five o&rsquo;clock Sister Rose, coming to see that

-the music rooms were aired for the evening use,

-found Ruth an inert, shapeless little bundle of

-broken nerves lying across the piano.</p>

-<p>She took the girl to her room and sent for the

-sister infirmarian.</p>

-<p>But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only

-to leave her alone.</p>

-<p>The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness

-that every new pupil in a boarding school

-is liable to, sent some of the other girls in during

-the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she

-drove them away. She was not cross nor pettish.

-But her soul was sick for the sweeping freedom

-of her hills and for people who could understand

-her.</p>

-<p>She rose and dragged her little couch over to

-the window, where she could look out and up to

-the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped down

-upon her in the hills.</p>

-<p>She did not know the names that they had in

-books, but she had framed little pet names for

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>

-them all out of her baby fancies and the names had

-clung to them all the years.</p>

-<p>She recognised them, although they did not

-stand in the places where they belonged when she

-looked at them from the hills.</p>

-<p>Out among them somewhere was Heaven.

-Daddy Tom was there, and her mother whom she

-had never seen.</p>

-<p>Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it

-seemed, there came stealing into her sense a sound.

-Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so illusive.

-It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear

-as other sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to

-steal past the clumsy senses directly into the spirit

-and the heart.</p>

-<p>It was music. Yes. But it was as though the

-Soul of Music had freed itself of the bondage and

-the body of sound and notes and came carrying its

-unutterable message straight to the soul of the

-world.</p>

-<p>It was only the sisters in their chapel gently

-hymning the <i>Salve</i> of the Compline to their Queen

-in Heaven.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued,

-sweetly poignant evensong on every other

-night. Other nights, her mind filled with books

-and its other business, the music had scarcely

-reached her. To-night her soul was alive. Her

-every sense was like a nerve laid bare, ready to be

-thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span></div>

-<p>She did not think of the sisters. She saw the

-deep rose flush of the windows in the dimly lighted

-chapel across the court, and knew vaguely, perhaps,

-that the music came from there. But it carried

-her beyond all thought.</p>

-<p>She did not hear the words of the hymn.

-Would not have understood them if she had heard.

-But the lifting of hearts to <i>Our Life, our Sweetness

-and our Hope</i> caught her heart up into a

-world where words were never needed.</p>

-<p>She heard the cry of the <i>Banished children of

-Eve</i>. The <i>Mourning and weeping in this vale

-of tears</i> swept into her soul like the flood-tide of

-all the sorrow of all the world.</p>

-<p>On and upwards the music carried her, until she

-could hear the triumph, until her soul rang with

-the glory and the victory of <i>The Promises of

-Christ</i>.</p>

-<p>The music ceased. She saw the light fade from

-the chapel windows, leaving only the one little

-blood-red spot of light before the altar. She lay

-there trembling, not daring to move, while the

-echo of that unseen choir caught her heartstrings

-and set them ringing to the measure of the heart

-of the world.</p>

-<p>It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and

-helplessness but the undying hope of the world

-that she had heard. It was the cry of the little

-blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of

-martyrs on their pyres. It was the cry of strong

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>

-men and valiant women crushed under the forces

-of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic

-Church, which knows what the soul of the world

-is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this. She realised

-it as she lay there trembling.</p>

-<p>Always, as long as life was in her; always,

-whether she worked or laughed, cried or played;

-always that voice would grip her heart and play

-upon it and lead her whether she would or no.</p>

-<p>It would lead her. It would carry her. It

-would send her.</p>

-<p>Through all the long night she fought it. She

-would not! She would not give up her life, her

-will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?</p>

-<p>It would take her spirit out of the freedom of

-the hills and make it follow a trodden way. It

-would take her life out of her hands and maybe

-ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and

-the wind, in a darkened convent. It would take

-her will, the will of a soldier&rsquo;s daughter, and break

-it into little pieces to make a path for her to walk

-upon!</p>

-<p>No! No! No! Through all the endless

-night she moaned her protest. She would not!

-She would not give in to it.</p>

-<p>It would never let her rest. Through all her

-life that voice of the Choir Unseen would strike

-the strings of her heart. She knew it.</p>

-<p>But she would not. Never would she give in

-to it.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span></div>

-<p>In the morning, even before the coming of the

-dawn, the music came again; and it beat upon her

-worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched at

-her heart until she could stand it no longer.</p>

-<p>The sisters were taking up again the burden and

-the way of the day.</p>

-<p>She could not stand it! She could not stay

-here! She must go back to her hills, where there

-was peace for her.</p>

-<p>She heard the sister going down to unlock the

-street door so that Father Tenney could walk in

-when it was time and go up to the chapel for the

-sisters&rsquo; early mass.</p>

-<p>That was her chance! The sisters would be in

-chapel. The girls would be still in their rooms.</p>

-<p>She dressed hastily and threw her books into a

-bag. She would take only these and her money.

-She had enough to get home on. The rest did

-not matter.</p>

-<p>When she heard the priest&rsquo;s step pass in the

-hall, she slipped out and down the dim, broad

-stairs.</p>

-<p>The great, heavy door of the convent stood

-like the gate of the world. It swung slowly, deliberately,

-on its well-oiled, silent hinges.</p>

-<p>She stood in the portal a moment, drinking

-hungrily the fresh, free air of the morning that

-had come down from her hills. Then she fled

-away into the dawn.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span></div>

-<p>The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain

-as Jeffrey Whiting came out of his mother&rsquo;s

-house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His

-uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn

-with the team and sled. Jeffrey threw his trunk

-upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe. It

-was twenty-five miles of half broken road and

-snowdrifts to Lowville and the railroad.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical

-American farm boy has been doing for the last

-hundred years and what he will probably continue

-to do as long as we Americans are what we are.

-He is not always a dreamer, your farm boy, when

-he starts down from his hills or his cross-roads

-farm to see the big world and conquer it. More

-often than you would think, he knows that he is

-not going to conquer it at all. And he is not, on

-the other hand, merely running away from the

-drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will

-probably have to work harder than he would ever

-have worked on the farm. But he knows that he

-has things to sell. And he is going down into the

-markets of men. He has a good head and a

-strong body. He has a power of work in him.

-He has grit and energy.</p>

-<p>He is going down into the markets where men

-pay the price for these things that he has. He is

-going to fight men for that price which he knows

-his things are worth.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span></div>

-<p>Jeffrey&rsquo;s mother came out carrying a canvas

-satchel which she put on the sled under Cassius

-Bascom&rsquo;s feet.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t kick that, Catty,&rdquo; she warned, &ldquo;Jeff&rsquo;s

-lunch is in it. And, Jeff, don&rsquo;t you go and check

-it with the trunk.&rdquo; There was just a little catch

-in the laugh with which she said this. She was

-remembering a day more than twenty years before

-when she had started, a bride, with big, lumbering,

-slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting, Jeffrey&rsquo;s

-father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with

-their lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting

-checked the satchel through from Lowville to Buffalo,

-and they had nearly starved on the way. It

-was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity.

-But she never quite forgave him for telling it on

-himself when they got back. It had been a standing

-joke in the hills all these years.</p>

-<p>She was just a typical mother of the hills. She

-loved her boy. She needed him. She knew that

-she would never have him again. The boys do

-not come back from the market place. She knew

-that she would cry for him through many a lonely

-night, as she had cried all last night. But she was

-not crying now.</p>

-<p>Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his

-as she stretched her arms up around the neck of

-her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss her.</p>

-<p>He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart.

-He knew his mother very well. So he began with

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span>

-the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to tell

-when we were leaving.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll only be a little while, Mother. You

-won&rsquo;t find the time slipping by, and I&rsquo;ll be back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys

-always knew it was a lie. But she backed him up

-sturdily:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, of course, Jeff. Don&rsquo;t worry about me.

-You&rsquo;ll be back in no time.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the

-house with a dark, oblong object in her hands.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just

-tried to forget this on purpose. It&rsquo;s too late to

-put it in the trunk now; so you&rsquo;ll just have to put

-it in your overcoat pocket.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown

-brick covered with felt, a foot warmer. Aunt

-Letty had made him take one with him when he

-went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter,

-and he and his brick had furnished much of the

-winter&rsquo;s amusement there. The memory of his

-humiliations on account of that brick would last a

-lifetime. He wondered why maiden aunts could

-not understand. His mother, now, would have

-known better. But he dutifully put the thing into

-the pocket of his big coat&ndash;&ndash;he could drop it into

-the first snowback&ndash;&ndash;and turned to kiss his aunt.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany,&rdquo;

-she lectured. &ldquo;Make your landlady heat

-it for you every night.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span></div>

-<p>A noise in the road made them all turn.</p>

-<p>Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were

-driving into the yard.</p>

-<p>It was evident from the signs that the men

-had been having a hard time on the road. They

-must have been out all night, for they could not

-have started from anywhere early enough to be

-here now at sunrise.</p>

-<p>Their harness had been broken and mended in

-several places. The cutter had a runner broken.

-The horses were cut and bloody, where they had

-kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.</p>

-<p>As they drove up beside the group in the yard,

-one of the men shouted:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Say, is there any place we can put in here?

-We&rsquo;ve been on that road all night.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and

-warm yourselves,&rdquo; said Mrs. Whiting.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Rogers,&rdquo; said the man who had spoken, addressing

-the other, &ldquo;if I ever get into a place that&rsquo;s

-warm, I&rsquo;ll stay there till spring.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of

-the cutter and stepped stiffly out into the snow.

-He swept the group with a sharp, a praising eye,

-and asked:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s the one to talk to here?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and

-replied with another question.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>

-grey moustache and cold grey eyes, looked the

-youth over carefully as he spoke.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I want a man that knows this country and can

-get around in it in this season. I was brought up

-in the country, but I never saw anything like this.

-I wouldn&rsquo;t take a trip like this again for any

-money. I can&rsquo;t do this sort of thing. I want a

-man that knows the country and the people and

-can do it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going away now,&rdquo; said Jeffrey

-slowly, &ldquo;but Uncle Catty here knows the people

-and the country better than most and he can go

-anywhere.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish

-man on the sled. Then he turned away decisively.

-Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old face

-all withered and puckered to one side, where a

-splinter of shell from Fort Fisher had taken away

-his right eye, was evidently not the kind of man

-that the big man wanted.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo; he asked Jeffrey

-sharply.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Albany Law School,&rdquo; said Jeffrey promptly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Unstrap the trunk, young man. You&rsquo;re not

-going. I&rsquo;ve got something for you right here at

-home that&rsquo;ll teach you more than ten law schools.

-Put both teams into the barn,&rdquo; the big man commanded

-loudly.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would

-oppose the will of this brusque stranger. But he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>

-knew that he would not do so. In that moment

-something told him that he would not go to law

-school; would never go there; that his life was

-about to take a twist away from everything that he

-had ever intended.</p>

-<p>Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Come into the house.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom

-poured boiling tea for the two men, Rogers, cup

-in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and explained

-himself. The other man, whose name

-does not matter, sank into a great wooden chair

-at the side of the fire and seemed to be ready to

-make good his threat of staying until spring.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I represent the U. &amp; M. railroad. We are

-coming up through here in the spring. All these

-farms have to be given up. We have eminent domain

-for this whole section,&rdquo; said Rogers.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Jeffrey. &ldquo;The

-railroad can&rsquo;t run <i>all over</i> the country.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No. But the road will need the whole strip

-of hills for timber. They&rsquo;ll cut off what is standing

-and then they&rsquo;ll stock the whole country with

-cedar, for ties. That&rsquo;s all the land&rsquo;s good for,

-anyway.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s mouth opened for an answer

-to this, but his mother&rsquo;s sharp, warning glance

-stopped him. He understood that it was his place

-to listen and learn. There would be time enough

-for questions and arguments afterward.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Now these people here won&rsquo;t understand what

-eminent domain means,&rdquo; the big man went on.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to make it clear to you, young man.

-I know who you are and I know more about you

-than you think. I&rsquo;m going to make it clear to you

-and then I&rsquo;m going to send you out among them

-to make them see it. They wouldn&rsquo;t understand

-me and they wouldn&rsquo;t believe me. You can make

-them see it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How do you know that I&rsquo;ll believe you?&rdquo;

-asked Jeffrey.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got brains. You don&rsquo;t have to <i>believe</i>.

-I can <i>show</i> it to you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed

-to taking responsibilities upon himself.

-He had never been afraid of anything and this

-perhaps had given him more than the average

-boy&rsquo;s good opinion of himself. Nothing could

-have appealed to him more subtly than this man&rsquo;s

-bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to

-man by a man of the world. No boy is proof

-against the compliment that he is a man, to be

-dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced

-men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you know what an option is?&rdquo; the man

-began again.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course I do.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; said Rogers, in a manner that

-seemed to confirm his previous judgment of

-Jeffrey&rsquo;s brains. &ldquo;Now then, the railroad has got

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>

-to have all these farms from Beaver River right

-up to the head of Little Tupper Lake. I say these

-people won&rsquo;t know what eminent domain means.

-You&rsquo;re going to tell them. It means that they can

-sell at the railroad&rsquo;s price or they can hold off

-and a referee will be appointed to name a price.

-The railroad will have a big say in appointing

-those referees. Do you understand me?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. I see,&rdquo; said Jeffrey. &ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No buts at all about it, young man,&rdquo; said Rogers,

-waving his hand. &ldquo;The people have got to

-sell. If they give options at once&ndash;&ndash;within thirty

-days&ndash;&ndash;they&rsquo;ll get more than a fair price for their

-land. If they don&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;if they hold off&ndash;&ndash;their

-farms will be condemned as forest land. And you

-know how much that brings.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You people will be the first. You can ask almost

-anything for your land. You&rsquo;ll get it.

-And, what is more, I am able to offer you, Whiting,

-a very liberal commission on every option

-you can get me within the time I have said. This

-is the thing that I can&rsquo;t do. It&rsquo;s the thing that I

-want you to do.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll do it. I know you will, when you get

-time to think it over. Here are the options,&rdquo; said

-the big man, pulling a packet of folded papers

-out of his pocket. &ldquo;They cover every farm in

-the section. All you have to do is to get the

-people to write their names once. Then your

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>

-work is done. We&rsquo;ll do the rest and your commissions

-will be waiting for you. Some better

-than law school, eh?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But say,&rdquo; Jeffrey stammered, &ldquo;say, that

-means, why, that means my mother and the folks

-here, why, they&rsquo;d have to get out; they&rsquo;d have to

-leave their home!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Rogers easily. &ldquo;A man

-like you isn&rsquo;t going to keep his family up on top of

-this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you&rsquo;ll

-have the best home in Lowville for them, where

-they can live in style, in less than six months. Do

-you think your mother wants to stay here after

-you&rsquo;re gone. You were going away. Did you

-think,&rdquo; he said shrewdly, &ldquo;what life up here would

-be worth to your mother while you were away.

-No, you&rsquo;re just like all boys. You wanted to get

-away yourself. But you never thought what a

-life this is for her.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, boy, she&rsquo;s a young woman yet. You

-can take her out and give her a chance to live.

-Do you hear, a chance to live.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Think it over.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than

-he had ever tried to think in his life. But he could

-make nothing of it.</p>

-<p>He thought of the people, old and young, on

-the hills, suddenly set adrift from their homes.

-He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius and

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>

-Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back

-to. And he thought of money&ndash;&ndash;illimitable

-money: money that could do everything.</p>

-<p>He did not want to look at his mother for counsel.

-The man&rsquo;s talk had gone to his head. But,

-slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his mother&rsquo;s,

-and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look

-which told him to wait, wait. He caught the

-meaning and spoke it brusquely:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;All right. Leave the options here. I&rsquo;ll see

-what we&rsquo;ll do. And I&rsquo;ll write to you next week.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>No. That would not do. The big man must

-have his answer at once. He stormed at Jeffrey.

-He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished

-Miss Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius,

-but that guileless man led him off into such a discussion

-of cross grafting and reforestation that he

-was glad to drop him.</p>

-<p>In the end, he saw that, having committed himself,

-he could do no better than leave the matter

-to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for thought,

-the boy could not refuse his offer.</p>

-<p>So the two men, having breakfasted and rested

-their horses, set out on the down trip to Lowville.</p>

-<p>Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother

-came to a decision.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is too big for us, Jeff,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We do

-not know what it means. Nobody up here can tell

-us. The man was lying. But we do not know

-why, or what about.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;There is one man that could tell us. The

-White Horse Chaplain, do you remember him,

-Jeffrey?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Only to give her her chance, my son. Do

-not forget that. He could tell us what this means.

-I don&rsquo;t care anything about his religion. Your

-Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day

-at Fort Fisher. I don&rsquo;t. He is the Catholic

-Bishop of Alden. You&rsquo;ll go to him to-morrow.

-He&rsquo;ll tell you what it means.&rdquo;</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very

-much worried. For the third time he picked up

-and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of

-the Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him

-that Ruth Lansing had left the convent that morning.

-But the third perusal of the message did not

-give him any more light on the matter than the

-two previous readings had done.</p>

-<p>Why should the girl have gone away? What

-could have happened? Only the other day he

-had received a letter from her telling of her studies

-and her progress and of every new thing that was

-interesting her.</p>

-<p>The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home

-where he had found her &ldquo;Daddy Tom&rdquo; dying,

-and where he had buried him on the hillside.

-Probably the girl would go back and try to live

-there. And he thought of the boy who had told

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>

-him of his love and that he wanted to keep Ruth

-there in the hills.</p>

-<p>As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary

-came to the door to tell him that the boy,

-Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking

-to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature

-of his business to any one but the Bishop himself.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was startled. He had understood

-that the young man was in Albany at school.

-Now he thought that he would get a very clear

-light upon Ruth Lansing&rsquo;s disappearance.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I came to you, sir,&rdquo; said Jeffrey when the

-Bishop had given him a chair, &ldquo;because you could

-tell us what to do.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You mean you and your&ndash;&ndash;neighbour, Ruth

-Lansing?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, no, sir. What about her?&rdquo; said

-Jeffrey quickly.</p>

-<p>The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching

-look, and saw his mistake. The boy knew nothing.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; the Bishop answered, as he handed

-Jeffrey the open telegram.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But where&rsquo;s she gone? Why did she go?&rdquo;

-Jeffrey broke out, as he read the message.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I thought you were coming to tell me that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop&rsquo;s

-meaning quickly. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t write to me, not

-at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn&rsquo;t have it.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>

-But she wrote to my mother and she didn&rsquo;t say

-anything about leaving there.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I suppose not,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;She seems

-to have gone away suddenly. But, I am forgetting.

-You came to talk to me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly

-and shortly, of the coming of Rogers and his

-proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to

-tell how he had been carried away by the man&rsquo;s

-offer and his flattery. He made it plain that it

-was only his mother&rsquo;s insight and caution that had

-held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.</p>

-<p>The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness

-of the young fellow. It was good to

-hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his

-old-fashioned, stiff way and said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise

-woman. You will convey to her my deepest respect.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I do not know what it all means,&rdquo; he went on,

-in another tone. &ldquo;But I can soon find out.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the

-door the Bishop said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Will you see, please, if General Chandler is

-in his office across the street. If he is, give him

-my respects and ask him to step over here a moment.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the

-doorway.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked the Bishop.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She

-says she must see you, but she will not give a name.

-She seems to be in trouble, or frightened.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for

-the door.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Sit down where you were, young man,&rdquo; said

-the Bishop sharply. If Ruth Lansing were out

-there&ndash;&ndash;and the Bishop half believed that she was&ndash;&ndash;well,

-it <i>might</i> be coincidence. But it was too

-much for the Bishop&rsquo;s credulity.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Send the girl in here,&rdquo; he said shortly.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went

-straight to the Bishop. She did not see Jeffrey.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I came straight here all the way,&rdquo; she said,

-&ldquo;to tell you, Bishop, that I couldn&rsquo;t stay in the

-convent any longer. I am going home. I could

-not stay there.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am very glad to see you, Ruth,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop easily, &ldquo;and if you&rsquo;ll just turn around, I

-think you&rsquo;ll see some one who is even more

-pleased.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at

-sight of Jeffrey was abundant proof to the Bishop

-that the coming of these two to his door was indeed

-a coincidence.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the Bishop quickly, &ldquo;you will

-both sit down and listen. It concerns both of you

-deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General

-Chandler. You have both heard of him.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>

-He is the political power of this part of the State.

-He can, if he will, tell us just how serious your situation

-is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just

-listen.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise

-and perhaps a little resentment. For hours

-she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal

-of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely

-told to sit down and listen to something, she did

-not know what.</p>

-<p>The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler

-was ushered into the room and the two veterans

-saluted each other with the stiffest of military precision.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;These are two young friends of mine from

-the hills, General,&rdquo; said the Bishop, as he seated

-his old friend. &ldquo;They both own farms in the

-Beaver Run country. They have come to me to

-find out what the U. &amp; M. Railroad wants with

-options on all that country. Can you, will you

-tell them?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The General plucked for a moment at the empty

-left sleeve of his coat.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, Bishop,&rdquo; he said finally, &ldquo;I cannot give

-out what I know of that matter. The interests

-behind it are too large for me. I would not dare.

-I do not often have to say that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly, &ldquo;I never heard

-you say that before.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I can do this, Bishop,&rdquo; said the General,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>

-rising. &ldquo;If you will come over here to the end

-of the room, I can tell you, privately, what I know.

-You can then use your own prudence to judge

-how much you can tell these young people.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop followed to the window at the other

-end of the room, where the two men stood and

-talked in undertones.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey,&rdquo; said Ruth through teeth that gritted

-with impatience, &ldquo;if you don&rsquo;t tell me this instant

-what it&rsquo;s all about, I&rsquo;ll&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ll <i>bite</i> you!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little

-wild outbreak of hers to convince him that the

-young lady who had swept into the room and faced

-the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth,

-after all.</p>

-<p>In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.</p>

-<p>The Bishop walked to the door with the General,

-thanking him. From the door the General

-saluted gravely and stalked away.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The answer,&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly, as he

-came back to them, &ldquo;is one word&ndash;&ndash;Iron.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making

-a mysterious fuss about nothing. But Jeffrey saw

-the whole matter instantly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No one knows how much there is, or how little

-there is,&rdquo; said the Bishop. &ldquo;The man lied to you,

-Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain. But

-they can get it if they get the options on a large

-part of the farms. Then, when they have the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>

-right of eminent domain, they will let the options

-lapse and buy the properties at their own prices.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll start back to warn the people to-night,&rdquo;

-said Jeffrey, jumping up. &ldquo;Maybe they made

-that offer to other people besides me!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; said the Bishop, &ldquo;there is more to

-think of. The railroad, if you serve it well, will,

-no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it is

-worth to you. There is your mother to be considered

-first. And they will, very likely, give you

-a chance to make a small fortune in your commissions,

-if you are faithful to them. If you go to

-fight them, they will probably crush you all in the

-end, and you will be left with little or nothing.

-Better go slowly, young man.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried Jeffrey. &ldquo;Take their bribe!

-Take their money, for fooling and cheating the

-other people out of their homes! Why, before

-I&rsquo;d do that, I&rsquo;d leave that farm and everything

-that&rsquo;s there and go up into the big woods with

-only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my

-mother would follow me! You know that! My

-mother would be glad to go with me, with nothing,

-nothing in her hands!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And so would I!&rdquo; said Ruth, springing to her

-feet. &ldquo;I <i>would</i>! I <i>would</i>!&rdquo; she chanted defiantly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, well, well!&rdquo; said the Bishop, smiling.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But you are not going up into the big woods,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>

-Jeffrey,&rdquo; Ruth said demurely. &ldquo;You are going

-back home to fight them. If I could help you I

-would go back with you. I would not be of any

-use. So, I&rsquo;m going back, to the convent, to face

-my fight.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But, but,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;I thought you were

-running away.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I did. I was,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;Last night I

-heard the voice of something calling to me. It

-was such a big thing,&rdquo; she went on, turning to the

-Bishop; &ldquo;it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing

-that I thought it would crush me. It would take

-my life and make me do what <i>it</i> wanted, not what

-I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It

-was like a Choir Unseen singing to me to follow,

-and I didn&rsquo;t dare follow.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey

-spoke that way. Now I know what it was. It

-was the call of life to everybody to face life, to

-take our souls in our hands and go forward. I

-thought I could turn back. I can&rsquo;t. God, or

-life won&rsquo;t let us turn back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing,&rdquo;

-said the Bishop. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you came away,

-to have it out with yourself. And you will be

-very glad now to go back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;As for you, young man,&rdquo; he turned to

-Jeffrey, &ldquo;I should say that your mother <i>would</i> be

-proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you.

-Remember that, when you are in the worst of this

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>

-fight that is before you. When you are tempted,

-as you will be tempted, remember it. When you

-are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed,

-<i>remember it</i>.&rdquo;</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>

-<a name='III_GLOW_OF_DAWN' id='III_GLOW_OF_DAWN'></a>

-<h2>III</h2>

-<h3>GLOW OF DAWN</h3>

-</div>

-<p>Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to

-his breakfast. It was past the middle of June, or,

-as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was the

-time when the snow water and the water from the

-spring rains had already gone down to the Big

-River: Beaver Run was still a fresh, rushing

-stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon

-there would not be enough water in it to make it

-safe for a trout as large as he. Then he would

-have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver

-River, where the saw-dust came to bother him.</p>

-<p>He was going up to lie all the morning in the

-shallow little pond at the very head of Beaver

-Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and drew

-the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very

-fond of flies and the pond was his own. He had

-made it his own now through four seasons, by his

-speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,

-quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below

-did not dispute with him this sweet upper stretch

-of his own stream. No large fish ever came up

-this way now, and he did not bother with the little

-ones. He liked flies better.</p>

-<p>His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>

-cool yet, for the sun was not high enough to have

-heated it through: a beautiful breakfast room at

-the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that

-ran away up on every side to the rim of the high

-hills.</p>

-<p>Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast.

-The sun had not yet begun to draw the flies from

-their hiding places to buzz over the surface of

-the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool

-only one fly was in sight. A rather decrepit looking

-black fly was doddering about a cat-tail stalk

-at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his

-body, and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and

-took the fly in his leap. But that was no breakfast.

-He would have to settle down by the cat-tails,

-in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.</p>

-<p>Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond

-this season. Always, in other years, two people,

-a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as he

-ate his breakfast. The girl had called him

-Twinkle-tail the very first time they had seen him.

-But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They were not

-friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow

-of the cat-tails and watch them as they crept along

-the edge of the bank. But he knew they came to

-catch him. When they were there the most

-tempting flies seemed to appear. Some of those

-flies fell into the water, others just skimmed the

-surface in the most aggravating and challenging

-manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>

-the cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl

-came to his side of the pond, then a lightning

-twinkle of his tail was all that told them that he

-had scooted out of the pool and down into the

-stream. Once the girl had trailed a piece of

-flashing red flannel across the water, and Twinkle-tail

-could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible

-hook caught him in the side of the mouth!

-In his fury and terror he dove and fought until he

-broke the hook. He had never forgotten that

-lesson.</p>

-<p>But he was forgetting a little this season. No

-one came to his pool. He was growing big and

-fat, and a little careless.</p>

-<p>As he lay there in the warming sand by the

-cat-tails, the biggest, juiciest green bottle fly that

-Twinkle-tail had ever seen came skimming down

-to the very line of the water. It circled once.

-Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not

-an inch from the water!</p>

-<p>A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and

-Twinkle-tail was out of the water! He had the

-fly in his mouth.</p>

-<p>Then the struggle began.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the

-shoulder of the bank behind which she had been

-hiding.</p>

-<p>The trout dove and started for the stream, the

-line ripping through the water like a shot.</p>

-<p>The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span>

-strong, slender, boy-like body giving and swaying

-cunningly to every tug of the fish.</p>

-<p>He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool,

-throwing her off her balance and down into the

-water. She rose wet and angry, clinging grimly

-to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side

-of the pond. She did not dare to stand and pull

-against him, for fear of breaking the hook. She

-could only race around, giving him all the line she

-could until he should tire a little.</p>

-<p>Three times they fought around the circle of the

-pool, the taut line singing like a wire in the wind.

-Ruth&rsquo;s hand was cut where she had fallen on the

-rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head

-to foot. Her breath came in great, gulping sobs.

-But she fought on.</p>

-<p>Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down

-the Run, but she headed him back each time to the

-pond where she could handle him better. She

-had never before fought so big a fish all alone.

-Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had always been with her.

-Now she found herself calling desperately under

-her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She

-bit back the words and took a new hold on the

-pole.</p>

-<p>The trout was running blindly now from side

-to side of the pond. He had lost his cunning.

-He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her

-strength was nearly gone too. She must use her

-head quickly.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span></div>

-<p>She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate

-effort. She must catch him as he ran

-toward her and try to flick him out of the water.

-It was her only chance. She might break the line

-or the pole and lose him entirely, but she would

-try it.</p>

-<p>Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water,

-directly at her. She suddenly threw her strength

-on the pole. It bent nearly double but it held.

-And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her

-strength, was whipped clear out on to the grass.

-Dropping the pole, she dove desperately at him

-where he fought on the very edge of the bank.

-Finally she caught the line a few inches above his

-mouth, and her prize was secure.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you, Twinkle-tail,&rdquo; she panted, as she held

-him up for a good look, &ldquo;sure enough!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She carried him back to a large stone and

-despatched him painlessly with a blunt stick.

-Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and

-dizzy from her struggle.</p>

-<p>Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she

-said aloud:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I wish Jeffrey was here. He&rsquo;ll never believe

-it was you unless he sees you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s him all right,&rdquo; said a voice behind

-her. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d know him in a thousand.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, where did you come from? Your mother

-told me you wouldn&rsquo;t be back till to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow

-if you want me to,&rdquo; said Jeffrey,

-smiling.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, Jeff, you know I&rsquo;m glad to see you. I

-was awfully disappointed when I got home and

-found that you were away up in the hills. How

-is your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail,&rdquo;

-she hurried on a little nervously, for Jeffrey

-had her hand and was drawing her determinedly

-to him. She reached for the trout and held him

-up strategically between them.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, <i>Fish</i>!&rdquo; said Jeffrey discontentedly as he

-saw himself beaten by her ruse.</p>

-<p>The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly

-handsome face. Then she seemed to relent,

-and with a friendly little tug at his arm led

-him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit

-down.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now tell me,&rdquo; she commanded, &ldquo;all about

-your battle with the railroad people. Your

-mother told me some things, but I want it all,

-from yourself.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked

-at her dress and shoes and said with a show of

-meanness:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ruth, you didn&rsquo;t catch Twinkle-tail fair, on

-your line. You just walked into the pond and got

-him in a corner and kicked him to death brutally.

-I know you did. You&rsquo;re always cruel.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>

-cut in her hand where she had fallen on the

-rocks.</p>

-<p>Instantly he was all interest and contrition.

-He must wash the hand and dress it! But she

-made him sit where he was, while she knelt down

-by the water and bathed the smarting hand and

-bound it with her handkerchief.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;tell me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he began, when he saw that there was

-nothing to be gained by delay, &ldquo;the very night that

-the Bishop of Alden told me that they had found

-iron in the hills here and that they were going to

-try to push us all out of our homes, I started out

-to warn the people. I found I wasn&rsquo;t the only

-man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had

-Rafe Gadbeau, you know he&rsquo;s a kind of a political

-boss of the French around French Village; and a

-man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but

-he&rsquo;d been spending money around free, and I knew

-the railroad must have given it to him outright.

-I told him what I had found out, about the iron

-and what the land would be worth if the farmers

-held on to it. But I might as well have held my

-breath. He didn&rsquo;t care anything about the interests

-of the people that had land. He was getting

-paid well for every option that he could get. And

-he was going to get all he could. I will have

-trouble with that man yet.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>

-and a good man. They had fooled him, just as

-that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He

-had started out in good faith to help the railroad

-get the properties over on that side of the mountains,

-thinking it was the best thing for the people

-to do to sell out at once. When I told him about

-their finding iron, he saw that they had made a

-catspaw of him; and he was the maddest man you

-ever saw.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He is a big man over that way, and his word

-was worth ten of mine. He went right out with

-me to warn every man who had a piece of land

-not to sign anything.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling

-the whole business for the railroad, came up here

-and had me arrested on charges of extortion and

-conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They

-took me down to Lowville, but Judge Clemmons

-couldn&rsquo;t find anything in the charges. So I was let

-go. But they are not through. They will find

-some way to get me away from here yet.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How does it stand now?&rdquo; said Ruth thoughtfully.

-&ldquo;Have they actually started to build the

-railroad?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes. You know they have the right of

-way to run the road through. But they wouldn&rsquo;t

-build it, at least not for years yet, only that they

-want to get this iron property opened up. Why,

-the road is to run from Welden to French Village

-and there is not a single town on the whole line!

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>

-The road wouldn&rsquo;t have business enough to keep

-the rust off. They&rsquo;re building the road just the

-same, so that shows that they intend to get our

-property some way, no matter what we do. And

-I suppose they will, somehow,&rdquo; he added sullenly.

-&ldquo;They always do, I guess.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But the people,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;can&rsquo;t you get

-them all to join and agree to sell at a fair price?

-Wouldn&rsquo;t that be all right?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t want to buy. They won&rsquo;t buy

-at any fair price. They only want to get options

-enough to show the Legislature and the Governor,

-and then they will be granted eminent domain and

-they can have the land condemned and can buy it

-at the price of wild land.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes; I remember now. That&rsquo;s what the

-Bishop said. Isn&rsquo;t it strange,&rdquo; she went on

-slowly, &ldquo;how he seems to come into everything

-we do. How he saved my Daddy Tom&rsquo;s life that

-time at Fort Fisher. And how he came here that

-night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked

-us up and turned us around and sent me off to

-convent. And now how he seems to come into all

-this.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the

-North,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;I wonder if he comes

-into the lives of <i>all</i> the people that way. At the

-convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging

-to them personally. I resented it at first,

-because I thought I had more reason to know him

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>

-than anybody. But I found that everybody felt

-the same way.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s just like the Catholic Church,&rdquo; said

-Jeffrey suddenly, and a little sharply; &ldquo;he comes

-into everything.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeffrey,&rdquo; said Ruth in surprise, &ldquo;what

-do you know about the Church?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve read some.

-And I&rsquo;ve had to deal a lot with the French people

-up toward French Village. And I&rsquo;ve talked with

-their priest up there. You know you have to talk

-to the priest before it&rsquo;s any use talking to them.

-That&rsquo;s the way with the Catholic Church. It

-comes into everything. I don&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He sat looking across the pool for a moment,

-while Ruth quietly studied the stubborn, settling

-lines of his face. She saw that a few months had

-made a big change in the boy and playmate that

-she had known. He was no longer the bright-faced,

-clear-eyed boy. His face was turning into

-a man&rsquo;s face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and

-of harshness were coming into it. It showed

-strength and doggedness and will, along with some

-of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not

-dislike the change altogether. But it began to

-make her a little timid. She was quick to see from

-it that there would be certain limits beyond which

-she could not play with this new man that she

-found.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right to be religious,&rdquo; he went on argumentatively.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>

-&ldquo;Mother&rsquo;s religious. And Aunt

-Letty&rsquo;s just full of it. But it don&rsquo;t interfere with

-their lives. It&rsquo;s all right to have a preacher for

-marrying or dying or something like that; and to

-go to hear him if you want to. But the Catholic

-Church comes right in to where those people live.

-It tells them what to do and what to think about

-everything. They don&rsquo;t dare speak without looking

-back to it to find out what they must say. I

-don&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeffrey, I&rsquo;m a Catholic!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I <i>knew</i> it!&rdquo; he said stubbornly. &ldquo;I knew it!

-I knew there was something that had changed you.

-And I might have known it was that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s funny!&rdquo; said the girl, breaking in

-quickly. &ldquo;When you came I was just wondering

-to myself why it had not seemed to change me at

-all. I think I was half disappointed with myself,

-to think that I had gone through a wonderful

-experience and it had left me just the same as I

-was before.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But it has changed you,&rdquo; he persisted. &ldquo;And

-it&rsquo;s going to change you a lot more. I can see it.

-Please, Ruth,&rdquo; he said, suddenly softening, &ldquo;you

-won&rsquo;t let it change you? You won&rsquo;t let it make

-any difference, with us, I mean?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his

-face, and said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, Jeffrey. It won&rsquo;t make any difference

-with us, in the way you mean.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;So long as we are what we are,&rdquo; she said again

-after a pause, &ldquo;we will be just the same to each

-other. If it should make something different out

-of me than what I am, then, of course, I would

-not be the same to you. Or if you should change

-into something else, then you would not be the

-same to me.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s too soon,&rdquo; she continued decisively.

-&ldquo;Nothing is clear to me, yet. I&rsquo;ve just entered

-into a great, wonderful world of thought and feeling

-that I never knew existed. Where it leads

-to, I do not know. When I do know, Jeffrey

-dear, I&rsquo;ll tell you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her

-feet, and he understood that she had said the last

-word that was to be said. He saw something in

-her face with which he did not dare to argue.</p>

-<p>He got up saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have to be gone. I&rsquo;m glad I found you here

-at the old place. I&rsquo;ll be back to-night to help you

-eat the trout.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Where are you going?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. There&rsquo;s a couple of

-men over there that are shaky. I&rsquo;ve had to keep

-after them or they&rsquo;d be listening to Rafe Gadbeau

-and letting their land go.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; Ruth exclaimed, &ldquo;now when they

-know, can&rsquo;t they see what is to their own interest!

-Are they blind?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Jeffrey dully. &ldquo;But you know

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>

-how it is with those people. Their land is hard

-to work. It is poor land. They have to scratch

-and scrape for a little money. They don&rsquo;t see

-many dollars together from one year&rsquo;s end to the

-other. Even a little money, ready, green money,

-shaken in their faces looks awful big to them.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Good luck, then, Jeff,&rdquo; she said cheerily;

-&ldquo;and get back early if you can.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; he said easily as he picked up his hat.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And, say, Ruth.&rdquo; He turned back quietly to

-her. &ldquo;If&ndash;&ndash;if I shouldn&rsquo;t be back to-night, or to-morrow;

-why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you?

-I wouldn&rsquo;t say anything to mother. And Uncle

-Catty, well, he&rsquo;s not very sharp sometimes. Will

-you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff,

-please.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, sure,&rdquo; he sang back, as he walked quickly

-around the edge of the pond and slipped into the

-alder bushes through which ran the trail that went

-up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on

-the other side.</p>

-<p>Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily

-up the opposite slope, his grey felt hat and wide

-shoulders showing above the undergrowth.</p>

-<p>This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey

-that she had left when she went down to the convent

-five months before. She could see it in his

-walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside

-just as she had seen it in his face and his talk.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>

-He was fighting with a power that he had found

-to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was

-not discouraged. He had no thought of giving

-up. But the airy edge of his boyish confidence

-in himself was gone. He had become grim and

-thoughtful and determined. He had settled

-down to a long, dogged struggle.</p>

-<p>He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau.

-How much did he mean? Why should he have

-said this to her? Would it not have been better

-to have warned some of the men that were associated

-with him in his fight? And what was

-there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of

-physical fear in connection with Jeffrey. Why,

-nothing ever happened in the hills, anyway.

-Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was

-true, the lumber jacks were rough when they came

-down with the log drives in the spring. But they

-only fought among themselves. And they did not

-stop in the hills. They hurried on down to the

-towns where they could spend their money.</p>

-<p>What had Jeffrey to fear?</p>

-<p>Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He

-would not have spoken to her unless he had good

-reason to think that something might happen to

-him.</p>

-<p>Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the

-temper of the hills. The men were easy-going.

-They were slow of speech. They were generally

-ruled by their more energetic women. But they

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>

-or their fathers had all been fighting men, like her

-own father. And they were rooted in the soil of

-the hills. Any man or any power that attempted

-to drive them from the land which their hands had

-cleared and made into homes, where the bones of

-their fathers and mothers lay, would have to

-reckon with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top

-of the ridge. In another moment he would drop

-down the other side out of sight. She wondered

-whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he

-forgotten that she would surely be standing where

-he had left her?</p>

-<p>He had not forgotten. He turned and waved

-briskly to her. Then he stepped down quickly

-out of sight. His act was brusque and businesslike.

-It showed that he remembered. He could

-hardly have seen her standing there in all the

-green by the pond. He had just known that she

-was there. But it showed something else, too.

-He had plunged down over the edge of the hill

-upon a business with which his mind was filled, to

-the exclusion, almost, of her and of everything

-else.</p>

-<p>The girl did not feel any of the little pique or

-resentment that might have been very natural.

-It was so that she would wish him to go about the

-business that was going to be so serious for all of

-them. But it gave her a new and startling flash

-of insight into what was coming.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span></div>

-<p>She had always thought of her hills as the place

-where peace lived. Out in the great crowded

-market places of the world she knew men fought

-each other for money. But why do that in the

-hills? There was a little for all. And a man

-could only get as much as his own labour and good

-judgment would make for him out of the land.</p>

-<p>Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills

-or of cities. Wherever, in the hills or the city or

-in the farthest desert, there was wealth or the hope

-of wealth, there greedy men with power would

-surely come to look for it and take it. That was

-why men fought. Wealth, even the scent of

-wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on

-to battle.</p>

-<p>A cloud passed between her and the morning

-sun. She felt the premonition of tragedy and suffering

-lowering down like a storm on her hills.

-How foolishly she had thought that all life and all

-the great, seething business of life was to be done

-down in the towns and the cities. Here was life

-now, with its pressure and its ugly passions, pushing

-right into the very hills.</p>

-<p>She shivered as she picked up her prize of the

-morning and her fishing tackle and started slowly

-up the hill toward her home.</p>

-<p>Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth

-with the understanding that Ruth was to spend the

-summer there in her own home. The rent was

-enough to give Ruth what little money she needed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>

-for clothes and to pay her modest expenses at the

-convent at Athens. So her life was arranged for

-her at least up to the time when she should have

-finished school.</p>

-<p>It seemed very strange to come home and find

-her home in the hands of strangers. It was odd

-to be a sort of guest in the house that she had

-ruled and managed from almost the time that she

-was a baby. It would be very hard to keep from

-telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged and

-how other things should be done. It would be

-hard to stand by and see others driving the horses

-that had never known a hand but hers and Daddy

-Tom&rsquo;s. Still she had been very glad to come

-home. It was her place. It held all the memories

-and all the things that connected her with

-her own people. She wanted to be able always

-to come back to it and call it her own. Looking

-down over it from the crest of the hill, at the little

-clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom

-and her mother, at the little house that had seen

-their love and in which she had been born, she

-could understand the fierceness with which men

-would fight to hold the farms and homes which

-were threatened.</p>

-<p>Until now she had hardly realised that those

-men whom people vaguely called &ldquo;the railroad&rdquo;

-would want to take <i>her</i> home and farm away from

-her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span>

-felt a swelling rage of indignation rising in her

-throat. She hurried down the hill to the house,

-as though she saw it already threatened.</p>

-<p>She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof

-of the wood shed and went around to the front of

-the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth weeding

-in what had been Ruth&rsquo;s own flower beds.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss

-Ruth!&rdquo; the woman exclaimed at sight of her.

-&ldquo;I called you <i>three</i> times, and when you didn&rsquo;t

-answer I went to your door; and there you were

-gone! I told Norman Apgarth somebody must

-have took you off in the night.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;No danger. I&rsquo;m

-used to getting up early, you see. So I just took

-some cakes&ndash;&ndash;Didn&rsquo;t you miss them?&ndash;&ndash;and

-some milk and slipped out without waking any one.

-I wanted to catch this fish. Jeffrey Whiting and I

-tried to catch him for four years. And I had to

-do it myself this morning.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;So young Whiting&rsquo;s gone away, eh?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, no,&rdquo; said Ruth quickly. &ldquo;He went

-over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork about half an hour ago.

-Who said he&rsquo;d gone away?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, nobody,&rdquo; said the woman hastily; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s

-only what they was sayin&rsquo; up at French Village

-yesterday.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What were they saying?&rdquo; Ruth demanded.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, just talk, I suppose,&rdquo; Mrs. Apgarth

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>

-evaded. &ldquo;Still, I dunno&rsquo;s I blame him. I guess

-if I got as much money as they say he&rsquo;s got out of

-it, I&rsquo;d skedaddle, too.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth stepped over and caught the woman

-sharply by the arm.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What did they say? Tell me, please.

-Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl was trembling

-with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she

-herself had said too much, or too little. She

-could not stop at that. She must tell everything

-now.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;they say he&rsquo;s just fooled

-the people up over their eyes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo; said Ruth impatiently. &ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been agoin&rsquo; round holdin&rsquo; the people

-back and gettin&rsquo; them to swear that they won&rsquo;t

-sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the railroad.

-Now it turns out he was just keepin&rsquo; the rest of

-the people back till he could get a good big lot of

-money from the railroad for his own farm and

-for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he&rsquo;s sold

-this farm and his own and five other ones that he&rsquo;d

-got hold of, for four times what they&rsquo;re worth.

-And that gives the railroad enough to work on,

-so the rest of the people&rsquo;ll just have to sell for

-what they can get. He&rsquo;s gone now; skipped out.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But he has <i>not</i> gone!&rdquo; Ruth snapped out indignantly.

-&ldquo;I saw him only half an hour ago.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, of course,&rdquo; said the woman knowingly,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>

-&ldquo;you&rsquo;d know more about it than anybody

-else. It&rsquo;s all talk, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten

-on the grass. She said shortly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, then, don&rsquo;t say a word to her about this.

-She&rsquo;s an awful good neighbour. I wouldn&rsquo;t for

-the world have her think that I&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, it doesn&rsquo;t matter at all,&rdquo; said Ruth, as

-she turned toward the road. &ldquo;You only said

-what people were saying.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I wouldn&rsquo;t for anything,&rdquo; the woman

-called nervously after her, &ldquo;have her think that&ndash;&ndash; And

-what&rsquo;ll I do with this?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Eat it,&rdquo; said Ruth over her shoulder. The

-prize for which she had fought so desperately in

-the early morning meant nothing to her now.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night.

-Through the long twilight of one of the longest

-days of the year, Ruth sat reading in the old place

-on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find

-her. Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew

-that he would not come.</p>

-<p>She did not try to argue with herself. She did

-not fight back the nervous feeling that something

-had happened. She was sure that she had been

-all day expecting it. When the moon came up

-over the hill and the long purple shadows of the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span>

-elm trees on the crest came stalking down in the

-white light, she went miserably into the house and

-up to the little room they had fitted up for her in

-the loft of her own home.</p>

-<p>She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep.

-But with the elasticity of youth and health she was

-awake at the first hint of morning, and the cloud

-of the night had passed.</p>

-<p>She dressed and hurried down into the yard

-where Norman Apgarth was just stirring about

-with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight

-and action. A man had put his trust in her before

-all others. She was eager to answer to his

-faith.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Where is Brom Bones?&rdquo; she demanded of the

-still drowsy Apgarth as she caught him crossing

-the yard from the milk house.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The colt? He&rsquo;s up in the back pasture, just

-around the knob of the mountain. What was you

-calc&rsquo;latin&rsquo; to do with him, Miss?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I want to use him,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;May I?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But,

-say, Miss, that colt ain&rsquo;t been driv&rsquo; since the

-Spring&rsquo;s work. An&rsquo; he&rsquo;s so fat an&rsquo; silky he&rsquo;s liable

-to act foolish.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to <i>ride</i> him,&rdquo; said Ruth briefly, as

-she stepped to the horse barn door for a bridle.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now, say, Miss,&rdquo; the man opposed feebly,

-&ldquo;you could take the brown pony just as well; I

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>

-don&rsquo;t need her a bit. And I tell you that colt is

-just a lun-<i>at</i>-ic, when he&rsquo;s been idle so long.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Ruth, as she started up the

-hill. &ldquo;But I think I&rsquo;ll find work enough to satisfy

-even Brom Bones to-day.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The big black colt followed her peaceably down

-the mountain, and stood champing at the door

-while she went in to get something to eat. When

-she brought out a shining new side saddle he

-looked suspiciously at the strange thing, but he

-made no serious objection as she fastened it on.

-Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood

-looking doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as

-new to her as it was to the horse. She had bought

-it on her way home the other day, as a concession

-to the fact that she was now a young lady who

-could no longer go stampeding over the hills on a

-bare-backed horse.</p>

-<p>She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming

-to know in the way of his kind that she was uneasy

-and uncomfortable, began at once to act badly.

-His intention seemed to be to walk into the open

-well on his hind feet. The girl caught a short

-hold on her lines and cut him sharply across the

-ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the

-hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.</p>

-<p>The path led straight up to the top of the slope.

-Ruth did not try to hold him. The sooner he ran

-the conceit out of himself, she thought, the better.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span></div>

-<p>He hurled himself down the other slope, past

-the pool, and into the trail which Jeffrey had taken

-yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in a strange

-saddle. But the girl&rsquo;s anxiety rose with the excitement

-of the horse&rsquo;s wild rush, so that when

-they reached the top of the divide where she had

-last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl

-that was ready to settle down to a sober and safer

-pace.</p>

-<p>Her common sense told her that she was probably

-foolish; that Jeffrey had merely stayed over

-night somewhere and that she would meet him on

-the way. But another and a subtler sense kept

-whispering to her to hurry on, that she was

-needed, that the good name, if not the life, of the

-boy she loved was in danger!</p>

-<p>She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just

-who were the men whom Jeffrey had gone to see.

-But she did not know how she could dash up to

-their doors and demand to know where he was.

-It was eleven miles up the stony trail that followed

-Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork, and the girl&rsquo;s nerves now keyed

-up to expect she knew not what jangled at every

-turn of the road. Jeffrey had meant to come

-straight back this way to her. That he had not

-done so meant that <i>something</i> had stopped him on

-the way. What was it?</p>

-<p>On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks

-and the underbrush was grown into an impenetrable

-wall. On the other it ran sheer along

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>

-the edge of Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing

-stream that tumbled and brawled its way down

-the long slope of the country.</p>

-<p>Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped

-her saddle as she pushed on past a place where the

-undergrowth came right down to the trail, and

-six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to

-the rock bed of the stream. She caught herself

-leaning across the saddle to look down. A man

-might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came

-carelessly along. And that man might have

-swung a cant-stick once&ndash;&ndash;a single blow at the

-back of the head&ndash;&ndash;and Jeffrey would have gone

-stumbling and falling over the edge of the path.

-There would not be even the sign of a struggle.</p>

-<p>Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Ruth Lansing,&rdquo; she scolded aloud, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re

-making a little fool of yourself. You&rsquo;ve been

-down there in that convent living among a lot of

-girls, and you&rsquo;re forgetting that these hills are

-your own, that there never was and never is any

-danger in them for us who belong here. Just

-keep that in your mind and hustle on about your

-business.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>When she came out into the open country near

-the head of the Fork she met old Darius Wilbur

-turning his cattle to pasture. The old man

-did not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing

-colt and he looked sharply at the steaming withers

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>

-of Brom Bones before he would give any attention

-to her question.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the tarnation hurry, young lady?&rdquo; he

-inquired exasperatingly. &ldquo;Jeff Whiting? Yes,

-he was here yest&rsquo;day. Why?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did he start home by this trail?&rdquo; asked Ruth

-eagerly. &ldquo;Or did he go on up country?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He went on up country.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again

-without a word.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But stay!&rdquo; the old man yelled after her,

-when she had gone twenty yards. &ldquo;He came

-back again.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly

-threw Brom Bones to his knees.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t ask me that,&rdquo; the old man chortled, as

-she came back, &ldquo;but if I didn&rsquo;t tell you I reckon

-you&rsquo;d run that colt to death up the hills.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then he <i>did</i> take the Forks trail back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t do that, nuther.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then where <i>did</i> he go? Please tell me!&rdquo;

-cried the girl, the tears of vexation rising into her

-voice.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter, girl? He crossed

-the Fork just there,&rdquo; said the old man, pointing,

-&ldquo;and he took over the hill for French Village.

-You his wife? You&rsquo;re mighty young.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones

-were already slipping down the rough bank in a

-shower of dirt and stones.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span></div>

-<p>In the middle of the ford she stopped and

-loosened the bridle, let the colt drink a little, then

-drove him across, up the other bank and on up the

-stiff slope.</p>

-<p>She did not know the trail, but she knew the

-general run of the country that way and had no

-doubt of finding her road.</p>

-<p>Now she told herself that it was certainly a

-wild goose chase. Jeffrey had merely found that

-he had to see some one in French Village and had

-gone there and, of course, had spent the night

-there.</p>

-<p>By the time she had come over the ridge of the

-hill and was dropping down through the heavily

-wooded country toward French Village, she had

-begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly

-remembered that it was Saint John the Baptist&rsquo;s

-day. It was not a holy day of obligation

-but she knew it was a feast day in French Village.

-There would be Mass. She should have gone,

-anyway. And she would hear with her own ears

-the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.</p>

-<p>Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store

-in French Village in the glory of a stiff white shirt

-and a festal red vest. The store was closed, of

-course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he

-would put on his black coat, in his official capacity

-of trustee of the church, and march solemnly over

-to ring the bell for Mass.</p>

-<p>The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>

-whom he seemed to know vaguely, riding down

-the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on

-the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made

-the little man reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle Lansing!&rdquo; he said, bowing in

-friendly pomp as Ruth drove up.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came

-down to go to Mass. Can you tell me what time

-it begins?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I shall ring the bell when I have put away

-your horse, M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle.&rdquo; Now no earthly power

-could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute

-from the exact time for ringing that bell.

-But, he was a Frenchman. His manner intimated

-that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must await

-her convenience.</p>

-<p>He stepped forward jauntily to help her down.

-Ruth kicked her feet loose and slid down

-deftly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb,&rdquo;

-said Ruth as she took his hand. &ldquo;Did you see

-Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>A girl of about Ruth&rsquo;s own age had come

-quietly up the street and stood beside them, recording

-in one swift inspection every detail of

-Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her

-brown boots.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;Cynthe,&rdquo; said the little man briskly, &ldquo;you

-show Miss Lansing on my pew for Mass.&rdquo; He

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>

-took the bridle from Ruth&rsquo;s hand and led the horse

-away to the shed in the rear of the store.</p>

-<p>The fear and uneasiness of the early morning

-leaped back to Ruth. The little man had certainly

-run away from her question. Why should

-he not answer?</p>

-<p>She would have liked to linger a while among

-the people standing about the church door. She

-knew some of them. She might have asked questions

-of them. But her escort led her straight into

-the church and up to a front pew.</p>

-<p>At the end of the Mass the people filed out

-quietly, but at the church door they broke into volleys

-of rapid-fire French chatter of which Ruth

-could only catch a little here and there.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You will come by the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>, M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle. You

-will not dance <i>non</i>, I s&rsquo;pose. But you will eat,

-and you will see the fun they make, one <i>jolie</i> time!

-Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance.&rdquo;

-Arsene led Ruth and the other girl, whom she

-now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal, across the

-road to a little wood that stood opposite the

-church. There were tables, on which the women

-had already begun to spread the food that they had

-brought from home, and a dancing platform. On

-a great stump which had been carved rudely into

-a chair sat Soriel Brouchard, the fiddler of the

-hills, twiddling critically at his strings.</p>

-<p>It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who

-had a moment before been so devout and concentrated

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>

-in church should in an instant switch

-their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking.

-But she soon found their light-hearted

-gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it, she

-was sputtering away in the best French she had

-and entering into the fun with all her heart.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Which is Rafe Gadbeau?&rdquo; she suddenly

-asked Cynthe Cardinal. &ldquo;I want to know him.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why for you want to know him?&rdquo; the girl

-asked sharply in English.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, nothing,&rdquo; said Ruth carelessly, &ldquo;only

-I&rsquo;ve heard of him.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The other girl reached out into the crowd and

-plucked at the sleeve of a tall, beak-nosed man.

-The man was evidently flattered by Ruth&rsquo;s request,

-and wanted her to dance with him immediately.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;I do not know how to dance

-your dances, and we&rsquo;d only break up the sets if

-I tried to learn now. We&rsquo;ve heard a lot about

-you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to

-know you. And we&rsquo;ve heard some things about

-Jeffrey Whiting. I&rsquo;m sure you could tell me if

-they are true.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo; dance? Well, we sit then. I tell

-you. One rascal, this young Whiting!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled

-herself to listen quietly as he led her to a seat.</p>

-<p>As they left the other girl standing in the middle

-of the platform, Ruth, looking back, caught

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>

-a swift glance of what she knew was jealous anger

-in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want

-to make an enemy of this girl. But she felt that

-she must use every effort to get this man to tell

-her all he would.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;One rascal, I tell you,&rdquo; repeated Gadbeau.

-&ldquo;First he stop all the people. He say don&rsquo; sell

-nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He

-sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip

-the country, right out. An&rsquo; he leave these poor

-French people in the soup.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;he sat back tapping himself on the

-chest&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;I got hinfluence with that railroad.

-They buy now from us. To-morrow morning,

-nine o&rsquo;clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on

-French Village. We sell out everything on the

-option to him.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; objected Ruth, trying to draw him out,

-&ldquo;if Jeffrey Whiting should come back before

-then?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He don&rsquo; come back, that fellow.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know, I&ndash;&ndash; He don&rsquo; come back. I tell

-you that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine

-o&rsquo;clock to-morrow,&rdquo; she said, turning suddenly

-upon him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Eh? M&rsquo;m&rsquo;selle, what you mean? What

-you know?&rdquo; he questioned excitedly.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at

-us,&rdquo; she smiled as she arose, &ldquo;and I think you are

-in for a lecture.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Through all the long day, while she ate and

-listened to the fun and talked to Father Ponfret

-about her convent life, she did not let Rafe Gadbeau

-out of her sight or mind for an instant. She

-knew that she had alarmed him. She was certain

-that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey

-Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray

-himself in some way.</p>

-<p>When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers,

-she waited by the bell ringer to see that

-Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place

-among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly

-into a pew near the door. When the people rose

-to sing the <i>Tantum Ergo</i>, she saw Gadbeau slip

-unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely

-until the singing was finished, then she almost ran

-to the door.</p>

-<p>Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that

-had been standing all day in the little woods, was

-riding away in the direction of the trail which she

-had come down this morning. She fairly flew

-down the street to Arsene LaComb&rsquo;s store.

-There was not a pony in the hills that Brom Bones

-could not overtake easily, but she must see by what

-trail the man left the Village.</p>

-<p>Brom Bones was very willing to make a race

-for home, and she let him have his head until she

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>

-again caught sight of the man. She pulled up

-sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The

-man was still on the main road, and he might turn

-any moment. Finally she saw him pull into the

-trail that led over to Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. Then she

-knew. Jeffrey was somewhere on the trail between

-French Village and Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork. And

-he was alive! The man was going now to make

-sure that he was still there.</p>

-<p>For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough

-to assure her that the man was still following

-the trail. Then, just when the real darkness had

-fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at

-her left. The man had turned off into the woods!

-She had almost passed him! She threw herself

-out upon Brom Bones&rsquo; neck and caught him by

-the nose. He threw up his head indignantly and

-tried to bolt, but she blessed him for making no

-noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred

-yards, slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into

-the bushes away from the road and tied him. She

-talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading

-with him to be quiet. Then she left him and

-stole back to where she had heard the pony.</p>

-<p>In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing.

-But her feet found themselves on what

-seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly.

-She almost walked into a square black thing that

-suddenly confronted her. Within what seemed a

-foot of her she heard voices. Her heart stopped

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>

-beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she

-could not distinguish a word. One of the voices

-was certainly Gadbeau&rsquo;s. The other&ndash;&ndash; It

-was!&ndash;&ndash; It was! Though it was only a mumble,

-she knew it was Jeffrey Whiting who tried to

-speak!</p>

-<p>She took a step forward, ready to dash into

-the place, whatever it was. But the caution of the

-hills made her back away noiselessly into the

-brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, <i>why</i>

-had she not brought a rifle? Gadbeau was sure to

-be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably

-wounded and bound.</p>

-<p>She backed farther into the bushes and started

-to make a circuit of the place. She understood

-now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely of logs,

-even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse.

-She knew that she was helpless. And she knew

-that Jeffrey would not be a prisoner there unless

-he were hurt.</p>

-<p>She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come

-to injure Jeffrey further. He had merely come to

-make himself sure that his prisoner was secure.

-He would not stay long.</p>

-<p>As she stole around away from the path and

-the pony she saw a little stream of light shoot

-out through a chink between the logs of the hut.

-Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had

-brought something for Jeffrey to eat. She pulled

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>

-off the white collar of her jacket, the only white

-thing that showed about her and settled down for

-a long wait.</p>

-<p>First she had thought that she ought to steal

-away to her horse and ride for help. But she

-could not bear the thought of even getting beyond

-the sound of Jeffrey&rsquo;s voice. She knew

-where he was now. He might be taken away

-while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing

-had always learned to do things for herself. She

-had always disliked appealing for help.</p>

-<p>Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place

-she could find, leaning against the bole of a great

-tree. The light, candles, of course, burned on;

-and the voices came irregularly through the living

-silence of the woods. She did not dare to

-creep nearer to hear what was being said. That

-did not matter. The important thing was to have

-Gadbeau go away without any suspicion that he

-had been followed. Then she would be free to

-release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she

-would be able to get him down to French Village

-in the morning. She could easily have him there

-before nine o&rsquo;clock.</p>

-<p>When she saw by the stars that it was long

-past midnight she began to be worried. Just then

-the light went out. Ah! The man was going

-away at last! She waited a long, nervous half

-hour. But there was no sound. She dared not

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>

-move, for even when she shifted her position

-against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to

-crackle with her motion.</p>

-<p>Would he never come out? It seemed not.

-Was he going to stay there all night?</p>

-<p>Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the

-door of the cabin. Apparently both men were

-asleep within. She pushed the door ever so

-quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.</p>

-<p>What could she do? Nothing, absolutely

-nothing! Oh, why, <i>why</i> had she not brought a

-rifle? She would shoot. She <i>would</i>, if she had

-it now, and that man opened the door! It was

-too late now to think of riding for help, too late!</p>

-<p>She sank down again beside her tree and raged

-helplessly at herself, at her conceit in herself that

-would not let her go for help in the first place,

-at her foolishness in coming on this business without

-a gun. The hours dragged out their weary

-minutes, every minute an age to the taut, ragged

-nerves of the girl.</p>

-<p>The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops,

-while the ground still lay in utter darkness. Ruth

-rose and slipped farther back into the bushes.</p>

-<p>Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in

-the soft grass, and the hot, angry tears of desperation

-and rage at herself were softened. Her

-heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and

-sang its prayer to God; a thrilling, lifting little

-prayer of confidence and wonder. The words

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>

-that the night before would not form themselves

-for her now sprang up ready in her soul&ndash;&ndash;the

-words of all the children of earth, to Our Father

-Who Art in Heaven&ndash;&ndash;paused an instant to bless

-her lips, then sped away to God in His Heaven.

-Fear was gone, and doubt, and anxiety. She

-would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor,

-befooled people from ruin. God had told her so,

-as He walked abroad in the <i>Glow</i> of <i>Dawn</i>.</p>

-<p>Two long hours more she waited, but now with

-patience and a sure confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau

-came out of the hut and strode down the

-path to his pony.</p>

-<p>Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and

-ran to the door, and called to Jeffrey. The only

-answer was a moan. The door was locked with

-a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy

-padlock. She reached for the nearest stone and

-attacked the lock frantically. She beat it out of

-all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her.

-There was no window in the hut. She had to

-come back again to the lock. Her hands, softened

-by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on

-the tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave,

-and she threw herself against the door.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk

-beside the furnace where they boiled the sugar

-sap. His arms were stretched out and tied together

-down under the narrow bunk. She saw

-that his left arm was broken. For an instant the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>

-girl&rsquo;s heart leaped back to the rage of the night

-when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But

-pity swallowed up every other feeling as she cut

-the cords from his hands and loosened the rope

-that they had bound in between his teeth.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk, Jeff,&rdquo; she commanded. &ldquo;I can

-see just what happened. Lie easy and get your

-strength. I&rsquo;ve got to take you to French Village

-at once.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She ran out to bring water. When she returned

-he was sitting dizzily on the edge of the bunk.

-While she bathed his head with the water and

-gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and

-crooned over him as she would over a baby for

-she saw that he was shaken and half delirious with

-pain.</p>

-<p>Brom Bones was standing munching twigs

-where she had left him. He had never before

-been asked to carry double and he did not like it.

-But the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into

-his silky black ear that he finally gave in.</p>

-<p>When they were mounted, she fastened the

-white collar of her jacket into a sling for the

-boy&rsquo;s broken arm, and with a prayer to the heathen

-Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down

-the trail.</p>

-<p>When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey

-spoke suddenly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Say, Ruth, what&rsquo;s the use trying to save these

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>

-people? Let&rsquo;s sell out while we can and take

-mother and go away.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Jeff, dear,&rdquo; she said lightly, &ldquo;this fight

-hasn&rsquo;t begun yet. Wait till we get to French Village.

-You&rsquo;ll say something different. You&rsquo;ll say

-just what you said to the Shepherd of the North;

-remember?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey said no more. The girl&rsquo;s heart was

-weak with the pain she knew he was bearing, but

-she knew that they must go through with this.</p>

-<p>All French Village and the farmers of Little

-Tupper country were gathered in front of Arsene

-Lacomb&rsquo;s store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing on

-the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with

-his prisoner as he thought up to the last possible

-moment, so he stammered in his speech when he

-saw a big black horse come tearing down the street

-carrying a girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy

-behind her. Rogers, the railroad lawyer beside

-him, said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Go on, man. What&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl drove the horse right in through the

-crowd until Jeffrey Whiting faced Rogers. Then

-Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain, took up his

-fight again.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Rogers,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;you did this. You

-got Rafe Gadbeau and the others to knock me on

-the head and put me out of the way, so that you

-could spread your lies about me. And you&rsquo;d have

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>

-won out, too, if it hadn&rsquo;t been for this brave girl

-here.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now, Rogers, you liar,&rdquo; he shouted louder,

-&ldquo;I dare you, dare you, to tell these people here

-that I or any of our people have sold you a foot

-of land. I dare you!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau

-pulled him away. Gadbeau knew that crowd.

-They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and

-full of potential fury. They were already cheering

-the brave girl. In a few minutes they would

-be hunting the life of the man who had lied to

-them and nearly ruined them.</p>

-<p>A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from

-the saddle, but she waved them away and pointed

-to Jeffrey&rsquo;s broken arm. They helped him down

-and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough&rsquo;s

-little office.</p>

-<p>Ruth saw that her business was finished. She

-wheeled Brom Bones toward home, and gave him

-his head.</p>

-<p>For three glorious miles they fairly flew through

-the pearly morning air along the hard mountain

-road, and the girl never pulled a line. Breakfastless

-and weary in body, her heart sang the

-song that it had learned in the Glow of Dawn.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>

-<a name='IV_THE_ANSWER' id='IV_THE_ANSWER'></a>

-<h2>IV</h2>

-<h3>THE ANSWER</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The Committee on Franchises was in session in

-one of the committee rooms outside the chamber

-of the New York State Senate. It was not a routine

-session. A bill was before it, the purpose of

-which was virtually to dispossess some four or

-five hundred families of their homes in the counties

-of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The

-bill did not say this. It cited the need of adequate

-transportation in that part of the State and

-proposed that the U. &amp; M. Railroad should be

-granted the right of eminent domain over three

-thousand square miles of the region, in order to

-help the development of the country.</p>

-<p>The committee was composed of five members,

-three of the majority party in the Senate and two

-of the minority. A political agent of the railroad

-who drew a salary from Racquette County as a

-judge had just finished presenting to the committee

-the reasons why the people of that part of

-the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill

-should become a law. He had drawn a pathetic

-picture of the condition of the farmers, so long

-deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He had

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>

-almost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce

-left to rot up there in the hills because the men

-who toiled to produce it had no means of bringing

-it down to the starving thousands of the cities.

-The scraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that

-region became in his picture vast reservoirs of

-cheap food, only waiting to be tapped by the

-beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world&rsquo;s

-poor.</p>

-<p>When the judge had finished, one minority

-member of the committee looked at his colleague,

-the other minority member, and winked. It was

-a grave and respectful wink. It meant that the

-committee was not often privileged to listen to

-quite such bare-faced effrontery. If the hearing

-had been a secret one they would not have listened

-to it. But the bill had already aroused a storm.

-So the leader of the majority had given orders

-that the hearing should be public.</p>

-<p>So far not a word had been said as to the fact

-which underlay the motives of the bill. Iron had

-been found in workable quantities in those three

-thousand square miles of hill country. Not a

-word had been said about iron.</p>

-<p>No one in the room had listened to the speech

-with any degree of interest. It was intended entirely

-for the consumption of the outside public.

-Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during

-its delivery. They had been furnished with

-advance copies of it and had already turned them

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>

-in to their papers. But with the naming of the

-next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around

-the room.</p>

-<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from

-his place in the rear of the room and walked

-briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall,

-spare figure of a man coming to his sixty years,

-his hair as white as the snow of his hills, with a

-large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan governor,

-he would have attracted attention under almost

-any circumstances.</p>

-<p>Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee,

-had received his orders from the leader of the

-majority in the Senate that the bill should be reported

-back favourably to that body before night.

-He had anticipated no difficulty. The form of a

-public hearing had to be gone through with. It

-was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions

-that had been aroused as to the nature of

-the bill. The speech of the Racquette County

-Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The

-chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising

-reformers of the opposition would come before

-the committee with time-honoured, stock diatribes

-against the rapacity and greed of railroads

-in general and this one in particular. Then he

-and his two majority colleagues would vote to report

-the bill favourably, while the two members

-of the minority would vote to report adversely.

-This, the chairman said, was about all a public

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>

-hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted

-on the coming of the Bishop of Alden.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The committee would like to hear, sir,&rdquo; began

-the chairman, as the Bishop took his place, &ldquo;whom

-you represent in the matter of this bill.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in

-what had been a dull session of a dull committee,

-sat with poised pencils while the Bishop turned a

-look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of

-Racquette County.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee

-quite understands that you do not come here in the

-interest of any one. But the gentleman who has

-just been before us spoke for the farmers who

-would be most directly affected by the prosperity

-of the railroad, including those of your county.

-Are we to understand that there is opposition in

-your county to the proposed grant?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Your committee,&rdquo; said the Bishop, &ldquo;cannot be

-ignorant that there is the most stubborn opposition

-to this grant in all three counties. If there had

-not been that opposition, there would have been no

-call for the bill which you are now considering.

-If the railroad could have gotten the options which

-it tried to get on those farms the grant would have

-been given without question. Your committee

-knows this better than I.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; returned the chairman, &ldquo;we have been

-advised that the railroad was not able to get those

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>

-options because a boy up there in the Beaver River

-country, who fancied that he had some grievance

-against the railroad people, banded the people together

-to oppose the options in unfair and unlawful

-ways.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The chairman paused an impressive moment.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;In fact,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;from what this committee

-has been able to gather, it looks very much

-as though there were conspiracy in the matter,

-against the U. &amp; M. Railroad. It almost would

-seem that some rival of the railroad in question

-had used the boy and his fancied grievance to

-manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be

-proven, but there was every appearance.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his

-challenge quietly at the feet of the committee.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The boy, Jeffrey Whiting,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;was

-guided by me. I directed his movements from the

-beginning.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The whole room sat up and leaned forward as

-one man, alive to the fact that a novel and stirring

-situation was being developed. Everybody had

-understood that the Bishop had come to plead the

-cause of the French-Canadian farmers of the

-hills.</p>

-<p>They had supposed that he would speak only

-on what was a side issue of the case. No one had

-expected that he would attack the main question

-of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming

-himself the principal in that silent, stubborn

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>

-fight that had been going on up in the hills

-for six months!</p>

-<p>The reporters doubled down to their work and

-wrote furiously. They were trying to throw this

-unusual man upon a screen before their readers.

-It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product

-of New England, and what was more he had been

-one of the leaders of that collection of striking

-men who made the Brook Farm &ldquo;Experiment.&rdquo;

-He had endeared himself to the old generation of

-Americans by his war record as a chaplain. To

-some of the new generation he was known as the

-Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from

-the Mohawk Valley to the Canadian line and to

-Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd

-of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to

-North Creek men knew his ways and felt the beating

-of the great heart of him behind the stern,

-ascetic set of his countenance.</p>

-<p>As much as they could of this the reporters

-were trying to put into their notes while Nathan

-Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That

-well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself

-into a trap. He had been too zealous in announcing

-his impression that the opposition to the

-U. &amp; M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival.

-The Bishop had taken that ground from under

-him by a simple stroke of truth. He could

-neither go forward with his charge nor could he

-retract it.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this

-committee,&rdquo; he temporised, &ldquo;just why you wished

-to arouse this opposition to the railroad?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There is not and has never been any opposition

-whatever to the railroad,&rdquo; said the Bishop.

-&ldquo;The bill before your committee has nothing to

-do with the right of way of the railroad. That

-has already been granted. Your bill proposes to

-confiscate, practically, from the present owners a

-strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly

-eighty miles long. That land is valuable because

-the experts of the railroad know, and the people

-up there know, and, I think, this committee knows

-that there is iron ore in these hills.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have said that I do not represent any one

-here,&rdquo; the Bishop went on. &ldquo;But there are four

-hundred families up there in our hills who stand

-to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people.

-They have no voice to reach the world. I have

-asked to speak before your committee because

-only in this way can the case of my people reach

-the great, final trial court of publicity before the

-whole State.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They are a silent people, the people of the

-hills. You will have heard that they are a stubborn

-people. They are a stubborn people, for

-they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside

-homes that their hands have made just as do the

-hardy trees of the hills. You cannot uproot them

-by the stroke of a pen.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;These people are my friends and my neighbours.

-Many of them were once my comrades.

-I know what they think. I know what they feel.

-I would beg your committee to consider very

-earnestly this question before bringing to bear

-against these people the sovereign power of the

-State. They love their State. Many of them

-have loved their country to the peril of their

-lives. They live on the little farms that their

-fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Not through prejudice or ignorance are they

-opposing this development, which will in the end

-be for the good of the whole region. They are

-opposed to this bill before you because it would

-give a corporation power to drive them from the

-homes they love, and that without fair compensation.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They are opposed to it because they are

-Americans. They know what it has meant and

-what it still means to be Americans. And they

-know that this bill is directly against everything

-that is American.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They are ever ready to submit themselves to

-the sovereign will of the State, but you will never

-convince them that this bill is the real will of the

-State. They are fighting men and the sons of

-fighting men. They have fought the course of the

-railroad in trying to get options from them by

-coercion and trickery. They have been aroused.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>

-Their homes, poor and wretched as they often

-are, mean more to them than any law you can set

-on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it.

-It will set a ring of fire and murder about our

-peaceful hills.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;In the name of high justice, in the name of

-common honesty, in the name&ndash;&ndash;to come to lower

-levels&ndash;&ndash;of political common sense, I tell you this

-bill should never go back to the Senate.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound

-upon those who are found weak enough to

-let it pass here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils

-of the reporters could be plainly heard in the

-hush of the room.</p>

-<p>Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating

-question which he had been wanting to put

-from the beginning.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Perhaps the committee has been badly informed,&rdquo;

-he began to the Bishop; &ldquo;we understood

-that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian

-immigrants and not usually owners of land.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is it necessary for me to repeat,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop, turning sharply, &ldquo;that I am here, Joseph

-Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours and

-my friends? Does it matter to them or to this

-committee that I wear the badge of a service that

-they do not understand? I do not come before

-you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come

-as an owner of property. I come because I think

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>

-the cause of my friends will be served by my coming.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The facts I have laid before you, the warning

-I have given might as well have been sent out

-direct through the press. But I have chosen to

-come before you, with your permission, because

-these facts will get a wider hearing and a more

-eager reading coming from this room.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I do not seek to create sensation here. I

-have no doubt that some of you are thinking that

-the place for a churchman to speak is in his church.

-But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing

-to create sensation. I am willing that you

-should say that I have gone far beyond the privilege

-of a witness invited to come before your

-committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should

-put any interpretation you like upon my use of my

-privilege here, only so that my neighbours of the

-hills shall have their matter put squarely and fully

-before all the people of the State.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;When this matter is once thoroughly understood

-by the people, then I know that no branch

-of the lawmaking power will dare make itself responsible

-for the passage of this bill.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further

-questions. When he saw that none were

-forthcoming, he thanked the committee and

-begged leave to retire.</p>

-<p>As the Bishop passed out of the room the

-chairman arose and declared the public hearing

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>

-closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporters

-crowded out of the room and scattered through

-the corridors of the Capitol. Four or five reporters

-bunched themselves about the elevator

-shaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired

-boy of twenty, summed up the matter with

-irreverent brevity.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway,&rdquo; he said.

-&ldquo;Not every bad bill has a bishop at the obsequies.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t tell,&rdquo; said the Associated Press

-man slowly; &ldquo;they might report it out in spite

-of all that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No use,&rdquo; said the youngster shortly. &ldquo;The

-Senate wouldn&rsquo;t dare touch it once this stuff is

-in the papers.&rdquo; And he jammed a wad of flimsy

-down into his pocket.</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>Three weeks of a blistering August sun had

-withered the grasses of the hills almost to a powder.

-The thin soil of the north country, where

-the trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture;

-so that the heat of the short, vicious summer

-goes down through the roots of the vegetation to

-the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone.</p>

-<p>Since June there had been no rain. The

-tumbling hill streams were reduced to a trickle

-among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were

-covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The

-second growth of stunted timber, showing everywhere

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>

-the scars of the wasting rapacity of man,

-stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving

-life, from the cattle to the woodchucks and even

-the field mice, had moved down to hide itself in

-the thicker growths near the water courses or had

-stolen away into the depths of the thick woods.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a

-scarred pine on the French Village road and sat

-looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up

-away from the road on either side. Every child

-of the hills knew the menace that a hot dry summer

-brought to us in those days. The first, ruthless

-cutting of the timber had followed the water

-courses. Men had cut and slashed their way up

-through the hills without thought of what they

-were leaving behind. They had taken only the

-prime, sound trees that stood handiest to the roll-ways.

-They had left dead and dying trees standing.

-Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of

-brush and trimmings. The farmers had come

-pushing into the hills in the wake of the lumbermen

-and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes

-and hay land. But around every piece of

-cleared land there was an ever-encroaching ring of

-brush and undergrowth and fallen timber that held

-a constant threat for the little home within the

-ring.</p>

-<p>A summer without rain meant a season of grim

-and unrelenting watchfulness. Men armed themselves

-and tramped through the woods on unbidden

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>

-sentry duty, to see that no campfires were

-made. Strangers and outsiders who were likely

-to be careless were watched from the moment they

-came into the hills until they were seen safely out

-of them again. Where other children scouted for

-and fought imaginary Indians, the children of our

-hills hunted and fought imaginary fires. The

-forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo.

-It was an enemy that lurked just outside the

-little clearing of the farm, out there in the underbrush

-and fallen timber.</p>

-<p>Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had

-ridden up to French Village for mail. For some

-weeks they had known that the railroad would try

-to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the

-special session of the Legislature. And they

-knew that the session would probably come to a

-close this week.</p>

-<p>If that bill became a law, then the resistance of

-the people of the hills had been in vain: Jeffrey

-had merely led them into a bitter and useless fight

-against a power with which they could not cope.

-They would have to leave their homes, taking

-whatever a corrupted board of condemnation

-would grant for them. It would be hard on all,

-but it would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness.

-He would have to remember that he had

-had the chance to make his mother and himself

-independently rich. He had thrown away that

-chance, and now if his fight had failed he would

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>

-have nothing to bring back to his mother but his

-own miserable failure.</p>

-<p>Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop&rsquo;s house

-in Alden when Jeffrey had said proudly that his

-mother would be glad to follow him into poverty.

-And she smiled now at her own outburst at that

-time. They had both meant it, every word; but

-the ashes of failure are bitter. And she had seen

-the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through

-all the summer.</p>

-<p>She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad

-had succeeded. She would not be able to go back

-to school, and would probably have to go somewhere

-to get work of some kind, for the little that

-she would get for her farm now would not keep

-her any time. But that was a little matter, or at

-least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence

-of Jeffrey&rsquo;s failure and what he would

-consider his disgrace. She did not know how he

-would take it, for during the summer she had seen

-him in vicious moods when he seemed capable of

-everything.</p>

-<p>She saw the speck which he made against the

-horizon as he came over Argyle Mountain three

-miles away and she saw that he was riding fast.

-He was bringing good news!</p>

-<p>It needed only the excited, happy touch of her

-hand to set Brom Bones whirling up the road, for

-the big colt understood her ways and moods and

-followed them better than he would have followed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>

-whip or rein of another. Half-way, she pulled

-the big fellow down to a decorous canter and

-gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came

-thundering down upon them. He pulled up

-sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two

-horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected

-to do and their two riders gave them no

-more heed than if they had been wooden horses.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How did you know it was all right, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain,&rdquo;

-Ruth laughed. &ldquo;You looked as though you were

-riding Victory down the top side of the earth.

-How did it all come out?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the paper,&rdquo; he said, handing her an

-Albany newspaper of the day previous; &ldquo;it tells

-the story right off. But I got a letter from the

-Bishop, too,&rdquo; he added.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, did you?&rdquo; she exclaimed, looking up

-from the headline&ndash;&ndash;U. &amp; M. Grab Killed in

-Committee&ndash;&ndash;which she had been feverishly trying

-to translate into her own language. &ldquo;Please

-let me hear. I&rsquo;m never sure what headlines mean

-till I go down to the fine print, and then it&rsquo;s generally

-something else. I can understand what the

-Bishop says, I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s only short,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, unfolding

-the letter. &ldquo;He leaves out all the part that he

-did himself.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Ruth simply. &ldquo;He always

-does.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;He says:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You will see from the Albany papers, which

-will probably reach you before this does, that the

-special session of the Legislature closed to-night

-and that the railroad&rsquo;s bill was not reported to

-the Senate. It had passed the Assembly, as you

-know. The bill aroused a measure of just public

-anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently

-thought it the part of wisdom not to risk

-a contest over it in the open Senate. So there can

-be no legislative action in favour of the railroad

-before December at the earliest, and I regard it as

-doubtful that the matter will be brought up even

-then.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;from this you&rsquo;d never

-know that he was there present at all. And

-it was just his speech before the committee

-that aroused that public anger. Then he goes

-on:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But we must not make the mistake of presuming

-that the matter ends here. You and your

-people are just where you were in the beginning.

-Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not

-in the nature of things that a corporation which

-has spent an enormous amount of money in constructing

-a line with the one purpose of getting

-to your lands should now give up the idea of getting

-them by reason of a mere legislative setback.

-They have not entered into this business

-in any half-hearted manner. They are bound to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>

-carry it through somehow&ndash;&ndash;anyhow. We must

-realise that.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;We need not speculate upon the soul or the

-conscience of a corporation or the lack of those

-things. We know that this corporation will have

-an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must

-watch for that answer. What their future methods

-or their plans may be I think no man can tell.

-Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed.

-But there will be an answer. While rejoicing that

-a fear of sound public opinion has been on your

-side, we must never forget that there will be an

-answer.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond

-the limits which men set for the proper activities

-of a priest of the church. I do not apologise.

-I have done this, partly because your

-people are my own, my friends and my comrades

-of old, partly because you yourself came to me in

-a confidence which I do not forget, partly&ndash;&ndash;and

-most, perhaps&ndash;&ndash;because where my people and

-their rights are in question I have never greatly

-respected those limits which men set. I put these

-things before you so that when the answer comes

-you will remember that you engaged yourself in

-this business solely in defence of the right. So it

-is not your personal fight and you must try to

-keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a

-quarrel. The struggle is a larger thing than that

-and you must keep your heart larger still and

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>

-above it. I fear that you will sorely need to remember

-this.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;My sincerest regards to your family and to

-all my friends in the hills, not forgetting your

-friend Ruth.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, folding

-the letter. &ldquo;I wish he&rsquo;d said more about how he

-managed the thing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it enough to know that he did manage it,

-without bothering about how? That is the way

-he does everything.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I suppose I ought to be satisfied,&rdquo; said Jeffrey

-as he gathered up his reins. &ldquo;But I wonder what

-he means by that last part of the letter. It sounds

-like a warning to me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is a warning to you,&rdquo; said Ruth thoughtfully.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, what does it mean? What does he

-think I&rsquo;m likely to do?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Maybe he does not mean what you are likely

-to do exactly,&rdquo; said Ruth, trying to choose her

-words wisely; &ldquo;maybe he is thinking more of what

-you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to

-your heart rather than to your head or about your

-actions.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now I don&rsquo;t know what you mean, either,&rdquo;

-said Jeffrey a little discontentedly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know I oughtn&rsquo;t to try to tell you what the

-Bishop means, for I don&rsquo;t know myself. But I&rsquo;ve

-been worried and I&rsquo;m sure your mother has too,&rdquo;

-said Ruth reluctantly.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;But what is it?&rdquo; said Jeffrey quickly.

-&ldquo;What have I been doing?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure it isn&rsquo;t anything you&rsquo;ve done, nor

-anything maybe that you&rsquo;re likely to do. I don&rsquo;t

-know just what it is, or how to say it. But,

-Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in

-the Bishop&rsquo;s house at Alden?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, and I remember what you said, too.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We both meant it,&rdquo; Ruth returned gravely,

-not attempting to evade any of the meaning that

-he had thrown into his words. &ldquo;And we both

-mean it now, I&rsquo;m sure. But there&rsquo;s a difference,

-Jeffrey, a difference with you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know it,&rdquo; he said a little shortly.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m still doing just the thing I started out to do

-that day.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. But that day you started out to fight

-for the people. Now you are fighting for yourself&ndash;&ndash; Oh,

-not for anything selfish! Not for

-anything you want for yourself! I know that.

-But you have made the fight your own. It is your

-own quarrel now. You are fighting because you

-have come to hate the railroad people.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, you wouldn&rsquo;t expect me to love them?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No. I&rsquo;m not blaming you, Jeff. But&ndash;&ndash;but,

-I&rsquo;m afraid. Hate is a terrible thing. I wish you

-were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you. I&rsquo;m

-afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through

-all the long, long years of life. Can you see?

-I&rsquo;m afraid of something that might go deeper

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>

-than all this, something that might go as deep as

-life. After all, that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid of, I

-guess&ndash;&ndash;Life, great, big, terrible, menacing,

-Life!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My life?&rdquo; Jeffrey asked gruffly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have faced that,&rdquo; the girl answered evenly,

-&ldquo;just as you have faced it. And I am not afraid

-of that. No. It&rsquo;s what you might do in anger&ndash;&ndash;if

-they hurt you again. Something that would

-scar your heart and your soul. Jeffrey, do you

-know that sometimes I&rsquo;ve seen the worst, the worst&ndash;&ndash;even

-<i>murder</i> in your eyes!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; the boy returned shortly, &ldquo;the

-Bishop would keep his religion out of all this.

-He&rsquo;s a good man and a good friend,&rdquo; he went on,

-&ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t like this religion coming into everything.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But how can he? He cannot keep religion

-apart from life and right and wrong. What

-good would religion be if it did not go ahead of

-us in life and show us the way?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s the use?&rdquo; the boy said grudgingly.

-&ldquo;What good does it do? You wouldn&rsquo;t have

-thought of any of this only for that last part of

-his letter. Why does that have to come into

-everything? It&rsquo;s the Catholic Church all over

-again, always pushing in everywhere.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t that funny,&rdquo; the girl said, brightening;

-&ldquo;I have cried myself sick thinking just that same

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>

-thing. I have gone almost frantic thinking that

-if I once gave in to the Church it would crush

-me and make me do everything that I didn&rsquo;t want

-to do. And now I never think of it. Life goes

-along really just as though being a Catholic didn&rsquo;t

-make any difference at all.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve given in to it altogether.

-You don&rsquo;t even know that you want to

-resist. You&rsquo;re swallowed up in it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before

-she answered.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the queerest thing, isn&rsquo;t it, Jeff,&rdquo; she said

-finally in a thoughtful, friendly way, &ldquo;how two

-people can fight about religion? Now you don&rsquo;t

-care a particle about it one way or the other.

-And I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;d rather not talk about it. And yet,

-we were just now within an inch of quarrelling bitterly

-about it. Why is it?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;m sorry, Ruth,&rdquo; the boy

-apologised slowly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s none of my business,

-anyway.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>They were just coming over the long hill above

-Ruth&rsquo;s home. Below them stretched the long

-sweep of the road down past her house and up

-the other slope until it lost itself around the

-shoulder of Lansing Mountain.</p>

-<p>Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his

-big roan horse up the hill towards them at a heart-breaking

-pace.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s &lsquo;My&rsquo; Stocking&rsquo;s roan,&rdquo; said Jeffrey,

-straightening in his saddle; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d know that horse

-three miles away.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s he carrying?&rdquo; cried Ruth excitedly,

-as she peered eagerly from under her

-shading hand. &ldquo;Look. Across his saddle.

-Rifles! <i>Two</i> of them!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Brom Bones, sensing the girl&rsquo;s excitement, was

-already pulling at his bit, eager for a wild race

-down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long, sharp

-look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly

-to the side of the road. And Ruth did the same.

-She was too well trained in the things of the hills

-not to know that if there was trouble, then it was

-no time to be weakening horses&rsquo; knees in mad and

-useless dashes downhill.</p>

-<p>The rider was Myron Stocking from over in

-the Crooked Lake country, as Jeffrey had supposed.

-He pulled up as he recognised the two

-who waited for him by the roadside, and when

-he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew by sight,

-he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as

-she was to hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces

-farther away from them. They would not talk

-freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey

-would tell her all that she needed to know.</p>

-<p>The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences

-and Ruth heard Stocking conclude:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun

-o&rsquo; yours. Your Ma didn&rsquo;t see.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span></div>

-<p>Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he

-came to Ruth.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s some strangers over in the hills that

-maybe ought to be watched. The country&rsquo;s awful

-dry,&rdquo; he added quietly. He knew that Ruth

-would need no further explanation.</p>

-<p>He pulled the Bishop&rsquo;s letter from his pocket

-and handed it to Ruth, saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Take this and the paper along to Mother.

-She&rsquo;ll want to see them right away. And say,

-Ruth,&rdquo; he went on, as he looked anxiously at the

-great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that

-lay between them and his home on the hill three

-miles away, &ldquo;the country&rsquo;s awful dry. If anything

-happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down

-out of this country. You can make them go.

-Nobody else could.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl had not yet spoken. There was no

-need for her to ask questions. She knew what

-lay under every one of Jeffrey&rsquo;s pauses and

-silences. It was no time for many words. He

-was laying upon her a trust to look after the ones

-whom he loved.</p>

-<p>She put out her hand to his and said simply:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad we didn&rsquo;t quarrel, Jeff.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was a fool,&rdquo; said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung

-her hand. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ll remember. Forgive me,

-please, Ruth.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to forgive&ndash;&ndash;ever&ndash;&ndash;between

-us, Jeffrey. Go now,&rdquo; she said softly.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span></div>

-<p>Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the

-other man back over the hill on the road which

-he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they

-were out of sight. At the very last she saw

-Jeffrey swing his rifle across the saddle in front of

-him, and a shadow fell across her heart. She

-would have given everything in her world to have

-had back what she had said of seeing murder in

-Jeffrey&rsquo;s eyes.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up

-the French Village road for an hour or so. Then

-they turned off from the road and began a long

-winding climb up into the higher levels of the

-Racquette country.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We might as well head for Bald Mountain

-right away,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, as they came about sundown

-to a fork in their trail. &ldquo;The breeze comes

-straight down from the east. That&rsquo;s where the

-danger is, if there is any.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re right, Jeff. But it means

-we&rsquo;ll have to sleep out if we go that way.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I guess that won&rsquo;t hurt us,&rdquo; Jeffrey returned.

-&ldquo;If anything happens we might have to sleep out

-a good many nights&ndash;&ndash;and a lot of other people

-would have to do the same.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;All right then,&rdquo; Stocking agreed. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll

-get a bite and give the horses a feed and a rest at

-Hosmer&rsquo;s, that&rsquo;s about two miles over the hills

-here; and then we can go on as far as you like.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>At Hosmer&rsquo;s they got food enough for two

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>

-days in the hills, and having fed and breathed the

-horses they rode on up into the higher woods.

-They were now in the region of the uncut timber

-where the great trees were standing from the beginning,

-because they had been too high up to be

-accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the

-lower levels. Though the long summer twilight

-of the North still lighted the tops of the trees, the

-two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving

-the horses to pick their own canny footing up the

-trail.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?&rdquo;

-Jeffrey asked as they rode along. &ldquo;You know,

-the man that was in French Village this summer.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Stocking answered. &ldquo;You

-see they came up to the end of the rails, at Grafton,

-on a handcar. And then they scattered.

-Nobody&rsquo;s sure that he&rsquo;s seen any of &rsquo;em since.

-But they must be in the hills somewhere. And

-Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s with &rsquo;em. You can bet on that.

-That&rsquo;s all we&rsquo;ve got to go on. But it may be

-a-plenty.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s enough to set us on the move, anyway,&rdquo;

-said Jeffrey. &ldquo;They have no business in the

-hills. They&rsquo;re bound to be up to mischief of some

-sort. And there&rsquo;s just one big mischief that they

-can do. Can we make Bald Mountain before daylight?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, certainly; that&rsquo;ll be easy. We&rsquo;ll get a

-little light when we&rsquo;re through this belt of heavy

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>

-woods and then we can push along. We ought

-to get up there by two o&rsquo;clock. It ain&rsquo;t light till

-near five. That&rsquo;ll give us a little sleep, if we feel

-like it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>True to Stocking&rsquo;s calculation they came out

-upon the rocky, thinly grassed knobs of Bald

-Mountain shortly before two o&rsquo;clock. It was a

-soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain

-in the air somewhere, for there was no dew; but

-it might be on the other side of the divide or it

-might be miles below on the lowlands.</p>

-<p>Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in

-the vicinity of the mountain, or were heading

-toward here. For the word of the menace had

-gone through the hills that day, and men would decide,

-as Jeffrey had done, that the danger would

-come from this direction. But they had not

-heard anything to show the presence of others,

-nor did they care to give any signals of their own

-whereabouts.</p>

-<p>As for those others, the possible enemy, who

-had left the railroad that morning and had scattered

-into the hills, if their purpose was the one

-that men feared, they, too, would be near here.

-But it was useless to look for them in the dark:

-neither was anything to be feared from them before

-morning. Men do not start forest fires in

-the night. There is little wind. A fire would

-probably die out of itself. And the first blaze

-would rouse the whole country.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span></div>

-<p>The two hobbled their horses with the bridle

-reins and lay down in the open to wait for morning.

-Neither had any thought of sleep. But the

-softness of the night, the pungent odour of the

-tamarack trees floating up to them from below,

-and their long ride, soon began to tell on them.

-Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Curl up and go to sleep, &lsquo;My,&rsquo;&rdquo; he said,

-shaking himself. &ldquo;You might as well. I&rsquo;ll wake

-you in an hour.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>A ready snore was the only answer.</p>

-<p>Morning coming over the higher eastern hills

-found them stiff and weary, but alert. The

-woods below them were still banked in darkness

-as they ate their dry food and caught their horses

-for the day that was before them. There was

-no water to be had up here, and they knew their

-horses must be gotten down to some water course

-before night.</p>

-<p>A half circle of open country belted by heavy

-woods lay just below them. Eagerly, as the light

-crept down the hill, they scanned the area for sign

-of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently

-they had the world to themselves. A fresh morning

-breeze came down over the mountain and

-watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops

-of the distant trees. The same thought made

-both men grip their rifles and search more carefully

-the ground below them, for that innocent

-breeze blowing straight down towards their homes

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>

-and loved ones was a potential enemy more to be

-feared than all the doings of men.</p>

-<p>Down to the right, two miles or more away, a

-man came out of the shadow of the woods. They

-could only see that he was a big man and stout.

-There was nothing about him to tell them whether

-he was friend or foe, of the hills or a stranger.

-Without waiting to see who he was or what he

-did, the two dove for their saddles and started

-their horses pell-mell down the hill towards him.</p>

-<p>He saw them at once against the bare brow of

-the hill, and ran back into the wood.</p>

-<p>In another instant they knew what he was and

-what was his business.</p>

-<p>They saw a light moving swiftly along the

-fringe of the woods. Behind the light rose a trail

-of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a

-line of living fire. The man was running, dragging

-a flaming torch through the long dried grass

-and brush!</p>

-<p>The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks,

-regardless of paths or horses&rsquo; legs, would gladly

-have killed the man as he ran. But it was too far

-for even a random shot. They could only ride on

-in reckless rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat

-it to death with their hands, to stamp it into the

-earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and

-a fair shot at the fiend there within the wood.</p>

-<p>Before they had stumbled half the distance

-down the hill, a wave of leaping flame a hundred

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>

-feet long was hurling itself upon the forest.

-They could not stamp that fire out. But they

-could kill that man!</p>

-<p>The man ran back behind the wall of fire to

-where he had started and began to run another

-line of fire in the other direction. At that moment

-Stocking yelled:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s another starting, straight in front!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Get him,&rdquo; Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to kill this one.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Stocking turned slightly and made for a second

-light which he had seen starting. Jeffrey rode on

-alone, unslinging his rifle and driving madly. His

-horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down

-the hill, now saw the fire and started to bolt off at

-a tangent. Jeffrey fought with him a furious

-moment, trying to force him toward the fire and

-the man. Then, seeing that he could not conquer

-the fright of the horse and that his man was

-escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and

-leaping free with his gun ran towards the

-man.</p>

-<p>The man was dodging in and out now among

-the trees, but still using his torch and moving

-rapidly away.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man

-in his zigzag until he was within easy distance.

-But the man continued weaving his way among the

-trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim.

-Jeffrey dropped to one knee and steadied the sights

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>

-of his rifle until they closed upon the running

-man and clung to him.</p>

-<p>Suddenly the man turned in an open space and

-faced about. It was Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He

-was unarmed, but he must be killed.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am going to kill him,&rdquo; said Jeffrey under

-his breath, as he again fixed the sights of his rifle,

-this time full on the man&rsquo;s breast.</p>

-<p>A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers

-threw up his hands, took a half step forward, and

-fell on his face.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger

-which he had not pulled, ran forward to where

-the man lay.</p>

-<p>He was lying face down, his arms stretched out

-wide at either side, his fingers convulsively clutching

-at tufts of grass.</p>

-<p>He was dying. No need for a second look.</p>

-<p>His hat had fallen off to a little distance.

-There was a clean round hole in the back of the

-skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair showed

-just the merest streak of red.</p>

-<p>Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still

-flaming railroad torch, with which he had done his

-work.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction

-from which the shot had come. There was

-no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no

-sign of another human being anywhere.</p>

-<p>Away back of him he heard shots, one, two,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>

-three; Stocking, probably, or some of the other

-men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at

-other fleeing figures in the woods.</p>

-<p>He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the

-wick and stamped it into a patch of burnt ground,

-threw the torch back from the fire line, and started

-clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of

-his rifle.</p>

-<p>He was quickly brought to his senses, when the

-forgotten cartridge in his gun accidentally exploded

-and the bullet went whizzing past his ear.

-He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp

-piece of sapling he began to work furiously, but

-systematically at the line of fire.</p>

-<p>The line was thin here, where it had really only

-that moment been started, and he made some

-headway. But as he worked along to where it

-had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless.

-Still he clung to his work. It was the only thing

-that his numbed brain could think of to do for the

-moment.</p>

-<p>He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the

-loose dirt furiously after the fire as it ran away

-from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire

-and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept

-up his trousers and shirt and up even to his hair.

-And still the fire ran away from him, away down

-the hill after its real prey. He looked farther

-on along the line and saw that it was not now a line

-but a charging, rushing river of flame that ran

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>

-down the hill, twenty feet at a jump. Nothing,

-nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain

-could now stop that torrent of fire.</p>

-<p>He stepped back. There was nothing to be

-done here now, behind the fire. Nothing to be

-done but to get ahead of it and save what could

-be saved. He looked around for his horse.</p>

-<p>Just then men came riding along the back of the

-line, Stocking and old Erskine Beasley in the lead.

-They came up to where Jeffrey was standing and

-looked on beyond moodily to where the body of

-Rogers lay.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell

-upon the little group of horsemen and upon the

-boy standing there.</p>

-<p>Myron Stocking spoke at last:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Mine got away, Jeff,&rdquo; he said slowly.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the

-meaning of the words flashed upon him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t do that!&rdquo; he exclaimed hastily.

-&ldquo;Somebody else shot him from the woods. My

-gun went off accidental.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Silence fell again upon the little group of men.

-They did not look at Jeffrey. They had heard

-but one shot. The shot from the woods had been

-too muffled for them to hear.</p>

-<p>Again Stocking broke the silence.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What difference does it make,&rdquo; he said.

-&ldquo;Any of us would have done it if we could.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t! I tell you I didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; shouted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>

-Jeffrey. &ldquo;The shot from the woods got ahead of

-me. That man was facing me. He was shot

-from behind!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Old Erskine Beasley took command.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What difference does it make, as Stocking

-says. We&rsquo;ve got live men and women and children

-to think about to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Straighten

-him out decent. Then divide and go around the

-fire both ways. The alarm can&rsquo;t travel half fast

-enough for this breeze, and it&rsquo;s rising, too,&rdquo; he

-added.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I tell you&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo; Jeffrey began again.

-Then he saw how useless it was.</p>

-<p>He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which

-even in the face of this unheard-of terror had preferred

-to venture back toward his master.</p>

-<p>He caught the horse, mounted, and started to

-ride south with the party that was to try to get

-around the fire from that side.</p>

-<p>He rode with them. They were his friends.

-But he was not with them. There was a circle

-drawn around him. He was separated from

-them. They probably did not feel it, but he felt

-it. It is a circle which draws itself ever around

-a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of

-blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may

-say that they themselves would wish to have done

-it. But the circle is there.</p>

-<p>Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She

-would not see that circle.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span></div>

-<p>Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a

-few hours before said that she had sometimes seen

-even murder in his eyes.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>

-<a name='V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE' id='V_MON_PERE_JE_ME_CUSE'></a>

-<h2>V</h2>

-<h3>MON PERE JE ME &rsquo;CUSE</h3>

-</div>

-<p>Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the

-fire raved exultingly, leaping and skipping fantastically

-as it ran. It was a prisoner released

-from the bondage of the elements that had held

-it. It was a spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom.

-It was a flood raging down a valley. It

-was a maniac at large.</p>

-<p>The broad base of the mountain where it sat

-upon the backs of the lower hills spread out fanwise

-to a width of five miles. The fire spread its

-wings as it came down until it swept the whole

-apron of the mountain. A five-mile wave of solid

-flame rolled down upon the hills.</p>

-<p>Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early

-browse missed the juicy dew from the grass.

-They looked to where the sun should be coming

-over the mountain and instead they saw the sun

-coming down the side of the mountain in a blanket

-of white smoke. They left their feed and began

-to huddle together, mooing nervously to each

-other about this thing and sniffing the air and

-pawing the earth.</p>

-<p>Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>

-in to milking looked blinking up at the mountain,

-stood a moment before their numb minds understood

-what their senses were telling them, then

-ran shouting back to the farm houses, throwing

-open pasture gates and knocking down lengths of

-fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear

-in their hearts, ran straight to the barns and

-mounting the best horses fled down the roads to

-the west. For the hireling flees because he is a

-hireling.</p>

-<p>Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children

-came tumbling out of the houses, to look up

-at the death that was coming down to them.

-Some cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and

-shook foolish fists at the oncoming enemy. Some

-fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God

-of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the

-house for his or her treasure; a little bag of money

-under a mattress, or a babe in its crib, or a little

-rifle, or a dolly of rags.</p>

-<p>Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm

-wagons. The treasures were quickly bundled in.

-Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into

-the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at

-the heads of the sweating horses, then climbed to

-their places in the wagons and took the reins.

-For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind

-mad horses, they would have to hold the lives of

-the children, the horses, and, incidentally, of themselves

-in their hands. But they were capable

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>

-hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother

-hearts that went with them.</p>

-<p>They would have preferred to stay with the

-men, these women. But it was the law that they

-should take the brood and run to safety.</p>

-<p>Men stood watching the wagons until they shot

-out of sight behind the trees of the road. Then

-they turned back to the hopeless, probably useless

-fight. They could do little or nothing. But it

-was the law that men must stay and make the

-fight. They must go out with shovels to the very

-edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of

-new earth which the running fire could not cross.

-Thus they might divert the fire a little. They

-might even divide it, if the wind died down a little,

-so that it would roll on to either side of their

-homes.</p>

-<p>This was their business. There was little

-chance that they would succeed. Probably they

-would have to drop shovels at the last moment

-and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But

-this was the law, that every man must stay and try

-to make his own little clearing the point of an entering

-wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No

-man, no ten thousand men could stop the fire.

-But, against all probabilities, some one man might

-be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground,

-or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of

-it. That sector might be fought and narrowed

-down by other men until it was beaten. And so

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>

-something would be gained. For this men stayed,

-stifled and blinded, and fought on until the last

-possible moment, and then ran past their already

-smoking homes and down the wind for life.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake

-of four other men down a long spiral course

-towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he

-would have ridden at their head. He would have

-taken the place of leadership and command among

-them which he had for months been taking in the

-fight against the railroad. Probably he could still

-have had that place among them if he had tried to

-assert himself, for men had come to have a habit

-of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear,

-dispirited and miserable.</p>

-<p>They were trying to get around the fire, so that

-they might hang upon its flank and beat it in upon

-itself. There was no thought now of getting

-ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm.

-That rolling curtain of smoke would have already

-aroused every living thing ahead of it.

-They could only hope to get to the end of the line

-of fire and fight it inch by inch to narrow the path

-of destruction that it was making for itself.</p>

-<p>If the wind had held stiff and straight down the

-mountain it would have driven the fire ahead in a

-line only a little wider than its original front.

-But the shape of the mountain caught the light

-breeze as it came down and twisted it away always

-to the side. So that the end of the fire line was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>

-not a thin edge of scattered fire that could be

-fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted

-funnel of flame that leaped and danced ever

-outward and onward.</p>

-<p>Half way down the mountain they thought that

-they had outflanked it. They slid from their

-horses and began to beat desperately at the brush

-and grasses among the trees. They gained upon

-it. They were doing something. They shouted

-to each other when they had driven it back even a

-foot. They fought it madly for the possession of

-a single tree. They were gaining. They were

-turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat began to

-streak the caking grime upon their faces. There

-was no air to breathe, only the hot breath of fire.

-But it was heartsome work, for they were surely

-pushing the fire in upon itself.</p>

-<p>A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud

-of hot white smoke about them. They stood still

-with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves pressed over

-eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.</p>

-<p>When they could look they saw a wall of fire

-bearing down upon them from three sides. The

-wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise

-so that it had surrounded the meagre little space

-that they had cleared and had now outflanked

-them. Their own man&oelig;uvre had been turned

-against them. There was but one way to run,

-straight down the hill with the fire roaring and

-panting after them. It was a playful, tricky

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>

-monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing

-at their puny efforts.</p>

-<p>Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves

-out of the path of the flames and dropped

-exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by

-them on its way.</p>

-<p>Their horses were gone, of course. The fire

-in its side leap had caught them and they had fled

-shrieking down the hill, following their instinct

-to hunt water.</p>

-<p>The men now began to understand the work

-that was theirs. They were five already weary

-men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must

-follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they

-could run at their best. And they must hang upon

-its edge and fight every inch of the way to fold

-that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from

-spreading out upon them. A hundred men who

-could have flanked the fire shoulder to shoulder for

-a long space might have accomplished what these

-five were trying to do. For them it was impossible.

-But they hung on in desperation.</p>

-<p>Three times more they made a stand and

-pushed the edge of the fire back a little, each time

-daring to hope that they had done something.

-And three times more the treacherous wind

-whirled the fire back behind and around them so

-that they had to race for life.</p>

-<p>Now they were down off the straight slope of

-the mountain and among the broken hills. Here

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>

-their work was entirely hopeless and they knew it.

-They knew also that they were in almost momentary

-danger of being cut off and completely surrounded.

-Here the fire did not keep any steady

-edge that they could follow and attack. The

-wind eddied and whirled about among the broken

-peaks of the hills in every direction and with it

-the fire ran apparently at will.</p>

-<p>When they tried to hold it to one side of a

-hill and were just beginning to think that they had

-won, a sudden sweep of the wind would send a

-ring of fire around to the other side so that they

-saw themselves again and again surrounded and

-almost cut off.</p>

-<p>Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold

-the fire to the north side of the Chain. The

-Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly east

-and west. It divides the hill country into fairly

-even portions. If they could keep the fire north

-of the lakes they would save the southern half of

-the country. Their own homes all lay to the

-north of the lakes and they were now doomed.

-But that was a matter that did not enter here.

-What was gone was gone. Their loved ones

-would have had plenty of warning and would be

-out of the way by now. The men were fighting

-the enemy merely to save what could be saved.

-And as is the way of men in fight they began to

-make it a personal quarrel with the fire.</p>

-<p>They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>

-It was no longer an impersonal, natural

-creature of the elements, that fire. It was a cunning,

-a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them.

-They hated it. Its eyes were red with gloating

-over them. Their eyes were red and bloodshot

-with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse

-with the roar of its laughing at them. Their

-voices were thick and their lips were cracking with

-the hot curses they hurled back at it.</p>

-<p>They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel.

-All but one of them had forgotten the men

-whom they had tracked into the hills last night

-and who had started the fire. All but one of them

-had forgotten those other men, far away and safe

-and cowardly, who had sent those men into the

-hills to do this thing.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the

-day wore on and the fight waxed more bitter and

-more hopeless, even he began to lose sight of the

-beginning and to make it his own single feud with

-the fire. He fought and was beaten back and

-ran and went back to fight again, until there was

-but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in

-his brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without

-mercy, without quarter given or asked with the

-demon of the fire.</p>

-<p>Now other men came from scattered, far-flung

-homes to the south and joined the five. Two hills

-stood between them and Sixth Lake, where the

-Chain began and stretched away to the west. If

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>

-they could hold the fire to the north of these two

-hills then it would sweep along the north side of

-the lakes and the other half of the country would

-be safe.</p>

-<p>The first hill was easy. They took their stand

-along its crest. The five weary, scarred, singed

-men, their voices gone, their swollen tongues protruding

-through their splitting lips, took new

-strength from the help that had come to them.

-They fought the enemy back down the north side

-of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with

-charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones

-down upon it.</p>

-<p>They were beating it at last! Only another

-hill like this and their work would be done. They

-would strike the lake and water. Water! God

-in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it!

-To throw themselves into it! To sink into its

-cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and

-<i>drink</i>!</p>

-<p>Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy

-with undergrowth. Here was the worst place.

-Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder,

-fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass,

-the hated breath of the fire in their nostrils. And

-they held their line. They pushed the fire on past

-the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill.

-They had won! It could not beat them now!</p>

-<p>As he came around the brow of the hill and saw

-the shining body of the placid lake below him one

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>

-of the new men, who still had voice, raised a shout.

-It ran back along the line, even the five who had

-no voice croaking out what would have been a

-cry of triumph.</p>

-<p>But the wind heard them and laughed.

-Through the ravine which they had safely crossed

-with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a

-merry, flirting little gust, a draught. On the

-draught the lingering flames went dancing swiftly

-through the brush of the ravine and spread out

-around the southern side of the hill. Before the

-men could turn, the thing was done. The hill

-made itself into a chimney and the flames went

-roaring to the top of it.</p>

-<p>The men fled over the ridge of the hill and

-down to the south, to get themselves out of that

-encircling death.</p>

-<p>When they were beyond the circle of fire on

-that side, they saw the full extent of what had befallen

-them in what had been their moment of

-victory.</p>

-<p>Not only would the fire come south of the lake

-and the Chain&ndash;&ndash;but they themselves could not

-get near the lake.</p>

-<p>Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet

-almost! And they could not reach it! The fire

-was marching in a swift, widening line between

-them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger

-might they wet in the lake.</p>

-<p>Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>

-silent teeth, according to the nature that was in

-each.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the

-lake. He saw two men pushing a boat into the

-lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke and

-waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes.

-They were not men of the hills.</p>

-<p>They were!&ndash;&ndash;They were the real enemy!&ndash;&ndash;They

-were two of those who had set the fire!

-They had not stopped to fight fire. They had

-headed straight for the lake and had gotten there.

-<i>They</i> were safe. And <i>they</i> had <i>water</i>!</p>

-<p>All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him

-by the fighting fire fury of the day, rushed back

-upon him.</p>

-<p>He had not killed a man this morning. Men

-said he had, but he had not.</p>

-<p>Now he would kill. The fire should not stop

-him. He would kill those two there in the water.

-<i>In the water!</i></p>

-<p>He ran madly down the slope and into the

-flaming, fuming maw of the fire. He went blind.

-His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward,

-his face buried in a patch of bare earth.</p>

-<p>Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged

-him out by the feet. When they had brought him

-back to safety and had fanned breath into him with

-their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at

-them. As he understood, he turned on his face

-moaning:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t kill Rogers. I wish I had&ndash;&ndash;I wish

-I had.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled

-away into the west.</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of

-the window as the intolerable, sooty train jolted

-its slow way northward along the canal and the

-Black River. He had left Albany in the very

-early hours of the morning. Now it was nearing

-noon and there were yet eighty miles, four hours,

-of this interminable journey before he could find

-a good wash and rest and some clean food. But

-he was not hungry, neither was he querulous.

-There were worse ways of travel than even by a

-slow and dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn

-diocese the Bishop had found plenty of

-them. He was never one to complain. A gentle

-philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and

-understood the faults of high and low, a slow,

-quiet gleam of New England humour at the back

-of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these

-things, Joseph Winthrop contrived to be a very

-good man and a very good bishop.</p>

-<p>But to-day he was not content with things. He

-had done one thing in Albany, or rather, he would

-have said, he had seen it done. He had appealed

-to the conscience of the people of the State. And

-the conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable

-terms that the U. &amp; M. Railroad must not

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>

-dare to drive the people of the hills from their

-homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their

-land. Then the conscience of the people of the

-State had gone off about its business, as the public

-conscience has a way of doing. The public would

-forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished

-it with a mild sensation which had aroused

-it for a time, a matter of a few days at most.

-He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days.

-But the railroad would not forget. It never slept.

-For there were men behind it who said, and kept

-on saying, that they must have results.</p>

-<p>He was sure that the railroad would strike back.

-And it would strike in some way that would be effective,

-but that yet would hide the hand that

-struck.</p>

-<p>Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode

-north lay the line of the first hills. Beyond them

-stood the softly etched outlines of the mountains,

-their white-blue tones blending gently into the

-deep blue of the sky behind them.</p>

-<p>Forty miles away he could make out the break

-in the line where Old Forge lay and the Chain began.

-Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the divide.

-But he could not see Bald Mountain.

-That was strange. The day was very clear. He

-had noticed that there had been no dew that morning.

-There might have been a little haze on the

-hills in the early morning. But this sun would

-have cleared that all away by now.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span></div>

-<p>Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the

-compass on his journey up this side of his diocese.

-He had never before missed it on a fair

-day. It was something more to him than a mere

-bare rock set on the top of other rocks. It was

-one of his marking posts. And when you remember

-that his was a charge of souls scattered

-over twenty thousand square miles of broken

-country, you will see that he had need of marking

-posts.</p>

-<p>Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory

-which he could reach from the western side of his

-diocese. When he had to go into the country to

-the east of the mountain he must go all the way

-south to Albany and around by North Creek or

-he must go all the way north and east by Malone

-and Rouses Point and then south and west again

-into the mountains. The mountain was set in almost

-the geographical centre of his diocese and

-he had travelled towards it from north, east, south

-and west.</p>

-<p>He missed his mountain now and rubbed his

-eyes in a troubled, perplexed way. When the

-train stopped at the next little station he went out

-on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.</p>

-<p>Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between

-the hills where he knew Old Forge nestled

-was gone. The open rift of sky that he had

-recognised a few moments before was now filled,

-as though a mountain had suddenly been moved

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>

-into the gap. He went back to his seat and sat

-watching the line of the mountains. As he

-watched, the whole contour of the hills that he

-had known was changed under his very eyes.

-Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and

-rounded, smooth skulls of mountains showed

-against the sky where sharp peaks should have

-been.</p>

-<p>He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion

-shot into his mind, and stayed. Then a

-just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of

-Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a

-man of gentle heart whose passions ran deep below

-a placid surface.</p>

-<p>At Booneville he stepped off the train before

-it had stopped and hurried to the operator&rsquo;s window

-to ask if any news had gone down the wire of

-a fire in the hills.</p>

-<p>Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over

-his table &ldquo;listening in&rdquo; with shameless glee to

-a flirtatious conversation that was going over the

-wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the

-Company, between the young lady operator at

-Snowden and the man in the office at Steuben.</p>

-<p>The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.</p>

-<p>Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This ain&rsquo;t the bulletin board. We&rsquo;re busy.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop stood quiet a moment.</p>

-<p>Then Jerry looked up. The face looking

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>

-calmly through the window was the face of one

-who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder

-of certain things.</p>

-<p>Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously,

-on his feet. He grabbed at his front lock

-of curly red hair and gasped:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;m sorry, Bishop! I&ndash;&ndash;I&ndash;&ndash;didn&rsquo;t hear

-what you said.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop&ndash;&ndash;if one might say it&ndash;&ndash;grinned.

-Then he said quickly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills.

-Have you heard anything on the wire?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop&rsquo;s

-mouth. The beet red colour of his face had gone

-down several degrees. The freckles were coming

-back. He was now coherent.</p>

-<p>No he had not heard anything. He was sure

-nothing had come down the wire. Just then the

-rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed

-abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a

-&ldquo;call.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jerry held up his hand. &ldquo;Lowville calling

-Utica,&rdquo; he said. They waited a little and then:

-&ldquo;Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country.

-Call everything,&rdquo; Jerry repeated from the

-sounder, punctuating for the benefit of the Bishop.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It must be big, Bishop,&rdquo; he said, turning, &ldquo;or

-they wouldn&rsquo;t call&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But the Bishop was already running for the

-steps of his departing train.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span></div>

-<p>At Lowville he left the train and hurried to

-Father Brady&rsquo;s house. Finding the priest out on

-a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the housekeeper,

-and, commandeering some riding clothes

-and Father Brady&rsquo;s saddle horse, he was soon on

-the road to French Village and the hills.</p>

-<p>It was before the days of the rural telephone

-and there was no telegraph up the hill road. A

-messenger had come down from the hills a half

-hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was

-no alarm among the people of Lowville, for there

-lay twenty miles of well cultivated country between

-them and the hills. If they noticed Father

-Brady&rsquo;s clothes riding furiously out toward

-the hill road, they gave the matter no more than

-a mild wonder.</p>

-<p>For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily

-up the hard dirt road over which he and Arsene

-LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the

-winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who

-had died that night. He thought of the many

-things that had in some way had their beginning

-on that night, all leading up, more or less, to this

-present moment. But more than all he thought

-of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up

-there in the hills fighting for their lives and their

-little all.</p>

-<p>He did not know who had started this fire. It

-might well have started accidentally. He did not

-know that the railroad people had sent men into

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>

-the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those

-men were caught by the men of the hills, then

-there would be swift and bloody justice done.

-The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father

-Brady&rsquo;s horse as that good animal had never been

-ridden in the course of his well fed life.</p>

-<p>Nearing Corben&rsquo;s, he saw that the horse could

-go but little farther. Registering a remonstrance

-to Father Brady, anent the matter of keeping

-his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with

-Corben for a fresh horse. Corben looked at the

-horse from which the Bishop had just slid

-swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop&rsquo;s

-destination in the hills&ndash;&ndash;which was vague,

-and his business&ndash;&ndash;which was still more vague.

-He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and

-reviewed the whole matter critically. Finally he

-guessed that the Bishop could have the fresh

-horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.</p>

-<p>The Bishop explained that he did not have the

-money about him. Corben believed that. The

-Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the

-diocese. Corben did not believe that.</p>

-<p>In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay,

-persuaded the man to believe him and to accept

-his surety for the horse. And taking food in his

-pockets he pressed on into the high hills.</p>

-<p>Already he had met wagons loaded with women

-and children on the road. But he knew that they

-would be of those who lived nearest the fringe of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>

-the hills. They would know little more than he

-did himself of the origin of the fire or of what

-was going on up there under and beyond that pall

-of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.</p>

-<p>Now the road began to be dotted with these

-wagons of the fleeing ones, and some seemed to

-have come far. Twice he stopped long enough

-to ask a question or two. But their replies gave

-him no real knowledge of the situation. They

-had been called from their beds in the early morning

-by the fire. Their men had stayed, the

-women had fled with the children. That was all

-they could tell.</p>

-<p>As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth

-Lansing on Brom Bones escorting Mrs. Whiting

-and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew

-without asking that the fire was now coming near,

-for these women would not have left their homes

-except in the nearness of danger.</p>

-<p>In fact the two older women had only yielded

-to the most peremptory authority, exercised by

-Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to

-the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously

-against the idea that Cassius Bascom, who

-was notoriously unable to look after himself in

-the most ordinary things of life, should now be

-left behind on the mere argument that he was a

-man.</p>

-<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s first question concerned Jeffrey

-Whiting. Ruth told what she knew. That a

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>

-man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road yesterday;

-that the man had brought news of strange

-men being seen in the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden

-away with him toward Bald Mountain.</p>

-<p>The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain

-would be the place to be watched. He could even

-conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and

-the breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could

-see the desperate and futile struggle with the fire

-as it reached down to the hills. Back of that

-screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy

-darker even than the one of the fire itself.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He had my letter?&rdquo; the Bishop asked, when

-he had heard all that Ruth had to tell.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. We had just read it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He went armed?&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey&rsquo;s gun to

-him,&rdquo; the girl answered simply, with a full knowledge

-of all that the question and answer implied.

-The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They will all be driven in upon French Village,&rdquo;

-said the Bishop slowly. &ldquo;The wind will

-not hold any one direction in the high hills. Little

-Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all

-in the end. The road from here there, is it open,

-do you know?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No one has come down from that far,&rdquo; said

-Ruth. &ldquo;We have watched the people on the

-road all day. But probably they would not leave

-the lake. And if they did they would go north

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>

-by the river. But the road certainly won&rsquo;t be

-open long. The fire is spreading north as it

-comes down.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I must hurry, then,&rdquo; said the Bishop, gripping

-his reins.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, but you cannot, you must not!&rdquo; exclaimed

-Ruth. &ldquo;You will be trapped. You can never go

-through. We are the last to leave, except a few

-men with fast horses who know the country every

-step. You cannot go through on the road, and if

-you leave it you will be lost.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well, I can always come back,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop lightly, as he set his horse up the hill.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But you cannot. Won&rsquo;t you listen, please,

-Bishop,&rdquo; Ruth pleaded after him. &ldquo;The fire may

-cross behind you, and you&rsquo;ll be trapped on the

-road!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up

-the hill. Whether he heard or not, he did not

-answer or look back.</p>

-<p>Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after

-him. She did not know whether or not he realised

-his danger. Probably he did, for he was a

-quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge

-of his danger would not drive him back. She

-knew that.</p>

-<p>She knew the business upon which he went.

-No doubt it was one in which he was ready to

-risk his life. He had said that they would all

-be driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>

-meant hunters and hunted alike. For there were

-the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills

-would be up there behind the wall of fire or working

-along down beside it. But while they fought

-the fire they would be hunting the brush and the

-smoke for the traces of other men. Those other

-men would maybe be trapped by the swift running

-of the fire. All might be driven to seek safety

-together. The hunted men would flee from the

-fire to a death just as certain but which they would

-prefer to face.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was riding to save the lives of

-those men. Also he was riding to keep the men

-of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be

-among them. Only yesterday she had spoken

-that word to him.</p>

-<p>But he can do neither, she thought. He will

-be caught on the road, and before he will give in

-and turn back he will be trapped.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am going back to the top of the hill,&rdquo; she

-said suddenly to Mrs. Whiting. &ldquo;I want to see

-what it looks like now. Go on down. I will

-catch you before long.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No. We will pull in at the side of the road

-here and wait for you. Don&rsquo;t go past the hill.

-We&rsquo;ll wait. There&rsquo;s no danger down here yet,

-and won&rsquo;t be for some time.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for

-he was fresh and all day long he had been held

-in tight when he had wanted to run away. He

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>

-did not know what that thing was from which he

-had all day been wanting to run. But he knew

-that if he had been his own master he would have

-run very far, hunting water. So now he bolted

-quickly to the top of the hill.</p>

-<p>But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse

-and was not sparing him. When Ruth came to

-the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a

-mile away, already past her own home and mounting

-the long hill.</p>

-<p>She stood watching him, undecided what to do.

-The chances were all against him. Perhaps he

-did not understand how certainly those chances

-stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode

-like a man who knew the chances and was ready

-to measure himself against them.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Brom Bones could catch him, I think,&rdquo; she

-said as she watched him up the long hill. &ldquo;But

-we could not make him come back until it was too

-late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I

-don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m afraid. Only somehow he seems&ndash;&ndash;seems

-different. He doesn&rsquo;t seem just like a

-man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger.

-No. He knows all about it. But it doesn&rsquo;t

-count. He is a man going on business&ndash;&ndash;God&rsquo;s

-business. I wonder.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Now she saw him against the rim of the sky

-as he went over the brow of the hill, where

-Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was

-not a pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>

-for he was very tired from the unusual ride, and

-he crouched forward, saving his horse all that he

-could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten

-as he disappeared over the crown of the hill,

-seeming to ride right on into the sky.</p>

-<p>Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her.

-He was looking away to the right of the long, terraced

-hill before her. The fire was coming,

-sweeping diagonally down across the face of the

-hill straight toward her home.</p>

-<p>All her life she had been hearing of forest fires.

-Hardly a summer had passed within her memory

-when the menace of them had not been present

-among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill

-children did, expecting to some day have to fly

-for her life before one. But she had never before

-seen a wall of breathing fire marching down

-a hill toward her.</p>

-<p>For moments the sight held her enthralled in

-wonder and awe. It was a living thing, moving

-down the hillside with an intelligent, defined

-course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer

-and a silver fox down the hill. It could not catch

-those timid, fleet animals in the open chase. But

-if they halted or turned aside it might come upon

-them and surround them.</p>

-<p>While she looked, one part of her brain was

-numbed by the sight, but the other part was thinking

-rapidly. This was not the real fire. This

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>

-was only one great paw of fire that shot out before

-the body, to sweep in any foolish thing that

-did not at first alarm hurry down to the level lands

-and safety.</p>

-<p>The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming

-on in a solid front beyond the hill. It would not

-yet have struck the road up which the Bishop was

-hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past

-it and get into French Village before it should

-cross the road. But she was sure he could not

-do so. He would go on until he found it

-squarely before him. Then he would have to turn

-back. And here was this great limb of fire already

-stretching out behind him. In five minutes

-he would be cut off. The formation of the

-hills had sent the wind whirling down through a

-gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead

-of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country

-to the north of the road. If he left the road

-he could only flounder about and wander aimlessly

-until the fire closed in upon him.</p>

-<p>Ruth&rsquo;s decision was taken on the instant. The

-two women did not need her. They would

-know enough to drive on down to safety when

-they saw the fire surely coming. There was a

-man gone unblinking into a peril from which he

-would not know how to escape. He had gone to

-save life. He had gone to prevent crime. If he

-stayed in the road she could find him and lead him

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>

-out to the north and probably to safety. If he did

-not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only

-make the attempt.</p>

-<p>Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the

-road towards his home. For the first time in his

-life, he felt the cut of a whip on his flanks&ndash;&ndash;to

-make him go faster. He did not know what it

-meant. Nothing like that had ever been a part

-of Brom Bones&rsquo; scheme of life, for he had always

-gone as fast as he was let go. But it did

-not need the stroke of the whip to madden him.</p>

-<p>Down across the slope of the hill in front of

-him he saw a great, red terror racing towards the

-road which he travelled. If he could not understand

-the girl&rsquo;s words, he could feel the thrill of

-rising excitement in her voice as she urged him

-on, saying over and over:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You can make it, Brom! I know you can!

-I never struck you this way before, did I? But

-it&rsquo;s for life&ndash;&ndash;a good man&rsquo;s life! You can make

-it. I know you can make it. I wouldn&rsquo;t ask you

-to if I didn&rsquo;t know. You can make it! It won&rsquo;t

-hurt us a bit. It <i>can&rsquo;t</i> hurt us! Bromie, dear,

-I tell you it can&rsquo;t hurt us. It just can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She crouched out over the horse&rsquo;s shoulder,

-laying her weight upon her hands to even it for

-the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw

-that neither terror nor punishment could drive him

-faster than he was going. He was giving her the

-best of his willing heart and fleet body.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span></div>

-<p>But would it be enough? Fast as she raced

-along the road she saw that red death whirling

-down the hillside, to cross the road at a

-point just above her home. Could she pass that

-point before the fire came? She did not know.

-And when she came to within a hundred yards of

-where the fire would strike the road she still did

-not know whether she could pass it. Already she

-could feel the hot breath of it panting down upon

-her. Already showers of burning leaves and

-branches were whirling down upon her head and

-shoulders. If her horse should hesitate or bolt

-sidewise now they would both be burned to death.

-The girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking

-into his mane, she told him so. Perhaps he, too,

-knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he

-plunged straight into the blinding blast that swept

-across the road.</p>

-<p>A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in

-the face. He reeled and reared a little, and a

-moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But

-he felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane

-and he plunged on again, through the smoke and

-out into the good air.</p>

-<p>The fire laughed and leaped across the road

-behind them. It had missed them, but it did not

-care. The other way, it would not have cared,

-either.</p>

-<p>Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long

-slope of the hill, and turning looked back at her

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>

-home. The farmer had long since gone away

-with his family. The place was not his. The

-flames were already leaping up from the grass

-to the windows and the roof was taking fire from

-the cinders and burning branches in the air. But,

-where everything was burning, where a whole

-countryside was being swept with the broom of

-destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter

-much.</p>

-<p>Only when she saw the flames sweep on past

-the house and across the hillside and attack the

-trees that stood guard over the graves of her

-loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul.

-She revolted at the cruel wickedness of it all.

-Her heart hated the fire. Hated the men who

-had set it. (She was sure that men <i>had</i> set it.)

-She wanted vengeance. The Bishop was wrong.

-Why should he interfere? Let men take revenge

-in the way of men.</p>

-<p>But on the instant she was sorry and breathed

-a little prayer of and for forgiveness. You see,

-she was rather a downright young person. And

-she took her religion at its word. When she

-said, &ldquo;Forgive us our trespasses,&rdquo; she meant just

-that. And when she said, &ldquo;As we forgive those

-who trespass against us,&rdquo; she meant that, too.</p>

-<p>The Bishop was right, of course. One horror,

-one sin, would not heal another.</p>

-<p>Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder

-and horror of the fire burst upon her with appalling

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>

-force. What she had so far seen was but

-a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill.

-Now in front and to the right of her, in an unbroken

-quarter circle of the whole horizon, there

-ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed

-to be coming down upon the whole world.</p>

-<p>She knew that it was already behind her. If

-she had thought of herself, she would have turned

-Brom Bones to the left, away from the road and

-have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the

-north and out of the range of the moving terror.

-But only for one quaking little moment did she

-think of herself. Along that road ahead of her

-there was a man, a good man, who rode bravely,

-unquestioningly, to almost certain death, for

-others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as

-she could see, the fire was not yet crossing the

-road in front. The Bishop would still be on the

-road. She was sure of that. Again she asked

-Brom Bones for his brave best.</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>The Bishop was beginning to think that he

-might yet get through to French Village. His

-watch told him that it was six o&rsquo;clock. Soon the

-sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable

-tenting of white smoke that had spread high

-over all the air there was nothing to show that

-a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the

-going down of the sun the wind, too, would probably

-die away. The fire had not yet come to the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>

-road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire

-would advance but slowly, and would hardly

-spread to the north at all.</p>

-<p>He was not discrediting the enemy in front.

-He had seen the mighty sweep of the fire and

-he knew that it would need but the slightest shift

-of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon

-him from which he would have to run for his

-life. He did not, of course, know that the fire

-had already crossed the road behind him. But

-even if he had, he would probably have kept on

-trusting to the chance of getting through somehow.</p>

-<p>He was ascending another long slope of country

-where the road ran straight up to the east.

-The fire was already to the right of him, sweeping

-along in a steady march to the west. It was

-spreading steadily northward, toward the road;

-but he was hoping that the hill before him had

-served to hold it back, that it had not really

-crossed the road at any point, and that when he

-came to the top of this hill he would be able to

-see the road clear before him up to French Village.

-He was wearied to the point of exhaustion,

-and his nervous horse fought him constantly in

-an effort to bolt from the road and make off to

-the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing

-so far from the fire; and there was no real

-reason to be discouraged.</p>

-<p>Then he came to the top of the hill.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span></div>

-<p>He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long

-time before on that same day. Five hundred

-yards before him as he looked down a slight

-slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to

-the sky. The road ran straight through that.

-Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could see

-the whole country banked in terraces of flame.

-There was no road. This hill had divided the

-wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided the

-fire. Already the fire had run away to the north,

-and it was still moving northward as it also advanced

-more slowly to the top of the hill where

-he stood.</p>

-<p>Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing

-worse had happened than he had, in reason, anticipated.

-He must go back. He turned the

-horse and looked.</p>

-<p>Across the ridge of the last hill that he had

-passed the fire was marching majestically. The

-daylight, such as it had been, had given its place

-to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago

-he could not have distinguished anything back

-there. Now he could see the road clearly marked,

-nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid

-wall of fire.</p>

-<p>There were no moments to be lost. He was cut

-off on three sides. The way out lay to the north,

-over he knew not what sort of country. But at

-least it was a way out. He must not altogether

-run away from the fire, for in that way he might

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>

-easily be caught and hemmed in entirely. He

-must ride along as near as he could in front of

-it. So, if he were fast enough, he might turn the

-edge of it and be safe again. He might even

-be able to go on his way again to French Village.</p>

-<p>Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the

-fire played no new trick upon him.</p>

-<p>His horse turned willingly from the road and

-ran along under the shelter of the ridge of the hill

-for a full mile as fast as the Bishop dared let

-him go. He could not drive. He was obliged

-to trust the horse to pick his own footing. It

-was mad riding over rough pasture land and brush,

-but it was better to let the horse have his own

-way.</p>

-<p>Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge

-where the Bishop might have expected to be able

-to go around the edge of the fire. The horse

-stood stock still. The Bishop took one quiet,

-comprehensive look.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I am sorry, boy,&rdquo; he said gently to the horse.

-&ldquo;You have done your best. And I&ndash;&ndash;have done

-my worst. You did not deserve this.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He was looking down toward Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork,

-a dry water course, two miles away and a thousand

-feet below.</p>

-<p>The fire had come clear around the hill and

-had been driven down into the heavy timber along

-the water course. There it was raging away to

-the west down through the great trees, travelling

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>

-faster than any horse could have been driven.</p>

-<p>The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in

-his saddle, thinking mechanically. To the east

-the fire was coming over the ridge in an unbroken

-line&ndash;&ndash;death. From the south it was advancing

-slowly but with a calm and certain steadiness of

-purpose&ndash;&ndash;death. On the hill to the west it was

-burning brightly and running speedily to meet that

-swift line of fire coming down the northern side

-of the square&ndash;&ndash;death. One narrowing avenue

-of escape was for the moment open. The lines

-on the north and the west had not met. For some

-minutes, a pitifully few minutes, there would be

-a gap between them. The horse, riderless and

-running by the instinct of his kind might make

-that gap in time. With a rider and stumbling

-under weight, it was useless to think of it.</p>

-<p>With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop

-slid a tired leg over the horse and came heavily

-to the ground.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You have done well, boy, you shall have your

-chance,&rdquo; he said, as he hurried to loosen the heavy

-saddle and slip the bridle.</p>

-<p>He looked again. There was no chance. The

-square of fire was closed.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We stay together, then.&rdquo; And the Bishop

-mounted again.</p>

-<p>Within the four walls of breathing death that

-were now closing around them there was one

-slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>

-No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe

-of life. Still it was to be played with to the

-last. For that again is the law, applying equally

-to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things

-that ran through the grass by his horse&rsquo;s feet.</p>

-<p>One fire was burning behind the other. There

-was just a possibility that a place might be found

-where the first fire would have burned away a

-breathing place before the other fire came up to

-it. It might be possible to live in that place until

-the second fire, finding nothing to eat, should

-die. It might be possible. Thinking of this, the

-Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the

-west.</p>

-<p>Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden,

-thought of death. How should a bishop die?

-He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But

-there seemed to be nothing in those passages that

-bore on the matter immediately in hand.</p>

-<p>Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid,

-guessed that he would die very much as

-another man would die, with his rosary in his

-hand.</p>

-<p>But was there not a certain ignominy in being

-trapped here as the dumb and senseless brute creatures

-were being trapped? For the life of him,

-the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the

-matter or the manner of the thing than he could

-see heroism.</p>

-<p>He had come out on a bootless errand, to save

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>

-the lives of certain men, if it might be. God had

-not seen wisdom in his plan. That was all. He

-had meant well. God meant better.</p>

-<p>Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl

-broke insistently with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere

-neighed to his horse, and the Bishop realised

-with a start of horror that a woman was here

-in this square of fire.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s you, Bishop, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; the voice cried

-frantically. &ldquo;I thought I&rsquo;d never find you.

-Over here to the right. Let your horse come.

-He&rsquo;ll follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks,&rdquo; she

-yelled back over her shoulder, &ldquo;we can make them

-yet! There&rsquo;s nothing there to burn. We may

-smother. But we won&rsquo;t <i>burn</i>!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse

-taken swiftly under command. It was Ruth

-Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to

-think how she had gotten into this fortress of

-death. His horse followed Brom Bones through

-a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck path of

-loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get

-a fair breath or any knowledge of where he was

-going, he found himself on the top of what seemed

-to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.</p>

-<p>They stopped, and Ruth was already down and

-talking soothingly to Brom Bones when the Bishop

-got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he

-saw that they were on a plateau of rock at least

-several acres in extent and perhaps a hundred feet

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>

-above the ground about them. Looking down he

-saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot

-of the rocks below. They had not been an instant

-too soon. As he turned to speak to the

-girl, his eye was caught by something that ran

-out of one of the lines of fire. It ran and fell

-headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it

-stirred and began crawling up the rocks.</p>

-<p>It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands

-and knees up the side of the refuge. The Bishop

-went down a little to help. As the two came

-slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there

-waiting. The Bishop brought the man to his feet

-and stood there holding him in the light. The

-face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond

-any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed

-figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe Gadbeau.</p>

-<p>The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop&rsquo;s

-arms for a moment, then crumpled down inert.

-The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck

-and holding the head of what he was quick to fear

-was a dying man.</p>

-<p>The man&rsquo;s eyes opened and in the strong light

-he evidently recognised the Bishop&rsquo;s grimy collar,

-for out of his cracked and swollen lips there came

-the moan:</p>

-<p><i>&ldquo;Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</i></p>

-<p>With a start, Ruth recognised the words.

-They were the form in which the French people

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>

-began the telling of their sins in confession. And

-she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.</p>

-<p>She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom

-Bones, thinking of Jeffrey Whiting. Here was

-one of the things that he did not like&ndash;&ndash;the Catholic

-Church always turning up in everything.</p>

-<p>She wondered where he was and what he was

-doing and thinking, up there behind that awful

-veil of red.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>

-<a name='VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD' id='VI_THE_BUSINESS_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'></a>

-<h2>VI</h2>

-<h3>THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The Bishop laid the man&rsquo;s head back so that

-he lay as easy as it was possible and spoke a word

-or two in that astonishing French of his which

-was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the

-North Country.</p>

-<p>But for a long time the man seemed unable to

-go farther. He saw the Bishop slip the little

-pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know

-what it was and what it was for. The swollen

-lips, however, only continued to mumble the words

-with which they had begun:</p>

-<p><i>&ldquo;Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse</i>&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or

-better than he could speak French. But there

-are times when a man reverts to the tongue of his

-mother. And confession, especially in the face

-of death, is one of these.</p>

-<p>Again the Bishop lowered the man&rsquo;s head and

-changed the position of the body, while he fanned

-what air there was across the gasping mouth with

-his hat.</p>

-<p>Now the man tried to gather his straying wits

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>

-to him. With a sharp effort that seemed to send

-a tremor through his whole long body he forced

-his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered

-word of encouragement from the Bishop,

-he began hoarsely that precise, recitative form of

-confession that the good priests of Lower Canada

-have been drilling into the children for the last

-three hundred years.</p>

-<p>Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed

-way it worked easily, mechanically.

-Since five years he had not confessed. At that

-time he had received the Sacrament. He went

-through the &ldquo;table of sins&rdquo; with the methodical

-care of a man who knows that if he misses a step

-in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the

-story of the young men of his people in the hills,

-in the lumber camps, in the sawmills, in the

-towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill

-country would have told the same story, of hard

-work and anger and fighting in the camps, of

-drink and debauch in the towns when they went

-down to spend their money; and would have told

-it in exactly the same way. The Bishop had

-heard the story ten thousand times.</p>

-<p>But now&ndash;&ndash;<i>Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse</i>&ndash;&ndash;there

-was something more, something that would not

-fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day.

-It had begun a long time ago and it was just coming

-to an end here at the feet of the Bishop.

-Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>

-the Bishop had found blood caked on the man&rsquo;s

-shirt, in the back, just below the shoulder blade.

-There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a

-wound from which ordinarily the man would have

-fallen and stayed lying where he fell.</p>

-<p>He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards,

-as it unrolled itself to his mind.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I die, Mon Pere, I die,&rdquo; he began between

-gasps. &ldquo;I die. Since the afternoon I have been

-dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down,

-if I could have had two minutes free from the

-fire, I would have lain down to die. But shall a

-man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;All day I have run from the fire. I could

-not lie down to die till I had found a free place

-where my soul could breathe out. Here I

-breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes

-and the deer ran out from the fire, and they ran

-no faster than I ran. But I could not run out of

-its way. All day long men followed the line of

-the fire and fought around its edge. They fought

-the fire, but they hunted me. All the day long

-they hunted me and drove me always back into the

-fire when I would run out.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They hunted me because in the early morning

-they had seen me with the men who set the

-fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand

-to the fire. Why was I with those men? Why

-did I go with them when they went to set the fire?

-Ah, that is a longer tale.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in

-a drinking place. All were drinking. There was

-a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow.

-<i>Mon Pere</i>, I struck no blow. But my knife&ndash;&ndash;my

-knife was found in the man&rsquo;s heart. Who

-struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad

-that comes now into the hills found my knife.

-He traced it to me. He showed the knife to me.

-It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no

-word to the law. With the knife he could hang

-me. But he said no word. Only to me he said,

-&lsquo;Some day I may need you.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Last winter that man the detective came into

-the hills. Now he was not a detective. He was

-Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He

-would buy the land from the people.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The people would not sell. You know of

-the matter. In June he came again. He was

-angry, because other men above him were angry.

-He must force the people to sell. He must trick

-the people. He saw me. &lsquo;You,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I

-need you.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, that man owned me. On the

-point of my knife, like a pinch of salt, he held my

-life. Never a moment when I could say, I will

-do this, I will do that. Always I must do his

-bidding. For him I lied to my own people. For

-him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed

-the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told.

-He called and I came. He bade me do and I did.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;M&rsquo;sieur does not know the sin of hate. It

-is the wild beast of all sins. And fear, too, that

-is the father of sin. For fear begets hate. And

-hate goes raging to do all sin.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before

-my eyes was always the face of this man,

-threatening with that knife of mine.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yesterday, in the morning came a message

-that I must meet him at the railroad. He would

-come to the end of the rail and we would go up

-into the high hills. I knew what was to be done.

-To myself, I rebelled. I would not go. I swore

-I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved me,

-begged me not to go. To her I swore I would

-not go.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I went. Fear, <i>Mon Pere</i>, fear is the father

-of all. I went because there was that knife before

-my eyes. I believe that good girl followed

-into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me

-back at the last moment. I do not know.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I went because I must go. I must be there

-in case any one should see. If any of us that went

-was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be

-seen. I must be known to have been there. If

-any one was to be punished, I was that one.

-Rogers must be free, do you see. I would have

-to take the blame. I would not dare to

-speak.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain.

-We were seven. And of the seven I alone

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>

-was to take the blame. They would swear it upon

-me. I knew.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the

-reach of his tongue. And his speech was, &lsquo;You

-owe me this. Now you must pay.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;In the first light the torches were got ready.

-We scattered along the fringe of the highest trees.

-Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went

-out into the clearing. Then he came running

-back. He had seen other men watching for us.

-I ran a little way. He came running behind with

-a lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled

-to me to light my torch. Again I ran, deeper

-into the wood. Again he came after me, the red

-flare of the fire running after him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the

-wood! The red rush of fire in the air! The red

-flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate!

-Fire!&rdquo; With a terrible convulsion the man drew

-himself up in the Bishop&rsquo;s arms, gazing wildly at

-the fire all about them, and screaming:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot

-Rogers when he stopped!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He fell back as the scream died in his throat.</p>

-<p>The Bishop began the words of the Absolution.

-Some whisper of the well-remembered sound must

-have reached down to the soul of Rafe Gadbeau

-in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously,

-his lips began to form the words of the Act of

-Contrition.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span></div>

-<p>As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran

-through the body in his arms. He knelt there

-holding the empty shell of a man.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away,

-resting against the flank of her horse, had time to

-be awed and subdued by the terrific forces of this

-world and the other that were at work about her.

-This world, with the exception of this little island

-on which she stood, was on fire. The wind had

-almost entirely died out. On every side the flames

-rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance,

-place, all were blotted out. There was no

-east, no west; no north, no south. Only an impenetrable

-ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only

-these few bare rocks and this inverted bowl of

-lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out of which she must

-get the breath of life.</p>

-<p>Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst,

-just as she had seen a rabbit and a belated woodchuck

-bursting. And that man had lain himself

-down to die. And here, of all places, he had

-found the hand of the mighty, the omnipresent

-Catholic Church reached out ready to him!</p>

-<p>She was only a young girl. But since that night

-when the Bishop had come to her as she held her

-father dying in her arms she had thought much.

-Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had

-pressed themselves in upon her mind. The things

-that she had been hearing and reading since her

-childhood, the thoughts of the people among

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>

-whom she had grown up, the feeling of loyalty to

-her own kind, all these had fought in her against

-the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged

-them all.</p>

-<p>Because she had so recently come under its influence,

-the Catholic Church seemed ever to be unfolding

-new wonders to her. It seemed as though

-she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another

-more wonderful, more awesome. Yet always

-there seemed to be something just beyond,

-some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which

-she could not quite attain. Always a door opened,

-only to disclose another closed door beyond it.</p>

-<p>Here surely she stood as near to naked truth

-as it was possible to get. Here were none of the

-forms of words, none of the explanations, none

-of the ready-made answers of the catechism.

-Here were just two men. One was a bad man,

-a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few moments

-his soul must go&ndash;&ndash;somewhere. The other

-was a good man. To-day he had risked his life

-to save the lives of this man and others&ndash;&ndash;for

-Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been

-caught in the fire because other men were chasing

-him.</p>

-<p>Now these two men had a question to settle between

-them. In a very few minutes these two

-men must settle whether this bad man&rsquo;s soul was

-presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity.

-You see, she was a very direct young

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span>

-person. She took her religion at its word,

-straight in the eyes, literally.</p>

-<p>So far she had not needed to take any precautions

-against hearing anything that was said. The

-dull roar of the fire all about them effectually

-silenced every other sound. Then, without warning,

-high above the noise of the fire, came the

-shrill, breaking voice of Gadbeau, screaming:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot

-Rogers as he stopped!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Involuntarily she turned and started towards

-the men. Gadbeau had fallen back in the

-Bishop&rsquo;s arms and the Bishop was leaning over,

-apparently talking to him. She knew that she

-must not go near until the Bishop gave her leave.

-She turned back and putting her hands up to her

-ears buried her face in Brom Bones&rsquo; mane.</p>

-<p>But she could not put away the words that she

-had heard. Never, so long as she lived, was she

-able to forget them. Like the flash of the shot

-itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves

-there. Years afterwards she could shut

-her eyes and fairly see those words burning in her

-mind.</p>

-<p>When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and

-she went over timidly. She heard the Bishop say:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the

-light of the flames, the Prayers for the Departed.

-Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and among

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>

-the Mysteries she wept gently&ndash;&ndash;why, she knew

-not.</p>

-<p>When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while

-in silence, looking into the face of the dead.

-Then he arose and folded the long arms on the

-tattered breast and straightened the body.</p>

-<p>Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way.

-Once, twice she opened her lips to speak. But

-she did not know what to say or how to say it.

-Finally she began:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Bishop, I&ndash;&ndash;I heard&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, child. You heard nothing,&rdquo; the Bishop

-interrupted quietly, &ldquo;nothing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth understood. And for a little space the

-two stood there looking down. The dead man&rsquo;s

-secret lay between them, buried under God&rsquo;s awful

-seal.</p>

-<p>The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping

-Father Brady&rsquo;s storm coat which he had brought

-wrapped it gently over the head and body of the

-dead man as a protection from the showers of

-glowing cinders that rained down upon everything.</p>

-<p>Then they took up the interminable vigil of the

-night, standing at their horses&rsquo; heads, their faces

-buried in the manes, their arms thrown over the

-horses&rsquo; eyes.</p>

-<p>As the night wore on the fire, having consumed

-everything to the east and south, moved on deliberately

-into the west and north. But the sharp,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span>

-acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still

-kept them in exquisite, blinded torture.</p>

-<p>The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost

-to black as the fires to the east died almost out in

-that last, lifeless hour of the night. The light

-of the morning showed a faint, sickly white

-through the smoke banks on the high hills. When

-it was time for the sun to be rising over Bald

-Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting

-the heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead

-and away into the west. They saw the

-world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a

-land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and

-here and there a great tree still standing smoking

-like a burnt-out torch.</p>

-<p>They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at

-the figure of the man lying there on his rocky

-bier, picked their way down to the sloping hillside.

-The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives.

-Now they must reach Little Tupper and water if

-they would have their horses live. Intolerable,

-frightful thirst was already swelling their own

-lips and they knew that the plight of the horses

-was inevitably worse.</p>

-<p>Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country.

-They must travel circuitously, avoiding the places

-that had been wooded for the fallen trees would

-still be burning and would block them everywhere.

-The road was impossible because it had

-largely run through wooded places and the trees

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>

-would have fallen across it. Their situation was

-not desperate, but at any moment a horse might

-drop or turn mad for water.</p>

-<p>For two hours they plodded steadily over the

-hills through the hot, loose-lying ashes. In all the

-world it seemed that not man nor beast nor bird

-was alive. The top of the earth was one grey

-ruin, draped with the little sworls of dust and

-ashes that the playful wind sent drifting up into

-their mouths and eyes.</p>

-<p>They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the

-ashes had blown level over holes and traps of all

-sorts in which a galloping horse would surely break

-his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the

-horses to any rapid expenditure of energy. The

-little that was left in them must be doled out to the

-very last ounce. For they did not yet know what

-lay between them and French Village and the lake.

-If the fire had not reached the lake during the

-night then it was always a possibility that, with

-this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring

-up from the ashes of the old and place an impassable

-barrier between them and the water.</p>

-<p>When this thought came to them, as it must,

-they involuntarily quickened their pace. The impulse

-was to make one wild dash for the lake.

-But they knew that it would be nothing short of

-madness. They must go slowly and carefully, enduring

-the torture with what fortitude they could.</p>

-<p>The story which the Bishop had heard from the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>

-lips of the dying man had stirred him profoundly.

-He now knew definitely, what yesterday he had

-suspected, that men had been sent into the hills

-by the railroad people to set fire to the forests,

-thereby driving the people out of that part of the

-country which the railroad wished to possess. He

-was moved to anger by the knowledge, but he

-knew that he must try to drive that knowledge

-back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try

-to hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded

-moment, some time of stress and mental

-conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture

-or even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness

-of that knowledge. Now he knew that

-the situation which last night he had thought to

-meet in French Village would almost certainly

-confront him there this morning, if indeed he ever

-succeeded in reaching there. And he must be

-doubly on his guard lest the things which he might

-learn to-day should in his mind confuse themselves

-with what he had last night learned under the seal

-of the confessional.</p>

-<p>Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been

-hearing the words of that last cry of the dying

-man. She did not know how near they came to

-her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had

-stood with his gun levelled upon the man whom

-Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she would to

-keep back the knowledge which she knew she must

-never under any circumstances reveal, those words

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>

-came ringing upon her ears. And she knew that

-the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.</p>

-<p>As they came over the last of the ridges, the

-grey waste of the country sloping from all sides to

-the lake lay open before them. There was not a

-ruin, not a standing stick to show them where

-little French Village had once stood along the

-lake. The fire had gone completely around the

-lake to the very water edge and a back draught

-had drawn it up in a circle around the east slope.

-There it had burned itself out along the forest

-line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward

-the west, burning its way down to the settled farm

-lands. But there would be no more fire in this

-region.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Would the people make their way down the

-river,&rdquo; the Bishop asked; &ldquo;or did they escape back

-into the higher hills?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think they did either,&rdquo; Ruth answered

-as she scanned the lake sharply. &ldquo;There is something

-out there in the middle of the lake, and I

-wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if they made rafts out of the

-logs and went through the fire that way. They&rsquo;d

-be better off than we were, and that way they

-could save some things. If they had run away

-they would have had to drop everything.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake,

-pricked up their ears and started briskly down the

-slope. It was soon plain that Ruth was right in

-her conjecture. They could now make out five

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>

-or six large rafts which the people had evidently

-thrown together out of the logs that had been

-lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the sawmill.

-These were crowded with people, standing

-as they must have stood all through the night;

-and now the freshening wind, aided by such help

-as the people could give it with boards and poles,

-was moving all slowly toward the shore where

-their homes had been.</p>

-<p>The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he

-rode fetlock deep through the ashes of what had

-been the street of a happy little village and

-watched his people coming sadly back to land.

-There was nothing for them to come back to.

-They might as well have gone to the other side

-of the lake to begin life again. But they would

-inevitably, with that dumb loyalty to places, which

-people share with birds, come back and begin

-their nests over again.</p>

-<p>For nearly an hour they stood on the little

-beach, letting the horses drink a little now and

-then, and watching the approach of the rafts.

-When they came to the shallow water, men and

-boys jumped yelling from the rafts and came wading

-ashore. In a few moments the rafts were

-emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled

-who must be carried off.</p>

-<p>They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable

-Bishop and the girl with wonder and a little

-superstition, for it was plain that these two people

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>

-must have come straight through the fire. But

-when Father Ponfret came running forward and

-knelt at the Bishop&rsquo;s feet, a great glad cry of

-wondering recognition went up from all the French

-people. It was their Bishop! He who spoke

-the French of the most astonishing! His coming

-was a sign! A deliverance! They had come

-through horrors. Now all was well! The good

-God had hidden His face through the long night.

-Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger

-to say that all was well!</p>

-<p>Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of

-spirits that makes their race what it is, they threw

-themselves on their knees begging his blessing.

-The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand

-slowly. He was infinitely humbled by the quick,

-spontaneous outburst of their faith. He had done

-nothing for them; could do nothing for them.

-They were homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a

-stick of shelter. Yet it had needed but the sight

-of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded

-confidence that God was good, that the world was

-right again.</p>

-<p>The other people, the hill people of the Bishop&rsquo;s

-own blood and race, stood apart. They did not

-understand the scene. They were not a kind of

-people that could weep and laugh at once. But

-they were not unmoved. For years they had

-heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some two

-or three old men of them saw him now through

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>

-a mist of memory and battle smoke riding a mad

-horse across a field. They knew that this was the

-man. That he should appear out of the fire after

-the nightmare through which they had passed was

-not so much incredible as it was a part of the

-strange things that they had always half believed

-about him.</p>

-<p>Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues

-around the Bishop. Father Ponfret, a quick,

-eager little man of his people, would drag the

-Bishop&rsquo;s story from him by very force. Had he

-dropped from Heaven? How had he come to be

-in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the

-fire?</p>

-<p>The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the

-folly of his own imprudence, and how he had been

-saved from the consequences of it by the quickness

-and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret

-translated freely and with a fine flourish.

-Then the Bishop told of the coming of Rafe Gadbeau

-and how the man had died with the Sacrament.

-They nodded their heads in silence.

-There was nothing to be said. They knew who

-the man was. He had done wickedly. But the

-good God had stretched out the wing of His great

-Church over him at the last. Why say more?

-God was good. No?</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people,

-grouped on the outskirts of the crowd that pressed

-around the Bishop, answering their eager questions

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>

-and asking questions of her own. There was just

-one question that she wanted to ask, but something

-kept it back from her lips. There was no reason

-at all why she should not ask them about Jeffrey

-Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard

-news of him, must know in what direction he had

-gone to fight the fire. But some unnamed dread

-seemed to take possession of her so that she dared

-not put her crying question into words.</p>

-<p>Some one at her elbow, who had heard what

-the French people were saying, asked:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re sure that was Gadbeau that crawled

-out of the fire and died, Miss Lansing?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was

-Gadbeau, certainly,&rdquo; Ruth answered without looking

-up.</p>

-<p>Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s two of &rsquo;em done for. That was

-Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting shot Rogers.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He did not!&rdquo; Ruth blazed up in the young

-man&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Jeffrey Whiting did <i>not</i> shoot Rogers!

-Rafe&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The horror of the thing she had been about to

-do rushed upon her and blinded her. The blood

-came rushing up into her throat and brain, choking

-her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered.

-The young man, Perry Waite, caught her

-by the arm as she seemed about to fall. She

-struggled a moment for control of herself, then

-managed to gasp:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing&ndash;&ndash; Let me go.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Perry Waite looked sharply into her face.

-Then he took his hand from her arm.</p>

-<p>Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped

-away and crowded herself in among the people

-who stood around the Bishop. Here no one

-would be likely to speak to her. And here, too,

-she felt a certain relief, a sense of security, in being

-surrounded by people who would understand.

-Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet

-the mere feeling that she stood among those who

-could have understood gave her strength and a

-feeling of safety even against herself which she

-could not have had among her own kind.</p>

-<p>But she was not long left with her feeling of

-security. A wan, grey-faced girl with burning

-eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and drew her

-out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal,

-though Ruth found it difficult to recognise in her

-the red-cheeked, sprightly French girl she had met

-in the early summer.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You saw Rafe Gadbeau die,&rdquo; the girl said

-roughly, as she faced Ruth sharply at a little distance

-from the crowd. &ldquo;You were there, close?

-No?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, the fire was all around,&rdquo; Ruth answered,

-quaking.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;How did he die? Tell me. How?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why&ndash;&ndash;why, he died quickly, in the Bishop&rsquo;s

-arms.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I know. Yes. But how? He <i>confessed</i>?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He&ndash;&ndash;he went to confession, you mean.

-Yes, I think so.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; she persisted. &ldquo;I heard

-M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop. But did he <i>confess</i>&ndash;&ndash;about

-Rogers?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know

-I didn&rsquo;t hear anything. I couldn&rsquo;t&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t say nothing, except in confession?&rdquo;

-the girl questioned swiftly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Nothing at all,&rdquo; Ruth answered, relieved.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And you heard?&rdquo; the girl returned shrewdly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know

-that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I know you are lying,&rdquo; Cynthe said slowly.

-&ldquo;That is right. But I do not know. Will you

-always be able to lie? I do not know. You are

-Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not

-like one of us. Sometime you will forget. It is

-not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in us.

-Sometime when you are not thinking some one will

-ask you a question and you will start and your

-tongue will slip, or you will be silent&ndash;&ndash;and that

-will be just as bad.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She

-dared not speak, did not even raise her eyes, for

-any assurance of silence or even a reassuring look

-to the girl would be an admission that she must not

-make.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did

-not hear a word! You cannot speak to me. But

-swear it to your soul,&rdquo; said the girl in a low, tense

-whisper; &ldquo;swear that you will never, sleeping or

-waking, laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let

-woman or man know that you heard. Swear it.

-And while you swear, remember.&rdquo; She drew

-Ruth close to her and almost hissed into her ear:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Remember&ndash;&ndash; You love Jeffrey Whiting!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She dropped Ruth&rsquo;s arm and turned quickly

-away.</p>

-<p>Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind

-lost in a whirl of fright and bewilderment. She

-did not know where to turn. She could not grapple

-with the racing thoughts that went hurtling

-through her mind.</p>

-<p>This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was

-half crazed with her love and her grief. And she

-was determined to protect his name from the dark

-blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is

-sometimes given to those beside themselves with

-some great grief or strain, the girl had seen Ruth&rsquo;s

-terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had

-plucked it out before Ruth&rsquo;s very eyes.</p>

-<p>The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened,

-thought Ruth. She had broken the seal of

-the confessional! She had been entrusted with

-the most terrible secret that a man could have to

-tell, under the most awful bond that God could put

-upon a secret. And the secret had escaped her!</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span></div>

-<p>She had said no word at all. But, just as surely

-as if she had repeated the cry of the dying man in

-the night, Ruth knew that the other girl had taken

-her secret from her.</p>

-<p>And with that same uncanny insight, too, the

-girl had looked into the future and had shown

-Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her.

-Nay, what a burden it was already becoming.

-For already she was afraid to speak to any one,

-afraid to go near any person that she had ever

-known.</p>

-<p>And that girl had stripped bare another of

-Ruth&rsquo;s secrets, one that had been hidden even

-from herself. She had said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Remember&ndash;&ndash; You love Jeffrey Whiting.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>In ways, she had always loved him. But she

-now realised that she had never known what love

-was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up

-in the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to

-clutch and tear for the dead name of the man

-whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it

-was, and it came burning up in her heart to protect

-the dear name of her own beloved one, her man.

-Already men were putting the brand of Cain upon

-him! Already the word was running from mouth

-to mouth over the hills&ndash;&ndash; The word of blood!

-And with it ran the name of her love! Jeffrey,

-the boy she had loved since always, the man she

-would love forever!</p>

-<p>He would hear it from other mouths. But,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>

-oh! the cruel, unbearable taunt was that only two

-days ago he had heard it first from her own lips!

-Why? Why? How? How had she ever said

-such a thing? Ever thought of such a thing?</p>

-<p>But she could not speak as the French girl had

-spoken for her man. She could not swear the

-mouths to silence. She could not cry out the

-bursting, torturing truth that alone would close

-those mouths. No, not even to Jeffrey himself

-could she ever by word, or even by the faintest

-whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew

-more than his and other living mouths could tell

-her! Never would she be able to look into his

-eyes and say:</p>

-<p>I <i>know</i> you did not do it.</p>

-<p>Only in her most secret heart of hearts could

-she be glad that she knew. And even that knowledge

-was the sacred property of the dead man.

-It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of

-her mind. Love, horror, and the awful weight of

-God&rsquo;s seal pressed in upon her to crush her.

-There was no way to turn, no step to take. She

-could not meet them, could not cope with them.</p>

-<p>Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd

-and down to where Brom Bones stood by the lake.

-There the kindly French women found her, her

-face buried in the colt&rsquo;s mane, crying hysterically.

-They bathed her hands and face and soothed her,

-and when she was a little quieted they gave her

-drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>

-that she would need strength above all things,

-took what was given and silently faced the galling

-weight of the burden that was hers.</p>

-<p>The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole

-situation. The first thing to be decided was

-whether the people should try to hold out where

-they were or should attempt at once to walk out

-to the villages on the north or west. To the west

-it would mean forty miles of walking over ashes

-with hardly any way of carrying water. To the

-north it would mean a longer walk, but they could

-follow the river and have water at hand. The

-danger in that direction was that they might come

-into the path of a new fire that would cut them

-off from all help.</p>

-<p>Even if they did come out safe to the villages,

-what would they do there? They would be scattered,

-penniless, homeless. There was nothing

-left for them here but the places where their

-homes had been, but at least they would be together.

-The cataclysm through which they had

-all passed, which had brought the prosperous and

-the poverty-stricken alike to the common level of

-just a few meals away from starvation, would here

-bind them together and give them a common

-strength for a new grip on life. If there was

-food enough to carry them over the four or five

-days that would be required to get supplies up

-from Lowville or from the head of the new railroad,

-then they should stay here.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span></div>

-<p>The Bishop went swiftly among them, where

-already mothers were drawing family groups aside

-and parcelling out the doles of food. Already

-these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree

-and drawing around them and theirs the circle of

-the hearth, even though it was a circle drawn only

-in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor

-kindly of eye and understanding of heart,

-but by no means to be evaded. Unsuspected

-stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came

-forth from nondescript bundles of clothing and

-were laid under his eye. It appeared that Arsene

-LaComb had stayed in his little provision store

-until the last moment portioning out what was his

-with even hand, to each one as much as could be

-carried. The Bishop saw that it was all pitifully

-little for those who had lived in the village and

-for those refugees who had been driven in from

-the surrounding hills. But, he thought, it would

-do. These were people born to frugality, inured

-to scanty living.</p>

-<p>The thing now was to give them work for their

-hands, to put something before them that was to

-be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all

-things it is not well for men to sit down in the

-ashes and merely wait. They had no tools left

-but the axes which they had carried in their hands

-to the rafts, but with these they could hew some

-sort of shelter out of the loose logs in the lake.

-A rough shack of any kind would cover at least

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span>

-the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up

-or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at

-the outlet of the lake. It would be slow work and

-hard and a makeshift at the best. But it would

-put heart into them to see at least something, anything,

-begin to rise from the hopeless level of the

-ashes.</p>

-<p>Three of the hill men had managed to keep

-their horses by holding desperately to them all

-through the day before and swimming and wading

-them through the night in the lake. These

-the Bishop despatched to what, as near as he could

-judge, were the nearest points from which messages

-could be gotten to the world outside the

-burnt district. They bore orders to dealers in the

-nearest towns for all the things that were immediately

-necessary for the life and rebuilding of the

-little village. With the orders went the notes of

-hand of all the men gathered here who had had

-a standing of credit or whose names would mean

-anything to the dealers. And, since the world

-outside would well know that these men had now

-nothing that would make the notes worth while,

-each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of

-Alden. For the Bishop knew that there was no

-time to wait for charity and its tardy relief.

-Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone

-makes the life of the world go on, must be established

-at once. And it was characteristic of

-Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>

-penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he

-was signing obligations upon himself and his diocese.

-He was simply writing down his gospel

-of his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men.

-And it is a commentary upon that faith of his that

-he was never presented with a single one of the

-notes he signed that day.</p>

-<p>All the day long men toiled with heart and will,

-dragging logs and driftwood from the lake and

-cutting, splitting, shaping planks and joists for a

-shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and

-spikes from the ruins of what had been their

-homes. So that when night came down over the

-hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of

-women and children. And the light spirited,

-sanguine people raised cheer after cheer as their

-imagination leaped ahead to the new French Village

-that would rise glorious out of the ashes of

-the old. Then Father Ponfret, catching their

-mood, raised for them the hymn to the Good

-Saint Anne. They were all men from below

-Beaupre and from far Chicothomi where the Good

-Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had

-never been out of their childhood hearing. They

-sang it now, old and young, good and bad, their

-eyes filling with the quick-welling tears, their

-hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence

-on the lilt of the air. Even the Bishop, whose

-singing voice approached a scandal and whose

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>

-French has been spoken of before, joined in loud

-and unashamed.</p>

-<p>Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring

-in the twilight brooded them in to shelter

-from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing

-odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to

-talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the

-hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.</p>

-<p>Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very

-old man to-night, laid his head upon a saddle and

-a folded blanket and considered the Mysteries of

-God and His world, as the beads slipped through

-his fingers and unfolded their story to him.</p>

-<p>Two men were stumbling fearfully down

-through the ashes of the far slope to the lake.

-All day long they had lain on their faces in the

-grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The

-fire had gone on past them leaving them safe.

-But behind them rose tier upon tier of barren

-rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly

-of unknown country. They could not go that

-way. They were not, in fact, fit for travel in any

-direction. For all the day before they had run,

-dodging like hunted rats, between a line of fire&ndash;&ndash;of

-their own making&ndash;&ndash;before them, and a line of

-armed men behind them. They had outrun the

-fire and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun

-the men and escaped them. They were free

-of those two enemies. But a third enemy had

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>

-run with them all through the day yesterday and

-had stayed with them through all the horror of

-last night and it had lain with them through all the

-blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable,

-scorching thirst, drying their bones, splitting

-their lips, bulging their eyes. And all day long,

-down there before their very eyes, taunting them,

-torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and

-sweet and deep and wide. It was worse than the

-mirage of any desert, for they knew that it was

-real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense

-of sight. They could perhaps have stood the torture

-of one sense. But this lake came up to them

-through all their senses. They could feel the air

-from it cool upon their brows. The wind brought

-the smell of water up to taunt their nostrils.

-And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy

-that they heard the lapping of the little waves

-against the rocks. This last they knew was an

-illusion. But, for the matter of that, all might

-as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their

-enemies who had yesterday chased them with

-death in their hearts, were scattered around the

-shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one

-who might come out of the fringe of shrub and

-grass beyond the line of the burnt ground. No

-living thing could move down that bare and

-whitened hillside toward the lake without being

-marked by those armed men. And, for these two

-men, to be seen meant to die.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span></div>

-<p>So they had lain all day on their faces and raved

-in their torture. Now when they saw the fires on

-the shore where French Village had been beginning

-to die down they were stumbling painfully

-and crazily down to the water.</p>

-<p>They threw themselves down heavily in the

-burnt grass at the edge of the lake and drank

-greedily, feverishly until they could drink no

-more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the

-grass and rested until they could return to drink.

-When they had fully slaked their thirst and rested

-to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they

-realised now that thirst was not the only thing in

-the world. It had taken up so much of their recent

-thought that they had forgotten everything

-else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came

-upon them and they knew that if they would live

-and travel&ndash;&ndash;and they must travel&ndash;&ndash;they would

-have to have food at once.</p>

-<p>Over there at the end of the lake where the

-cooking fires had now died out there were men

-lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There

-was food over there, food in plenty, food to be

-had for the taking! Now it did not seem that

-thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any

-great thing to be feared. Hunger was the only

-real enemy. Food was the one thing that they

-must have, before all else and in spite of all else.

-They would go over there and take the food in

-the face of all the world!</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span></div>

-<p>Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water

-side picking drowsily at a few wisps of half-burnt

-grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself.

-There was a great deal wrong with the world.

-He had not, it seemed, seen a spear of fresh grass

-for an age. And as for oats, he did not remember

-when he had had any. It was true that Ruth

-had dug up some baked potatoes out of a field for

-him and he had been glad to eat them, but&ndash;&ndash;Fresh

-grass! Or oats!</p>

-<p>Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his

-hobbles. It was nothing to be alarmed at, of

-course. But he did not like strange hands around

-him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and

-thought no more of the matter.</p>

-<p>A few moments later a man went running softly

-toward the horse. He carried a bundle of tinned

-meats and preserves slung in a coat. At peril of

-his life he had crept up and stolen them from the

-common pile that was stacked up at the very door

-of the shanty where the women and children

-slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom

-Bones&rsquo; bridle and tried to launch himself across

-the colt&rsquo;s back. In his leap a can of meat fell and

-a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom

-Bones&rsquo; hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.</p>

-<p>A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping

-a rifle and kicking the embers into a blaze.

-He saw the man struggling with the horse and

-fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>

-leaped and plunged head down towards the

-water, shot dead through his stout, faithful

-heart.</p>

-<p>In a moment twenty men were running into the

-dark, shouting and shooting at everything that

-seemed to move, while the women and children

-screamed and wailed their fright within the little

-building.</p>

-<p>The two men running with the food for which

-they had been willing to give their lives dropped

-flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men

-running wildly stumbled over them. They were

-quickly secured and hustled and kicked to their

-feet and brought back to the fire.</p>

-<p>They must die. And they must die now.

-They were in the hands of men whose homes they

-had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced

-with the most terrible of deaths; men who for

-thirty-six hours now had been thirsting to kill

-them. The hour had come.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Take them down to the gully. Build a fire

-and dig their graves.&rdquo; Old Erskine Beasley

-spoke the sentence.</p>

-<p>A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer.

-A cry that suggested the snapping of jaws

-let loose upon the prey.</p>

-<p>Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst

-of the crowd, laying hands upon the two cowering

-men, and spoke. A moment before he had

-caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>

-done. But he had cried to God against the sin

-that had whispered at his heart, and he spoke now

-calmly, as one assured.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do we do wisely, men?&rdquo; he questioned.

-&ldquo;These men are guilty. We know that, for you

-saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just,

-for they planned what might have been death for

-you and yours. But shall only these two be punished?

-Are there not others? And if we silence

-these two now forever, how shall we be ever able

-to find the others?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll be sure of these two,&rdquo; said a sullen

-voice in the crowd.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; returned the Bishop, raising his voice.

-&ldquo;But I tell you there are others greater than any

-of these who have come into the hills risking their

-lives. How shall we find and punish those other

-greater ones? And I tell you further there is one,

-for it is always one in the end. I tell you there is

-one man walking the world to-night without a

-thought of danger or disgrace from whose single

-mind came all this trouble upon us. That one

-man we must find. And I pledge you, my friends

-and my neighbours,&rdquo; he went on raising his hand,

-&ldquo;I pledge you that that one man will be found

-and that he will do right by you.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Before these men die, bring a justice&ndash;&ndash;there

-is one of the village&ndash;&ndash;and let them confess before

-the world and to him on paper what they

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>

-know of this crime and of those who commanded

-it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>A grudging silence was the only answer, but the

-Bishop had won for the time. Old Toussaint

-Derossier, the village justice, was brought forward,

-fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers,

-and made to sit upon an up-turned bucket with a

-slab across his knee and write in his long hand of

-the <i>rue Henri</i> the story that the men told.</p>

-<p>They were ready to tell. They were eager to

-spin out every detail of all they knew for they felt

-that men stood around them impatient for the

-ending of the story, that they might go on with

-their task.</p>

-<p>The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet

-to come. He must save these men, not only because

-it was his duty as a citizen and a Christian

-and a priest, but because he foresaw that his

-friend, Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused

-of the killing of a certain man, and that these

-men might in that day be able to tell something of

-that story which he himself could but must not

-tell.</p>

-<p>The temper of the crowd was perhaps running

-a little lower when the story of the men was

-finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure

-that he could hold them back from their purpose.

-Nevertheless he spoke simply and with a determination

-that was not to be mistaken. At the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span>

-first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry

-out their intention, he said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall

-not, I say. Shall not. I will prevent. I will

-put this old body of mine between. You shall

-not move these men from this spot. And if they

-are shot, then the bullets must pass through me.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You will call this thing justice. But you know

-in your hearts it is just one thing&ndash;&ndash;Revenge.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What business is it of yours?&rdquo; came an angry

-voice out of the crowd.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is <i>not</i> my business,&rdquo; said the Bishop solemnly.

-&ldquo;It is the business of God. Of your

-God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest?

-Have I no right to speak God&rsquo;s name to you, because

-we do not believe all the same things? My

-business is with the souls of men&ndash;&ndash;of all men.

-And never in my life have I so attended to my own

-business as I am doing this minute, when I say to

-you in the name of God, of the God of my fathers

-and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder

-upon your souls this night. Have you wives?

-Have you mothers? Have you sweethearts?

-Can you go back to them with blood upon your

-hands and say: A man warned us, but he had no

-<i>business</i>!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear

-not. Justice shall be done. And you will see

-right in the end. As you believe in your God,

-oh! believe me now! You shall see right!&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span></div>

-<p>The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw

-it in the faces of the men about him. God had

-spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his

-feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was

-glad.</p>

-<p>He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over

-them.</p>

-<p>Then he went down near to the lake where a

-girl kneeling beside her dead pet wept wildly.

-The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done

-his noble part in saving the life of Joseph

-Winthrop, Bishop of Alden. But that Bishop of

-Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful

-words, had now no word that he could dare to

-say in comfort to this grief.</p>

-<p>He covered his face and turned, walking away

-through the ashes into the dark. And as he

-walked, fingering his beads, he again considered

-the things of God and His world.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>

-<a name='VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL' id='VII_THE_INNER_CITADEL'></a>

-<h2>VII</h2>

-<h3>THE INNER CITADEL</h3>

-</div>

-<p>&ldquo;And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to

-prove to your absolute satisfaction that this defendant,

-Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and with

-prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the

-morning of August twentieth last. I shall not

-only prove to you the existence of a long-standing

-hatred harboured by this defendant against the

-murdered man, but I will show to you a direct motive

-for the crime. And I shall not only prove

-circumstantially to you that he and no other could

-have done the deed but I shall also convict him out

-of the unwilling mouths of his friends and neighbours

-who were, to all intents and purposes, actual

-eye-witnesses of the crime.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette

-County the District Attorney of the county was

-opening the case for the State against Jeffrey

-Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers,

-who had died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau

-that grim morning on the side of Bald Mountain.</p>

-<p>From early morning the streets of Danton, the

-little county seat of Racquette County, had been

-filled with the wagons and horses of the hill people

-who had come down for this, the second day

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>

-of the trial. Yesterday the jury had been selected.

-They were all men of the villages and of

-the one little city of Racquette County, men whose

-lives or property had never been endangered by

-forest fires. Judge Leslie in questioning them and

-in ruling their selection had made it plain that the

-circumstances surrounding the killing of the man

-Rogers must have no weight in their minds.

-They must be prepared to judge the guilt or innocence

-of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder

-itself, with no regard for what rumour might

-say the victim had been doing at the time.</p>

-<p>For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the

-man had been killed just a mile or so within the

-line of Racquette County. Only a little of the extreme

-southeastern corner of that county had been

-burned over in the recent fire and in general it had

-meant very little to these people. In Tupper

-County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which

-had suffered terribly from the fire it should have

-been nearly impossible to select a jury which would

-have been willing to convict the slayer of Rogers

-under the circumstances. But to the people of

-the villages of Racquette County the matter did

-not come home. They only knew that a man had

-been killed up the corner of the county. A forest

-fire had started at about the same time and place.

-But few people had any clear version of the story.

-And there seemed to be little doubt as to the identity

-of the slayer.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span></div>

-<p>There was another and far more potent reason

-why it was unfortunate for Jeffrey Whiting that

-Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of

-Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the

-bench was the same man who only a few weeks

-before had pleaded so unctuously before the Senate

-committee for the rights of the downtrodden U.

-&amp; M. Railroad against the lawless people of the

-hills. He had given the District Attorney every

-possible assistance toward the selection of a jury

-who would be at least thoughtful of the interests

-of the railroad. For this was not merely a murder

-trial. It was the case of the people of the

-hills against the U. &amp; M. Railroad.</p>

-<p>Racquette County was a &ldquo;railroad&rdquo; county.

-The life of every one of its rising villages depended

-absolutely upon the good will of the railroad

-system that had spread itself beneficently

-over the county and that had given it a prosperity

-beyond that of any other county of the North.

-Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad,

-and it was not in the disposition or the plans

-of the railroad to leave the county in a position

-where it might forget the debt. So the railroad

-saw to it that only men personally known to its

-officials should have public office in the county.

-It had put this judge upon this bench. And the

-railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid

-him well for the very timely and valuable services

-which he was able to render it.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span></div>

-<p>The grip which the railroad corporation had

-upon the life of Racquette County was so complex

-and varied that it extended to every money-making

-affair in the community. It was an intangible

-but impenetrable mesh of interests and influences

-that extended in every direction and crossed and

-intercrossed so that no man could tell where it

-ended. But all men could surely tell that these

-lines of influence ran from all ends of the county

-into the hand of the attorney for the railroad in

-Alden and that from his hand they passed on into

-the hands of the single great man in New York

-whose money and brain dominated the whole

-transportation business of the State. All men

-knew, too, that those lines passed through the

-Capitol at Albany and that no man there, from

-the Executive down to the youngest page in the

-legislative corridors, was entirely immune from

-their influence.</p>

-<p>Now the U. &amp; M. Railroad had been openly

-charged with having procured the setting of the

-fire that had left five hundred hill people homeless

-in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would,

-of course, be impossible to bring the railroad to

-trial on such a charge in any county of the State.

-The company had really nothing to fear in the way

-of criminal prosecution. But the matter had

-touched the temper and roused the suspicions of

-the great, headless body called the public. The

-railroad felt that it must not be silent under even

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span>

-a muttered and vague charge of such nature. It

-must strike first, and in a spectacular manner. It

-must divert the public mind by a counter charge.</p>

-<p>Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes

-of the fire, the Grand Jury of Racquette County

-had been prepared to find an indictment against

-Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers.

-They had found that Samuel Rogers was an agent

-of the railroad engaged upon a peaceable and lawful

-journey through the hills in the interests of his

-company. He had been found shot through the

-back of the head and the circumstances surrounding

-his death were of such a nature and disposition

-as to warrant the finding of a bill against the

-young man who for months had been leading a

-stubborn fight against the railroad.</p>

-<p>The case had been advanced over all others on

-the calendar in Judge Leslie&rsquo;s court, for the railroad

-was determined to occupy the mind of the

-public with this case until the people should have

-had time to forget the sensation of the fire. The

-mind at the head of the railroad&rsquo;s affairs argued

-that the mind of the public could hold only one

-thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put

-this murder case into that mind and keep it there

-until some new thing should arise.</p>

-<p>The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had

-been brought to trial; the well-oiled smoothness

-with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had

-done its work, and the efficient way in which judge

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>

-and prosecuting attorney had worked together for

-the selection of what was patently a &ldquo;railroad&rdquo;

-jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident

-power was moving its forces to an assured and

-definite end. This judge and this jury would

-allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in

-the way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the

-man had been caught in the act of setting fire to the

-forests, if the Judge allowed it to appear in the

-record at all, would not stand with the jury as

-justification, or even extenuation of the deed of

-murder charged. The fate of the accused must

-hang solely on the question of fact, whether or

-not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other

-question would be allowed to enter.</p>

-<p>And on that question it seemed that the minds

-of all men were already made up. The prisoner&rsquo;s

-friends and associates in the hills had been at first

-loud in their commendation of the act which they

-had no doubt was his. Now, though they talked

-less and less, they still did not deny their belief.

-It was known that they had congratulated him on

-the very scene of the murder. What room was

-there in the mind of any one for doubt as to the

-actual facts of the killing? And since his conviction

-or acquittal must hinge on that single question,

-what room was there to hope for his acquittal?</p>

-<p>The hill people had come down from their

-ruined homes, where they had been working night

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>

-and day to put a roof over their families before

-the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen

-and nervous. They had no doubt whatever

-that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and they

-had been forced to come down here to tell what

-they knew&ndash;&ndash;every word of which would count

-against them. They had come down determined

-that he should not suffer for his act, which had

-been done, as it were, in the name of all of them.

-But the rapid certainty in which the machinery

-of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved

-them. There was nothing for them to do, it

-seemed, but to sit there, idle and glum, waiting

-for the end.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the

-opening arraignment by the District Attorney.

-He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of

-circumstances which had begun to wrap itself

-around him that morning on Bald Mountain had

-never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold

-upon him. He had followed his friends that day

-and all of that night and had reached Lowville

-early the next day. He had found his mother

-there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom,

-but had been horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing

-had turned back into the face of the fire in an effort

-to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No

-word had been had of either of them. He had

-told his mother exactly what had happened in the

-hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span>

-had wished to do so. But another had fired before

-he did. He had not, in fact, used his gun at

-all. She had believed him implicitly, of course.

-Why should she not? If he had actually shot the

-man he would have told her that just as exactly

-and truthfully. But Jeffrey was aware that she

-was the only person who did or would believe him.</p>

-<p>He was just on the point of mounting one of his

-mother&rsquo;s horses, to go up into the lower hills in

-the hope of finding Ruth wandering somewhere,

-when he was placed under arrest for the murder of

-Rogers. The two men who had escaped down

-the line of the chain had gotten quickly to a telegraph

-line and had made their report. The railroad

-people had taken their decision and had acted

-on the instant. The warrant was ready and waiting

-for Jeffrey before he even reached Lowville.</p>

-<p>When he had been taken out of his own county

-and brought before the Grand Jury in Racquette

-County, he realised that any hope he might have

-had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was

-thereby lost. Unless he could find and actually

-produce that other man, whoever he was, who had

-fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless.

-His own friends who had been there at hand

-would not believe his oath.</p>

-<p>His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in

-the front seats just to the right of him. From time

-to time he turned to smile reassuringly at them

-with a confidence that he was far from feeling.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>

-His mother smiled back through glistening grey

-eyes, all the while marking with a twinge at her

-heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep

-into the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she

-was thinking of the morning, just a few months

-ago when her little boy, suddenly and unaccountably

-grown to the size of a tall man, had been

-obliged to lift up her face to kiss her. He was

-going down into the big world, to conquer it and

-bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness

-of everything but his own plans of conquest,

-which is at once the pride and the heart-stab

-of every mother with her man child, he had kissed

-her and told her the old, old lie that we all have

-told&ndash;&ndash;that he would be back in a little while, that

-all would be the same again. And she had smiled

-up into his face and had compounded the lie with

-him.</p>

-<p>Then in that very moment the man Rogers had

-come. And the mother heart in her was not

-gentle at the thought of him. He had come like

-a trail of evil across their lives, embittering the

-hearts of all of them. Never since she had seen

-him had she slept a good night. Never had she

-been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of

-him. Even now, the thought of him lying in an

-unhonoured grave among the ashes of the hills

-could not soften her heart toward him. The

-gentle, kindly heart of her was very near to hating

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>

-even the dead as she thought of her boy brought

-to this pass because of that man.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail

-in Danton with his mother to see Jeffrey. They

-had not been left alone, but she had clung to him

-and kissed him boldly as though by her right before

-all men. The first time he had watched her

-sharply, looking almost savagely to see her shrink

-away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as

-he had seen men who had been his friends shrink

-away from him. But there had been not a shadow

-of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he

-remembered how she had walked unafraid into

-his arms, looking him squarely and bravely in the

-eyes and crying to him to forget the foolish words

-that she had said to him that last day in the hills.

-In that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into

-her eyes and had seen there not the love of the

-little girl that he had known but the unbounded

-love and confidence of the woman who would give

-herself to him for life or death. He had seen

-it; the look of all the women of earth who love,

-whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying

-pity, whose hands are fashioned for the healing of

-torn hearts.</p>

-<p>It was only when she had gone, and when he in

-the loneliness of his cell was reliving the hour,

-that he remembered that she had scarcely listened

-to his story of the morning in the hills. Of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>

-course, she had heard his story from his mother

-and was probably already so familiar with it that

-it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not

-like Ruth. She was always a direct little person,

-who wanted to know the exact how and why of

-everything first hand. She would not have been

-satisfied with anybody&rsquo;s telling of the matter but

-his own.</p>

-<p>Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind

-and struck at his heart. Could it be that she had

-over-acted it all? Could it be that she had

-brushed aside his story because she really did not

-believe it and could not listen to it without betraying

-her doubt? And had she blinded him

-with her pity? Had she acted all&ndash;&ndash;!</p>

-<p>He threw himself down on his cot and writhed

-in blind despair. Might not even his mother have

-deceived him! Might not she too have been acting!

-What did he care now for name or liberty,

-or life itself! The girl had mocked him with

-what he thought was love, when it was only&ndash;&ndash;!</p>

-<p>But his good sense brought him back and set

-him on his feet. Ruth was no actress. And if

-she had been the greatest actress the world had

-ever seen she could not have acted that flooding

-love light into her eyes.</p>

-<p>He threw back his head, laughing softly, and

-began to pace his cell rapidly. There was some

-other explanation. Either she had deliberately

-put his story aside in order to keep the whole of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>

-their little time together entirely to themselves, or

-Ruth knew something that made his story unimportant.</p>

-<p>She had been through the fire herself. Both

-she and the Bishop must have gone straight

-through it from their home in its front line to the

-rear of it at French Village. How, no one could

-tell. Jeffrey had heard wild tales of the exploit&ndash;&ndash; The

-French people had made many

-wonders of the coming of these two to them in

-the hour of their deliverance, the one the Bishop

-of their souls, the other the young girl just baptised

-by Holy Church and but little differing from

-the angels.</p>

-<p>Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire

-might have revealed to one or both of these two

-as they went through it. Perhaps there were

-other men who had not been accounted for.

-Then he remembered Rafe Gadbeau. He had

-been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey

-at Rogers&rsquo; command. Might it not be that the

-bullet which killed Rogers was intended for

-Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in

-the line of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing

-him squarely and the bullet had struck Rogers

-fairly in the back of the head.</p>

-<p>Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed

-some sort of mysterious hold over Rafe

-Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding unwillingly,

-under a pressure of fear. What if

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>

-Gadbeau there under the excitement of the fire,

-and certain that another man would be charged

-with the killing, had decided that here was the

-time and place to rid himself of the man who had

-made him his slave!</p>

-<p>The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and,

-pacing his cell, stopping between mouthfuls of his

-food as he sat at the jail table, sitting up in his cot

-in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey caught

-at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact

-that would fit into the story as it must have happened.

-He wandered into many blind trails of

-theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he

-at last came upon the truth&ndash;&ndash;and stuck to it.</p>

-<p>Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had

-been caught in the fire and had almost burned to

-death. He had managed to reach the place where

-Ruth and the Bishop had found refuge. He had

-died there in their presence. He had confessed.

-The Catholics always told the truth when they

-were going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had

-heard him. Ruth <i>knew</i>. The Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>

-<p>When Ruth came again, he watched her closely;

-and saw&ndash;&ndash;just what he had expected to see.

-Ruth <i>knew</i>. It was not only her love and her

-confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering,

-torturing doubts that must sometimes, unbidden,

-rise to frighten even his mother. Ruth

-<i>knew</i>.</p>

-<p>That she should not tell him, or give him any

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>

-outward hint of what she was hiding in her mind,

-did not surprise him. It was a very serious matter

-this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter

-with anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man.

-Ruth would not speak unnecessarily of it. When

-the proper time came, and there was need, she

-would speak. For the present&ndash;&ndash;Ruth <i>knew</i>.

-That was enough.</p>

-<p>When the Bishop came down from Alden to see

-him, Jeffrey watched him as he had watched Ruth.

-He had never been very observant. He had

-never had more than a boy&rsquo;s careless indifference

-and disregard of details in his way of looking at

-men and things. But much thinking in the dark

-had now given him intuitions that were now sharp

-and sensitive as those of a woman. He was

-quick to know that the grip of the Bishop&rsquo;s hand

-on his, the look of the Bishop&rsquo;s eye into his, were

-not those of a man who had been obliged to fight

-against doubts in order to keep his faith in him.

-That grip and that look were not those of a man

-who wished to believe, who tried to believe, who

-told himself and was obliged to keep on telling

-himself that he believed in spite of all. No.

-Those were the grip and the look of a man who

-<i>knew</i>. The Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>

-<p>It was even easier to understand the Bishop&rsquo;s

-silence than it had been to see why Ruth might not

-speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an

-official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>

-He must not speak of such things without a very

-serious cause. But, of course, there was nothing

-in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent

-man. Of course, when the time and the need

-came, the Bishop would speak.</p>

-<p>So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of

-fact and deduction. So he had watched and discovered

-and reasoned and debated with himself.

-He had not, of course, said a word of these things

-to any one. The result was that, while he listened

-to the plans which his lawyer, young Emmet

-Dardis, laid for his defence&ndash;&ndash;plans which, in

-the face of the incontestable facts which would be

-brought against them, would certainly amount to

-little or nothing&ndash;&ndash;he really paid little attention

-to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of

-the things his heart felt, he had built up around

-himself an inner citadel, as it were, of defence

-which no attack could shake. He had come to

-feel, had made himself feel, that his life and his

-name were absolutely safe in the keeping of these

-two people&ndash;&ndash;the one a girl who loved him and

-who would give her life for him, and the other a

-true friend, a man of God, a true man. He had

-nothing to fear. When the time came these two

-would speak. It was true that he was outwardly

-depressed by the concise and bitter conviction in

-the words of the prosecuting attorney. For

-Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes

-the most terrible of criminal prosecutors&ndash;&ndash;an

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>

-honest, narrow man who was always absolutely

-convinced of the guilt of the accused from the

-moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly

-he had no fear.</p>

-<p>The weight of evidence that would be brought

-against him, the fact that his own best friends

-would be obliged to give their oaths against him,

-the very feeling of being accused and of having

-to scheme and plan to prove his innocence to a

-world that&ndash;&ndash;except here and there&ndash;&ndash;cared not

-a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these

-things bowed his head and brought his eyes down

-to the floor. But they could not touch that inner

-wall that he had built around himself. Ruth

-<i>knew</i>; the Bishop <i>knew</i>.</p>

-<p>The rasping speech of the prosecutor was

-finished at last.</p>

-<p>Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.</p>

-<p>The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in

-hand at once for though he had been called as a

-witness for the prosecution it was well known

-that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney

-had made no attempt to school him beforehand,

-and he was determined now to allow him

-to give only direct answers to the questions put to

-him.</p>

-<p>Two or three times the old man attempted to

-explain, at the end of an answer, just why he had

-gone up into the high hills the night before the

-twentieth of August&ndash;&ndash;that he had heard that

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>

-Rogers and a band of men had gone into the

-woods to start fires. But he was ordered to stop,

-and these parts of his answers were kept out of the

-record. Finally he was rebuked savagely by the

-Judge and ordered to confine himself to answering

-the lawyer&rsquo;s questions, on pain of being arrested

-for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding

-that showed the temper and the intention of the

-Judge and a stir of protest ran around the courtroom.

-But old Erskine Beasley was quelled.

-He gave only the answers that the prosecutor

-forced from him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you hear a shot fired?&rdquo; he was asked.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you hear two shots fired?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you see Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s gun?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you examine it?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Had it been fired off?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Excused,&rdquo; snapped the prosecutor. And the

-old man, almost in tears, came down from the

-stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers

-had made the most damaging sort of evidence.</p>

-<p>Then the prosecutor went back in the story to

-establish a motive. He called several witnesses

-who had been agents of the railroad and associated

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>

-in one way or another with the murdered

-man in his efforts to get options on the farm lands

-in the hills. Even these witnesses, though they

-were ready to give details and opinions which

-might have been favorable to his side of the case,

-he held down strictly to answering with a word

-his own carefully thought out questions.</p>

-<p>With these answers the prosecutor built up a

-solid continuity of cause and effect from the day

-when Rogers had first come into the hills to offer

-Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself

-right up to the moment when the two had faced

-each other that morning on Bald Mountain.</p>

-<p>He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to

-undermine and oppose Rogers&rsquo; work from the

-first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of

-a family well known and trusted in the hills. The

-young man had been quick to grasp the situation

-and to believe that he could keep the people from

-dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers&rsquo; work would

-then be a failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then

-be pointed to as the only man who could get the

-options from the people. They would sell or

-hold out at his word. The railroad would have

-to deal with him direct, and at his terms.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from

-many of the owners that they would not sell or

-even sign any paper until such time as he gave

-them the word. Did those promises bind the

-people to him? They did. Did they have the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>

-same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained

-actual options on the property? Yes. Would

-the people stand by their promises? Yes. Then

-Whiting had actually been obtaining what were

-really options to himself, while pretending to hold

-the people back in their own interest? Yes.</p>

-<p>The prosecutor went on to draw out answer

-after answer tending to show that it was not really

-a conflict between the people and the railroad

-that had been making trouble in the hills all summer;

-that it was, in fact, merely a personal struggle

-for influence and gain between Jeffrey Whiting

-and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully

-done and drawn out with all the exaggerated

-effect of truth which bald negative and affirmative

-answers invariably carry.</p>

-<p>He went on to show that a bitter hatred had

-grown up between the two men. Rogers had been

-accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the

-way at a time in the early summer when many of

-the people about French Village had been prepared

-to sign Rogers&rsquo; options. Rogers had been

-obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account

-of Whiting&rsquo;s anger. He had not returned to the

-hills until the day before he was killed.</p>

-<p>The people in the hills had talked freely of

-what had happened on Bald Mountain on the

-morning of August twentieth and in the hills during

-the afternoon and night preceding. The

-prosecutor knew the incidents and knew what men

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>

-had said to each other. He now called Myron

-Stocking.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon

-of August nineteenth?&rdquo; was the question.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I went lookin&rsquo; for him, to tell&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Answer, yes or no?&rdquo; shouted the attorney.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the witness admitted sullenly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you tell him that Rogers was in the

-hills?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He followed me,&rdquo; the witness began. But

-the Judge rapped warningly and the attorney

-yelled:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes or no?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you see Rogers in the morning?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, he was settin&rsquo; fire to&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; The Judge

-hammering furiously with his gavel drowned his

-words. The attorney went on:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you hear a shot?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you hear two shots?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The fire&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;was making a lot of noise, he

-tried to say. But his voice was smothered by

-eruptions from the court and the attorney. He

-was finally obliged to say that he had heard but

-one shot. Then he was asked:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;What did you say when you came up and saw

-the dead man?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;Mine got away, Jeff.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What else did you say?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I said, &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the difference, any of us

-would&rsquo;ve done it if we had the chance.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Whiting&rsquo;s gun had been fired?&rdquo; asked the attorney,

-working back.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;One question more and I will excuse you,&rdquo;

-said the attorney, with a show of friendliness&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;I

-see it is hard for you to testify against your

-friend. Did you, standing there with the facts

-fresh before you, conclude that Jeffrey Whiting

-had fired the shot which killed Rogers?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that

-it was not proper, that the answer would not be

-evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply,

-reminding him that this witness had been called

-by the prosecution, that it was not the business of

-opposing counsel to protect him. The witness

-found himself forced to answer a simple yes.</p>

-<p>One by one the other men who had been present

-that fatal morning were called. Their answers

-were identical, and as each one was forced

-to give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning

-Jeffrey Whiting out of the mouths of his

-friends who had stood on the very ground of the

-murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for

-him was closing.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span></div>

-<p>On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do

-little with the witnesses. He was gruffly reminded

-by the Judge that the witnesses were not

-his, that he must not attempt to draw any fresh

-stories from them, that he might only examine

-them on the facts which they had stated to the

-District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had

-pinned his witnesses down absolutely to answers

-of known fact, there was really nothing in their

-testimony that could be attacked.</p>

-<p>With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet

-Dardis let the last witness go. The State

-promptly rested its case.</p>

-<p>Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised

-how pitifully inadequate their testimony

-would be when placed beside the chain of facts

-which the District Attorney had pieced together.

-They were in the main character witnesses, hardly

-more. They could tell only of their long acquaintance

-with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in

-him, of their firm faith that in holding the people

-back from giving the options to Rogers and the

-railroad he had been acting in absolute good faith

-and purely in the interests of the people. Not

-one of these men had been near the scene of the

-murder, for the railroad had planned its campaign

-comprehensively and had subp&oelig;naed for its

-side every man who could have had any direct

-knowledge of the events leading up to the tragedy.

-As line after line of their testimony was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>

-stricken from the record, as being irrelevant, it

-was seen that the defence had little or no case.

-Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single

-objections, made a general ruling that no testimony

-which did not tend to reveal the identity

-of the man who had shot Rogers could go into the

-record.</p>

-<p>Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously

-watching the course of the trial. Beside

-him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village.

-The little French priest looked up from

-time to time and guardedly studied the long angular

-white head of his bishop as it towered above

-him. He did not know, but he could guess some

-of the struggle that was going on in the mind and

-the heart of the Bishop.</p>

-<p>The Bishop had come down to the trial to give

-what aid he could, in the way of showing his confidence

-and faith, to the case of the boy who stood

-in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he

-had first heard of Jeffrey&rsquo;s arrest, he had not

-thought it possible that, even had he been guilty

-of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be convicted

-under such circumstances. Men must see

-that the act was in defence of life and property.

-But as he listened to the progress of the trial he

-realised sadly that he had very much underestimated

-the seriousness of the railroad people in the

-matter and the hold which they had upon the machinery

-of justice in Racquette County.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span></div>

-<p>He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and

-tell the reason why Jeffrey Whiting had entered

-into this fight against the railroad. He would associate

-himself and his own good name with the

-things that Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the

-two might stand before men together. But he

-now saw that it would be of no avail. His words

-would be swept aside as irrelevant.</p>

-<p>One thing and only one thing would now avail

-Jeffrey Whiting. This morning on his arrival in

-Danton, the Bishop had been angered at learning

-that the two men whose lives he had

-saved that night by the lake at French Village

-had escaped from the train as they were being

-brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at

-this trial.</p>

-<p>Whether they could have told anything of value

-to Jeffrey Whiting was not known. Certainly

-they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the

-connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop

-had their confession in his pocket at this minute,

-but there was nothing in it concerning the murder.

-He had intended to read it into the record of the

-trial. He saw that he would not be allowed to

-do so.</p>

-<p>One thing and only one thing would now avail

-Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey Whiting would be condemned

-to death, unless, within the hour, a man

-or woman should rise up in this room and swear:

-Jeffrey Whiting did not kill Samuel Rogers.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>

-Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or&ndash;&ndash;He

-told me so.</p>

-<p>The Bishop remembered how that day last winter

-he had set the boy upon this course which had

-brought him here into this court and into the

-shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey

-Whiting had actually fired the shot that had cut

-off a human life, would not he, Joseph, Bishop of

-Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility?

-He would.</p>

-<p>And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of

-his own, but through a chain of circumstances,

-stood now in danger of death, was not he, Joseph

-Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst

-of these circumstances, in a way responsible? He

-was.</p>

-<p>Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this

-court and saying: &ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau killed Samuel

-Rogers&ndash;&ndash;He told me so&rdquo;&ndash;&ndash;could he thus

-save Jeffrey Whiting from a felon&rsquo;s fate? He

-could. Nine words, no more, would do.</p>

-<p>And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and

-did not do what was necessary&ndash;&ndash;did not speak

-those nine words&ndash;&ndash;would he, Joseph Winthrop,

-be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment

-and ruin of Jeffrey Whiting? He

-would.</p>

-<p>Then what would Joseph Winthrop do?

-Would he speak those nine words? He would

-not.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span></div>

-<p>There was no claim of life or death that had

-the force to break the seal and let those nine words

-escape his lips.</p>

-<p>There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision

-in the Bishop&rsquo;s mind as he sat there waiting for

-his name to be called. He loved the boy who sat

-there in the prisoner&rsquo;s stand before him. He felt

-responsible for him and the situation in which he

-was. He cared nothing for the dead man or the

-dead man&rsquo;s secret, as such. Yet he would go

-up there and defy the law of humanity and the

-law of men, because he was bound by the law that

-is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal salvation

-of men&rsquo;s souls.</p>

-<p>But there was no reasoning, no weighing of

-the issue in his mind. His course was fixed by the

-eternal Institution of God. There was nothing

-to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was

-caught between the greater and the lesser law and

-he could only stand and be ground between the

-working of the two.</p>

-<p>If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty

-God had ordained the salvation of men

-through the confession of sin. Therefore the salvation

-of men depended on the inviolability of the

-seal of the confessional. But he did not reason.

-He merely sat through his torture, waiting.</p>

-<p>When his name was called, he walked heavily

-forward and took his place standing beside the

-chair that was set for him.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span></div>

-<p>At Dardis&rsquo; question, the Bishop began to speak

-freely and rapidly. He told of the coming of

-Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated

-what he had said to the boy, and from that point

-went on to sketch the things that had been happening

-in the hills. He wanted to get clearly before

-the minds of the jurymen the fact that he

-had advised and directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything

-that the boy had done.</p>

-<p>The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy

-to the Bishop. But he saw that he must

-stop him. His story could not but have a powerful

-effect upon even this jury. Looking past the

-Bishop and addressing Dardis, he said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is this testimony pertinent?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is, if Your Honor pardon me,&rdquo; said

-the Bishop, turning quickly. &ldquo;It goes to prove

-that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed

-the crime charged, any more than I could have

-done so.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully

-the logic or the legal phraseology of his answer.

-He hurried on with his story to the jury. He

-related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting.

-He told of his ride into the hills. He told

-of the capture of the two men in the night at

-French Village. They should be here now as

-witnesses. They had escaped. But he held in his

-hand a written confession, written and sealed by a

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>

-justice of the peace, made by the two men. He

-would read this to the jury.</p>

-<p>He began reading rapidly. But before he had

-gotten much past the opening sentences, the Judge

-saw that this would not do. It was the story of

-the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in

-court.</p>

-<p>He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when

-the Bishop stopped, he asked:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned

-in that paper?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, Your Honor. But there are&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is irrelevant,&rdquo; interrupted the Judge

-shortly. &ldquo;It cannot go before the jury.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do

-no more.</p>

-<p>Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not

-the slightest hope for his client&ndash;&ndash;unless&ndash;&ndash;unless.

-He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession

-to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask

-the Bishop this morning, if there was not some

-way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The

-Bishop stood waiting for his further questions.

-There might be some way or some help, thought

-Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was

-not a part of the real confession. He said

-quickly:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;What did he say to you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair,

-his eyes eager and confident. His heart shouting

-that here was his deliverance. Here was the

-hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!</p>

-<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s eyes fell upon the prisoner for

-an instant. Then he looked full into the eyes of

-his questioner and he answered:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That will do. Thank you, Bishop,&rdquo; said

-Dardis in a low, broken voice.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The

-light of confidence died slowly, reluctantly out of

-his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop

-had <i>lied</i>! He <i>knew</i>! And he had <i>lied</i>!</p>

-<p>As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat,

-Ruth Lansing saw the terrible suffering of the

-spirit reflected in his face. If she were questioned

-about that night, she must do as he had done.</p>

-<p>Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must

-I do that? <i>Can</i> I do that?</p>

-<p>Oh! She had never thought it would come to

-this. How <i>could</i> it happen like this! How could

-any one think that she would ever stand like this,

-alone in all the world, with the fate of her love

-in her hands, and not be able to speak the few

-little words that would save him to her and life!</p>

-<p>She <i>would</i> save him! She <i>would</i> speak the

-words! What did she care for that wicked man

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span>

-who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?

-Why should she keep a secret of his? One night

-in the early summer she had lain all through the

-night in the woods outside a cabin and wished

-for a way to kill that man. Why should she

-guard a secret that was no good to him or to any

-one now?</p>

-<p>Who was it that said she must not speak?

-The Catholic Church. Then she would be a Catholic

-no longer. She would renounce it this minute.

-She had never promised anything like this.

-But, on the instant, she knew that that would not

-free her. She knew that she could throw off the

-outward garment of the Church, but still she

-would not be free to speak the words. The

-Church itself could not free her from the seal of

-the secret. What use, then, to fly from the

-Church, to throw off the Church, when the bands

-of silence would still lie mighty and unbreakable

-across her lips.</p>

-<p>That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up

-before her, and what she saw held her.</p>

-<p>What she saw was not merely a church giving

-a sacrament. It was not the dramatic falling of

-a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not a

-poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his

-crime in the agony and fear of death.</p>

-<p>What she saw was a world, herself standing all

-alone in it. What she saw was the soul of the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>

-world giving up its sin into the scale of God from

-which&ndash;&ndash;Heart break or world burn!&ndash;&ndash;that sin

-must never be disturbed.</p>

-<p>As she went slowly across the front of the room

-in answer to her name, a girl came out of one of

-the aisles and stood almost in her path. Ruth

-looked up and found herself staring dully into

-the fierce, piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She

-saw the look in those eyes which she had recognised

-for the first time that day at French Village&ndash;&ndash;the

-terrible mother-hunger look of love,

-ready to die for its own. And though the girl

-said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:

-Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.</p>

-<p>How well that girl knew!</p>

-<p>Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a

-point which he had not been able to correct in the

-testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he had

-dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to

-the Bishop, he had become more desperate, and

-bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was always

-a chance that the dying man had said something

-to her.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon

-when word was brought to him that suspicious

-men had been seen in the hills?&rdquo; he

-asked.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either

-Stocking or Whiting?&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then he flashed the question upon her:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was

-dying?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve.

-The impact of the sudden, startling question leaping

-upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to

-what followed. For, in answer to the question,

-there came a scream, a terrified, agonised scream,

-mingled of fright and remorse and&ndash;&ndash;relief. A

-scream out of the fire. A scream from death.

-<i>On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers

-as he stood.</i></p>

-<p>Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling.

-Again the inner citadel of his hope stood

-strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the

-word that would free him! Her love would set

-him free! It was the time. Ruth <i>knew</i>. He

-would rather have it this way. He was almost

-glad that the Bishop had lied. Ruth <i>knew</i>.

-Ruth would speak.</p>

-<p>The words of that terrible scream went searing

-through Ruth&rsquo;s brain and down into the very

-roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout

-them out to the ends of the earth!</p>

-<p>But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear

-voice answered:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of

-the stand.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span></div>

-<p>Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.</p>

-<p><i>Ruth</i> had <i>lied</i>!</p>

-<p>The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and

-crushed him.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>

-<a name='VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I' id='VIII_SEIGNEUR_DIEU_WHITHER_GO_I'></a>

-<h2>VIII</h2>

-<h3>SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse

-and turned up the street toward the little

-church. He had not been the same man since his

-experience of those two terrible nights in the

-hills. They had aged him and shaken him visibly.

-But those nights of suffering and superhuman effort

-had only attacked him physically. They had

-broken the spring of his step and had drawn

-heavily upon the vigour and the vital reserves

-which his years of simple living had left stored

-up in him. He had fought with fire. He had

-looked death in the face. He had roused his soul

-to master the passions of men. No man who has

-already reached almost the full allotted span of

-life may do these things without showing the outward

-effects of them. But these things had struck

-only at the clay of the body. They had not

-touched the quick spirit of the man within.</p>

-<p>The trial through which he had passed to-day

-had cut deep into the spiritual fibre of his being.

-If Joseph Winthrop had been given the alternative

-of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he

-would have offered the few years that might be

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>

-his, without question or halting. For he was a

-man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled

-or thought of taking back any of the things which

-he had given to Christ. Thirty years ago he had

-made his compact with the Master, and he had

-never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts

-on a stole to receive the secret of another&rsquo;s soul

-he puts his life in pledge for the sanctity of that

-secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by

-any perplexities or confusion.</p>

-<p>Never had he thought of the alternative which

-had this day been forced upon him. Years ago

-he had given his own life entire to Christ. The

-snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces

-farther on would be a matter of no more moment

-than the length of a thread. This world had

-nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from

-him. But to guard his secret at the cost of another

-life, and that a young, vigorous, battling

-life full of future and promise, full of youth and

-the glory of living, the life of a boy he loved&ndash;&ndash;that

-was another matter. Never had he reckoned

-with a thing such as that. Life had always been

-so direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To

-think right, to do right, to serve God; these things

-had always seemed very simple. But the thing

-that he had done to-day was breaking his heart.

-He could not have done otherwise. He had been

-given no choice, to be sure.</p>

-<p>But was it possible that God would have allowed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>

-things to come to that issue, if somewhere,

-at some turn in that line of circumstances which

-had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not

-done a wrong? It did not seem possible. Somewhere

-he had done wrong or he had done foolishly&ndash;&ndash;and,

-where men go to direct the lives of

-others, to do unwisely is much the same as to do

-wickedly.</p>

-<p>What use to go over the things that he had

-done, the things that he had advised? What use

-to say, here he had done his best, there he thought

-only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere

-he had spoken foolishly, or he had been headstrong

-in his interference, or he had acted without

-thought and prayer. What use to go over the

-record? He could only carry this matter to God

-and let Him see his heart.</p>

-<p>He stumbled in the half light of the darkened

-little church and sank heavily into the last pew.

-Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart he

-cried out from afar to the Presence on the little

-altar, where he, Bishop of Alden, had often

-spoken with much authority.</p>

-<p>When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up

-into the witness stand she sank down quietly into

-a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the other

-girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes.

-She hung upon every fleeting wave of the contending

-emotions that showed themselves on Ruth&rsquo;s

-face. She was convinced that this girl knew that

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>

-Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of

-Samuel Rogers and that Jeffrey Whiting was innocent.

-She had not thought that Ruth would be

-called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only

-decided upon it at the last moment.</p>

-<p>Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to

-hating this girl, for she had seen Rafe Gadbeau

-leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very long

-time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon

-talking gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe

-Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing left of

-him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory.

-But that memory was as much to her as was

-the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this other girl. She

-was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be?

-What would that girl do? If the question was not

-asked directly, it was not likely that the girl would

-tell what she knew. She would not wish to tell.

-She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the

-question came to her of a sudden, without warning,

-without time for thought? What then?

-Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny

-and to keep on denying?</p>

-<p>Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic.

-But she was a convert. She did not know the

-terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it

-who had been born to the Faith.</p>

-<p>Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from

-this trial. She knew it was no place for her to

-carry the awful secret that she had hidden away

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>

-in her heart. No matter how deeply she might

-have it hidden, the fear hung over her that men

-would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint might

-be enough to set some on the search for it and

-she had had a superstition that it was a secret of a

-nature that it could not be hidden forever. Some

-day some one would tear it from her heart. She

-knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton

-during these days when the hill people were

-talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers and

-hunting for any possible fact that might make

-Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s story believable. But she had

-been drawn irresistibly to the trial and had sat all

-day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly,

-avidly to every word that was said, waiting to

-hear, and praying against hearing the name of

-the man she had loved. The idea of protecting

-his name and his memory from the blight of his

-deed had become more than a religion, more than

-a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own

-thought and life but it seemed even to take up that

-great void in her world which Rafe Gadbeau had

-filled.</p>

-<p>When she had heard his name mentioned in that

-sudden questioning of the Bishop, she had almost

-jumped from her seat to cry out to him that he

-must know nothing. But that was foolish, she

-reflected. They might as well have asked the

-stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell Rafe

-Gadbeau&rsquo;s secret as to ask it from the Bishop.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span></div>

-<p>But this girl was different. You could not tell

-what she might do under the test. If she stood

-the test, if she kept the seal unbroken upon her

-lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for

-life. She would love that girl, she would fetch

-for her, work for her, die for her!</p>

-<p>When that point-blank question came leaping

-upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose

-to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer

-and blurt out something that would give them

-a chance to ask her further questions. But when

-she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she

-saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she

-saw the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light

-broke in upon the heart of Cynthe Cardinal.

-Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could

-not know what love was! Here was a woman,

-a sister woman, who could suffer, who for the sake

-of one greater thing could trample her love under

-foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one

-steady word&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened

-heart could not look at the torture of the other

-girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself

-at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering

-down from the stand and implore her pardon.

-She wanted to cry out to her that she must

-tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth

-all this! For Cynthe Cardinal knew that truth

-bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>

-frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the

-street.</p>

-<p>She had seen the Bishop come direct from the

-little church to the court. And as she watched

-his face when he came down from the stand, she

-knew instinctively that he was going back there.

-Cynthe understood. Even M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop

-who was so wise and strong, he was troubled. He

-thought much of the young Whiting. He would

-have business with God.</p>

-<p>She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the

-church and saw the Bishop kneeling there at the

-end of the pew, bowed and broken.</p>

-<p>He was first aware of her when he heard a

-frightened, hurrying whisper at his elbow. Some

-one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:</p>

-<p><i>Mon Pere, je me &rsquo;cuse.</i></p>

-<p>The ritual would have told him to rise and go to

-the confessional. But here was a soul that was

-pouring its secret out to him in a torrential rush of

-words and sobs that would not wait for ritual.

-The Bishop listened without raising his head. He

-had neither the will nor the power to break in upon

-that cruel story that had been torturing its keeper

-night and day. He knew that it was true, knew

-what the end of it would be. But still he must be

-careful to give no word that would show that he

-knew what was coming. The French of the hills

-and of Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but

-it was easy to follow the thread of the story.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span>

-When she had finished and was weeping quietly,

-the Bishop prompted gently.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And now? my daughter.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And now, <i>Mon Pere</i>, must I tell? I would

-not tell. I loved Rafe Gadbeau. As long as I

-shall live I shall love him. For his good name

-I would die. But I cannot see the suffering of

-that girl, Ruth. <i>Mon Pere</i>, it is too much! I

-cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before

-men and call my love a murderer. Consider,

-<i>Mon Pere</i>. There is another way. I, too, am

-guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I

-would have killed him myself, for he had made

-Rafe Gadbeau do many things that he would not

-have done. He made my love a murderer. I

-went to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of

-the fire. But I would have killed that man myself

-with the gun if I could. So I hated him.

-When I saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee.

-See, <i>Mon Pere</i>, I am guilty. And I called joyfully

-to my love to run with me and save himself,

-for he was now free from that man forever. But

-he ran in the path of the fire because he feared

-those other men.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But see, <i>Mon Pere</i>, I am guilty. I will go

-and tell the court that I am the guilty one. I will

-say that my hand shot that man. See, I will tell

-the story. I have told it many times to myself.

-Such a straight story I shall tell. And they will

-believe. I will make them believe. And they

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>

-will not hurt a girl much,&rdquo; she said, dropping back

-upon her native shrewdness to strengthen her plea.

-&ldquo;The railroad does not care who killed Rogers.

-They want only to punish the young Whiting.

-And the court will believe, as I shall tell it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But, my daughter,&rdquo; said the Bishop, temporising.

-&ldquo;It would not be true. We must not lie.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop, himself,&rdquo; the girl

-argued swiftly, evidently separating the priest in

-the confessional from the great bishop in his public

-walk, &ldquo;he himself, on the stand&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl stopped abruptly.</p>

-<p>The Bishop held the silence of the grave.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i> will make me tell, then&ndash;&ndash;the

-truth,&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, I cannot!

-I&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Let us consider,&rdquo; the Bishop broke in deliberately.

-&ldquo;Suppose he had told this thing to you

-when he was dying. You would have said to him:

-Your soul may not rest if you leave another to

-suffer for your deed. Would he not have told

-you to tell and clear the other man?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;To escape Hell,&rdquo; said the girl quickly, &ldquo;yes.

-He would have said: Tell everything; tell anything!&rdquo;

-In the desolate forlornness of her grief

-she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as

-he was, she had known the man, good and bad,

-brave and cowardly&ndash;&ndash;and had loved him.

-Would always love him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We will not speak of Hell,&rdquo; said the Bishop

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>

-gently. &ldquo;In that hour he would have seen the

-right. He would have told you to tell.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But he confessed to M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop himself,&rdquo;

-she retorted quickly, still seeming to forget

-that she was talking to the prelate in person, but

-springing the trap of her quick wit and sound

-Moral Theology back upon him with a vengeance,

-&ldquo;and he gave <i>him</i> no leave to speak.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous

-ground.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him,

-my daughter?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, with the bones of my hands!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Consider, then, he is not now the man that

-you knew. The man who was blind and walked

-in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where

-a great light shines about him. He knows now

-that which he did not know here&ndash;&ndash;Truth.

-He sees the things which here he did not see. He

-stands alone in the great open space of the Beyond.

-He looks up to God and cries: <i>Seigneur

-Dieu</i>, whither go I?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate,

-standing in the open place. Would he come

-back to the world?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And he answers: &lsquo;No, my God; but I have

-left a debt behind and another man&rsquo;s life stands

-in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward with

-that debt unpaid.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then God: &lsquo;And is there none to cancel the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>

-debt? Is there not one in all that world who

-loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none

-loved you who will pay the debt?&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And he will answer with a lifted heart: &lsquo;My

-God, yes; there was one, a girl; in spite of me, she

-loved me; she will make the debt right; only because

-she loved me may I be saved; she will speak

-and the debt will be right; my God, let me go.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop&rsquo;s French was sometimes wonderfully

-and fearfully put together. But the girl

-saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to

-her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with

-almost a little break of joy among the tears. For

-she saw the man, whom she had loved in spite of

-what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and

-sins of life. And her love leaped up quickly to

-the ideal and the illusions that every woman craves

-for and clings to.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; the Bishop was going on quietly, &ldquo;is

-the new man we are to consider; the one who

-stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not

-hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he

-care for the opinions or the words that are said

-here? See, he stands in the great open space,

-all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God

-and tell Him all. Will you be afraid to stand in

-the court and tell these people, who do not matter

-at all?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It

-is not for the sake of Ruth Lansing. It is because

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>

-the man you loved calls back to you, from

-where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom

-he has now learned tells him must be done.

-He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He

-would have you tell.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon Pere</i>, I will tell the tale,&rdquo; said the girl

-simply as she rose from her knees. &ldquo;I will go

-quickly, while I have yet the courage.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel

-rooms in the courthouse and sent for Dardis.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This girl,&rdquo; he told the lawyer, &ldquo;has a story

-to tell. I think you would do wisely to put her

-on the stand and let her tell it in her own way.

-She will make no mistakes. They will not be able

-to break her down.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then the Bishop went back to take up again his

-business with God.</p>

-<p>As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey

-Whiting had been put upon the stand in his own

-defence. There was nothing he could tell which

-the jurors had not already heard in one form or

-another. Everybody had heard what he had said

-that morning on Bald Mountain. He had not

-been believed even then, by men who had never

-had a reason to doubt his simple word. There

-was little likelihood that he would be believed here

-now by these jurors, whose minds were already

-fixed by the facts and the half truths which they

-had been hearing. But there was some hope that

-his youth and the manly sincerity with which he

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>

-clung to his simple story might have some effect.

-It might be that a single man on that jury would

-be so struck with his single sturdy tale that he

-would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You

-could never tell what might strike a man on a jury.

-So Dardis argued.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel

-wished him to tell his story he would do so. It

-would not matter. His own friends did not believe

-his story. Nobody believed it. Two people

-<i>knew</i> that it was true. And those two people

-had stood up there upon the stand and sworn that

-they did not know. One of them was a good man,

-a man of God, a man he would have trusted with

-every dear thing that life held. That man had

-stood up there and lied. The other was a girl

-whom he loved, and who, he was sure, loved him.</p>

-<p>It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie&ndash;&ndash;or

-maybe she did not consider it a lie: he had seen

-her suffer terribly in the telling of it. He was

-beginning to feel that he did not care much what

-was the outcome of the trial. Life was a good

-thing, it was true. And death, or a life of death,

-as a murderer, was worse than twenty common

-deaths. But that had all dropped into the background.

-Only one big thing stood before him.

-It laid hold upon him and shook him and took

-from him his interest in every other fact in the

-world.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>

-never before in her life told a lie. Why should

-she have ever told a lie. She had never had reason

-to fear any one; and they only lie who fear.

-He would have said that the fear of death could

-not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she had

-stood up there and lied.</p>

-<p>For what? For a church. For a religion to

-which she had foolishly given herself. For that

-she had given up him. For that she had given up

-her conscience. For that she had given up her

-own truth!</p>

-<p>It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and

-listened to it.</p>

-<p>He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer

-to a question which meant life or death to

-him. She had known that. She could not have

-escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was

-no way in which she could have fooled herself or

-been persuaded into believing that she was not

-lying or that she was not taking from him his last

-hope of life.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason

-with the fact. What was the use? It was the

-end of all things. He merely sat and gazed

-dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole

-mental vision.</p>

-<p>He went forward to the witness chair and stood

-woodenly until some one told him to be seated.

-He answered the questions put him automatically,

-without looking either at the questioner or at the

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>

-jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who

-had been watching the alert, keen-faced boy all day

-yesterday and through to-day wondered what had

-happened to him. Was he breaking down?

-Would he confess? Or had he merely ceased

-hoping and turned sullen and dumb?</p>

-<p>Without any trace of emotion or interest, he

-told how he had raced forward, charging upon the

-man who was setting the fire. He looked vacantly

-at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of

-his words stricken out which told what the man

-was doing. He showed no resentment, no feeling

-of any kind. He related how the man had run

-away from him, trailing the torch through the

-brush, and again he did not seem to notice the

-Judge&rsquo;s anger in cautioning him not to mention

-the fire again.</p>

-<p>At his counsel&rsquo;s direction, he went through a

-lifeless pantomime of falling upon one knee and

-pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now the

-man turned and faced him. Then he heard the

-shot which killed Rogers come from the woods.

-He dropped his own rifle and went forward to

-look at the dying man. He picked up the torch

-and threw it away.</p>

-<p>Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time

-the Judge did not rule out the word.) Then his

-rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet going

-just past his ear. The charge had scorched his

-neck. It was a simple story. The thing <i>might</i>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>

-have happened. It was entirely credible. There

-were no contradictions in it. But the manner of

-Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of

-reality. It was not the manner of a man telling

-one of the most stirring things of his life. He

-was not telling what he saw and remembered and

-felt and was now living through. Rather, he

-seemed to be going over a wearying, many-times-told

-tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A

-sleeping man might have told it so. The jury

-was left entirely unconvinced, though puzzled by

-the manner of the recital.</p>

-<p>Even Lemuel Squires&rsquo; harping cross questions

-did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story

-that he had told. At each question he went back

-to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully

-and evenly without any thought of what the District

-Attorney was trying to make him say. He

-was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of

-the story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid

-wonder at the horrible fact that Ruth Lansing had

-lied his life away at the word of her church.</p>

-<p>When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure

-where he was again the prisoner, he sat

-down heavily to wait for the end of this wholly

-irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness

-was called. He did not know that there was another.

-He had expected that Squires would begin

-his speech at once.</p>

-<p>He noticed that this witness was a girl from

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span>

-French Village whom he had seen several times.

-Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s

-girl. What did they bring her here for? She

-could not know anything, and why did they want

-to pester the poor thing? Didn&rsquo;t the poor little

-thing look sorry and troubled enough without

-fetching her down here to bring it all up to her?

-He roused himself to look reassuringly at the girl,

-as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not

-matter anyway, that he knew she could not help

-him, and that she must not let them hurt her.</p>

-<p>Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure

-Cynthe against interruptions from the prosecutor

-or the Judge, had told her to say nothing about

-fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers

-and nothing else. So when, after she had been

-sworn, he told her to relate the things that led up

-to the killing, she began at the very beginning:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Four years ago,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau

-was in Utica. A man was killed in a crowd.

-His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe

-Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn

-to me that he did not know who had done it. But

-a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife

-and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest

-him. No, he kept the knife, saying that some day

-he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the price

-of his silence.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Last summer this man Rogers came into the

-woods looking for some one to help get the people

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>

-to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He

-showed him the knife. He told him that whatever

-he laid upon him to do, that he must do. He

-made him lie to the people. He made him attack

-the young Whiting. He made him do many

-things that he would not do, for Rafe Gadbeau

-was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And

-Rafe Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear

-that this man had put upon him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;At times he said to me, &lsquo;Cynthe, I will kill

-this man one day, and that will be the end of all.&rsquo;

-But I said, &lsquo;<i>Non, non, mon Rafe</i>, we will marry in

-the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will

-never see you again, and we will not know that he

-ever lived.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was

-telling over to herself the tragedy of her little life

-and her great love. Genius could not have told

-her how better to tell it for the purpose for which

-her story was here needed. Dardis thanked his

-stars that he had taken the Bishop&rsquo;s advice, to let

-her get through with it in her own way.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But it was not time for us to marry yet,&rdquo; she

-went on. &ldquo;Then came the morning of the nineteenth

-August. I was sitting on the back steps

-of my aunt&rsquo;s house by the Little Tupper, putting

-apples on a string to hang up in the hot sun to

-dry.&rdquo; The Judge turned impatiently on his bench

-and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and

-her eyes blazed angrily at him. Who was he to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>

-shrug his shoulders! Was it not important, this

-story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter

-the Judge gave her the most rigid attention.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps

-at my feet. I saw that he was troubled. &lsquo;What

-is it, <i>mon Rafe</i>?&rsquo; I asked. He groaned and said

-one bad word. Then he told me that he had just

-had a message from Rogers to meet him at the

-head of the rail with three men and six horses.

-&lsquo;What to do, <i>mon Rafe</i>?&rsquo; &lsquo;I do not know,&rsquo; he

-said, &lsquo;though I can guess. But I will not tell you,

-Cynthe.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;You will not go, <i>mon Rafe</i>. Promise me

-you will not go. Hide away, and we will slip

-down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married&ndash;&ndash;me,

-I do not care for the grand wedding in the

-church here&ndash;&ndash;and then we will get away to

-Beaupre. Promise me.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;<i>Bien</i>, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to

-him.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But it was a man&rsquo;s promise. I knew he would

-go in the end.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I watched and followed. I did not know

-what I could do. But I followed, hoping that

-somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done

-what they intended and we could run away together

-with clean hands.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;When I saw that they had gone toward the

-railroad I turned aside and climbed up to the Bald

-Mountain. I knew they would all come back

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span>

-there together. I waited until it was dark and

-they came. They would do nothing in the night.

-I waited for the morning. Then I would find

-Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I

-was a wild girl that night. If I could have found

-that Rogers and come near him I would have killed

-him myself. I hated him, for he had made me

-much suffering.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;In the morning I was in the woods near them.

-I saw Rafe. But that Rogers kept him always

-near him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to

-look. Rafe was a little way from him and coming

-slowly toward me. I called to him. He did

-not hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the

-look of one who has made up his mind to kill.

-Again I called to him. But he did not hear.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the

-wood. Now he came running back toward Rafe.

-He stopped and turned.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The young Whiting was on his knee with the

-rifle raised to shoot. I looked to Rafe. The

-sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face.

-The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head.

-I saw. The young Whiting had not fired at all.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me.

-&lsquo;Come with me, <i>mon Rafe</i>,&rsquo; I called. &lsquo;I, too, am

-guilty. I would have killed him in the night.

-Come with me. We will escape. The fire will

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>

-cover all. None will ever know but you and me,

-and I am guilty as you. Come.&rsquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But he did not hear. And I wished him to

-hear. Oh! I wished him at least to hear me say

-that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not

-wish to be separated from him in this world or the

-next.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But he ran back always into the path of the

-fire, for those other men, the old M&rsquo;sieur Beasley

-and the others, were closing behind him and the

-fire.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She was speaking freely of the fire now, but

-it did not matter. Her story was told. The big,

-hot tears were flowing freely and her voice rose

-into a cry of farewell as she told the end.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over

-him. Oh, the great God, who is good, was cruel

-that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and

-running on again. Then the fire shut him out

-from my sight, and God took him away.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and

-was safe.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Dardis did not try to draw another word from

-her on any part of the story. He was artist

-enough to know that the story was complete in its

-na&iuml;ve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge

-enough of human nature to understand that the

-jury would remember better and hold more easily

-her own unthought, clipped expressions than they

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>

-would any more connected elaborations he might

-try to make her give.</p>

-<p>Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor.

-He had always been a useful officer to the

-railroad powers because he was convinced of the

-guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to

-bring into court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal

-as hardly less than a personal insult. He

-denied that there were ever two sides to any case.

-But his very narrowness now confounded him

-here. This girl&rsquo;s story was true. It was astounding,

-impossible, subversive of all things. But it

-was true.</p>

-<p>His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room

-for only the one thing. The story was true. He

-asked her a few unimportant questions, leading

-nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing

-up to the jury.</p>

-<p>It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them

-to remember the facts by which the prisoner had

-already been convicted and to put aside the girl&rsquo;s

-dramatic story. He was still convinced that the

-prisoner was guilty. But&ndash;&ndash;the girl&rsquo;s story was

-true. His mind was not nimble enough to escape

-the shock of that fact. He was helpless under it.

-His pleading was spiritless and wandering while

-his mind stood aside to grapple with that one

-astounding thing.</p>

-<p>The Judge, however, in charging the jury was

-troubled by none of these hampering limitations

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>

-of mind. He had always regarded the taking and

-discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and

-windy business. All democracy was full of such

-wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to a conclusion.

-The boy was guilty. The powers who

-controlled the county had said he was guilty.

-Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.</p>

-<p>He charged the jury that the girl&rsquo;s testimony

-was no more credible than that of a dozen other

-witnesses&ndash;&ndash;which was quite true. All had told

-the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But

-he glided smoothly over the one important difference.

-The girl had seen the act. No other, not

-even the accused himself, had been able to say that.</p>

-<p>He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly

-false lecture on the comparative force of evidence,

-intended only to befog the minds of the jurors.

-But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that

-which he had intended, for, whereas they had up

-to now held a fairly clear view of the things that

-had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts

-by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that

-structure of guilt which he so laboriously built up

-and remembered only one thing clearly. And

-that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.</p>

-<p>Without leaving their seats, they intimated that

-they had come to an agreement.</p>

-<p>The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded

-to know what it was.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood up.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span></div>

-<p>The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly,

-saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Not guilty.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at

-each man as his name was called, but one after

-another the men arose and answered gruffly for

-acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse,

-running for their horses and shouting the

-verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little Danton

-awoke from its September drowse and was aware

-that something real had happened. The elaborate

-machinery of prosecution, the whole political

-power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure

-of the railroad power had all been set at nothing

-by the tragic little love story of an ignorant French

-girl from the hills.</p>

-<p>Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place

-where he had been a prisoner and brought him to

-his mother.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into

-his mother&rsquo;s eyes as he stooped to kiss her. What

-he saw filled him with a bitterness that all the

-years of his life would not efface. What he saw

-was not the sprightly, cheery, capable woman who

-had been his mother, but a grey, trembling old

-woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to

-him fainting and crying weakly. What men had

-done to him, he could shake off. They had not

-hurt him. He could still defy them. But what

-they had done to his little mother, that would

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span>

-rankle and turn in his heart forever. He would

-never forgive them for the things they had done

-to her in these four weeks and in these two days.</p>

-<p>And here at his elbow stood the one person who

-had to-day done more to hurt his mother and himself

-than any other in the world could have done.

-She could have told his mother weeks ago, and

-have saved her all that racking sorrow and anxiety.

-But no, for the sake of that religion of hers, for

-the sake of what some priest told her, she had

-stuck to what had turned out to be a useless lie,

-to save a dead man&rsquo;s name.</p>

-<p>Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him.

-But he turned upon her with a look of savage,

-fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl as

-a blow in the face would have done. Then in a

-strange, hard voice he said brutally:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You lied!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock

-of his look and words. Even now she could not

-speak, could not appeal to his reason, could not

-tell him that she had heard nothing but what had

-come under the awful seal of the confessional.

-The secret was out. She had risked his life and

-lost his love to guard that secret, and now the

-world knew it. All the world could talk freely

-about what she had done except only herself.

-Even if she could have reached up and drawn his

-head down to her lips, even then she could not so

-much as whisper into his ear that he was right, or

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>

-try to tell him why she had not been able to

-speak. She saw the secret standing forever between

-their two lives, unacknowledged, embittering

-both those lives, yet impassable as the line of

-death.</p>

-<p>When she looked up, he was gone out to his

-freedom in the sunlight.</p>

-<p>The hill people were jammed about the door

-and in the street as he came out. Twenty hands

-reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into

-the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his

-own horse which they had caught wandering in

-the high hills and had brought down for him.

-They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them&ndash;&ndash;the

-hill people were not much given to noise or

-demonstration. But under their triumph and their

-noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness

-which he was quick to notice.</p>

-<p>During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had

-absorbed most of his waking moments, he had let

-slip from him the thought of the battle that yet

-must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people

-again, and once more their unquestioned

-leader, his mind went back with a click into the

-grooves in which it had been working so long.

-He pushed his horse forward and led the men at

-a gallop over the Racquette bridge and out toward

-the hills, the families who had come down from

-the nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span></div>

-<p>When they were well clear of the town, he

-halted and demanded the full news of the last four

-weeks.</p>

-<p>It must not be forgotten that while this account

-of these happenings has been obliged to turn aside

-here and there, following the vicissitudes and doings

-of individuals, the railroad powers had never

-for a moment turned a step aside from the single,

-unemotional course upon which they had set out.

-Orders had gone out that the railroad must get

-title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide

-lying along the right of way. These orders must

-be executed. The titles must be gotten. Failures

-or successes here or there were of no account.

-The incidents made use of or the methods employed

-were of importance only as they contributed

-to the general result.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once.

-That was nothing. There were other plans.

-The Shepherd of the North before the Senate

-committee had blocked another set of plans.

-That was merely an obstacle to be gone around.

-The railroad people had gone around it by procuring

-the burning of the country. The people, left

-homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined,

-would be glad now to take anything they could

-get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness,

-no animus on the part of the railroad.

-Its programme had been as impersonal and detached

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span>

-as the details in any business transaction.

-Certain aims were to be accomplished. The

-means were purely incidental.</p>

-<p>Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an

-agent and afterwards as an instrument, was now

-gone&ndash;&ndash;a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had

-been Rogers&rsquo; assistant, was gone&ndash;&ndash;another broken

-tool. The fire had been used for its purpose.

-The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey Whiting

-had been put out of the way&ndash;&ndash;definitely, the railroad

-had hoped. He was now free again to make

-difficulties. All these things were but changes

-and moves and temporary checks in the carrying

-through of the business. In the end the railroad

-must attain its end.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat

-his horse on the old Piercefield road and listened

-to what had been happening in the hills during the

-four weeks of his removal from the scene.</p>

-<p>The fire, because it had seemed the end of all

-things to the people of the hills, had put out of

-their minds all thought of what the railroad would

-do next. Now they were realising that the railroad

-had moved right on about its purpose in the

-wake of the fire. It had learned instantly of Rogers&rsquo;

-death and had instantly set to work to use that

-as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its

-path. But that was only a side line of activity.

-It had gone right on with its main business.

-Other men had been sent at once into the hills with

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>

-what seemed like liberal offers for six-month

-options on all the lands which the railroad

-coveted.</p>

-<p>They had gotten hold of discouraged families

-who had not yet begun to rebuild. The offer of

-any little money was welcome to these. The

-whole people were disorganised and demoralised

-as a result of the scattering which the fire had

-forced upon them. They were not sure that it

-was worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire

-had burned through the thin soil in many places

-so that the land would be useless for farming for

-many years to come. They had no leader, and

-the fact that Jeffrey Whiting was in jail charged

-with murder, and, as they heard, likely to be convicted,

-forced upon them the feeling that the railroad

-would win in the end. Where was the use

-to struggle against an enemy they could not see

-and who could not be hurt by anything they might

-do?</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had

-gone before, to keep the people in line and prevent

-them from signing enough options to suit the railroad&rsquo;s

-purpose, had been easy in comparison with

-the one that was now before him. The people

-were disheartened. They had begun to fear the

-mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It

-was an enemy of a kind to which their lives and

-training had not accustomed them. It struck in

-the dark, and no man&rsquo;s hand could be raised to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>

-punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law

-and a bulwark of officials.</p>

-<p>The people were for the large part still homeless.

-Many were still down in the villages, living

-upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant help

-of public charity. Only the comparative few who

-could obtain ready credit had been able even to

-begin rebuilding. If they were not roused to

-prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be

-upon them before the hills were resettled. And

-with the coming of the pinch of winter men would

-be ready to sell anything upon which they had a

-claim, for the mere privilege of living.</p>

-<p>When they came up into the burnt country, the

-bitterness which had been boiling up in his heart

-through those weeks and which he had thought

-had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day

-now ran over completely. His heart raved

-in an agony of impotent anger and a thirst for revenge.

-His life had been in danger. Gladly

-would he now put it ten times in danger for the

-power to strike one free, crushing blow at this insolent

-enemy. He would grapple with it, die with

-it only for the power to bring it to the ground

-with himself!</p>

-<p>The others had become accustomed to the look

-of the country, but the full desolation of it broke

-upon his eyes now for the first time. The hills

-that should have glowed in their wonderful russets

-from the red sun going down in the west,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>

-were nothing but streaked ash heaps, where the

-rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between,

-where the autumn greens should have run

-deep and fresh, where snug homes should have

-stood, where happy people should now be living,

-were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution.

-From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far,

-low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a

-circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the

-mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the

-food of hate in the heart!</p>

-<p>Very late in the night they came to French Village.

-The people here were still practically living

-in the barrack which the Bishop had seen built,

-the women and children sleeping in it, the men

-finding what shelter they could in the new houses

-that were going up. There were enough of these

-latter to show that French Village would live

-again, for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed

-had carried credit and good faith to men

-who were judges of paper on which men&rsquo;s names

-were written and they had brought back supplies

-of all that was strictly needful.</p>

-<p>Here was food and water for man and beast.

-Men roused themselves from sleep to cheer the

-young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and

-feed them. And shrill, voluminous women came

-forth to get food for the men and to wave hands

-and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe

-Cardinal.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span></div>

-<p>The mention of the girl&rsquo;s name brought things

-back to Jeffrey Whiting. Till now he had hardly

-given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible sacrifice

-of the man she loved, had saved him. He

-owed that girl a great deal. And the thought

-brought to his mind another girl. He struck himself

-viciously across the eyes as though he would

-crush the memory, and went out to tramp among

-the ashes till the dawn. His body had no need of

-rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had

-merely served to throw off the lethargy of the jail;

-and sleep was beyond him.</p>

-<p>At the first light he roused the hill men and told

-them what the night had told him. Unless they

-struck one desperate, destroying blow at the railroad,

-it would come up mile by mile and farm by

-farm and take from them the little that was left

-to them. They had been fools that they had not

-struck in the beginning when they had first found

-that they were being played falsely. If they had

-begun to fight in the early summer their homes

-would not have been burned and they would not

-be now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered,

-unprovided winter.</p>

-<p>Why had they not struck? Because they were

-afraid? No. They had not struck because their

-fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the

-law. They had depended upon law. And here

-was law for them: the hills in ashes, their families

-scattered and going hungry!</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span></div>

-<p>If no man would go with him, he would ride

-alone down to the end of the rails and sell his life

-singly to drive back the work as far as he could,

-to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and

-their own.</p>

-<p>If ten men would come with him they could

-drive back the workmen for days, days in which

-the hill people would come rallying back into the

-hills to them. The people were giving up in

-despair because nothing was being done. Show

-them that even ten men were ready to fight for

-them and their rights and they would come

-trooping back, eager to fight and to hold their

-homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If

-the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law

-and right to get it, were there not men in the

-hills who would fight for it because it was their

-own?</p>

-<p>If fifty men would come with him they could

-destroy the railroad clear down below the line of

-the hills and put the work back for months.

-They would have sheriffs&rsquo; posses out against them.

-They would have to fight with hired fighters that

-the railroad would bring up against them. In the

-end they would perhaps have to fight the State

-militia, but there were men among them, he

-shouted, who had fought more than militia.

-Would they not dare face it now for their homes

-and their people!</p>

-<p>Some men would die. But some men always

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>

-died, in every cause. And in the end the people

-of the whole State would judge the cause!</p>

-<p>Would one man come? Would ten? Would

-fifty?</p>

-<p>Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the

-knobs and valleys of ashes where their homes had

-been, took what food the French people could

-spare them, and mounted silently behind him.</p>

-<p>Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars

-of the homes of many of them, for half the

-day they rode, saving every strain they could upon

-their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the

-southern divide and down the slope they thundered

-to strike the railroad at Leavit&rsquo;s bridge.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>

-<a name='IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD' id='IX_THE_COMING_OF_THE_SHEPHERD'></a>

-<h2>IX</h2>

-<h3>THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD</h3>

-</div>

-<p>The wires coming down from the north were

-flashing the railroad&rsquo;s call for help. A band of

-madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit&rsquo;s

-Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge.

-They had raced down the line, driving the frightened

-labourers before them, tearing up the ties and

-making huge fires of them on which they threw

-the new rails, heating and twisting these beyond

-any hope of future usefulness.</p>

-<p>Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction

-had fled literally for their lives. The men

-of the hills had no quarrel with them. They preferred

-not to injure them. But they were infuriated

-men with their wrongs fresh in mind and

-with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The workmen

-on the line needed no second warning. They

-would take no chances with an enemy of this kind.

-They were used to violence and rioting in their own

-labour troubles, but this was different. This was

-war. They threw themselves headlong upon

-handcars and work engines and bolted down the

-line, carrying panic before them.</p>

-<p>In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting

-at their head had ridden down and destroyed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>

-nearly twenty miles of very costly construction

-work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left

-in the hills and if the men were not stopped they

-would not leave a single rail in all the hill country

-where they were masters.</p>

-<p>The call of the railroad was at first frantic with

-panic and fright. That was while little men who

-had lost their wits were nominally in charge of a

-situation in which nobody knew what to do.

-Then suddenly the tone of the railroad&rsquo;s call

-changed. Big men, used to meeting all sorts of

-things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold.

-They had the telegraph lines of the State in their

-hands. There was no more frightened appeal.

-Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in

-Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties.

-They were told to swear in as many deputies as

-they could lead. They were to forget the consideration

-of expense. The railroad would pay and

-feed the men. They were to think of nothing but

-to get the greatest possible number of fighting men

-upon the line at once.</p>

-<p>Then a single great man, a man who sat in a

-great office building in New York and held his

-hand upon every activity in the State, saw the gravity

-of the business in the hills and put himself to

-work upon it. He took no half measures. He

-had no faith in little local authorities, who would

-be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill

-people in this battle.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span></div>

-<p>He called the Governor of the State from Albany

-to his office. He ordered the Governor to

-turn out the State&rsquo;s armed forces and set them in

-motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically

-that the Governor had not had the sense

-to do this of himself. The Governor bridled and

-hesitated. The Governor had been living on the

-fiction that he was the executive head of the State.

-It took Clifford W. Stanton just three minutes to

-disabuse him completely and forever of this illusion.

-He explained to him just why he was Governor

-and by whose permission. Also he pointed

-out that the permission of the great railroad system

-that covered the State would again be necessary

-in order that Governor Foster might succeed

-himself. Then the great man sent Wilbur Foster

-back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment

-of the National Guard for service in the hills.</p>

-<p>Before the second night three companies of the

-militia had passed through Utica and had gone up

-the line of the U. &amp; M. Their orders were to

-avoid killing where possible and to capture all of

-the hill men that they could. The railroad wished

-to have them tried and imprisoned by the impartial

-law of the land. For it was characteristic of the

-great power which in those days ruled the State

-that when it had outraged every sense of fair play

-and common humanity to attain its ends it was then

-ready to spend much money creating public opinion

-in favour of itself.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span></div>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the

-cover of the woods above Milton&rsquo;s Crossing and

-watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars come

-creeping up the grade from the south. This was

-the last of the hills. He had refused to let his

-men go farther. Behind him lay fifty miles of

-new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open,

-settled country. His men, once the fever of destruction

-had begun to run in their blood, had

-wished to sweep on down into the villages and

-carry their work through them. But he had stood

-firm. This was their own country where they belonged

-and where the railroad was the interloper.

-Here they were at home. Here there was a certain

-measure of safety for them even in the destructive

-and lawless work that they had begun.

-They had done enough. They had pushed the

-railroad back to the edge of the hills. They had

-roused the men of the hills behind them. Where

-he had started with his seventy-two friends, there

-were now three hundred well-armed men in the

-woods around him. Here in their cover they

-could hold the line of the railroad indefinitely

-against almost any force that might be sent against

-them.</p>

-<p>But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership

-and responsibility was already at work upon him.

-The burning, rankling anger that had driven him

-onward so that he had carried everything and

-everybody near him into this business of destruction

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>

-was now dulled down to a slow, dull hate that

-while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave

-him time to think. Those men coming up there

-on the cars were not professional soldiers, paid

-to fight wherever there was fighting to be done.

-Neither did they care anything for the railroad

-that they should come up here to fight for it.

-Why did they come?</p>

-<p>They had joined their organisation for various

-reasons that usually had very little to do with fighting.

-They were clerks and office men, for the

-most part, from the villages and factories of the

-central part of the State. The militia companies

-had attracted them because the armouries in the

-towns had social advantages to offer, because uniforms

-and parade appeal to all boys, because they

-were sons of veterans and the military tradition

-was strong in them. Jeffrey Whiting&rsquo;s strong

-natural sense told him the substance of these

-things. He could not regard these boys as deadly

-enemies to be shot down without mercy or warning.

-They had taken their arms at a word of command

-and had come up here to uphold the arm of

-the State. If the railroad was able to control the

-politics of the State and so was able to send these

-boys up here on its own business, then other people

-were to blame for the situation. Certainly these

-boys, coming up here to do nothing but what their

-duty to the State compelled them to do; they were

-not to be blamed.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span></div>

-<p>His men were now urging him to withdraw a

-little distance into the hills to where the bed of the

-road ran through a defile between two hills. The

-soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the

-line of what had been the railroad, covering the

-workmen and engineers who would be coming on

-behind them. If they were allowed to go on up

-into the defile without warning or opposition they

-could be shot down by the hill men from almost absolute

-safety. If he had been dealing with a hated

-enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed

-to that. But to shoot down from ambush these

-boys, who had come up here many of them probably

-thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic

-or outing in the September woods, was a thing

-which he could not contemplate. Before he would

-attack them these boys must know just what they

-were to expect.</p>

-<p>He saw them leave the cars at the end of the

-broken line and take up their march in a rough

-column of fours along the roadbed. He was surprised

-and puzzled. He had expected them to

-work along the line only as fast as the men repaired

-the rails behind them. He had not thought

-that they would go away from their cars.</p>

-<p>Then he understood. They were not coming

-merely to protect the rebuilding of the railroad.

-They had their orders to come straight into the

-hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The

-railroad was not only able to call the State to protect

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>

-itself. It had called upon the State to avenge

-its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His men

-had understood this better than he. Probably

-they were right. This thing might as well be

-fought out from the first. In the end there would

-be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of

-troops and drive them back out of the hills with

-an ease that would be almost ridiculous. But that

-would not be the end.</p>

-<p>The State would send other men, unlimited

-numbers of them, for it must and would uphold

-the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did

-not deceive himself. Probably he had not from

-the beginning had any doubt as to what would be

-the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The

-railroad itself had broken the law of the State

-and the law of humanity. It had defied every

-principle of justice and common decency. It had

-burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in

-the hills. Yet the law had not raised a hand to

-punish it. But now when the railroad itself had

-suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to

-be set in motion to punish the men of the hills

-who had merely paid their debt.</p>

-<p>But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself

-that he had not foreseen all this from the outset.

-Those days of thinking in jail had given him an

-insight into realities that years of growth and observation

-of things outside might not have produced

-in him. He had been given time to see that

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>

-some things are insurmountable, that things may

-be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still

-persist and go on indefinitely. Youth does not

-readily admit this. Jeffrey Whiting had recognised

-it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had

-led these men, his friends, men who trusted him,

-upon this mad raid. They had come without the

-clear vision of the end which he now realised had

-been his from the start. They had thought that

-they could accomplish something, that they had

-some chance of winning a victory over the railroad.

-They had believed that the power of the

-State would intervene to settle the differences between

-them and their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting

-knew, must have known all along, that the moment

-a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength

-of the State would be put forth to capture these

-men and punish them. There would be no compromise.

-There would be no bargaining. If

-they surrendered and gave themselves up now they

-would be jailed for varying terms. If they did

-not, if they stayed here and fought, some of them

-would be killed and injured and in one way or another

-all would suffer in the end.</p>

-<p>He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth

-of this struck him with startling clearness now.

-He had led them into this without letting them see

-the full extent of what they were doing, as he must

-have seen it.</p>

-<p>There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>

-now and scattered themselves through the

-hills few of them would ever be identified. And

-if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad

-would be almost satisfied with punishing him.

-It was the one just and right thing to do.</p>

-<p>He went swiftly among the men where they

-stood among the trees, waiting with poised rifles

-for the word to fire upon the advancing soldiers,

-and told them what they must do. He had deceived

-them. He had not told them the whole

-truth as he himself knew it. They must leave at

-once, scattering up among the hills and keeping

-close mouths as to where they had been and what

-they had done. He would go down and give himself

-up, for if the railroad people once had him in

-custody they would not bother so very much about

-bringing the others to punishment.</p>

-<p>His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder.

-They did not understand, unless it might be

-that he had suddenly gone crazy. There was an

-enemy marching up the line toward them, bent

-upon killing or capturing them. They turned

-from him and without a spoken word, without a

-signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the

-front of the oncoming troops. The battle was

-on!</p>

-<p>The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed

-to shoot deer and foxes from distances

-greater than this. The first two ranks of the

-soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>

-scythes. Not one of them was hit above the

-knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had begun.

-The hill men had given a terse, emphatic

-warning. It was as though they had marked a

-dead line beyond which there must be no advance.</p>

-<p>These soldiers had never before been shot at.

-The very restraint which the hill men had shown

-in not killing any of them in that volley proved

-to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise

-how deadly was the aim and the judgment of the

-invisible enemy somewhere in the woods there before

-them. To their credit, they did not drop

-their arms or run. They stood stunned and

-paralysed, as much by the suddenness with which

-the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.</p>

-<p>Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous

-command for them to halt, and ordering

-them to carry the wounded men back to the cars.

-For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they

-would again advance or would put themselves into

-some kind of defence formation and hold the

-ground on which they stood.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two

-other trains come slowly creeping up the line.

-From the second train he saw men leaping down

-who did not take up any sort of military formation.

-These he knew were sheriffs&rsquo; posses, fighting

-men sworn in because they were known to be

-fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>

-in the chase of the human animal. He had

-often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and he

-knew that they were an enemy of a character far

-different from those harmless boys who could not

-hit a mark smaller than the side of a hill. These

-men would follow doggedly, persistently into the

-highest of the hills, saving themselves, but never

-letting the prey slip from their sight, dividing the

-hill men, separating them, cornering them until

-they should have tracked them down one by one

-and either captured or killed them all.</p>

-<p>These men did not attempt to advance along the

-line of the road. They stepped quickly out into

-the undergrowth and began spreading a thin line

-of men to either side.</p>

-<p>Then he saw that the third train, although they

-were soldiers, took their lesson from the men who

-had just preceded them. They left the tracks

-and spreading still farther out took up the wings

-of a long line that was now stretching east to west

-along the fringe of the hills. The soldiers in the

-centre retired a little way down the roadbed, stood

-bunched together for a little time while their officers

-evidently conferred together, then left the

-road by twos and fours and began spreading out

-and pushing the other lines out still farther. It

-was perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that

-could not have been better done if he and his companions

-had planned it for their own capture.</p>

-<p>There were easily eight hundred men there in

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>

-front, he judged; men well armed and ready for

-an indefinite stay in the hills, with a railroad at

-their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire

-State behind them. And the State was ready to

-send more and more men after these if it should be

-necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of

-other men were being held in readiness to follow

-these or were perhaps already on their way. He

-saw the end.</p>

-<p>Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly

-and surround his men. If they stood together

-they would be massacred. If they separated

-they would be hunted down one by one.</p>

-<p>Their only chance was to scatter at once and

-ride back to where their homes had been. This

-time he implored them to take their chance,

-begged them to save themselves while they could.

-But he might have known that they would do nothing

-of the kind. Already they were breaking

-away and spreading out to meet that distending

-line in front of them. Nothing short of a miracle

-could now save them from annihilation, and

-Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle.

-There was nothing to be done but to take command

-and sell his life along with theirs as dearly

-as possible.</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up

-and down the State. Men who had followed the

-course of things through the past months, men who

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>

-knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which

-no newspaper had dared to print openly, understood

-just what it meant. The men up there had

-been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men

-agreed quietly with each other that they had done

-the very worst thing that could have been done.

-The injury they had done the railroad would

-amount to very little, comparatively, in the end,

-while it would give the railroad an absolutely free

-hand from now on. The people would be driven

-forever out of the lands which the railroad wished

-to possess. There would be no legislative hindrances

-now. The people had doomed themselves.</p>

-<p>The echoes reached also to two million other

-men throughout the State who did not understand

-the matter in the least. These looked up a moment

-from the work of living and earning a living

-to sympathise vaguely with the foolish men up

-there in the hills who had attacked the sacred and

-awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad.

-Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the

-case. But who could tell? And the two million,

-the rulers and sovereigns of the State, went back

-again to their business.</p>

-<p>The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of

-Alden, almost before a blow had been struck. It

-is hardly too much to say that he was listening for

-it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech,

-slow to anger; but, once past a certain point of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span>

-aggravation, absolutely heedless and reckless of

-consequences.</p>

-<p>He did not stop to compute just how much he

-himself was bound up in the causes and consequences

-of what had happened and what was happening

-in the hills. He had given advice. He

-had thought with the people and only for the

-people.</p>

-<p>He saw, long before it was told him in words,

-the wild ride down through the hills to strike the

-railroad, the fury of destruction, the gathering

-of the forces of the State to punish.</p>

-<p>Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment.

-Wherein Joseph Winthrop had done

-well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no

-moment now.</p>

-<p>One man there was in all the State, in all the

-nation, who could give the word that would now

-save the people of the hills. Clifford W. Stanton

-who had sat months ago in his office in New York

-and had set all these things going, whose ruthless

-hand was to be recognised in every act of those

-which had driven the people to this madness, his

-will and his alone could stay the storm that was

-now raging in the hills.</p>

-<p>Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act

-of supreme and unselfish bravery. It was an act

-of both physical and moral courage the like of

-which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>

-an act which had revealed in Clifford W. Stanton

-a depth of strong fineness that no man would have

-suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of

-faraway youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten.

-And he knew that men do not rise to such heights

-without having very deep in them the nobility to

-make it possible and at times inevitable that they

-should rise to those heights.</p>

-<p>After these years and the encrusting strata of

-compromise and cowardice and selfishness which

-years and life lay upon the fresh heart of the youth

-of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul of

-Clifford W. Stanton again be touched?</p>

-<p>Almost before the forces of the State were in

-motion against the people of the hills, the Bishop,

-early of a morning, walked into the office of Clifford

-Stanton.</p>

-<p>Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and

-though younger than the latter by some half-dozen

-years, it was evident that he had burned up the fuel

-of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked

-and spoke and moved with the deliberate fixity of

-the settling years, Stanton acted with a quick nervousness

-that shook just a perceptible little. The

-spiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking

-which had chiselled the Bishop&rsquo;s face into a single,

-simple expression of will power was not to be

-found in the other&rsquo;s face. In its stead there was

-a certain steel-trap impression, as though the man

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>

-behind the face had all his life refused to be certain

-of anything until the jaws of the trap had set upon

-the accomplished fact.</p>

-<p>Physically the two men were much of a type.

-You would have known them anywhere for New

-Englanders of the generation that has disappeared

-almost completely in the last twenty years. They

-had been boys at Harvard together, though not of

-the same class. They had been together in the

-Civil War, though the nature of their services had

-been infinitely diverse. They had met here and

-there casually and incidentally in the business of

-life. But they faced each other now virtually as

-strangers, and with a certain tightening grip upon

-himself each man realised that he was about to

-grapple with one of the strongest willed men that

-he had ever met, and that he must test out the

-other man to the depths and be himself tried out

-to the limit of his strength.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is some years since I&rsquo;ve seen you, Bishop.

-But we are both busy men. And&ndash;&ndash;well&ndash;&ndash; You

-know I am glad to have you come to see me.

-I need not tell you that.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The Bishop accepted the other man&rsquo;s frank

-courtesy and took a chair quietly. Stanton

-watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing

-the last few years a good deal, he thought. In

-reality it was the last month that the Bishop was

-showing. But it did not show in the steady, untroubled

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span>

-glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no

-time on preliminaries.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have come on business, of course, Mr.

-Stanton,&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;It is a very strange and

-unusual business. And to come at it rightly I

-must tell you a story. At the end of the story I

-will ask you a question. That will be my whole

-business.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The other man said nothing. He did not understand

-and he never spoke until he was sure that

-he understood. The Bishop plunged into his

-story.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;One January day in &lsquo;Sixty-five&rsquo; I was going

-up the Shenandoah alone. My command had left

-me behind for two days of hospital service at Cross

-Keys. They were probably some twenty miles

-ahead of me and would be crossing over the divide

-towards Five Forks and the east. I thought I

-knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of

-the distance that separated me from them, so I

-started across the Ridge by a path which would

-have been impossible for troops in order.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was right. I did cut off the distance which

-I had expected and came down in the early afternoon

-upon a good road that ran up the eastern side

-of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself

-that I would be with my men before dark, when

-a troop of Confederate cavalry came pelting over

-a rise in the road behind me.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I leaped my horse back into the brush at the

-side of the road and waited. They would sweep

-on past and allow me to go on my way. Behind

-them came a troop of our own horse pursuing

-hotly. The Confederate horses were well spent.

-I saw that the end of the pursuit was not far off.

-The Confederates&ndash;&ndash;some detached band of

-Early&rsquo;s men, I imagine&ndash;&ndash;realised that they would

-soon be run down. Just where I had left the road

-there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates

-threw themselves from their horses and drew

-themselves across the road. They were in perfect

-ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen

-yards back on the narrow road.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I broke from the bush and fled back along the

-road to warn our men. But I did no good.

-They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even,

-as they came yelling around the turn of the

-road.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;For three minutes there was some of the

-sharpest fighting I ever saw, there in the narrow

-road, before what remained of the Confederates

-broke after their horses and made off again. In

-the very middle of the fight I noticed two young

-officers. One was a captain, the other a lieutenant.

-I knew them. I knew their story. I

-believe I was the only man living who knew that

-story. Probably <i>I</i> did not know the whole of

-that story.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The lieutenant had maligned the captain.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>

-He had said of him the one thing that a soldier

-may not say of another. They had fought once.

-Why they had been kept in the same command I

-do not know.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now in the very hottest of this fight, without

-apparently the slightest warning, the lieutenant

-threw himself upon the captain, attacking

-him viciously with his sword. For a moment

-they struggled there, unnoticed in the dust of the

-conflict. Then the captain, swinging free, struck

-the lieutenant&rsquo;s sword from his hand. The latter

-drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It

-missed. By what miracle I do not know. All

-this time the captain had held his sword poised to

-lunge, within easy striking distance of the other&rsquo;s

-throat. But he had made no attempt to thrust.

-As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his arm to

-strike. Instead he looked a long moment into

-the lieutenant&rsquo;s eyes. The latter was screaming

-what were evidently taunts into his face. The

-captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at

-the now breaking line of Confederates.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have

-seen brave men bravely refrain from killing.

-That was the bravest thing I ever saw.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of

-him. He gave no sign of hearing. He was living

-over for himself that scene on a lonely, forgotten

-Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;The lieutenant died, a soldier&rsquo;s death, the

-next day.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; said the Bishop quietly. &ldquo;My

-question is: Are you the same brave man with

-a soldier&rsquo;s brave, great heart that you were that

-day?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring

-directly at something that was not in the visible

-world. The question had sprung upon him out

-of the dead past. What right had this man, what

-right had any man to face him with it?</p>

-<p>He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of

-the tragedy of my life as it whirled by you on

-the road! How dare you come here to tell me the

-little bit of it you saw?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said the Bishop swiftly, &ldquo;you have

-forgotten how great and brave a man you are.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He

-was stirred to the depths of feelings that he had

-not known for years. But even in his emotion

-and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set

-upon his face. His lifetime of never speaking

-until he knew what he was going to say kept him

-waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious

-caution; it was merely the instinct of self-defence.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;For months,&rdquo; the Bishop was going on

-quietly, &ldquo;the people of my hills have been harassed

-by you in your unfair efforts to get possession

-of the lands upon which their fathers built

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>

-their homes. You have tried to cheat them.

-You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to

-debauch a legislature in your attempt to overcome

-them. I have here in my pocket the sworn

-confessions of two men who stood in the shadow

-of death and said that they had been sent to burn

-a whole countryside that you and your associates

-coveted&ndash;&ndash;to burn the people in their homes like

-the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that

-act to within two men of you. And I can sit here,

-Clifford Stanton, and look you in the eye man to

-man and tell you that I <i>know</i> you gave the suggestion.

-And you cannot look back and deny it.

-I cannot take you into a court of law in this State

-and prove it. We both know the futility of talking

-of that. But I can take you, I do take you

-this minute into the court of your own heart&ndash;&ndash;where

-I know a brave man lives&ndash;&ndash;and convict

-you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If

-the whole world stood here accusing you would

-we know it any the better?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now my people have made a terrible mistake.

-They have taken the law into their own hands and

-have thought to punish you themselves. They

-have done wrong, they have done foolishly.

-Who can punish you? You have power above the

-law. Your interests are above the courts of the

-land. They did not understand. They did not

-know you. They have been misled. They have

-listened to men like me preaching: &lsquo;Right shall

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>

-prevail: Justice shall conquer.&rsquo; And where

-does right prevail? And when shall justice conquer?

-No doubt you have said these phrases

-yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers

-taught us to say them. But are they true? Does

-justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can

-say. I ask you, who have the answer in your

-power. Does right prevail? Then give my

-stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?

-Then see that they come to no harm.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I dare to put this thing raw to your face because

-I know the man that once lived within you.

-I saw you&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t harp on that,&rdquo; Stanton cut in viciously.

-&ldquo;You know nothing about it.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I <i>do</i> harp on that. I have come here to

-harp on that. Do you think that if I had not

-with my eyes seen that thing I would have come

-near you at all? No. I would have branded

-you before all men for the thing that you have

-done. I would have given these confessions

-which I hold to the world. I would have denounced

-you as far as tongue and pen would go

-to every man who through four years gave blood

-at your side. I would have braved the rebuke

-of my superiors and maybe the discipline of my

-Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of

-men. I would have made your name hated in

-the ears of little children. But I would not have

-come to you.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;If I had not seen that thing I would not have

-come to you, for I would have said: What

-good? The man is a coward without a heart.

-A <i>coward</i>, do you remember that word?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The man groaned and struck out with his hand

-as though to drive away a ghastly thing that would

-leap upon him.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;A coward without a heart,&rdquo; the Bishop repeated

-remorselessly, &ldquo;who has men and women

-and children in his power and who, because he has

-no heart, can use his power to crush them.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;If I had not seen, I would have said that.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I saw. I <i>saw</i>. And I have come here

-to ask you: Are you the same brave man with a

-heart that I saw on that day?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You shall not evade me. Do you think you

-can put me off with defences and puling arguments

-of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of

-property? No. You and I are here looking at

-naked truth. I will go down into your very soul

-and have it out by the roots, the naked truth.

-But I will have my answer. Are you that same

-man?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;If you are not that same man; if you have

-killed that in you which gave life to that man;

-if that man no longer lives in you; if you are not

-capable of being that same man with the heart

-of a great and tender hero, then tell me and I

-will go. But you shall answer me. I will have

-my answer.&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span></div>

-<p>Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair

-and stood trembling as though in an overpowering

-rage, and visibly struggling for his command

-of mind and tongue.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Words, words, words,&rdquo; he groaned at last.

-&ldquo;Your life is made of words. Words are your

-coin. What do you know?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Do you think that words can go down into

-my soul to find the man that was once there? Do

-you think that words can call him up? When

-did words ever mean anything to a man&rsquo;s real

-heart! You come here with your question. It&rsquo;s

-made of words.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;When did men ever do anything for <i>words</i>?

-Honour is a word. Truth is a word. Bravery

-is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word.

-Do you think men do things for words? No!

-What do you know? What <i>could</i> you know?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Men do things and you call them by words.

-But do they do them for the words? No!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They do them&ndash;&ndash; Because <i>some woman

-lives, or once lived!</i> What do <i>you</i> know?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Go out there. Stay there.&rdquo; He pointed.

-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to think.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against

-his desk. The Bishop rose and walked from the

-room.</p>

-<p>When he heard the door close, the man got up

-and going to the door barred it.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span></div>

-<p>He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning

-heavily upon his propped hands.</p>

-<p>He opened a drawer of his desk and looked

-at a smooth, glinting black and steel thing that

-lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang

-that went out to the Bishop listening in the

-outer office. It was a sinister, suggestive noise,

-and for an instant it chilled that good man&rsquo;s

-heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he

-knew immediately that he had been mistaken.</p>

-<p>Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked

-a smaller compartment within it, and from the

-latter took a small gold-framed picture. He set

-it up on the desk between his hands and looked

-long at it, questioning the face in the frame with

-a tender, diffident expression of a wonder that

-never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled.</p>

-<p>The face that looked out of the picture was

-one of a quiet, translucent beauty. At first

-glance the face had none of the striking features

-that men associate with great beauty. But behind

-the eyes there seemed to glow, and to grow

-gradually, and softly stronger, a light, as though

-diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly radiated

-from the whole countenance an impression of

-indescribable, gentle loveliness.</p>

-<p>Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was

-that light from within. He wondered now, and

-questioned. Never before had that light seemed

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>

-so wonderful and so real. Now there came to

-him an answer. An answer that shook him, for

-it was the last answer he would have expected.

-The light within was truth&ndash;&ndash;truth. It seemed

-that in a world of sham and illusions and evasions

-this one woman had understood, had lived with

-truth.</p>

-<p>The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry

-laugh that was nearer to a sob.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Was that it, Lucy?&rdquo; he queried. &ldquo;Truth?

-Then let us have a little truth, for once! I&rsquo;ll tell

-you some truth!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I lied a while ago. He did <i>not</i> die a soldier&rsquo;s

-death. I told the same lie to you long ago.

-Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven

-happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to

-you. Words. And yet you died a happy woman,

-because of that lie.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;He lied to you. He took you from me with

-lies. Words. Lies. And yet they made you

-happy. Where is truth?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You lived happy and died happy with a lie.

-Because I lied like what they call a man and a

-gentleman. <i>Truth!</i>&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face

-before him. Did he expect to see the light fade

-out, to see the face wither under the bitter

-revelation?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been everything,&rdquo; he went on, still trying

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>

-to make his point, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done everything,

-that men say I&rsquo;ve been and done. Why?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well&ndash;&ndash;Why?&rdquo; he asked sharply. &ldquo;Did

-it make any difference?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my

-face&ndash;&ndash;sometimes. Well&ndash;&ndash;Why not? Does

-it make any difference? Did it make any difference

-with you? If I had thought it would&ndash;&ndash; But

-it didn&rsquo;t. Lies, trickery, words! They

-served with you. They made you happy.

-<i>Truth!</i>&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But as he looked into the face and the smiling

-light of truth persisted in it, there came over

-his soul the dawn of a wonder. And the dawn

-glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and

-looked out wondering at a world remade.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is it true, Lucy?&rdquo; he asked gently. &ldquo;Can

-that be <i>truth</i>, at last? Is that what you mean?

-Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words

-and beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand&ndash;&ndash;a

-little? And do you, somewhere,

-understand now?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Then tell me. Was it worth the lies?

-Down underneath, when you understood, which

-was the truth? The thing I did&ndash;&ndash;which men

-would call fine? Or was it the words?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was

-it the fine thing that was really the truth, and

-did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>

-truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were

-made of truth, did you somehow understand all

-the time?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally

-believing. Then he said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I

-will not speak it to him. But I&rsquo;ll say it to you:

-Yes, I am that same man who once did what they

-call a fine, brave thing. I didn&rsquo;t do it because

-it was a great thing, a brave thing. I did it for

-you.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And&ndash;&ndash;I&rsquo;ll do this for you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He looked again at the face in the picture, as

-if to make sure. Then he locked it away quickly

-in its place.</p>

-<p>He thought for a moment, then drew a pad

-abruptly to him and began writing. He wrote

-two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State,

-the other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then

-he took another pad and wrote a note, this to his

-personal representative who was following the

-state troops into the hills.</p>

-<p>He rose and walked briskly to the door.

-Throwing it open he called a clerk and gave him

-the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand

-and asked the Bishop back into the office.</p>

-<p>Closing the door quickly, he said without

-preface:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;This note will put my man up there at your

-service. You will prefer to go up into the hills

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>

-yourself, I think. The officers in command of the

-troops will know that you are empowered to act

-for all parties. The Governor will have seen to

-that before you get there, I think. There will

-be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards.

-You can settle the whole matter in no time.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;We will not buy the land, but we&rsquo;ll give a

-fair rental, based on what ores we find to take

-out. You can give <i>your</i> word&ndash;&ndash;mine wouldn&rsquo;t

-go for much up there, I guess,&rdquo; he put in grimly&ndash;&ndash;&ldquo;that

-it will be fair. You can make that the

-basis of settlement.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;They can go back and rebuild. I will help,

-where it will do the most good. Our operations

-won&rsquo;t interfere much with their farm land, I find.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You will want to start at once. That is all,

-I guess, Bishop,&rdquo; he concluded abruptly.</p>

-<p>The Bishop reached for the smaller man&rsquo;s hand

-and wrung it with a sudden, unwonted emotion.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I will not cheapen this, sir,&rdquo; he said evenly,

-&ldquo;by attempting to thank you.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;A mere whim of mine, that&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; Stanton

-cut in almost curtly, the steel-trap expression snapping

-into place over his face. &ldquo;A mere whim.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the Bishop slowly, looking him

-squarely in the eyes, &ldquo;I only came to ask a question,

-anyhow.&rdquo; Then he turned and walked

-briskly from the office. He had no right and no

-wish to know what the other man chose to conceal

-beneath that curt and incisive manner.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span></div>

-<p>So these two men parted. In words, they had

-not understood each other. Neither had come

-near the depths of the other. But then, what man

-does ever let another man see what is in his

-heart?</p>

-<hr class='tb' />

-<p>All day long the line of armed men had gone

-spreading itself wider and wider, to draw itself

-around the edges of the shorter line of men hidden

-in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day

-long clearly and more clearly Jeffrey Whiting

-had been seeing the inevitable end. His line was

-already stretched almost to the breaking point.

-If the enemy had known, there were dangerous

-gaps in it now through which a few daring men

-might have pushed and have begun to divide up

-the strength of the men with him.</p>

-<p>All the afternoon as he watched he saw other

-and yet other groups and troops of men come

-up the railroad, detrain and push out ever

-farther upon the enveloping wings to east and

-west.</p>

-<p>Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line

-had been driven in and almost surrounded.

-They had decided in the beginning to leave their

-horses in the rear, and so use them only at the

-last. But the spreading line in front had become

-too long to be covered on foot by the few men he

-had. They were forced to use the speed of the

-animals to make a show of greater force than

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span>

-they really had. The horses furnished marks that

-even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the

-afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams

-of terrified, wounded horses rang horribly through

-the woods above the pattering crackle of the irregular

-rifle fire. Old men who years before had

-learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and

-fell asleep grumbling. Young men and boys who

-had never heard such sounds turned sick with horror

-or wandered frightened through the dark,

-nervously ready to fire on any moving twig or

-scraping branch.</p>

-<p>In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the

-line, talking aside to every man; telling them to

-slip quietly away through the dark. They could

-make their way out through the loose lines of

-soldiers and sheriffs&rsquo; men and get down to the villages

-where they would be unknown and where

-nobody would bother with them.</p>

-<p>The inevitable few took his word&ndash;&ndash; There is

-always the inevitable few. They slipped away

-one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly

-good reason for going, several good reasons, in

-fact; any reason, indeed, but that they were afraid.

-Most of them were gathered in by the soldier

-pickets and sent down to jail.</p>

-<p>Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with

-a grim, ugly suggestion in it of the coming winter.

-Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily

-out to their posts, munching dryly at the last of

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span>

-the stores which they had taken from the construction

-depots along the line which they had destroyed.

-This was the end. It was not far from

-the mind of each man that this would probably be

-his last meal.</p>

-<p>The firing began again as the outer line came

-creeping in upon them. They had still the great

-advantage of the shelter of the woods and the

-formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship

-kept those directly in front of them almost

-out of range. But there was nothing in sight before

-them but that they would certainly all be surrounded

-and shot down or taken.</p>

-<p>Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those

-who had been watching the most distant of the

-two wings creeping around them saw these men

-halt and slowly begin to gather back together.

-What was it? Were they going to rush at last?

-Here would be a fight in earnest!</p>

-<p>But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation,

-merely walked back in their tracks until

-they were entirely out of range. It must be a

-ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their

-shelter, puzzled, but determined not to be drawn

-out.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of

-the line, saw an old man walking, barehead, up

-over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted

-rails. That white head with the high, wide brow,

-the slightly stooping, spare shoulders, the long,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span>

-swinging walk&ndash;&ndash; That was the Bishop of Alden!</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to

-the men on either side to stay where they were,

-jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet the

-Bishop.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Are any men killed?&rdquo; the Bishop asked before

-Jeffrey had time to speak as they met.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the

-chest&ndash;&ndash;we don&rsquo;t know how bad it is,&rdquo; said

-Jeffrey, stopping short. &ldquo;Ten other men are

-wounded. I don&rsquo;t think any of them are bad.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Call in your men,&rdquo; said the Bishop briefly.

-&ldquo;The soldiers are going back.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>At Jeffrey&rsquo;s call the men came running from

-all sides as he and the Bishop reached the line.

-Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered

-round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance

-of the White Horse Chaplain, for so one

-and all they knew and remembered him. Men

-who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped

-back into the scene of that day and looked about

-blankly for the white horse. And young men who

-had heard that tale many times and had seen and

-heard of his coming through the fire to French

-Village stared round-eyed at him. What did this

-coming mean?</p>

-<p>He told them shortly the terms that Clifford

-W. Stanton, their enemy, was willing to make with

-them. And in the end he added:</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;You have only my word that these things will

-be done as I say. <i>I</i> believe. If you believe, you

-will take your horses and get back to your families

-at once.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief,

-the men for the first time knew what they had

-been through. Their knees gave under them.

-They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking

-quaver. Many who had thought never to see

-loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying

-over the names of those they were saved to.</p>

-<p>The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him,

-walked slowly back down the roadbed. Suddenly

-Jeffrey remembered something that had gone

-completely out of his mind in these last hours.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Bishop,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;that day&ndash;&ndash;that

-day in court. I&ndash;&ndash;I said you lied. Now I know

-you didn&rsquo;t. You told the truth, of course.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My boy,&rdquo; said the Bishop queerly, &ldquo;yesterday

-I asked a man, on his soul, for the truth&ndash;&ndash;the

-truth. I got no answer.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the

-name of the Emperor of all the World, once

-asked what was truth. And <i>he</i> got no answer.

-Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that

-there are things bigger than we are. We get no

-answer.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.</p>

-<hr class='toprule' />

-<div class='chsp'>

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span>

-<a name='X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID' id='X_THAT_THEY_BE_NOT_AFRAID'></a>

-<h2>X</h2>

-<h3>THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID</h3>

-</div>

-<p>It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring

-and the bud of Promise.</p>

-<p>The snow had been gone from the sunny places

-for three weeks now. He still lingered three feet

-deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from which

-only the hot June sun and the warm rains would

-drive him. He still held fastnesses on the northerly

-side of high hills, where the sun could not

-come at him and only the trickling rain-wash

-running down the hill could eat him out from

-underneath. But the sun had chased him away

-from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to

-the grass and the germinant life beneath to come

-boldly forth, for the enemy was gone.</p>

-<p>But the grass was timid. And the hardy little

-wild flowers, the forget-me-nots and the little

-wild pansies held back fearfully. Even the

-bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys

-of meadow and hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection

-that belied their nature. For all of

-them had been burned to the very roots of the

-roots. But the sun came warmer, more insistent,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span>

-and kissed the scarred, brown body of earth and

-warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and

-the little flowers took courage out of their very

-craving for life and pushed resolutely forth.

-And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The

-world was born again!</p>

-<p>Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run

-on her way back to French Village. She had been

-to put the first flowers of the Spring on the grave

-of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had

-blessed the ground for him and they had laid him,

-there under the sunny side of the Gaunt Rocks

-that had given him his last breathing space that

-he might die in peace. They had put him here,

-for there was no way in that time to carry him

-to the little cemetery in French Village. And

-Cynthe was well satisfied that it was so. Here,

-under the Gaunt Rocks, she would not have to

-share him with any one. And she would not have

-to hear people pointing out the grave to each other

-and to see them staring.</p>

-<p>The water tumbling down the Run out of the

-hills sang a glad, uproarious song, as is the way

-of all brooks at their beginnings, concerning the

-necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible

-to the big, wide life of the sea. The sea would

-not care at all if that brook never came down to

-it. But the brook did not know that. Would not

-have believed it if it had been told.</p>

-<p>And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span>

-of old Beaupre&ndash;&ndash;which she had never seen, for

-Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was

-sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time,

-and&ndash;&ndash; But Cynthe was not unhappy. The

-Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good.

-Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet.

-There was work in the world to do. And&ndash;&ndash;when

-all was said and done&ndash;&ndash;Rafe Gadbeau was

-in Heaven.</p>

-<p>As she left the Run and was crossing up to

-the divide she met Jeffrey Whiting coming down.

-He had been over in the Wilbur&rsquo;s Fork country

-and was returning home. He stopped and

-showed that he was anxious to talk with her.

-Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty,

-sociable little person, and, besides, for some time

-she had had it in mind that she would some day

-take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this

-scowling young gentleman with the big face.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;

-he said, after some verbal beating about the bush;

-&ldquo;how is she?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you come see, if you want to

-know?&rdquo; retorted Cynthe sharply.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went

-on:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;If you wanted to know why didn&rsquo;t you come

-up all Winter and see? Why didn&rsquo;t you come

-up when she was nursing the dirty French babies

-through the black diphtheria, when their own

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span>

-mothers were afraid of them? Why didn&rsquo;t you

-come see when she was helping the mothers up

-there to get into their houses and make the houses

-warm before the coming of the Winter, though

-she had no house of her own? Why didn&rsquo;t you

-come see when she nearly got her death from

-the &rsquo;mmonia caring for old Robbideau Laclair

-in his house that had no roof on it, till she shamed

-the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you

-ask somebody then? Why didn&rsquo;t you come

-see?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Jeffrey defended, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know

-about any of those things. And we had plenty

-to do here&ndash;&ndash;our place and my mother and all.

-I didn&rsquo;t see her at all till Easter Sunday. I

-sneaked up to your church, just to get a look at

-her. She saw me. But she didn&rsquo;t seem to want

-to.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But she should have been delighted to see

-you,&rdquo; Cynthe snapped back. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think

-so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed.

-She should have flown to your arms! Not so?

-You remember what you said to her the last time

-you saw her before that. No? I will tell you.

-You called her &lsquo;liar&rsquo; before the whole court, even

-the Judge! Of one certainty, she should have

-flown to you. No?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have

-gone away, with all haste. But he was not wise.

-He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span>

-that some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed

-to argue.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But she&ndash;&ndash;she cared for me,&rdquo; he blurted out.

-&ldquo;I know she did. I couldn&rsquo;t understand why she

-couldn&rsquo;t tell&ndash;&ndash;the truth; when you&ndash;&ndash;you did so

-much for me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;For you? For <i>you</i>!&rdquo; the girl flamed up in

-his face. &ldquo;Oh, villainous monster of vanity! For

-<i>you</i>! Ha! I could laugh! For <i>you</i>! I put

-<i>mon Rafe</i>&ndash;&ndash;dead in his grave&ndash;&ndash;to shame before

-all the world, called him murderer, blackened

-his name, for <i>you</i>!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No! No! <i>No!</i> <i>Never!</i></p>

-<p>&ldquo;I would not have said a word against him to

-save you from the death. <i>Never!</i></p>

-<p>&ldquo;I did what I did, because there was a debt.

-A debt which <i>mon Rafe</i> had forgotten to pay.

-He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay

-that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made

-straight. He could go in. I did it for <i>you</i>!

-Ha!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And

-the girl had talked so rapidly and so fiercely that

-he could not gather even the context of the matter.

-He gave up trying to follow it and went back

-to his main argument.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But why couldn&rsquo;t she have told the truth?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;The truth, eh! You must have the truth!

-The girl must tell the truth for you! No matter

-if she was to blacken her soul before God,

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span>

-you must have the truth told for you. The truth!

-It was not enough for you to know that the

-girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that

-she would have died for you if she might! No.

-The poor girl must tear out the secret lining of her

-heart for you, to save you!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Think you that if <i>mon Rafe</i> was alive and

-stood there where you stood, in peril of his life;

-think you that he would ask me to give up the

-secret of the Holy Confession to save him. <i>Non!</i>

-<i>Mon Rafe</i> was a <i>man</i>! He would die, telling me

-to keep that which God had trusted me with!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to

-be saved; that the Good God must come down

-from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened

-Book for <i>you</i>!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You ask for truth! <i>Tiens!</i> I will tell you

-truth!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried

-that you were an innocent man. <i>Mon Rafe</i> was

-the guilty man. The whole world must come

-forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth

-to declare you innocent and him guilty! You

-were innocent! You were persecuted! The

-earth and the Heaven must come to show that you

-were innocent and he was guilty! <i>Bah!</i> <i>You

-were as guilty as he!</i></p>

-<p>&ldquo;I was there. I saw. Your finger was on

-the trigger. You only waited for the man to stop

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span>

-moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder

-was in your soul. Murder was in your finger.

-But you were innocent and <i>mon Rafe</i> was guilty.

-By how much?</p>

-<p>&ldquo;By one second. That was the difference between

-<i>mon Rafe</i> and you. Just that second that

-he shot before you were ready. <i>That</i> was the

-difference between you the innocent man and <i>mon

-Rafe</i>!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were guilty. In your heart you were

-guilty. In your soul you were guilty. M&rsquo;sieur

-Cain himself was not more guilty than you!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You were more guilty than <i>mon Rafe</i>, for he

-had suffered more from that man. He was

-hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were

-cool. You were ready. Only <i>mon Rafe</i> was a

-little quicker, because he was desperate. Before

-the Good God you were more guilty.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And <i>mon Rafe</i> must be blackened more than

-the fire had blackened his poor body. And the

-poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the

-good M&rsquo;sieur the Bishop must break his holiest

-oath. All to make you innocent!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Bah! <i>Innocent!</i>&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She flung away from him and ran up the hill.

-Cynthe had not said quite all that she intended to

-say to this young gentleman. But then, also, she

-had said a good deal more than she had intended

-to say. So it was about even. She had

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span>

-said enough. And it would do him no harm.

-She had felt that she owed <i>mon Rafe</i> a little plain

-speaking. She was much relieved.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him

-digging up the tender roots of the new grass with

-his toe. He did not look after the girl. He had

-forgotten her.</p>

-<p>He felt no resentment at the things that she had

-said. He did not argue with himself as to

-whether these things were just or unjust. Of all

-the things that she had said only one thing mattered.

-And that not because she had said it. It

-mattered because it was true. The quick, jabbing

-sentences from the girl had driven home to him

-just one thing.</p>

-<p>Guilty? He <i>was</i> guilty. He was as guilty as&ndash;&ndash;Rafe

-Gadbeau.</p>

-<p>Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation,

-bitter, blinding provocation. But so had Rafe

-Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau

-as anything but guilty of murder.</p>

-<p>He turned on his heel and walked down the

-Run with swift, swinging strides, fighting this conviction

-that was settling upon him. He fought it

-viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a

-man, that the thing was done and past, that men

-have no time for remorse and sickish, mawkish

-repentance. Those things were for brooding

-women, and Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably,

-sagaciously; contending that he had not, in

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span>

-fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that

-he would ever have done so? Maybe he had not

-really intended to kill at all. Maybe he would not

-have killed. The man might have spoken to him.

-Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned

-that time. Who could tell? Ten thousand

-things might have happened, any one of which

-would have stood between him and killing the man.

-He fought it defiantly. Suppose he had killed the

-man? What about it? The man deserved it.

-He had a right to kill him.</p>

-<p>But he knew that he was losing at every angle

-of the fight. For the conviction answered not a

-word to any of these things. It merely fastened

-itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment:

-&ldquo;As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>And when he came over the top of the hill,

-from where he could look down upon the grave of

-Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the

-conviction pointed out to him just one enduring

-fact. It said: &ldquo;There is the grave of Rafe

-Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything

-about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried

-here.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then he fought no more with the conviction.

-It gripped his spirit and cowed him. It sat upon

-his shoulders and rode home with him. His

-mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding,

-began to look for some fresh trouble.</p>

-<p>She need not have looked for new trouble, so

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span>

-far as concerned things outside himself. For

-Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men.

-He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable

-and finer home than it had ever been.

-He had secured an excellent contract from the railroad

-to supply thousands of ties out of the timber

-of the high hills. He had made money out

-of that. And once he had gotten a taste of money-making,

-in a business that was his by the traditions

-of his people and his own liking, he knew that he

-had found himself a career.</p>

-<p>He was working now on a far bigger project,

-the reforesting of thirty thousand acres of the

-higher hill country. In time there would be unlimited

-money in that. But there was more than

-money in it. It was a game and a life which he

-knew and which he loved. To make money by

-making things more abundant, by covering the

-naked peaks of the hill country with sturdy, growing

-timber, that was a thing that appealed to him.</p>

-<p>All the Winter nights he had spent learning the

-things that men had done in Germany and elsewhere

-in this direction, and in adding this knowledge

-to what he knew could be done here in the

-hills. Already he knew it was being said that

-he was a young fellow who knew more about growing

-timber than any two old men in the hills.

-And he knew how much this meant, coming from

-among a people who are not prone to give youth

-more than its due. Already he was being picked

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span>

-as an expert. Next week he was going down to

-Albany to give answers to a legislative committee

-for the Forest Commission, which was trying to

-get appropriations from the State for cleaning up

-brush and deadfalls from out of standing timber&ndash;&ndash;a

-thing that if well done would render forest

-fires almost harmless.</p>

-<p>He was getting a standing and a recognition

-which now made that law school diploma&ndash;&ndash;the

-thing that he had once regarded as the portal of

-the world&ndash;&ndash;look cheap and little.</p>

-<p>But, as he sat late that night working on his

-forestry calculations, the roadway of his dreams

-fell away from under him. The high colour of

-his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before

-him and across the grey wall in letters of

-black he could only see the word&ndash;&ndash;<i>guilty</i>.</p>

-<p>What was it all worth? Why work? Why

-fight? Why dream? Why anything? when at

-the end and the beginning of all things there stood

-that wall with the word written across it.

-Guilty&ndash;&ndash;guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And Ruth

-Lansing&ndash;&ndash;!</p>

-<p>A flash of sudden insight caught him and held

-him in its glaring light. He had been doing all

-this work. He had built this home. He had

-fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills

-and the raging winter for money. He had

-dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built them

-higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span></div>

-<p>He had fought the thought of her. He had

-put her out of his mind. He had said that she

-had failed him in need. He had even, in the

-blackest time of the night, called her liar. He

-had forgotten her, he said.</p>

-<p>Now he knew that not for an instant had she

-been out of his mind. Every stroke of work had

-been for her. She had stood at the top of the

-high path of every struggling dream.</p>

-<p>Between him and her now rose that grey wall

-with the one word written on it. Was that what

-they had meant that day there in the court, she

-and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all?

-Was there some sort of uncanny truth or insight

-or hidden justice in that secret confessional of

-theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting

-truth, while it hid the momentary, accidental

-truth of mere words? In effect, they had

-said that he was guilty. And he <i>was</i> guilty!</p>

-<p>What was that the Bishop had said when he

-had asked for truth that day on the railroad line?

-&ldquo;Sooner or later we have to learn that there is

-something bigger than we are.&rdquo; Was this what

-it meant? Was this the thing bigger than he was?

-The thing that had seen through him, had looked

-down into his heart, had measured him; was this

-the thing that was bigger than he?</p>

-<p>He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting

-maze of imagination, misinformation, and

-some unreadable facts.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span></div>

-<p>He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that

-he was guilty. That was why she had acted as

-she had. He would go to her. He would&ndash;&ndash;!

-But what was the use? She would not talk to

-him about this. She would merely deny, as she

-had done before, that she knew anything at all.

-What could he do? Where could he turn?

-They, he and Ruth, could never speak of that

-thing. They could never come to any understanding

-of anything. This thing, this wall&ndash;&ndash;with

-that word written on it&ndash;&ndash;would stand between

-them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that

-was sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the

-thing that was stronger than he. There was no

-answer. There was no way out.</p>

-<p>Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!</p>

-<p>But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He

-was not guilty any more. Cynthe had said so.

-He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow.

-He had merely come through the fire and thrown

-himself at a man&rsquo;s feet and had his guilt wiped

-away. What was there in that uncanny thing they

-called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as&ndash;&ndash;as

-Rafe Gadbeau, could come to another man,

-and, by the saying of a few words, turn over and

-face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?</p>

-<p>It was a delusion, of course. The saying of

-words could never wipe away Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s

-guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt

-from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span>

-But Rafe Gadbeau <i>believed</i> it! Cynthe believed

-it! And Cynthe was no fool. <i>Ruth</i> believed it!</p>

-<p>It was a delusion, yes. But&ndash;&ndash;<i>What</i> a delusion!

-What a magnificent, soul-stirring delusion!

-A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau

-out of the misery of his guilt, that carried the

-souls of millions of guilty people through all the

-world up out of the depths of their crimes to a

-confidence of relief and freedom!</p>

-<p>Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down

-into the abyss of despairing loneliness. It trod

-the dark ways in which there was no guidance.

-It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or

-to what it might appeal. It travelled an endless

-round of memory, from cause to effect and back

-again to cause, looking for the single act, or

-thought, that must have been the starting point,

-that must have held the germ of his guilt.</p>

-<p>Somewhere there must have been a beginning.

-He knew that he was not in any particular a different

-person, capable of anything different, likely

-to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain

-from what he had been on any other morning

-since he had become a man. There was never

-a time, so far as he could see, when he would not

-have been ready to do the thing which he was

-ready to do that morning&ndash;&ndash;given the circumstances.

-Nor had he changed in any way since

-that morning. What had been essentially his act,

-his thought, a part of him, that morning was just

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span>

-as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this

-minute. There was no thing in the succession

-of incidents to which he could point and say:

-That was not I who did that: I did not mean

-that: I am sorry I did that. Nor would there

-ever be a time when he could say any of these

-things. It seemed that he must always have been

-guilty of that thing; that in all his life to come

-he must always be guilty of it. There had been

-no change in him to make him capable of it, to

-make him wish it; there had been no later change

-in him by which he would undo it. It seemed

-that his guilt was something which must have begun

-away back in the formation of his character,

-and which would persist as long as he was the

-being that he was. There was no beginning of

-it. There was no way that it might ever end.</p>

-<p>And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing

-had seen that guilt, too. She had seen it in his

-eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in

-his mind.</p>

-<p>What had she seen? What was that thing written

-so clear in his eyes that she could read and

-tell him of it that day on the road from French

-Village?</p>

-<p>He would go to her and ask her. She should

-tell him what was that thing she had seen. He

-would make her tell. He would have it from

-her!</p>

-<p>But, no. Where was the use? It would only

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span>

-bring them to that whole, impossible, bewildering

-business of the confessional. And he did not

-want to hear any more of that. His heart was

-sick of it. It had made him suffer enough. And

-he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered

-equally, or maybe more, from it.</p>

-<p>Where could he go? He must tell this thing.

-He <i>must</i> talk of it to some one! That resistless,

-irrepressible impulse for confession, that call

-of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon

-him. He must find some other soul to share with

-him the burden of this conviction. He must find

-some one who would understand and to whom he

-could speak.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not

-have analysed what this craving meant. He only

-knew that it was very real, that his soul was staggering

-alone and blind under the weight of this

-thing.</p>

-<p>There was one man who would understand.

-The man who had looked upon the faces of life

-and death these many years, the man of strange

-comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him

-on the way of all this, and who from what he had

-said in his house in Alden, that day so long ago

-when all this began, may have foreseen this very

-thing, the man who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry

-out his guilt; that man would understand. He

-would go to him.</p>

-<p>He wrote a note which his mother would find in

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span>

-the morning, and slipping quietly out of the

-house he saddled his horse for the ride to Lowville.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I came because I had to come,&rdquo; Jeffrey began,

-when the Bishop had seated him. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know

-why I should come to you. I know you cannot

-do anything. There is nothing for any one to do.

-But I had to tell some one. I <i>had</i> to say it to

-somebody.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I sat that day in the courtroom,&rdquo; he went on

-as the Bishop waited, &ldquo;and thought that the whole

-world was against me. It seemed that everybody

-was determined to make me guilty&ndash;&ndash;even you,

-even Ruth. And I was innocent. I had done

-nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the idea

-that everybody was trying to make me out guilty,

-when I was innocent. I had done nothing. I had

-not killed a man. I told the men there on the

-mountain that I was innocent and they would not

-believe me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts

-that I had not done the thing, but you would not

-say a word for me, an innocent man.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It was that as much as anything, that feeling

-that the whole world wanted to condemn me knowing

-that I was innocent, that drove me on to the

-wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting

-back, fighting back against everybody.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And&ndash;&ndash;this is what I came to say&ndash;&ndash;all the

-time I was guilty&ndash;&ndash;guilty: guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!&rdquo;</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;I am not sure I understand,&rdquo; said the Bishop

-slowly, as Jeffrey stopped.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s nothing to understand. It is just

-as I say. I was guilty of that man&rsquo;s death before

-I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty of it

-that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am

-guilty now. I will always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau

-could say a few words to you and turn over

-into the next world, free. I cannot,&rdquo; he ended,

-with a sort of grim finality as though he saw again

-before him that wall against which he had come

-the night before.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo; the Bishop began slowly.

-Then he asked suddenly, &ldquo;What brought your

-mind to this view of the matter?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;A girl,&rdquo; said Jeffrey, &ldquo;the girl that saved me;

-that French girl that loved Rafe Gadbeau. She

-showed me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving

-her mind with some plain speaking. But he

-did not feel at all easy. He knew better than to

-treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not

-a boy to be laughed out of a morbid notion, or to

-be told to grow older and forget the thing. His

-was a man&rsquo;s soul, standing in the dark, grappling

-with a thing with which it could not cope. The

-wrong word here might mar his whole life. Here

-was no place for softening away the realities with

-reasoning. The man&rsquo;s soul demanded a man&rsquo;s

-straight answer.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span></div>

-<p>&ldquo;Before you could be guilty,&rdquo; said the Bishop

-decisively, &ldquo;you must have injured some one by

-your thought, your intention. Whom did you injure?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought,

-to follow it out from the maze which his mind

-had been treading. Here was the answer. This

-would clear the way. Whom had he injured?</p>

-<p>Well, <i>whom</i> had he injured? <i>Who</i> had been

-hurt by his thought, his wish, to kill a man? Had

-it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was

-none the worse of it.</p>

-<p>Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not

-enter into this at all.</p>

-<p>Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till

-yesterday; and not in the way meant.</p>

-<p>Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then&ndash;&ndash;then

-why all this&ndash;&ndash;? Jeffrey Whiting rose

-from his chair as though to go. He did not look

-at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing

-upon the floor, asking:</p>

-<p>Whom?</p>

-<p>Suddenly, from within, just barely audible

-through his lips there came the answer; a single

-word:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;<i>God!</i>&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Your business is with Him, then,&rdquo; said the

-Bishop, rising with what almost seemed brusqueness.

-&ldquo;You wanted to see Him.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But&ndash;&ndash;but,&rdquo; Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span>

-argue, &ldquo;men come to you, to confess. Rafe Gadbeau&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Bishop quickly, &ldquo;you are

-wrong. Men come to me to <i>confession</i>. They

-come to <i>confess</i> to God.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>He took the young man&rsquo;s hand, saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I will not say another word. You have found

-your own answer. You would not understand better

-if I talked forever. Find God, and tell Him,

-what you have told me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the

-long way to the hills and home. He was still bewildered,

-disappointed, and a little resentful of the

-Bishop&rsquo;s brief manners with him. He had gone

-looking for sympathy, understanding, help. And

-he had been told to find God.</p>

-<p>Find God? How did men go about to find

-God? Wasn&rsquo;t all the world continually on the

-lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did

-the preachers find Him? Did the priests find

-Him? And if they did, what did they say to

-Him? Did people who were sick, and people who

-said God had answered their prayers and punished

-their enemies for them; did they find God?</p>

-<p>Did they find Him when they prayed? Did

-they find Him when they were in trouble? What

-did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must

-have meant something? How did the Bishop

-himself find God? Was there some word, some

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span>

-key, some hidden portal by which men found God?

-Was God to be found here on the hills, in the

-night, in the open?</p>

-<p>God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how

-can I come, how can I find! A wordless, baffled,

-impotent cry, that reached nowhere.</p>

-<p>The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.</p>

-<p>Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable

-guilt, swept down upon him again and

-beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It

-left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to

-face this thing. It was too big for him. He was

-after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling alone in

-the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had

-been caught and crushed between forces and passions

-that were too much for him. He was little

-and these things were very great.</p>

-<p>Unconsciously the heart within him, the child

-heart that somehow lives ever in every man, began

-to speak, to speak, without knowing it, direct

-to God.</p>

-<p>It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was

-not an excuse. It was the simple unfolding of the

-heart of a child to the Father who made it. The

-heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It

-could not lift itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness

-complete, of dependence utter and unreasoning.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span></div>

-<p>Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at

-the stars, blinking at him through the starting

-tears.</p>

-<p>Was that God? Had some one spoken?

-Where was the load that had lain upon him all

-these weary hours?</p>

-<p>He stopped his horse and looked about him,

-breathing in great, free, hungry breaths of God&rsquo;s

-air about him. For it <i>was</i> God&rsquo;s air. That was

-the wonder of it. The world was God&rsquo;s! And it

-was new made for him to live in!</p>

-<p>He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer

-of thanks, as simple and unreasoning, unquestioning,

-as had been the unfolding of his heart. He

-had been bound: he was free!</p>

-<p>Then his horse went flying up the hill road,

-beating a tattoo of new life upon the soft, breathing

-air of the spring night.</p>

-<p>With the inconsequence of all of us children

-when God has lifted the stone from our hearts,

-Jeffrey had already left everything of the last thirty-six

-hours behind him as completely as if he had

-never lived through those hours. (That He lets

-us forget so easily, shows that He is the Royal

-God in very deed.)</p>

-<p>Before the sun was well up in the morning

-Jeffrey was on his way to French Village, to look

-out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old Robbideau

-Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into

-fixing that roof.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span></div>

-<p>What he had heard the other day from Cynthe

-was by no means all that he had heard of the

-doings of Ruth during the last seven months.

-For the French people had taken her to their

-hearts and had made of her a wonderful new kind

-of saint. They had seen her come to them out of

-the fire. They had heard of her silence at the

-trial of the man she loved. They had seen her

-devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to

-their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria

-had frightened the wits out of the best of

-women. All the while they knew that she was not

-happy. And they had explained fully to the

-countryside just what was their opinion of the

-whole matter.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly

-understanding many things that had been hidden

-from him, was very humble as he wondered what

-he could say to Ruth.</p>

-<p>At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he

-met Cynthe.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; he asked without preface.</p>

-<p>Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching

-look, and was amazed at the change she

-saw.</p>

-<p>Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to

-whom she had talked the other day. Here was a

-man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and

-had learned some things out of unknown places of

-his heart.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span></div>

-<p>I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too

-much. But I am not sorry. <i>Non.</i></p>

-<p>&ldquo;The last house,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;by the crook

-of the lake there. She will be glad,&rdquo; she remarked

-simply, and turned on her way.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl

-heartily for the word that she had thought to add.

-It was a warrant, it seemed, of forgiveness&ndash;&ndash;and

-of all things.</p>

-<p>Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife

-Philomena sat in the sun by the side of the house

-watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms bare

-above the elbow was working away contentedly

-in their little patch of garden. They nudged each

-other as Jeffrey rode up and left his horse, but

-they made no sign to Ruth.</p>

-<p>So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth

-came to her unseen and unheard. He took the

-hoe from her hand as she turned to face him. Up

-to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he

-was to say to her. What was there to say? But

-as he looked into her startled, pain-clouded eyes

-he found himself saying:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I hurt God once, very much. I did not know

-what to say to Him. Last night He taught me

-what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will

-you tell me what to say to you, Ruth?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting.

-But Ruth quickly understood. There was no irreverence

-in it, only a man&rsquo;s stumbling, wholehearted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span>

-confession. It was a plea that she had no

-will to deny. The quick, warm tears of joy came

-welling to her eyes as she silently took his hand

-and led him out of the little garden and to where

-his horse stood.</p>

-<p>There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers

-slipping softly through the big bay&rsquo;s mane, Jeffrey

-standing stiff and anxious before her, with the glad

-morning and the high hills and all French Village

-observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced

-their question.</p>

-<p>But after all there was no question. For

-when Jeffrey had told all, down to that moment in

-the dark road when he had found God in his heart,

-Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness

-that is born in every woman, said:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Poor boy, you have suffered too much!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What I suffered was that I made for myself,&rdquo;

-he said thickly. &ldquo;Cynthe Cardinal told me what

-a fool I was.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;What did Cynthe tell you?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;She told me that you loved me.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?&rdquo; said

-the girl very quietly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, it seems so. I&rsquo;d known your little white

-soul ever since you were a baby. I knew that in

-all your life you&rsquo;d never had a thought that was

-not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I

-knew that there was never a time when you

-wouldn&rsquo;t have given everything, even life, for me.

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span>

-I knew it that day in the Bishop&rsquo;s house. I knew

-it that morning when you came to me in the sugar

-cabin.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, I knew all that,&rdquo; he went on bitterly.

-&ldquo;I knew you loved me, and I knew what a love it

-was. I knew it. And yet that day&ndash;&ndash;that day

-in the courtroom, the only thing I could do was

-to call you liar!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him,

-but he went on doggedly.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, I did. That was all I could think of.

-I threw it at you like a blow in the face. I saw

-you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck you.

-And even that sight wasn&rsquo;t enough for me. I

-kept on saying it, when I knew in my heart it

-wasn&rsquo;t so. I couldn&rsquo;t help but know it. I knew

-you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied;

-kept on till yesterday. I wasn&rsquo;t big enough. I

-wasn&rsquo;t man enough to see that you were just facing

-something that was bigger than both of us&ndash;&ndash;something

-that was bigger and truer than words&ndash;&ndash;that

-there was no way out for you but to do

-what you did.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Jeffrey, dear,&rdquo; the girl hurried to say, &ldquo;you

-know that&rsquo;s a thing we can&rsquo;t speak about&ndash;&ndash;&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand.

-You needn&rsquo;t say anything. I <i>understand</i>.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And I understand a lot more,&rdquo; he began

-again. &ldquo;It took that little French girl to tell me

-what was the truth. I know it now. There was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span>

-a deeper, a truer truth under everything. That

-was why you had to do as you did. That&rsquo;s why

-everything was so. I wasn&rsquo;t innocent. Things

-don&rsquo;t <i>happen</i> as those things did. They work out,

-because they have to.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl was watching him with fright and

-wonder in her eyes. What was he going to say?

-But she let him go on.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;No, I wasn&rsquo;t innocent,&rdquo; he said, as though to

-himself now. &ldquo;I fooled myself into thinking that

-I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man.

-I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but

-Rafe Gadbeau&rsquo;s quickness prevented me. No, I

-wasn&rsquo;t innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was

-a murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as

-Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as Ca&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The girl had suddenly sprung forward and

-thrown her arms around his neck. She caught

-the word that was on his lips and stopped it with

-a kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say

-what he had been going to say.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You shall not say that!&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;I

-will not let you say it! Nobody shall say it! I

-defy the whole world to say it!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s&ndash;&ndash;it&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said the boy brokenly as

-he held her.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;It is not true! Never! Nothing&rsquo;s true, only

-the truth that God has hidden in His heart!

-And that is hidden! How can we say? How

-dare we say what we would have done, when we

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span>

-didn&rsquo;t do it? How do we know what&rsquo;s really in

-our hearts? Don&rsquo;t you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot

-say things like that! We don&rsquo;t know! I

-won&rsquo;t let you say it.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;And if you do say it,&rdquo; she argued, &ldquo;why, I&rsquo;ll

-have to say it, too.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You?&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes, I. Do you remember that night you

-were in the sugar cabin? I was outside looking

-through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was

-I thinking? What was in my heart? I&rsquo;ll tell

-you. I was out there stalking like a panther. I

-wanted just one thing out of all the world. Just

-one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would

-have done it gladly&ndash;&ndash;with joy in my heart! I

-could have sung while I was doing it!</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she gasped, &ldquo;now, if you&rsquo;re going to

-say that thing, why, we&rsquo;ll say it together!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer

-in his arms, understood nothing but that she

-wanted to stand with him, to put herself in whatever

-place was his, to take that black, terrible

-shadow that had fallen on him and wrap it around

-herself too.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;My poor little white-souled darling,&rdquo; he said

-through tears that choked him, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t take this

-from you! It&rsquo;s too much, I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against

-his shoulder and argued dreamily:</p>

-<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what you can do. You&rsquo;ll have to

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span>

-take <i>me</i>. And I don&rsquo;t see how you can take me

-any way but just as I am.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Then she was suddenly conscious that the world

-was observing. She drew quickly away, and

-Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go.</p>

-<p>Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered

-and adored, he began to speak in wonder and

-self-abasement.</p>

-<p>&ldquo;After all I&rsquo;ve made you suffer&ndash;&ndash;!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>But Ruth would have none of this. It had been

-nothing, she declared. She had found work to

-do. She had been happy, in a way. God had

-been very kind.</p>

-<p>At length Jeffrey said: &ldquo;Well, I guess we&rsquo;ll

-never have to misunderstand again, anyway, Ruth.

-I had to find God because I was&ndash;&ndash;I needed Him.

-Now I want to find Him&ndash;&ndash;your way.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;You mean&ndash;&ndash;you mean that you <i>believe</i>!&rdquo;</p>

-<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jeffrey slowly. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think I

-ever would. I certainly didn&rsquo;t want to. But I

-do. And it isn&rsquo;t just to win with you, Ruth, or

-to make you happier. I can&rsquo;t help it. It&rsquo;s the

-thing the Bishop once told me about&ndash;&ndash;the thing

-that&rsquo;s bigger than I am.&rdquo;</p>

-<p>Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for

-leading him forthwith to Father Ponfret, that he

-might begin at once his course of instructions

-which she assured him was essential.</p>

-<p>But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading

-books all winter, he said. Though he admitted

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span>

-that until last night he had not understood much

-of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God!

-Could she not come home, then, to his mother,

-who was pining for her&ndash;&ndash;and&ndash;&ndash;and they would

-have all their lives to finish the instructions.</p>

-<p>On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she

-would stay, among these good people where she

-had made for herself a place and a home. He

-must come every week to Father Ponfret for his

-instructions, like any other convert. If on those

-occasions he also came to see her, well, she would,

-of course, be glad to see him and to know how he

-was progressing.</p>

-<p>Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would

-see.</p>

-<p>And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree.</p>

-<p>Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this

-arrangement, grumbled that the way of the heretic

-was indeed made easy in these days. But his wife

-Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed

-him that if the good Ruth saw fit to convert

-even a heathen Turk into a husband for herself

-she would no doubt make a good job of it.</p>

-<p>So love came and went through the summer,

-practically unrebuked.</p>

-<p>Again the Bishop came riding up to French

-Village with Arsene LaComb. But this time they

-rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up

-over the new line of railroad that came into the

-hills from Welden Junction. And Arsene was

-<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span>

-very glad of this, for as he looked at his beloved

-M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;Eveque he saw that he was not now the

-man to have faced the long road up over the hills.

-He was not two, he was many years older and less

-sturdy.</p>

-<p>The Bishop practised his French a little, but

-mostly he was silent and thoughtful. He was

-remembering that day, nearly two years ago now,

-when he had set two ambitious young souls upon

-a way which they did not like. What a coil of

-good and bad had come out of that doing of his.

-And again he wondered, as he had wondered then,

-whether he had done right. Who was to tell?</p>

-<p>And again to-morrow he was to set those two

-again upon their way of life, for he was coming up

-to French Village to the wedding of Ruth Lansing

-to Jeffrey Whiting.</p>

-<p>Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing&rsquo;s side in

-the little rough-finished sanctuary of the chapel

-which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to

-raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer.

-But Jeffrey Whiting saw none of the poor makeshifts

-out of which the little priest had contrived

-a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again,

-in the night, on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned

-stars, crying out to find God. Then

-God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch

-and lifted him out of the dust and agony of the

-road, and, finally, had brought him here, to this

-moment.</p>

-<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span></div>

-<p>He had just received into his body the God of

-life. His soul stood trembling at its portal, receiving

-its Guest for the first time. He was

-amazed with a great wonder, for here was the

-very God of the dark night speaking to him in

-words that beat upon his heart. And his wonder

-was that from this he should ever arise and go on

-with any other business whatever.</p>

-<p>Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to

-the music of that <i>choir unseen</i> which had once

-given her the call of life. She had followed it, not

-always in the perfect way, but at least bravely, unquestioningly.

-And it had brought her now to a

-holy and awed happiness. Neither life nor death

-would ever rob her of this moment.</p>

-<p>Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop.

-And as the Shepherd blessed their joined hands he

-prayed for these two who were dear to him, as

-well as for his other little ones, and, as always,

-for those &ldquo;other sheep.&rdquo; And the breathing of

-his prayer was:</p>

-<p>That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear;

-but trust long in Thee and in each other.</p>

-<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em'>THE END</p>

-<p class='tp' style='font-size:smaller;'>Printed in the United States of America.</p>

-

-<!-- generated by ppg.rb version: 3.15 -->

-<!-- timestamp: Sat Sep 26 03:46:52 -0400 2009 -->

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

-

-End of Project Gutenberg's The Shepherd of the North, by Richard Aumerle Maher

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-Project Gutenberg's The Shepherd of the North, by Richard Aumerle Maher

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: The Shepherd of the North

-

-Author: Richard Aumerle Maher

-

-Release Date: September 26, 2009 [EBook #30093]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ASCII

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed

-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-BY RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER

-

-Author of "The Heart of a Man," etc.

-

-M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY

-

-CHICAGO--NEW YORK

-

-

-

-

-Copyright 1916

-

-By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

-

-Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916.

-

-Reprinted March, 1916 June, 1916 October, 1916.

-

-February, 1917.

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS

-

-  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE

-        I THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN                                   3

-       II THE CHOIR UNSEEN                                          35

-      III GLOW OF DAWN                                              64

-       IV THE ANSWER                                               103

-        V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE                                     137

-       VI THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD                             174

-      VII THE INNER CITADEL                                        210

-     VIII SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?                             243

-       IX THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD                               277

-        X THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID                                  311

-

-

-

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-

-

-

-THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH

-

-I

-

-THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN

-

-

-The Bishop of Alden was practising his French upon Arsene LaComb. It

-was undoubtedly good French, this of M'sieur the Bishop, Arsene

-assured himself. It must be. But it certainly was not any kind of

-French that had ever been spoken by the folks back in Three Rivers.

-

-Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not understand all that the

-Bishop said, it was equally certain that the Bishop could not

-understand all that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a cheery

-companion for the long road. He took his upsets into six feet of

-Adirondack snow, as man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft and

-the road is uncertain.

-

-In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and the railroad behind and

-had headed into the hills. For thirty miles, with only one stop for a

-bite of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded along up the

-half-broken, logging roads. Now they were in the high country and

-there were no roads.

-

-Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a drifting storm had followed

-him down from Little Tupper, covering the road that he had made and

-leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped driving and held only a

-steady, even rein to keep his ponies from stumbling, while he let the

-tough, willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road.

-

-Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene had been tossed off the

-single bobsled out into the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting

-all day long on the swaying bumper, with no back rest, feet braced

-stiffly against the draw bar in front to keep the dizzy balance. But

-it was the only way that this trip could be made.

-

-The Bishop knew that he should not have let the confirmation in French

-Village on Little Tupper go to this late date in the season. He had

-arranged to come a month before. But Father Ponfret's illness had put

-him back at that time.

-

-Now he was worried. The early December dark was upon them. There was

-no road. The ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve bad miles

-to go.

-

-Still, things might be worse. The cold was not bad. He had the bulkier

-of his vestments and regalia in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to

-the sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils and the other sacred

-essentials were slung securely about his body. And a tumble more or

-less in the snow was a part of the day's work. They would break their

-way through somehow.

-

-So, with the occasional interruptions, he was practising his amazing

-French upon Arsene.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old Massachusetts stock. He had

-learned the French that was taught at Harvard in the fifties.

-Afterwards, after his conversion to the Catholic Church, he had gone

-to Louvain for his seminary studies. There he had heard French of

-another kind. But to the day he died he spoke his French just as it

-was written in the book, and with an aggressive New England accent.

-

-He must speak French to the children in French Village to-morrow, not

-because the children would understand, but because it would please

-Father Ponfret and the parents.

-

-They were struggling around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain and the

-Bishop was rounding out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration

-of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a sharp:

-

-"Jomp, M'sieur l'Eveque, _jomp_!"

-

-The Bishop jumped--or was thrown--ten feet into a snow-bank.

-

-While he gathered himself out of the snow and felt carefully his

-bulging breast pockets to make sure that everything was safe, he saw

-what had happened.

-

-The star-faced pony on the near side had slipped off the trail and

-rolled down a little bank, dragging the other pony and Arsene and the

-sled with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies, man and sled at

-the bottom of a little gully, and as the Bishop floundered through the

-snow to help he feared that it was serious.

-

-Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under the sled, his head just

-clear of the ponies' heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in

-the _patois_ that they understood. He was within inches of having his

-brains beaten out by the quivering hoofs; he could not, literally,

-move his head to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with them

-as quietly as if he stood at their heads.

-

-They kicked and fought each other and the sled, until the influence of

-the calm voice behind them began to work upon them. Then their own

-craft came back to them and they remembered the many bitter lessons

-they had gotten from kicking and fighting in deep snow. They lay still

-and waited for the voice to come and get them out of this.

-

-As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to release Arsene, he

-remembered that he had seen men under fire. And he said to himself

-that he had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this little

-French-Canadian storekeeper.

-

-The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had been soft under him,

-and lunged for the ponies' heads.

-

-"Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now! Ah-a! Bien!"

-

-He had them both by their bridles and dragged them skilfully to their

-feet and up the bank. With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all

-safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail.

-

-Arsene now looked around for the Bishop.

-

-"Ba Golly! M'sieur l'Eveque, dat's one fine jomp. You got hurt, you?"

-

-The Bishop declared that he was not in any way the worse from the

-tumble, and Arsene turned to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up

-the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection of his harness

-and said ruefully:

-

-"Dat's bad, M'sieur l'Eveque. She's gone bust."

-

-He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his hand. The trouble was

-quite evident.

-

-"What can we do?" asked the Bishop. "Have you any rope?"

-

-"No. Dat's how I been one big fool, me. I lef' new rope on de sled

-las' night on Lowville. Dis morning she's gone. Some t'ief."

-

-"We must get on somehow," said the Bishop, as he unbuckled part of the

-lashing from his bag and handed the strap to Arsene. "That will hold

-until we get to the first house where we can get the loan of a trace.

-We can walk behind. We're both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is

-it far?"

-

-"Dat's Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks, 'bout quarter mile, maybe."

-The little man looked up from his work long enough to point out a

-clump of hemlocks that stood out black and sharp against the white

-world around them. As the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among

-the trees, showing where life and a home fought their battle against

-the desolation of the hills.

-

-"I donno," said Arsene speculatively, as he and the Bishop took up

-their tramp behind the sled; "Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don' like

-Canuck. Maybe he don' lend no harness, I donno."

-

-"Oh, yes; he will surely," answered the Bishop easily. "Nobody would

-refuse a bit of harness in a case like this."

-

-It was full dark when they came to where Tom Lansing's cabin hid

-itself among the hemlocks. Arsene did not dare trust his team off the

-road where they had footing, so the Bishop floundered his way through

-the heavy snow to find the cabin door.

-

-It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out of the hemlocks that had

-stood around it and belonged to a generation already past. But it was

-still serviceable and tight, and it was a home.

-

-The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was no response from within.

-It was strange. For there was every sign of life about the place.

-After knocking a second time without result, he lifted the heavy

-wooden latch and pushed quietly into the cabin.

-

-A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite the door. On

-the hearth stood a big black and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not

-the slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his four legs

-planted squarely under him, his whole body quivering with fear. His

-nose was pointed upward as though ready for the howl to which he dared

-not give voice. His great brown eyes rolled in an ecstasy of fright

-but seemed unable to tear themselves from the side of the room where

-he was looking.

-

-Along the side of the room ran a long, low couch covered with soft,

-well worn hides. On it lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out

-awkwardly and unnaturally, showing that he had been dragged

-unconscious to where he was. A candle stood on the low window ledge

-and shone down full into the man's face.

-

-At the head of the couch knelt a young girl, her arm supporting the

-man's head and shoulder, her wildly tossed hair falling down across

-his chest.

-

-She was speaking to the man in a voice low and even, but so tense that

-her whole slim body seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as

-though her very soul came to the portals of her lips and shouted its

-message to the man. The power of her voice, the breathless, compelling

-strength of her soul need seemed to hold everything between heaven

-and earth, as she pleaded to the man. The Bishop stood spellbound.

-

-"Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My Father!" she was saying over and

-over. "Come back, come back, Daddy Tom! It's not true! God doesn't

-want you! He doesn't want to take you from Ruth! How could He! It's

-not never true! A tree couldn't kill my Daddy Tom! Never, never! Why,

-he's felled whole slopes of trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!"

-

-For a time which he could not measure the Bishop stood listening to

-the pleading of the girl's voice. But in reality he was not listening

-to the sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She was fighting

-bitterly with death. She was calling all the forces of love and life

-to aid her in her struggle. She was following the soul of her loved

-one down to the very door of death. She would pull him back out of the

-very clutches of the unknown.

-

-And the Bishop found that he was not merely listening to what the girl

-said. He was going down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing

-every word of her pleading. The force of her will and her prayer swept

-him along so that with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed

-for the man to open his eyes.

-

-Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible fear seemed to grip and

-crush her, so that she cowered and hid her face against the big,

-grizzled white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed in terror.

-

-The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched the girl on the head,

-saying:

-

-"Do not give up yet, child. I once had some skill. Let me try."

-

-The girl turned and looked up blankly at him. She did not question who

-he was or whence he had come. She turned again and wrapped her arms

-jealously about the head and shoulders of her father. Plainly she was

-afraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insisted

-gently and in the end she gave him place beside her.

-

-He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listen

-at the man's breast.

-

-Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life,

-certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man's pockets for the

-knife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly.

-

-"It was just a little while ago," she answered, in short, frightened

-sentences. "My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Father

-had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinned

-down under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and told

-me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it must

-be I hurt him; he fainted. I can't make him speak. I cut boughs and

-made a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can't make him speak.

-Is he?-- Is he?-- Tell me," she appealed.

-

-The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man's

-jacket and shirt.

-

-"You were all alone, child?" he said. "Where could you get the

-strength for all this? My driver is out on the road," he continued, as

-he worked on. "Call him and send him for the nearest help."

-

-The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at the

-man on the couch, went out into the snow.

-

-The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.

-

-The man's shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing there

-to constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upper

-ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them were

-caved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of them

-must have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung on

-that side.

-

-The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bled

-outwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little,

-and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula.

-

-He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was a

-little black ball of steel.

-

-While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, a

-long tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever so

-slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyes

-opened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop

-thought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come back

-naturally to a realisation of things.

-

-While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly, and the Bishop stood

-holding the little black ball between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth

-Lansing came back into the room.

-

-Seeing her father's eyes open, the girl rushed across the room and was

-about to throw herself down by the side of the couch when her father's

-voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible and clear, stopped

-her.

-

-"The White Horse Chaplain!" he said in a voice of slow wonder. "But I

-always knew he'd come for me sometime. And I suppose it's time."

-

-The Bishop started. He had not heard the name for twenty-five years.

-

-The girl stopped by the table, trembling and frightened. She had heard

-the tale of the White Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her

-that her father was delirious and raving. But he spoke so calmly and

-so certainly. He seemed so certain that the man he saw was an

-apparition that she could not think or reason herself out of her

-fright.

-

-The Bishop answered easily and quietly:

-

-"Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did not think anybody

-remembered now."

-

-Tom Lansing's eyes leaped wide with doubt and question. They stared

-full at the Bishop. Then they turned and saw the table standing in its

-right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the table; saw the dog at

-the fireplace. The man there was real!

-

-Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle to rise, then fell back

-gasping.

-

-The Bishop put his hand gently under the man's head and eased him to a

-better position, saying:

-

-"It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving past and had broken a

-trace, and came in to borrow one from you. You got a bad blow. But

-your girl has just sent my driver for help. They will get a doctor

-somewhere. We cannot tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not

-so bad as it looks." But, even as he spoke, the Bishop saw a drop of

-blood appear at the corner of the man's white mouth; and he knew that

-it was as bad as the worst.

-

-The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes moved again from the

-Bishop to the girl and the everyday things of the room.

-

-It was evident that his mind was clearing sharply. He had rallied

-quickly. But the Bishop knew instinctively that it was the last,

-flashing rally of the forces of life--in the face of the on-crowding

-darkness. The shock and the internal hemorrhage were doing their work

-fast. The time was short.

-

-Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with a look, he called the

-girl to him.

-

-Through the seventeen years of her life, since the night when her

-mother had laid her in her father's arms and died, Ruth Lansing had

-hardly ever been beyond the reach of her father's voice. They had

-grown very close together, these two. They had little need of clumsy

-words between them.

-

-As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild, eager, rebellious,

-seared her father with their terror-stricken, unbelieving question.

-

-But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her wild questioning had

-given him. She crushed back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely

-with herself until she was able to force into her eyes a look of

-understanding and great mothering tenderness.

-

-Her father saw the struggle and the look, and blessed her for it with

-his eyes. Then he said:

-

-"You'll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you? I know I'm desertin'

-you, little comrade, right in the mornin' of your battle with life.

-But you won't be afraid. I know you won't."

-

-The girl shook her head bravely, but it was clear that she dared not

-trust herself to speak.

-

-"I'm goin' to ask this man here to look to you. He came here for a

-sign to me. I see it. I see it plain. I will trust him with your life.

-And so will you, little comrade. I--I'm droppin' out. He'll take you

-on.

-

-"He saved my life once. So he gave you your life. It's a sign, my

-Ruth."

-

-The girl slipped her hands gently under his head and looked deep and

-long into the glazing eyes.

-

-Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was facing death--and life

-alone.

-

-Obedient to her father's look, she rose and walked across the room.

-She saw that he had something to say to this strange man and that the

-time was short.

-

-In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin she stood, and throwing

-one arm up against the frame of the door she buried her face in it.

-She did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty of time for

-that.

-

-The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant an irrevocable

-change had come over her. She had knelt a frightened, wondering,

-protesting child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of death and its

-infinite certainty, of life and its infinite chance, had risen from

-her knees.

-

-As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke hurriedly:

-

-"I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I did I forgot it, and it

-don't matter.

-

-"I'm dying. I don't need any doctor to tell me. I'll be gone before he

-gets here.

-

-"You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when Curtis' men were cut to

-pieces in the second charge on the trenches. They left me there,

-because it was every man for himself.

-

-"A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg. And you came drivin' mad

-across the field on a big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me

-where I lay. You threw me across your saddle and walked that wild

-horse back into our lines.

-

-"Do you remember? Dying men got up on their elbows and cheered you. I

-lay six weeks in fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?"

-

-"I do, now," said the Bishop. "Our troop came back to the Shenandoah,

-and I never knew what--"

-

-That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back upon him. He was just a

-few months ordained. He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union

-army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the ways and business of a

-battlefield, he had found himself that day in the sand dunes before

-Fort Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about him. Hail, fumes,

-lightning and thunder of battle rolled over him and sickened him. He

-saw his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against the

-Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself, and fade away back into

-the smoke. He lost it, and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered

-blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead man, now speaking to

-a living stricken one: Here straightening a torn body and giving

-water; there hearing the confession of a Catholic.

-

-Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis' troops came yelling across the flat

-land. Once, twice they tried the trenches and were driven back into

-the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a big white horse. The

-animal, mad with fright and blood scent, charged down upon him as he

-bent over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and fought the horse.

-Before he realised what he was doing, he was in the saddle riding back

-and forth across the field. Right up to the trenches the horse carried

-him.

-

-Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy, a thin, long-legged boy

-with a long beardless face. He lay there marking the high tide of the

-last charge--the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain, tumbling down

-somehow from his mount, picked up the writhing boy and bundled him

-across the saddle. Then he started walking back looking for his own

-lines.

-

-Now here was the boy talking to him across the mists of twenty-five

-years. And the boy, the man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom

-Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have died from fever bloat

-or been trampled to death in the succeeding charges. He had given him

-life. And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he had given that

-daughter life. Now he knew what Lansing was going to say.

-

-"I didn't know you then," said Lansing. "I don't know who you are now,

-Chaplain, or what you are.

-

-"But," he went on slowly, "if I'd agiven you a message that day you'd

-have taken it on for me, wouldn't you?"

-

-"Of course I would."

-

-"Suppose it had been to my mother, say: You'da risked your life to get

-it on to her?"

-

-"I hope I would," said the Bishop evenly.

-

-"I believe you would. That's what I think of you," said Tom Lansing.

-

-"I went back South after the war," he began again. "I stole my girl's

-mother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonel

-that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her up

-here into the hills and she died when the baby was just a few weeks

-old.

-

-"There ain't a relation in the world that my little girl could go to.

-I'm goin' to die in half an hour. But what better would she be if I

-lived? What would I do with her? Keep her here and let her marry some

-fightin' lumber jack that'd beat her? Or see her break her heart

-tryin' to make a livin' on one of these rock hills? She'd fret

-herself to death. She knows more now than I do and she'd soon be

-wantin' to know more. She's that kind.

-

-"She'd ought to have her chance the way I've seen girls in towns

-havin' a chance. A chance to study and learn and grow the way she

-wants to. And now I'm desertin'; goin' out like a smoky lamp.

-

-"It was a crime, a crime!" he groaned, "ever to bring her mother up

-into this place!"

-

-"You could not think of all that then. No man ever does," said the

-Bishop calmly. "And I will do my best to see that she gets her chance.

-I think that's what you want to ask me, isn't it, Lansing?"

-

-"Do you swear it?" gasped Lansing, struggling and choking in an effort

-to raise his head. "Do you swear to try and see that she gets a

-chance?"

-

-"God will help me to do the best for her," said the Bishop quietly. "I

-am the Bishop of Alden. I can do something."

-

-With the definiteness of a man who has heard a final word, Tom

-Lansing's eyes turned to his daughter.

-

-Obediently she came again and knelt at his side, holding his head.

-

-To the very last, as long as his eyes could see, they saw her smiling

-bravely and sweetly down into them; giving her sacrament and holding

-her light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.

-

-When the last twinging tremour had run through the racked body, she

-leaned over and kissed her father full on the lips.

-

-Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into the night.

-

-While the Bishop was straightening the body on the couch, a young man

-and two women came into the room.

-

-They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and her sister, neighbours

-whom Arsene had brought.

-

-The Bishop was much relieved with their coming. He could do nothing

-more now, and the long night ride was still ahead of him.

-

-He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had gone out into the cold,

-and asked him to find her.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had played with Ruth Lansing

-since she was a baby, for they were the only children on Lansing

-Mountain. He knew where he would find her.

-

-Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of the hills, where people

-had to meet their problems and burdens alone, took command at once.

-

-"No, sir," she replied to the Bishop's question, "there's nobody to

-send for. The Lansings didn't have a relation living that anybody ever

-heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom Lansing's father and

-mother. They're buried out there on the hill where he'll be buried.

-

-"There's some old soldiers down the West Slope towards Beaver River.

-They'll want to take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on

-Monday," she went on rapidly, sketching in the programme. "We have a

-preacher if we can get one. But when we can't my sister Letty here

-sings something."

-

-"Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a way," said the Bishop slowly.

-"At least, I was at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like to--"

-

-"Were you at Fort Fisher?" broke in the sister Letty, speaking for the

-first time. "And did you see Curtis' colour bearer? He was killed in

-the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton, with long, black

-hair?"

-

-"He had an old scar over his eye-brow." The Bishop supplemented the

-description out of the memory of that day.

-

-"He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five years ago to-morrow,"

-said the woman trembling. "You saw him die?"

-

-"He was dead when I came to him," said the Bishop quietly, "with the

-stock of the colour standard still clenched in his hand."

-

-"He was my--my--" Sweetheart, she wanted to say. But the hill women do

-not say things easily.

-

-"Yes?" said the Bishop gently. "I understand." She was a woman of his

-people. Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he could read

-the years of her faithfulness to the memory of that lean, dark face

-which he had once seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow.

-

-Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about her sister.

-

-"Are you--?" she questioned, hesitating strangely. "Are you the White

-Horse Chaplain?"

-

-"The boys called me that," said the Bishop. "Though it was only a name

-for a day," he added.

-

-"It was true, then?" she said slowly, as if still unready to believe.

-"We never half believed our boys when they came home from the war--the

-ones that did come home--and told about the white horse and the priest

-riding the field. We thought it was one of the things men see when

-they're fighting and dying."

-

-Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room leading Ruth Lansing by

-the hand.

-

-The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The Bishop drew her over to

-the fire.

-

-"I must go now, child," he said. "To-morrow I must be in French

-Village. Monday I will be here again.

-

-"Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he said to me, about you?"

-

-The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the Bishop's face, then

-nodded her head.

-

-"Then, we must think and pray, child, that we may know how to do what

-he wanted us to do. God will show us what is the best. That is what he

-wanted.

-

-"God keep you brave now. Your friends here will see to everything for

-you. I have to go now."

-

-He crossed the room and laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the

-dead man, renewing in his heart the promise he had made.

-

-Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting that he would be back before

-noon Monday, he went out to where Arsene and his horses were stamping

-in the snow.

-

-The little man had replaced the broken trace, and the ponies, fretting

-with the cold and eager to get home, took hungrily to the trail.

-

-But the Bishop forgot to practise his French further upon Arsene. He

-told him briefly what had happened, then lapsed into silence.

-

-Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing had said about the girl.

-She knew more now than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew now. But

-more than Tom Lansing had known half an hour ago.

-

-She would want to see the world. She would want to know life and ask

-her own questions from life and the world. In the broad open space

-between her eye-brows it was written that she would never take

-anybody's word for the puzzles of the world. She was marked a seeker;

-one of those who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand to

-know what it means. They never find out. But, heart break or sparrow

-fall, they must go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own way.

-The world is infinitely the better through them. But their own way is

-hard and lonely.

-

-She must go out. She must have education. She must have a chance to

-face life and wrest its lessons from it in her own way. It did not

-promise happiness for her. But she could go no other way. For hers was

-the high, stony way of those who demand more than jealous life is

-ready to give.

-

-The Bishop only knew that he had this night given a promise which had

-sent a man contentedly on his way. Somehow, God would show him how

-best to keep that promise.

-

-And when they halloed at Father Ponfret's house in French Village he

-had gotten no farther than that.

-

-

-Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his couch. Clean white sheets

-had been draped over the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking

-in through the west window picked out every bare thread of his service

-coat and glinted on the polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung

-into the belt at his side.

-

-Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head of the couch, listening

-to the comments and stumbling condolences of neighbours from the high

-hills and the lower valleys. They were good, kindly people, she knew.

-But why, why, must every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous

-lie-- How natural he looked!

-

-He did not. He did not. He did _not_ look natural. How could her Daddy

-Tom look natural, when he lay there all still and cold, and would not

-speak to his Ruth!

-

-He was dead. And what was death-- And why? _Why?_

-

-Who had ordered this? And _why?_

-

-And still they came with that set, borrowed phrase--the only thing

-they could think to say--upon their lips.

-

-Out in Tom Lansing's workshop on the horse-barn floor, Jacque Lafitte,

-the wright, was nailing soft pine boards together.

-

-Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not leave Daddy Tom to her?

-She wanted to ask him things. She knew that she could make him

-understand and answer.

-

-She slipped away from the couch and out of the house. At the corner of

-the house her dog joined her and together they circled away from the

-horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where her father had been

-working yesterday.

-

-She found her father's cap where it had been left in her fright of

-yesterday, and sat down fondling it in her hands. The dog came and

-slid his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle into the cap

-between her hands.

-

-So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following her with her coat

-and hood.

-

-"You better put these on, Ruth," he said, as he dropped the coat

-across her shoulder. "It's too cold here."

-

-The girl drew the coat around her obediently, but did not look up at

-him. She was grateful for his thought of her, but she was not ready to

-speak to any one.

-

-He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and drew the dog over to

-him.

-

-After a little he asked timidly:

-

-"What are you going to do, Ruth? You can't stay here. I'll tend your

-stock and look after the place for you. But you just can't stay

-here."

-

-"You?" she questioned finally. "You're going to that Albany school

-next week. You said you were all ready."

-

-"I was all ready. But I ain't going. I'll stay here and work the two

-farms for you."

-

-"For me?" she said. "And not be a lawyer at all?"

-

-"I--I don't care anything about it any more," he lied. "I told mother

-this morning that I wasn't going. She said she'd have you come and

-stay with her till Spring."

-

-"And then?" the girl faced the matter, looking straight and unafraid

-into his eyes. "And then?"

-

-"Well, then," he hesitated. "You see, then I'll be twenty. And you'll

-be old enough to marry me," he hurried. "Your father, you know, he

-always wanted me to take care of you, didn't he?" he pleaded,

-awkwardly but subtly.

-

-"I know you don't want to talk about it now," he went on hastily. "But

-you'll come home with mother to-morrow, won't you? You know she wants

-you, and I--I never had to tell you that I love you. You knew it when

-you wasn't any higher than Prince here."

-

-"Yes. I always knew it, and I'm glad," the girl answered levelly. "I'm

-glad now, Jeff. But I can't let you do it. Some day you'd hate me for

-it."

-

-"Ruth! You know better than that!"

-

-"Oh, you'd never tell me; I know that. You'd do your best to hide it

-from me. But some day when your chance was gone you'd look back and

-see what you might have been, 'stead of a humpbacked farmer in the

-hills. Oh, I know. You've told me all your dreams and plans, how

-you're going down to the law school, and going to be a great lawyer

-and go to Albany and maybe to Washington."

-

-"What's it all good for?" said the boy sturdily. "I'd rather stay here

-with you."

-

-The girl did not answer. In the strain of the night and the day, she

-had almost forgotten the things that she had heard her father say to

-the White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call the Bishop.

-

-Now she remembered those things and tried to tell them.

-

-"That strange man that said he was the Bishop of Alden told my father

-that he would see that I got a chance. My father called him the White

-Horse Chaplain and said that he had been sent here just on purpose to

-look after me. I didn't know there were bishops in this country. I

-thought it was only in books about Europe."

-

-"What did they say?"

-

-"My father said that I would want to go out and see things and know

-things; that I mustn't be married to a--a lumber jack. He said it was

-no place for me in the hills."

-

-"And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, to

-school?" he guessed shrewdly.

-

-"I don't know, I suppose that was it," said the girl slowly.

-"Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He had

-taught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills was

-full of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and see

-and pick up. And to-day I don't care."

-

-She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the dog at her feet, and

-down the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were all

-she had in the world.

-

-The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly.

-

-He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:

-

-"Don't forget to count me, Ruth. You've got me, you know."

-

-Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought.

-Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it

-was just the eternal surrender of woman.

-

-When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears,

-the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run

-out into the night.

-

-He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white,

-desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untried

-troth.

-

-When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white bosom of the hillside, and

-the people were dispersing from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting came

-and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop's sharp old eyes had told him

-to expect something of what was coming. He liked the look of the boy's

-clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance of his eyes. They

-told of dependableness and plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was

-not a boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be his.

-

-"Ruth told me that you were going to take her away from the hills," he

-began. "To a school, I suppose."

-

-"I made a promise to her father," said the Bishop, "that I would try

-to see that she got the chance that she will want in the world."

-

-"But I love her. She's going to marry me in the Spring."

-

-The Bishop was surprised. He had not thought matters had gone so far.

-

-"How old are you?" he asked thoughtfully.

-

-"Twenty in April."

-

-"You have some education?" the Bishop suggested. "You have been at

-school?"

-

-"Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth. And last Winter at the

-Academy in Lowville. I was going to Albany to law school next week."

-

-"And you are giving it all up for Ruth," said the Bishop incisively.

-"Does it hurt?"

-

-The boy winced, but caught himself at once.

-

-"It don't make any difference about that. I want Ruth."

-

-"And Ruth? What does she want?" the Bishop asked. "You are offering to

-make a sacrifice for her. You are willing to give up your hopes and

-work yourself to the bone here on these hills for her. And you would

-be man enough never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe

-that. But what of her? You find it hard enough to give up your chance,

-for her, for love.

-

-"Do you know that you are asking her to give up her chance, for

-nothing, for less than nothing; because in giving up her chance she

-would know that she had taken away yours, too. She would be a good and

-loving companion to you through all of a hard life. But, for both your

-sakes, she would never forgive you. Never."

-

-"You're asking me to give her up. If she went out and got a start,

-she'd go faster than I could. I know it," said the boy bitterly.

-"She'd go away above me. I'd lose her."

-

-"I am not asking you to give her up," the Bishop returned steadily.

-"If you are the man I think you are, you will never give her up. But

-are you afraid to let her have her chance in the sun? Are you afraid

-to let her have what you want for yourself? Are you afraid?"

-

-The boy looked steadily into the Bishop's eyes for a moment. Then he

-turned quickly and walked across the room to where Ruth sat.

-

-"I can't give it up, Ruth," he said gruffly. "I'm going to Albany to

-school. I can't give it up."

-

-The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:

-

-"You needn't have tried to lie, Jeff; though it's just like you to put

-the blame on yourself. I know what he said. I must think."

-

-The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He saw them suddenly light

-up. He knew what that meant. She was seeing the great world with all

-its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he himself had seen it. Now

-he knew that he had lost.

-

-The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready to go. The day was

-slipping away and before him there were thirty miles and a train to be

-caught.

-

-"We must not be hurried, my children," he said, standing by the boy

-and girl. "The Sacred Heart Academy at Athens is the best school this

-side of Albany. The Mother Superior will write you in a few days,

-telling you when and how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go

-as she directs.

-

-"You have been a good, brave little girl. A soldier's daughter could

-be no more, nor less. God bless you now, and you, too, my boy," he

-added.

-

-When he was settled on the sled with Arsene and they were rounding the

-shoulder of Lansing Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace, he

-turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.

-

-"To-day," he said to himself, "I have set two ambitious, eager souls

-upon the high and stony paths of the great world. Should I have left

-them where they were?

-

-"I shall never know whether I did right or not. Even time will mix

-things up so that I'll never be able to tell. Maybe some day God will

-let me see. But why should he? One can only aim right, and trust in

-Him."

-

-

-

-

-II

-

-THE CHOIR UNSEEN

-

-

-Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms of the Sacred Heart convent

-in Athens thrumming out a finger exercise that a child of six would

-have been able to do as well as she.

-

-It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world, this, into which she

-had been suddenly transplanted. It was as different from the great

-world that she had come out to see as it was from the wild, sweet life

-of the hills where she had ruled and managed everything within reach.

-Mainly it was full of girls of her own age whose talk and thoughts

-were of a range entirely new to her.

-

-She compared herself with them and knew that they were really children

-in the comparison. Their talk was of dress and manners and society and

-the thousand little and big things that growing girls look forward to.

-She knew that in any real test, anything that demanded common sense

-and action, she was years older than they. But they had things that

-she did not have.

-

-They talked of things that she knew nothing about. They could walk

-across waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walked

-on. They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or choking

-as she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had never

-in her life received a scolding, would have been driven into

-hysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses were

-supposed to be new. She knew that these were not things that they had

-learned by studying. They just grew up to them, just as she knew how

-to throw a fishing line and hold a rifle.

-

-But she wanted all those things that they had; wanted them all

-passionately. She had the sense to know that those were not great

-things. But they were the things that would make her like these other

-girls. And she wanted to be like them.

-

-Because she had not grown up with other girls, because she had never

-even had a girl playmate, she wanted not to miss any of the things

-that they had and were.

-

-They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick, eager mind sprang at

-books and fairly tore the lessons from them. She ran away from the

-girls in anything that could be learned in that way. But when she

-found herself with two or three of them they talked a language that

-she did not know. She could not keep up with them. And she was stupid

-and awkward, and felt it. It was not easy to break into their world

-and be one of them.

-

-Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls but

-infinitely removed from it--the world of the sisters.

-

-That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave their

-hours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was a

-world all by itself.

-

-What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What was

-there in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They must

-once have been as different as every girl is different from every

-other girl.

-

-How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air of

-never being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence was

-there behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to come

-out with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light that

-shone in their faces?

-

-Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What did

-they have to be happy about?

-

-Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They were

-Catholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her

-question aside with a stare:

-

-"Sisters always look like that."

-

-So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world

-of the sisters behind those walls. What did they do in there? Did

-they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they

-just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of

-God and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed so

-familiar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especially

-when He was displeased.

-

-She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, where

-there were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the trees

-to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as a

-printed book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She could

-read the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden.

-Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away from

-her.

-

-Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its door

-in the face of her sharp, hungry mind.

-

-And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worlds

-about her--the world of the Catholic Church.

-

-Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little green

-building in French Village where the "Canucks" went to church.

-

-Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. The

-pictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroom

-door. The books she read, the talk she heard was all filled with it.

-It came and went through every door of life.

-

-All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers were

-alive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much.

-The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought against

-it. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted to

-argue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrong

-sometimes.

-

-But just when she was sure that she had found something false,

-something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her,

-she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was always

-ready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she had

-gotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what was

-wrong with her that she could not understand? She could learn

-everything else faster and more easily than the other girls could.

-

-Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fell

-nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burning

-tears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her.

-

-The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills to

-conquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her.

-Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand these

-strange women about her. Would never understand them.

-

-Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her,

-where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow and

-the wild winds were her friends?

-

-She threw herself forward on her arms and gave way utterly, crying in

-great, heart-breaking, breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her

-home, for her hills.

-

-At five o'clock Sister Rose, coming to see that the music rooms were

-aired for the evening use, found Ruth an inert, shapeless little

-bundle of broken nerves lying across the piano.

-

-She took the girl to her room and sent for the sister infirmarian.

-

-But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only to leave her alone.

-

-The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness that every

-new pupil in a boarding school is liable to, sent some of the other

-girls in during the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she drove

-them away. She was not cross nor pettish. But her soul was sick for

-the sweeping freedom of her hills and for people who could understand

-her.

-

-She rose and dragged her little couch over to the window, where she

-could look out and up to the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped

-down upon her in the hills.

-

-She did not know the names that they had in books, but she had framed

-little pet names for them all out of her baby fancies and the names

-had clung to them all the years.

-

-She recognised them, although they did not stand in the places where

-they belonged when she looked at them from the hills.

-

-Out among them somewhere was Heaven. Daddy Tom was there, and her

-mother whom she had never seen.

-

-Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it seemed, there came stealing

-into her sense a sound. Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so

-illusive. It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear as other

-sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to steal past the clumsy senses

-directly into the spirit and the heart.

-

-It was music. Yes. But it was as though the Soul of Music had freed

-itself of the bondage and the body of sound and notes and came

-carrying its unutterable message straight to the soul of the world.

-

-It was only the sisters in their chapel gently hymning the _Salve_ of

-the Compline to their Queen in Heaven.

-

-Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignant

-evensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled with

-books and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her.

-To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laid

-bare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.

-

-She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of the

-windows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knew

-vaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried her

-beyond all thought.

-

-She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood them

-if she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to _Our Life, our

-Sweetness and our Hope_ caught her heart up into a world where words

-were never needed.

-

-She heard the cry of the _Banished children of Eve_. The _Mourning and

-weeping in this vale of tears_ swept into her soul like the flood-tide

-of all the sorrow of all the world.

-

-On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear the

-triumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of _The

-Promises of Christ_.

-

-The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows,

-leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar.

-She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of that

-unseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to the

-measure of the heart of the world.

-

-It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but the

-undying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of the

-little blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on their

-pyres. It was the cry of strong men and valiant women crushed under

-the forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, which

-knows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this.

-She realised it as she lay there trembling.

-

-Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked or

-laughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart and

-play upon it and lead her whether she would or no.

-

-It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her.

-

-Through all the long night she fought it. She would not! She would not

-give up her life, her will, her spirit! Why? Why? Why must she?

-

-It would take her spirit out of the freedom of the hills and make it

-follow a trodden way. It would take her life out of her hands and

-maybe ask her to shut herself up, away from the sun and the wind, in a

-darkened convent. It would take her will, the will of a soldier's

-daughter, and break it into little pieces to make a path for her to

-walk upon!

-

-No! No! No! Through all the endless night she moaned her protest. She

-would not! She would not give in to it.

-

-It would never let her rest. Through all her life that voice of the

-Choir Unseen would strike the strings of her heart. She knew it.

-

-But she would not. Never would she give in to it.

-

-In the morning, even before the coming of the dawn, the music came

-again; and it beat upon her worn, ragged nerves, and tore and wrenched

-at her heart until she could stand it no longer.

-

-The sisters were taking up again the burden and the way of the day.

-

-She could not stand it! She could not stay here! She must go back to

-her hills, where there was peace for her.

-

-She heard the sister going down to unlock the street door so that

-Father Tenney could walk in when it was time and go up to the chapel

-for the sisters' early mass.

-

-That was her chance! The sisters would be in chapel. The girls would

-be still in their rooms.

-

-She dressed hastily and threw her books into a bag. She would take

-only these and her money. She had enough to get home on. The rest did

-not matter.

-

-When she heard the priest's step pass in the hall, she slipped out and

-down the dim, broad stairs.

-

-The great, heavy door of the convent stood like the gate of the world.

-It swung slowly, deliberately, on its well-oiled, silent hinges.

-

-She stood in the portal a moment, drinking hungrily the fresh, free

-air of the morning that had come down from her hills. Then she fled

-away into the dawn.

-

-The sun was just showing over Lansing mountain as Jeffrey Whiting came

-out of his mother's house dragging a hair trunk by the handle. His

-uncle, Cassius Bascom, drove up from the barn with the team and sled.

-Jeffrey threw his trunk upon the sled and bent to lash it down safe.

-It was twenty-five miles of half broken road and snowdrifts to

-Lowville and the railroad.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was doing what the typical American farm boy has been

-doing for the last hundred years and what he will probably continue to

-do as long as we Americans are what we are. He is not always a

-dreamer, your farm boy, when he starts down from his hills or his

-cross-roads farm to see the big world and conquer it. More often than

-you would think, he knows that he is not going to conquer it at all.

-And he is not, on the other hand, merely running away from the

-drudgery of the farm. He knows that he will probably have to work

-harder than he would ever have worked on the farm. But he knows that

-he has things to sell. And he is going down into the markets of men.

-He has a good head and a strong body. He has a power of work in him.

-He has grit and energy.

-

-He is going down into the markets where men pay the price for these

-things that he has. He is going to fight men for that price which he

-knows his things are worth.

-

-Jeffrey's mother came out carrying a canvas satchel which she put on

-the sled under Cassius Bascom's feet.

-

-"Don't kick that, Catty," she warned, "Jeff's lunch is in it. And,

-Jeff, don't you go and check it with the trunk." There was just a

-little catch in the laugh with which she said this. She was

-remembering a day more than twenty years before when she had started,

-a bride, with big, lumbering, slow-witted, adoring Dan Whiting,

-Jeffrey's father, on her wedding trip to Niagara Falls, with their

-lunch in that same satchel. Dan Whiting checked the satchel through

-from Lowville to Buffalo, and they had nearly starved on the way. It

-was easy to forgive Dan Whiting his stupidity. But she never quite

-forgave him for telling it on himself when they got back. It had been

-a standing joke in the hills all these years.

-

-She was just a typical mother of the hills. She loved her boy. She

-needed him. She knew that she would never have him again. The boys do

-not come back from the market place. She knew that she would cry for

-him through many a lonely night, as she had cried all last night. But

-she was not crying now.

-

-Her deep grey eyes smiled steadily up into his as she stretched her

-arms up around the neck of her tall boy and drew his head down to kiss

-her.

-

-He was not a dull boy. He was quick of heart. He knew his mother very

-well. So he began with the old, old lie; the lie that we all tried to

-tell when we were leaving.

-

-"It'll only be a little while, Mother. You won't find the time

-slipping by, and I'll be back."

-

-She knew it was a lie. All the mothers of boys always knew it was a

-lie. But she backed him up sturdily:

-

-"Why, of course, Jeff. Don't worry about me. You'll be back in no

-time."

-

-Miss Letitia Bascom came hurrying out of the house with a dark, oblong

-object in her hands.

-

-"There now, Jeff Whiting, I know you just tried to forget this on

-purpose. It's too late to put it in the trunk now; so you'll just have

-to put it in your overcoat pocket."

-

-Jeffrey groaned in spirit. It was a full-grown brick covered with

-felt, a foot warmer. Aunt Letty had made him take one with him when he

-went down to the Academy at Lowville last winter, and he and his brick

-had furnished much of the winter's amusement there. The memory of his

-humiliations on account of that brick would last a lifetime. He

-wondered why maiden aunts could not understand. His mother, now, would

-have known better. But he dutifully put the thing into the pocket of

-his big coat--he could drop it into the first snowback--and turned to

-kiss his aunt.

-

-"I know all about them hall bedrooms in Albany," she lectured. "Make

-your landlady heat it for you every night."

-

-A noise in the road made them all turn.

-

-Two men in a high-backed, low-set cutter were driving into the yard.

-

-It was evident from the signs that the men had been having a hard time

-on the road. They must have been out all night, for they could not

-have started from anywhere early enough to be here now at sunrise.

-

-Their harness had been broken and mended in several places. The cutter

-had a runner broken. The horses were cut and bloody, where they had

-kicked themselves and each other in the drifts.

-

-As they drove up beside the group in the yard, one of the men

-shouted:

-

-"Say, is there any place we can put in here? We've been on that road

-all night."

-

-"Drive in onto the barn floor, and come in and warm yourselves," said

-Mrs. Whiting.

-

-"Rogers," said the man who had spoken, addressing the other, "if I

-ever get into a place that's warm, I'll stay there till spring."

-

-Rogers laid the lines down on the dashboard of the cutter and stepped

-stiffly out into the snow. He swept the group with a sharp, a praising

-eye, and asked:

-

-"Who's the one to talk to here?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stepped forward naturally and replied with another

-question.

-

-"What do you want?"

-

-Rogers, a large, square-faced man, with a stubby grey moustache and

-cold grey eyes, looked the youth over carefully as he spoke.

-

-"I want a man that knows this country and can get around in it in this

-season. I was brought up in the country, but I never saw anything like

-this. I wouldn't take a trip like this again for any money. I can't do

-this sort of thing. I want a man that knows the country and the people

-and can do it."

-

-"Well, I'm going away now," said Jeffrey slowly, "but Uncle Catty here

-knows the people and the country better than most and he can go

-anywhere."

-

-The big man looked doubtfully at the little, oldish man on the sled.

-Then he turned away decisively. Uncle Cassius, his kindly, ugly old

-face all withered and puckered to one side, where a splinter of shell

-from Fort Fisher had taken away his right eye, was evidently not the

-kind of man that the big man wanted.

-

-"Where are you going?" he asked Jeffrey sharply.

-

-"Albany Law School," said Jeffrey promptly.

-

-"Unstrap the trunk, young man. You're not going. I've got something

-for you right here at home that'll teach you more than ten law

-schools. Put both teams into the barn," the big man commanded loudly.

-

-Jeffrey stood still a moment, as though he would oppose the will of

-this brusque stranger. But he knew that he would not do so. In that

-moment something told him that he would not go to law school; would

-never go there; that his life was about to take a twist away from

-everything that he had ever intended.

-

-Mrs. Whiting broke the pause, saying simply:

-

-"Come into the house."

-

-In the broad, low kitchen, while Letitia Bascom poured boiling tea for

-the two men, Rogers, cup in hand, stood squarely on the hearth and

-explained himself. The other man, whose name does not matter, sank

-into a great wooden chair at the side of the fire and seemed to be

-ready to make good his threat of staying until spring.

-

-"I represent the U. & M. railroad. We are coming up through here in

-the spring. All these farms have to be given up. We have eminent

-domain for this whole section," said Rogers.

-

-"What do you mean?" asked Jeffrey. "The railroad can't run _all over_

-the country."

-

-"No. But the road will need the whole strip of hills for timber.

-They'll cut off what is standing and then they'll stock the whole

-country with cedar, for ties. That's all the land's good for,

-anyway."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting's mouth opened for an answer to this, but his mother's

-sharp, warning glance stopped him. He understood that it was his place

-to listen and learn. There would be time enough for questions and

-arguments afterward.

-

-"Now these people here won't understand what eminent domain means,"

-the big man went on. "I'm going to make it clear to you, young man. I

-know who you are and I know more about you than you think. I'm going

-to make it clear to you and then I'm going to send you out among them

-to make them see it. They wouldn't understand me and they wouldn't

-believe me. You can make them see it."

-

-"How do you know that I'll believe you?" asked Jeffrey.

-

-"You've got brains. You don't have to _believe_. I can _show_ it to

-you."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was a big, strong boy, well accustomed to taking

-responsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anything

-and this perhaps had given him more than the average boy's good

-opinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtly

-than this man's bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by a

-man of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is a

-man, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced

-men. Jeffrey was ready to listen.

-

-"Do you know what an option is?" the man began again.

-

-"Of course I do."

-

-"I thought so," said Rogers, in a manner that seemed to confirm his

-previous judgment of Jeffrey's brains. "Now then, the railroad has

-got to have all these farms from Beaver River right up to the head of

-Little Tupper Lake. I say these people won't know what eminent domain

-means. You're going to tell them. It means that they can sell at the

-railroad's price or they can hold off and a referee will be appointed

-to name a price. The railroad will have a big say in appointing those

-referees. Do you understand me?"

-

-"Yes. I see," said Jeffrey. "But--"

-

-"No buts at all about it, young man," said Rogers, waving his hand.

-"The people have got to sell. If they give options at once--within

-thirty days--they'll get more than a fair price for their land. If

-they don't--if they hold off--their farms will be condemned as forest

-land. And you know how much that brings.

-

-"You people will be the first. You can ask almost anything for your

-land. You'll get it. And, what is more, I am able to offer you,

-Whiting, a very liberal commission on every option you can get me

-within the time I have said. This is the thing that I can't do. It's

-the thing that I want you to do.

-

-"You'll do it. I know you will, when you get time to think it over.

-Here are the options," said the big man, pulling a packet of folded

-papers out of his pocket. "They cover every farm in the section. All

-you have to do is to get the people to write their names once. Then

-your work is done. We'll do the rest and your commissions will be

-waiting for you. Some better than law school, eh?"

-

-"But say," Jeffrey stammered, "say, that means, why, that means my

-mother and the folks here, why, they'd have to get out; they'd have to

-leave their home!"

-

-"Of course," said Rogers easily. "A man like you isn't going to keep

-his family up on top of this rock very long. Why, young fellow, you'll

-have the best home in Lowville for them, where they can live in style,

-in less than six months. Do you think your mother wants to stay here

-after you're gone. You were going away. Did you think," he said

-shrewdly, "what life up here would be worth to your mother while you

-were away. No, you're just like all boys. You wanted to get away

-yourself. But you never thought what a life this is for her.

-

-"Why, boy, she's a young woman yet. You can take her out and give her

-a chance to live. Do you hear, a chance to live.

-

-"Think it over."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting thought, harder and faster than he had ever tried to

-think in his life. But he could make nothing of it.

-

-He thought of the people, old and young, on the hills, suddenly set

-adrift from their homes. He thought of his mother and Uncle Cassius

-and Aunt Letitia without their real home to come back to. And he

-thought of money--illimitable money: money that could do everything.

-

-He did not want to look at his mother for counsel. The man's talk had

-gone to his head. But, slowly, unwillingly his eyes came to his

-mother's, and he saw in hers that steady, steadfast look which told

-him to wait, wait. He caught the meaning and spoke it brusquely:

-

-"All right. Leave the options here. I'll see what we'll do. And I'll

-write to you next week."

-

-No. That would not do. The big man must have his answer at once. He

-stormed at Jeffrey. He appealed to Mrs. Whiting. He blandished Miss

-Letitia. He even attacked Uncle Cassius, but that guileless man led

-him off into such a discussion of cross grafting and reforestation

-that he was glad to drop him.

-

-In the end, he saw that, having committed himself, he could do no

-better than leave the matter to Jeffrey, trusting that, with time for

-thought, the boy could not refuse his offer.

-

-So the two men, having breakfasted and rested their horses, set out on

-the down trip to Lowville.

-

-Late that night Jeffrey Whiting and his mother came to a decision.

-

-"It is too big for us, Jeff," she said. "We do not know what it means.

-Nobody up here can tell us. The man was lying. But we do not know why,

-or what about.

-

-"There is one man that could tell us. The White Horse Chaplain, do you

-remember him, Jeffrey?"

-

-"I guess I do. He sent Ruth away from me."

-

-"Only to give her her chance, my son. Do not forget that. He could

-tell us what this means. I don't care anything about his religion.

-Your Uncle Catty thinks he was a ghost even that day at Fort Fisher. I

-don't. He is the Catholic Bishop of Alden. You'll go to him to-morrow.

-He'll tell you what it means."

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was very much worried. For the third

-time he picked up and read a telegram from the Mother Superior of the

-Sacred Heart Convent at Athens, telling him that Ruth Lansing had left

-the convent that morning. But the third perusal of the message did not

-give him any more light on the matter than the two previous readings

-had done.

-

-Why should the girl have gone away? What could have happened? Only the

-other day he had received a letter from her telling of her studies and

-her progress and of every new thing that was interesting her.

-

-The Bishop thought of the lonely hill home where he had found her

-"Daddy Tom" dying, and where he had buried him on the hillside.

-Probably the girl would go back and try to live there. And he thought

-of the boy who had told him of his love and that he wanted to keep

-Ruth there in the hills.

-

-As he laid down the telegraph form, his secretary came to the door to

-tell him that the boy, Jeffrey Whiting, was in the waiting room asking

-to see him and refusing even to indicate the nature of his business to

-any one but the Bishop himself.

-

-

-The Bishop was startled. He had understood that the young man was in

-Albany at school. Now he thought that he would get a very clear light

-upon Ruth Lansing's disappearance.

-

-"I came to you, sir," said Jeffrey when the Bishop had given him a

-chair, "because you could tell us what to do."

-

-"You mean you and your--neighbour, Ruth Lansing?"

-

-"Why, no, sir. What about her?" said Jeffrey quickly.

-

-The Bishop gave the boy one keen, searching look, and saw his mistake.

-The boy knew nothing.

-

-

-"This," the Bishop answered, as he handed Jeffrey the open telegram.

-

-"But where's she gone? Why did she go?" Jeffrey broke out, as he read

-the message.

-

-"I thought you were coming to tell me that."

-

-"No," said Jeffrey, reading the Bishop's meaning quickly. "She didn't

-write to me, not at all. I suppose the sisters wouldn't have it. But

-she wrote to my mother and she didn't say anything about leaving

-there."

-

-"I suppose not," said the Bishop. "She seems to have gone away

-suddenly. But, I am forgetting. You came to talk to me."

-

-"Yes." And Jeffrey went on to tell, clearly and shortly, of the coming

-of Rogers and his proposition. Though it hurt, he did not fail to tell

-how he had been carried away by the man's offer and his flattery. He

-made it plain that it was only his mother's insight and caution that

-had held him back from accepting the offer on the instant.

-

-The Bishop, listening, was proud of the down-rightness of the young

-fellow. It was good to hear. When he had heard all he bowed in his

-old-fashioned, stiff way and said:

-

-"Your mother, young man, is a rare and wise woman. You will convey to

-her my deepest respect.

-

-"I do not know what it all means," he went on, in another tone. "But I

-can soon find out."

-

-He rang a bell, and as his secretary opened the door the Bishop said:

-

-"Will you see, please, if General Chandler is in his office across the

-street. If he is, give him my respects and ask him to step over here a

-moment."

-

-The secretary bowed, but hesitated a little in the doorway.

-

-"What is it?" asked the Bishop.

-

-"There is a young girl out there, Bishop. She says she must see you,

-but she will not give a name. She seems to be in trouble, or

-frightened."

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was on his feet and making for the door.

-

-"Sit down where you were, young man," said the Bishop sharply. If Ruth

-Lansing were out there--and the Bishop half believed that she

-was--well, it _might_ be coincidence. But it was too much for the

-Bishop's credulity.

-

-"Send the girl in here," he said shortly.

-

-Ruth Lansing walked into the room and went straight to the Bishop. She

-did not see Jeffrey.

-

-"I came straight here all the way," she said, "to tell you, Bishop,

-that I couldn't stay in the convent any longer. I am going home. I

-could not stay there."

-

-"I am very glad to see you, Ruth," said the Bishop easily, "and if

-you'll just turn around, I think you'll see some one who is even more

-pleased."

-

-Her startled cry of surprise and pleasure at sight of Jeffrey was

-abundant proof to the Bishop that the coming of these two to his door

-was indeed a coincidence.

-

-"Now," said the Bishop quickly, "you will both sit down and listen. It

-concerns both of you deeply. A man is coming here in a moment, General

-Chandler. You have both heard of him. He is the political power of

-this part of the State. He can, if he will, tell us just how serious

-your situation is up there, Jeffrey. Say nothing. Just listen."

-

-Ruth looked from one to the other with surprise and perhaps a little

-resentment. For hours she had been bracing her courage for this ordeal

-of meeting the Bishop, and here she was merely told to sit down and

-listen to something, she did not know what.

-

-The Bishop rose as General Oliver Chandler was ushered into the room

-and the two veterans saluted each other with the stiffest of military

-precision.

-

-"These are two young friends of mine from the hills, General," said

-the Bishop, as he seated his old friend. "They both own farms in the

-Beaver Run country. They have come to me to find out what the U. & M.

-Railroad wants with options on all that country. Can you, will you

-tell them?"

-

-The General plucked for a moment at the empty left sleeve of his

-coat.

-

-"No, Bishop," he said finally, "I cannot give out what I know of that

-matter. The interests behind it are too large for me. I would not

-dare. I do not often have to say that."

-

-"No," said the Bishop slowly, "I never heard you say that before."

-

-"But I can do this, Bishop," said the General, rising. "If you will

-come over here to the end of the room, I can tell you, privately, what

-I know. You can then use your own prudence to judge how much you can

-tell these young people."

-

-The Bishop followed to the window at the other end of the room, where

-the two men stood and talked in undertones.

-

-"Jeffrey," said Ruth through teeth that gritted with impatience, "if

-you don't tell me this instant what it's all about, I'll--I'll _bite_

-you!"

-

-Jeffrey laughed softly. It took just that little wild outbreak of hers

-to convince him that the young lady who had swept into the room and

-faced the Bishop was really his little playmate, his Ruth, after all.

-

-In quick whispers, he told her all he knew.

-

-The Bishop walked to the door with the General, thanking him. From the

-door the General saluted gravely and stalked away.

-

-"The answer," said the Bishop quietly, as he came back to them, "is

-one word--Iron."

-

-To Ruth, it seemed that these men were making a mysterious fuss about

-nothing. But Jeffrey saw the whole matter instantly.

-

-"No one knows how much there is, or how little there is," said the

-Bishop. "The man lied to you, Jeffrey. The road has no eminent domain.

-But they can get it if they get the options on a large part of the

-farms. Then, when they have the right of eminent domain, they will

-let the options lapse and buy the properties at their own prices."

-

-"I'll start back to warn the people to-night," said Jeffrey, jumping

-up. "Maybe they made that offer to other people besides me!"

-

-"Wait," said the Bishop, "there is more to think of. The railroad, if

-you serve it well, will, no doubt, buy your farm for much more than it

-is worth to you. There is your mother to be considered first. And they

-will, very likely, give you a chance to make a small fortune in your

-commissions, if you are faithful to them. If you go to fight them,

-they will probably crush you all in the end, and you will be left with

-little or nothing. Better go slowly, young man."

-

-"What?" cried Jeffrey. "Take their bribe! Take their money, for

-fooling and cheating the other people out of their homes! Why, before

-I'd do that, I'd leave that farm and everything that's there and go up

-into the big woods with only my axe, as my grandfather did. And my

-mother would follow me! You know that! My mother would be glad to go

-with me, with nothing, nothing in her hands!"

-

-"And so would I!" said Ruth, springing to her feet. "I _would_! I

-_would_!" she chanted defiantly.

-

-"Well, well, well!" said the Bishop, smiling.

-

-"But you are not going up into the big woods, Jeffrey," Ruth said

-demurely. "You are going back home to fight them. If I could help you

-I would go back with you. I would not be of any use. So, I'm going

-back, to the convent, to face my fight."

-

-"But, but," said Jeffrey, "I thought you were running away."

-

-"I did. I was," said Ruth. "Last night I heard the voice of something

-calling to me. It was such a big thing," she went on, turning to the

-Bishop; "it seemed such a pitiless, strong thing that I thought it

-would crush me. It would take my life and make me do what _it_ wanted,

-not what I wanted. I was afraid of it. I ran away. It was like a Choir

-Unseen singing to me to follow, and I didn't dare follow.

-

-"But I heard it again, just now when Jeffrey spoke that way. Now I

-know what it was. It was the call of life to everybody to face life,

-to take our souls in our hands and go forward. I thought I could turn

-back. I can't. God, or life won't let us turn back."

-

-"I know what you mean, child. Fear nothing," said the Bishop. "I'm

-glad you came away, to have it out with yourself. And you will be very

-glad now to go back."

-

-"As for you, young man," he turned to Jeffrey, "I should say that your

-mother _would_ be proud to go anywhere, empty-handed with you.

-Remember that, when you are in the worst of this fight that is before

-you. When you are tempted, as you will be tempted, remember it. When

-you are hard pressed, as you will be hard pressed, _remember it_."

-

-

-

-

-III

-

-GLOW OF DAWN

-

-

-Twinkle-tail was gliding up Beaver Run to his breakfast. It was past

-the middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was

-the time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains had

-already gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh,

-rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would not

-be enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Then

-he would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River,

-where the saw-dust came to bother him.

-

-He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond at

-the very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and

-drew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of flies

-and the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through four

-seasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,

-quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not dispute

-with him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fish

-ever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones.

-He liked flies better.

-

-His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little cool yet, for the sun

-was not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfast

-room at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away up

-on every side to the rim of the high hills.

-

-Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begun

-to draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface of

-the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was in

-sight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about a

-cat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body,

-and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap.

-But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by the

-cat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.

-

-Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, in

-other years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as

-he ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the very

-first time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They

-were not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of the

-cat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. But

-he knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most tempting

-flies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water,

-others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating and

-challenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in the

-cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of the

-pond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told them that

-he had scooted out of the pool and down into the stream. Once the girl

-had trailed a piece of flashing red flannel across the water, and

-Twinkle-tail could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible hook

-caught him in the side of the mouth! In his fury and terror he dove

-and fought until he broke the hook. He had never forgotten that

-lesson.

-

-But he was forgetting a little this season. No one came to his pool.

-He was growing big and fat, and a little careless.

-

-As he lay there in the warming sand by the cat-tails, the biggest,

-juiciest green bottle fly that Twinkle-tail had ever seen came

-skimming down to the very line of the water. It circled once.

-Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not an inch from the

-water!

-

-A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and Twinkle-tail was out of

-the water! He had the fly in his mouth.

-

-Then the struggle began.

-

-Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the shoulder of the bank

-behind which she had been hiding.

-

-The trout dove and started for the stream, the line ripping through

-the water like a shot.

-

-The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her strong, slender,

-boy-like body giving and swaying cunningly to every tug of the fish.

-

-He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool, throwing her off her

-balance and down into the water. She rose wet and angry, clinging

-grimly to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side of the

-pond. She did not dare to stand and pull against him, for fear of

-breaking the hook. She could only race around, giving him all the line

-she could until he should tire a little.

-

-Three times they fought around the circle of the pool, the taut line

-singing like a wire in the wind. Ruth's hand was cut where she had

-fallen on the rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head to foot. Her

-breath came in great, gulping sobs. But she fought on.

-

-Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down the Run, but she headed him

-back each time to the pond where she could handle him better. She had

-never before fought so big a fish all alone. Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had

-always been with her. Now she found herself calling desperately under

-her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She bit back the words and

-took a new hold on the pole.

-

-The trout was running blindly now from side to side of the pond. He

-had lost his cunning. He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her

-strength was nearly gone too. She must use her head quickly.

-

-She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate effort. She must

-catch him as he ran toward her and try to flick him out of the water.

-It was her only chance. She might break the line or the pole and lose

-him entirely, but she would try it.

-

-Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water, directly at her. She

-suddenly threw her strength on the pole. It bent nearly double but it

-held. And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her strength, was

-whipped clear out on to the grass. Dropping the pole, she dove

-desperately at him where he fought on the very edge of the bank.

-Finally she caught the line a few inches above his mouth, and her

-prize was secure.

-

-"It's you, Twinkle-tail," she panted, as she held him up for a good

-look, "sure enough!"

-

-She carried him back to a large stone and despatched him painlessly

-with a blunt stick. Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and

-dizzy from her struggle.

-

-Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she said aloud:

-

-"I wish Jeffrey was here. He'll never believe it was you unless he

-sees you."

-

-"Yes, that's him all right," said a voice behind her. "I'd know him in

-a thousand."

-

-She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-"Why, where did you come from? Your mother told me you wouldn't be

-back till to-morrow."

-

-"Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow if you want me to,"

-said Jeffrey, smiling.

-

-"Oh, Jeff, you know I'm glad to see you. I was awfully disappointed

-when I got home and found that you were away up in the hills. How is

-your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail," she hurried on a

-little nervously, for Jeffrey had her hand and was drawing her

-determinedly to him. She reached for the trout and held him up

-strategically between them.

-

-"Oh, _Fish_!" said Jeffrey discontentedly as he saw himself beaten by

-her ruse.

-

-The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly handsome face. Then

-she seemed to relent, and with a friendly little tug at his arm led

-him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit down.

-

-"Now tell me," she commanded, "all about your battle with the railroad

-people. Your mother told me some things, but I want it all, from

-yourself."

-

-But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked at her dress and shoes and

-said with a show of meanness:

-

-"Ruth, you didn't catch Twinkle-tail fair, on your line. You just

-walked into the pond and got him in a corner and kicked him to death

-brutally. I know you did. You're always cruel."

-

-Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged cut in her hand where she had

-fallen on the rocks.

-

-Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the hand

-and dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt down

-by the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with her

-handkerchief.

-

-"Now," she said, "tell me."

-

-"Well," he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained by

-delay, "the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they had

-found iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to push

-us all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found I

-wasn't the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had Rafe

-Gadbeau, you know he's a kind of a political boss of the French around

-French Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.

-

-"Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he'd been spending money

-around free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to him

-outright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what the

-land would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as well

-have held my breath. He didn't care anything about the interests of

-the people that had land. He was getting paid well for every option

-that he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will have

-trouble with that man yet.

-

-"The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, and a good man. They had

-fooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He had

-started out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties over

-on that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for the

-people to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their finding

-iron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was the

-maddest man you ever saw.

-

-"He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He

-went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not

-to sign anything.

-

-"Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for the

-railroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion and

-conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down to

-Lowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn't find anything in the charges. So

-I was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to get

-me away from here yet."

-

-"How does it stand now?" said Ruth thoughtfully. "Have they actually

-started to build the railroad?"

-

-"Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through.

-But they wouldn't build it, at least not for years yet, only that they

-want to get this iron property opened up. Why, the road is to run from

-Welden to French Village and there is not a single town on the whole

-line! The road wouldn't have business enough to keep the rust off.

-They're building the road just the same, so that shows that they

-intend to get our property some way, no matter what we do. And I

-suppose they will, somehow," he added sullenly. "They always do, I

-guess."

-

-"But the people," said Ruth, "can't you get them all to join and agree

-to sell at a fair price? Wouldn't that be all right?"

-

-"They don't want to buy. They won't buy at any fair price. They only

-want to get options enough to show the Legislature and the Governor,

-and then they will be granted eminent domain and they can have the

-land condemned and can buy it at the price of wild land."

-

-"Oh, yes; I remember now. That's what the Bishop said. Isn't it

-strange," she went on slowly, "how he seems to come into everything we

-do. How he saved my Daddy Tom's life that time at Fort Fisher. And how

-he came here that night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked us up

-and turned us around and sent me off to convent. And now how he seems

-to come into all this.

-

-"Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the North," she went on. "I

-wonder if he comes into the lives of _all_ the people that way. At the

-convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging to them

-personally. I resented it at first, because I thought I had more

-reason to know him than anybody. But I found that everybody felt the

-same way."

-

-"He's just like the Catholic Church," said Jeffrey suddenly, and a

-little sharply; "he comes into everything."

-

-"Why, Jeffrey," said Ruth in surprise, "what do you know about the

-Church?"

-

-"I know," he answered. "I've read some. And I've had to deal a lot

-with the French people up toward French Village. And I've talked with

-their priest up there. You know you have to talk to the priest before

-it's any use talking to them. That's the way with the Catholic Church.

-It comes into everything. I don't like it."

-

-He sat looking across the pool for a moment, while Ruth quietly

-studied the stubborn, settling lines of his face. She saw that a few

-months had made a big change in the boy and playmate that she had

-known. He was no longer the bright-faced, clear-eyed boy. His face was

-turning into a man's face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and of

-harshness were coming into it. It showed strength and doggedness and

-will, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not

-dislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a little

-timid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limits

-beyond which she could not play with this new man that she found.

-

-"It's all right to be religious," he went on argumentatively.

-"Mother's religious. And Aunt Letty's just full of it. But it don't

-interfere with their lives. It's all right to have a preacher for

-marrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if you

-want to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those people

-live. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything.

-They don't dare speak without looking back to it to find out what they

-must say. I don't like it."

-

-"Why, Jeffrey, I'm a Catholic!"

-

-"I _knew_ it!" he said stubbornly. "I knew it! I knew there was

-something that had changed you. And I might have known it was that."

-

-"That's funny!" said the girl, breaking in quickly. "When you came I

-was just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me at

-all. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I had

-gone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the same

-as I was before."

-

-"But it has changed you," he persisted. "And it's going to change you

-a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth," he said, suddenly softening,

-"you won't let it change you? You won't let it make any difference,

-with us, I mean?"

-

-The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:

-

-"No, Jeffrey. It won't make any difference with us, in the way you

-mean.

-

-"So long as we are what we are," she said again after a pause, "we

-will be just the same to each other. If it should make something

-different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be

-the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you

-would not be the same to me.

-

-"It's too soon," she continued decisively. "Nothing is clear to me,

-yet. I've just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and

-feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know.

-When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I'll tell you."

-

-He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood

-that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something

-in her face with which he did not dare to argue.

-

-He got up saying:

-

-"I have to be gone. I'm glad I found you here at the old place. I'll

-be back to-night to help you eat the trout."

-

-"Where are you going?"

-

-"Over to Wilbur's Fork. There's a couple of men over there that are

-shaky. I've had to keep after them or they'd be listening to Rafe

-Gadbeau and letting their land go."

-

-"But," Ruth exclaimed, "now when they know, can't they see what is to

-their own interest! Are they blind?"

-

-"I know," said Jeffrey dully. "But you know how it is with those

-people. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have to

-scratch and scrape for a little money. They don't see many dollars

-together from one year's end to the other. Even a little money, ready,

-green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them."

-

-"Good luck, then, Jeff," she said cheerily; "and get back early if you

-can."

-

-"Sure," he said easily as he picked up his hat.

-

-"And, say, Ruth." He turned back quietly to her. "If--if I shouldn't

-be back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? I

-wouldn't say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he's not very

-sharp sometimes. Will you?"

-

-"Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please."

-

-"Oh, sure," he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of the

-pond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trail

-that went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the other

-side.

-

-Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope,

-his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth.

-

-This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left when

-she went down to the convent five months before. She could see it in

-his walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she had

-seen it in his face and his talk. He was fighting with a power that

-he had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was not

-discouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of his

-boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and

-thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged

-struggle.

-

-He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Why

-should he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to have

-warned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? And

-what was there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of physical fear

-in connection with Jeffrey. Why, nothing ever happened in the hills,

-anyway. Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was true, the

-lumber jacks were rough when they came down with the log drives in the

-spring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stop

-in the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spend

-their money.

-

-What had Jeffrey to fear?

-

-Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to her

-unless he had good reason to think that something might happen to

-him.

-

-Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. The

-men were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generally

-ruled by their more energetic women. But they or their fathers had

-all been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted in

-the soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drive

-them from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes,

-where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckon

-with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. In

-another moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. She

-wondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgotten

-that she would surely be standing where he had left her?

-

-He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Then

-he stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque and

-businesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly have

-seen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had just

-known that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He had

-plunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with which

-his mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and of

-everything else.

-

-The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that might

-have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about

-the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it

-gave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming.

-

-She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived.

-Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew men

-fought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was a

-little for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour and

-good judgment would make for him out of the land.

-

-Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever,

-in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealth

-or the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely come

-to look for it and take it. That was why men fought. Wealth, even the

-scent of wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on to battle.

-

-A cloud passed between her and the morning sun. She felt the

-premonition of tragedy and suffering lowering down like a storm on her

-hills. How foolishly she had thought that all life and all the great,

-seething business of life was to be done down in the towns and the

-cities. Here was life now, with its pressure and its ugly passions,

-pushing right into the very hills.

-

-She shivered as she picked up her prize of the morning and her fishing

-tackle and started slowly up the hill toward her home.

-

-Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth with the understanding that

-Ruth was to spend the summer there in her own home. The rent was

-enough to give Ruth what little money she needed for clothes and to

-pay her modest expenses at the convent at Athens. So her life was

-arranged for her at least up to the time when she should have finished

-school.

-

-It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands of

-strangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she had

-ruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It would

-be very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged

-and how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by and

-see others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers and

-Daddy Tom's. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was her

-place. It held all the memories and all the things that connected her

-with her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to it

-and call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill,

-at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and her

-mother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which she

-had been born, she could understand the fierceness with which men

-would fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened.

-

-Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguely

-called "the railroad" would want to take _her_ home and farm away from

-her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she felt a swelling rage of

-indignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to the

-house, as though she saw it already threatened.

-

-She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and

-went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth

-weeding in what had been Ruth's own flower beds.

-

-"Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!" the woman

-exclaimed at sight of her. "I called you _three_ times, and when you

-didn't answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I told

-Norman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night."

-

-"Oh, no," said Ruth. "No danger. I'm used to getting up early, you

-see. So I just took some cakes--Didn't you miss them?--and some milk

-and slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish.

-Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had to

-do it myself this morning."

-

-"So young Whiting's gone away, eh?"

-

-"Why, no," said Ruth quickly. "He went over to Wilbur's Fork about

-half an hour ago. Who said he'd gone away?"

-

-"Oh, nobody," said the woman hastily; "it's only what they was sayin'

-up at French Village yesterday."

-

-"What were they saying?" Ruth demanded.

-

-"Oh, just talk, I suppose," Mrs. Apgarth evaded. "Still, I dunno's I

-blame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he's got out of

-it, I'd skedaddle, too."

-

-Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm.

-

-"What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl

-was trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herself

-had said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She must

-tell everything now.

-

-"Well," she began, "they say he's just fooled the people up over their

-eyes."

-

-"How?" said Ruth impatiently. "Tell me."

-

-"He's been agoin' round holdin' the people back and gettin' them to

-swear that they won't sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the

-railroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin' the rest of the people

-back till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad for

-his own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he's sold

-this farm and his own and five other ones that he'd got hold of, for

-four times what they're worth. And that gives the railroad enough to

-work on, so the rest of the people'll just have to sell for what they

-can get. He's gone now; skipped out."

-

-"But he has _not_ gone!" Ruth snapped out indignantly. "I saw him only

-half an hour ago."

-

-"Oh, well, of course," said the woman knowingly, "you'd know more

-about it than anybody else. It's all talk, I suppose."

-

-Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She said

-shortly:

-

-"I'm going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting."

-

-"Oh, then, don't say a word to her about this. She's an awful good

-neighbour. I wouldn't for the world have her think that I--"

-

-"Why, it doesn't matter at all," said Ruth, as she turned toward the

-road. "You only said what people were saying."

-

-"But I wouldn't for anything," the woman called nervously after her,

-"have her think that-- And what'll I do with this?"

-

-"Eat it," said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she had

-fought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not come home that night. Through the long

-twilight of one of the longest days of the year, Ruth sat reading in

-the old place on the hill, where Jeffrey would be sure to find her.

-Suddenly, when it was full dark, she knew that he would not come.

-

-She did not try to argue with herself. She did not fight back the

-nervous feeling that something had happened. She was sure that she had

-been all day expecting it. When the moon came up over the hill and the

-long purple shadows of the elm trees on the crest came stalking down

-in the white light, she went miserably into the house and up to the

-little room they had fitted up for her in the loft of her own home.

-

-She cried herself into a wearied, troubled sleep. But with the

-elasticity of youth and health she was awake at the first hint of

-morning, and the cloud of the night had passed.

-

-She dressed and hurried down into the yard where Norman Apgarth was

-just stirring about with his milk pails. She was glad to face daylight

-and action. A man had put his trust in her before all others. She was

-eager to answer to his faith.

-

-"Where is Brom Bones?" she demanded of the still drowsy Apgarth as she

-caught him crossing the yard from the milk house.

-

-"The colt? He's up in the back pasture, just around the knob of the

-mountain. What was you calc'latin' to do with him, Miss?"

-

-"I want to use him," said Ruth. "May I?"

-

-"Use him? Certainly, if you want to. But, say, Miss, that colt ain't

-been driv' since the Spring's work. An' he's so fat an' silky he's

-liable to act foolish."

-

-"I'm going to _ride_ him," said Ruth briefly, as she stepped to the

-horse barn door for a bridle.

-

-"Now, say, Miss," the man opposed feebly, "you could take the brown

-pony just as well; I don't need her a bit. And I tell you that colt

-is just a lun-_at_-ic, when he's been idle so long."

-

-"Thank you," said Ruth, as she started up the hill. "But I think I'll

-find work enough to satisfy even Brom Bones to-day."

-

-The big black colt followed her peaceably down the mountain, and stood

-champing at the door while she went in to get something to eat. When

-she brought out a shining new side saddle he looked suspiciously at

-the strange thing, but he made no serious objection as she fastened it

-on. Ruth herself, when she had buckled it tight, stood looking

-doubtfully at it. A side saddle was as new to her as it was to the

-horse. She had bought it on her way home the other day, as a

-concession to the fact that she was now a young lady who could no

-longer go stampeding over the hills on a bare-backed horse.

-

-She mounted easily, but Brom Bones, seeming to know in the way of his

-kind that she was uneasy and uncomfortable, began at once to act

-badly. His intention seemed to be to walk into the open well on his

-hind feet. The girl caught a short hold on her lines and cut him

-sharply across the ear. He wheeled on two feet and bolted for the

-hill, clearing the woodshed by mere inches.

-

-The path led straight up to the top of the slope. Ruth did not try to

-hold him. The sooner he ran the conceit out of himself, she thought,

-the better.

-

-He hurled himself down the other slope, past the pool, and into the

-trail which Jeffrey had taken yesterday. It was break-neck riding, in

-a strange saddle. But the girl's anxiety rose with the excitement of

-the horse's wild rush, so that when they reached the top of the divide

-where she had last seen Jeffrey it was the horse and not the girl that

-was ready to settle down to a sober and safer pace.

-

-Her common sense told her that she was probably foolish; that Jeffrey

-had merely stayed over night somewhere and that she would meet him on

-the way. But another and a subtler sense kept whispering to her to

-hurry on, that she was needed, that the good name, if not the life, of

-the boy she loved was in danger!

-

-She had found out from Mrs. Whiting just who were the men whom Jeffrey

-had gone to see. But she did not know how she could dash up to their

-doors and demand to know where he was. It was eleven miles up the

-stony trail that followed Wilbur's Fork, and the girl's nerves now

-keyed up to expect she knew not what jangled at every turn of the

-road. Jeffrey had meant to come straight back this way to her. That he

-had not done so meant that _something_ had stopped him on the way.

-What was it?

-

-On one side the trail was flanked by giant hemlocks and the underbrush

-was grown into an impenetrable wall. On the other it ran sheer along

-the edge of Wilbur's Fork, a rock-bottomed, rushing stream that

-tumbled and brawled its way down the long slope of the country.

-

-Time after time the girl shuddered and gripped her saddle as she

-pushed on past a place where the undergrowth came right down to the

-trail, and six feet away the path dropped off thirty feet to the rock

-bed of the stream. She caught herself leaning across the saddle to

-look down. A man might have stood in the brush as Jeffrey came

-carelessly along. And that man might have swung a cant-stick once--a

-single blow at the back of the head--and Jeffrey would have gone

-stumbling and falling over the edge of the path. There would not be

-even the sign of a struggle.

-

-Once she stopped and took hold of her nerves.

-

-"Ruth Lansing," she scolded aloud, "you're making a little fool of

-yourself. You've been down there in that convent living among a lot of

-girls, and you're forgetting that these hills are your own, that there

-never was and never is any danger in them for us who belong here. Just

-keep that in your mind and hustle on about your business."

-

-When she came out into the open country near the head of the Fork she

-met old Darius Wilbur turning his cattle to pasture. The old man did

-not know the girl, but he knew the Lansing colt and he looked sharply

-at the steaming withers of Brom Bones before he would give any

-attention to her question.

-

-"What's the tarnation hurry, young lady?" he inquired exasperatingly.

-"Jeff Whiting? Yes, he was here yest'day. Why?"

-

-"Did he start home by this trail?" asked Ruth eagerly. "Or did he go

-on up country?"

-

-"He went on up country."

-

-Ruth headed Brom Bones up the trail again without a word.

-

-"But stay!" the old man yelled after her, when she had gone twenty

-yards. "He came back again."

-

-Ruth pulled around so sharply that she nearly threw Brom Bones to his

-knees.

-

-"Didn't ask me that," the old man chortled, as she came back, "but if

-I didn't tell you I reckon you'd run that colt to death up the

-hills."

-

-"Then he _did_ take the Forks trail back."

-

-"Didn't do that, nuther."

-

-"Then where _did_ he go? Please tell me!" cried the girl, the tears of

-vexation rising into her voice.

-

-"Why, what's the matter, girl? He crossed the Fork just there," said

-the old man, pointing, "and he took over the hill for French Village.

-You his wife? You're mighty young."

-

-But Ruth did not hear. She and Brom Bones were already slipping down

-the rough bank in a shower of dirt and stones.

-

-In the middle of the ford she stopped and loosened the bridle, let the

-colt drink a little, then drove him across, up the other bank and on

-up the stiff slope.

-

-She did not know the trail, but she knew the general run of the

-country that way and had no doubt of finding her road.

-

-Now she told herself that it was certainly a wild goose chase. Jeffrey

-had merely found that he had to see some one in French Village and had

-gone there and, of course, had spent the night there.

-

-By the time she had come over the ridge of the hill and was dropping

-down through the heavily wooded country toward French Village, she had

-begun to feel just a little bit foolish. But she suddenly remembered

-that it was Saint John the Baptist's day. It was not a holy day of

-obligation but she knew it was a feast day in French Village. There

-would be Mass. She should have gone, anyway. And she would hear with

-her own ears the things they were saying about Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-Arsene LaComb sat on the steps of his store in French Village in the

-glory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store was

-closed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would put

-on his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church,

-and march solemnly over to ring the bell for Mass.

-

-The spectacle of a smartly-dressed young lady whom he seemed to know

-vaguely, riding down the dusty street on a shiny yellow side saddle on

-the back of a big, vicious-looking black colt, made the little man

-reach hastily for his coat of ceremony.

-

-"M'm'selle Lansing!" he said, bowing in friendly pomp as Ruth drove

-up.

-

-"How do you do, Mr. LaComb? I came down to go to Mass. Can you tell me

-what time it begins?"

-

-"I shall ring the bell when I have put away your horse, M'm'selle."

-Now no earthly power could have made Arsene LaComb deviate a minute

-from the exact time for ringing that bell. But, he was a Frenchman.

-His manner intimated that the ringing of all bells whatsoever must

-await her convenience.

-

-He stepped forward jauntily to help her down. Ruth kicked her feet

-loose and slid down deftly.

-

-"I am glad to see you again, Mr. LaComb," said Ruth as she took his

-hand. "Did you see Jeffrey Whiting in the Village last night?"

-

-A girl of about Ruth's own age had come quietly up the street and

-stood beside them, recording in one swift inspection every detail of

-Ruth from her little riding cap to the tips of her brown boots.

-

-"'Cynthe," said the little man briskly, "you show Miss Lansing on my

-pew for Mass." He took the bridle from Ruth's hand and led the horse

-away to the shed in the rear of the store.

-

-The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The

-little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not

-answer?

-

-She would have liked to linger a while among the people standing about

-the church door. She knew some of them. She might have asked questions

-of them. But her escort led her straight into the church and up to a

-front pew.

-

-At the end of the Mass the people filed out quietly, but at the church

-door they broke into volleys of rapid-fire French chatter of which

-Ruth could only catch a little here and there.

-

-"You will come by the _fete_, M'm'selle. You will not dance _non_, I

-s'pose. But you will eat, and you will see the fun they make, one

-_jolie_ time! Till I ring the Vesper bell they will dance." Arsene led

-Ruth and the other girl, whom she now learned was Hyacinthe Cardinal,

-across the road to a little wood that stood opposite the church. There

-were tables, on which the women had already begun to spread the food

-that they had brought from home, and a dancing platform. On a great

-stump which had been carved rudely into a chair sat Soriel Brouchard,

-the fiddler of the hills, twiddling critically at his strings.

-

-It seemed strange to Ruth that these people who had a moment before

-been so devout and concentrated in church should in an instant switch

-their whole thought to a day of eating and merrymaking. But she soon

-found their light-hearted gaiety very infectious. Before she knew it,

-she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into

-the fun with all her heart.

-

-"Which is Rafe Gadbeau?" she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. "I want

-to know him."

-

-"Why for you want to know him?" the girl asked sharply in English.

-

-"Oh, nothing," said Ruth carelessly, "only I've heard of him."

-

-The other girl reached out into the crowd and plucked at the sleeve of

-a tall, beak-nosed man. The man was evidently flattered by Ruth's

-request, and wanted her to dance with him immediately.

-

-"No," said Ruth, "I do not know how to dance your dances, and we'd

-only break up the sets if I tried to learn now. We've heard a lot

-about you, Mr. Gadbeau, so, of course, I wanted to know you. And we've

-heard some things about Jeffrey Whiting. I'm sure you could tell me if

-they are true."

-

-"You don' dance? Well, we sit then. I tell you. One rascal, this young

-Whiting!"

-

-Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietly

-as he led her to a seat.

-

-As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform,

-Ruth, looking back, caught a swift glance of what she knew was

-jealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make an

-enemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to get

-this man to tell her all he would.

-

-"One rascal, I tell you," repeated Gadbeau. "First he stop all the

-people. He say don' sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He

-sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out.

-An' he leave these poor French people in the soup.

-

-"But I"--he sat back tapping himself on the chest--"I got hinfluence

-with that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nine

-o'clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sell

-out everything on the option to him."

-

-"But," objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, "if Jeffrey Whiting

-should come back before then?"

-

-"He don' come back, that fellow."

-

-"How do you know?"

-

-"I know, I-- He don' come back. I tell you that."

-

-"Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o'clock to-morrow," she

-said, turning suddenly upon him.

-

-"Eh? M'm'selle, what you mean? What you know?" he questioned

-excitedly.

-

-"Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she

-arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture."

-

-Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and

-talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe

-Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had

-alarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey

-Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way.

-

-When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bell

-ringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place

-among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door.

-When the people rose to sing the _Tantum Ergo_, she saw Gadbeau slip

-unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing was

-finished, then she almost ran to the door.

-

-Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all day

-in the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trail

-which she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the street

-to Arsene LaComb's store. There was not a pony in the hills that Brom

-Bones could not overtake easily, but she must see by what trail the

-man left the Village.

-

-Brom Bones was very willing to make a race for home, and she let him

-have his head until she again caught sight of the man. She pulled up

-sharply and forced the colt down to a walk. The man was still on the

-main road, and he might turn any moment. Finally she saw him pull into

-the trail that led over to Wilbur's Fork. Then she knew. Jeffrey was

-somewhere on the trail between French Village and Wilbur's Fork. And

-he was alive! The man was going now to make sure that he was still

-there.

-

-For an hour, the long, high twilight was enough to assure her that the

-man was still following the trail. Then, just when the real darkness

-had fallen, she heard a pony whinny in the woods at her left. The man

-had turned off into the woods! She had almost passed him! She threw

-herself out upon Brom Bones' neck and caught him by the nose. He threw

-up his head indignantly and tried to bolt, but she blessed him for

-making no noise. She drove on quietly a couple of hundred yards,

-slipped down, and drew Brom Bones into the bushes away from the road

-and tied him. She talked to him, patting his head and neck, pleading

-with him to be quiet. Then she left him and stole back to where she

-had heard the pony.

-

-In the gloom of the woods she could see nothing. But her feet found

-themselves on what seemed to be a path and she followed it blindly.

-She almost walked into a square black thing that suddenly confronted

-her. Within what seemed a foot of her she heard voices. Her heart

-stopped beating, but the blood rang in her ears so that she could not

-distinguish a word. One of the voices was certainly Gadbeau's. The

-other-- It was!-- It was! Though it was only a mumble, she knew it was

-Jeffrey Whiting who tried to speak!

-

-She took a step forward, ready to dash into the place, whatever it

-was. But the caution of the hills made her back away noiselessly into

-the brush. What could she do? Why? Oh, _why_ had she not brought a

-rifle? Gadbeau was sure to be armed. Jeffrey was a prisoner, probably

-wounded and bound.

-

-She backed farther into the bushes and started to make a circuit of

-the place. She understood now that it was a sugar hut, built entirely

-of logs, even the roof. It was as strong as a blockhouse. She knew

-that she was helpless. And she knew that Jeffrey would not be a

-prisoner there unless he were hurt.

-

-She could only wait. Gadbeau had not come to injure Jeffrey further.

-He had merely come to make himself sure that his prisoner was secure.

-He would not stay long.

-

-As she stole around away from the path and the pony she saw a little

-stream of light shoot out through a chink between the logs of the hut.

-Gadbeau had made a light. Probably he had brought something for

-Jeffrey to eat. She pulled off the white collar of her jacket, the

-only white thing that showed about her and settled down for a long

-wait.

-

-First she had thought that she ought to steal away to her horse and

-ride for help. But she could not bear the thought of even getting

-beyond the sound of Jeffrey's voice. She knew where he was now. He

-might be taken away while she was gone. And, besides, Ruth Lansing had

-always learned to do things for herself. She had always disliked

-appealing for help.

-

-Hour after hour she sat in the darkest place she could find, leaning

-against the bole of a great tree. The light, candles, of course,

-burned on; and the voices came irregularly through the living silence

-of the woods. She did not dare to creep nearer to hear what was being

-said. That did not matter. The important thing was to have Gadbeau go

-away without any suspicion that he had been followed. Then she would

-be free to release Jeffrey. She had no fear but that she would be able

-to get him down to French Village in the morning. She could easily

-have him there before nine o'clock.

-

-When she saw by the stars that it was long past midnight she began to

-be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away

-at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound.

-She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against

-the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion.

-

-Would he never come out? It seemed not. Was he going to stay there all

-night?

-

-Noiseless as a cat, she rose and crept to the door of the cabin.

-Apparently both men were asleep within. She pushed the door ever so

-quietly. It was firmly barred on the inside.

-

-What could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Oh, why, _why_ had she

-not brought a rifle? She would shoot. She _would_, if she had it now,

-and that man opened the door! It was too late now to think of riding

-for help, too late!

-

-She sank down again beside her tree and raged helplessly at herself,

-at her conceit in herself that would not let her go for help in the

-first place, at her foolishness in coming on this business without a

-gun. The hours dragged out their weary minutes, every minute an age to

-the taut, ragged nerves of the girl.

-

-The dawn came stealing across the tree-tops, while the ground still

-lay in utter darkness. Ruth rose and slipped farther back into the

-bushes.

-

-Suddenly she found herself upon her knees in the soft grass, and the

-hot, angry tears of desperation and rage at herself were softened. Her

-heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and sang its prayer to God;

-a thrilling, lifting little prayer of confidence and wonder. The

-words that the night before would not form themselves for her now

-sprang up ready in her soul--the words of all the children of earth,

-to Our Father Who Art in Heaven--paused an instant to bless her lips,

-then sped away to God in His Heaven. Fear was gone, and doubt, and

-anxiety. She would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor, befooled

-people from ruin. God had told her so, as He walked abroad in the

-_Glow_ of _Dawn_.

-

-Two long hours more she waited, but now with patience and a sure

-confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau came out of the hut and strode down the

-path to his pony.

-

-Ruth rose stiff and wet from the ground and ran to the door, and

-called to Jeffrey. The only answer was a moan. The door was locked

-with a great iron clasp and staple joined by a heavy padlock. She

-reached for the nearest stone and attacked the lock frantically. She

-beat it out of all semblance to a lock, but still it defied her. There

-was no window in the hut. She had to come back again to the lock. Her

-hands, softened by the months in the convent, left bloody marks on the

-tough brass of the lock. In the end it gave, and she threw herself

-against the door.

-

-Jeffrey was lying trussed, face down, on a bunk beside the furnace

-where they boiled the sugar sap. His arms were stretched out and tied

-together down under the narrow bunk. She saw that his left arm was

-broken. For an instant the girl's heart leaped back to the rage of

-the night when she had almost prayed for her rifle. But pity swallowed

-up every other feeling as she cut the cords from his hands and

-loosened the rope that they had bound in between his teeth.

-

-"Don't talk, Jeff," she commanded. "I can see just what happened. Lie

-easy and get your strength. I've got to take you to French Village at

-once."

-

-She ran out to bring water. When she returned he was sitting dizzily

-on the edge of the bunk. While she bathed his head with the water and

-gave him a little to drink, she talked to him and crooned over him as

-she would over a baby for she saw that he was shaken and half

-delirious with pain.

-

-Brom Bones was standing munching twigs where she had left him. He had

-never before been asked to carry double and he did not like it. But

-the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into his silky black ear

-that he finally gave in.

-

-When they were mounted, she fastened the white collar of her jacket

-into a sling for the boy's broken arm, and with a prayer to the

-heathen Brom Bones to go tenderly they were off down the trail.

-

-When they were half way down the trail Jeffrey spoke suddenly:

-

-"Say, Ruth, what's the use trying to save these people? Let's sell

-out while we can and take mother and go away."

-

-"Why, Jeff, dear," she said lightly, "this fight hasn't begun yet.

-Wait till we get to French Village. You'll say something different.

-You'll say just what you said to the Shepherd of the North;

-remember?"

-

-Jeffrey said no more. The girl's heart was weak with the pain she knew

-he was bearing, but she knew that they must go through with this.

-

-All French Village and the farmers of Little Tupper country were

-gathered in front of Arsene Lacomb's store. Rafe Gadbeau was standing

-on the steps haranguing them. He had stayed with his prisoner as he

-thought up to the last possible moment, so he stammered in his speech

-when he saw a big black horse come tearing down the street carrying a

-girl and a white-faced, black-headed boy behind her. Rogers, the

-railroad lawyer beside him, said:

-

-"Go on, man. What's the matter with you?"

-

-The girl drove the horse right in through the crowd until Jeffrey

-Whiting faced Rogers. Then Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain,

-took up his fight again.

-

-"Rogers," he shouted, "you did this. You got Rafe Gadbeau and the

-others to knock me on the head and put me out of the way, so that you

-could spread your lies about me. And you'd have won out, too, if it

-hadn't been for this brave girl here.

-

-"Now, Rogers, you liar," he shouted louder, "I dare you, dare you, to

-tell these people here that I or any of our people have sold you a

-foot of land. I dare you!"

-

-Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau pulled him away. Gadbeau

-knew that crowd. They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and full of

-potential fury. They were already cheering the brave girl. In a few

-minutes they would be hunting the life of the man who had lied to them

-and nearly ruined them.

-

-A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from the saddle, but she waved

-them away and pointed to Jeffrey's broken arm. They helped him down

-and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough's little office.

-

-Ruth saw that her business was finished. She wheeled Brom Bones toward

-home, and gave him his head.

-

-For three glorious miles they fairly flew through the pearly morning

-air along the hard mountain road, and the girl never pulled a line.

-Breakfastless and weary in body, her heart sang the song that it had

-learned in the Glow of Dawn.

-

-

-

-

-IV

-

-THE ANSWER

-

-

-The Committee on Franchises was in session in one of the committee

-rooms outside the chamber of the New York State Senate. It was not a

-routine session. A bill was before it, the purpose of which was

-virtually to dispossess some four or five hundred families of their

-homes in the counties of Hamilton, Tupper and Racquette. The bill did

-not say this. It cited the need of adequate transportation in that

-part of the State and proposed that the U. & M. Railroad should be

-granted the right of eminent domain over three thousand square miles

-of the region, in order to help the development of the country.

-

-The committee was composed of five members, three of the majority

-party in the Senate and two of the minority. A political agent of the

-railroad who drew a salary from Racquette County as a judge had just

-finished presenting to the committee the reasons why the people of

-that part of the State were unanimous in the wish that the bill should

-become a law. He had drawn a pathetic picture of the condition of the

-farmers, so long deprived of the benefits of a railroad. He had

-almost wept as he told of the rich loads of produce left to rot up

-there in the hills because the men who toiled to produce it had no

-means of bringing it down to the starving thousands of the cities. The

-scraggy rocks and thinly soiled farms of that region became in his

-picture vast reservoirs of cheap food, only waiting to be tapped by

-the beneficent railroad for the benefit of the world's poor.

-

-When the judge had finished, one minority member of the committee

-looked at his colleague, the other minority member, and winked. It was

-a grave and respectful wink. It meant that the committee was not often

-privileged to listen to quite such bare-faced effrontery. If the

-hearing had been a secret one they would not have listened to it. But

-the bill had already aroused a storm. So the leader of the majority

-had given orders that the hearing should be public.

-

-So far not a word had been said as to the fact which underlay the

-motives of the bill. Iron had been found in workable quantities in

-those three thousand square miles of hill country. Not a word had been

-said about iron.

-

-No one in the room had listened to the speech with any degree of

-interest. It was intended entirely for the consumption of the outside

-public. Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during its

-delivery. They had been furnished with advance copies of it and had

-already turned them in to their papers. But with the naming of the

-next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around the room.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from his place in the rear of the

-room and walked briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall, spare

-figure of a man coming to his sixty years, his hair as white as the

-snow of his hills, with a large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan

-governor, he would have attracted attention under almost any

-circumstances.

-

-Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee, had received his orders

-from the leader of the majority in the Senate that the bill should be

-reported back favourably to that body before night. He had anticipated

-no difficulty. The form of a public hearing had to be gone through

-with. It was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions that

-had been aroused as to the nature of the bill. The speech of the

-Racquette County Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The

-chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising reformers of

-the opposition would come before the committee with time-honoured,

-stock diatribes against the rapacity and greed of railroads in general

-and this one in particular. Then he and his two majority colleagues

-would vote to report the bill favourably, while the two members of the

-minority would vote to report adversely. This, the chairman said, was

-about all a public hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted on

-the coming of the Bishop of Alden.

-

-"The committee would like to hear, sir," began the chairman, as the

-Bishop took his place, "whom you represent in the matter of this

-bill."

-

-The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in what had been a dull

-session of a dull committee, sat with poised pencils while the Bishop

-turned a look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:

-

-"I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of Racquette County."

-

-"I beg pardon, sir, of course. The committee quite understands that

-you do not come here in the interest of any one. But the gentleman who

-has just been before us spoke for the farmers who would be most

-directly affected by the prosperity of the railroad, including those

-of your county. Are we to understand that there is opposition in your

-county to the proposed grant?"

-

-"Your committee," said the Bishop, "cannot be ignorant that there is

-the most stubborn opposition to this grant in all three counties. If

-there had not been that opposition, there would have been no call for

-the bill which you are now considering. If the railroad could have

-gotten the options which it tried to get on those farms the grant

-would have been given without question. Your committee knows this

-better than I."

-

-"But," returned the chairman, "we have been advised that the railroad

-was not able to get those options because a boy up there in the

-Beaver River country, who fancied that he had some grievance against

-the railroad people, banded the people together to oppose the options

-in unfair and unlawful ways."

-

-The chairman paused an impressive moment.

-

-"In fact," he resumed, "from what this committee has been able to

-gather, it looks very much as though there were conspiracy in the

-matter, against the U. & M. Railroad. It almost would seem that some

-rival of the railroad in question had used the boy and his fancied

-grievance to manufacture opposition. Conspiracy could not be proven,

-but there was every appearance."

-

-The Bishop smiled grimly as he dropped his challenge quietly at the

-feet of the committee.

-

-"The boy, Jeffrey Whiting," he said, "was guided by me. I directed his

-movements from the beginning."

-

-The whole room sat up and leaned forward as one man, alive to the fact

-that a novel and stirring situation was being developed. Everybody had

-understood that the Bishop had come to plead the cause of the

-French-Canadian farmers of the hills.

-

-They had supposed that he would speak only on what was a side issue of

-the case. No one had expected that he would attack the main question

-of the bill itself. And here he was openly proclaiming himself the

-principal in that silent, stubborn fight that had been going on up in

-the hills for six months!

-

-The reporters doubled down to their work and wrote furiously. They

-were trying to throw this unusual man upon a screen before their

-readers. It was not easy. He was an unmistakable product of New

-England, and what was more he had been one of the leaders of that

-collection of striking men who made the Brook Farm "Experiment." He

-had endeared himself to the old generation of Americans by his war

-record as a chaplain. To some of the new generation he was known as

-the Yankee Bishop. But in the hill country, from the Mohawk Valley to

-the Canadian line and to Lake Champlain, he had one name, The Shepherd

-of the North. From Old Forge to Ausable to North Creek men knew his

-ways and felt the beating of the great heart of him behind the stern,

-ascetic set of his countenance.

-

-As much as they could of this the reporters were trying to put into

-their notes while Nathan Gorham was recovering from his surprise. That

-well-trained statesman saw that he had let himself into a trap. He had

-been too zealous in announcing his impression that the opposition to

-the U. & M. Railroad was the work of a jealous rival. The Bishop had

-taken that ground from under him by a simple stroke of truth. He could

-neither go forward with his charge nor could he retract it.

-

-"Would you be so kind, then, as to tell this committee," he

-temporised, "just why you wished to arouse this opposition to the

-railroad?"

-

-"There is not and has never been any opposition whatever to the

-railroad," said the Bishop. "The bill before your committee has

-nothing to do with the right of way of the railroad. That has already

-been granted. Your bill proposes to confiscate, practically, from the

-present owners a strip of valuable land forty miles wide by nearly

-eighty miles long. That land is valuable because the experts of the

-railroad know, and the people up there know, and, I think, this

-committee knows that there is iron ore in these hills.

-

-"I have said that I do not represent any one here," the Bishop went

-on. "But there are four hundred families up there in our hills who

-stand to suffer by this bill. They are a silent people. They have no

-voice to reach the world. I have asked to speak before your committee

-because only in this way can the case of my people reach the great,

-final trial court of publicity before the whole State.

-

-"They are a silent people, the people of the hills. You will have

-heard that they are a stubborn people. They are a stubborn people, for

-they cling to their rocky soil and to the hillside homes that their

-hands have made just as do the hardy trees of the hills. You cannot

-uproot them by the stroke of a pen.

-

-"These people are my friends and my neighbours. Many of them were once

-my comrades. I know what they think. I know what they feel. I would

-beg your committee to consider very earnestly this question before

-bringing to bear against these people the sovereign power of the

-State. They love their State. Many of them have loved their country to

-the peril of their lives. They live on the little farms that their

-fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness.

-

-"Not through prejudice or ignorance are they opposing this development,

-which will in the end be for the good of the whole region. They are

-opposed to this bill before you because it would give a corporation

-power to drive them from the homes they love, and that without fair

-compensation.

-

-"They are opposed to it because they are Americans. They know what it

-has meant and what it still means to be Americans. And they know that

-this bill is directly against everything that is American.

-

-"They are ever ready to submit themselves to the sovereign will of the

-State, but you will never convince them that this bill is the real

-will of the State. They are fighting men and the sons of fighting men.

-They have fought the course of the railroad in trying to get options

-from them by coercion and trickery. They have been aroused. Their

-homes, poor and wretched as they often are, mean more to them than any

-law you can set on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it. It

-will set a ring of fire and murder about our peaceful hills.

-

-"In the name of high justice, in the name of common honesty, in the

-name--to come to lower levels--of political common sense, I tell you

-this bill should never go back to the Senate.

-

-"It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound upon those who are

-found weak enough to let it pass here."

-

-The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils of the reporters

-could be plainly heard in the hush of the room.

-

-Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating question which he had

-been wanting to put from the beginning.

-

-"Perhaps the committee has been badly informed," he began to the

-Bishop; "we understood that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian

-immigrants and not usually owners of land."

-

-"Is it necessary for me to repeat," said the Bishop, turning sharply,

-"that I am here, Joseph Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours

-and my friends? Does it matter to them or to this committee that I

-wear the badge of a service that they do not understand? I do not come

-before you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come as an owner of

-property. I come because I think the cause of my friends will be

-served by my coming.

-

-"The facts I have laid before you, the warning I have given might as

-well have been sent out direct through the press. But I have chosen to

-come before you, with your permission, because these facts will get a

-wider hearing and a more eager reading coming from this room.

-

-"I do not seek to create sensation here. I have no doubt that some

-of you are thinking that the place for a churchman to speak is in

-his church. But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing to

-create sensation. I am willing that you should say that I have

-gone far beyond the privilege of a witness invited to come before

-your committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should put any

-interpretation you like upon my use of my privilege here, only so

-that my neighbours of the hills shall have their matter put squarely

-and fully before all the people of the State.

-

-"When this matter is once thoroughly understood by the people, then I

-know that no branch of the lawmaking power will dare make itself

-responsible for the passage of this bill."

-

-The Bishop stood a moment, waiting for further questions. When he saw

-that none were forthcoming, he thanked the committee and begged leave

-to retire.

-

-As the Bishop passed out of the room the chairman arose and declared

-the public hearing closed. Witnesses, spectators and reporters

-crowded out of the room and scattered through the corridors of the

-Capitol. Four or five reporters bunched themselves about the elevator

-shaft waiting for a car. One of them, a tow-haired boy of twenty,

-summed up the matter with irreverent brevity.

-

-"Well, it got a fine funeral, anyway," he said. "Not every bad bill

-has a bishop at the obsequies."

-

-"You can't tell," said the Associated Press man slowly; "they might

-report it out in spite of all that."

-

-"No use," said the youngster shortly. "The Senate wouldn't dare touch

-it once this stuff is in the papers." And he jammed a wad of flimsy

-down into his pocket.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-Three weeks of a blistering August sun had withered the grasses of the

-hills almost to a powder. The thin soil of the north country, where

-the trees have been cut away, does not hold moisture; so that the heat

-of the short, vicious summer goes down through the roots of the

-vegetation to the rock beneath and heats it as a cooking stone.

-

-Since June there had been no rain. The tumbling hill streams were

-reduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were

-covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stunted

-timber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man,

-stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattle

-to the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hide

-itself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolen

-away into the depths of the thick woods.

-

-Ruth Lansing reined Brom Bones in under a scarred pine on the French

-Village road and sat looking soberly at the slopes that stretched up

-away from the road on either side. Every child of the hills knew the

-menace that a hot dry summer brought to us in those days. The first,

-ruthless cutting of the timber had followed the water courses. Men had

-cut and slashed their way up through the hills without thought of what

-they were leaving behind. They had taken only the prime, sound trees

-that stood handiest to the roll-ways. They had left dead and dying

-trees standing. Everywhere they had strewn loose heaps of brush and

-trimmings. The farmers had come pushing into the hills in the wake of

-the lumbermen and had cleared their pieces for corn and potatoes and

-hay land. But around every piece of cleared land there was an

-ever-encroaching ring of brush and undergrowth and fallen timber that

-held a constant threat for the little home within the ring.

-

-A summer without rain meant a season of grim and unrelenting

-watchfulness. Men armed themselves and tramped through the woods on

-unbidden sentry duty, to see that no campfires were made. Strangers

-and outsiders who were likely to be careless were watched from the

-moment they came into the hills until they were seen safely out of

-them again. Where other children scouted for and fought imaginary

-Indians, the children of our hills hunted and fought imaginary fires.

-The forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo. It was an

-enemy that lurked just outside the little clearing of the farm, out

-there in the underbrush and fallen timber.

-

-Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had ridden up to French

-Village for mail. For some weeks they had known that the railroad

-would try to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the special

-session of the Legislature. And they knew that the session would

-probably come to a close this week.

-

-If that bill became a law, then the resistance of the people of the

-hills had been in vain: Jeffrey had merely led them into a bitter and

-useless fight against a power with which they could not cope. They

-would have to leave their homes, taking whatever a corrupted board of

-condemnation would grant for them. It would be hard on all, but it

-would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness. He would have to

-remember that he had had the chance to make his mother and himself

-independently rich. He had thrown away that chance, and now if his

-fight had failed he would have nothing to bring back to his mother

-but his own miserable failure.

-

-Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop's house in Alden when Jeffrey

-had said proudly that his mother would be glad to follow him into

-poverty. And she smiled now at her own outburst at that time. They had

-both meant it, every word; but the ashes of failure are bitter. And

-she had seen the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through all

-the summer.

-

-She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad had succeeded. She

-would not be able to go back to school, and would probably have to go

-somewhere to get work of some kind, for the little that she would get

-for her farm now would not keep her any time. But that was a little

-matter, or at least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence of

-Jeffrey's failure and what he would consider his disgrace. She did not

-know how he would take it, for during the summer she had seen him in

-vicious moods when he seemed capable of everything.

-

-She saw the speck which he made against the horizon as he came over

-Argyle Mountain three miles away and she saw that he was riding fast.

-He was bringing good news!

-

-It needed only the excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Bones

-whirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moods

-and followed them better than he would have followed whip or rein of

-another. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canter

-and gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came thundering down

-upon them. He pulled up sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two

-horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected to do and their

-two riders gave them no more heed than if they had been wooden

-horses.

-

-"How did you know it was all right, Ruth?"

-

-"I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain," Ruth laughed. "You looked as

-though you were riding Victory down the top side of the earth. How did

-it all come out?"

-

-"Here's the paper," he said, handing her an Albany newspaper of the

-day previous; "it tells the story right off. But I got a letter from

-the Bishop, too," he added.

-

-"Oh, did you?" she exclaimed, looking up from the headline--U. & M.

-Grab Killed in Committee--which she had been feverishly trying to

-translate into her own language. "Please let me hear. I'm never sure

-what headlines mean till I go down to the fine print, and then it's

-generally something else. I can understand what the Bishop says, I'm

-sure."

-

-"Well, it's only short," said Jeffrey, unfolding the letter. "He

-leaves out all the part that he did himself."

-

-"Of course," said Ruth simply. "He always does."

-

-"He says:

-

-"'You will see from the Albany papers, which will probably reach you

-before this does, that the special session of the Legislature closed

-to-night and that the railroad's bill was not reported to the Senate.

-It had passed the Assembly, as you know. The bill aroused a measure of

-just public anger through the newspapers and its authors evidently

-thought it the part of wisdom not to risk a contest over it in the

-open Senate. So there can be no legislative action in favour of the

-railroad before December at the earliest, and I regard it as doubtful

-that the matter will be brought up even then.'

-

-"You see," said Jeffrey, "from this you'd never know that he was there

-present at all. And it was just his speech before the committee that

-aroused that public anger. Then he goes on:

-

-"'But we must not make the mistake of presuming that the matter ends

-here. You and your people are just where you were in the beginning.

-Nothing has been lost, nothing gained. It is not in the nature of

-things that a corporation which has spent an enormous amount of money

-in constructing a line with the one purpose of getting to your lands

-should now give up the idea of getting them by reason of a mere

-legislative setback. They have not entered into this business in

-any half-hearted manner. They are bound to carry it through

-somehow--anyhow. We must realise that.

-

-"'We need not speculate upon the soul or the conscience of a

-corporation or the lack of those things. We know that this corporation

-will have an answer to this defeat of its bill. We must watch for that

-answer. What their future methods or their plans may be I think no man

-can tell. Perhaps those plans are not yet even formed. But there will

-be an answer. While rejoicing that a fear of sound public opinion has

-been on your side, we must never forget that there will be an answer.

-

-"'In this matter, young sir, I have gone beyond the limits which men

-set for the proper activities of a priest of the church. I do not

-apologise. I have done this, partly because your people are my own,

-my friends and my comrades of old, partly because you yourself

-came to me in a confidence which I do not forget, partly--and most,

-perhaps--because where my people and their rights are in question I

-have never greatly respected those limits which men set. I put

-these things before you so that when the answer comes you will

-remember that you engaged yourself in this business solely in

-defence of the right. So it is not your personal fight and you must

-try to keep from your mind and heart the bitterness of a quarrel.

-The struggle is a larger thing than that and you must keep your heart

-larger still and above it. I fear that you will sorely need to

-remember this.

-

-"'My sincerest regards to your family and to all my friends in the

-hills, not forgetting your friend Ruth.' That's all," said Jeffrey,

-folding the letter. "I wish he'd said more about how he managed the

-thing."

-

-"Isn't it enough to know that he did manage it, without bothering

-about how? That is the way he does everything."

-

-"I suppose I ought to be satisfied," said Jeffrey as he gathered up

-his reins. "But I wonder what he means by that last part of the

-letter. It sounds like a warning to me."

-

-"It is a warning to you," said Ruth thoughtfully.

-

-"Why, what does it mean? What does he think I'm likely to do?"

-

-"Maybe he does not mean what you are likely to do exactly," said Ruth,

-trying to choose her words wisely; "maybe he is thinking more of what

-you are likely to feel. Maybe he is talking to your heart rather than

-to your head or about your actions."

-

-"Now I don't know what you mean, either," said Jeffrey a little

-discontentedly.

-

-"I know I oughtn't to try to tell you what the Bishop means, for I

-don't know myself. But I've been worried and I'm sure your mother has

-too," said Ruth reluctantly.

-

-"But what is it?" said Jeffrey quickly. "What have I been doing?"

-

-"I'm sure it isn't anything you've done, nor anything maybe that

-you're likely to do. I don't know just what it is, or how to say it.

-But, Jeffrey, you remember what you said that day in the Bishop's

-house at Alden?"

-

-"Yes, and I remember what you said, too."

-

-"We both meant it," Ruth returned gravely, not attempting to evade any

-of the meaning that he had thrown into his words. "And we both mean it

-now, I'm sure. But there's a difference, Jeffrey, a difference with

-you."

-

-"I don't know it," he said a little shortly. "I'm still doing just the

-thing I started out to do that day."

-

-"Yes. But that day you started out to fight for the people. Now you

-are fighting for yourself-- Oh, not for anything selfish! Not for

-anything you want for yourself! I know that. But you have made the

-fight your own. It is your own quarrel now. You are fighting because

-you have come to hate the railroad people."

-

-"Well, you wouldn't expect me to love them?"

-

-"No. I'm not blaming you, Jeff. But--but, I'm afraid. Hate is a

-terrible thing. I wish you were out of it all. Hate can only hurt you.

-I'm afraid of a scar that it might leave on you through all the long,

-long years of life. Can you see? I'm afraid of something that might go

-deeper than all this, something that might go as deep as life. After

-all, that's what I'm afraid of, I guess--Life, great, big, terrible,

-menacing, Life!"

-

-"My life?" Jeffrey asked gruffly.

-

-"I have faced that," the girl answered evenly, "just as you have faced

-it. And I am not afraid of that. No. It's what you might do in

-anger--if they hurt you again. Something that would scar your heart

-and your soul. Jeffrey, do you know that sometimes I've seen the

-worst, the worst--even _murder_ in your eyes!"

-

-"I wish," the boy returned shortly, "the Bishop would keep his

-religion out of all this. He's a good man and a good friend," he went

-on, "but I don't like this religion coming into everything."

-

-"But how can he? He cannot keep religion apart from life and right and

-wrong. What good would religion be if it did not go ahead of us in

-life and show us the way?"

-

-"But what's the use?" the boy said grudgingly. "What good does it do?

-You wouldn't have thought of any of this only for that last part of

-his letter. Why does that have to come into everything? It's the

-Catholic Church all over again, always pushing in everywhere."

-

-"Isn't that funny," the girl said, brightening; "I have cried myself

-sick thinking just that same thing. I have gone almost frantic

-thinking that if I once gave in to the Church it would crush me and

-make me do everything that I didn't want to do. And now I never think

-of it. Life goes along really just as though being a Catholic didn't

-make any difference at all."

-

-"That's because you've given in to it altogether. You don't even know

-that you want to resist. You're swallowed up in it."

-

-The girl flushed angrily, but bit her lips before she answered.

-

-"It's the queerest thing, isn't it, Jeff," she said finally in a

-thoughtful, friendly way, "how two people can fight about religion?

-Now you don't care a particle about it one way or the other. And

-I--I'd rather not talk about it. And yet, we were just now within an

-inch of quarrelling bitterly about it. Why is it?"

-

-"I don't know. I'm sorry, Ruth," the boy apologised slowly. "It's none

-of my business, anyway."

-

-They were just coming over the long hill above Ruth's home. Below them

-stretched the long sweep of the road down past her house and up the

-other slope until it lost itself around the shoulder of Lansing

-Mountain.

-

-Half a mile below them a rider was pushing his big roan horse up the

-hill towards them at a heart-breaking pace.

-

-"That's 'My' Stocking's roan," said Jeffrey, straightening in his

-saddle; "I'd know that horse three miles away."

-

-"But what's he carrying?" cried Ruth excitedly, as she peered eagerly

-from under her shading hand. "Look. Across his saddle. Rifles! _Two_

-of them!"

-

-Brom Bones, sensing the girl's excitement, was already pulling at his

-bit, eager for a wild race down the hill. But Jeffrey, after one long,

-sharp look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly to the side of

-the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the

-things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was

-no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes

-downhill.

-

-The rider was Myron Stocking from over in the Crooked Lake country, as

-Jeffrey had supposed. He pulled up as he recognised the two who waited

-for him by the roadside, and when he had nodded to Ruth, whom he knew

-by sight, he drew over close to Jeffrey. Ruth, eager as she was to

-hear, pushed Brom Bones a few paces farther away from them. They would

-not talk freely in her hearing, she knew. And Jeffrey would tell her

-all that she needed to know.

-

-The two men exchanged a half dozen rapid sentences and Ruth heard

-Stocking conclude:

-

-"Your Uncle Catty slipped me this here gun o' yours. Your Ma didn't

-see."

-

-Jeffrey nodded and took the gun. Then he came to Ruth.

-

-"There's some strangers over in the hills that maybe ought to be

-watched. The country's awful dry," he added quietly. He knew that Ruth

-would need no further explanation.

-

-He pulled the Bishop's letter from his pocket and handed it to Ruth,

-saying:

-

-"Take this and the paper along to Mother. She'll want to see them

-right away. And say, Ruth," he went on, as he looked anxiously at the

-great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between them

-and his home on the hill three miles away, "the country's awful dry.

-If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of this

-country. You can make them go. Nobody else could."

-

-The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to ask

-questions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey's pauses and

-silences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her a

-trust to look after the ones whom he loved.

-

-She put out her hand to his and said simply:

-

-"I'm glad we didn't quarrel, Jeff."

-

-"I was a fool," said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. "But I'll

-remember. Forgive me, please, Ruth."

-

-"There's nothing to forgive--ever--between us, Jeffrey. Go now," she

-said softly.

-

-Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over the

-hill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they

-were out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifle

-across the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart.

-She would have given everything in her world to have had back what she

-had said of seeing murder in Jeffrey's eyes.

-

-Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village road

-for an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a long

-winding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country.

-

-"We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away," said Jeffrey, as

-they came about sundown to a fork in their trail. "The breeze comes

-straight down from the east. That's where the danger is, if there is

-any."

-

-"I suppose you're right, Jeff. But it means we'll have to sleep out if

-we go that way."

-

-"I guess that won't hurt us," Jeffrey returned. "If anything happens

-we might have to sleep out a good many nights--and a lot of other

-people would have to do the same."

-

-"All right then," Stocking agreed. "We'll get a bite and give the

-horses a feed and a rest at Hosmer's, that's about two miles over the

-hills here; and then we can go on as far as you like."

-

-At Hosmer's they got food enough for two days in the hills, and

-having fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higher

-woods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the great

-trees were standing from the beginning, because they had been too high

-up to be accessible to the lumbermen who had ravaged the lower levels.

-Though the long summer twilight of the North still lighted the tops of

-the trees, the two men rode in impenetrable darkness, leaving the

-horses to pick their own canny footing up the trail.

-

-"Did anybody see Rogers in that crowd?" Jeffrey asked as they rode

-along. "You know, the man that was in French Village this summer."

-

-"I don't know," Stocking answered. "You see they came up to the end of

-the rails, at Grafton, on a handcar. And then they scattered. Nobody's

-sure that he's seen any of 'em since. But they must be in the hills

-somewhere. And Rafe Gadbeau's with 'em. You can bet on that. That's

-all we've got to go on. But it may be a-plenty."

-

-"It's enough to set us on the move, anyway," said Jeffrey. "They have

-no business in the hills. They're bound to be up to mischief of some

-sort. And there's just one big mischief that they can do. Can we make

-Bald Mountain before daylight?"

-

-"Oh, certainly; that'll be easy. We'll get a little light when we're

-through this belt of heavy woods and then we can push along. We ought

-to get up there by two o'clock. It ain't light till near five. That'll

-give us a little sleep, if we feel like it."

-

-True to Stocking's calculation they came out upon the rocky, thinly

-grassed knobs of Bald Mountain shortly before two o'clock. It was a

-soft, hazy night with no moon. There was rain in the air somewhere,

-for there was no dew; but it might be on the other side of the divide

-or it might be miles below on the lowlands.

-

-Others of the men of the hills were no doubt in the vicinity of the

-mountain, or were heading toward here. For the word of the menace had

-gone through the hills that day, and men would decide, as Jeffrey had

-done, that the danger would come from this direction. But they had not

-heard anything to show the presence of others, nor did they care to

-give any signals of their own whereabouts.

-

-As for those others, the possible enemy, who had left the railroad

-that morning and had scattered into the hills, if their purpose was

-the one that men feared, they, too, would be near here. But it was

-useless to look for them in the dark: neither was anything to be

-feared from them before morning. Men do not start forest fires in the

-night. There is little wind. A fire would probably die out of itself.

-And the first blaze would rouse the whole country.

-

-The two hobbled their horses with the bridle reins and lay down in the

-open to wait for morning. Neither had any thought of sleep. But the

-softness of the night, the pungent odour of the tamarack trees

-floating up to them from below, and their long ride, soon began to

-tell on them. Jeffrey saw that they must set a watch.

-

-"Curl up and go to sleep, 'My,'" he said, shaking himself. "You might

-as well. I'll wake you in an hour."

-

-A ready snore was the only answer.

-

-Morning coming over the higher eastern hills found them stiff and

-weary, but alert. The woods below them were still banked in darkness

-as they ate their dry food and caught their horses for the day that

-was before them. There was no water to be had up here, and they knew

-their horses must be gotten down to some water course before night.

-

-A half circle of open country belted by heavy woods lay just below

-them. Eagerly, as the light crept down the hill, they scanned the area

-for sign of man or horse. Nothing moved. Apparently they had the world

-to themselves. A fresh morning breeze came down over the mountain and

-watching they could see the ripple of it in the tops of the distant

-trees. The same thought made both men grip their rifles and search

-more carefully the ground below them, for that innocent breeze blowing

-straight down towards their homes and loved ones was a potential

-enemy more to be feared than all the doings of men.

-

-Down to the right, two miles or more away, a man came out of the

-shadow of the woods. They could only see that he was a big man and

-stout. There was nothing about him to tell them whether he was friend

-or foe, of the hills or a stranger. Without waiting to see who he was

-or what he did, the two dove for their saddles and started their

-horses pell-mell down the hill towards him.

-

-He saw them at once against the bare brow of the hill, and ran back

-into the wood.

-

-In another instant they knew what he was and what was his business.

-

-They saw a light moving swiftly along the fringe of the woods. Behind

-the light rose a trail of white smoke. And behind the smoke ran a line

-of living fire. The man was running, dragging a flaming torch through

-the long dried grass and brush!

-

-The two, riding break-neck down over the rocks, regardless of paths or

-horses' legs, would gladly have killed the man as he ran. But it was

-too far for even a random shot. They could only ride on in reckless

-rage, mad to be at the fire, to beat it to death with their hands, to

-stamp it into the earth, but more eager yet for a right distance and a

-fair shot at the fiend there within the wood.

-

-Before they had stumbled half the distance down the hill, a wave of

-leaping flame a hundred feet long was hurling itself upon the forest.

-They could not stamp that fire out. But they could kill that man!

-

-The man ran back behind the wall of fire to where he had started and

-began to run another line of fire in the other direction. At that

-moment Stocking yelled:

-

-"There's another starting, straight in front!"

-

-"Get him," Jeffrey shouted over his shoulder. "I'm going to kill this

-one."

-

-Stocking turned slightly and made for a second light which he had seen

-starting. Jeffrey rode on alone, unslinging his rifle and driving

-madly. His horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down the hill, now

-saw the fire and started to bolt off at a tangent. Jeffrey fought with

-him a furious moment, trying to force him toward the fire and the man.

-Then, seeing that he could not conquer the fright of the horse and

-that his man was escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and

-leaping free with his gun ran towards the man.

-

-The man was dodging in and out now among the trees, but still using

-his torch and moving rapidly away.

-

-Jeffrey ran on, gradually overhauling the man in his zigzag until he

-was within easy distance. But the man continued weaving his way among

-the trees so that it was impossible to get a fair aim. Jeffrey dropped

-to one knee and steadied the sights of his rifle until they closed

-upon the running man and clung to him.

-

-Suddenly the man turned in an open space and faced about. It was

-Rogers, Jeffrey saw. He was unarmed, but he must be killed.

-

-"I am going to kill him," said Jeffrey under his breath, as he again

-fixed the sights of his rifle, this time full on the man's breast.

-

-A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers threw up his hands, took a

-half step forward, and fell on his face.

-

-Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger which he had not

-pulled, ran forward to where the man lay.

-

-He was lying face down, his arms stretched out wide at either side,

-his fingers convulsively clutching at tufts of grass.

-

-He was dying. No need for a second look.

-

-His hat had fallen off to a little distance. There was a clean round

-hole in the back of the skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair

-showed just the merest streak of red.

-

-Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still flaming railroad

-torch, with which he had done his work.

-

-Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction from which the shot

-had come. There was no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no

-sign of another human being anywhere.

-

-Away back of him he heard shots, one, two, three; Stocking, probably,

-or some of the other men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at

-other fleeing figures in the woods.

-

-He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the wick and stamped it into

-a patch of burnt ground, threw the torch back from the fire line, and

-started clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of his

-rifle.

-

-He was quickly brought to his senses, when the forgotten cartridge in

-his gun accidentally exploded and the bullet went whizzing past his

-ear. He dropped the gun nervously and finding a sharp piece of sapling

-he began to work furiously, but systematically at the line of fire.

-

-The line was thin here, where it had really only that moment been

-started, and he made some headway. But as he worked along to where it

-had gotten a real start he saw that it was useless. Still he clung to

-his work. It was the only thing that his numbed brain could think of

-to do for the moment.

-

-He dug madly with the sapling, throwing the loose dirt furiously after

-the fire as it ran away from him. He leaped upon the line of the fire

-and stamped at it with his boots until the fire crept up his trousers

-and shirt and up even to his hair. And still the fire ran away from

-him, away down the hill after its real prey. He looked farther on

-along the line and saw that it was not now a line but a charging,

-rushing river of flame that ran down the hill, twenty feet at a jump.

-Nothing, nothing on earth, except perhaps a deluge of rain could now

-stop that torrent of fire.

-

-He stepped back. There was nothing to be done here now, behind the

-fire. Nothing to be done but to get ahead of it and save what could be

-saved. He looked around for his horse.

-

-Just then men came riding along the back of the line, Stocking and old

-Erskine Beasley in the lead. They came up to where Jeffrey was

-standing and looked on beyond moodily to where the body of Rogers

-lay.

-

-Jeffrey turned and looked, too. A silence fell upon the little group

-of horsemen and upon the boy standing there.

-

-Myron Stocking spoke at last:

-

-"Mine got away, Jeff," he said slowly.

-

-Jeffrey looked up quickly at him. Then the meaning of the words

-flashed upon him.

-

-"I didn't do that!" he exclaimed hastily. "Somebody else shot him from

-the woods. My gun went off accidental."

-

-Silence fell again upon the little group of men. They did not look at

-Jeffrey. They had heard but one shot. The shot from the woods had been

-too muffled for them to hear.

-

-Again Stocking broke the silence.

-

-"What difference does it make," he said. "Any of us would have done it

-if we could."

-

-"But I didn't! I tell you I didn't," shouted Jeffrey. "The shot from

-the woods got ahead of me. That man was facing me. He was shot from

-behind!"

-

-Old Erskine Beasley took command.

-

-"What difference does it make, as Stocking says. We've got live men

-and women and children to think about to-day," he said. "Straighten

-him out decent. Then divide and go around the fire both ways. The

-alarm can't travel half fast enough for this breeze, and it's rising,

-too," he added.

-

-"But I tell you--!" Jeffrey began again. Then he saw how useless it

-was.

-

-He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which even in the face of

-this unheard-of terror had preferred to venture back toward his

-master.

-

-He caught the horse, mounted, and started to ride south with the party

-that was to try to get around the fire from that side.

-

-He rode with them. They were his friends. But he was not with them.

-There was a circle drawn around him. He was separated from them. They

-probably did not feel it, but he felt it. It is a circle which draws

-itself ever around a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of

-blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may say that they themselves

-would wish to have done it. But the circle is there.

-

-Then Jeffrey thought of his Mother. She would not see that circle.

-

-Also he thought of a girl. The girl had only a few hours before said

-that she had sometimes seen even murder in his eyes.

-

-

-

-

-V

-

-MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE

-

-

-Down the wide slope of Bald Mountain the fire raved exultingly,

-leaping and skipping fantastically as it ran. It was a prisoner

-released from the bondage of the elements that had held it. It was a

-spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom. It was a flood raging down a

-valley. It was a maniac at large.

-

-The broad base of the mountain where it sat upon the backs of the

-lower hills spread out fanwise to a width of five miles. The fire

-spread its wings as it came down until it swept the whole apron of the

-mountain. A five-mile wave of solid flame rolled down upon the hills.

-

-Sleepy cattle on the hills rising for their early browse missed the

-juicy dew from the grass. They looked to where the sun should be

-coming over the mountain and instead they saw the sun coming down the

-side of the mountain in a blanket of white smoke. They left their feed

-and began to huddle together, mooing nervously to each other about

-this thing and sniffing the air and pawing the earth.

-

-Sleepy hired men coming out to drive the cattle in to milking looked

-blinking up at the mountain, stood a moment before their numb minds

-understood what their senses were telling them, then ran shouting back

-to the farm houses, throwing open pasture gates and knocking down

-lengths of fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear in their

-hearts, ran straight to the barns and mounting the best horses fled

-down the roads to the west. For the hireling flees because he is a

-hireling.

-

-Sleepy men and women and still sleeping children came tumbling out of

-the houses, to look up at the death that was coming down to them. Some

-cried in terror. Some raged and cursed and shook foolish fists at the

-oncoming enemy. Some fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God

-of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the house for his or her

-treasure; a little bag of money under a mattress, or a babe in its

-crib, or a little rifle, or a dolly of rags.

-

-Frantic horses were hastily hitched to farm wagons. The treasures were

-quickly bundled in. Women pushed their broods up ahead of them into

-the wagons, ran back to kiss the men standing at the heads of the

-sweating horses, then climbed to their places in the wagons and took

-the reins. For twenty miles, down break-neck roads, behind mad horses,

-they would have to hold the lives of the children, the horses, and,

-incidentally, of themselves in their hands. But they were capable

-hands, brown, and strong and steady as the mother hearts that went

-with them.

-

-They would have preferred to stay with the men, these women. But it

-was the law that they should take the brood and run to safety.

-

-Men stood watching the wagons until they shot out of sight behind the

-trees of the road. Then they turned back to the hopeless, probably

-useless fight. They could do little or nothing. But it was the law

-that men must stay and make the fight. They must go out with shovels

-to the very edge of their own clearing and dig up a width of new earth

-which the running fire could not cross. Thus they might divert the

-fire a little. They might even divide it, if the wind died down a

-little, so that it would roll on to either side of their homes.

-

-This was their business. There was little chance that they would

-succeed. Probably they would have to drop shovels at the last moment

-and run an unequal foot race for their lives. But this was the law,

-that every man must stay and try to make his own little clearing the

-point of an entering wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No man, no

-ten thousand men could stop the fire. But, against all probabilities,

-some one man might be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground,

-or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of it. That sector

-might be fought and narrowed down by other men until it was beaten.

-And so something would be gained. For this men stayed, stifled and

-blinded, and fought on until the last possible moment, and then ran

-past their already smoking homes and down the wind for life.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting rode southward in the wake of four other men down a

-long spiral course towards the base of the mountain. Yesterday he

-would have ridden at their head. He would have taken the place of

-leadership and command among them which he had for months been taking

-in the fight against the railroad. Probably he could still have had

-that place among them if he had tried to assert himself, for men had

-come to have a habit of depending upon him. But he rode at the rear,

-dispirited and miserable.

-

-They were trying to get around the fire, so that they might hang upon

-its flank and beat it in upon itself. There was no thought now of

-getting ahead of it: no need to ride ahead giving alarm. That rolling

-curtain of smoke would have already aroused every living thing ahead

-of it. They could only hope to get to the end of the line of fire and

-fight it inch by inch to narrow the path of destruction that it was

-making for itself.

-

-If the wind had held stiff and straight down the mountain it would

-have driven the fire ahead in a line only a little wider than its

-original front. But the shape of the mountain caught the light breeze

-as it came down and twisted it away always to the side. So that the

-end of the fire line was not a thin edge of scattered fire that could

-be fought and stamped back but was a whirling inverted funnel of flame

-that leaped and danced ever outward and onward.

-

-Half way down the mountain they thought that they had outflanked it.

-They slid from their horses and began to beat desperately at the brush

-and grasses among the trees. They gained upon it. They were doing

-something. They shouted to each other when they had driven it back

-even a foot. They fought it madly for the possession of a single tree.

-They were gaining. They were turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat

-began to streak the caking grime upon their faces. There was no air to

-breathe, only the hot breath of fire. But it was heartsome work, for

-they were surely pushing the fire in upon itself.

-

-A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smoke

-about them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves

-pressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.

-

-When they could look they saw a wall of fire bearing down upon them

-from three sides. The wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise

-so that it had surrounded the meagre little space that they had

-cleared and had now outflanked them. Their own manoeuvre had been

-turned against them. There was but one way to run, straight down the

-hill with the fire roaring and panting after them. It was a playful,

-tricky monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing at their

-puny efforts.

-

-Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves out of the path of

-the flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by

-them on its way.

-

-Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap had

-caught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following their

-instinct to hunt water.

-

-The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They were

-five already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must

-follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run at

-their best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch of

-the way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from

-spreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fire

-shoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished what

-these five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But they

-hung on in desperation.

-

-Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fire

-back a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something.

-And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behind

-and around them so that they had to race for life.

-

-Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and among

-the broken hills. Here their work was entirely hopeless and they knew

-it. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of being

-cut off and completely surrounded. Here the fire did not keep any

-steady edge that they could follow and attack. The wind eddied and

-whirled about among the broken peaks of the hills in every direction

-and with it the fire ran apparently at will.

-

-When they tried to hold it to one side of a hill and were just

-beginning to think that they had won, a sudden sweep of the wind would

-send a ring of fire around to the other side so that they saw

-themselves again and again surrounded and almost cut off.

-

-Ahead of them now there was one hope: to hold the fire to the north

-side of the Chain. The Chain is a string of small lakes running nearly

-east and west. It divides the hill country into fairly even portions.

-If they could keep the fire north of the lakes they would save the

-southern half of the country. Their own homes all lay to the north of

-the lakes and they were now doomed. But that was a matter that did not

-enter here. What was gone was gone. Their loved ones would have had

-plenty of warning and would be out of the way by now. The men were

-fighting the enemy merely to save what could be saved. And as is the

-way of men in fight they began to make it a personal quarrel with the

-fire.

-

-They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. It was no longer

-an impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was a

-cunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its

-eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and

-bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the

-roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips

-were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it.

-

-They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of them

-had forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last night

-and who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten those

-other men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men into

-the hills to do this thing.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and the

-fight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sight

-of the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. He

-fought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, until

-there was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in his

-brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quarter

-given or asked with the demon of the fire.

-

-Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south and

-joined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, where

-the Chain began and stretched away to the west. If they could hold

-the fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along the

-north side of the lakes and the other half of the country would be

-safe.

-

-The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. The

-five weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollen

-tongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strength

-from the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back down

-the north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with

-charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it.

-

-They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and their

-work would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! God

-in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it!

-To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and

-_drink_!

-

-Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Here

-was the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder,

-fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath of

-the fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed the

-fire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. They

-had won! It could not beat them now!

-

-As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of the

-placid lake below him one of the new men, who still had voice, raised

-a shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voice

-croaking out what would have been a cry of triumph.

-

-But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they had

-safely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry,

-flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flames

-went dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread out

-around the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, the

-thing was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flames

-went roaring to the top of it.

-

-The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to get

-themselves out of that encircling death.

-

-When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw the

-full extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment of

-victory.

-

-Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain--but they

-themselves could not get near the lake.

-

-Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they could

-not reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line between

-them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet in

-the lake.

-

-Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted silent teeth, according

-to the nature that was in each.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men

-pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke

-and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not

-men of the hills.

-

-They were!--They were the real enemy!--They were two of those who had

-set the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headed

-straight for the lake and had gotten there. _They_ were safe. And

-_they_ had _water_!

-

-All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting fire

-fury of the day, rushed back upon him.

-

-He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he had

-not.

-

-Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill those

-two there in the water. _In the water!_

-

-He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of the

-fire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward,

-his face buried in a patch of bare earth.

-

-Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. When

-they had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into him

-with their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As he

-understood, he turned on his face moaning:

-

-"I didn't kill Rogers. I wish I had--I wish I had."

-

-And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as the

-intolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canal

-and the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of the

-morning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, four

-hours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good wash

-and rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was he

-querulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow and

-dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop had

-found plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentle

-philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood the

-faults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour at

-the back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, Joseph

-Winthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop.

-

-But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing in

-Albany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He had

-appealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And the

-conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that the

-U. & M. Railroad must not dare to drive the people of the hills from

-their homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Then

-the conscience of the people of the State had gone off about its

-business, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The public

-would forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with a

-mild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few days

-at most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But the

-railroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behind

-it who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results.

-

-He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strike

-in some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the hand

-that struck.

-

-Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of the

-first hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of the

-mountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blue

-of the sky behind them.

-

-Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where Old

-Forge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the

-divide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The day

-was very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew that

-morning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the early

-morning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now.

-

-Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journey

-up this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fair

-day. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the top

-of other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you remember

-that his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand square

-miles of broken country, you will see that he had need of marking

-posts.

-

-Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach from

-the western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country to

-the east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany and

-around by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east by

-Malone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into the

-mountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre of

-his diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, south

-and west.

-

-He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled,

-perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station he

-went out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.

-

-Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where he

-knew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he had

-recognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountain

-had suddenly been moved into the gap. He went back to his seat and

-sat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the whole

-contour of the hills that he had known was changed under his very

-eyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smooth

-skulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks should

-have been.

-

-He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind,

-and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of

-Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heart

-whose passions ran deep below a placid surface.

-

-At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped and

-hurried to the operator's window to ask if any news had gone down the

-wire of a fire in the hills.

-

-Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table "listening in"

-with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going over

-the wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company,

-between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the office

-at Steuben.

-

-The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.

-

-Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:

-

-"This ain't the bulletin board. We're busy."

-

-The Bishop stood quiet a moment.

-

-Then Jerry looked up. The face looking calmly through the window was

-the face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder of

-certain things.

-

-Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. He

-grabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped:

-

-"I--I'm sorry, Bishop! I--I--didn't hear what you said."

-

-The Bishop--if one might say it--grinned. Then he said quickly:

-

-"I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anything

-on the wire?"

-

-Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop's mouth. The beet red

-colour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles were

-coming back. He was now coherent.

-

-No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the

-wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed

-abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call."

-

-Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica," he said. They waited

-a little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call

-everything," Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the

-benefit of the Bishop.

-

-"It must be big, Bishop," he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call--"

-

-But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing

-train.

-

-At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house.

-Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the

-housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady's

-saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the

-hills.

-

-It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no

-telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a

-half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among

-the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated

-country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady's

-clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the

-matter no more than a mild wonder.

-

-For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road

-over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the

-winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He

-thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on

-that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But

-more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up

-there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all.

-

-He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started

-accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men

-into the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were

-caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody

-justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady's

-horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his

-well fed life.

-

-Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther.

-Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of

-keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for a

-fresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had just

-slid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop's destination in the

-hills--which was vague, and his business--which was still more vague.

-He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the whole

-matter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have the

-fresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.

-

-The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corben

-believed that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the

-diocese. Corben did not believe that.

-

-In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to

-believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in

-his pockets he pressed on into the high hills.

-

-Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road.

-But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe

-of the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the

-origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond

-that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.

-

-Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones,

-and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask

-a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the

-situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning

-by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the

-children. That was all they could tell.

-

-As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones

-escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew

-without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women

-would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger.

-

-In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory

-authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to

-the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea

-that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself

-in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the

-mere argument that he was a man.

-

-The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what

-she knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road

-yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in

-the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald

-Mountain.

-

-The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched.

-He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the

-breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and

-futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of

-that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even

-than the one of the fire itself.

-

-"He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth

-had to tell.

-

-"Yes. We had just read it."

-

-"He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly.

-

-"Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him," the girl answered

-simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer

-implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.

-

-"They will all be driven in upon French Village," said the Bishop

-slowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills.

-Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road

-from here there, is it open, do you know?"

-

-"No one has come down from that far," said Ruth. "We have watched the

-people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the

-lake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the road

-certainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes

-down."

-

-"I must hurry, then," said the Bishop, gripping his reins.

-

-"Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will be

-trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a

-few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot

-go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost."

-

-"Well, I can always come back," said the Bishop lightly, as he set his

-horse up the hill.

-

-"But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop," Ruth pleaded after

-him. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on the

-road!"

-

-But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he

-heard or not, he did not answer or look back.

-

-Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know

-whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a

-quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not

-drive him back. She knew that.

-

-She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which

-he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be

-driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and hunted

-alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills

-would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside

-it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and

-the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be

-trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek

-safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death

-just as certain but which they would prefer to face.

-

-The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was

-riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be

-among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.

-

-But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and

-before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.

-

-"I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs.

-Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will

-catch you before long."

-

-"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you.

-Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet,

-and won't be for some time."

-

-Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day

-long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did

-not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to

-run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run

-very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the

-hill.

-

-But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him.

-When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile

-away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.

-

-She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all

-against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances

-stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the

-chances and was ready to measure himself against them.

-

-"Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up

-the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too

-late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid.

-Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like a

-man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all

-about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God's

-business. I wonder."

-

-Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of

-the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a

-pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired from

-the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that

-he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he

-disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into

-the sky.

-

-Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to

-the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming,

-sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward

-her home.

-

-All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had

-passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present

-among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting

-to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never

-before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her.

-

-For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a

-living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined

-course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down

-the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open

-chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and

-surround them.

-

-While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but

-the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This

-was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep

-in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the

-level lands and safety.

-

-The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid front

-beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the

-Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and

-get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was

-sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely

-before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great

-limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he

-would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind

-whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead

-of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the

-road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander

-aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him.

-

-Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need

-her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw

-the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril

-from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life.

-He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find

-him and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he did

-not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the

-attempt.

-

-Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home.

-For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his

-flanks--to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing

-like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for he

-had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the

-stroke of the whip to madden him.

-

-Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red

-terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not

-understand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of rising

-excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:

-

-"You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way

-before, did I? But it's for life--a good man's life! You can make it.

-I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. You

-can make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It _can't_ hurt us! Bromie, dear,

-I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!"

-

-She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon her

-hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw

-that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was

-going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet

-body.

-

-But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that

-red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point

-just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came?

-She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where

-the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she

-could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting

-down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were

-whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should

-hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The

-girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him

-so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged

-straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road.

-

-A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and

-reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he

-felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on

-again, through the smoke and out into the good air.

-

-The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed

-them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared,

-either.

-

-Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and

-turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away

-with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already

-leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire

-from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where

-everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with

-the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter

-much.

-

-Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the

-hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her

-loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at

-the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the

-men who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it.) She wanted

-vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take

-revenge in the way of men.

-

-But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and

-for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And

-she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our

-trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive

-those who trespass against us," she meant that, too.

-

-The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal

-another.

-

-Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire

-burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but

-a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and

-to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole

-horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be

-coming down upon the whole world.

-

-She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of

-herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the

-road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out

-of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little

-moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there

-was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost

-certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she

-could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop

-would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom

-Bones for his brave best.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to

-French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the

-sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white

-smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show

-that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the

-sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come

-to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance

-but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.

-

-He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty

-sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest

-shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he

-would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the

-fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he

-would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through

-somehow.

-

-He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran

-straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him,

-sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading

-steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill

-before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed

-the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill

-he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French

-Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous

-horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and

-make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far

-from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.

-

-Then he came to the top of the hill.

-

-He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that

-same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight

-slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran

-straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could

-see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road.

-This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided

-the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still

-moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the

-hill where he stood.

-

-Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than

-he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse

-and looked.

-

-Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was

-marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given

-its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not

-have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road

-clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid

-wall of fire.

-

-There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The

-way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But

-at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the

-fire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed in

-entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So,

-if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe

-again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French

-Village.

-

-Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick

-upon him.

-

-His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the

-shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop

-dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the

-horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture

-land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way.

-

-Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have

-expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood

-stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look.

-

-"I am sorry, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You have done your

-best. And I--have done my worst. You did not deserve this."

-

-He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, two

-miles away and a thousand feet below.

-

-The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into

-the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to

-the west down through the great trees, travelling faster than any

-horse could have been driven.

-

-The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking

-mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an

-unbroken line--death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with

-a calm and certain steadiness of purpose--death. On the hill to the

-west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift

-line of fire coming down the northern side of the square--death. One

-narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the

-north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few

-minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and

-running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With

-a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it.

-

-With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over

-the horse and came heavily to the ground.

-

-"You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance," he said, as he

-hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle.

-

-He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed.

-

-"We stay together, then." And the Bishop mounted again.

-

-Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around

-them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope.

-No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it

-was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying

-equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran

-through the grass by his horse's feet.

-

-One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility

-that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned

-away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might

-be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding

-nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this,

-the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west.

-

-Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a

-bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to

-be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in

-hand.

-

-Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he

-would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his

-hand.

-

-But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb

-and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him,

-the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of

-the thing than he could see heroism.

-

-He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certain

-men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was

-all. He had meant well. God meant better.

-

-Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently

-with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the

-Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this

-square of fire.

-

-"It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thought

-I'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'll

-follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks," she yelled back over her shoulder, "we

-can make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. But

-we won't _burn_!"

-

-Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under

-command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to

-think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse

-followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck

-path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath

-or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of

-what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.

-

-They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom

-Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw

-that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent

-and perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking down

-he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks

-below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to

-the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the

-lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks.

-Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.

-

-It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side

-of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came

-slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop

-brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light.

-The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing.

-But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe

-Gadbeau.

-

-The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, then

-crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck

-and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.

-

-The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised

-the Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips

-there came the moan:

-

-_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse--"_

-

-With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in which

-the French people began the telling of their sins in confession. And

-she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.

-

-She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking of

-Jeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like--the

-Catholic Church always turning up in everything.

-

-She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up there

-behind that awful veil of red.

-

-

-

-

-VI

-

-THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD

-

-

-The Bishop laid the man's head back so that he lay as easy as it was

-possible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of his

-which was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country.

-

-But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw the

-Bishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know

-what it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, only

-continued to mumble the words with which they had begun:

-

-_"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--"

-

-Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he could

-speak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue of

-his mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one of

-these.

-

-Again the Bishop lowered the man's head and changed the position of

-the body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouth

-with his hat.

-

-Now the man tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp

-effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he

-forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of

-encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise,

-recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada

-have been drilling into the children for the last three hundred

-years.

-

-Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it worked

-easily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At that

-time he had received the Sacrament. He went through the "table of

-sins" with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses a

-step in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of the

-young men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in the

-sawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill country

-would have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting in

-the camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down to

-spend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. The

-Bishop had heard the story ten thousand times.

-

-But now--_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse_--there was something more, something

-that would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. It

-had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the

-feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For the

-Bishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, just

-below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a

-wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying

-where he fell.

-

-He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolled

-itself to his mind.

-

-"I die, Mon Pere, I die," he began between gasps. "I die. Since the

-afternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down,

-if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have lain

-down to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.

-

-"All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till I

-had found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here I

-breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran out

-from the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not run

-out of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire and

-fought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. All

-the day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the fire

-when I would run out.

-

-"They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with the

-men who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to the

-fire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they went

-to set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale.

-

-"Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All were

-drinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. _Mon

-Pere_, I struck no blow. But my knife--my knife was found in the man's

-heart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad that

-comes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showed

-the knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word to

-the law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only to

-me he said, 'Some day I may need you.'

-

-"Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he was

-not a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He

-would buy the land from the people.

-

-"The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he came

-again. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He must

-force the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. 'You,'

-he said, 'I need you.'

-

-"_Mon Pere_, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinch

-of salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will do

-this, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied to

-my own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed

-the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came.

-He bade me do and I did.

-

-"M'sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of all

-sins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate.

-And hate goes raging to do all sin.

-

-"So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was always

-the face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine.

-

-"Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at the

-railroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up into

-the high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. I

-would not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved

-me, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go.

-

-"I went. Fear, _Mon Pere_, fear is the father of all. I went because

-there was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followed

-into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the last

-moment. I do not know.

-

-"I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see.

-If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be

-seen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to be

-punished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I would

-have to take the blame. I would not dare to speak.

-

-"Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And of

-the seven I alone was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me.

-I knew.

-

-"Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. And

-his speech was, 'You owe me this. Now you must pay.'

-

-"In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along the

-fringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went

-out into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen other

-men watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with a

-lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light my

-torch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, the

-red flare of the fire running after him.

-

-"Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of fire

-in the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!" With

-a terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop's arms,

-gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming:

-

-"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!"

-

-He fell back as the scream died in his throat.

-

-The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of the

-well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe

-Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips

-began to form the words of the Act of Contrition.

-

-As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in

-his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man.

-

-Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against the

-flank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrific

-forces of this world and the other that were at work about her. This

-world, with the exception of this little island on which she stood,

-was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side the

-flames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place,

-all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south.

-Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these few

-bare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out

-of which she must get the breath of life.

-

-Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a

-rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself

-down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the

-mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him!

-

-She was only a young girl. But since that night when the Bishop had

-come to her as she held her father dying in her arms she had thought

-much. Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had pressed themselves

-in upon her mind. The things that she had been hearing and reading

-since her childhood, the thoughts of the people among whom she had

-grown up, the feeling of loyalty to her own kind, all these had fought

-in her against the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged

-them all.

-

-Because she had so recently come under its influence, the Catholic

-Church seemed ever to be unfolding new wonders to her. It seemed as

-though she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another more

-wonderful, more awesome. Yet always there seemed to be something just

-beyond, some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which she could not

-quite attain. Always a door opened, only to disclose another closed

-door beyond it.

-

-Here surely she stood as near to naked truth as it was possible to

-get. Here were none of the forms of words, none of the explanations,

-none of the ready-made answers of the catechism. Here were just two

-men. One was a bad man, a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few

-moments his soul must go--somewhere. The other was a good man. To-day

-he had risked his life to save the lives of this man and others--for

-Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been caught in the fire

-because other men were chasing him.

-

-Now these two men had a question to settle between them. In a very few

-minutes these two men must settle whether this bad man's soul was

-presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity. You see, she

-was a very direct young person. She took her religion at its word,

-straight in the eyes, literally.

-

-So far she had not needed to take any precautions against hearing

-anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them

-effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high

-above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, breaking voice of

-Gadbeau, screaming:

-

-"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stopped!"

-

-Involuntarily she turned and started towards the men. Gadbeau had

-fallen back in the Bishop's arms and the Bishop was leaning over,

-apparently talking to him. She knew that she must not go near until

-the Bishop gave her leave. She turned back and putting her hands up to

-her ears buried her face in Brom Bones' mane.

-

-But she could not put away the words that she had heard. Never, so

-long as she lived, was she able to forget them. Like the flash of the

-shot itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves there.

-Years afterwards she could shut her eyes and fairly see those words

-burning in her mind.

-

-When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and she went over timidly.

-She heard the Bishop say:

-

-"He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?"

-

-Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the light of the flames, the

-Prayers for the Departed. Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and

-among the Mysteries she wept gently--why, she knew not.

-

-When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while in silence, looking

-into the face of the dead. Then he arose and folded the long arms on

-the tattered breast and straightened the body.

-

-Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way. Once, twice she opened

-her lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it.

-Finally she began:

-

-"Bishop, I--I heard--"

-

-"No, child. You heard nothing," the Bishop interrupted quietly,

-"nothing."

-

-Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there looking

-down. The dead man's secret lay between them, buried under God's awful

-seal.

-

-The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady's storm coat

-which he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of the

-dead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders that

-rained down upon everything.

-

-Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing at

-their horses' heads, their faces buried in the manes, their arms

-thrown over the horses' eyes.

-

-As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the east

-and south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But the

-sharp, acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept them

-in exquisite, blinded torture.

-

-The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the fires

-to the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night.

-The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through the

-smoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to be

-rising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting the

-heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into the

-west. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a

-land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there a

-great tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch.

-

-They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the man

-lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping

-hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach

-Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live.

-Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and

-they knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse.

-

-Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travel

-circuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallen

-trees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The road

-was impossible because it had largely run through wooded places and

-the trees would have fallen across it. Their situation was not

-desperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad for

-water.

-

-For two hours they plodded steadily over the hills through the hot,

-loose-lying ashes. In all the world it seemed that not man nor beast

-nor bird was alive. The top of the earth was one grey ruin, draped

-with the little sworls of dust and ashes that the playful wind sent

-drifting up into their mouths and eyes.

-

-They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the ashes had blown level

-over holes and traps of all sorts in which a galloping horse would

-surely break his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the horses to

-any rapid expenditure of energy. The little that was left in them must

-be doled out to the very last ounce. For they did not yet know what

-lay between them and French Village and the lake. If the fire had not

-reached the lake during the night then it was always a possibility

-that, with this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring up from

-the ashes of the old and place an impassable barrier between them and

-the water.

-

-When this thought came to them, as it must, they involuntarily

-quickened their pace. The impulse was to make one wild dash for the

-lake. But they knew that it would be nothing short of madness. They

-must go slowly and carefully, enduring the torture with what fortitude

-they could.

-

-The story which the Bishop had heard from the lips of the dying man

-had stirred him profoundly. He now knew definitely, what yesterday he

-had suspected, that men had been sent into the hills by the railroad

-people to set fire to the forests, thereby driving the people out of

-that part of the country which the railroad wished to possess. He was

-moved to anger by the knowledge, but he knew that he must try to drive

-that knowledge back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try to

-hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded moment, some time of

-stress and mental conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture or

-even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness of that knowledge.

-Now he knew that the situation which last night he had thought to meet

-in French Village would almost certainly confront him there this

-morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be

-doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should

-in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned

-under the seal of the confessional.

-

-Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words of

-that last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near they

-came to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his

-gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she

-would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under

-any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears.

-And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.

-

-As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of the

-country sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. There

-was not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little French

-Village had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completely

-around the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn it

-up in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself out

-along the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward the

-west, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there would

-be no more fire in this region.

-

-"Would the people make their way down the river," the Bishop asked;

-"or did they escape back into the higher hills?"

-

-"I don't think they did either," Ruth answered as she scanned the lake

-sharply. "There is something out there in the middle of the lake, and

-I wouldn't be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and went

-through the fire that way. They'd be better off than we were, and that

-way they could save some things. If they had run away they would have

-had to drop everything."

-

-The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up their

-ears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruth

-was right in her conjecture. They could now make out five or six

-large rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of the

-logs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the

-sawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must have

-stood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided by

-such help as the people could give it with boards and poles, was

-moving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been.

-

-The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep through

-the ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village and

-watched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing for

-them to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other side

-of the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with that

-dumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back and

-begin their nests over again.

-

-For nearly an hour they stood on the little beach, letting the horses

-drink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts.

-When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling from

-the rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts were

-emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must be

-carried off.

-

-They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl with

-wonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these two

-people must have come straight through the fire. But when Father

-Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a great

-glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people.

-It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing!

-His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors.

-Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long

-night. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that all

-was well!

-

-Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes their

-race what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging his

-blessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He was

-infinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith.

-He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They were

-homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it had

-needed but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded

-confidence that God was good, that the world was right again.

-

-The other people, the hill people of the Bishop's own blood and race,

-stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kind

-of people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were not

-unmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some

-two or three old men of them saw him now through a mist of memory and

-battle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that this

-was the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare

-through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a

-part of the strange things that they had always half believed about

-him.

-

-Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop.

-Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag

-the Bishop's story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven?

-How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the

-fire?

-

-The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own

-imprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it by

-the quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translated

-freely and with a fine flourish. Then the Bishop told of the coming of

-Rafe Gadbeau and how the man had died with the Sacrament. They nodded

-their heads in silence. There was nothing to be said. They knew who

-the man was. He had done wickedly. But the good God had stretched out

-the wing of His great Church over him at the last. Why say more? God

-was good. No?

-

-Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people, grouped on the outskirts

-of the crowd that pressed around the Bishop, answering their eager

-questions and asking questions of her own. There was just one

-question that she wanted to ask, but something kept it back from her

-lips. There was no reason at all why she should not ask them about

-Jeffrey Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard news of him,

-must know in what direction he had gone to fight the fire. But some

-unnamed dread seemed to take possession of her so that she dared not

-put her crying question into words.

-

-Some one at her elbow, who had heard what the French people were

-saying, asked:

-

-"You're sure that was Gadbeau that crawled out of the fire and died,

-Miss Lansing?"

-

-"Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly," Ruth

-answered without looking up.

-

-Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:

-

-"Then that's two of 'em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting

-shot Rogers."

-

-"He did not!" Ruth blazed up in the young man's face. "Jeffrey Whiting

-did _not_ shoot Rogers! Rafe--!"

-

-The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her and

-blinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain,

-choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The young

-man, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall.

-She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp:

-

-"It's nothing-- Let me go."

-

-Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand from

-her arm.

-

-Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself

-in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be

-likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a

-sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand.

-Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling that

-she stood among those who could have understood gave her strength and

-a feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have had

-among her own kind.

-

-But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan,

-grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and

-drew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth found

-it difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly French

-girl she had met in the early summer.

-

-"You saw Rafe Gadbeau die," the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruth

-sharply at a little distance from the crowd. "You were there, close?

-No?"

-

-"Yes, the fire was all around," Ruth answered, quaking.

-

-"How did he die? Tell me. How?"

-

-"Why--why, he died quickly, in the Bishop's arms."

-

-"I know. Yes. But how? He _confessed_?"

-

-"He--he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so."

-

-But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.

-

-"I know that," she persisted. "I heard M'sieur the Bishop. But did he

-_confess_--about Rogers?"

-

-"Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn't hear anything. I

-couldn't--"

-

-"He didn't say nothing, except in confession?" the girl questioned

-swiftly.

-

-"Nothing at all," Ruth answered, relieved.

-

-"And you heard?" the girl returned shrewdly.

-

-"Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that."

-

-"I know you are lying," Cynthe said slowly. "That is right. But I do

-not know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You are

-Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometime

-you will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in

-us. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you a

-question and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will be

-silent--and that will be just as bad."

-

-Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did not

-even raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuring

-look to the girl would be an admission that she must not make.

-

-"Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! You

-cannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul," said the girl in a

-low, tense whisper; "swear that you will never, sleeping or waking,

-laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know that

-you heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember." She drew Ruth

-close to her and almost hissed into her ear:

-

-"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting!"

-

-She dropped Ruth's arm and turned quickly away.

-

-Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright

-and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not

-grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind.

-

-This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love

-and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the

-dark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes given

-to those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girl

-had seen Ruth's terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had

-plucked it out before Ruth's very eyes.

-

-The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She had

-broken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with the

-most terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the most

-awful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret had

-escaped her!

-

-She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she had

-repeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that the

-other girl had taken her secret from her.

-

-And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into the

-future and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her.

-Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraid

-to speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had ever

-known.

-

-And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth's secrets, one that

-had been hidden even from herself. She had said:

-

-"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting."

-

-In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she had

-never known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up in

-the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for the

-dead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was,

-and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of her

-own beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cain

-upon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over the

-hills-- The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love!

-Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would love

-forever!

-

-He would hear it from other mouths. But, oh! the cruel, unbearable

-taunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her own

-lips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thought

-of such a thing?

-

-But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She

-could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the

-bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not

-even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the

-faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his

-and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to

-look into his eyes and say:

-

-I _know_ you did not do it.

-

-Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that she

-knew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man.

-It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love,

-horror, and the awful weight of God's seal pressed in upon her to

-crush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could not

-meet them, could not cope with them.

-

-Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where Brom

-Bones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, her

-face buried in the colt's mane, crying hysterically. They bathed her

-hands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted they

-gave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing that she

-would need strength above all things, took what was given and silently

-faced the galling weight of the burden that was hers.

-

-The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The first

-thing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold out

-where they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villages

-on the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walking

-over ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north it

-would mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and have

-water at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might come

-into the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help.

-

-Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they do

-there? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothing

-left for them here but the places where their homes had been, but at

-least they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had all

-passed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-stricken

-alike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation,

-would here bind them together and give them a common strength for a

-new grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the four

-or five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowville

-or from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here.

-

-The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawing

-family groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Already

-these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing around

-them and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circle

-drawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindly

-of eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded.

-Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth from

-nondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. It

-appeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision store

-until the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, to

-each one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was all

-pitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for those

-refugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, he

-thought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured to

-scanty living.

-

-The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put something

-before them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all

-things it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merely

-wait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried in

-their hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort of

-shelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kind

-would cover at least the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up

-or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of the

-lake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. But

-it would put heart into them to see at least something, anything,

-begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes.

-

-Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holding

-desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading

-them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to

-what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which

-messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They

-bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that

-were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little

-village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men

-gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would

-mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well

-know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth

-while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the

-Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy

-relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes

-the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was

-characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of

-penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations

-upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of

-his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary

-upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one

-of the notes he signed that day.

-

-All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and

-driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and

-joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes

-from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came

-down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of

-women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised

-cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French

-Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then

-Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the

-Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far

-Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had

-never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and

-young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears,

-their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt

-of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal

-and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and

-unashamed.

-

-Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight

-brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men,

-sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and

-dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.

-

-Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid

-his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the

-Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his

-fingers and unfolded their story to him.

-

-Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far

-slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the

-grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on

-past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of

-barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown

-country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for

-travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging

-like hunted rats, between a line of fire--of their own making--before

-them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire

-and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them.

-They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run with

-them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through

-all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the

-blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching

-thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes.

-And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them,

-torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and

-wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that

-it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight.

-They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake

-came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from

-it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to

-taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy

-that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks.

-This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all

-might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had

-yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered

-around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might

-come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt

-ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened

-hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And,

-for these two men, to be seen meant to die.

-

-So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture.

-Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been

-beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down

-to the water.

-

-They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of

-the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no

-more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until

-they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst

-and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised

-now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up

-so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything

-else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew

-that if they would live and travel--and they must travel--they would

-have to have food at once.

-

-Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died

-out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was

-food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it

-did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great

-thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one

-thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else.

-They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the

-world!

-

-Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a

-few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself.

-There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed,

-seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not

-remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some

-baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat

-them, but--Fresh grass! Or oats!

-

-Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing

-to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around

-him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the

-matter.

-

-A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He

-carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At

-peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile

-that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and

-children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridle

-and tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a can

-of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom

-Bones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.

-

-A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking

-the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and

-fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and

-plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout,

-faithful heart.

-

-In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and

-shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and

-children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building.

-

-The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to

-give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men

-running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and

-hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire.

-

-They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men

-whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the

-most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been

-thirsting to kill them. The hour had come.

-

-"Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves." Old

-Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence.

-

-A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that

-suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey.

-

-Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying

-hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had

-caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he had

-cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he

-spoke now calmly, as one assured.

-

-"Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We know

-that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for

-they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall

-only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence

-these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?"

-

-"We'll be sure of these two," said a sullen voice in the crowd.

-

-"True," returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you there

-are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills

-risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater

-ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the

-end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a

-thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this

-trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my

-friends and my neighbours," he went on raising his hand, "I pledge you

-that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you.

-

-"Before these men die, bring a justice--there is one of the

-village--and let them confess before the world and to him on paper

-what they know of this crime and of those who commanded it."

-

-A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the

-time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought

-forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit

-upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his

-long hand of the _rue Henri_ the story that the men told.

-

-They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of

-all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for

-the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task.

-

-The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save

-these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a

-Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend,

-Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain

-man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of

-that story which he himself could but must not tell.

-

-The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the

-story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure

-that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke

-simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the

-first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their

-intention, he said:

-

-"My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I

-will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not

-move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets

-must pass through me.

-

-"You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is

-just one thing--Revenge."

-

-"What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd.

-

-"It is _not_ my business," said the Bishop solemnly. "It is the

-business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have

-I no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe all

-the same things? My business is with the souls of men--of all men. And

-never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing

-this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my

-fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your

-souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you

-sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and

-say: A man warned us, but he had no _business_!

-

-"Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done.

-And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh!

-believe me now! You shall see right!"

-

-The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men

-about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his

-feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.

-

-He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.

-

-Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her

-dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done

-his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden.

-But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful

-words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this

-grief.

-

-He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into

-the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered

-the things of God and His world.

-

-

-

-

-VII

-

-THE INNER CITADEL

-

-

-"And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute

-satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and

-with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August

-twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a

-long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered

-man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall

-not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have

-done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths

-of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes,

-actual eye-witnesses of the crime."

-

-In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District

-Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against

-Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had

-died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald

-Mountain.

-

-From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of

-Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the

-hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial.

-Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the

-villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose

-lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge

-Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it

-plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers

-must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the

-guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder

-itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been

-doing at the time.

-

-For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed

-just a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a little

-of the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned over

-in the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to these

-people. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had

-suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible

-to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer

-of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages

-of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that

-a man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire had

-started at about the same time and place. But few people had any clear

-version of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to the

-identity of the slayer.

-

-There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunate

-for Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of

-Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same man

-who only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before the

-Senate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroad

-against the lawless people of the hills. He had given the District

-Attorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury who

-would be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. For

-this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of

-the hills against the U. & M. Railroad.

-

-Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of its

-rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad

-system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that

-had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the

-North. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it was

-not in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave the

-county in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroad

-saw to it that only men personally known to its officials should have

-public office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench.

-And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well for

-the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it.

-

-The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of

-Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to

-every money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible but

-impenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in every

-direction and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tell

-where it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines of

-influence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of the

-attorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand they

-passed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whose

-money and brain dominated the whole transportation business of the

-State. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitol

-at Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to the

-youngest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune from

-their influence.

-

-Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procured

-the setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill people

-homeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, be

-impossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in any

-county of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the way

-of criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper and

-roused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public.

-The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even a muttered

-and vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in a

-spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter

-charge.

-

-Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand

-Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment

-against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They had

-found that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon a

-peaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of his

-company. He had been found shot through the back of the head and the

-circumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature and

-disposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young man

-who for months had been leading a stubborn fight against the

-railroad.

-

-The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in Judge

-Leslie's court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind of

-the public with this case until the people should have had time to

-forget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of the

-railroad's affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold only

-one thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder case

-into that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise.

-

-The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; the

-well-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had

-done its work, and the efficient way in which judge and prosecuting

-attorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a

-"railroad" jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident power

-was moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge and

-this jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in the

-way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in

-the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to

-appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as

-justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The

-fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether

-or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would be

-allowed to enter.

-

-And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were already

-made up. The prisoner's friends and associates in the hills had been

-at first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubt

-was his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did not

-deny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on the

-very scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any one

-for doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since his

-conviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what room

-was there to hope for his acquittal?

-

-The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they had

-been working night and day to put a roof over their families before

-the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. They

-had no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and

-they had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew--every

-word of which would count against them. They had come down determined

-that he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as it

-were, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which the

-machinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them.

-There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idle

-and glum, waiting for the end.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment by

-the District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of

-circumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morning

-on Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold

-upon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that night

-and had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his mother

-there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had been

-horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face of

-the fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No

-word had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactly

-what had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He

-had wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not,

-in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, of

-course. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he would

-have told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey was

-aware that she was the only person who did or would believe him.

-

-He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother's horses, to go

-up into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wandering

-somewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers.

-The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gotten

-quickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroad

-people had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. The

-warrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reached

-Lowville.

-

-When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before the

-Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might

-have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost.

-Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he

-was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His

-own friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath.

-

-His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in the front seats just to

-the right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly at

-them with a confidence that he was far from feeling. His mother

-smiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with a

-twinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep into

-the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of the

-morning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly and

-unaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged to

-lift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, to

-conquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness

-of everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once the

-pride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he had

-kissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told--that

-he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again.

-And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with

-him.

-

-Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart

-in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail

-of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them.

-Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she

-been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the

-thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the

-hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart

-of her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of her

-boy brought to this pass because of that man.

-

-Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with his

-mother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung

-to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men.

-The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to

-see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had

-seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had

-been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he

-remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him

-squarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget the

-foolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. In

-that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seen

-there not the love of the little girl that he had known but the

-unbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself to

-him for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women of

-earth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity,

-whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts.

-

-It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of his

-cell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcely

-listened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of course, she had

-heard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiar

-with it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not like

-Ruth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know the

-exact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have been

-satisfied with anybody's telling of the matter but his own.

-

-Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind and struck at his

-heart. Could it be that she had over-acted it all? Could it be that

-she had brushed aside his story because she really did not believe it

-and could not listen to it without betraying her doubt? And had she

-blinded him with her pity? Had she acted all--!

-

-He threw himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Might

-not even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have been

-acting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! The

-girl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it was

-only--!

-

-But his good sense brought him back and set him on his feet. Ruth was

-no actress. And if she had been the greatest actress the world had

-ever seen she could not have acted that flooding love light into her

-eyes.

-

-He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cell

-rapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberately

-put his story aside in order to keep the whole of their little time

-together entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made his

-story unimportant.

-

-She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop must

-have gone straight through it from their home in its front line to the

-rear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey had

-heard wild tales of the exploit-- The French people had made many

-wonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of their

-deliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the young

-girl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from the

-angels.

-

-Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed to

-one or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there were

-other men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered Rafe

-Gadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey at

-Rogers' command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogers

-was intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the line

-of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullet

-had struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head.

-

-Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort of

-mysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding

-unwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if Gadbeau there under

-the excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would be

-charged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and place

-to rid himself of the man who had made him his slave!

-

-The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell,

-stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table,

-sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey

-caught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that would

-fit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into many

-blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at

-last came upon the truth--and stuck to it.

-

-Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had

-almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth

-and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence.

-He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they were

-going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth _knew_. The

-Bishop _knew_.

-

-When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw--just what he

-had expected to see. Ruth _knew_. It was not only her love and her

-confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturing

-doubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even his

-mother. Ruth _knew_.

-

-That she should not tell him, or give him any outward hint of what

-she was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a very

-serious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter with

-anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speak

-unnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need,

-she would speak. For the present--Ruth _knew_. That was enough.

-

-When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched him

-as he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had never

-had more than a boy's careless indifference and disregard of details

-in his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the dark

-had now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive as

-those of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop's

-hand on his, the look of the Bishop's eye into his, were not those of

-a man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keep

-his faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man who

-wished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and was

-obliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all.

-No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who _knew_. The Bishop

-_knew_.

-

-It was even easier to understand the Bishop's silence than it had been

-to see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an

-official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. He must not

-speak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course,

-there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent

-man. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop would

-speak.

-

-So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of fact and deduction. So

-he had watched and discovered and reasoned and debated with himself.

-He had not, of course, said a word of these things to any one. The

-result was that, while he listened to the plans which his lawyer,

-young Emmet Dardis, laid for his defence--plans which, in the face of

-the incontestable facts which would be brought against them, would

-certainly amount to little or nothing--he really paid little attention

-to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of the things his heart

-felt, he had built up around himself an inner citadel, as it were, of

-defence which no attack could shake. He had come to feel, had made

-himself feel, that his life and his name were absolutely safe in the

-keeping of these two people--the one a girl who loved him and who

-would give her life for him, and the other a true friend, a man of

-God, a true man. He had nothing to fear. When the time came these two

-would speak. It was true that he was outwardly depressed by the

-concise and bitter conviction in the words of the prosecuting

-attorney. For Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes the most

-terrible of criminal prosecutors--an honest, narrow man who was

-always absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused from the

-moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly he had no fear.

-

-The weight of evidence that would be brought against him, the fact

-that his own best friends would be obliged to give their oaths against

-him, the very feeling of being accused and of having to scheme and

-plan to prove his innocence to a world that--except here and

-there--cared not a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these

-things bowed his head and brought his eyes down to the floor. But they

-could not touch that inner wall that he had built around himself. Ruth

-_knew_; the Bishop _knew_.

-

-The rasping speech of the prosecutor was finished at last.

-

-Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.

-

-The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in hand at once for though

-he had been called as a witness for the prosecution it was well known

-that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney had made no

-attempt to school him beforehand, and he was determined now to allow

-him to give only direct answers to the questions put to him.

-

-Two or three times the old man attempted to explain, at the end of an

-answer, just why he had gone up into the high hills the night before

-the twentieth of August--that he had heard that Rogers and a band of

-men had gone into the woods to start fires. But he was ordered to

-stop, and these parts of his answers were kept out of the record.

-Finally he was rebuked savagely by the Judge and ordered to confine

-himself to answering the lawyer's questions, on pain of being arrested

-for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding that showed the temper

-and the intention of the Judge and a stir of protest ran around the

-courtroom. But old Erskine Beasley was quelled. He gave only the

-answers that the prosecutor forced from him.

-

-"Did you hear a shot fired?" he was asked.

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you hear two shots fired?"

-

-"No."

-

-"Did you see Jeffrey Whiting's gun?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you examine it?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Had it been fired off?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Excused," snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears,

-came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers

-had made the most damaging sort of evidence.

-

-Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. He

-called several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad and

-associated in one way or another with the murdered man in his efforts

-to get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses,

-though they were ready to give details and opinions which might have

-been favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly to

-answering with a word his own carefully thought out questions.

-

-With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of cause

-and effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills to

-offer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to the

-moment when the two had faced each other that morning on Bald

-Mountain.

-

-He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and oppose

-Rogers' work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of a

-family well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had been

-quick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep the

-people from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers' work would then be a

-failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man who

-could get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out at

-his word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at his

-terms.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from many of the owners that they

-would not sell or even sign any paper until such time as he gave them

-the word. Did those promises bind the people to him? They did. Did

-they have the same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained actual

-options on the property? Yes. Would the people stand by their

-promises? Yes. Then Whiting had actually been obtaining what were

-really options to himself, while pretending to hold the people back in

-their own interest? Yes.

-

-The prosecutor went on to draw out answer after answer tending to show

-that it was not really a conflict between the people and the railroad

-that had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, in

-fact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain between

-Jeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully done

-and drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which bald

-negative and affirmative answers invariably carry.

-

-He went on to show that a bitter hatred had grown up between the two

-men. Rogers had been accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the

-way at a time in the early summer when many of the people about French

-Village had been prepared to sign Rogers' options. Rogers had been

-obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account of Whiting's anger.

-He had not returned to the hills until the day before he was killed.

-

-The people in the hills had talked freely of what had happened on Bald

-Mountain on the morning of August twentieth and in the hills during

-the afternoon and night preceding. The prosecutor knew the incidents

-and knew what men had said to each other. He now called Myron

-Stocking.

-

-"Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon of August nineteenth?"

-was the question.

-

-"I went lookin' for him, to tell--"

-

-"Answer, yes or no?" shouted the attorney.

-

-"Yes," the witness admitted sullenly.

-

-"Did you tell him that Rogers was in the hills?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?"

-

-"He followed me," the witness began. But the Judge rapped warningly

-and the attorney yelled:

-

-"Yes or no?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you see Rogers in the morning?"

-

-"Yes, he was settin' fire to--" The Judge hammering furiously with his

-gavel drowned his words. The attorney went on:

-

-"Did you hear a shot?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Did you hear two shots?"

-

-"The fire"--was making a lot of noise, he tried to say. But his voice

-was smothered by eruptions from the court and the attorney. He was

-finally obliged to say that he had heard but one shot. Then he was

-asked:

-

-"What did you say when you came up and saw the dead man?"

-

-"I said, 'Mine got away, Jeff.'"

-

-"What else did you say?"

-

-"I said, 'What's the difference, any of us would've done it if we had

-the chance.'"

-

-"Whiting's gun had been fired?" asked the attorney, working back.

-

-"Yes."

-

-"One question more and I will excuse you," said the attorney, with a

-show of friendliness--"I see it is hard for you to testify against

-your friend. Did you, standing there with the facts fresh before you,

-conclude that Jeffrey Whiting had fired the shot which killed

-Rogers?"

-

-To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that it was not proper, that

-the answer would not be evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply,

-reminding him that this witness had been called by the prosecution,

-that it was not the business of opposing counsel to protect him. The

-witness found himself forced to answer a simple yes.

-

-One by one the other men who had been present that fatal morning were

-called. Their answers were identical, and as each one was forced to

-give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning Jeffrey Whiting

-out of the mouths of his friends who had stood on the very ground of

-the murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for him was closing.

-

-On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do little with the witnesses.

-He was gruffly reminded by the Judge that the witnesses were not his,

-that he must not attempt to draw any fresh stories from them, that he

-might only examine them on the facts which they had stated to the

-District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had pinned his witnesses down

-absolutely to answers of known fact, there was really nothing in their

-testimony that could be attacked.

-

-With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet Dardis let the last

-witness go. The State promptly rested its case.

-

-Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised how pitifully

-inadequate their testimony would be when placed beside the chain of

-facts which the District Attorney had pieced together. They were in

-the main character witnesses, hardly more. They could tell only of

-their long acquaintance with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in him,

-of their firm faith that in holding the people back from giving the

-options to Rogers and the railroad he had been acting in absolute good

-faith and purely in the interests of the people. Not one of these men

-had been near the scene of the murder, for the railroad had planned

-its campaign comprehensively and had subpoenaed for its side every man

-who could have had any direct knowledge of the events leading up to

-the tragedy. As line after line of their testimony was stricken from

-the record, as being irrelevant, it was seen that the defence had

-little or no case. Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single

-objections, made a general ruling that no testimony which did not tend

-to reveal the identity of the man who had shot Rogers could go into

-the record.

-

-Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously watching the course of

-the trial. Beside him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village.

-The little French priest looked up from time to time and guardedly

-studied the long angular white head of his bishop as it towered above

-him. He did not know, but he could guess some of the struggle that was

-going on in the mind and the heart of the Bishop.

-

-The Bishop had come down to the trial to give what aid he could, in

-the way of showing his confidence and faith, to the case of the boy

-who stood in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he had first

-heard of Jeffrey's arrest, he had not thought it possible that, even

-had he been guilty of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be

-convicted under such circumstances. Men must see that the act was in

-defence of life and property. But as he listened to the progress of

-the trial he realised sadly that he had very much underestimated the

-seriousness of the railroad people in the matter and the hold which

-they had upon the machinery of justice in Racquette County.

-

-He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and tell the reason why

-Jeffrey Whiting had entered into this fight against the railroad. He

-would associate himself and his own good name with the things that

-Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the two might stand before men

-together. But he now saw that it would be of no avail. His words would

-be swept aside as irrelevant.

-

-One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. This

-morning on his arrival in Danton, the Bishop had been angered at

-learning that the two men whose lives he had saved that night by the

-lake at French Village had escaped from the train as they were being

-brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at this trial.

-

-Whether they could have told anything of value to Jeffrey Whiting was

-not known. Certainly they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the

-connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop had their confession in

-his pocket at this minute, but there was nothing in it concerning the

-murder. He had intended to read it into the record of the trial. He

-saw that he would not be allowed to do so.

-

-One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey

-Whiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man or

-woman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did not

-kill Samuel Rogers. Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or--He told

-me so.

-

-The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy upon

-this course which had brought him here into this court and into the

-shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actually

-fired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph,

-Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? He

-would.

-

-And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through a

-chain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he,

-Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of these

-circumstances, in a way responsible? He was.

-

-Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: "Rafe

-Gadbeau killed Samuel Rogers--He told me so"--could he thus save

-Jeffrey Whiting from a felon's fate? He could. Nine words, no more,

-would do.

-

-And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what was

-necessary--did not speak those nine words--would he, Joseph Winthrop,

-be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin of

-Jeffrey Whiting? He would.

-

-Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words?

-He would not.

-

-There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break the

-seal and let those nine words escape his lips.

-

-There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop's mind

-as he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boy

-who sat there in the prisoner's stand before him. He felt responsible

-for him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for the

-dead man or the dead man's secret, as such. Yet he would go up there

-and defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was bound

-by the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal

-salvation of men's souls.

-

-But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. His

-course was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothing

-to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between the

-greater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be ground

-between the working of the two.

-

-If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty God had ordained

-the salvation of men through the confession of sin. Therefore the

-salvation of men depended on the inviolability of the seal of the

-confessional. But he did not reason. He merely sat through his

-torture, waiting.

-

-When his name was called, he walked heavily forward and took his place

-standing beside the chair that was set for him.

-

-At Dardis' question, the Bishop began to speak freely and rapidly. He

-told of the coming of Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated

-what he had said to the boy, and from that point went on to sketch the

-things that had been happening in the hills. He wanted to get clearly

-before the minds of the jurymen the fact that he had advised and

-directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything that the boy had done.

-

-The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy to the Bishop. But he

-saw that he must stop him. His story could not but have a powerful

-effect upon even this jury. Looking past the Bishop and addressing

-Dardis, he said:

-

-"Is this testimony pertinent?"

-

-"It is, if Your Honor pardon me," said the Bishop, turning quickly.

-"It goes to prove that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed the

-crime charged, any more than I could have done so."

-

-The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully the logic or the legal

-phraseology of his answer. He hurried on with his story to the jury.

-He related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting. He told of his

-ride into the hills. He told of the capture of the two men in the

-night at French Village. They should be here now as witnesses. They

-had escaped. But he held in his hand a written confession, written and

-sealed by a justice of the peace, made by the two men. He would read

-this to the jury.

-

-He began reading rapidly. But before he had gotten much past the

-opening sentences, the Judge saw that this would not do. It was the

-story of the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in court.

-

-He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when the Bishop stopped, he

-asked:

-

-"Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned in that paper?"

-

-"No, Your Honor. But there are--"

-

-"It is irrelevant," interrupted the Judge shortly. "It cannot go

-before the jury."

-

-The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do no more.

-

-Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not the slightest hope for his

-client--unless--unless. He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession

-to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask the Bishop this morning, if there

-was not some way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The Bishop stood

-waiting for his further questions. There might be some way or some

-help, thought Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was not a part

-of the real confession. He said quickly:

-

-"You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?"

-

-"I was."

-

-"What did he say to you?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair, his eyes eager and

-confident. His heart shouting that here was his deliverance. Here was

-the hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!

-

-The Bishop's eyes fell upon the prisoner for an instant. Then he

-looked full into the eyes of his questioner and he answered:

-

-"Nothing."

-

-"That will do. Thank you, Bishop," said Dardis in a low, broken

-voice.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The light of confidence died

-slowly, reluctantly out of his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop

-had _lied_! He _knew_! And he had _lied_!

-

-As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat, Ruth Lansing saw the

-terrible suffering of the spirit reflected in his face. If she were

-questioned about that night, she must do as he had done.

-

-Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must I do that? _Can_ I do

-that?

-

-Oh! She had never thought it would come to this. How _could_ it happen

-like this! How could any one think that she would ever stand like

-this, alone in all the world, with the fate of her love in her hands,

-and not be able to speak the few little words that would save him to

-her and life!

-

-She _would_ save him! She _would_ speak the words! What did she care

-for that wicked man who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?

-Why should she keep a secret of his? One night in the early summer she

-had lain all through the night in the woods outside a cabin and wished

-for a way to kill that man. Why should she guard a secret that was no

-good to him or to any one now?

-

-Who was it that said she must not speak? The Catholic Church. Then she

-would be a Catholic no longer. She would renounce it this minute. She

-had never promised anything like this. But, on the instant, she knew

-that that would not free her. She knew that she could throw off the

-outward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free to

-speak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal of

-the secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off the

-Church, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty and

-unbreakable across her lips.

-

-That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what she

-saw held her.

-

-What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not

-the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not

-a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and

-fear of death.

-

-What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she

-saw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of God

-from which--Heart break or world burn!--that sin must never be

-disturbed.

-

-As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name,

-a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path.

-Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce,

-piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which

-she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village--the

-terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And

-though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:

-Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-How well that girl knew!

-

-Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not

-been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he

-had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had

-become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was

-always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.

-

-"You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought

-to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?" he asked.

-

-"Yes, sir."

-

-"Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?"

-

-"No, sir."

-

-Then he flashed the question upon her:

-

-"What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?"

-

-Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden,

-startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to

-what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a

-terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and--relief.

-A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. _On my knee I dropped

-and shot him, shot Rogers as he stood._

-

-Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling. Again the inner citadel

-of his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the word

-that would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time.

-Ruth _knew_. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad that

-the Bishop had lied. Ruth _knew_. Ruth would speak.

-

-The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth's brain

-and down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout

-them out to the ends of the earth!

-

-But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered:

-

-"Nothing."

-

-Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand.

-

-Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.

-

-_Ruth_ had _lied_!

-

-The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him.

-

-

-

-

-VIII

-

-SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?

-

-

-The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up the

-street toward the little church. He had not been the same man since

-his experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They had

-aged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering and

-superhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had broken

-the spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and the

-vital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up in

-him. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He had

-roused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has already

-reached almost the full allotted span of life may do these things

-without showing the outward effects of them. But these things had

-struck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quick

-spirit of the man within.

-

-The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into the

-spiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given the

-alternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he would

-have offered the few years that might be his, without question or

-halting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled or

-thought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ.

-Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he had

-never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole to

-receive the secret of another's soul he puts his life in pledge for

-the sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by

-any perplexities or confusion.

-

-Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forced

-upon him. Years ago he had given his own life entire to Christ. The

-snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces farther on would be

-a matter of no more moment than the length of a thread. This world had

-nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from him. But to guard his

-secret at the cost of another life, and that a young, vigorous,

-battling life full of future and promise, full of youth and the glory

-of living, the life of a boy he loved--that was another matter. Never

-had he reckoned with a thing such as that. Life had always been so

-direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To think right, to do

-right, to serve God; these things had always seemed very simple. But

-the thing that he had done to-day was breaking his heart. He could not

-have done otherwise. He had been given no choice, to be sure.

-

-But was it possible that God would have allowed things to come to

-that issue, if somewhere, at some turn in that line of circumstances

-which had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not done a wrong? It

-did not seem possible. Somewhere he had done wrong or he had done

-foolishly--and, where men go to direct the lives of others, to do

-unwisely is much the same as to do wickedly.

-

-What use to go over the things that he had done, the things that he

-had advised? What use to say, here he had done his best, there he

-thought only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere he had spoken

-foolishly, or he had been headstrong in his interference, or he had

-acted without thought and prayer. What use to go over the record? He

-could only carry this matter to God and let Him see his heart.

-

-He stumbled in the half light of the darkened little church and sank

-heavily into the last pew. Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart

-he cried out from afar to the Presence on the little altar, where he,

-Bishop of Alden, had often spoken with much authority.

-

-When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up into the witness stand she

-sank down quietly into a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the

-other girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes. She hung

-upon every fleeting wave of the contending emotions that showed

-themselves on Ruth's face. She was convinced that this girl knew that

-Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and that

-Jeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would be

-called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it at

-the last moment.

-

-Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to hating this girl, for she

-had seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very

-long time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talking

-gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing

-left of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But that

-memory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this

-other girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? What

-would that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was not

-likely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish to

-tell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came to

-her of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then?

-Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep on

-denying?

-

-Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. She

-did not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it

-who had been born to the Faith.

-

-Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it was

-no place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden away

-in her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fear

-hung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint

-might be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had a

-superstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not be

-hidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. She

-knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these days

-when the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers

-and hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting's

-story believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial and

-had sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly to

-every word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearing

-the name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name and

-his memory from the blight of his deed had become more than a

-religion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own

-thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her

-world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled.

-

-When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of

-the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that

-he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They might

-as well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell

-Rafe Gadbeau's secret as to ask it from the Bishop.

-

-But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might do

-under the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbroken

-upon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. She

-would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for

-her!

-

-When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in

-the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl

-stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask

-her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in

-pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw

-the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of

-Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not

-know what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who could

-suffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her love

-under foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steady

-word--"Nothing."

-

-Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at the

-torture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself

-at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from the

-stand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that she

-must tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For Cynthe

-Cardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a

-frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street.

-

-She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to the

-court. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand,

-she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cynthe

-understood. Even M'sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he was

-troubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have business

-with God.

-

-She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw the

-Bishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken.

-

-He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisper

-at his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:

-

-_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse._

-

-The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. But

-here was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrential

-rush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishop

-listened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor the

-power to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing its

-keeper night and day. He knew that it was true, knew what the end of

-it would be. But still he must be careful to give no word that would

-show that he knew what was coming. The French of the hills and of

-Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but it was easy to follow the

-thread of the story. When she had finished and was weeping quietly,

-the Bishop prompted gently.

-

-"And now? my daughter."

-

-"And now, _Mon Pere_, must I tell? I would not tell. I loved Rafe

-Gadbeau. As long as I shall live I shall love him. For his good name I

-would die. But I cannot see the suffering of that girl, Ruth. _Mon

-Pere_, it is too much! I cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before

-men and call my love a murderer. Consider, _Mon Pere_. There is

-another way. I, too, am guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I

-would have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do many

-things that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I went

-to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would have

-killed that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When I

-saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, _Mon Pere_, I am

-guilty. And I called joyfully to my love to run with me and save

-himself, for he was now free from that man forever. But he ran in the

-path of the fire because he feared those other men.

-

-"But see, _Mon Pere_, I am guilty. I will go and tell the court that I

-am the guilty one. I will say that my hand shot that man. See, I will

-tell the story. I have told it many times to myself. Such a straight

-story I shall tell. And they will believe. I will make them believe.

-And they will not hurt a girl much," she said, dropping back upon her

-native shrewdness to strengthen her plea. "The railroad does not care

-who killed Rogers. They want only to punish the young Whiting. And the

-court will believe, as I shall tell it."

-

-"But, my daughter," said the Bishop, temporising. "It would not be

-true. We must not lie."

-

-"But M'sieur the Bishop, himself," the girl argued swiftly, evidently

-separating the priest in the confessional from the great bishop in his

-public walk, "he himself, on the stand--"

-

-The girl stopped abruptly.

-

-The Bishop held the silence of the grave.

-

-"_Mon Pere_ will make me tell, then--the truth," she began. "_Mon

-Pere_, I cannot! I--!"

-

-"Let us consider," the Bishop broke in deliberately. "Suppose he had

-told this thing to you when he was dying. You would have said to him:

-Your soul may not rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed.

-Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?"

-

-"To escape Hell," said the girl quickly, "yes. He would have said:

-Tell everything; tell anything!" In the desolate forlornness of her

-grief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, she

-had known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly--and had loved

-him. Would always love him.

-

-"We will not speak of Hell," said the Bishop gently. "In that hour he

-would have seen the right. He would have told you to tell."

-

-"But he confessed to M'sieur the Bishop himself," she retorted

-quickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelate

-in person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound Moral

-Theology back upon him with a vengeance, "and he gave _him_ no leave

-to speak."

-

-The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground.

-

-"If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?"

-

-"_Mon Pere_, with the bones of my hands!"

-

-"Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who was

-blind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where a

-great light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not know

-here--Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He stands

-alone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God and

-cries: _Seigneur Dieu_, whither go I?

-

-"And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the open

-place. Would he come back to the world?

-

-"And he answers: 'No, my God; but I have left a debt behind and

-another man's life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward

-with that debt unpaid.'

-

-"Then God: 'And is there none to cancel the debt? Is there not one in

-all that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none

-loved you who will pay the debt?'

-

-"And he will answer with a lifted heart: 'My God, yes; there was one,

-a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right;

-only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debt

-will be right; my God, let me go.'"

-

-The Bishop's French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully put

-together. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to

-her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little break

-of joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved in

-spite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins of

-life. And her love leaped up quickly to the ideal and the illusions

-that every woman craves for and clings to.

-

-"This," the Bishop was going on quietly, "is the new man we are to

-consider; the one who stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not

-hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he care for the opinions

-or the words that are said here? See, he stands in the great open

-space, all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God and tell Him

-all. Will you be afraid to stand in the court and tell these people,

-who do not matter at all?

-

-"Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It is not for the sake of

-Ruth Lansing. It is because the man you loved calls back to you, from

-where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom he has now learned

-tells him must be done. He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He

-would have you tell."

-

-"_Mon Pere_, I will tell the tale," said the girl simply as she rose

-from her knees. "I will go quickly, while I have yet the courage."

-

-The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel rooms in the courthouse

-and sent for Dardis.

-

-"This girl," he told the lawyer, "has a story to tell. I think you

-would do wisely to put her on the stand and let her tell it in her own

-way. She will make no mistakes. They will not be able to break her

-down."

-

-Then the Bishop went back to take up again his business with God.

-

-As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey Whiting had been put

-upon the stand in his own defence. There was nothing he could tell

-which the jurors had not already heard in one form or another.

-Everybody had heard what he had said that morning on Bald Mountain. He

-had not been believed even then, by men who had never had a reason to

-doubt his simple word. There was little likelihood that he would be

-believed here now by these jurors, whose minds were already fixed by

-the facts and the half truths which they had been hearing. But there

-was some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he

-clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a

-single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale

-that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell

-what might strike a man on a jury. So Dardis argued.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel wished him to tell his

-story he would do so. It would not matter. His own friends did not

-believe his story. Nobody believed it. Two people _knew_ that it was

-true. And those two people had stood up there upon the stand and sworn

-that they did not know. One of them was a good man, a man of God, a

-man he would have trusted with every dear thing that life held. That

-man had stood up there and lied. The other was a girl whom he loved,

-and who, he was sure, loved him.

-

-It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie--or maybe she did not

-consider it a lie: he had seen her suffer terribly in the telling of

-it. He was beginning to feel that he did not care much what was the

-outcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death,

-or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty common

-deaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one big

-thing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and took

-from him his interest in every other fact in the world.

-

-Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had never before in her life

-told a lie. Why should she have ever told a lie. She had never had

-reason to fear any one; and they only lie who fear. He would have said

-that the fear of death could not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she

-had stood up there and lied.

-

-For what? For a church. For a religion to which she had foolishly

-given herself. For that she had given up him. For that she had given

-up her conscience. For that she had given up her own truth!

-

-It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and listened to it.

-

-He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer to a question which

-meant life or death to him. She had known that. She could not have

-escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was no way in which she

-could have fooled herself or been persuaded into believing that she

-was not lying or that she was not taking from him his last hope of

-life.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What

-was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed

-dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision.

-

-He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until some

-one told him to be seated. He answered the questions put him

-automatically, without looking either at the questioner or at the

-jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watching

-the alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-day

-wondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would he

-confess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb?

-

-Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had raced

-forward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He looked

-vacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his words

-stricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed no

-resentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had run

-away from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he did

-not seem to notice the Judge's anger in cautioning him not to mention

-the fire again.

-

-At his counsel's direction, he went through a lifeless pantomime of

-falling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now

-the man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killed

-Rogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forward

-to look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away.

-

-Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule

-out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet

-going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a

-simple story. The thing _might_ have happened. It was entirely

-credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of

-Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not

-the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his

-life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was

-now living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying,

-many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping man

-might have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, though

-puzzled by the manner of the recital.

-

-Even Lemuel Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to

-any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went

-back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly

-without any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to make

-him say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of the

-story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horrible

-fact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of her

-church.

-

-When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he was

-again the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of this

-wholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called.

-He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squires

-would begin his speech at once.

-

-He noticed that this witness was a girl from French Village whom he

-had seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau's

-girl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything,

-and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn't the poor little

-thing look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here to

-bring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at the

-girl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matter

-anyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not let

-them hurt her.

-

-Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe against

-interruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to say

-nothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers

-and nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to

-relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very

-beginning:

-

-"Four years ago," she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was

-killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe

-Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know

-who had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife

-and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept the

-knife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the

-price of his silence.

-

-"Last summer this man Rogers came into the woods looking for some one

-to help get the people to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He

-showed him the knife. He told him that whatever he laid upon him to

-do, that he must do. He made him lie to the people. He made him attack

-the young Whiting. He made him do many things that he would not do,

-for Rafe Gadbeau was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And Rafe

-Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear that this man had put upon

-him.

-

-"At times he said to me, 'Cynthe, I will kill this man one day, and

-that will be the end of all.' But I said, '_Non, non, mon Rafe_, we

-will marry in the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will never

-see you again, and we will not know that he ever lived.'"

-

-Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was telling over to herself the

-tragedy of her little life and her great love. Genius could not have

-told her how better to tell it for the purpose for which her story was

-here needed. Dardis thanked his stars that he had taken the Bishop's

-advice, to let her get through with it in her own way.

-

-"But it was not time for us to marry yet," she went on. "Then came the

-morning of the nineteenth August. I was sitting on the back steps of

-my aunt's house by the Little Tupper, putting apples on a string to

-hang up in the hot sun to dry." The Judge turned impatiently on his

-bench and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and her eyes blazed

-angrily at him. Who was he to shrug his shoulders! Was it not

-important, this story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter the

-Judge gave her the most rigid attention.

-

-"Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that he

-was troubled. 'What is it, _mon Rafe_?' I asked. He groaned and said

-one bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message from

-Rogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and six

-horses. 'What to do, _mon Rafe_?' 'I do not know,' he said, 'though I

-can guess. But I will not tell you, Cynthe.'

-

-"'You will not go, _mon Rafe_. Promise me you will not go. Hide away,

-and we will slip down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married--me, I

-do not care for the grand wedding in the church here--and then we will

-get away to Beaupre. Promise me.'

-

-"'_Bien_, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to him.'

-

-"But it was a man's promise. I knew he would go in the end.

-

-"I watched and followed. I did not know what I could do. But I

-followed, hoping that somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done

-what they intended and we could run away together with clean hands.

-

-"When I saw that they had gone toward the railroad I turned aside and

-climbed up to the Bald Mountain. I knew they would all come back

-there together. I waited until it was dark and they came. They would

-do nothing in the night. I waited for the morning. Then I would find

-Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I was a wild girl that

-night. If I could have found that Rogers and come near him I would

-have killed him myself. I hated him, for he had made me much

-suffering.

-

-"In the morning I was in the woods near them. I saw Rafe. But that

-Rogers kept him always near him.

-

-"I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to look. Rafe was a little

-way from him and coming slowly toward me. I called to him. He did not

-hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the look of one who has made

-up his mind to kill. Again I called to him. But he did not hear.

-

-"I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the wood. Now he came

-running back toward Rafe. He stopped and turned.

-

-"The young Whiting was on his knee with the rifle raised to shoot. I

-looked to Rafe. The sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face.

-The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head. I saw. The young

-Whiting had not fired at all.

-

-"I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. 'Come with me, _mon

-Rafe_,' I called. 'I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in the

-night. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will cover all. None

-will ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come.'

-

-"But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him at

-least to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not

-wish to be separated from him in this world or the next.

-

-"But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those other

-men, the old M'sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind him

-and the fire."

-

-She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Her

-story was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voice

-rose into a cry of farewell as she told the end.

-

-"Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God,

-who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and

-running on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and God

-took him away.

-

-"That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe."

-

-Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the

-story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its

-naive and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature

-to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily

-her own unthought, clipped expressions than they would any more

-connected elaborations he might try to make her give.

-

-Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been

-a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of

-the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into

-court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a

-personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case.

-But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story was

-true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it

-was true.

-

-His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing.

-The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading

-nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury.

-

-It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the

-facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put

-aside the girl's dramatic story. He was still convinced that the

-prisoner was guilty. But--the girl's story was true. His mind was not

-nimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless under

-it. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stood

-aside to grapple with that one astounding thing.

-

-The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these

-hampering limitations of mind. He had always regarded the taking and

-discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All

-democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to

-a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county

-had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.

-

-He charged the jury that the girl's testimony was no more credible

-than that of a dozen other witnesses--which was quite true. All had

-told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided

-smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act.

-No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that.

-

-He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the

-comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the

-jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he

-had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view

-of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts

-by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt

-which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing

-clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.

-

-Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an

-agreement.

-

-The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood up.

-

-The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying:

-

-"Not guilty."

-

-The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his name

-was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly

-for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for

-their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little

-Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something

-real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole

-political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the

-railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love

-story of an ignorant French girl from the hills.

-

-Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been a

-prisoner and brought him to his mother.

-

-Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother's eyes as he

-stooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that all

-the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the

-sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey,

-trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him

-fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake

-off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they

-had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his

-heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had

-done to her in these four weeks and in these two days.

-

-And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to

-hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have

-done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all

-that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion

-of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to

-what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man's name.

-

-Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon her

-with a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl

-as a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voice

-he said brutally:

-

-"You lied!"

-

-Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words.

-Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, could

-not tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under the

-awful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked his

-life and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knew

-it. All the world could talk freely about what she had done except

-only herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his head

-down to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into his

-ear that he was right, or try to tell him why she had not been able

-to speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives,

-unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as the

-line of death.

-

-When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight.

-

-The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he

-came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into

-the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they

-had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him.

-They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people were

-not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and

-their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which

-he was quick to notice.

-

-During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his

-waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle

-that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and

-once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click

-into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his

-horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge

-and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the

-nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.

-

-When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full

-news of the last four weeks.

-

-It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings

-has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the

-vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never

-for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course

-upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad

-must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying

-along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must

-be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The

-incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only

-as they contributed to the general result.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There

-were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate

-committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an

-obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by

-procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for

-the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything

-they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no

-animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as

-impersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction.

-Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely

-incidental.

-

-Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as

-an instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been

-Rogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had been

-used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey

-Whiting had been put out of the way--definitely, the railroad had

-hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things

-were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying

-through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old

-Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills

-during the four weeks of his removal from the scene.

-

-The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of

-the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad

-would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved

-right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned

-instantly of Rogers' death and had instantly set to work to use that

-as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was

-only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main

-business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with what

-seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands

-which the railroad coveted.

-

-They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun to

-rebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The whole

-people were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scattering

-which the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it was

-worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through the

-thin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farming

-for many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that Jeffrey

-Whiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely to

-be convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would win

-in the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they could

-not see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do?

-

-Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep the

-people in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suit

-the railroad's purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one that

-was now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun to

-fear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was an

-enemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomed

-them. It struck in the dark, and no man's hand could be raised to

-punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark of

-officials.

-

-The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still

-down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant

-help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain

-ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not

-roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them

-before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of

-winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a

-claim, for the mere privilege of living.

-

-When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had

-been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had

-thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now

-ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and

-a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now

-put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing

-blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it

-only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!

-

-The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the

-full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The

-hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red

-sun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps,

-where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the

-autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should

-have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but

-blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the

-east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle

-of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the

-eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!

-

-Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here

-were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen

-built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what

-shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were

-enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again,

-for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and

-good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names were

-written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly

-needful.

-

-Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from

-sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed

-them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men

-and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe

-Cardinal.

-

-The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting.

-Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible

-sacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl a

-great deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. He

-struck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush the

-memory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His body

-had no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merely

-served to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyond

-him.

-

-At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the night

-had told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at the

-railroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take from

-them the little that was left to them. They had been fools that they

-had not struck in the beginning when they had first found that they

-were being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the early

-summer their homes would not have been burned and they would not be

-now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter.

-

-Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had not

-struck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the

-law. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hills

-in ashes, their families scattered and going hungry!

-

-If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end of

-the rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as he

-could, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and their

-own.

-

-If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen for

-days, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into the

-hills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothing

-was being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight for

-them and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager to

-fight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If

-the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it,

-were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it was

-their own?

-

-If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad clear

-down below the line of the hills and put the work back for months.

-They would have sheriffs' posses out against them. They would have to

-fight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up against

-them. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia,

-but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more than

-militia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and their

-people!

-

-Some men would die. But some men always died, in every cause. And in

-the end the people of the whole State would judge the cause!

-

-Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty?

-

-Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys of

-ashes where their homes had been, took what food the French people

-could spare them, and mounted silently behind him.

-

-Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars of the homes of

-many of them, for half the day they rode, saving every strain they

-could upon their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the southern

-divide and down the slope they thundered to strike the railroad at

-Leavit's bridge.

-

-

-

-

-IX

-

-THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD

-

-

-The wires coming down from the north were flashing the railroad's call

-for help. A band of madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit's

-Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge. They had raced down

-the line, driving the frightened labourers before them, tearing up the

-ties and making huge fires of them on which they threw the new rails,

-heating and twisting these beyond any hope of future usefulness.

-

-Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction had fled literally

-for their lives. The men of the hills had no quarrel with them. They

-preferred not to injure them. But they were infuriated men with their

-wrongs fresh in mind and with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The

-workmen on the line needed no second warning. They would take no

-chances with an enemy of this kind. They were used to violence and

-rioting in their own labour troubles, but this was different. This was

-war. They threw themselves headlong upon handcars and work engines and

-bolted down the line, carrying panic before them.

-

-In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting at their head had

-ridden down and destroyed nearly twenty miles of very costly

-construction work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left in the

-hills and if the men were not stopped they would not leave a single

-rail in all the hill country where they were masters.

-

-The call of the railroad was at first frantic with panic and fright.

-That was while little men who had lost their wits were nominally in

-charge of a situation in which nobody knew what to do. Then suddenly

-the tone of the railroad's call changed. Big men, used to meeting all

-sorts of things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold. They had the

-telegraph lines of the State in their hands. There was no more

-frightened appeal. Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in

-Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties. They were told to swear

-in as many deputies as they could lead. They were to forget the

-consideration of expense. The railroad would pay and feed the men.

-They were to think of nothing but to get the greatest possible number

-of fighting men upon the line at once.

-

-Then a single great man, a man who sat in a great office building in

-New York and held his hand upon every activity in the State, saw the

-gravity of the business in the hills and put himself to work upon it.

-He took no half measures. He had no faith in little local authorities,

-who would be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill people in this

-battle.

-

-He called the Governor of the State from Albany to his office. He

-ordered the Governor to turn out the State's armed forces and set them

-in motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically that the

-Governor had not had the sense to do this of himself. The Governor

-bridled and hesitated. The Governor had been living on the fiction

-that he was the executive head of the State. It took Clifford W.

-Stanton just three minutes to disabuse him completely and forever of

-this illusion. He explained to him just why he was Governor and by

-whose permission. Also he pointed out that the permission of the great

-railroad system that covered the State would again be necessary in

-order that Governor Foster might succeed himself. Then the great man

-sent Wilbur Foster back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment of

-the National Guard for service in the hills.

-

-Before the second night three companies of the militia had passed

-through Utica and had gone up the line of the U. & M. Their orders

-were to avoid killing where possible and to capture all of the hill

-men that they could. The railroad wished to have them tried and

-imprisoned by the impartial law of the land. For it was characteristic

-of the great power which in those days ruled the State that when it

-had outraged every sense of fair play and common humanity to attain

-its ends it was then ready to spend much money creating public opinion

-in favour of itself.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the cover of the woods above

-Milton's Crossing and watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars

-come creeping up the grade from the south. This was the last of the

-hills. He had refused to let his men go farther. Behind him lay fifty

-miles of new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open, settled

-country. His men, once the fever of destruction had begun to run in

-their blood, had wished to sweep on down into the villages and carry

-their work through them. But he had stood firm. This was their own

-country where they belonged and where the railroad was the interloper.

-Here they were at home. Here there was a certain measure of safety for

-them even in the destructive and lawless work that they had begun.

-They had done enough. They had pushed the railroad back to the edge of

-the hills. They had roused the men of the hills behind them. Where he

-had started with his seventy-two friends, there were now three hundred

-well-armed men in the woods around him. Here in their cover they could

-hold the line of the railroad indefinitely against almost any force

-that might be sent against them.

-

-But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership and responsibility was

-already at work upon him. The burning, rankling anger that had driven

-him onward so that he had carried everything and everybody near him

-into this business of destruction was now dulled down to a slow, dull

-hate that while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave him

-time to think. Those men coming up there on the cars were not

-professional soldiers, paid to fight wherever there was fighting to be

-done. Neither did they care anything for the railroad that they should

-come up here to fight for it. Why did they come?

-

-They had joined their organisation for various reasons that usually

-had very little to do with fighting. They were clerks and office men,

-for the most part, from the villages and factories of the central part

-of the State. The militia companies had attracted them because the

-armouries in the towns had social advantages to offer, because

-uniforms and parade appeal to all boys, because they were sons of

-veterans and the military tradition was strong in them. Jeffrey

-Whiting's strong natural sense told him the substance of these things.

-He could not regard these boys as deadly enemies to be shot down

-without mercy or warning. They had taken their arms at a word of

-command and had come up here to uphold the arm of the State. If the

-railroad was able to control the politics of the State and so was able

-to send these boys up here on its own business, then other people were

-to blame for the situation. Certainly these boys, coming up here to do

-nothing but what their duty to the State compelled them to do; they

-were not to be blamed.

-

-His men were now urging him to withdraw a little distance into the

-hills to where the bed of the road ran through a defile between two

-hills. The soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the line of

-what had been the railroad, covering the workmen and engineers who

-would be coming on behind them. If they were allowed to go on up into

-the defile without warning or opposition they could be shot down by

-the hill men from almost absolute safety. If he had been dealing with

-a hated enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed to that. But

-to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of

-them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing

-in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate.

-Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they were

-to expect.

-

-He saw them leave the cars at the end of the broken line and take up

-their march in a rough column of fours along the roadbed. He was

-surprised and puzzled. He had expected them to work along the line

-only as fast as the men repaired the rails behind them. He had not

-thought that they would go away from their cars.

-

-Then he understood. They were not coming merely to protect the

-rebuilding of the railroad. They had their orders to come straight

-into the hills, to attack and capture him and his men. The railroad

-was not only able to call the State to protect itself. It had called

-upon the State to avenge its wrongs, to exterminate its enemies. His

-men had understood this better than he. Probably they were right. This

-thing might as well be fought out from the first. In the end there

-would be no quarter. They could defeat this handful of troops and

-drive them back out of the hills with an ease that would be almost

-ridiculous. But that would not be the end.

-

-The State would send other men, unlimited numbers of them, for it must

-and would uphold the authority of its law. Jeffrey Whiting did not

-deceive himself. Probably he had not from the beginning had any doubt

-as to what would be the outcome of this raid upon the railroad. The

-railroad itself had broken the law of the State and the law of

-humanity. It had defied every principle of justice and common decency.

-It had burned the homes of law-supporting, good men in the hills. Yet

-the law had not raised a hand to punish it. But now when the railroad

-itself had suffered, the whole might of the State was ready to be set

-in motion to punish the men of the hills who had merely paid their

-debt.

-

-But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself that he had not

-foreseen all this from the outset. Those days of thinking in jail had

-given him an insight into realities that years of growth and

-observation of things outside might not have produced in him. He had

-been given time to see that some things are insurmountable, that

-things may be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still persist

-and go on indefinitely. Youth does not readily admit this. Jeffrey

-Whiting had recognised it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had

-led these men, his friends, men who trusted him, upon this mad

-raid. They had come without the clear vision of the end which he now

-realised had been his from the start. They had thought that they

-could accomplish something, that they had some chance of winning a

-victory over the railroad. They had believed that the power of the

-State would intervene to settle the differences between them and

-their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting knew, must have known all along, that the

-moment a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength of the

-State would be put forth to capture these men and punish them. There

-would be no compromise. There would be no bargaining. If they

-surrendered and gave themselves up now they would be jailed for

-varying terms. If they did not, if they stayed here and fought, some

-of them would be killed and injured and in one way or another all

-would suffer in the end.

-

-He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth of this struck him with

-startling clearness now. He had led them into this without letting

-them see the full extent of what they were doing, as he must have seen

-it.

-

-There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed now and scattered

-themselves through the hills few of them would ever be identified. And

-if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad would be almost

-satisfied with punishing him. It was the one just and right thing to

-do.

-

-He went swiftly among the men where they stood among the trees,

-waiting with poised rifles for the word to fire upon the advancing

-soldiers, and told them what they must do. He had deceived them. He

-had not told them the whole truth as he himself knew it. They must

-leave at once, scattering up among the hills and keeping close mouths

-as to where they had been and what they had done. He would go down and

-give himself up, for if the railroad people once had him in custody

-they would not bother so very much about bringing the others to

-punishment.

-

-His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder. They did not

-understand, unless it might be that he had suddenly gone crazy. There

-was an enemy marching up the line toward them, bent upon killing or

-capturing them. They turned from him and without a spoken word,

-without a signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the front

-of the oncoming troops. The battle was on!

-

-The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed to shoot deer and

-foxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of the

-soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with scythes. Not one of

-them was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had

-begun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was as

-though they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be no

-advance.

-

-These soldiers had never before been shot at. The very restraint which

-the hill men had shown in not killing any of them in that volley

-proved to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise how deadly

-was the aim and the judgment of the invisible enemy somewhere in the

-woods there before them. To their credit, they did not drop their arms

-or run. They stood stunned and paralysed, as much by the suddenness

-with which the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.

-

-Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous command for them

-to halt, and ordering them to carry the wounded men back to the cars.

-For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they would again advance or

-would put themselves into some kind of defence formation and hold the

-ground on which they stood.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two other trains come slowly

-creeping up the line. From the second train he saw men leaping down

-who did not take up any sort of military formation. These he knew were

-sheriffs' posses, fighting men sworn in because they were known to be

-fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted in the chase of

-the human animal. He had often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and

-he knew that they were an enemy of a character far different from

-those harmless boys who could not hit a mark smaller than the side of

-a hill. These men would follow doggedly, persistently into the highest

-of the hills, saving themselves, but never letting the prey slip from

-their sight, dividing the hill men, separating them, cornering them

-until they should have tracked them down one by one and either

-captured or killed them all.

-

-These men did not attempt to advance along the line of the road. They

-stepped quickly out into the undergrowth and began spreading a thin

-line of men to either side.

-

-Then he saw that the third train, although they were soldiers, took

-their lesson from the men who had just preceded them. They left the

-tracks and spreading still farther out took up the wings of a long

-line that was now stretching east to west along the fringe of the

-hills. The soldiers in the centre retired a little way down the

-roadbed, stood bunched together for a little time while their officers

-evidently conferred together, then left the road by twos and fours and

-began spreading out and pushing the other lines out still farther. It

-was perfect and systematic work, he agreed, that could not have been

-better done if he and his companions had planned it for their own

-capture.

-

-There were easily eight hundred men there in front, he judged; men

-well armed and ready for an indefinite stay in the hills, with a

-railroad at their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire State

-behind them. And the State was ready to send more and more men after

-these if it should be necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of

-other men were being held in readiness to follow these or were perhaps

-already on their way. He saw the end.

-

-Those lines would sweep up slowly, remorselessly and surround his men.

-If they stood together they would be massacred. If they separated they

-would be hunted down one by one.

-

-Their only chance was to scatter at once and ride back to where their

-homes had been. This time he implored them to take their chance,

-begged them to save themselves while they could. But he might have

-known that they would do nothing of the kind. Already they were

-breaking away and spreading out to meet that distending line in front

-of them. Nothing short of a miracle could now save them from

-annihilation, and Jeffrey Whiting was not expecting a miracle. There

-was nothing to be done but to take command and sell his life along

-with theirs as dearly as possible.

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-The echoes of the outbreak in the hills ran up and down the State. Men

-who had followed the course of things through the past months, men

-who knew the spoken story of the fire in the hills which no newspaper

-had dared to print openly, understood just what it meant. The men up

-there had been goaded to desperation at last. But wise men agreed

-quietly with each other that they had done the very worst thing that

-could have been done. The injury they had done the railroad would

-amount to very little, comparatively, in the end, while it would give

-the railroad an absolutely free hand from now on. The people would be

-driven forever out of the lands which the railroad wished to possess.

-There would be no legislative hindrances now. The people had doomed

-themselves.

-

-The echoes reached also to two million other men throughout the State

-who did not understand the matter in the least. These looked up a

-moment from the work of living and earning a living to sympathise

-vaguely with the foolish men up there in the hills who had attacked

-the sacred and awful rights of railroad property. It was too bad.

-Maybe there were some rights somewhere in the case. But who could

-tell? And the two million, the rulers and sovereigns of the State,

-went back again to their business.

-

-The echo came to Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, almost before a

-blow had been struck. It is hardly too much to say that he was

-listening for it. He knew his people, kindly, lagging of speech, slow

-to anger; but, once past a certain point of aggravation, absolutely

-heedless and reckless of consequences.

-

-He did not stop to compute just how much he himself was bound up in

-the causes and consequences of what had happened and what was

-happening in the hills. He had given advice. He had thought with the

-people and only for the people.

-

-He saw, long before it was told him in words, the wild ride down

-through the hills to strike the railroad, the fury of destruction, the

-gathering of the forces of the State to punish.

-

-Here was no time for self-examination or self-judgment. Wherein Joseph

-Winthrop had done well, or had failed, or had done wrong, was of no

-moment now.

-

-One man there was in all the State, in all the nation, who could give

-the word that would now save the people of the hills. Clifford W.

-Stanton who had sat months ago in his office in New York and had set

-all these things going, whose ruthless hand was to be recognised in

-every act of those which had driven the people to this madness, his

-will and his alone could stay the storm that was now raging in the

-hills.

-

-Once the Bishop had seen that man do an act of supreme and unselfish

-bravery. It was an act of both physical and moral courage the like of

-which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was an act which had

-revealed in Clifford W. Stanton a depth of strong fineness that no man

-would have suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of faraway

-youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten. And he knew that men do not

-rise to such heights without having very deep in them the nobility to

-make it possible and at times inevitable that they should rise to

-those heights.

-

-After these years and the encrusting strata of compromise and

-cowardice and selfishness which years and life lay upon the fresh

-heart of the youth of men, could that depth of nobility in the soul of

-Clifford W. Stanton again be touched?

-

-Almost before the forces of the State were in motion against the

-people of the hills, the Bishop, early of a morning, walked into the

-office of Clifford Stanton.

-

-Stanton was a smaller man than the Bishop, and though younger than the

-latter by some half-dozen years, it was evident that he had burned up

-the fuel of life more rapidly. Where the Bishop looked and spoke and

-moved with the deliberate fixity of the settling years, Stanton acted

-with a quick nervousness that shook just a perceptible little. The

-spiritual strength of restraint and inward thinking which had

-chiselled the Bishop's face into a single, simple expression of will

-power was not to be found in the other's face. In its stead there was

-a certain steel-trap impression, as though the man behind the face

-had all his life refused to be certain of anything until the jaws of

-the trap had set upon the accomplished fact.

-

-Physically the two men were much of a type. You would have known them

-anywhere for New Englanders of the generation that has disappeared

-almost completely in the last twenty years. They had been boys at

-Harvard together, though not of the same class. They had been together

-in the Civil War, though the nature of their services had been

-infinitely diverse. They had met here and there casually and

-incidentally in the business of life. But they faced each other now

-virtually as strangers, and with a certain tightening grip upon

-himself each man realised that he was about to grapple with one of the

-strongest willed men that he had ever met, and that he must test out

-the other man to the depths and be himself tried out to the limit of

-his strength.

-

-"It is some years since I've seen you, Bishop. But we are both busy

-men. And--well-- You know I am glad to have you come to see me. I need

-not tell you that."

-

-The Bishop accepted the other man's frank courtesy and took a chair

-quietly. Stanton watched him carefully. The Bishop was showing the

-last few years a good deal, he thought. In reality it was the last

-month that the Bishop was showing. But it did not show in the

-steady, untroubled glow of his eyes. The Bishop wasted no time on

-preliminaries.

-

-"I have come on business, of course, Mr. Stanton," he began. "It is a

-very strange and unusual business. And to come at it rightly I must

-tell you a story. At the end of the story I will ask you a question.

-That will be my whole business."

-

-The other man said nothing. He did not understand and he never spoke

-until he was sure that he understood. The Bishop plunged into his

-story.

-

-"One January day in 'Sixty-five' I was going up the Shenandoah alone.

-My command had left me behind for two days of hospital service at

-Cross Keys. They were probably some twenty miles ahead of me and would

-be crossing over the divide towards Five Forks and the east. I thought

-I knew a way by which I could cut off a good part of the distance that

-separated me from them, so I started across the Ridge by a path which

-would have been impossible for troops in order.

-

-"I was right. I did cut off the distance which I had expected and came

-down in the early afternoon upon a good road that ran up the eastern

-side of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself that I would be

-with my men before dark, when a troop of Confederate cavalry came

-pelting over a rise in the road behind me.

-

-"I leaped my horse back into the brush at the side of the road and

-waited. They would sweep on past and allow me to go on my way. Behind

-them came a troop of our own horse pursuing hotly. The Confederate

-horses were well spent. I saw that the end of the pursuit was not far

-off. The Confederates--some detached band of Early's men, I

-imagine--realised that they would soon be run down. Just where I had

-left the road there was a sharp turn. Here the Confederates threw

-themselves from their horses and drew themselves across the road. They

-were in perfect ambush, for they could be seen scarcely fifteen yards

-back on the narrow road.

-

-"I broke from the bush and fled back along the road to warn our men.

-But I did no good. They were beyond all stopping, or hearing even, as

-they came yelling around the turn of the road.

-

-"For three minutes there was some of the sharpest fighting I ever saw,

-there in the narrow road, before what remained of the Confederates

-broke after their horses and made off again. In the very middle of the

-fight I noticed two young officers. One was a captain, the other a

-lieutenant. I knew them. I knew their story. I believe I was the only

-man living who knew that story. Probably _I_ did not know the whole of

-that story.

-

-"The lieutenant had maligned the captain. He had said of him the one

-thing that a soldier may not say of another. They had fought once. Why

-they had been kept in the same command I do not know.

-

-"Now in the very hottest of this fight, without apparently the

-slightest warning, the lieutenant threw himself upon the captain,

-attacking him viciously with his sword. For a moment they struggled

-there, unnoticed in the dust of the conflict. Then the captain,

-swinging free, struck the lieutenant's sword from his hand. The latter

-drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It missed. By what miracle I

-do not know. All this time the captain had held his sword poised to

-lunge, within easy striking distance of the other's throat. But he had

-made no attempt to thrust. As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his

-arm to strike. Instead he looked a long moment into the lieutenant's

-eyes. The latter was screaming what were evidently taunts into his

-face. The captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at the now

-breaking line of Confederates.

-

-"I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have seen brave men bravely

-refrain from killing. That was the bravest thing I ever saw."

-

-Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of him. He gave no sign

-of hearing. He was living over for himself that scene on a lonely,

-forgotten Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:

-

-"The lieutenant died, a soldier's death, the next day."

-

-"I knew," said the Bishop quietly. "My question is: Are you the same

-brave man with a soldier's brave, great heart that you were that

-day?"

-

-For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring directly at something

-that was not in the visible world. The question had sprung upon him

-out of the dead past. What right had this man, what right had any man

-to face him with it?

-

-He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:

-

-"You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of the tragedy of my life

-as it whirled by you on the road! How dare you come here to tell me

-the little bit of it you saw?"

-

-"Because," said the Bishop swiftly, "you have forgotten how great and

-brave a man you are."

-

-Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He was stirred to the depths

-of feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotion

-and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. His

-lifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kept

-him waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it was

-merely the instinct of self-defence.

-

-"For months," the Bishop was going on quietly, "the people of my hills

-have been harassed by you in your unfair efforts to get possession of

-the lands upon which their fathers built their homes. You have tried

-to cheat them. You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to debauch

-a legislature in your attempt to overcome them. I have here in my

-pocket the sworn confessions of two men who stood in the shadow of

-death and said that they had been sent to burn a whole countryside

-that you and your associates coveted--to burn the people in their

-homes like the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that act to

-within two men of you. And I can sit here, Clifford Stanton, and look

-you in the eye man to man and tell you that I _know_ you gave the

-suggestion. And you cannot look back and deny it. I cannot take you

-into a court of law in this State and prove it. We both know the

-futility of talking of that. But I can take you, I do take you this

-minute into the court of your own heart--where I know a brave man

-lives--and convict you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If the

-whole world stood here accusing you would we know it any the better?

-

-"Now my people have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the law

-into their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. They

-have done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? You

-have power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of the

-land. They did not understand. They did not know you. They have been

-misled. They have listened to men like me preaching: 'Right shall

-prevail: Justice shall conquer.' And where does right prevail? And

-when shall justice conquer? No doubt you have said these phrases

-yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers taught us to say them.

-But are they true? Does justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can

-say. I ask you, who have the answer in your power. Does right prevail?

-Then give my stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?

-Then see that they come to no harm.

-

-"I dare to put this thing raw to your face because I know the man that

-once lived within you. I saw you--!"

-

-"Don't harp on that," Stanton cut in viciously. "You know nothing

-about it."

-

-"I _do_ harp on that. I have come here to harp on that. Do you think

-that if I had not with my eyes seen that thing I would have come near

-you at all? No. I would have branded you before all men for the thing

-that you have done. I would have given these confessions which I hold

-to the world. I would have denounced you as far as tongue and pen

-would go to every man who through four years gave blood at your side.

-I would have braved the rebuke of my superiors and maybe the

-discipline of my Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of men. I

-would have made your name hated in the ears of little children. But I

-would not have come to you.

-

-"If I had not seen that thing I would not have come to you, for I

-would have said: What good? The man is a coward without a heart. A

-_coward_, do you remember that word?"

-

-The man groaned and struck out with his hand as though to drive away a

-ghastly thing that would leap upon him.

-

-"A coward without a heart," the Bishop repeated remorselessly, "who

-has men and women and children in his power and who, because he has no

-heart, can use his power to crush them.

-

-"If I had not seen, I would have said that.

-

-"But I saw. I _saw_. And I have come here to ask you: Are you the same

-brave man with a heart that I saw on that day?

-

-"You shall not evade me. Do you think you can put me off with defences

-and puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of

-property? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will go

-down into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the naked

-truth. But I will have my answer. Are you that same man?

-

-"If you are not that same man; if you have killed that in you which

-gave life to that man; if that man no longer lives in you; if you are

-not capable of being that same man with the heart of a great and

-tender hero, then tell me and I will go. But you shall answer me. I

-will have my answer."

-

-Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair and stood trembling as

-though in an overpowering rage, and visibly struggling for his command

-of mind and tongue.

-

-"Words, words, words," he groaned at last. "Your life is made of

-words. Words are your coin. What do you know?

-

-"Do you think that words can go down into my soul to find the man that

-was once there? Do you think that words can call him up? When did

-words ever mean anything to a man's real heart! You come here with

-your question. It's made of words.

-

-"When did men ever do anything for _words_? Honour is a word. Truth is

-a word. Bravery is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word. Do you

-think men do things for words? No! What do you know? What _could_ you

-know?

-

-"Men do things and you call them by words. But do they do them for the

-words? No!

-

-"They do them-- Because _some woman lives, or once lived!_ What do

-_you_ know?

-

-"Go out there. Stay there." He pointed. "I've got to think."

-

-He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against his desk. The Bishop

-rose and walked from the room.

-

-When he heard the door close, the man got up and going to the door

-barred it.

-

-He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning heavily upon his propped

-hands.

-

-He opened a drawer of his desk and looked at a smooth, glinting black

-and steel thing that lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang

-that went out to the Bishop listening in the outer office. It was a

-sinister, suggestive noise, and for an instant it chilled that good

-man's heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he knew immediately

-that he had been mistaken.

-

-Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked a smaller compartment

-within it, and from the latter took a small gold-framed picture. He

-set it up on the desk between his hands and looked long at it,

-questioning the face in the frame with a tender, diffident expression

-of a wonder that never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled.

-

-The face that looked out of the picture was one of a quiet,

-translucent beauty. At first glance the face had none of the striking

-features that men associate with great beauty. But behind the eyes

-there seemed to glow, and to grow gradually, and softly stronger, a

-light, as though diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly

-radiated from the whole countenance an impression of indescribable,

-gentle loveliness.

-

-Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was that light from within.

-He wondered now, and questioned. Never before had that light seemed

-so wonderful and so real. Now there came to him an answer. An answer

-that shook him, for it was the last answer he would have expected. The

-light within was truth--truth. It seemed that in a world of sham and

-illusions and evasions this one woman had understood, had lived with

-truth.

-

-The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry laugh that was nearer to a

-sob.

-

-"Was that it, Lucy?" he queried. "Truth? Then let us have a little

-truth, for once! I'll tell you some truth!

-

-"I lied a while ago. He did _not_ die a soldier's death. I told the

-same lie to you long ago. Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven

-happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to you. Words. And yet

-you died a happy woman, because of that lie.

-

-"He lied to you. He took you from me with lies. Words. Lies. And yet

-they made you happy. Where is truth?

-

-"You lived happy and died happy with a lie. Because I lied like what

-they call a man and a gentleman. _Truth!_"

-

-He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face before him. Did he

-expect to see the light fade out, to see the face wither under the

-bitter revelation?

-

-"I've been everything," he went on, still trying to make his point,

-"I've done everything, that men say I've been and done. Why?

-

-"Well--Why?" he asked sharply. "Did it make any difference?

-

-"Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my face--sometimes.

-Well--Why not? Does it make any difference? Did it make any difference

-with you? If I had thought it would-- But it didn't. Lies, trickery,

-words! They served with you. They made you happy. _Truth!_"

-

-But as he looked into the face and the smiling light of truth

-persisted in it, there came over his soul the dawn of a wonder. And

-the dawn glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and looked out

-wondering at a world remade.

-

-"Is it true, Lucy?" he asked gently. "Can that be _truth_, at last? Is

-that what you mean? Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words and

-beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand--a little? And do

-you, somewhere, understand now?

-

-"Then tell me. Was it worth the lies? Down underneath, when you

-understood, which was the truth? The thing I did--which men would call

-fine? Or was it the words?

-

-"Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was it the fine thing that was

-really the truth, and did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there

-truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were made of truth, did

-you somehow understand all the time?"

-

-He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally believing. Then he

-said:

-

-"Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I will not speak it to him.

-But I'll say it to you: Yes, I am that same man who once did what they

-call a fine, brave thing. I didn't do it because it was a great thing,

-a brave thing. I did it for you.

-

-"And--I'll do this for you."

-

-He looked again at the face in the picture, as if to make sure. Then

-he locked it away quickly in its place.

-

-He thought for a moment, then drew a pad abruptly to him and began

-writing. He wrote two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State, the

-other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then he took another pad and

-wrote a note, this to his personal representative who was following

-the state troops into the hills.

-

-He rose and walked briskly to the door. Throwing it open he called a

-clerk and gave him the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand and

-asked the Bishop back into the office.

-

-Closing the door quickly, he said without preface:

-

-"This note will put my man up there at your service. You will prefer

-to go up into the hills yourself, I think. The officers in command of

-the troops will know that you are empowered to act for all parties.

-The Governor will have seen to that before you get there, I think.

-There will be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards. You can

-settle the whole matter in no time.

-

-"We will not buy the land, but we'll give a fair rental, based on what

-ores we find to take out. You can give _your_ word--mine wouldn't go

-for much up there, I guess," he put in grimly--"that it will be fair.

-You can make that the basis of settlement.

-

-"They can go back and rebuild. I will help, where it will do the most

-good. Our operations won't interfere much with their farm land, I

-find.

-

-"You will want to start at once. That is all, I guess, Bishop," he

-concluded abruptly.

-

-The Bishop reached for the smaller man's hand and wrung it with a

-sudden, unwonted emotion.

-

-"I will not cheapen this, sir," he said evenly, "by attempting to

-thank you."

-

-"A mere whim of mine, that's all," Stanton cut in almost curtly, the

-steel-trap expression snapping into place over his face. "A mere

-whim."

-

-"Well," said the Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I

-only came to ask a question, anyhow." Then he turned and walked

-briskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what the

-other man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner.

-

-So these two men parted. In words, they had not understood each other.

-Neither had come near the depths of the other. But then, what man does

-ever let another man see what is in his heart?

-

-                  *       *       *       *       *

-

-All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider and

-wider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of men

-hidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly and

-more clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. His

-line was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemy

-had known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a few

-daring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strength

-of the men with him.

-

-All the afternoon as he watched he saw other and yet other groups and

-troops of men come up the railroad, detrain and push out ever farther

-upon the enveloping wings to east and west.

-

-Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line had been driven in and

-almost surrounded. They had decided in the beginning to leave their

-horses in the rear, and so use them only at the last. But the

-spreading line in front had become too long to be covered on foot by

-the few men he had. They were forced to use the speed of the animals

-to make a show of greater force than they really had. The horses

-furnished marks that even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the

-afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams of terrified,

-wounded horses rang horribly through the woods above the pattering

-crackle of the irregular rifle fire. Old men who years before had

-learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and fell asleep grumbling.

-Young men and boys who had never heard such sounds turned sick with

-horror or wandered frightened through the dark, nervously ready to

-fire on any moving twig or scraping branch.

-

-In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the line, talking aside to

-every man; telling them to slip quietly away through the dark. They

-could make their way out through the loose lines of soldiers and

-sheriffs' men and get down to the villages where they would be unknown

-and where nobody would bother with them.

-

-The inevitable few took his word-- There is always the inevitable few.

-They slipped away one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly

-good reason for going, several good reasons, in fact; any reason,

-indeed, but that they were afraid. Most of them were gathered in by

-the soldier pickets and sent down to jail.

-

-Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with a grim, ugly suggestion in

-it of the coming winter. Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily out

-to their posts, munching dryly at the last of the stores which they

-had taken from the construction depots along the line which they had

-destroyed. This was the end. It was not far from the mind of each man

-that this would probably be his last meal.

-

-The firing began again as the outer line came creeping in upon them.

-They had still the great advantage of the shelter of the woods and the

-formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship kept those

-directly in front of them almost out of range. But there was nothing

-in sight before them but that they would certainly all be surrounded

-and shot down or taken.

-

-Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those who had been watching the

-most distant of the two wings creeping around them saw these men halt

-and slowly begin to gather back together. What was it? Were they going

-to rush at last? Here would be a fight in earnest!

-

-But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation, merely walked

-back in their tracks until they were entirely out of range. It must be

-a ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their shelter, puzzled, but

-determined not to be drawn out.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of the line, saw an old man

-walking, barehead, up over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted

-rails. That white head with the high, wide brow, the slightly

-stooping, spare shoulders, the long, swinging walk-- That was the

-Bishop of Alden!

-

-Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to the men on either side

-to stay where they were, jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet

-the Bishop.

-

-"Are any men killed?" the Bishop asked before Jeffrey had time to

-speak as they met.

-

-"Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the chest--we don't know how bad

-it is," said Jeffrey, stopping short. "Ten other men are wounded. I

-don't think any of them are bad."

-

-"Call in your men," said the Bishop briefly. "The soldiers are going

-back."

-

-At Jeffrey's call the men came running from all sides as he and the

-Bishop reached the line. Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered

-round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance of the White

-Horse Chaplain, for so one and all they knew and remembered him. Men

-who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped back into the scene

-of that day and looked about blankly for the white horse. And young

-men who had heard that tale many times and had seen and heard of his

-coming through the fire to French Village stared round-eyed at him.

-What did this coming mean?

-

-He told them shortly the terms that Clifford W. Stanton, their enemy,

-was willing to make with them. And in the end he added:

-

-"You have only my word that these things will be done as I say. _I_

-believe. If you believe, you will take your horses and get back to

-your families at once."

-

-Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the first

-time knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them.

-They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many who

-had thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying

-over the names of those they were saved to.

-

-The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him, walked slowly back down

-the roadbed. Suddenly Jeffrey remembered something that had gone

-completely out of his mind in these last hours.

-

-"Bishop," he stammered, "that day--that day in court. I--I said you

-lied. Now I know you didn't. You told the truth, of course."

-

-"My boy," said the Bishop queerly, "yesterday I asked a man, on his

-soul, for the truth--the truth. I got no answer.

-

-"But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor of

-all the World, once asked what was truth. And _he_ got no answer.

-Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are things

-bigger than we are. We get no answer."

-

-Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.

-

-

-

-

-X

-

-THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID

-

-

-It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of

-Promise.

-

-The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He

-still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from

-which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He

-still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the

-sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running

-down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had

-chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the

-grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the

-enemy was gone.

-

-But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the

-forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even

-the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and

-hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature.

-For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But

-the sun came warmer, more insistent, and kissed the scarred, brown

-body of earth and warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and the

-little flowers took courage out of their very craving for life and

-pushed resolutely forth. And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The

-world was born again!

-

-Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run on her way back to French

-Village. She had been to put the first flowers of the Spring on the

-grave of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had blessed the ground for

-him and they had laid him, there under the sunny side of the Gaunt

-Rocks that had given him his last breathing space that he might die in

-peace. They had put him here, for there was no way in that time to

-carry him to the little cemetery in French Village. And Cynthe was

-well satisfied that it was so. Here, under the Gaunt Rocks, she would

-not have to share him with any one. And she would not have to hear

-people pointing out the grave to each other and to see them staring.

-

-The water tumbling down the Run out of the hills sang a glad,

-uproarious song, as is the way of all brooks at their beginnings,

-concerning the necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible to the

-big, wide life of the sea. The sea would not care at all if that brook

-never came down to it. But the brook did not know that. Would not have

-believed it if it had been told.

-

-And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song of old Beaupre--which

-she had never seen, for Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was

-sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time, and-- But Cynthe was

-not unhappy. The Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good.

-Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet. There was work in the

-world to do. And--when all was said and done--Rafe Gadbeau was in

-Heaven.

-

-As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey

-Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur's Fork country and

-was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk

-with her. Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty, sociable

-little person, and, besides, for some time she had had it in mind that

-she would some day take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this

-scowling young gentleman with the big face.

-

-"You're with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren't you?" he said, after some

-verbal beating about the bush; "how is she?"

-

-"Why don't you come see, if you want to know?" retorted Cynthe

-sharply.

-

-Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on:

-

-"If you wanted to know why didn't you come up all Winter and see? Why

-didn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies

-through the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid of

-them? Why didn't you come see when she was helping the mothers up

-there to get into their houses and make the houses warm before the

-coming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn't

-you come see when she nearly got her death from the 'mmonia caring for

-old Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till she

-shamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebody

-then? Why didn't you come see?"

-

-"Well," Jeffrey defended, "I didn't know about any of those things.

-And we had plenty to do here--our place and my mother and all. I

-didn't see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church,

-just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn't seem to want

-to."

-

-"But she should have been delighted to see you," Cynthe snapped back.

-"Don't you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. She

-should have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said to

-her the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. You

-called her 'liar' before the whole court, even the Judge! Of one

-certainty, she should have flown to you. No?"

-

-Now if Jeffrey had been wise he would have gone away, with all haste.

-But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure that

-some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue.

-

-"But she--she cared for me," he blurted out. "I know she did. I

-couldn't understand why she couldn't tell--the truth; when you--you

-did so much for me."

-

-"For you? For _you_!" the girl flamed up in his face. "Oh, villainous

-monster of vanity! For _you_! Ha! I could laugh! For _you_! I put _mon

-Rafe_--dead in his grave--to shame before all the world, called him

-murderer, blackened his name, for _you_!

-

-"No! No! _No!_ _Never!_

-

-"I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death.

-_Never!_

-

-"I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which _mon Rafe_

-had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay

-that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in.

-I did it for _you_! Ha!"

-

-The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so

-rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of

-the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main

-argument.

-

-"But why couldn't she have told the truth?"

-

-"The truth, eh! You must have the truth! The girl must tell the truth

-for you! No matter if she was to blacken her soul before God, you

-must have the truth told for you. The truth! It was not enough for you

-to know that the girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that

-she would have died for you if she might! No. The poor girl must tear

-out the secret lining of her heart for you, to save you!

-

-"Think you that if _mon Rafe_ was alive and stood there where you

-stood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give up

-the secret of the Holy Confession to save him. _Non!_ _Mon Rafe_ was a

-_man_! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted me

-with!

-

-"Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to be saved; that the Good God must

-come down from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened Book for

-_you_!

-

-"You ask for truth! _Tiens!_ I will tell you truth!

-

-"You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried that you were an

-innocent man. _Mon Rafe_ was the guilty man. The whole world must come

-forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth to declare you

-innocent and him guilty! You were innocent! You were persecuted! The

-earth and the Heaven must come to show that you were innocent and he

-was guilty! _Bah!_ _You were as guilty as he!_

-

-"I was there. I saw. Your finger was on the trigger. You only waited

-for the man to stop moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder was in

-your soul. Murder was in your finger. But you were innocent and _mon

-Rafe_ was guilty. By how much?

-

-"By one second. That was the difference between _mon Rafe_ and you.

-Just that second that he shot before you were ready. _That_ was the

-difference between you the innocent man and _mon Rafe_!

-

-"You were guilty. In your heart you were guilty. In your soul you were

-guilty. M'sieur Cain himself was not more guilty than you!

-

-"You were more guilty than _mon Rafe_, for he had suffered more from

-that man. He was hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were cool. You

-were ready. Only _mon Rafe_ was a little quicker, because he was

-desperate. Before the Good God you were more guilty.

-

-"And _mon Rafe_ must be blackened more than the fire had blackened his

-poor body. And the poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the good

-M'sieur the Bishop must break his holiest oath. All to make you

-innocent!

-

-"Bah! _Innocent!_"

-

-She flung away from him and ran up the hill. Cynthe had not said quite

-all that she intended to say to this young gentleman. But then, also,

-she had said a good deal more than she had intended to say. So it was

-about even. She had said enough. And it would do him no harm. She had

-felt that she owed _mon Rafe_ a little plain speaking. She was much

-relieved.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him digging up the tender

-roots of the new grass with his toe. He did not look after the girl.

-He had forgotten her.

-

-He felt no resentment at the things that she had said. He did not

-argue with himself as to whether these things were just or unjust. Of

-all the things that she had said only one thing mattered. And that not

-because she had said it. It mattered because it was true. The quick,

-jabbing sentences from the girl had driven home to him just one

-thing.

-

-Guilty? He _was_ guilty. He was as guilty as--Rafe Gadbeau.

-

-Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation, bitter, blinding provocation.

-But so had Rafe Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau as

-anything but guilty of murder.

-

-He turned on his heel and walked down the Run with swift, swinging

-strides, fighting this conviction that was settling upon him. He

-fought it viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a man, that

-the thing was done and past, that men have no time for remorse and

-sickish, mawkish repentance. Those things were for brooding women, and

-Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably, sagaciously; contending that he

-had not, in fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that he would

-ever have done so? Maybe he had not really intended to kill at all.

-Maybe he would not have killed. The man might have spoken to him.

-Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned that time. Who could

-tell? Ten thousand things might have happened, any one of which would

-have stood between him and killing the man. He fought it defiantly.

-Suppose he had killed the man? What about it? The man deserved it. He

-had a right to kill him.

-

-But he knew that he was losing at every angle of the fight. For the

-conviction answered not a word to any of these things. It merely

-fastened itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment:

-"As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau."

-

-And when he came over the top of the hill, from where he could look

-down upon the grave of Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the

-conviction pointed out to him just one enduring fact. It said: "There

-is the grave of Rafe Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything

-about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried here."

-

-Then he fought no more with the conviction. It gripped his spirit and

-cowed him. It sat upon his shoulders and rode home with him. His

-mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding, began to look for

-some fresh trouble.

-

-She need not have looked for new trouble, so far as concerned things

-outside himself. For Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men.

-He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable and finer home than

-it had ever been. He had secured an excellent contract from the

-railroad to supply thousands of ties out of the timber of the high

-hills. He had made money out of that. And once he had gotten a taste

-of money-making, in a business that was his by the traditions of his

-people and his own liking, he knew that he had found himself a

-career.

-

-He was working now on a far bigger project, the reforesting of thirty

-thousand acres of the higher hill country. In time there would be

-unlimited money in that. But there was more than money in it. It was a

-game and a life which he knew and which he loved. To make money by

-making things more abundant, by covering the naked peaks of the hill

-country with sturdy, growing timber, that was a thing that appealed to

-him.

-

-All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men had

-done in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding this

-knowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already he

-knew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more about

-growing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how much

-this meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youth

-more than its due. Already he was being picked as an expert. Next

-week he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislative

-committee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to get

-appropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls from

-out of standing timber--a thing that if well done would render forest

-fires almost harmless.

-

-He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that law

-school diploma--the thing that he had once regarded as the portal of

-the world--look cheap and little.

-

-But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations,

-the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The high

-colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him

-and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the

-word--_guilty_.

-

-What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything?

-when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall

-with the word written across it. Guilty--guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And

-Ruth Lansing--!

-

-A flash of sudden insight caught him and held him in its glaring

-light. He had been doing all this work. He had built this home. He had

-fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills and the raging

-winter for money. He had dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built

-them higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.

-

-He had fought the thought of her. He had put her out of his mind. He

-had said that she had failed him in need. He had even, in the blackest

-time of the night, called her liar. He had forgotten her, he said.

-

-Now he knew that not for an instant had she been out of his mind.

-Every stroke of work had been for her. She had stood at the top of the

-high path of every struggling dream.

-

-Between him and her now rose that grey wall with the one word written

-on it. Was that what they had meant that day there in the court, she

-and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all? Was there some sort of

-uncanny truth or insight or hidden justice in that secret confessional

-of theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting truth,

-while it hid the momentary, accidental truth of mere words? In effect,

-they had said that he was guilty. And he _was_ guilty!

-

-What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that day

-on the railroad line? "Sooner or later we have to learn that there is

-something bigger than we are." Was this what it meant? Was this the

-thing bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, had

-looked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing that

-was bigger than he?

-

-He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting maze of imagination,

-misinformation, and some unreadable facts.

-

-He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that he was guilty. That was

-why she had acted as she had. He would go to her. He would--! But what

-was the use? She would not talk to him about this. She would merely

-deny, as she had done before, that she knew anything at all. What

-could he do? Where could he turn? They, he and Ruth, could never speak

-of that thing. They could never come to any understanding of anything.

-This thing, this wall--with that word written on it--would stand

-between them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that was

-sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the thing that was stronger

-than he. There was no answer. There was no way out.

-

-Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!

-

-But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He was not guilty any more.

-Cynthe had said so. He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow. He

-had merely come through the fire and thrown himself at a man's feet

-and had his guilt wiped away. What was there in that uncanny thing

-they called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as--as Rafe

-Gadbeau, could come to another man, and, by the saying of a few words,

-turn over and face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?

-

-It was a delusion, of course. The saying of words could never wipe

-away Rafe Gadbeau's guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt

-from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes. But Rafe Gadbeau

-_believed_ it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. _Ruth_

-believed it!

-

-It was a delusion, yes. But--_What_ a delusion! What a magnificent,

-soul-stirring delusion! A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau out of

-the misery of his guilt, that carried the souls of millions of guilty

-people through all the world up out of the depths of their crimes to a

-confidence of relief and freedom!

-

-Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down into the abyss of

-despairing loneliness. It trod the dark ways in which there was no

-guidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what it

-might appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause to

-effect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, or

-thought, that must have been the starting point, that must have held

-the germ of his guilt.

-

-Somewhere there must have been a beginning. He knew that he was not in

-any particular a different person, capable of anything different,

-likely to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain from what

-he had been on any other morning since he had become a man. There was

-never a time, so far as he could see, when he would not have been

-ready to do the thing which he was ready to do that morning--given the

-circumstances. Nor had he changed in any way since that morning. What

-had been essentially his act, his thought, a part of him, that morning

-was just as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this minute.

-There was no thing in the succession of incidents to which he could

-point and say: That was not I who did that: I did not mean that: I am

-sorry I did that. Nor would there ever be a time when he could say any

-of these things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty of

-that thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty of

-it. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to make

-him wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he would

-undo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begun

-away back in the formation of his character, and which would persist

-as long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it.

-There was no way that it might ever end.

-

-And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing had seen that guilt, too.

-She had seen it in his eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in

-his mind.

-

-What had she seen? What was that thing written so clear in his eyes

-that she could read and tell him of it that day on the road from

-French Village?

-

-He would go to her and ask her. She should tell him what was that

-thing she had seen. He would make her tell. He would have it from

-her!

-

-But, no. Where was the use? It would only bring them to that whole,

-impossible, bewildering business of the confessional. And he did not

-want to hear any more of that. His heart was sick of it. It had made

-him suffer enough. And he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered

-equally, or maybe more, from it.

-

-Where could he go? He must tell this thing. He _must_ talk of it to

-some one! That resistless, irrepressible impulse for confession, that

-call of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon him. He must find

-some other soul to share with him the burden of this conviction. He

-must find some one who would understand and to whom he could speak.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not have analysed what this

-craving meant. He only knew that it was very real, that his soul was

-staggering alone and blind under the weight of this thing.

-

-There was one man who would understand. The man who had looked upon

-the faces of life and death these many years, the man of strange

-comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him on the way of all this,

-and who from what he had said in his house in Alden, that day so long

-ago when all this began, may have foreseen this very thing, the man

-who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry out his guilt; that man would

-understand. He would go to him.

-

-He wrote a note which his mother would find in the morning, and

-slipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride to

-Lowville.

-

-"I came because I had to come," Jeffrey began, when the Bishop had

-seated him. "I don't know why I should come to you. I know you cannot

-do anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tell

-some one. I _had_ to say it to somebody."

-

-"I sat that day in the courtroom," he went on as the Bishop waited,

-"and thought that the whole world was against me. It seemed that

-everybody was determined to make me guilty--even you, even Ruth. And I

-was innocent. I had done nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the

-idea that everybody was trying to make me out guilty, when I was

-innocent. I had done nothing. I had not killed a man. I told the men

-there on the mountain that I was innocent and they would not believe

-me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts that I had not done the thing,

-but you would not say a word for me, an innocent man."

-

-"It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole world

-wanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on to

-the wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting back

-against everybody.

-

-"And--this is what I came to say--all the time I was guilty--guilty:

-guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!"

-

-"I am not sure I understand," said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey

-stopped.

-

-"Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty

-of that man's death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty

-of it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I will

-always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turn

-over into the next world, free. I cannot," he ended, with a sort of

-grim finality as though he saw again before him that wall against

-which he had come the night before.

-

-"You mean--" the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, "What

-brought your mind to this view of the matter?"

-

-"A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that

-loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me."

-

-Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some

-plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than

-to treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not a boy to be

-laughed out of a morbid notion, or to be told to grow older and forget

-the thing. His was a man's soul, standing in the dark, grappling with

-a thing with which it could not cope. The wrong word here might mar

-his whole life. Here was no place for softening away the realities

-with reasoning. The man's soul demanded a man's straight answer.

-

-"Before you could be guilty," said the Bishop decisively, "you must

-have injured some one by your thought, your intention. Whom did you

-injure?"

-

-Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought, to follow it out from

-the maze which his mind had been treading. Here was the answer. This

-would clear the way. Whom had he injured?

-

-Well, _whom_ had he injured? _Who_ had been hurt by his thought, his

-wish, to kill a man? Had it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was

-none the worse of it.

-

-Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not enter into this at all.

-

-Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till yesterday; and not in

-the way meant.

-

-Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then--then why all this--?

-Jeffrey Whiting rose from his chair as though to go. He did not look

-at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing upon the floor,

-asking:

-

-Whom?

-

-Suddenly, from within, just barely audible through his lips there came

-the answer; a single word:

-

-"_God!_"

-

-"Your business is with Him, then," said the Bishop, rising with what

-almost seemed brusqueness. "You wanted to see Him."

-

-"But--but," Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to argue, "men come to you, to

-confess. Rafe Gadbeau--!"

-

-"No," said the Bishop quickly, "you are wrong. Men come to me to

-_confession_. They come to _confess_ to God."

-

-He took the young man's hand, saying:

-

-"I will not say another word. You have found your own answer. You

-would not understand better if I talked forever. Find God, and tell

-Him, what you have told me."

-

-In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the long way to the hills

-and home. He was still bewildered, disappointed, and a little

-resentful of the Bishop's brief manners with him. He had gone looking

-for sympathy, understanding, help. And he had been told to find God.

-

-Find God? How did men go about to find God? Wasn't all the world

-continually on the lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did the

-preachers find Him? Did the priests find Him? And if they did, what

-did they say to Him? Did people who were sick, and people who said God

-had answered their prayers and punished their enemies for them; did

-they find God?

-

-Did they find Him when they prayed? Did they find Him when they were

-in trouble? What did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must have meant

-something? How did the Bishop himself find God? Was there some word,

-some key, some hidden portal by which men found God? Was God to be

-found here on the hills, in the night, in the open?

-

-God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how can I come, how can I find!

-A wordless, baffled, impotent cry, that reached nowhere.

-

-The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.

-

-Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable guilt, swept down

-upon him again and beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It

-left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to face this thing. It was

-too big for him. He was after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling

-alone in the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had been caught and

-crushed between forces and passions that were too much for him. He was

-little and these things were very great.

-

-Unconsciously the heart within him, the child heart that somehow lives

-ever in every man, began to speak, to speak, without knowing it,

-direct to God.

-

-It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was not an excuse. It was

-the simple unfolding of the heart of a child to the Father who made

-it. The heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It could not lift

-itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness complete, of dependence

-utter and unreasoning.

-

-Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at the stars, blinking at

-him through the starting tears.

-

-Was that God? Had some one spoken? Where was the load that had lain

-upon him all these weary hours?

-

-He stopped his horse and looked about him, breathing in great, free,

-hungry breaths of God's air about him. For it _was_ God's air. That

-was the wonder of it. The world was God's! And it was new made for him

-to live in!

-

-He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer of thanks, as simple and

-unreasoning, unquestioning, as had been the unfolding of his heart. He

-had been bound: he was free!

-

-Then his horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new

-life upon the soft, breathing air of the spring night.

-

-With the inconsequence of all of us children when God has lifted the

-stone from our hearts, Jeffrey had already left everything of the last

-thirty-six hours behind him as completely as if he had never lived

-through those hours. (That He lets us forget so easily, shows that He

-is the Royal God in very deed.)

-

-Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to

-French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old

-Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof.

-

-What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that

-he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months. For

-the French people had taken her to their hearts and had made of her a

-wonderful new kind of saint. They had seen her come to them out of the

-fire. They had heard of her silence at the trial of the man she loved.

-They had seen her devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to

-their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria had frightened

-the wits out of the best of women. All the while they knew that she

-was not happy. And they had explained fully to the countryside just

-what was their opinion of the whole matter.

-

-Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly understanding many

-things that had been hidden from him, was very humble as he wondered

-what he could say to Ruth.

-

-At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he met Cynthe.

-

-"Where is she?" he asked without preface.

-

-Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching look, and was amazed

-at the change she saw.

-

-Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to whom she had talked the

-other day. Here was a man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and

-had learned some things out of unknown places of his heart.

-

-I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too much. But I am not sorry.

-_Non._

-

-"The last house," she answered, "by the crook of the lake there. She

-will be glad," she remarked simply, and turned on her way.

-

-Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl heartily for the word

-that she had thought to add. It was a warrant, it seemed, of

-forgiveness--and of all things.

-

-Old Robbideau Laclair and his crippled wife Philomena sat in the sun

-by the side of the house watching Ruth, who with strong brown arms

-bare above the elbow was working away contentedly in their little

-patch of garden. They nudged each other as Jeffrey rode up and left

-his horse, but they made no sign to Ruth.

-

-So Jeffrey stepping lightly on the soft new earth came to her unseen

-and unheard. He took the hoe from her hand as she turned to face

-him. Up to that moment Jeffrey had not known what he was to say to

-her. What was there to say? But as he looked into her startled,

-pain-clouded eyes he found himself saying:

-

-"I hurt God once, very much. I did not know what to say to Him. Last

-night He taught me what to say. I hurt you, once, very much. Will you

-tell me what to say to you, Ruth?"

-

-It was a surprising, disconcerting greeting. But Ruth quickly

-understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man's stumbling,

-wholehearted confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny.

-The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently

-took his hand and led him out of the little garden and to where his

-horse stood.

-

-There, she leaning against his horse, her fingers slipping softly

-through the big bay's mane, Jeffrey standing stiff and anxious before

-her, with the glad morning and the high hills and all French Village

-observing them with kindly eyes, these two faced their question.

-

-But after all there was no question. For when Jeffrey had told all,

-down to that moment in the dark road when he had found God in his

-heart, Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness that is born

-in every woman, said:

-

-"Poor boy, you have suffered too much!"

-

-"What I suffered was that I made for myself," he said thickly. "Cynthe

-Cardinal told me what a fool I was."

-

-"What did Cynthe tell you?"

-

-"She told me that you loved me."

-

-"Did you need to be told that, Jeffrey?" said the girl very quietly.

-

-"Yes, it seems so. I'd known your little white soul ever since you

-were a baby. I knew that in all your life you'd never had a thought

-that was not the best, the truest, the loyalest for me. I knew that

-there was never a time when you wouldn't have given everything, even

-life, for me. I knew it that day in the Bishop's house. I knew it

-that morning when you came to me in the sugar cabin."

-

-"Yes, I knew all that," he went on bitterly. "I knew you loved me, and

-I knew what a love it was. I knew it. And yet that day--that day in

-the courtroom, the only thing I could do was to call you liar!"

-

-She put up her hands with an appeal to stop him, but he went on

-doggedly.

-

-"Yes, I did. That was all I could think of. I threw it at you like a

-blow in the face. I saw you quiver and shrink, as though I had struck

-you. And even that sight wasn't enough for me. I kept on saying it,

-when I knew in my heart it wasn't so. I couldn't help but know it. I

-knew you. But I kept on telling myself that you lied; kept on till

-yesterday. I wasn't big enough. I wasn't man enough to see that you

-were just facing something that was bigger than both of us--something

-that was bigger and truer than words--that there was no way out for

-you but to do what you did."

-

-"Jeffrey, dear," the girl hurried to say, "you know that's a thing we

-can't speak about--"

-

-"Yes, we can, now. I know and I understand. You needn't say anything.

-I _understand_."

-

-"And I understand a lot more," he began again. "It took that little

-French girl to tell me what was the truth. I know it now. There was a

-deeper, a truer truth under everything. That was why you had to do as

-you did. That's why everything was so. I wasn't innocent. Things don't

-_happen_ as those things did. They work out, because they have to."

-

-The girl was watching him with fright and wonder in her eyes. What was

-he going to say? But she let him go on.

-

-"No, I wasn't innocent," he said, as though to himself now. "I fooled

-myself into thinking that I was. But I was not. I meant to kill a man.

-I had meant to for a long time. Nothing but Rafe Gadbeau's quickness

-prevented me. No, I wasn't innocent. I was guilty in my heart. I was a

-murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as

-Ca--!"

-

-The girl had suddenly sprung forward and thrown her arms around his

-neck. She caught the word that was on his lips and stopped it with a

-kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say what he had been

-going to say.

-

-"You shall not say that!" she panted. "I will not let you say it!

-Nobody shall say it! I defy the whole world to say it!"

-

-"But it's--it's true," said the boy brokenly as he held her.

-

-"It is not true! Never! Nothing's true, only the truth that God has

-hidden in His heart! And that is hidden! How can we say? How dare we

-say what we would have done, when we didn't do it? How do we know

-what's really in our hearts? Don't you see, Jeffrey boy, we cannot say

-things like that! We don't know! I won't let you say it.

-

-"And if you do say it," she argued, "why, I'll have to say it, too."

-

-"You?"

-

-"Yes, I. Do you remember that night you were in the sugar cabin? I was

-outside looking through the chinks at Rafe Gadbeau. What was I

-thinking? What was in my heart? I'll tell you. I was out there

-stalking like a panther. I wanted just one thing out of all the world.

-Just one thing! My rifle! To kill him! I would have done it

-gladly--with joy in my heart! I could have sung while I was doing it!

-

-"Now," she gasped, "now, if you're going to say that thing, why, we'll

-say it together!"

-

-The big boy, holding the trembling girl closer in his arms, understood

-nothing but that she wanted to stand with him, to put herself in

-whatever place was his, to take that black, terrible shadow that had

-fallen on him and wrap it around herself too.

-

-"My poor little white-souled darling," he said through tears that

-choked him, "I can't take this from you! It's too much, I can't!"

-

-After a little the girl relaxed, tiredly, against his shoulder and

-argued dreamily:

-

-"I don't see what you can do. You'll have to take _me_. And I don't

-see how you can take me any way but just as I am."

-

-Then she was suddenly conscious that the world was observing. She drew

-quickly away, and Jeffrey, still dazed and shaken, let her go.

-

-Standing, looking at her with eyes that hungered and adored, he began

-to speak in wonder and self-abasement.

-

-"After all I've made you suffer--!"

-

-But Ruth would have none of this. It had been nothing, she declared.

-She had found work to do. She had been happy, in a way. God had been

-very kind.

-

-At length Jeffrey said: "Well, I guess we'll never have to misunderstand

-again, anyway, Ruth. I had to find God because I was--I needed Him.

-Now I want to find Him--your way."

-

-"You mean--you mean that you _believe_!"

-

-"Yes," said Jeffrey slowly. "I didn't think I ever would. I certainly

-didn't want to. But I do. And it isn't just to win with you, Ruth, or

-to make you happier. I can't help it. It's the thing the Bishop once

-told me about--the thing that's bigger than I am."

-

-Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for leading him forthwith to

-Father Ponfret, that he might begin at once his course of instructions

-which she assured him was essential.

-

-But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading books all winter, he said.

-Though he admitted that until last night he had not understood much

-of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God! Could she not come

-home, then, to his mother, who was pining for her--and--and they would

-have all their lives to finish the instructions.

-

-On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she would stay, among these good

-people where she had made for herself a place and a home. He must come

-every week to Father Ponfret for his instructions, like any other

-convert. If on those occasions he also came to see her, well, she

-would, of course, be glad to see him and to know how he was

-progressing.

-

-Afterwards? Well, afterwards, they would see.

-

-And to this Jeffrey was forced to agree.

-

-Old Robbideau Laclair, when he heard of this arrangement, grumbled

-that the way of the heretic was indeed made easy in these days. But

-his wife Philomena, scraping sharply with her stick, informed him that

-if the good Ruth saw fit to convert even a heathen Turk into a husband

-for herself she would no doubt make a good job of it.

-

-So love came and went through the summer, practically unrebuked.

-

-Again the Bishop came riding up to French Village with Arsene LaComb.

-But this time they rode in a jogging, rattling coach that swung up

-over the new line of railroad that came into the hills from Welden

-Junction. And Arsene was very glad of this, for as he looked at his

-beloved M'sieur l'Eveque he saw that he was not now the man to have

-faced the long road up over the hills. He was not two, he was many

-years older and less sturdy.

-

-The Bishop practised his French a little, but mostly he was silent and

-thoughtful. He was remembering that day, nearly two years ago now,

-when he had set two ambitious young souls upon a way which they did

-not like. What a coil of good and bad had come out of that doing of

-his. And again he wondered, as he had wondered then, whether he had

-done right. Who was to tell?

-

-And again to-morrow he was to set those two again upon their way of

-life, for he was coming up to French Village to the wedding of Ruth

-Lansing to Jeffrey Whiting.

-

-Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing's side in the little rough-finished

-sanctuary of the chapel which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to

-raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer. But Jeffrey Whiting

-saw none of the poor makeshifts out of which the little priest had

-contrived a sanctuary to the high God. He was back again, in the night,

-on a dark, lone road, under the unconcerned stars, crying out to find

-God. Then God had come to him, with merciful, healing touch and lifted

-him out of the dust and agony of the road, and, finally, had brought him

-here, to this moment.

-

-He had just received into his body the God of life. His soul stood

-trembling at its portal, receiving its Guest for the first time. He

-was amazed with a great wonder, for here was the very God of the dark

-night speaking to him in words that beat upon his heart. And his

-wonder was that from this he should ever arise and go on with any

-other business whatever.

-

-Ruth Lansing knelt, adoring and listening to the music of that

-_choir unseen_ which had once given her the call of life. She had

-followed it, not always in the perfect way, but at least bravely,

-unquestioningly. And it had brought her now to a holy and awed

-happiness. Neither life nor death would ever rob her of this moment.

-

-Presently they rose and stood before the Bishop. And as the Shepherd

-blessed their joined hands he prayed for these two who were dear to

-him, as well as for his other little ones, and, as always, for those

-"other sheep." And the breathing of his prayer was:

-

-That they be not afraid, my God, with any fear; but trust long in Thee

-and in each other.

-

-THE END

-

-Printed in the United States of America.

-

-

-

-

-

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