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+Project Gutenberg's Mr. Crewe's Career, Book I., by Winston Churchill
+
+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: Mr. Crewe's Career, Book I.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 16, 2004 [EBook #3681]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. CREWE'S CAREER, BOOK I. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. CREWE'S CAREER
+
+By WINSTON CHURCHILL
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE HONOURABLE HILARY VANE SITS FOR HIS PORTRAIT
+
+I may as well begin this story with Mr. Hilary Vane, more frequently
+addressed as the Honourable Hilary Vane, although it was the gentleman's
+proud boast that he had never held an office in his life. He belonged to
+the Vanes of Camden Street,--a beautiful village in the hills near
+Ripton,--and was, in common with some other great men who had made a
+noise in New York and the nation, a graduate of Camden Wentworth Academy.
+But Mr. Vane, when he was at home, lived on a wide, maple-shaded street
+in the city of Ripton, cared for by an elderly housekeeper who had more
+edges than a new-fangled mowing machine. The house was a porticoed one
+which had belonged to the Austens for a hundred years or more, for Hilary
+Vane had married, towards middle age, Miss Sarah Austen. In two years he
+was a widower, and he never tried it again; he had the Austens' house,
+and that many-edged woman, Euphrasia Cotton, the Austens' housekeeper.
+
+The house was of wood, and was painted white as regularly as leap year.
+From the street front to the vegetable garden in the extreme rear it was
+exceedingly long, and perhaps for propriety's sake--Hilary Vane lived at
+one end of it and Euphrasia at the other. Hilary was sixty-five,
+Euphrasia seventy, which is not old for frugal people, though it is just
+as well to add that there had never been a breath of scandal about either
+of them, in Ripton or elsewhere. For the Honourable Hilary's modest needs
+one room sufficed, and the front parlour had not been used since poor
+Sarah Austen's demise, thirty years before this story opens.
+
+In those thirty years, by a sane and steady growth, Hilary Vane had
+achieved his present eminent position in the State. He was trustee for I
+know not how many people and institutions, a deacon in the first church,
+a lawyer of such ability that he sometimes was accorded the
+courtesy-title of "Judge." His only vice--if it could be called such--was
+in occasionally placing a piece, the size of a pea, of a particular kind
+of plug tobacco under his tongue,--and this was not known to many people.
+Euphrasia could not be called a wasteful person, and Hilary had
+accumulated no small portion of this world's goods, and placed them as
+propriety demanded, where they were not visible to the naked eye: and be
+it added in his favour that he gave as secretly, to institutions and
+hospitals the finances and methods of which were known to him.
+
+As concrete evidence of the Honourable Hilary Vane's importance, when he
+travelled he had only to withdraw from his hip-pocket a book in which
+many coloured cards were neatly inserted, an open-sesame which permitted
+him to sit without payment even in those wheeled palaces of luxury known
+as Pullman cars. Within the limits of the State he did not even have to
+open the book, but merely say, with a twinkle of his eyes to the
+conductor, "Good morning, John," and John would reply with a bow and a
+genial and usually witty remark, and point him out to a nobody who sat in
+the back of the car. So far had Mr. Hilary Vane's talents carried him.
+
+The beginning of this eminence dated back to the days before the Empire,
+when there were many little principalities of railroads fighting among
+themselves. For we are come to a changed America. There was a time, in
+the days of the sixth Edward of England, when the great landowners found
+it more profitable to consolidate the farms, seize the common lands, and
+acquire riches hitherto undreamed of. Hence the rising of tailor Ket and
+others, and the leveling of fences and barriers, and the eating of many
+sheep. It may have been that Mr. Vane had come across this passage in
+English history, but he drew no parallels. His first position of trust
+had been as counsel for that principality known in the old days as the
+Central Railroad, of which a certain Mr. Duncan had been president, and
+Hilary Vane had fought the Central's battles with such telling effect
+that when it was merged into the one Imperial Railroad, its stockholders
+--to the admiration of financiers--were guaranteed ten per cent. It was,
+indeed, rumoured that Hilary drew the Act of Consolidation itself. At any
+rate, he was too valuable an opponent to neglect, and after a certain
+interval of time Mr. Vane became chief counsel in the State for the
+Imperial Railroad, on which dizzy height we now behold him. And he found,
+by degrees, that he had no longer time for private practice.
+
+It is perhaps gratuitous to add that the Honourable Hilary Vane was a man
+of convictions. In politics he would have told you--with some vehemence,
+if you seemed to doubt--that he was a Republican. Treason to party he
+regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence, as an act for which a man should
+be justly outlawed. If he were in a mellow mood, with the right quantity
+of Honey Dew tobacco under his tongue, he would perhaps tell you why he
+was a Republican, if he thought you worthy of his confidence. He believed
+in the gold standard, for one thing; in the tariff (left unimpaired in
+its glory) for another, and with a wave of his hand would indicate the
+prosperity of the nation which surrounded him,--a prosperity too sacred
+to tamper with.
+
+One article of his belief, and in reality the chief article, Mr. Vane
+would not mention to you. It was perhaps because he had never formulated
+the article for himself. It might be called a faith in the divine right
+of Imperial Railroads to rule, but it was left out of the verbal creed.
+This is far from implying hypocrisy to Mr. Vane. It was his
+foundation-rock and too sacred for light conversation. When he allowed
+himself to be bitter against various "young men with missions" who had
+sprung up in various States of the Union, so-called purifiers of
+politics, he would call them the unsuccessful with a grievance, and
+recommend to them the practice of charity, forbearance, and other
+Christian virtues. Thank God, his State was not troubled with such.
+
+In person Mr. Hilary Vane was tall, with a slight stoop to his shoulders,
+and he wore the conventional double-breasted black coat, which reached to
+his knees, and square-toed congress boots. He had a Puritan beard, the
+hawk-like Vane nose, and a twinkling eye that spoke of a sense of humour
+and a knowledge of the world. In short, he was no man's fool, and on
+occasions had been more than a match for certain New York lawyers with
+national reputations.
+
+It is rare, in this world of trouble, that such an apparently ideal and
+happy state of existence is without a canker. And I have left the
+revelation of the canker to the last. Ripton knew it was there, Camden
+Street knew it, and Mr. Vane's acquaintances throughout the State; but
+nobody ever spoke of it. Euphrasia shed over it the only tears she had
+known since Sarah Austen died, and some of these blotted the only letters
+she wrote. Hilary Vane did not shed tears, but his friends suspected that
+his heart-strings were torn, and pitied him. Hilary Vane fiercely
+resented pity, and that was why they did not speak of it. This trouble of
+his was the common point on which he and Euphrasia touched, and they
+touched only to quarrel. Let us out with it--Hilary Vane had a wild son,
+whose name was Austen.
+
+Euphrasia knew that in his secret soul Mr. Vane attributed this wildness,
+and what he was pleased to designate as profligacy, to the Austen blood.
+And Euphrasia resented it bitterly. Sarah Austen had been a young, elfish
+thing when he married her,--a dryad, the elderly and learned Mrs. Tredway
+had called her. Mr Vane had understood her about as well as he would have
+understood Mary, Queen of Scots, if he had been married to that lady.
+Sarah Austen had a wild, shy beauty, startled, alert eyes like an animal,
+and rebellious black hair that curled about her ears and gave her a
+faun-like appearance. With a pipe and the costume of Rosalind she would
+have been perfect. She had had a habit of running off for the day into
+the hills with her son, and the conventions of Ripton had been to her as
+so many defunct blue laws. During her brief married life there had been
+periods of defiance from her lasting a week, when she would not speak to
+Hilary or look at him, and these periods would be followed by violent
+spells of weeping in Euphrasia's arms, when the house was no place for
+Hilary. He possessed by matrimony and intricate mechanism of which his
+really admirable brain could not grasp the first principles; he felt for
+her a real if uncomfortable affection, but when she died he heaved a sigh
+of relief, at which he was immediately horrified.
+
+Austen he understood little better, but his affection for the child may
+be likened to the force of a great river rushing through a narrow gorge,
+and he vied with Euphrasia in spoiling him. Neither knew what they were
+doing, and the spoiling process was interspersed with occasional and (to
+Austen) unmeaning intervals of severe discipline. The boy loved the
+streets and the woods and his fellow-beings; his punishments were a
+series of afternoons in the house, during one of which he wrecked the
+bedroom where he was confined, and was soundly whaled with an old slipper
+that broke under the process. Euphrasia kept the slipper, and once showed
+it to Hilary during a quarrel they had when the boy was grown up and gone
+and the house was silent, and Hilary had turned away, choking, and left
+the room. Such was his cross.
+
+To make it worse, the boy had love his father. Nay, still loved him. As a
+little fellow, after a scolding for some wayward prank, he would throw
+himself into Hilary's arms and cling to him, and would never know how
+near he came to unmanning him. As Austen grew up, they saw the world in
+different colours: blue to Hilary was red to Austen, and white, black;
+essentials to one were non-essentials to the other; boys and girls, men
+and women, abhorred by one were boon companions to the other.
+
+Austen made fun of the minister, and was compelled to go church twice on
+Sundays and to prayer-meeting on Wednesdays. Then he went to Camden
+Street, to live with his grandparents in the old Vane house and attend
+Camden Wentworth Academy. His letters, such as they were, were inimitable
+if crude, but contained not the kind of humour Hilary Vane knew. Camden
+Wentworth, principal and teachers, was painted to the life; and the lad
+could hardly wait for vacation time to see his father, only to begin
+quarreling with him again.
+
+I pass over escapades in Ripton that shocked one half of the population
+and convulsed the other half. Austen went to the college which his father
+had attended,--a college of splendid American traditions,--and his career
+there might well have puzzled a father of far greater tolerance and
+catholicity. Hilary Vane was a trustee, and journeyed more than once to
+talk the matter over with the president, who had been his classmate
+there.
+
+"I love that boy, Hilary," the president had said at length, when pressed
+for a frank opinion,--"there isn't a soul in the place, I believe, that
+doesn't,--undergraduates and faculty,--but he has given me more anxious
+thought than any scholar I have ever had."
+
+"Trouble," corrected Mr. Vane, sententiously.
+
+"Well, yes, trouble," answered the president, smiling, "but upon my soul,
+I think it is all animal spirits."
+
+"A euphemism for the devil," said Hilary, grimly; "he is the animal part
+of us, I have been brought up to believe."
+
+The president was a wise man, and took another tack.
+
+"He has a really remarkable mind, when he chooses to use it. Every once
+in a while he takes your breath away--but he has to become interested. A
+few weeks ago Hays came to me direct from his lecture room to tell me
+about a discussion of Austen's in constitutional law. Hays, you know, is
+not easily enthused, but he declares your son has as fine a legal brain
+as he has come across in his experience. But since then, I am bound to
+admit," added the president, sadly, "Austen seems not to have looked at a
+lesson."
+
+"'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,'" replied Hilary.
+
+"He'll sober down," said the president, stretching his conviction a
+little, "he has two great handicaps: he learns too easily, and he is too
+popular." The president looked out of his study window across the common,
+surrounded by the great elms which had been planted when Indian lads
+played among the stumps and the red flag of England had flown from the
+tall pine staff. The green was covered now with students of a conquering
+race, skylarking to and fro as they looked on at a desultory baseball
+game.  "I verily believe," said the president, "at a word from your son,
+most of them would put on their coats and follow him on any mad
+expedition that came into his mind."
+
+Hilary Vane groaned more than once in the train back to Ripton. It meant
+nothing to him to be the father of the most popular man in college.
+
+"The mad expedition" came at length in the shape of a fight with the
+townspeople, in which Austen, of course, was the ringleader. If he had
+inherited his mother's eccentricities, he had height and physique from
+the Vanes, and one result was a week in bed for the son of the local
+plumber and a damage suit against the Honourable Hilary. Another result
+was that Austen and a Tom Gaylord came back to Ripton on a long
+suspension, which, rumour said, would have been expulsion if Hilary were
+not a trustee. Tom Gaylord was proud of suspension in such company. More
+of him later. He was the son of old Tom Gaylord, who owned more lumber
+than any man in the State, and whom Hilary Vane believed to be the
+receptacle of all the vices.
+
+Eventually Austen went back and graduated--not summa cum laude, honesty
+compels me to add. Then came the inevitable discussion, and to please his
+father he went to the Harvard Law School for two years. At the end of
+that time, instead of returning to Ripton, a letter had come from him
+with the postmark of a Western State, where he had fled with a classmate
+who owned ranch. Evidently the worldly consideration to be derived from
+conformity counted little with Austen Vane. Money was a medium only--not
+an end. He was in the saddle all day, with nothing but the horizon to
+limit him; he loved his father, and did not doubt his father's love for
+him, and he loved Euphrasia. He could support himself, but he must see
+life. The succeeding years brought letters and quaint, useless presents
+to both the occupants of the lonely house,--Navajo blankets and Indian
+jeweler and basket-work,--and Austen little knew how carefully these were
+packed away and surreptitiously gazed at from time to time. But to Hilary
+the Western career was a disgrace, and such meagre reports of it as came
+from other sources than Austen tended only to confirm him in this
+opinion.
+
+It was commonly said of Mr. Paul Pardriff that not a newspaper fell from
+the press that he did not have a knowledge of its contents. Certain it
+was that Mr. Pardriff made a specialty of many kinds of knowledge,
+political and otherwise, and, the information he could give--if he chose
+--about State and national affairs was of a recondite and cynical nature
+that made one wish to forget about the American flag. Mr. Pardriff was
+under forty, and with these gifts many innocent citizens of Ripton
+naturally wondered why the columns of his newspaper, the Ripton Record,
+did not more closely resemble the spiciness of his talk in the office of
+Gales' Hotel. The columns contained, instead, such efforts as essays on a
+national flower and the abnormal size of the hats of certain great men,
+notably Andrew Jackson; yes, and the gold standard; and in times of
+political stress they were devoted to a somewhat fulsome praise of
+regular and orthodox Republican candidates,--and praise of any one was
+not in character with the editor. Ill-natured people said that the matter
+in his paper might possibly be accounted for by the gratitude of the
+candidates, and the fact that Mr. Pardriff and his wife and his
+maid-servant and his hired man travelled on pink mileage books, which
+could only be had for love--not money. On the other hand, reputable
+witnesses had had it often from Mr. Pardriff that he was a reformer, and
+not at all in sympathy with certain practices which undoubtedly existed.
+
+Some years before--to be exact, the year Austen Vane left the law school
+--Mr. Pardriff had proposed to exchange the Ripton Record with the editor
+of the Pepper County Plainsman in afar Western State. The exchange was
+effected, and Mr. Pardriff glanced over the Plainsman regularly once a
+week, though I doubt whether the Western editor ever read the Record
+after the first copy. One day in June Mr. Pardriff was seated in his
+sanctum above Merrill's drug store when his keen green eyes fell upon the
+following:--"The Plainsman considers it safe to say that the sympathy of
+the people of Pepper County at large is with Mr. Austen Vane, whose
+personal difficulty with Jim Blodgett resulted so disastrously for Mr.
+Blodgett. The latter gentleman has long made himself obnoxious to local
+ranch owners by his persistent disregard of property lines and property,
+and it will be recalled that he is at present in hot water with the
+energetic Secretary of the Interior for fencing government lands. Vane,
+who was recently made manager of Ready Money Ranch, is one of the most
+popular young men in the county. He was unwillingly assisted over the
+State line by his friends. Although he has never been a citizen of the
+State, the Plainsman trusts that he may soon be back and become one of
+us. At last report Mr. Blodgett was resting easily."
+
+This article obtained circulation in Ripton, although it was not copied
+into the Record out of deference to the feelings of the Honourable Hilary
+Vane. In addition to the personal regard Mr. Pardriff professed to have
+for the Honourable Hilary, it maybe well to remember that Austen's father
+was, among other, things, chairman of the State Committee. Mr. Tredway
+(largest railroad stockholder in Ripton) pursed his lips that were
+already pursed. Tom Gaylord roared with laughter. Two or three days later
+the Honourable Hilary, still in blissful ignorance, received a letter
+that agitated him sorely.
+
+"DEAR FATHER: I hope you don't object to receiving a little visit from a
+prodigal, wayward son. To tell the truth, I have found it convenient to
+leave the Ready Money Ranch for a while, although Bob Tyner is good
+enough to say I may have the place when I come back. You know I often
+think of you and Phrasie back in Ripton, and I long to see the dear old
+town again. Expect me when you see me.
+
+"Your aff. son,
+"AUSTEN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON THE TREATMENT OF PRODIGALS
+
+While Euphrasia, in a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the
+room which held for her so many memories of Austen's boyhood, even
+beating the carpet with her own hands, Hilary Vane went about his
+business with no apparent lack of diligence. But he was meditating. He
+had many times listened to the Reverend Mr. Weightman read the parable
+from the pulpit, but he had never reflected how it would be to be the
+father of a real prodigal. What was to be done about the calf? Was there
+to be a calf, or was there not? To tell the truth, Hilary wanted a calf,
+and yet to have one (in spite of Holy Writ) would seem to set a premium
+on disobedience and riotous living.
+
+Again, Austen had reached thirty, an age when it was not likely he would
+settle down and live an orderly and godly life among civilized beings,
+and therefore a fatted calf was likely to be the first of many follies
+which he (Hilary) would live to regret. No, he would deal with justice.
+How he dealt will be seen presently, but when he finally reached this
+conclusion, the clipping from the Pepper County Plainsman had not yet
+come before his eyes.
+
+It is worth relating how the clipping did come before his eyes, for no
+one in Ripton had the temerity to speak of it. Primarily, it was because
+Miss Victoria Flint had lost a terrier, and secondarily, because she was
+a person of strong likes and dislikes. In pursuit of the terrier she
+drove madly through Leith, which, as everybody knows, is a famous colony
+of rich summer residents. Victoria probably stopped at every house in
+Leith, and searched them with characteristic vigour and lack of ceremony,
+sometimes entering by the side door, and sometimes by the front, and
+caring very little whether the owners were at home or not. Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe discovered her in a boa-stall at Wedderburn,--as his place was
+called,--for it made little difference to Victoria that Mr. Crewe was a
+bachelor of marriageable age and millions. Full, as ever, of practical
+suggestions, Mr. Crewe proposed to telephone to Ripton and put an
+advertisement in the Record, which--as he happened to know--went to press
+the next day. Victoria would not trust to the telephone, whereupon Mr.
+Crewe offered to drive down with her.
+
+"You'd bore me, Humphrey," said she, as she climbed into her runabout
+with the father and grandfather of the absentee. Mr. Crewe laughed as she
+drove away. He had a chemical quality of turning invidious remarks into
+compliments, and he took this one as Victoria's manner of saying that she
+did not wish to disturb so important a man.
+
+Arriving in the hot main street of Ripton, her sharp eyes descried the
+Record sign over the drug store, and in an astonishingly short time she
+was in the empty office. Mr. Pardriff was at dinner. She sat down in the
+editorial chair and read a great deal of uninteresting matter, but at
+last found something on the floor (where the wind had blown it) which
+made her laugh. It was the account of Austen Vane's difficulty with Mr.
+Blodgett. Victoria did not know Austen, but she knew that the Honourable
+Hilary had a son of that name who had gone West, and this was what
+tickled her. She thrust the clipping in the pocket of her linen coat just
+as Mr. Pardriff came in.
+
+Her conversation with the editor of the Record proved so entertaining
+that she forgot all about the clipping until she had reached Fairview,
+and had satisfied a somewhat imperious appetite by a combination of lunch
+and afternoon tea. Fairview was the "summer place" of Mr. Augustus P.
+Flint, her father, on a shelf of the hills in the town of Tunbridge,
+equidistant from Leith and Ripton: and Mr. Flint was the president of the
+Imperial Railroad, no less.
+
+Yes, he had once been plain Gus Flint, many years ago, when he used to
+fetch the pocket-handkerchiefs of Mr. Isaac D. Worthington of Brampton,
+and he was still "Gus" to his friends. Mr. Flint's had been the brain
+which had largely conceived and executed the consolidation of
+principalities of which the Imperial Railroad was the result and, as
+surely as tough metal prevails, Mr. Flint, after many other trials and
+errors of weaker stuff, had been elected to the place for which he was so
+supremely fitted. We are so used in America to these tremendous rises
+that a paragraph will suffice to place Mr. Flint in his Aladdin's palace.
+To do him justice, he cared not a fig for the palace, and he would have
+been content with the farmhouse under the hill where his gardener lived.
+You could not fool Mr. Flint on a horse or a farm, and he knew to a dot
+what a railroad was worth by travelling over it. Like his
+governor-general and dependent, Mr. Hilary Vane, he had married a wife
+who had upset all his calculations. The lady discovered Mr. Flint's
+balance in the bank, and had proceeded to use it for her own
+glorification, and the irony of it all was that he could defend it from
+everybody else. Mrs. Flint spent, and Mr. Flint paid the bills; for the
+first ten years protestingly, and after that he gave it up and let her go
+her own gait.
+
+She had come from the town of Sharon, in another State, through which Mr.
+Flint's railroad also ran, and she had been known as the Rose of that
+place. She had begun to rise immediately, with the kite-like adaptability
+of the American woman for high altitudes, and the leaden weight of the
+husband at the end of the tail was as nothing to her. She had begun it
+all by the study of people in hotels while Mr. Flint was closeted with
+officials and directors. By dint of minute observation and reasoning
+powers and unflagging determination she passed rapidly through several
+strata, and had made a country place out of her husband's farm in
+Tunbridge, so happily and conveniently situated near Leith. In winter
+they lived on Fifth Avenue.
+
+One daughter alone had halted, for a minute period, this progress, and
+this daughter was Victoria--named by her mother. Victoria was now
+twenty-one, and was not only of another generation, but might almost have
+been judged of another race than her parents. The things for which her
+mother had striven she took for granted, and thought of them not at all,
+and she had by nature that simplicity and astonishing frankness of manner
+and speech which was once believed to be an exclusive privilege of
+duchesses.
+
+To return to Fairview. Victoria, after sharing her five o'clock luncheon
+with her dogs, went to seek her father, for the purpose (if it must be
+told) of asking him for a cheque. Mr. Flint was at Fairview on the
+average of two days out of the week during the summer, and then he was
+nearly always closeted with a secretary and two stenographers and a
+long-distance telephone in two plain little rooms at the back of the
+house. And Mr. Hilary Vane was often in consultation with him, as he was
+on the present occasion when Victoria flung open the door. At sight of
+Mr. Vane she halted suddenly on the threshold, and a gleam of mischief
+came into her eye as she thrust her hand into her coat pocket. The two
+regarded her with the detached air of men whose thread of thought has
+been broken.
+
+"Well, Victoria," said her father, kindly if resignedly, "what is it
+now?"
+
+"Money," replied Victoria, promptly; "I went to Avalon this morning and
+bought that horse you said I might have."
+
+"What horse?" asked Mr. Flint, vaguely. "But never mind. Tell Mr. Freeman
+to make out the cheque."
+
+Mr. Vane glanced at Mr. Flint, and his eyes twinkled. Victoria, who had
+long ago discovered the secret of the Honey Dew, knew that he was rolling
+it under his tongue and thinking her father a fool for his indulgence.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said; "Austen's coming home, isn't he?"
+She had got this by feminine arts out of Mr. Paul Pardriff, to whom she
+had not confided the fact of her possession of the clipping.
+
+The Honourable Hilary gave a grunt, as he always did when he was
+surprised and displeased, as though some one had prodded him with a stick
+in a sensitive spot.
+
+"Your son? Why, Vane, you never told me that," said Mr. Flint. "I didn't
+know that you knew him, Victoria."
+
+"I don't," answered Victoria, "but I'd like to. What did he do to Mr.
+Blodgett?" she demanded of Hilary.
+
+"Mr. Blodgett!" exclaimed that gentleman. "I never heard of him. What's
+happened to him?"
+
+"He will probably recover," she assured him.
+
+The Honourable Hilary, trying in vain to suppress his agitation, rose to
+his feet.
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about, Victoria," he said, but his
+glance was fixed on the clipping in her hand.
+
+"Haven't you seen it?" she asked, giving it to him.
+
+He read it in silence, groaned, and handed it to Mr. Flint, who had been
+drumming on the table and glancing at Victoria with vague disapproval.
+Mr. Flint read it and gave it back to the Honourable Hilary, who groaned
+again and looked out of the window.
+
+"Why do you feel badly about it?" asked Victoria. "I'd be proud of him,
+if I were you."
+
+"Proud of him" echoed Mr. Vane, grimly. "Proud of him!"
+
+"Victoria, what do you mean?" said Mr. Flint.
+
+"Why not?" said Victoria. "He's done nothing to make you ashamed.
+According to that clipping, he's punished a man who richly deserved to be
+punished, and he has the sympathy of an entire county."
+
+Hilary Vane was not a man to discuss his domestic affliction with
+anybody, so he merely grunted and gazed persistently out of the window,
+and was not aware of the fact that Victoria made a little face at him as
+she left the room. The young are not always impartial judges of the old,
+and Victoria had never forgiven him for carrying to her father the news
+of an escapade of hers in Ripton.
+
+As he drove through the silent forest roads on his way homeward that
+afternoon, the Honourable Hilary revolved the new and intensely
+disagreeable fact in his mind as to how he should treat a prodigal who
+had attempted manslaughter and was a fugitive from justice. In the
+meantime a tall and spare young man of a red-bronze colour alighted from
+the five o'clock express at Ripton and grinned delightedly at the
+gentlemen who made the station their headquarters about train time. They
+were privately disappointed that the gray felt hat, although
+broad-brimmed, was not a sombrero, and the respectable, loose-fitting
+suit of clothes was not of buckskin with tassels on the trousers; and
+likewise that he came without the cartridge belt and holster which they
+had pictured in anticipatory sessions on the baggage-trucks. There could
+be no doubt of the warmth of their greeting as they sidled up and seized
+a hand somewhat larger than theirs, but the welcome had in it an
+ingredient of awe that puzzled the newcomer, who did not hesitate to
+inquire:--"What's the matter, Ed? Why so ceremonious, Perley?"
+
+But his eagerness did not permit him to wait for explanations. Grasping
+his bag, the only baggage he possessed, he started off at a swinging
+stride for Hanover Street, pausing only to shake the hands of the few who
+recognized him, unconscious of the wild-fire at his back. Hanover Street
+was empty that drowsy summer afternoon, and he stopped under the
+well-remembered maples before the house and gazed at it long and
+tenderly; even at the windows of that room--open now for the first time
+in years--where he had served so many sentences of imprisonment. Then he
+went cautiously around by the side and looked in at the kitchen door. To
+other eyes than his Euphrasia might not have seemed a safe person to
+embrace, but in a moment he had her locked in his arms and weeping. She
+knew nothing as yet of Mr. Blodgett's misfortunes, but if Austen Vane had
+depopulated a county it would have made no difference in her affection.
+
+"My, but you're a man," exclaimed Euphrasia, backing away at last and
+staring at him with the only complete approval she had ever accorded to
+any human being save one.
+
+"What did you expect, Phrasie?"
+
+"Come, and I'll show you your room," she said, in a gutter she could not
+hide; "it's got all the same pictures in, your mother's pictures, and the
+chair you broke that time when Hilary locked you in. It's mended."
+
+"Hold on, Phrasie," said Austen, seizing her by the apron-strings, "how
+about the Judge?" It was by this title he usually designated his father.
+
+"What about him?" demanded Euphrasia, sharply.
+
+"Well, it's his house, for one thing," answered Austen, "and he may
+prefer to have that room--empty."
+
+"Empty! Turn you out? I'd like to see him," cried Euphrasia. "It wouldn't
+take me long to leave him high and dry."
+
+She paused at the sound of wheels, and there was the Honourable Hilary,
+across the garden patch, in the act of slipping out of his buggy at the
+stable door. In the absence of Luke, the hired man, the chief counsel for
+the railroad was wont to put up the horse himself, and he already had the
+reins festooned from the bit rings when he felt a heavy, hand on his
+shoulder and heard a voice say:--"How are you, Judge?"
+
+If the truth be told, that voice and that touch threw the Honourable
+Hilary's heart out of beat. Many days he had been schooling himself for
+this occasion: this very afternoon he had determined his course of
+action, which emphatically did not include a fatted calf. And now surged
+up a dryad-like memory which had troubled him many a wakeful night, of
+startled, appealing eyes that sought his in vain, and of the son she had
+left him flinging himself into his arms in the face of chastisement. For
+the moment Hilary Vane, under this traitorous influence, was unable to
+speak. But he let the hand rest on his shoulder, and at length was able
+to pronounce, in a shamefully shaky voice, the name of his son. Whereupon
+Austen seized him by the other shoulder and turned him round and looked
+into his face.
+
+"The same old Judge," he said.
+
+But Hilary was startled, even as Euphrasia had been. Was this strange,
+bronzed, quietly humorous young man his son? Hilary even had to raise his
+eyes a little; he had forgotten how tall Austen was. Strange emotions,
+unbidden and unwelcome, ran riot in his breast; and Hilary Vane, who made
+no slips before legislative committees or supreme courts, actually found
+himself saying:--"Euphrasia's got your room ready."
+
+"It's good of you to take me in, Judge," said Austen, patting his
+shoulder. And then he began, quite naturally to unbuckle the breechings
+and loose the traces, which he did with such deftness and celerity that
+he had the horse unharnessed and in the stall in a twinkling, and had
+hauled the buggy through the stable door, the Honourable Hilary watching
+him the while. He was troubled, but for the life of him could find no
+adequate words, who usually had the dictionary at his disposal.
+
+"Didn't write me why you came home," said the Honourable Hilary, as his
+son washed his hands at the spigot.
+
+"Didn't I? Well, the truth was I wanted to see you again, Judge."
+
+His father grunted, not with absolute displeasure, but suspiciously.
+
+"How about Blodgett?" he asked.
+
+"Blodgett? Have you heard about that? Who told you?"
+
+"Never mind. You didn't. Nothing in your letter about it."
+
+"It wasn't worth mentioning," replied Austen. "Tyner and the boys liked
+it pretty well, but I didn't think you'd be interested. It was a local
+affair."
+
+"Not interested! Not worth mentioning!" exclaimed the Honourable Hilary,
+outraged to discover that his son was modestly deprecating an achievement
+instead of defending a crime. "Godfrey! murder ain't worth mentioning, I
+presume."
+
+"Not when it isn't successful," said Austen. "If Blodgett had succeeded,
+I guess you'd have heard of it before you did."
+
+"Do you mean to say this Blodgett tried to kill you?" demanded the
+Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Yes," said his son, "and I've never understood why he didn't. He's a
+good deal better shot than I am."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and sat down on a bucket and carefully
+prepared a piece of Honey Dew. He was surprised and agitated.
+
+"Then why are you a fugitive from justice if you were acting in
+self-defence?" he inquired.
+
+"Well, you see there were no witnesses, except a Mexican of Blodgett's,
+and Blodgett runs the Pepper County machine for the railroad out there.
+I'd been wanting to come East and have a look at you for some time, and I
+thought I might as well come now."
+
+"How did this--this affair start?" asked Mr. Vane.
+
+"Blodgett was driving in some of Tyner's calves, and I caught him. I told
+him what I thought of him, and he shot at me through his pocket. That was
+all."
+
+"All! You shot him, didn't you?"
+
+"I was lucky enough to hit him first," said Austen.
+
+Extraordinary as it may seem, the Honourable Hilary experienced a sense
+of pride.
+
+"Where did you hit him?" he asked.
+
+It was Euphrasia who took matters in her own hands and killed the fatted
+calf, and the meal to which they presently sat down was very different
+from the frugal suppers Mr. Vane usually had. But he made no comment. It
+is perhaps not too much to say that he would have been distinctly
+disappointed had it been otherwise. There was Austen's favourite pie, and
+Austen's favourite cake, all inherited from the Austens, who had thought
+more of the fleshpots than people should. And the prodigal did full
+justice to the occasion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CONCERNING THE PRACTICE OF LAW
+
+So instinctively do we hark back to the primeval man that there was a
+tendency to lionize the prodigal in Ripton, which proves the finished
+civilization of the East not to be so far removed from that land of
+outlaws, Pepper County. Mr. Paul Pardriff, who had a guilty conscience
+about the clipping, and vividly bearing in mind Mr. Blodgett's mishap,
+alone avoided young Mr. Vane; and escaped through the type-setting room
+and down an outside stairway in the rear when that gentleman called. It
+gave an ironical turn to the incident that Mr. Pardriff was at the moment
+engaged in a "Welcome Home" paragraph meant to be propitiatory.
+
+Austen cared very little for lionizing. He spent most of his time with
+young Tom Gaylord, now his father's right-hand man in a tremendous lumber
+business. And Tom, albeit he had become so important, habitually fell
+once more under the domination of the hero of his youthful days. Together
+these two visited haunts of their boyhood, camping and fishing and
+scaling mountains, Tom with an eye to lumbering prospects the while.
+
+After a matter of two or three months bad passed away in this pleasant
+though unprofitable manner, the Honourable Hilary requested the presence
+of his son one morning at his office. This office was in what had once
+been a large residence, and from its ample windows you could look out
+through the elms on to the square. Old-fashioned bookcases lined with
+musty books filled the walls, except where a steel engraving of a legal
+light or a railroad map of the State was hung, and the Honourable Hilary
+sat in a Windsor chair at a mahogany table in the middle.
+
+The anteroom next door, where the clerks sat, was also a waiting-room for
+various individuals from the different parts of the State who continually
+sought the counsel's presence.
+
+"Haven't seen much of you since you've be'n home, Austen," his father
+remarked as an opening.
+
+"Your--legal business compels you to travel a great deal," answered
+Austen, turning from the window and smiling.
+
+"Somewhat," said the Honourable Hilary, on whom this pleasantry was not
+lost. "You've be'n travelling on the lumber business, I take it."
+
+"I know more about it than I did," his son admitted.
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted.
+
+"Caught a good many fish, haven't you?"
+
+Austen crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk beside his
+father's chair.
+
+"See here, Judge," he said, "what are you driving at? Out with it."
+
+"When are you--going back West?" asked Mr. Vane.
+
+Austen did not answer at once, but looked down into his father's
+inscrutable face.
+
+"Do you want to get rid of me?" he said.
+
+"Sowed enough wild oats, haven't you?" inquired the father.
+
+"I've sowed a good many," Austen admitted.
+
+"Why not settle down?"
+
+"I haven't yet met the lady, Judge," replied his son.
+
+"Couldn't support her if you had," said Mr. Vane.
+
+"Then it's fortunate," said Austen, resolved not to be the necessary
+second in a quarrel. He knew his father, and perceived that these
+preliminary and caustic openings of his were really olive branches.
+
+"Sometimes I think you might as well be in that outlandish country, for
+all I see of you," said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"You ought to retire from business and try fishing," his son suggested.
+
+The Honourable Hilary sometimes smiled.
+
+"You've got a good brain, Austen, and what's the use of wasting it
+chasing cattle and practising with a pistol on your fellow-beings? You
+won't have much trouble in getting admitted to the bar. Come into the
+office."
+
+Austen did not answer at once. He suspected that it had cost his father
+not a little to make these advances.
+
+"Do you believe you and I could get along, Judge? How long do you think
+it would last?"
+
+"I've considered that some," answered the Honourable Hilary, "but I won't
+last a great while longer myself."
+
+"You're as sound as a bronco," declared Austen, patting him.
+
+"I never was what you might call dissipated," agreed Mr. Vane, "but men
+don't go on forever. I've worked hard all my life, and got where I am,
+and I've always thought I'd like to hand it on to you. It's a position of
+honour and trust, Austen, and one of which any lawyer might be proud."
+
+"My ambition hasn't run in exactly that channel," said his son.
+
+"Didn't know as you had any precise ambition," responded the Honourable
+Hilary, "but I never heard of a man refusing to be chief counsel for a
+great railroad. I don't say you can be, mind, but I say with work and
+brains it's as easy for the son of Hilary Vane as for anybody else."
+
+"I don't know much about the duties of such a position," said Austen,
+laughing, "but at all events I shall have time to make up my mind how to
+answer Mr. Flint when he comes to me with the proposal. To speak frankly,
+Judge, I hadn't thought of spending the whole of what might otherwise
+prove a brilliant life in Ripton."
+
+The Honourable Hilary smiled again, and then he grunted.
+
+"I tell you what I'll do," he said; "you come in with me and agree to
+stay five years. If you've done well for yourself, and want to go to New
+York or some large place at the end of that time, I won't hinder you. But
+I feel it my duty to say, if you don't accept my offer, no son of mine
+shall inherit what I've laid up by hard labour. It's against American
+doctrine, and it's against my principles. You can go back to Pepper
+County and get put in jail, but you can't say I haven't warned you
+fairly."
+
+"You ought to leave your fortune to the railroad, Judge," said Austen.
+"Generations to come would bless your name if you put up a new station in
+Ripton and built bridges over Bunker Hill grade crossing and the other
+one on Heath Street where Nic Adams was killed last month. I shouldn't
+begrudge a cent of the money."
+
+"I suppose I was a fool to talk to you," said the Honourable Hilary,
+getting up.
+
+But his son pushed him down again into the Windsor chair.
+
+"Hold on, Judge," he said, "that was just my way of saying if I accepted
+your offer, it wouldn't be because I yearned after the money. Thinking of
+it has never kept me awake nights. Now if you'll allow me to take a few
+days once in a while to let off steam, I'll make a counter proposal, in
+the nature of a compromise."
+
+"What's that?" the Honourable Hilary demanded suspiciously.
+
+"Provided I get admitted to the bar I will take a room in another part of
+this building and pick up what crumbs of practice I can by myself. Of
+course, sir, I realize that these, if they come at all, will be owing to
+the lustre of your name. But I should, before I become Mr. Flint's
+right-hand man, like to learn to walk with my own legs."
+
+The speech pleased the Honourable Hilary, and he put out his hand.
+
+"It's a bargain, Austen," he said.
+
+"I don't mind telling you now, Judge, that when I left the West I left it
+for good, provided you and I could live within a decent proximity. And I
+ought to add that I always intended going into the law after I'd had a
+fling. It isn't fair to leave you with the impression that this is a
+sudden determination. Prodigals don't become good as quick as all that."
+
+Ripton caught its breath a second time the day Austen hired a law office,
+nor did the surprise wholly cease when, in one season, he was admitted to
+the bar, for the proceeding was not in keeping with the habits and
+customs of prodigals. Needless to say, the practice did not immediately
+begin to pour in, but the little office rarely lacked a visitor, and
+sometimes had as many as five or six. There was an irresistible
+attraction about that room, and apparently very little law read there,
+though sometimes its occupant arose and pushed the visitors into the hall
+and locked the door, and opened the window at the top to let the smoke
+out. Many of the Honourable Hilary's callers preferred the little room in
+the far corridor to the great man's own office.
+
+These visitors of the elder Mr. Vane's, as has been before hinted, were
+not all clients. Without burdening the reader too early with a treatise
+on the fabric of a system, suffice it to say that something was
+continually going on that was not law; and gentlemen came and went--fat
+and thin, sharp-eyed and red-faced--who were neither clients nor lawyers.
+These were really secretive gentlemen, though most of them had a
+hail-fellow-well-met manner and a hearty greeting, but when they talked
+to the Honourable Hilary it was with doors shut, and even then they sat
+very close to his ear. Many of them preferred now to wait in Austen's
+office instead of the anteroom, and some of them were not so cautious
+with the son of Hilary Vane that they did not let drop certain
+observations to set him thinking. He had a fanciful if somewhat facetious
+way of calling them by feudal titles which made them grin.
+
+"How is the Duke of Putnam this morning?" he would ask of the gentleman
+of whom the Ripton Record would frequently make the following
+announcement: "Among the prominent residents of Putnam County in town
+this week was the Honourable Brush Bascom."
+
+The Honourable Brush and many of his associates, barons and earls, albeit
+the shrewdest of men, did not know exactly how to take the son of Hilary
+Vane. This was true also of the Honourable Hilary himself, who did not
+wholly appreciate the humour in Austen's parallel of the feudal system.
+Although Austen had set up for himself, there were many ways--not legal
+--in which the son might have been helpful to the father, but the
+Honourable Hilary hesitated, for some unformulated reason, to make use of
+him; and the consequence was that Mr. Hamilton Tooting and other young
+men of a hustling nature in the Honourable Hilary's office found that
+Austen's advent did not tend greatly to lighten a certain class of their
+labours. In fact, father and son were not much nearer in spirit than when
+ode had been in Pepper County and the other in Ripton. Caution and an
+instinct which senses obstacles are characteristics of gentlemen in Mr.
+Vane's business.
+
+So two years passed,--years liberally interspersed with expeditions into
+the mountains and elsewhere, and nights spent in the company of Tom
+Gaylord and others. During this period Austen was more than once assailed
+by the temptation to return to the free life of Pepper County, Mr.
+Blodgett having completely recovered now, and only desiring vengeance of
+a corporal nature. But a bargain was a bargain, and Austen Vane stuck to
+his end of it, although he had now begun to realize many aspects of a
+situation which he had not before suspected. He had long foreseen,
+however, that the time was coming when a serious disagreement with his
+father was inevitable. In addition to the difference in temperament,
+Hilary Vane belonged to one generation and Austen to another.
+
+It happened, as do so many incidents which tend to shape a life, by a
+seeming chance. It was a Tune evening, and there had been a church
+sociable and basket picnic during the day in a grove in the town of
+Mercer, some ten miles south of Ripton. The grove was bounded on one side
+by the railroad track, and merged into a thick clump of second growth and
+alders where there was a diagonal grade crossing. The picnic was over and
+the people preparing to go home when they were startled by a crash,
+followed by the screaming of brakes as a big engine flew past the grove
+and brought a heavy train to a halt some distance down the grade. The
+women shrieked and dropped the dishes they were washing, and the men left
+their horses standing and ran to the crossing and then stood for the
+moment helpless, in horror at the scene which met their eyes. The wagon
+of one--of their own congregation was in splinters, a man (a farmer of
+the neighbourhood) lying among the alders with what seemed a mortal
+injury. Amid the lamentations and cries for some one to go to Mercer
+Village for the doctor a young man drove up rapidly and sprang out of a
+buggy, trusting to some one to catch his horse, pushed, through the ring
+of people, and bent over the wounded farmer. In an instant he had whipped
+out a knife, cut a stick from one of the alders, knotted his handkerchief
+around the man's leg, ran the stick through the knot, and twisted the
+handkerchief until the blood ceased to flow. They watched him, paralyzed,
+as the helpless in this world watch the capable, and before he had
+finished his task the train crew and some passengers began to arrive.
+
+"Have you a doctor aboard, Charley?" the young man asked.
+
+"No," answered the conductor, who had been addressed; "my God, not one,
+Austen."
+
+"Back up your train," said Austen, "and stop your baggage car here. And
+go to the grove," he added to one of the picnickers, "and bring four or
+five carriage cushions. And you hold this."
+
+The man beside him took the tourniquet, as he was bid. Austen Vane drew a
+note-book from his pocket.
+
+"I want this man's name and address," he said, "and the names and
+addresses of every person here, quickly."
+
+He did not lift his voice, but the man who had taken charge of such a
+situation was not to be denied. They obeyed him, some eagerly, some
+reluctantly, and by that time the train had backed down and the cushions
+had arrived. They laid these on the floor of the baggage car and lifted
+the man on to them. His name was Zeb Meader, and he was still insensible.
+Austen Vane, with a peculiar set look upon his face, sat beside him all
+the way into Ripton. He spoke only once, and that was to tell the
+conductor to telegraph from Avalon to have the ambulance from St. Mary's
+Hospital meet the train at Ripton.
+
+The next day Hilary Vane, returning from one of his periodical trips to
+the northern part of the State, invaded his son's office.
+
+"What's this they tell me about your saving a man's life?" he asked,
+sinking into one of the vacant chairs and regarding Austen with his
+twinkling eyes.
+
+"I don't know what they tell you," Austen answered. "I didn't do anything
+but get a tourniquet on his leg and have him put on the train."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and continued to regard his son. Then he
+cut a piece of Honey Dew.
+
+"Looks bad, does it?" he said.
+
+"Well," replied Austen, "it might have been done better. It was bungled.
+In a death-trap as cleverly conceived as that crossing, with a down grade
+approaching it, they ought to have got the horse too."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted again, and inserted the Honey Dew. He
+resolved to ignore the palpable challenge in this remark, which was in
+keeping with this new and serious mien in Austen.
+
+"Get the names of witnesses?" was his next question.
+
+"I took particular pains to do so."
+
+"Hand 'em over to Tooting. What kind of man is this Meagre?"
+
+"He is rather meagre now," said Austen, smiling a little. "His name's
+Meader."
+
+"Is he likely to make a fuss?"
+
+"I think he is," said Austen.
+
+"Well," said the Honourable Hilary, "we must have Ham Tooting hurry
+'round and fix it up with him as soon as he can talk, before one of these
+cormorant lawyers gets his claw in him."
+
+Austen said nothing, and after some desultory conversation, in which he
+knew how to indulge when he wished to conceal the fact that he was
+baffled, the Honourable Hilary departed. That student of human nature,
+Mr. Hamilton Tooting, a young man of a sporting appearance and a free
+vocabulary, made the next attempt. It is a characteristic of Mr.
+Tooting's kind that, in their efforts to be genial, they often use an
+awkward diminutive of their friends' names.
+
+"Hello, Aust," said Mr. Tooting, "I dropped in to get those witnesses in
+that Meagre accident, before I forget it."
+
+"I think I'll keep 'em," said Austen, making a note out of the Revised
+Statutes.
+
+"Oh, all right, all right," said Mr. Tooting, biting off a piece of his
+cigar. "Going to handle the case yourself, are you?"
+
+"I may."
+
+"I'm just as glad to have some of 'em off my hands, and this looks to me
+like a nasty one. I don't like those Mercer people. The last farmer they
+ran over there raised hell."
+
+"I shouldn't blame this one if he did, if he ever gets well enough," said
+Austen. Young Mr. Tooting paused with a lighted match halfway to his
+cigar and looked at Austen shrewdly, and then sat down on the desk very
+close to him.
+
+"Say, Aust, it sometimes sickens a man to have to buy these fellows off.
+What? Poor devils, they don't get anything like what they ought to get,
+do they? Wait till you see how the Railroad Commission'll whitewash that
+case. It makes a man want to be independent. What?"
+
+"This sounds like virtue, Ham."
+
+"I've often thought, too," said Mr. Tooting, "that a man could make more
+money if he didn't wear the collar."
+
+"But not sleep as well, perhaps," said Austen.
+
+"Say, Aust, you're not on the level with me."
+
+"I hope to reach that exalted plane some day, Ham."
+
+"What's got into you?" demanded the usually clear-headed Mr. Tooting, now
+a little bewildered.
+
+"Nothing, yet," said Austen, "but I'm thinking seriously of having a
+sandwich and a piece of apple pie. Will you come along?"
+
+They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile
+brain for some excuse to reopen the subject. Despairing of that, he
+decided that any subject would do.
+
+"That Humphrey Crewe up at Leith is smart--smart as paint," he remarked.
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"I've seen him," said Austen. "He's a young man, isn't he?"
+
+"And natty. He knows a thing or two for a millionaire that don't have to
+work, and he runs that place of his right up to the handle. You ought to
+hear him talk about the tariff, and national politics. I was passing
+there the other day, and he was walking around among the flowerbeds.
+'Ain't your name Tooting?' he hollered. I almost fell out of the buggy."
+
+"What did he want?" asked Austen, curiously. Mr. Tooting winked.
+
+"Say, those millionaires are queer, and no mistake. You'd think a fellow
+that only had to cut coupons wouldn't be lookin' for another job,
+wouldn't you? He made me hitch my horse, and had me into his study, as he
+called it, and gave me a big glass of whiskey and soda. A fellow with
+buttons and a striped vest brought it on tiptoe. Then this Crewe gave me
+a long yellow cigar with a band on it and told me what the State needed,
+--macadam roads, farmers' institutes, forests, and God knows what. I told
+him all he had to do was to get permission from old man Flint, and he
+could have 'em."
+
+"What did he say to that?"
+
+"He said Flint was an intimate friend of his. Then he asked me a whole
+raft of questions about fellows in the neighbourhood I didn't know he'd
+ever heard of. Say, he wants to go from Leith to the Legislature."
+
+"He can go for all I care," said Austen, as he pushed open the door of
+the restaurant.
+
+For a few days Mr. Meader hung between life and death. But he came of a
+stock which had for generations thrust its roots into the crevices of
+granite, and was not easily killed by steam-engines. Austen Vane called
+twice, and then made an arrangement with young Dr. Tredway (one of the
+numerous Ripton Tredways whose money had founded the hospital) that he
+was to see Mr. Meader as soon as he was able to sustain a conversation.
+Dr. Tredway, by the way, was a bachelor, and had been Austen's companion
+on many a boisterous expedition.
+
+When Austen, in response to the doctor's telephone message, stood over
+the iron bed in the spick-and-span men's ward of St. Mary's, a wave of
+that intense feeling he had experienced at the accident swept over him.
+The farmer's beard was overgrown, and the eyes looked up at him as from
+caverns of suffering below the bandage. They were shrewd eyes, however,
+and proved that Mr. Meader had possession of the five senses--nay, of the
+six. Austen sat down beside the bed.
+
+"Dr. Tredway tells me you are getting along finely," he said.
+
+"No thanks to the railrud," answered Mr. Meader; "they done their best."
+
+"Did you hear any whistle or any bell?" Austen asked.
+
+"Not a sound," said Mr. Meader; "they even shut off their steam on that
+grade."
+
+Austen Vane, like most men who are really capable of a deep sympathy, was
+not an adept at expressing it verbally. Moreover, he knew enough of his
+fellow-men to realize that a Puritan farmer would be suspicious of
+sympathy. The man had been near to death himself, was compelled to spend
+part of the summer, his bread-earning season, in a hospital, and yet no
+appeal or word of complaint had crossed his lips.
+
+"Mr. Meader," said Austen, "I came over here to tell you that in my
+opinion you are entitled to heavy damages from the railroad, and to
+advise you not to accept a compromise. They will send some one to you and
+offer you a sum far below that which you ought in justice to receive, You
+ought to fight this case."
+
+"How am I going to pay a lawyer, with a mortgage on my farm?" demanded
+Mr. Meader.
+
+"I'm a lawyer," said Austen, "and if you'll take me, I'll defend you
+without charge."
+
+"Ain't you the son of Hilary Vane?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I've heard of him a good many times," said Mr. Meader, as if to ask what
+man had not. "You're railroad, ain't ye?"
+
+Mr. Meader gazed long and thoughtfully into the young man's face, and the
+suspicion gradually faded from the farmer's blue eyes.
+
+"I like your looks," he said at last. "I guess you saved my life. I'm
+--I'm much obliged to you."
+
+When Mr. Tooting arrived later in the day, he found Mr. Meader willing to
+listen, but otherwise strangely non-committal. With native shrewdness,
+the farmer asked him what office he came from, but did not confide in Mr.
+Tooting the fact that Mr. Vane's son had volunteered to wring more money
+from Mr. Vane's client than Mr. Tooting offered him. Considerably
+bewildered, that gentleman left the hospital to report the affair to the
+Honourable Hilary, who, at intervals during the afternoon, found himself
+relapsing into speculation.
+
+Inside of a somewhat unpromising shell, Mr. Zeb Meader was a human being,
+and no mean judge of men and motives. As his convalescence progressed,
+Austen Vane fell into the habit of dropping in from time to time to chat
+with him, and gradually was rewarded by many vivid character sketches of
+Mr. Meader's neighbours in Mercer and its vicinity. One afternoon, when
+Austen came into the ward, he found at Mr. Meader's bedside a basket of
+fruit which looked too expensive and tempting to have come from any
+dealer's in Ripton.
+
+"A lady came with that," Mr. Meader explained. "I never was popular
+before I was run over by the cars. She's be'n here twice. When she
+fetched it to-day, I kind of thought she was up to some, game, and I
+didn't want to take it."
+
+"Up to some game?" repeated Austen.
+
+"Well, I don't know," continued Mr. Meader, thoughtfully, "the woman here
+tells me she comes regular in the summer time to see sick folks, but from
+the way she made up to me I had an idea that she wanted something. But I
+don't know. Thought I'd ask you. You see, she's railrud."
+
+"Railroad!"
+
+"She's Flint's daughter."
+
+Austen laughed.
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that," he said. "If Mr. Flint sent his daughter
+with fruit to everybody his railroad injures, she wouldn't have time to
+do anything else. I doubt if Mr. Flint ever heard of your case."
+
+Mr. Meader considered this, and calculated there was something in it.
+
+"She was a nice, common young lady, and cussed if she didn't make me
+laugh, she has such a funny way of talkin'. She wanted to know all about
+you."
+
+"What did she want to know?" Austen exclaimed, not unnaturally.
+
+"Well, she wanted to know about the accident, and I told her how you druv
+up and screwed that thing around my leg and backed the train down. She
+was a good deal took with that."
+
+"I think you are inclined to make too much of it," said Austen.
+
+Three days later, as he was about to enter the ward, Mr. Meader being now
+the only invalid there, he heard a sound which made him pause in the
+doorway. The sound was feminine laughter of a musical quality that struck
+pleasantly on Austen's ear. Miss Victoria Flint was sated beside Mr.
+Meader's bed, and qualified friendship had evidently been replaced by
+intimacy since Austen's last visit, for Mr. Meader was laughing, too.
+
+"And now I'm quite sure you have missed your vocation, Mr. Meader," said
+Victoria. "You would have made a fortune on the stage."
+
+"Me a play-actor!" exclaimed the invalid. "How much wages do they git?"
+
+"Untold sums," she declared, "if they can talk like you."
+
+"He kind of thought that story funny--same as you," Mr. Meader ruminated,
+and glanced up. "Drat me," he remarked, "if he ain't a-comin' now! I
+callated he'd run acrost you sometime."
+
+Victoria raised her eyes, sparkling with humour, and they met Austen's.
+
+"We was just talkin' about you," cried Mr. Meader, cordially; "come right
+in." He turned to Victoria. "I want to make you acquainted," he said,
+"with Austen Vane."
+
+"And won't you tell him who I am, Mr. Meader?" said Victoria.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Meader, apologetically, "that was stupid of me--wahn't
+it? But I callated he'd know. She's the daughter of the railrud
+president--the 'one that was askin' about you."
+
+There was an instant's pause, and the colour stole into Victoria's
+cheeks. Then she glanced at Austen and bit her lip-and laughed. Her
+laughter was contagious.
+
+"I suppose I shall have to confess that you have inspired my curiosity,
+Mr. Vane," she said.
+
+Austen's face was sunburned, but it flushed a more vivid red under the
+tan. It is needless to pretend that a man of his appearance and qualities
+had reached the age of thirty-two without having listened to feminine
+comments of which he was the exclusive subject. In this remark of
+Victoria's, or rather in the manner in which she made it, he recognized a
+difference.
+
+"It is a tribute, then, to the histrionic talents of Mr. Meader, of which
+you were speaking," he replied laughingly.
+
+Victoria glanced at him with interest as he looked down at Mr. Meader.
+
+"And how is it to-day, Zeb?" he said.
+
+"It ain't so bad as it might be--with sech folks as her and you araound,"
+admitted Mr. Meader. "I'd almost agree to get run over again. She was
+askin' about you, and that's a fact, and I didn't slander you, neither.
+But I never callated to comprehend wimmen-folks."
+
+"Now, Mr. Meader," said Victoria, reprovingly, but there were little
+creases about her eyes, "don't be a fraud."
+
+"It's true as gospel," declared the invalid; "they always got the better
+of me. I had one of 'em after me once, when I was young and prosperin'
+some."
+
+"And yet you have survived triumphant," she exclaimed.
+
+"There wahn't none of 'em like you," said Mr. Meader, "or it might have
+be'n different."
+
+Again her eyes irresistibly sought Austen's,--as though to share with him
+the humour of this remark,--and they laughed together. Her colour, so
+sensitive, rose again, but less perceptibly this time. Then she got up.
+
+"That's unfair, Mr. Meader!" she protested.
+
+"I'll leave it to Austen," said Mr. Meader, "if it ain't probable. He'd
+ought to know."
+
+In spite of a somewhat natural embarrassment, Austen could not but
+acknowledge to himself that Mr. Meader was right. With a womanly movement
+which he thought infinitely graceful, Victoria leaned over the bed.
+
+"Mr. Meader," she said, "I'm beginning to think it's dangerous for me to
+come here twice a week to see you, if you talk this way. And I'm not a
+bit surprised that that woman didn't get the better of you."
+
+"You hain't a-goin'!" he exclaimed. "Why, I callated--"
+
+"Good-by," she said quickly; "I'm glad to see that you are doing so
+well." She raised her head and looked at Austen in a curious, inscrutable
+way. "Good-by, Mr. Vane," she said; "I--I hope Mr. Blodgett has
+recovered."
+
+Before he could reply she had vanished, and he was staring at the empty
+doorway. The reference to the unfortunate Mr. Blodgett, after taking his
+breath away, aroused in him an intense curiosity betraying, as it did, a
+certain knowledge of past events in his life in the hitherto unknown
+daughter of Augustus interest could she have in him? Such a Flint. What
+question, from similar sources, has heightened the pulse of young men
+from time immemorial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"TIMEO DANAOS"
+
+The proverbial little birds that carry news and prophecies through the
+air were evidently responsible for an official-looking letter which
+Austen received a few mornings later. On the letter-head was printed "The
+United Northeastern Railroads," and Mr. Austen Vane was informed that, by
+direction of the president, the enclosed was sent to him in an entirely
+complimentary sense. "The enclosed" was a ticket of red cardboard, and
+its face informed him that he might travel free for the rest of the year.
+Thoughtfully turning it over, he read on the back the following
+inscription:--"It is understood that this pass is accepted by its
+recipient as a retainer."
+
+Austen stared at it and whistled. Then he pushed back his chair, with the
+pass in his hand, and hesitated. He seized a pen and wrote a few lines:
+"Dear sir, I beg to return the annual pass over the Northeastern
+Railroads with which you have so kindly honoured me"--when he suddenly
+changed his mind again, rose, and made his way through the corridors to
+his father's office. The Honourable Hilary was absorbed in his daily
+perusal of the Guardian.
+
+"Judge," he asked, "is Mr. Flint up at his place this week?"
+
+The Honourable Hilary coughed.
+
+"He arrived yesterday on the three. Er--why?"
+
+"I wanted to go up and thank him for this," his son answered, holding up
+the red piece of cardboard. "Mr. Flint is a very thoughtful man."
+
+The Honourable Hilary tried to look unconcerned, and succeeded.
+
+"Sent you an annual, has he? Er--I don't know as I'd bother him
+personally, Austen. Just a pleasant note of acknowledgment."
+
+"I don't flatter myself that my achievements in the law can be
+responsible for it," said Austen. "The favour must be due to my
+relationship with his eminent chief counsel."
+
+Hilary Vane's keen eyes rested on his son for an instant. Austen was more
+than ever an enigma to him.
+
+"I guess relationship hasn't got much to do with business," he replied.
+"You have be'n doing--er--better than I expected."
+
+"Thank you, Judge," said Austen, quietly. "I don't mind saying that I
+would rather have your approbation than--this more substantial
+recognition of merit."
+
+The Honourable Hilary's business was to deal with men, and by reason of
+his ability in so doing he had made a success in life. He could judge
+motives more than passably well, and play upon weaknesses. But he left
+Austen's presence that morning vaguely uneasy, with a sense of having
+received from his own son an initial defeat at a game of which he was a
+master. Under the excuse of looking up some precedents, he locked his
+doors to all comers for two hours, and paced his room. At one moment he
+reproached himself for not having been frank; for not having told Austen
+roundly that this squeamishness about a pass was unworthy of a strong man
+of affairs; yes, for not having revealed to him the mysteries of railroad
+practice from the beginning. But frankness was not an ingredient of the
+Honourable Hilary's nature, and Austen was not the kind of man who would
+accept a hint and a wink. Hilary Vane had formless forebodings, and found
+himself for once in his life powerless to act.
+
+The cost of living in Ripton was not so high that Austen Vane could not
+afford to keep a horse and buggy. The horse, which he tended himself, was
+appropriately called Pepper; Austen had found him in the hills, and he
+was easily the finest animal in Ripton: so good, in fact, that Mr.
+Humphrey Crewe (who believed he had an eye for horses) had peremptorily
+hailed Austen from a motorcar and demanded the price, as was Mr. Crewe's
+wont when he saw a thing he desired. He had been somewhat surprised and
+not inconsiderably offended by the brevity and force of the answer which
+he had received.
+
+On the afternoon of the summer's day in which Austen had the conversation
+with his father just related, Pepper was trotting at a round clip through
+the soft and shady wood roads toward the town of Tunbridge; the word
+"town" being used in the New England sense, as a piece of territory about
+six miles by six. The fact that automobiles full of laughing people from
+Leith hummed by occasionally made no apparent difference to Pepper, who
+knew only the master hand on the reins; the reality that the wood roads
+were climbing great hills the horse did not seem to feel. Pepper knew
+every lane and by-path within twenty miles of Ripton, and exhibited such
+surprise as a well-bred horse may when he was slowed down at length and
+turned into a hard, blue-stone driveway under a strange granite arch with
+the word "Fairview" cut in Gothic letters above it, and two great lamps
+in wrought-iron brackets at the sides. It was Austen who made a note of
+the gratings over the drains, and of the acres of orderly forest in a
+mysterious and seemingly enchanted realm. Intimacy with domains was new
+to him, and he began to experience an involuntary feeling of restraint
+which was new to him likewise, and made him chafe in spite of himself.
+The estate seemed to be the visible semblance of a power which troubled
+him.
+
+Shortly after passing an avenue neatly labelled "Trade's Drive" the road
+wound upwards through a ravine the sides of which were covered with a
+dense shrubbery which had the air of having always been there, and yet
+somehow looked expensive. At the top of the ravine was a sharp curve; and
+Austen, drawing breath, found himself swung, as it were, into space,
+looking off across miles of forest-covered lowlands to an ultramarine
+mountain in the hazy south,--Sawanec. As if in obedience to a telepathic
+command of his master, Pepper stopped.
+
+Drinking his fill of this scene, Austen forgot an errand which was not
+only disagreeable, but required some fortitude for its accomplishment.
+The son had this in common with the Honourable Hilary--he hated heroics;
+and the fact that the thing smacked of heroics was Austen's only
+deterrent. And then there was a woman in this paradise! These gradual
+insinuations into his revery at length made him turn. A straight avenue
+of pear-shaped, fifteen-year-old maples led to the house, a massive
+colonial structure of wood that stretched across the shelf; and he had
+tightened the reins and started courageously up the avenue when he
+perceived that it ended in a circle on which there was no sign of a
+hitching-post. And, worse than this, on the balconied, uncovered porch
+which he would have to traverse to reach the doorway he saw the sheen and
+glimmer of women's gowns grouped about wicker tables, and became aware
+that his approach was the sole object of the scrutiny of an afternoon tea
+party.
+
+As he reached the circle it was a slight relief to learn that Pepper was
+the attraction. No horse knew better than Pepper when he was being
+admired, and he arched his neck and lifted his feet and danced in the
+sheer exhilaration of it. A smooth-faced, red-cheeked gentleman in gray
+flannels leaned over the balustrade and made audible comments in a
+penetrating voice which betrayed the fact that he was Mr. Humphrey Crewe.
+
+"Saw him on the street in Ripton last year. Good hock action, hasn't
+he?--that's rare in trotters around here. Tried to buy him. Feller
+wouldn't sell. His name's Vane--he's drivin' him now."
+
+A lady of a somewhat commanding presence was beside him. She was perhaps
+five and forty, her iron-gray hair was dressed to perfection, her figure
+all that Parisian art could make it, and she was regarding Austen with
+extreme deliberation through the glasses which she had raised to a
+high-bridged nose.
+
+"Politics is certainly your career, Humphrey," she remarked, "you have
+such a wonderful memory for faces. I don't see how he does it, do you,
+Alice?" she demanded of a tall girl beside her, who was evidently her
+daughter, but lacked her personality.
+
+"I don't know," said Alice.
+
+"It's because I've been here longer than anybody else, Mrs. Pomfret,"
+answered Mr. Crewe, not very graciously, "that's all. Hello." This last
+to Austen.
+
+"Hello," said Austen.
+
+"Who do you want to see?" inquired Mr. Crewe, with the admirable tact for
+which he was noted.
+
+Austen looked at him for the first time.
+
+"Anybody who will hold my horse," he answered quietly.
+
+By this time the conversation had drawn the attention of the others at
+the tables, and one or two smiled at Austen's answer. Mrs. Flint, with a
+"Who is it?" arose to repel a social intrusion. She was an overdressed
+lady, inclining to embonpoint, but traces of the Rose of Sharon were
+still visible.
+
+"Why don't you drive 'round to the stables?" suggested Mr. Crewe, unaware
+of a smile.
+
+Austen did not answer. He was, in fact, looking towards the doorway, and
+the group on the porch were surprised to see a gleam of mirthful
+understanding start in his eyes. An answering gleam was in Victoria's,
+who had at that moment, by a singular coincidence, come out of the house.
+She came directly down the steps and out on the gravel, and held her hand
+to him in the buggy, and he flushed with pleasure as he grasped it.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said. "I am so glad you have called.
+Humphrey, just push the stable button, will you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe obeyed with no very good grace, while the tea-party went back
+to their seats. Mrs. Flint supposed he had come to sell Victoria the
+horse; while Mrs. Pomfret, who had taken him in from crown to boots,
+remarked that he looked very much like a gentleman.
+
+"I came to see your father for a few moments--on business," Austen
+explained.
+
+She lifted her face to his with a second searching look.
+
+"I'll take you to him," she said.
+
+By this time a nimble groom had appeared from out o a shrubbery path and
+seized Pepper's head. Austen alighted and followed Victoria into a great,
+cool hallway, and through two darkened rooms, bewilderingly furnished and
+laden with the scent of flowers, into a narrow passage beyond. She led
+the way simply, not speaking, and her silence seemed to betoken the
+completeness of an understanding between them, as of a long acquaintance.
+
+In a plain white-washed room, behind a plain oaken desk, sat Mr. Flint--a
+plain man. Austen thought he would have known him had he seen him on the
+street. The other things in the room were letter-files, a safe, a
+long-distance telephone, and a thin private secretary with a bend in his
+back. Mr. Flint looked up from his desk, and his face, previously bereft
+of illumination, lighted when he saw his daughter. Austen liked that in
+him.
+
+"Well, Vic, what is it now?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Austen Vane to see you," said Victoria, and with a quick glance at
+Austen she left him standing on the threshold. Mr. Flint rose. His eyes
+were deep-set in a square, hard head, and he appeared to be taking Austen
+in without directly looking at him; likewise, one felt that Mr. Flint's
+handshake was not an absolute gift of his soul.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane? I don't remember ever to have had the pleasure
+of seeing you, although your father and I have been intimately connected
+for many years."
+
+So the president's manner was hearty, but not the substance. It came,
+Austen thought, from a rarity of meeting with men on a disinterested
+footing; and he could not but wonder how Mr. Flint would treat the angels
+in heaven if he ever got there, where there were no franchises to be had.
+Would he suspect them of designs upon his hard won harp and halo? Austen
+did not dislike Mr. Flint; the man's rise, his achievements, his
+affection for his daughter, he remembered. But he was also well aware
+that Mr. Flint had thrown upon him the onus of the first move in a game
+which the railroad president was used to playing every day. The dragon
+was on his home ground and had the choice of weapons.
+
+"I do not wish to bother you long," said Austen.
+
+"No bother," answered Mr. Flint, "no bother to make the acquaintance of
+the son of my old friend, Hilary Vane. Sit down--sit down. And while I
+don't believe any man should depend upon his father to launch him in the
+world, yet it must be a great satisfaction to you, Mr. Vane, to have such
+a father. Hilary Vane and I have been intimately associated for many
+years, and my admiration for him has increased with every year. It is to
+men of his type that the prosperity, the greatness, of this nation is
+largely due,--conservative, upright, able, content to confine himself to
+the difficult work for which he is so eminently fitted, without
+spectacular meddling in things in which he can have no concern. Therefore
+I welcome the opportunity to know you, sir, for I understand that you
+have settled down to follow in his footsteps and that you will make a
+name for yourself. I know the independence of young men--I was young once
+myself. But after all, Mr. Vane, experience is the great teacher, and
+perhaps there is some little advice which an old man can give you that
+may be of service. As your father's son, it is always at your disposal.
+Have a cigar."
+
+The thin secretary continued to flit about the room, between the
+letter-files and the desk. Austen had found it infinitely easier to shoot
+Mr. Blodgett than to engage in a duel with the president of the United
+Railroad.
+
+"I smoke a pipe," he said.
+
+"Too many young men smoke cigars--and those disgusting cigarettes," said
+Mr. Flint, with conviction. "There are a lot of worthless young men in
+these days, anyhow. They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke,
+and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and
+cumber the earth generally. There's a young man named Crewe over at
+Leith, for instance--you may have seen him. Not that he's dissipated
+--but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the stock market
+to make you sick, and don't know any more about 'em than my farmer."
+
+During this diatribe Austen saw his opening growing smaller and smaller.
+If he did not make a dash for it, it would soon be closed entirely.
+
+"I received a letter this morning, Mr. Flint, enclosing me an annual
+pass--"
+
+"Did Upjohn send you one?" Mr. Flint cut in; "he ought to have done so
+long ago. It was probably an oversight that he did not, Mr. Vane. We try
+to extend the courtesies of the road to persons who are looked up to in
+their communities. The son of Hilary Vane is at all times welcome to
+one."
+
+Mr. Flint paused to light his cigar, and Austen summoned his resolution.
+Second by second it was becoming more and more difficult and seemingly
+more ungracious to return a gift so graciously given, a gift of no
+inconsiderable intrinsic value. Moreover, Mr. Flint had ingeniously
+contrived almost to make the act, in Austen's eyes, that of a picayune
+upstart. Who was he to fling back an annual pass in the face of the
+president of the Northeastern Railroads?
+
+"I had first thought of writing you a letter, Mr. Flint," he said, "but
+it seemed to me that, considering your relations with my father, the
+proper thing to do was to come to you and tell you why I cannot take the
+pass."
+
+The thin secretary paused in his filing, and remained motionless with his
+body bent over the drawer.
+
+"Why you cannot take it, Mr. Vane?" said the railroad president. "I'm
+afraid I don't understand."
+
+"I appreciate the--the kindness," said Austen, "and I will try to
+explain." He drew the red cardboard from his pocket and turned it over.
+"On the back of this is printed, in small letters, 'It is understood that
+this pass is accepted by the recipient as a retainer.'"
+
+"Well," Mr. Flint interrupted, smiling somewhat blandly, "how much money
+do you think that pass would save an active young lawyer in a year? Is
+three hundred dollars too much? Three hundred dollars is not an
+insignificant sum to a young man on the threshold of his practice, is
+it?"
+
+Austen looked at Mr. Flint.
+
+"Any sum is insignificant when it restricts a lawyer from the acceptance
+of just causes, Mr. Flint. As I understand the matter, it is the custom
+of your railroad to send these passes to the young lawyers of the State
+the moment they begin to give signs of ability. This past would prevent
+me from serving clients who might have righteous claims against your
+railroads, and--permit me to speak frankly--in my opinion the practice
+tends to make it difficult for poor people who have been injured to get
+efficient lawyers."
+
+"Your own father is retained by the railroad," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"As their counsel," answered Austen. "I have a pride in my profession,
+Mr. Flint, as no doubt you have in yours. If I should ever acquire
+sufficient eminence to be sought as counsel for a railroad, I should make
+my own terms with it. I should not allow its management alone to decide
+upon the value of my retainer, and my services in its behalf would be
+confined strictly to professional ones."
+
+Mr. Flint drummed on the table.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean that I would not engage, for a fee or a pass, to fight the
+political battles of a railroad, or undertake any political manipulation
+in its behalf whatever."
+
+Mr. Flint leaned forward aggressively.
+
+"How long do you think a railroad would pay dividends if it did not adopt
+some means of defending itself from the blackmail politician of the State
+legislatures, Mr. Vane? The railroads of which I have the honour to be
+president pay a heavy tag in this and other States. We would pay a much
+heavier one if we didn't take precautions to protect ourselves. But I do
+not intend to quarrel with you, Mr. Vane," he continued quickly,
+perceiving that Austen was about to answer him, "nor do I wish to leave
+you with the impression that the Northeastern Railroads meddle unduly in
+politics."
+
+Austen knew not how to answer. He had not gone there to discuss this last
+and really great question with Mr. Flint, but he wondered whether the
+president actually thought him the fledgling he proclaimed. Austen laid
+his pass on Mr. Flint's desk, and rose.
+
+"I assure you, Mr. Flint, that the spirit which prompted my visit was not
+a contentious one. I cannot accept the pass, simply because I do not wish
+to be retained."
+
+Mr. Flint eyed him. There was a mark of dignity, of silent power, on this
+tall scapegrace of a son of Hilary Vane that the railroad president had
+missed at first--probably because he had looked only for the scapegrace.
+Mr. Flint ardently desired to treat the matter in the trifling aspect in
+which he believed he saw it, to carry it off genially. But an instinct
+not yet formulated told the president that he was face to face with an
+enemy whose potential powers were not to be despised, and he bristled in
+spite of himself.
+
+"There is no statute I know of by which a lawyer can be compelled to
+accept a retainer against his will, Mr. Vane," he replied, and overcame
+himself with an effort. "But I hope that you will permit me," he added in
+another tone, "as an old friend of your father's and as a man of some
+little experience in the world, to remark that intolerance is a
+characteristic of youth. I had it in the days of Mr. Isaac D.
+Worthington, whom you do not remember. I am not addicted to flattery, but
+I hope and believe you have a career before you. Talk to your father.
+Study the question on both sides,--from the point of view of men who are
+honestly trying, in the face of tremendous difficulties, to protect
+innocent stockholders as well as to conduct a corporation in the
+interests of the people at large, and for their general prosperity. Be
+charitable, young man, and judge not hastily."
+
+Years before, when poor Sarah Austen had adorned the end of his table,
+Hilary Vane had raised his head after the pronouncement of grace to
+surprise a look in his wife's eyes which strangely threw him into a white
+heat of anger. That look (and he at intervals had beheld it afterwards)
+was the true presentment of the soul of the woman whose body was his. It
+was not--as Hilary Vane thought it--a contempt for the practice of
+thanking one's Maker for daily bread, but a contempt for cant of one who
+sees the humour in cant. A masculine version of that look Mr. Flint now
+beheld in the eyes of Austen Vane, and the enraging effect on the
+president of the United Railroads was much the same as it had been on his
+chief counsel. Who was this young man of three and thirty to agitate him
+so? He trembled, though not visibly, yet took Austen's hand mechanically.
+
+"Good day, Mr. Vane," he said; "Mr. Freeman will help you to find your
+horse."
+
+The thin secretary bowed, and before he reached the door into the passage
+Mr. Flint had opened another at the back of the room and stepped out on a
+close-cropped lawn flooded with afternoon sunlight. In the passage Austen
+perceived a chair, and in the chair was seated patiently none other than
+Mr. Brush Bascom--political Duke of Putnam. Mr. Bascom's little agate
+eyes glittered in the dim light.
+
+"Hello, Austen," he said, "since when have you took to comin' here?"
+
+"It's a longer trip from Putnam than from Ripton, Brush," said Austen,
+and passed on, leaving Mr. Bascom with a puzzled mind. Something very
+like a smile passed over Mr. Freeman's face as he led the way silently
+out of a side entrance and around the house. The circle of the drive was
+empty, the tea-party had gone--and Victoria. Austen assured himself that
+her disappearance relieved him: having virtually quarrelled with her
+father, conversation would have been awkward; and yet he looked for her.
+
+They found the buggy and Pepper in the paved courtyard of the stables. As
+Austen took the reins the secretary looked up at him, his mild blue eyes
+burning with an unsuspected fire. He held out his hand.
+
+"I want to congratulate you," he said.
+
+"What for?" asked Austen, taking the hand in some embarrassment.
+
+"For speaking like a man," said the secretary, and he turned on his heel
+and left him.
+
+This strange action, capping, as it did, a stranger experience, gave
+Austen food for thought as he let Pepper take his own pace down the
+trade's road. Presently he got back into the main drive where it clung to
+a steep, forest-covered side hill, when his attention was distracted by
+the sight of a straight figure in white descending amidst the foliage
+ahead. His instinctive action was to pull Pepper down to a walk, scarcely
+analyzing his motives; then he had time, before reaching the spot where
+their paths would cross, to consider and characteristically to enjoy the
+unpropitious elements arrayed against a friendship with Victoria Flint.
+
+She halted on a flagstone of the descending path some six feet above the
+roadway, and stood expectant. The Rose of Sharon, five and twenty years
+before, would have been coy--would have made believe to have done it by
+accident. But the Rose of Sharon, with all her beauty, would have had no
+attraction for Austen Vane. Victoria had much of her mother's good looks,
+the figure of a Diana, and her clothes were of a severity and correctness
+in keeping with her style; they merely added to the sum total of the
+effect upon Austen. Of course he stopped the buggy immediately beneath
+her, and her first question left him without any breath. No woman he had
+ever known seized the essentials as she did.
+
+"What have you been doing to my father?" she asked.
+
+"Why?" exclaimed Austen.
+
+"Because he's in such a bad temper," said Victoria. "You must have put
+him in it. It can't be possible that you came all the way up here to
+quarrel with him. Nobody ever dares to quarrel with him."
+
+"I didn't come up to quarrel with him," said Austen.
+
+"What's the trouble?" asked Victoria.
+
+The humour of this question was too much for him, and he laughed.
+Victoria's eyes laughed a little, but there was a pucker in her forehead.
+
+"Won't you tell me?" she demanded, "or must I get it out of him?"
+
+"I am afraid," said Austen, slowly, "that you must get it out of him--if
+he hasn't forgotten it."
+
+"Forgotten it, dear old soul!" cried Victoria. "I met him just now and
+tried to make him look at the new Guernseys, and he must have been
+disturbed quite a good deal when he's cross as a bear to me. He really
+oughtn't to be upset like that, Mr. Vane, when he comes up here to rest.
+I am afraid that you are rather a terrible person, although you look so
+nice. Won't you tell me what you did to him?"
+
+Austen was non-plussed.
+
+"Nothing intentional," he answered earnestly, "but it wouldn't be fair to
+your father if I gave you my version of a business conversation that
+passed between us, would it?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said Victoria. She sat down on the flagstone with her
+elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and looked at him
+thoughtfully. He knew well enough that a wise general would have
+retreated--horse, foot, and baggage; but Pepper did not stir.
+
+"Do you know," said Victoria, "I have an idea you came up here about Zeb
+Meader."
+
+"Zeb Meader!"
+
+"Yes. I told my father about him,--how you rescued him, and how you went
+to see him in the hospital, and what a good man he is, and how poor."
+
+"Oh, did you!" exclaimed Austen.
+
+"Yes. And I told him the accident wasn't Zeb's fault, that the train
+didn't whistle or ring, and that the crossing was a blind one."
+
+"And what did he say?" asked Austen, curiously.
+
+"He said that on a railroad as big as his something of the kind must
+happen occasionally. And he told me if Zeb didn't make a fuss and act
+foolishly, he would have no cause to regret it."
+
+"And did you tell Zeb?" asked Austen.
+
+"Yes," Victoria admitted, "but I'm sorry I did, now."
+
+"What did Zeb say?"
+
+Victoria laughed in spite of herself, and gave a more or less exact
+though kindly imitation of Mr. Meader's manner.
+
+"He said that wimmen-folks had better stick to the needle and the duster,
+and not go pokin' about law business that didn't concern 'em. But the
+worst of it was," added Victoria, with some distress, "he won't accept
+any more fruit. Isn't he silly? He won't get it into his head that I give
+him the fruit, and not my father. I suspect that he actually believes my
+father sent me down there to tell him that."
+
+Austen was silent, for the true significance of this apparently obscure
+damage case to the Northeastern Railroads was beginning to dawn on him.
+The public was not in the best of humours towards railroads: there was
+trouble about grade crossings, and Mr. Meader's mishap and the manner of
+his rescue by the son of the corporation counsel had given the accident a
+deplorable publicity. Moreover, if it had dawned on Augustus Flint that
+the son of Hilary Vane might prosecute the suit, it was worth while
+taking a little pains with Mr. Meader and Mr. Austen Vane. Certain small
+fires have been known to light world-wide conflagrations.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" asked Victoria. "It isn't at all polite to
+forget the person you are talking to."
+
+"I haven't forgotten you," said Austen, with a smile. How could he
+--sitting under her in this manner?
+
+"Besides," said Victoria, mollified, "you haven't an answered my
+question."
+
+"Which question?"
+
+She scrutinized him thoughtfully, and with feminine art made the kind of
+an attack that rarely fails.
+
+"Why are you such an enigma, Mr. Vane?" she demanded. "Is it because
+you're a lawyer, or because you've been out West and seen so much of life
+and shot so many people?"
+
+Austen laughed, yet he had tingling symptoms because she showed enough
+interest in him to pronounce him a riddle. But he instantly became
+serious as the purport of the last charge came home to him.
+
+"I suppose I am looked upon as a sort of Jesse James," he said. "As it
+happens, I have never shot but one man, and I didn't care very much for
+that."
+
+Victoria got up and came down a step and gave him her hand. He took it,
+nor was he the first to relinquish the hold; and a colour rose delicately
+in her face as she drew her fingers away.
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you," she said.
+
+"You didn't offend me," he replied quickly. "I merely wished you to know
+that I wasn't a brigand."
+
+Victoria smiled.
+
+"I really didn't think so--you are much too solemn. I have to go now,
+and--you haven't told me anything."
+
+She crossed the road and began to descend the path on the other side.
+Twice he glanced back, after he had started, and once surprised her
+poised lightly among the leaves, looking over her shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+The next time Austen visited the hospital Mr. Meader had a surprise in
+store for him. After passing the time of day, as was his custom, the
+patient freely discussed the motives which had led him to refuse any more
+of Victoria's fruit.
+
+"I hain't got nothing against her," he declared; "I tried to make that
+plain. She's as nice and common a young lady as I ever see, and I don't
+believe she had a thing to do with it. But I suspicioned they was up to
+somethin' when she brought them baskets. And when she give me the message
+from old Flint, I was sure of it."
+
+"Miss Flint was entirely innocent, I'm sure," said Austen, emphatically.
+
+"If I could see old Flint, I'd tell him what I thought of him usin'
+wimmen-folks to save 'em money," said Mr. Meader. "I knowed she wahn't
+that kind. And then that other thing come right on top of it."
+
+"What other thing?"
+
+"Say," demanded Mr. Meader, "don't you know?"
+
+"I know nothing," said Austen.
+
+"Didn't know Hilary Vane's be'n here?"
+
+"My father!" Austen ejaculated.
+
+"Gittin' after me pretty warm, so they be. Want to know what my price is
+now. But say, I didn't suppose your fayther'd come here without lettin'
+you know."
+
+Austen was silent. The truth was that for a few moments he could not
+command himself sufficiently to speak.
+
+"He is the chief counsel for the road," he said at length; "I am not
+connected with it."
+
+"I guess you're on the right track. He's a pretty smooth talker, your
+fayther. Just dropped in to see how I be, since his son was interested.
+Talked a sight of law gibberish I didn't understand. Told me I didn't
+have much of a case; said the policy of the railrud was to be liberal,
+and wanted to know what I thought I ought to have."
+
+"Well?" said Austen, shortly.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Mender, "he didn't git a mite of satisfaction out of me.
+I've seen enough of his kind of folks to know how to deal with 'em, and I
+told him so. I asked him what they meant by sending that slick Mr.
+Tooting 'raound to offer me five hundred dollars. I said I was willin' to
+trust my case on that crossin' to a jury."
+
+Austen smiled, in spite of his mingled emotions.
+
+"What else did Mr. Vane say?" he asked.
+
+Not a great sight more. Said a good many folks were foolish enough to
+spend money and go to law when they'd done better to trust to the
+liberality of the railrud. Liberality! Adams' widow done well to trust
+their liberality, didn't she? He wanted to know one more thing, but I
+didn't give him any satisfaction."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you how he got 'raound to it. Guess he never did, quite.
+He wanted to know what lawyer was to have my case. Wahn't none of his
+affair, and I callated if you'd wanted him to know just yet, you'd have
+toad him."
+
+Austen laid his hand on the farmer's, as he rose to go.
+
+"Zeb," he said, "I never expect to have a more exemplary client."
+
+Mr. Mender shot a glance at him.
+
+"Mebbe I spoke a mite too free about your fayther, Austen," he said; "you
+and him seem kind of different."
+
+"The Judge and I understand each other," answered Austen.
+
+He had got as far as the door, when he stopped, swung on his heel, and
+came back to the bedside.
+
+"It's my duty to tell you, Zeb, that in order to hush this thing up they
+may offer you more than you can get from a jury. In that case I should
+have to advise you to accept."
+
+He was aware that, while he made this statement, Zeb Meader's eyes were
+riveted on him, and he knew that the farmer was weighing him in the
+balance.
+
+"Sell out?" exclaimed Mr. Meader. "You advise me to sell out?"
+
+Austen did not get angry. He understood this man and the people from
+which he sprang.
+
+"The question is for you to decide--whether you can get more money by a
+settlement."
+
+"Money!" cried Zeb Meader, "I have found it pretty hard to git, but
+there's some things I won't do for it. There's a reason why they want
+this case hushed up, the way they've be'n actin'. I ain't lived in Mercer
+and Putnam County all my life for nothin'. Hain't I seen 'em run their
+dirty politics there under Brush Bascom for the last twenty-five years?
+There's no man has an office or a pass in that county but what Bascom
+gives it to him, and Bascom's the railrud tool." Suddenly Zeb raised
+himself in bed. "Hev' they be'n tamperin' with you?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Austen, dispassionately. He had hardly heard what Zeb had
+said; his mind had been going onward. "Yes. They sent me an annual pass,
+and I took it back."
+
+Zeb Meader did not speak for a few moments.
+
+"I guess I was a little hasty, Austen," he said at length.
+
+"I might have known you wouldn't sell out. If you're' willin' to take the
+risk, you tell 'em ten thousand dollars wouldn't tempt me."
+
+"All right, Zeb," said Austen.
+
+He left the hospital and struck out across the country towards the slopes
+of Sawanec, climbed them, and stood bareheaded in the evening light,
+gazing over the still, wide valley northward to the wooded ridges where
+Leith and Fairview lay hidden. He had come to the parting of the ways of
+life, and while he did not hesitate to choose his path, a Vane
+inheritance, though not dominant, could not fail at such a juncture to
+point out the pleasantness of conformity. Austen's affection for Hilary
+Vane was real; the loneliness of the elder man appealed to the son, who
+knew that his father loved him in his own way. He dreaded the wrench
+there.
+
+And nature, persuasive in that quarter, was not to be stilled in a field
+more completely her own. The memory and suppliance of a minute will
+scarce suffice one of Austen's temperament for a lifetime; and his eyes,
+flying with the eagle high across the valley, searched the velvet folds
+of the ridges, as they lay in infinite shades of green in the level
+light, for the place where the enchanted realm might be. Just what the
+state of his feelings were at this time towards Victoria Flint is too
+vague--accurately to be painted, but he was certainly not ready to give
+way to the attraction he felt for her. His sense of humour intervened if
+he allowed himself to dream; there was a certain folly in pursuing the
+acquaintance, all the greater now that he was choosing the path of
+opposition to the dragon. A young woman, surrounded as she was, could be
+expected to know little of the subtleties of business and political
+morality: let him take Zeb Meader's case, and her loyalty would naturally
+be with her father,--if she thought of Austen Vane at all.
+
+And yet the very contradiction of her name, Victoria joined with Flint,
+seemed to proclaim that she did not belong to her father or to the Rose
+of Sharon. Austen permitted himself to dwell, as he descended the
+mountain in the gathering darkness, upon the fancy of the springing of a
+generation of ideals from a generation of commerce which boded well for
+the Republic. And Austen Vane, in common with that younger and travelled
+generation, thought largely in terms of the Republic. Pepper County and
+Putnam County were all one to him--pieces of his native land. And as
+such, redeemable.
+
+It was long past the supper hour when he reached the house in Hanover
+Street; but Euphrasia, who many a time in days gone by had fared forth
+into the woods to find Sarah Austen, had his supper hot for him.
+Afterwards he lighted his pipe and went out into the darkness, and
+presently perceived a black figure seated meditatively on the granite
+doorstep.
+
+"Is that you, Judge?" said Austen.
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted in response.
+
+"Be'n on another wild expedition, I suppose."
+
+"I went up Sawanec to stretch my legs a little," Austen answered, sitting
+down beside his father.
+
+"Funny," remarked the Honourable Hilary, "I never had this mania for
+stretchin' my legs after I was grown."
+
+"Well," said Austen, "I like to go into the woods and climb the hills and
+get aired out once in a while."
+
+"I heard of your gettin' aired out yesterday, up Tunbridge way," said the
+Honourable Hilary.
+
+"I supposed you would hear of it," answered Austen.
+
+"I was up there to-day. Gave Mr. Flint your pass did you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Didn't see fit to mention it to me first--did you? Said you were going
+up to thank him for it."
+
+Austen considered this.
+
+"You have put me in the wrong, Judge," he replied after a little. "I made
+that remark ironically. I I am afraid we cannot agree on the motive which
+prompted me."
+
+"Your conscience a little finer than your father's--is it?"
+
+"No," said Austen, "I don't honestly think it is. I've thought a good
+deal in the last few years about the difference in our ways of looking at
+things. I believe that two men who try to be honest may conscientiously
+differ. But I also believe that certain customs have gradually grown up
+in railroad practice which are more or less to be deplored from the point
+of view of the honour of the profession. I think they are not perhaps
+--realized even by the eminent men in the law."
+
+"Humph!" said the Honourable Hilary. But he did not press his son for the
+enumeration of these customs. After all the years he had disapproved of
+Austen's deeds it seemed strange indeed to be called to account by the
+prodigal for his own. Could it be that this boy whom he had so often
+chastised took a clearer view of practical morality than himself? It was
+preposterous. But why the uneasiness of the past few years? Why had he
+more than once during that period, for the first time in his life,
+questioned a hitherto absolute satisfaction in his position of chief
+counsel for the Northeastern Railroads? Why had he hesitated to initiate
+his son into many of the so-called duties of a railroad lawyer? Austen
+had never verbally arraigned those duties until to-night.
+
+Contradictory as it may seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable
+Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as
+when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of
+Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more
+than ever. A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride
+made the acknowledgment of possible professional lapses for the benefit
+of his employer not to be thought of. He therefore assumed the same
+attitude as had Mr. Flint, and forced the burden of explanation upon
+Austen, relying surely on the disinclination of his son to be specific.
+And Austen, considering his relationship, could not be expected to fathom
+these mental processes.
+
+"See here, Judge," he said, greatly embarrassed by the real affection he
+felt, "I don't want to seem like a prig and appear to be sitting in
+judgment upon a man of your experience and position especially since I
+have the honour to be your son, and have made a good deal of trouble by a
+not irreproachable existence. Since we have begun on the subject,
+however, I think I ought to tell you that I have taken the case of Zeb
+Meader against the Northeastern Railroads."
+
+"Wahn't much need of telling me, was there?" remarked the Honourable
+Hilary, dryly. "I'd have found it out as soon as anybody else."
+
+"There was this need of telling you," answered Austen, steadily,
+"although I am not in partnership with you, I bear your name. And
+in-as-much as I am to have a suit against your client, it has occurred to
+me that you would like me to move--elsewhere."
+
+The Honourable Hilary was silent for a long time.
+
+"Want to move--do YOU? Is that it?"
+
+"Only because my presence may embarrass you."
+
+"That wahn't in the contract," said the Honourable Hilary; "you've got a
+right to take any fool cases you've a mind to. Folks know pretty well I'm
+not mixed up in 'em."
+
+Austen did not smile; he could well understand his father's animus in
+this matter. As he looked up at the gable of his old home against the
+stars, he did not find the next sentence any easier.
+
+"And then," he continued, "in taking, a course so obviously against your
+wishes and judgment it occurred to me--well, that I was eating at your
+table and sleeping in your house."
+
+To his son's astonishment, Hilary Vane turned on him almost truculently.
+
+"I thought the time'd come when you'd want to go off again,--gypsying,"
+he cried.
+
+"I'd stay right here in Ripton, Judge. I believe my work is in this
+State."
+
+The Honour could see through a millstone with a hole in it. The effect of
+Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the one
+was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up. And yet a
+growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining years
+in that house should Austen leave it again, never to return.
+
+"I knew you had this Meader business in mind," he said. "I knew you had
+fanciful notions about--some things. Never told you I didn't want you
+here, did I?"
+
+"No," said Austen, "but--"
+
+Would have told you if I hadn't wanted you--wouldn't I?"
+
+"I hope so, Judge," said Austen, who understood something of the feeling
+which underlay this brusqueness. That knowledge made matters all the
+harder for him.
+
+"It was your mother's house--you're entitled to that, anyway," said the
+Honourable Hilary, "but what I want to know is, why you didn't advise
+that eternal fool of a Meader to accept what we offered him. You'll never
+get a county jury to give as much."
+
+"I did advise him to accept it," answered Austen.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" the Honourable Hilary demanded.
+
+"Well, judge, if you really want my opinion, an honest farmer like Meader
+is suspicious of any corporation which has such zealous and loyal
+retainers as Ham Tooting and Brush Bascom." And Austen thought with a
+return of the pang which had haunted him at intervals throughout the
+afternoon, that he might almost have added to these names that of Hilary
+Vane. Certainly Zeb Meader had not spared his father.
+
+"Life," observed the Honourable Hilary, unconsciously using a phrase from
+the 'Book of Arguments,' "is a survival of the fittest."
+
+"How do you define 'the fittest?'" asked Austen. "Are they the men who
+have the not unusual and certainly not exalted gift of getting money from
+their fellow creatures by the use of any and all weapons that may be at
+hand? who believe the acquisition of wealth to be exempt from the
+practice of morality? Is Mr. Flint your example of the fittest type to
+exist and survive, or Gladstone or Wilberforce or Emerson or Lincoln?"
+
+"Emerson!" cried the Honourable Hilary, the name standing out in red
+letters before his eyes. He had never read a line of the philosopher's
+writings, not even the charge to "hitch your wagon to a star" (not in the
+"Book of Arguments"). Sarah Austen had read Emerson in the woods, and her
+son's question sounded so like the unintelligible but unanswerable
+flashes with which the wife had on rare occasions opposed the husband's
+authority that Hilary Vane found his temper getting the best of him--The
+name of Emerson was immutably fixed in his mind as the synonym for
+incomprehensible, foolish habits and beliefs. "Don't talk Emerson to me,"
+he exclaimed. "And as for Brush Bascom, I've known him for thirty years,
+and he's done as much for the Republican party as any man in this State."
+
+This vindication of Mr. Bascom naturally brought to a close a
+conversation which had already continued too long. The Honourable Hilary
+retired to rest; but--if Austen had known it--not to sleep until the
+small hours of the morning.
+
+It was not until the ensuing spring that the case of Mr. Zebulun Meader
+against the United Northeastern Railroads came up for trial in Bradford,
+the county-seat of Putnam County, and we do not wish to appear to give it
+too great a weight in the annals of the State. For one thing, the weekly
+newspapers did not mention it; and Mr. Paul Pardriff, when urged to give
+an account of the proceedings in the Ripton Record, said it was a matter
+of no importance, and spent the afternoon writing an editorial about the
+domestic habits of the Aztecs. Mr. Pardriff, however, had thought the
+matter of sufficient interest personally to attend the trial, and for the
+journey he made use of a piece of green cardboard which he habitually
+carried in his pocket. The editor of the Bradford Champion did not have
+to use his yellow cardboard, yet his columns may be searched in vain for
+the event.
+
+Not that it was such a great event, one of hundreds of railroad accidents
+that come to court. The son of Hilary Vane was the plaintiff's counsel;
+and Mr. Meader, although he had not been able to work since his release
+from the hospital, had been able to talk, and the interest taken in the
+case by the average neglected citizen in Putnam proved that the weekly
+newspaper is not the only disseminator of news.
+
+The railroad's side of the case was presented by that genial and able
+practitioner of Putnam County, Mr. Nathaniel Billings, who travelled from
+his home in Williamstown by the exhibition of a red ticket. Austen Vane
+had to pay his own way from Ripton, but as he handed back the mileage
+book, the conductor leaned over and whispered something in his ear that
+made him smile, and Austen thought he would rather have that little drop
+of encouragement than a pass. And as he left the car at Bradford, two
+grizzled and hard-handed individuals arose and wished him good luck.
+
+He needed encouragement,--what young lawyer does not on his first
+important case? And he did not like to think of the future if he lost
+this. But in this matter he possessed a certain self-confidence which
+arose from a just and righteous anger against the forces opposing him and
+a knowledge of their tactics. To his mind his client was not Zeb Meader
+alone, but the host of victims who had been maimed and bought off because
+it was cheaper than to give the public a proper protection.
+
+The court room was crowded. Mr. Zeb Meader, pale but determined, was
+surrounded by a knot of Mercer neighbours, many of whom were witnesses.
+The agate eyes of Mr. Brush Bascom flashed from the audience, and Mr. Nat
+Billings bustled forward to shake Austen's hand. Nat was one of those who
+called not infrequently upon the Honourable Hilary in Ripton, and had sat
+on Austen's little table.
+
+"Glad to see you, Austen," he cried, so that the people might hear; and
+added, in a confidentially lower tone, "We lawyers understand that these
+little things make no difference, eh?"
+
+"I'm willing to agree to that if you are, Nat," Austen answered. He
+looked at the lawyer's fleshy face, blue-black where it was shaven, and
+at Mr. Billings' shifty eyes and mouth, which its muscles could not quite
+keep in place. Mr. Billings also had nicked teeth. But he did his best to
+hide these obvious disadvantages by a Falstaffian bonhomie,--for Mr.
+Billings was growing stout.
+
+"I tried it once or twice, my friend, when I was younger. It's noble, but
+it don't pay," said Mr. Billings, still confidential. "Brush is
+sour--look at him. But I understand how you feel. I'm the kind of feller
+that speaks out, and what I can't understand is, why the old man let you
+get into it."
+
+"He knew you were going to be on the other side, Nat, and wanted to teach
+me a lesson. I suppose it is folly to contest a case where the Railroad
+Commission has completely exonerated your client," Austen added
+thoughtfully.
+
+Mr. Billings' answer was to wink, very slowly, with one eye; and shortly
+after these pleasantries were over, the case was called. A fragrant wind
+blew in at the open windows, and Nature outside was beginning to array
+herself in myriad hues of green. Austen studied the jury, and wondered
+how many points of his argument he could remember, but when he had got to
+his feet the words came to him. If we should seek an emblem for King
+David's smooth, round stone which he flung at Goliath, we should call it
+the truth--for the truth never fails to reach the mark. Austen's opening
+was not long, his words simple and not dramatic, but he seemed to charge
+them with something of the same magnetic force that compelled people to
+read and believe "Uncle Ton's Cabin" and the "Song of the Shirt."
+Spectators and jury listened intently.
+
+Some twenty witnesses appeared for the plaintiff, all of whom declared
+that they had heard neither bell nor whistle. Most of these witnesses had
+been in the grove, two or three in the train; two, residents of the
+vicinity, testified that they had complained to the Railroad Commission
+about that crossing, and had received evasive answers to the effect that
+it was the duty of citizens to look out for themselves. On
+cross-examination they declared they had no objection to grade crossings
+which were properly safeguarded; this crossing was a death-trap.
+(Stricken out.) Mr. Billings made the mistake of trying to prove that one
+of these farmers--a clear-eyed, full-chested man with a deep voice--had
+an animus against the railroad dating from a controversy concerning the
+shipping of milk.
+
+"I have an animus, your Honour," said the witness, quietly. "When the
+railrud is represented by the kind of politicians we have in Putnam, it's
+natural I should hain't it?"
+
+This answer, although stricken out, was gleefully received.
+
+In marked contrast to the earnestness of young Mr. Vane, who then rested,
+Mr. Billings treated the affair from the standpoint of a man of large
+practice who usually has more weighty matters to attend to. This was so
+comparatively trivial as not to be dignified by a serious mien. He quoted
+freely from the "Book of Arguments," reminding the jury of the debt of
+gratitude the State owed to the Northeastern Railroads for doing so much
+for its people; and if they were to eliminate all grade crossings, there
+would be no dividends for the stockholders. Besides, the law was that the
+State should pay half when a crossing was eliminated, and the State could
+not afford it. Austen had suggested, in his opening, that it was cheaper
+for the railroad as well as the State to kill citizens. He asked
+permission to inquire of the learned counsel for the defence by what
+authority he declared that the State could not afford to enter into a
+policy by which grade crossings would gradually be eliminated.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Billings, "the fact that all bills introduced to this end
+never get out of committee."
+
+"May I ask," said Austen, innocently, "who has been chairman of that
+particular committee in the lower House for the last five sessions?"
+
+Mr. Billings was saved the embarrassment of answering this question by a
+loud voice in the rear calling out:--"Brush Bascom!"
+
+A roar of laughter shook the court room, and all eyes were turned on
+Brush, who continued to sit unconcernedly with his legs crossed and his
+arm over the back of the seat. The offender was put out, order was
+restored, and Mr. Billings declared, with an injured air, that he failed
+to see why the counsel for the plaintiff saw fit to impugn Mr. Bascom.
+
+"I merely asked a question," said Austere; "far be it from me to impugn
+any man who has held offices in the gift of the people for the last
+twenty years."
+
+Another gale of laughter followed this, during which Mr. Billings
+wriggled his mouth and gave a strong impression that such tactics and
+such levity were to be deplored.
+
+For the defence, the engineer and fireman both swore that the bell had
+been rung before the crossing was reached. Austen merely inquired whether
+this was not when they had left the station at North Mercer, two miles
+away. No, it was nearer. Pressed to name the exact spot, they could only
+conjecture, but near enough to be heard on the crossing. Other
+witnesses--among them several picnickers in the grove--swore that they
+had heard the bell. One of these Austen asked if he was not the member
+from Mercer in the last Legislature, and Mr. Billings, no longer genial,
+sprang to his feet with an objection.
+
+"I merely wish to show, your Honour," said Austen, "that this witness
+accepted a pass from the Northeastern Railroads when he went to the
+Legislature, and that he has had several trip passes for himself and his
+family since."
+
+The objection was not sustained, and Mr. Billings noted an exception.
+
+Another witness, upon whose appearance the audience tittered audibly, was
+Dave Skinner, boss of Mercer. He had lived, he said, in the town of
+Mercer all his life, and maintained that he was within a hundred yards of
+the track when the accident occurred, and heard the bell ring.
+
+"Is it not a fact," said Austen to this witness, "that Mr. Brush Bascom
+has a mortgage on your farm?"
+
+"I can show, your Honour," Austen continued, when Mr. Billings had
+finished his protest, "that this man was on his way to Riverside to pay
+his quarterly instalment."
+
+Mr. Bascom was not present at the afternoon session. Mr. Billings'
+summing up was somewhat impassioned, and contained more quotations from
+the "Book of Arguments." He regretted, he said, the obvious appeals to
+prejudice against a railroad corporation that was honestly trying to do
+its duty-yes, and more than its duty.
+
+Misjudged, misused, even though friendless, it would continue to serve
+the people. So noble, indeed, was the picture which Mr. Billings'
+eloquence raised up that his voice shook with emotion as he finished.
+
+In the opinion of many of the spectators Austen Vane had yet to learn the
+art of oratory. He might with propriety have portrayed the suffering and
+loss of the poor farmer who was his client; he merely quoted from the
+doctor's testimony to the effect that Mr. Meader would never again be
+able to do physical labour of the sort by which he had supported himself,
+and ended up by calling the attention of the jury to the photographs and
+plans of the crossing he had obtained two days after the accident,
+requesting them to note the facts that the public highway, approaching
+through a dense forest and underbrush at an angle of thirty-three
+degrees, climbed the railroad embankment at that point, and a train could
+not be seen until the horse was actually on the track.
+
+The jury was out five minutes after the judge's charge, and gave Mr.
+Zebulun Meader a verdict of six thousand dollars and costs,--a popular
+verdict, from the evident approval with which it was received in the
+court room. Quiet being restored, Mr. Billings requested, somewhat
+vehemently, that the case be transferred on the exceptions to the Supreme
+Court, that the stenographer write out the evidence, and that he might
+have three weeks in which to prepare a draft. This was granted.
+
+Zeb Meader, true to his nature, was self-contained throughout the
+congratulations he received, but his joy was nevertheless intense.
+
+"You shook 'em up good, Austen," he said, making his way to where his
+counsel stood. "I suspicioned you'd do it. But how about this here
+appeal?"
+
+"Billings is merely trying to save the face of his railroad," Austen
+answered, smiling. "He hasn't the least notion of allowing this case to
+come up again--take my word for it."
+
+"I guess your word's good," said Zeb. "And I want to tell you one thing,
+as an old man. I've been talkin' to Putnam County folks some, and you
+hain't lost nothin' by this."
+
+"How am I to get along without the friendship of Brush Bascom?" asked
+Austen, soberly.
+
+Mr. Meader, who had become used to this mild sort of humour, relaxed
+sufficiently to laugh.
+
+"Brush did seem a mite disgruntled," he remarked.
+
+Somewhat to Austen's embarrassment, Mr. Mender's friends were pushing
+forward. One grizzled veteran took him by the hand and looked
+thoughtfully into his face.
+
+"I've lived a good many years," he said, "but I never heerd 'em talked up
+to like that. You're my candidate for governor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ENTER THE LION
+
+It is a fact, as Shakespeare has so tersely hinted, that fame sometimes
+comes in the line of duty. To be sure, if Austen Vane had been Timothy
+Smith, the Mender case might not have made quite so many ripples in the
+pond with which this story is concerned. Austen did what he thought was
+right. In the opinion of many of his father's friends whom he met from
+time to time he had made a good-sized stride towards ruin, and they did
+not hesitate to tell him so--Mr. Chipman, president of the Ripton
+National Bank; Mr. Greene, secretary and treasurer of the Hawkeye Paper
+Company, who suggested with all kindness that, however noble it may be,
+it doesn't pay to tilt at windmills.
+
+"Not unless you wreck the windmill," answered Austen. A new and very
+revolutionary point of view to Mr. Greene, who repeated it to Professor
+Brewer, urging that gentleman to take Austen in hand. But the professor
+burst out laughing, and put the saying into circulation.
+
+Mr. Silas Tredway, whose list of directorships is too long to print, also
+undertook to remonstrate with the son of his old friend, Hilary Vane. The
+young lawyer heard him respectfully. The cashiers of some of these
+gentlemen, who were younger men, ventured to say--when out of hearing
+--that they admired the championship of Mr. Mender, but it would never
+do. To these, likewise, Austen listened good-naturedly enough, and did
+not attempt to contradict them. Changing the angle of the sun-dial does
+not affect the time of day.
+
+It was not surprising that young Tom Gaylord, when he came back from New
+York and heard of Austen's victory, should have rushed to his office and
+congratulated him in a rough but hearty fashion. Even though Austen had
+won a suit against the Gaylord Lumber Company, young Tom would have
+congratulated him. Old Tom was a different matter. Old Tom, hobbling
+along under the maples, squinted at Austen and held up his stick.
+
+"Damn you, you're a lawyer, ain't you?" cried the old man.
+
+Austen, well used to this kind of greeting from Mr. Gaylord, replied that
+he didn't think himself much of one.
+
+"Damn it, I say you are. Some day I may have use for you," said old Tom,
+and walked on.
+
+"No," said young Tom, afterwards, in explanation of this extraordinary
+attitude of his father, "it isn't principle. He's had a row with the
+Northeastern about lumber rates, and swears he'll live till he gets even
+with 'em."
+
+If Professor Brewer (Ripton's most clear-sighted citizen) had made the
+statement that Hilary Vane--away down in the bottom of his heart--was
+secretly proud of his son, the professor would probably have lost his
+place on the school board, the water board, and the library committee.
+The way the worldly-wise professor discovered the secret was this: he had
+gone to Bradford to hear the case, for he had been a dear friend of Sarah
+Austen. Two days later Hilary Vane saw the professor on his little porch,
+and lingered. Mr. Brewer suspected why, led carefully up to the subject,
+and not being discouraged--except by numerous grunts--gave the father an
+account of the proceedings by no means unfavourable to the son. Some
+people like paregoric; the Honourable Hilary took his without undue
+squirming, with no visible effects to Austen.
+
+Life in the office continued, with one or two exceptions, the even tenor
+of its way. Apparently, so far as the Honourable Hilary was concerned,
+his son had never been to Bradford. But the Honourable Brush Bascom, when
+he came on mysterious business to call on the chief counsel, no longer
+sat on Austen's table; this was true of other feudal lords and retainers:
+of Mr. Nat Billings, who, by the way, did not file his draft after all.
+Not that Mr. Billings wasn't polite, but he indulged no longer in slow
+winks at the expense of the honourable Railroad Commission.
+
+Perhaps the most curious result of the Meader case to be remarked in
+passing, was upon Mr. Hamilton Tooting. Austen, except when he fled to
+the hills, was usually the last to leave the office, Mr. Tooting often
+the first. But one evening Mr. Tooting waited until the force had gone,
+and entered Austen's room with his hand outstretched.
+
+"Put her there, Aust," he said.
+
+Austen put her there.
+
+"I've been exercisin' my thinker some the last few months," observed Mr.
+Tooting, seating himself on the desk.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of nervous prostration, Ham?"
+
+"Say," exclaimed Mr. Tooting, with a vexed laugh, "why are you always
+jollying me? You ain't any older than I am."
+
+"I'm not as old, Ham. I don't begin to have your knowledge of the world."
+
+"Come off," said Mr. Tooting, who didn't know exactly how to take this
+compliment. "I came in here to have a serious talk. I've been thinking it
+over, and I don't know but what you did right."
+
+"Well, Ham, if you don't know, I don't know how I am to convince you."
+
+"Hold on. Don't go twistin' around that way--you make me dizzy." He
+lowered his voice confidentially, although there was no one within five
+walls of them. "I know the difference between a gold brick and a
+government bond, anyhow. I believe bucking the railroad's going to pay in
+a year or so. I got on to it as soon as you did, I guess, but when a
+feller's worn the collar as long as I have and has to live, it ain't easy
+to cut loose--you understand."
+
+"I understand," answered Austen, gravely.
+
+"I thought I'd let you know I didn't take any too much trouble with
+Meader last summer to get the old bird to accept a compromise."
+
+"That was good of you, Ham."
+
+"I knew what you was up to," said Mr. Tooting, giving Austen a friendly
+poke with his cigar.
+
+"You showed your usual acumen, Mr. Tooting," said Austen, as he rose to
+put on his coat. Mr. Tooting regarded him uneasily.
+
+"You're a deep one, Aust," he declared; "some day you and, me must get
+together."
+
+Mr. Billings' desire for ultimate justice not being any stronger than
+Austen suspected, in due time Mr. Meader got his money. His counsel would
+have none of it,--a decision not at all practical, and on the whole
+disappointing. There was, to be sure, an influx into Austen's office of
+people who had been run over in the past, and it was Austen's unhappy
+duty to point out to these that they had signed (at the request of
+various Mr. Tootings) little slips of paper which are technically known
+as releases. But the first hint of a really material advantage to be
+derived from his case against the railroad came from a wholly unexpected
+source, in the shape of a letter in the mail one August morning.
+
+   "DEAR SIR: Having remarked with some interest the verdict for a
+   client of yours against the United Northeastern Railroads, I wish
+   you would call and see me at your earliest convenience.
+
+   "Yours truly,
+
+   "HUMPHREY CREWE."
+
+Although his curiosity was aroused, Austen was of two minds whether to
+answer this summons, the truth being that Mr. Crewe had not made, on the
+occasions on which they had had intercourse, the most favourable of
+impressions. However, it is not for the struggling lawyer to scorn any
+honourable brief, especially from a gentleman of stocks and bonds and
+varied interests like Mr. Crewe, with whom contentions of magnitude are
+inevitably associated.  As he spun along behind Pepper on the Leith road
+that climbed Willow Brook on the afternoon he had made the appointment,
+Austen smiled to himself over his anticipations, and yet---being
+human-let his fancy play.
+
+The broad acres of Wedderburn stretched across many highways, but the
+manor-house (as it had been called) stood on an eminence whence one could
+look for miles down the Yale of the Blue. It had once been a farmhouse,
+but gradually the tail had begun to wag the dog, and the farmhouse
+became, like the original stone out of which the Irishman made the soup,
+difficult to find. Once the edifice had been on the road, but the road
+had long ago been removed to a respectful distance, and Austen entered
+between two massive pillars built of granite blocks on a musical gravel
+drive.
+
+Humphrey Crewe was on the porch, his hands in his pockets, as Austen
+drove up.
+
+"Hello," he said, in a voice probably meant to be hospitable, but which
+had a peremptory ring, "don't stand on ceremony. Hitch your beast and
+come along in."
+
+Having, as it were, superintended the securing of Pepper, Mr. Crewe led
+the way through the house to the study, pausing once or twice to point
+out to Austen a carved ivory elephant procured at great expense in China,
+and a piece of tapestry equally difficult of purchase. The study itself
+was no mere lounging place of a man of pleasure, but sober and formidable
+books were scattered through the cases: "Turner's Evolution of the
+Railroad," "Graham's Practical Forestry," "Eldridge's Finance"; while
+whole shelves of modern husbandry proclaimed that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was
+no amateur farmer. There was likewise a shelf devoted to road building,
+several to knotty-looking pamphlets, and half a wall of neatly labelled
+pigeonholes. For decoration, there was an oar garnished with a ribbon,
+and several groups of college undergraduates, mostly either in puffed
+ties or scanty attire, and always prominent in these groups, and always
+unmistakable, was Mr. Humphrey Crewe himself.
+
+Mr. Crewe was silent awhile, that this formidable array of things might
+make the proper impression upon his visitor.
+
+"It was lucky you came to-day, Vane," he said at length. "I am due in New
+York to-morrow for a directors' meeting, and I have a conference in
+Chicago with a board of trustees of which I am a member on the third.
+Looking at my array of pamphlets, eh? I've been years in collecting
+them,--ever since I left college. Those on railroads ought especially to
+interest you--I'm somewhat of a railroad man myself."
+
+"I didn't know that," said Austen.
+
+"Had two or three blocks of stock in subsidiary lines that had to be
+looked after. It was a nuisance at first," said Mr. Crewe, "but I didn't
+shirk it. I made up my mind I'd get to the bottom of the railroad
+problem, and I did. It's no use doing a thing at all unless you do it
+well." Mr. Crewe, his hands still in his pockets, faced Austen smilingly.
+"Now I'll bet you didn't know I was a railroad man until you came in
+here. To tell the truth, it was about a railroad matter that I sent for
+you."
+
+Mr. Crewe lit a cigar, but he did not offer one to Austen, as he had to
+Mr. Tooting. "I wanted to see what you were like," he continued, with
+refreshing frankness. "Of course, I'd seen you on the road. But you can
+get more of an idea of a man by talkin' to him, you know."
+
+"You can if he'll talk," said Austen, who was beginning to enjoy his
+visit.
+
+Mr. Crewe glanced at him keenly. Few men are fools at all points of the
+compass, and Mr. Crewe was far from this.
+
+"You did well in that little case you had against the Northeastern. I
+heard about it."
+
+"I did my best," answered Austen, and he smiled again.
+
+"As some great man has remarked," observed Mr. Crewe, "it isn't what we
+do, it's how we do it. Take pains over the smaller cases, and the larger
+cases will come of themselves, eh?"
+
+"I live in hope," said Austen, wondering how soon this larger case was
+going to unfold itself.
+
+"Let me see," said Mr. Crewe, "isn't your father the chief attorney in
+this State for the Northeastern? How do you happen to be on the other
+side?"
+
+"By the happy accident of obtaining a client," said Austen.
+
+Mr. Crewe glanced at him again. In spite of himself, respect was growing
+in him. He had expected to find a certain amount of eagerness and
+subserviency--though veiled; here was a man of different calibre than he
+looked for in Ripton.
+
+"The fact is," he declared, "I have a grievance against the Northeastern
+Railroads, and I have made up my mind that you are the man for me."
+
+"You may have reason to regret your choice," Austen suggested.
+
+"I think not," replied Mr. Crewe, promptly; "I believe I know a man when
+I see one, and you inspire me with confidence. This matter will have a
+double interest for you, as I understand you are fond of horses."
+
+"Horses?"
+
+"Yes," Mr. Crewe continued, gaining a little heat at the word, "I bought
+the finest-lookin' pair you ever saw in New York this spring,--all-around
+action, manners, conformation, everything; I'll show 'em to you. One of
+'em's all right now; this confounded railroad injured the other gettin'
+him up here. I've put in a claim. They say they didn't, my man says they
+did. He tells me the horse was thrown violently against the sides of the
+car several times. He's internally injured. I told 'em I'd sue 'em, and
+I've decided that you are the man to take the case--on conditions."
+
+Austen's sense of humour saved him,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe had begun to
+interest him. He rose and walked to the window and looked out for a few
+moments over the flower garden before he replied:--"On what conditions?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "frankly, I don't want to pay more than the horse
+is worth, and it's business to settle on the fee in case you win. I
+thought--"
+
+"You thought," said Austen, "that I might not charge as much as the next
+man."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I knew that if you took the case, you'd fight it
+through, and I want to get even with 'em. Their claim agent had the
+impudence to suggest that the horse had been doctored by the dealer in
+New York. To tell me that I, who have been buying horses all my life, was
+fooled. The veterinary swears the animal is ruptured. I'm a citizen of
+Avalon County, though many people call me a summer resident; I've done
+business here and helped improve the neighbourhood for years. It will be
+my policy to employ home talent Avalon County lawyers, for instance. I
+may say, without indiscretion, that I intend from now on to take even a
+greater interest in public affairs. The trouble is in this country that
+men in my position do not feel their responsibilities."
+
+"Public spirit is a rare virtue," Austen remarked, seeing that he was
+expected to say something. "Avalon County appreciates the compliment,
+--if I may be permitted to answer for it."
+
+"I want to do the right thing," said Mr. Crewe. "In fact, I have almost
+made up my mind to go to the Legislature this year. I know it would be a
+sacrifice of time, in a sense, and all that, but--" He paused, and looked
+at Austen.
+
+"The Legislature needs leavening."
+
+"Precisely," exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "and when I look around me and see the
+things crying to be done in this State, and no lawmaker with sense and
+foresight enough to propose them, it makes me sick. Now, for instance,"
+he continued, and rose with an evident attempt to assault the forestry
+shelves. But Austen rose too.
+
+"I'd like to go over that with you, Mr. Crewe," said he, "but I have to
+be back in Ripton."
+
+"How about my case?" his host demanded, with a return to his former
+abruptness.
+
+"What about it?" asked Austen.
+
+"Are you going to take it?"
+
+"Struggling lawyers don't refuse business."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "that's sensible. But what are you going to
+charge?"
+
+"Now," said Austen, with entire good humour, "when you get on that
+ground, you are dealing no longer with one voracious unit, but with a
+whole profession,--a profession, you will allow me to add, which in
+dignity is second to none. In accordance with the practice of the best
+men in that profession, I will charge you what I believe is fair--not
+what I think you are able and willing to pay. Should you dispute the
+bill, I will not stoop to quarrel with you, but, try to live on bread and
+butter a while longer."
+
+Mr. Crewe was silent for a moment. It would not be exact to say
+uncomfortable, for it is to be doubted whether he ever got so. But he
+felt dimly that the relations of patron and patronized were becoming
+somewhat jumbled.
+
+"All right," said he, "I guess we can let it go at that. Hello! What the
+deuce are those women doing here again?"
+
+This irrelevant exclamation was caused by the sight through the open
+French window--of three ladies in the flower garden, two of whom were
+bending over the beds. The third, upon whose figure Austen's eyes were
+riveted, was seated on a stone bench set in a recess of pines, and
+looking off into the Yale of the Blue. With no great eagerness, but
+without apology to Austen, Mr. Crewe stepped out of the window and
+approached them; and as this was as good a way as any to his horse and
+buggy, Austen followed. One of the ladies straightened at their
+appearance, scrutinized them through the glasses she held in her hand,
+and Austen immediately recognized her as the irreproachable Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"We didn't mean to disturb you, Humphrey," she said. "We knew you would
+be engaged in business, but I told Alice as we drove by I could not
+resist stopping for one more look at your Canterbury bells. I knew you
+wouldn't mind, but you mustn't leave your--affairs,--not for an instant."
+
+The word "affairs" was accompanied by a brief inspection of Austen Vane.
+
+"That's all right," answered Mr. Crewe; "it doesn't cost anything to look
+at flowers, that's what they're for. Cost something to put 'em in. I got
+that little feller Ridley to lay 'em out--I believe I told you. He's just
+beginning. Hello, Alice."
+
+"I think he did it very well, Humphrey," said Miss Pomfret.
+
+"Passably," said Mr. Crewe. "I told him what I wanted and drew a rough
+sketch of the garden and the colour scheme."
+
+"Then you did it, and not Mr. Ridley. I rather suspected it," said Mrs.
+Pomfret; "you have such clear and practical ideas about things,
+Humphrey."
+
+"It's simple enough," said Mr. Crewe, deprecatingly, "after you've seen a
+few hundred gardens and get the general underlying principle."
+
+"It's very clever," Alice murmured.
+
+"Not at all. A little application will do wonders. A certain definite
+colour massed here, another definite colour there, and so forth."
+
+Mr. Crewe spoke as though Alice's praise irritated him slightly. He waved
+his hand to indicate the scheme in general, and glanced at Victoria on
+the stone bench. From her (Austen thought) seemed to emanate a silent but
+mirthful criticism, although she continued to gaze persistently down the
+valley, apparently unaware of their voices. Mr. Crewe looked as if he
+would have liked to reach her, but the two ladies filled the narrow path,
+and Mrs. Pomfret put her fingers on his sleeve.
+
+"Humphrey, you must explain it to us. I am so interested in gardens I'm
+going to have one if Electrics increase their dividend."
+
+Mr. Crewe began, with no great ardour, to descant on the theory of
+planting, and Austen resolved to remain pocketed and ignored no longer.
+He retraced his steps and made his way rapidly by another path towards
+Victoria, who turned her head at his approach, and rose. He acknowledged
+an inward agitation with the vision in his eye of the tall, white figure
+against the pines, clad with the art which, in mysterious simplicity,
+effaces itself.
+
+"I was wondering," she said, as she gave him her hand, "how long it would
+be before you spoke to me."
+
+"You gave me no chance," said Austen, quickly.
+
+"Do you deserve one?" she asked.
+
+Before he could answer, Mr. Crewe's explanation of his theories had come
+lamely to a halt. Austen was aware of the renewed scrutiny of Mrs.
+Pomfret, and then Mr. Crewe, whom no social manacles could shackle, had
+broken past her and made his way to them. He continued to treat the
+ground on which Austen was standing as unoccupied.
+
+"Hello, Victoria," he said, "you don't know anything about gardens, do
+you?"
+
+"I don't believe you do either," was Victoria's surprising reply.
+
+Mr. Crewe laughed at this pleasantry.
+
+"How are you going to prove it?" he demanded.
+
+"By comparing what you've done with Freddie Ridley's original plan," said
+Victoria.
+
+Mr. Crewe was nettled.
+
+"Ridley has a lot to learn," he retorted. "He had no conception of what
+was appropriate here."
+
+"Freddie was weak," said Victoria, but he needed the money. Don't you
+know Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I've been talking to him--on business."
+
+"Oh," said Victoria, "I had no means of knowing. Mrs. Pomfret, I want to
+introduce Mr. Vane, and Miss Pomfret, Mr. Vane."
+
+Mrs. Pomfret, who had been hovering on the outskirts of this duel,
+inclined her head the fraction of an inch, but Alice put out her hand
+with her sweetest manner.
+
+"When did you arrive?" she asked.
+
+"Well, the fact is, I haven't arrived yet," said Austen.
+
+"Not arrived" exclaimed Alice, with a puzzled glance into Victoria's
+laughing eyes.
+
+"Perhaps Humphrey will help you along," Victoria suggested, turning to
+him. "He might be induced to give you his celebrated grievance about his
+horses."
+
+"I have given it to him," said Mr. Crewe, briefly.
+
+"Cheer up, Mr. Vane, your fortune is made," said Victoria.
+
+"Victoria," said Mrs. Pomfret, in her most imperial voice, "we ought to
+be going instantly, or we shan't have time to drop you at the Hammonds'."
+
+"I'll take you over in the new motor car," said Mr. Crewe, with his air
+of conferring a special train.
+
+"How much is gasoline by the gallon?" inquired Victoria.
+
+"I did a favour once for the local manager, and get a special price,"
+said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, taking his hand, "don't forget you are
+coming to dinner to-night. Four people gave out at the last minute, and
+there will be just Alice and myself. I've asked old Mr. Fitzhugh."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll have the motor car brought around."
+
+The latter part of this remark was, needless to say, addressed to
+Victoria.
+
+"It's awfully good of you, Humphrey," she answered, "but the Hammonds are
+on the road to Ripton, and I am going to ask Mr. Vane to drive me down
+there behind that adorable horse of his."
+
+This announcement produced a varied effect upon those who heard it,
+although all experienced surprise. Mrs. Pomfret, in addition to an anger
+which she controlled only as the result of long practice, was horrified,
+and once more levelled her glasses at Austen.
+
+"I think, Victoria, you had better come with us," she said. "We shall
+have plenty of time, if we hurry."
+
+By this time Austen had recovered his breath.
+
+"I'll be ready in an instant," he said, and made brief but polite adieus
+to the three others.
+
+"Good-by," said Alice, vaguely.
+
+"Let me know when anything develops," said Mr. Crewe, with his back to
+his attorney.
+
+Austen found Victoria, her colour heightened a little, waiting for him by
+the driveway. The Pomfrets had just driven off, and Mr. Crewe was nowhere
+to be seen.
+
+"I do not know what you will think of me for taking this for granted, Mr.
+Vane," she said as he took his seat beside her, "but I couldn't resist
+the chance of driving behind your horse."
+
+"I realized," he answered smilingly, "that Pepper was the attraction, and
+I have more reason than ever to be grateful to him."
+
+She glanced covertly at the Vane profile, at the sure, restraining hands
+on the reins which governed with so nice a touch the mettle of the horse.
+His silence gave her time to analyze again her interest in this man,
+which renewed itself at every meeting. In the garden she had been struck
+by the superiority of a nature which set at naught what had been, to some
+smaller spirits, a difficult situation. She recognized this quality as
+inborn, but, not knowing of Sarah Austen, she wondered where he got it.
+Now it was the fact that he refrained from comment that pleased her most.
+
+"Did Humphrey actually send for you to take up the injured horse case?"
+she asked.
+
+Austen flushed.
+
+"I'm afraid he did. You seem to know all about it," he added.
+
+"Know all about it Every one within twenty miles of Leith knows about it.
+I'm sure the horse was doctored when he bought him."
+
+"Take care, you may be called as a witness."
+
+"What I want to know is, why you accepted such a silly case," said
+Victoria.
+
+Austen looked quizzically into her upturned face, and she dropped her
+eyes.
+
+"That's exactly what I should have asked myself,--after a while," he
+said.
+
+She laughed with a delicious understanding of "after a while."
+
+"I suppose you think me frightfully forward," she said, in a lowered
+voice, "inviting myself to drive and asking you such a question when I
+scarcely know you. But I just couldn't go on with Mrs. Pomfret,--she
+irritated me so,--and my front teeth are too valuable to drive with
+Humphrey Crewe."
+
+Austen smiled, and secretly agreed with her.
+
+"I should have offered, if I had dared," he said.
+
+"Dared! I didn't know that was your failing. I don't believe you even
+thought of it."
+
+"Nevertheless, the idea occurred to me, and terrified me," said Austen.
+
+"Why?" she asked, turning upon him suddenly. "Why did it terrify you?"
+
+"I should have been presuming upon an accidental acquaintance, which I
+had no means of knowing you wished to continue," he replied, staring at
+his horse's head.
+
+"And I?" Victoria asked. "Presumption multiplies tenfold in a woman,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"A woman confers," said Austen.
+
+She smiled, but with a light in her eyes. This simple sentence seemed to
+reveal yet more of an inner man different from some of those with whom
+her life had been cast. It was an American point of view--this choosing
+to believe that the woman conferred. After offering herself as his
+passenger Victoria, too, had had a moment of terror: the action had been
+the result of an impulse which she did not care to attempt to define. She
+changed the subject.
+
+"You have been winning laurels since I saw you last summer," she said. "I
+hear incidentally you have made our friend Zeb Meader a rich man."
+
+"As riches go, in the town of Mercer," Austen laughed. "As for my
+laurels, they have not yet begun to chafe."
+
+Here was a topic he would have avoided, and yet he was curious to
+discover what her attitude would be. He had antagonized her father, and
+the fact that he was the son of Hilary Vane had given his antagonism
+prominence.
+
+"I am glad you did it for Zeb."
+
+"I should have done it for anybody--much as I like Zeb," he replied
+briefly.
+
+She glanced at him.
+
+"It was--courageous of you," she said.
+
+"I have never looked upon it in that light," he answered. "May I ask you
+how you heard of it?"
+
+She coloured, but faced the question.
+
+"I heard it from my father, at first, and I took an interest--on Zeb
+Meader's account," she added hastily.
+
+Austen was silent.
+
+"Of course," she continued, "I felt a little like boasting of an
+'accidental acquaintance' with the man who saved Zeb Meader's life."
+
+Austen laughed. Then he drew Pepper down to a walk, and turned to her.
+
+"The power of making it more than an accidental acquaintance lies with
+you," he said quietly.
+
+"I have always had an idea that aggression was a man's prerogative,"
+Victoria answered lightly. "And seeing that you have not appeared at
+Fairview for something over a year, I can only conclude that you do not
+choose to exercise it in this case."
+
+Austen was in a cruel quandary.
+
+"I did wish to come," he answered simply, "but--the fact that I have had
+a disagreement with your father has--made it difficult." "Nonsense"
+exclaimed Victoria; "just because you have won a suit against his
+railroad. You don't know my father, Mr. Vane. He isn't the kind of man
+with whom that would make any difference. You ought to talk it over with
+him. He thinks you were foolish to take Zeb Meader's side."
+
+"And you?" Austen demanded quickly.
+
+"You see, I'm a woman," said Victoria, "and I'm prejudiced--for Zeb
+Meader. Women are always prejudiced,--that's our trouble. It seemed to me
+that Zeb was old, and unfortunate, and ought to be compensated, since he
+is unable to work. But of course I suppose I can't be expected to
+understand."
+
+It was true that she could not be expected to understand. He might not
+tell her that his difference with Mr. Flint was not a mere matter of
+taking a small damage suit against his railroad, but a fundamental one.
+And Austen recognized that the justification of his attitude meant an
+arraignment of Victoria's father.
+
+"I wish you might know my father better, Mr. Vane," she went on, "I wish
+you might know him as I know him, if it were possible. You see, I have
+been his constant companion all my life, and I think very few people
+understand him as I do, and realize his fine qualities. He makes no
+attempt to show his best side to the world. His life has been spent in
+fighting, and I am afraid he is apt to meet the world on that footing. He
+is a man of such devotion to his duty that he rarely has a day to
+himself, and I have known him to sit up until the small hours of the
+morning to settle some little matter of justice. I do not think I am
+betraying his confidence when I say that he is impressed with your
+ability, and that he liked your manner the only time he ever talked to
+you. He believes that you have got, in some way, a wrong idea of what he
+is trying to do. Why don't you come up and talk to him again?"
+
+"I am afraid your kindness leads you to overrate my importance," Austen
+replied, with mingled feelings. Victoria's confidence in her father made
+the situation all the more hopeless.
+
+"I'm sure I don't," she answered quickly; "ever since--ever since I first
+laid eyes upon you I have had a kind of belief in you."
+
+"Belief?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes," she said, "belief that--that you had a future. I can't describe
+it," she continued, the colour coming into her face again; "one feels
+that way about some people without being able to put the feeling into
+words. And have a feeling, too, that I should like you to be friends with
+my father."
+
+Neither of them, perhaps, realized the rapidity with which "accidental
+acquaintance" had melted into intimacy. Austen's blood ran faster, but it
+was characteristic of him that he tried to steady himself, for he was a
+Vane. He had thought of her many times during the past year, but
+gradually the intensity of the impression had faded until it had been so
+unexpectedly and vividly renewed to-day. He was not a man to lose his
+head, and the difficulties of the situation made him pause and choose his
+words, while he dared not so much as glance at her as she sat in the
+sunlight beside him.
+
+"I should like to be friends with your father," he answered gravely,--the
+statement being so literally true as to have its pathetically humorous
+aspect.
+
+"I'll tell him so, Mr. Vane," she said.
+
+Austen turned, with a seriousness that dismayed her.
+
+"I must ask you as a favour not to do that," he said.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"In the first place," he answered quietly, "I cannot afford to have Mr.
+Flint misunderstand my motives. And I ought not to mislead you," he went
+on. "In periods of public controversy, such as we are passing through at
+present, sometimes men's views differ so sharply as to make intercourse
+impossible. Your father and I might not agree--politically, let us say.
+For instance," he added, with evident hesitation, "my father and I
+disagree."
+
+Victoria was silent. And presently they came to a wire fence overgrown
+with Virginia creeper, which divided the shaded road from a wide lawn.
+
+"Here we are at the Hammonds', and--thank you," she said.
+
+Any reply he might have made was forestalled. The insistent and
+intolerant horn of an automobile, followed now by the scream of the
+gears, broke the stillness of the country-side, and a familiar voice
+cried out--"Do you want the whole road?"
+
+Austen turned into the Hammonds' drive as the bulldog nose of a motor
+forged ahead, and Mr. Crewe swung in the driver's seat.
+
+"Hello, Victoria," he shouted, "you people ought to have ear-trumpets."
+
+The car swerved, narrowly missed a watering fountain where the word
+"Peace" was inscribed, and shot down the hill.
+
+"That manner," said Victoria, as she jumped out of the buggy, "is a
+valuable political asset."
+
+"Does he really intend to go into politics?" Austen asked curiously.
+
+"'Intend' is a mild word applied to Humphrey," she answered;
+"'determined' would suit him better. According to him, there is no game
+that cannot be won by dynamics. 'Get out of the way' is his motto. Mrs.
+Pomfret will tell you how he means to cover the State with good roads
+next year, and take a house in Washington the year after." She held out
+her hand.  "Good-by,--and I am ever so much obliged to you for bringing
+me here."
+
+He drove away towards Ripton with many things to think about, with a last
+picture of her in his mind as she paused for an instant in the flickering
+shadows, stroking Pepper's forehead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS
+
+It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of
+his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these
+pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected. Mr.
+Crewe by no means underestimated this claim upon the community, and he
+had of late been declaring that he was no summer resident. Wedderburn was
+his home, and there he paid his taxes. Undoubtedly, they were less than
+city taxes.
+
+Although a young man, Mr. Crewe was in all respects a model citizen, and
+a person of many activities. He had built a farmers' club, to which the
+farmers, in gross ingratitude, had never gone. Now it was a summer
+residence and distinctly rentable. He had a standing offer to erect a
+library in the village of Leith provided the town would furnish the
+ground, the books, and permit the name of Crewe to be carved in stone
+over the doorway. The indifference of the town pained him, and he was
+naturally not a little grieved at the lack of proper feeling of the
+country people of America towards those who would better their
+conditions. He had put a large memorial window in the chapel to his
+family.
+
+Mr. Crewe had another standing offer to be one of five men to start a
+farming experiment station--which might pay dividends. He, was a church
+warden; president of a society for turning over crops (which he had
+organized); a member of the State Grange; president of the embryo State
+Economic League (whatever that was); and chairman of the Local
+Improvement Board--also a creation of his own. By these tokens, and
+others too numerous to mention, it would seem that the inhabitants of
+Leith would have jumped at the chance to make such a man one of the five
+hundred in their State Legislature.
+
+To Whitman is attributed the remark that genius is almost one hundred per
+cent directness, but whether or not this applied to Mr. Humphrey Crewe
+remains to be seen. "Dynamics" more surely expressed him. It would not
+seem to be a very difficult feat, to be sure, to get elected to a State
+Legislature of five hundred which met once a year: once in ten years,
+indeed, might have been more appropriate for the five hundred. The town
+of Leith with its thousand inhabitants had one representative, and Mr.
+Crewe had made up his mind he was to be that representative.
+
+There was, needless to say, great excitement in Leith over Mr. Crewe's
+proposed venture into the unknown seas of politics. I mean, of course,
+that portion of Leith which recognized in Mr. Crewe an eligible bachelor
+and a person of social importance, for these qualities were not
+particularly appealing to the three hundred odd farmers whose votes were
+expected to send him rejoicing to the State capital.
+
+"It is so rare with us for a gentleman to go into politics, that we ought
+to do everything we can to elect him," Mrs. Pomfret went about declaring.
+"Women do so much in England, I wonder they don't do more here. I was
+staying at Aylestone Court last year when the Honourable Billy Aylestone
+was contesting the family seat with a horrid Radical, and I assure you,
+my dear, I got quite excited. We did nothing from morning till night but
+electioneer for the Honourable Billy, and kissed all the babies in the
+borough. The mothers were so grateful. Now, Edith, do tell Jack instead
+of playing tennis and canoeing all day he ought to help. It's the duty of
+all young men to help. Noblesse oblige, you know. I can't understand
+Victoria. She really has influence with these country people, but she
+says it's all nonsense. Sometimes I think Victoria has a common streak in
+her--and no wonder. The other day she actually drove to the Hammonds' in
+a buggy with an unknown lawyer from Ripton. But I told you about it. Tell
+your gardener and the people that do your haying, dear, and your chicken
+woman. My chicken woman is most apathetic, but do you wonder, with the
+life they lead?"
+
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe might have had, with King Charles, the watchword
+"Thorough." He sent to the town clerk for a check-list, and proceeded to
+honour each of the two hundred Republican voters with a personal visit.
+This is a fair example of what took place in the majority of cases.
+
+Out of a cloud of dust emerges an automobile, which halts, with
+protesting brakes, in front of a neat farmhouse, guarded by great maples.
+Persistent knocking by a chauffeur at last brings a woman to the door.
+Mrs. Jenney has a pleasant face and an ample figure.
+
+"Mr. Jenney live here?" cries Mr. Crewe from the driver's seat.
+
+"Yes," says Mrs. Jenney, smiling.
+
+"Tell him I want to see him."
+
+"Guess you'll find him in the apple orchard."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+The chauffeur takes down the bars, Mr. Jenney pricks up his ears, and
+presently--to his amazement--perceives a Leviathan approaching him,
+careening over the ruts of his wood road. Not being an emotional person,
+he continues to pick apples until he is summarily hailed. Then he goes
+leisurely towards the Leviathan.
+
+"Are you Mr. Jenney?"
+
+"Callate to be," says Mr. Jenney, pleasantly.
+
+"I'm Humphrey Crewe."
+
+"How be you?" says Mr. Jenney, his eyes wandering over the Leviathan.
+
+"How are the apples this year?" asks Mr. Crewe, graciously.
+
+"Fair to middlin'," says Mr. Jenney.
+
+"Have you ever tasted my Pippins?" says Mr. Crewe. "A little science in
+cultivation helps along. I'm going to send you a United States government
+pamphlet on the fruit we can raise here."
+
+Mr. Jenney makes an awkward pause by keeping silent on the subject of the
+pamphlet until he shall see it.
+
+"Do you take much interest in politics?"
+
+"Not a great deal," answers Mr. Jenney.
+
+"That's the trouble with Americans," Mr. Crewe declares, "they don't care
+who represents 'em, or whether their government's good or bad."
+
+"Guess that's so," replies Mr. Jenney, politely.
+
+"That sort of thing's got to stop," declares Mr. Crewe; "I'm a candidate
+for the Republican nomination for representative."
+
+"I want to know!" ejaculates Mr. Jenney, pulling his beard. One would
+never suspect that this has been one of Mr. Jenney's chief topics of
+late.
+
+"I'll see that the interests of this town are cared for."
+
+"Let's see," says Mr. Jenney, "there's five hundred in the House, ain't
+there?"
+
+"It's a ridiculous number," says Mr. Crewe, with truth.
+
+"Gives everybody a chance to go," says Mr. Jenney. "I was thar in '78,
+and enjoyed it some."
+
+"Who are you for?" demanded Mr. Crewe, combating the tendency of the
+conversation to slip into a pocket.
+
+"Little early yet, hain't it? Hain't made up my mind. Who's the
+candidates?" asks Mr. Jenney, continuing to stroke his beard.
+
+"I don't know," says Mr. Crewe, "but I do know I've done something for
+this town, and I hope you'll take it into consideration. Come and see me
+when you go to the village. I'll give you a good cigar, and that
+pamphlet, and we'll talk matters over."
+
+"Never would have thought to see one of them things in my orchard," says
+Mr. Jenney. "How much do they cost? Much as a locomotive, don't they?"
+
+It would not be exact to say that, after some weeks of this sort of
+campaigning, Mr. Crewe was discouraged, for such writhe vitality with
+which nature had charged him that he did not know the meaning of the
+word. He was merely puzzled, as a June-bug is puzzled when it bumps up
+against a wire window-screen. He had pledged to him his own gardener,
+Mrs. Pomfret's, the hired men of three of his neighbours, a few modest
+souls who habitually took off their hats to him, and Mr. Ball, of the
+village, who sold groceries to Wedderburn and was a general handy man for
+the summer people. Mr. Ball was an agitator by temperament and a promoter
+by preference. If you were a summer resident of importance and needed
+anything from a sewing-machine to a Holstein heifer, Mr. Ball, the
+grocer, would accommodate you. When Mrs. Pomfret's cook became inebriate
+and refractory, Mr. Ball was sent for, and enticed her to the station and
+on board of a train; when the Chillinghams' tank overflowed, Mr. Ball
+found the proper valve and saved the house from being washed away. And it
+was he who, after Mrs. Pomfret, took the keenest interest in Mr. Crewe's
+campaign. At length came one day when Mr. Crewe pulled up in front of the
+grocery store and called, as his custom was, loudly for Mr. Ball. The
+fact that Mr. Ball was waiting on customers made no difference, and
+presently that gentleman appeared, rubbing his hands together.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" he said, "automobile going all right?"
+
+"What's the matter with these fellers?" said Mr. Crewe. "Haven't I done
+enough for the town? Didn't I get 'em rural free delivery? Didn't I
+subscribe to the meeting-house and library, and don't I pay more taxes
+than anybody else?"
+
+"Certain," assented Mr. Ball, eagerly, "certain you do." It did not seem
+to occur to him that it was unfair to make him responsible for the scurvy
+ingratitude of his townsmen. He stepped gingerly down into the dust and
+climbed up on the tool box.
+
+"Look out," said Mr. Crewe, "don't scratch the varnish. What is it?"
+
+Mr. Ball shifted obediently to the rubber-covered step, and bent his face
+to his patron's ear.
+
+"It's railrud," he said.
+
+"Railroad!" shouted Mr. Crewe, in a voice that made the grocer clutch his
+arm in terror. "Don't pinch me like that. Railroad! This town ain't
+within ten miles of the railroad."
+
+"For the love of David," said Mr. Ball, "don't talk so loud, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"What's the railroad got to do with it?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+Mr. Ball glanced around him, to make sure that no one was within shouting
+distance.
+
+"What's the railrud got to do with anything in this State?" inquired Mr.
+Ball, craftily.
+
+"That's different," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I'm a corporation man
+myself. They've got to defend 'emselves."
+
+"Certain. I ain't got anything again' 'em," Mr. Ball agreed quickly. "I
+guess they know what they're about. By the bye, Mr. Crewe," he added,
+coming dangerously near the varnish again, and drawing back, "you hain't
+happened to have seen Job Braden, have you?"
+
+"Job Braden!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "Job Braden! What's all this mystery
+about Job Braden? Somebody whispers that name in my ear every day. If you
+mean that smooth-faced cuss that stutters and lives on Braden's Hill, I
+called on him, but he was out. If you see him, tell him to come up to
+Wedderburn, and I'll talk with him."
+
+Mr. Ball made a gesture to indicate a feeling divided between respect for
+Mr. Crewe and despair at the hardihood of such a proposition.
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, Job wouldn't go."
+
+"Wouldn't go?"
+
+"He never pays visits,--folks go to him."
+
+"He'd come to see me, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I--I'm afraid riot, Mr. Crewe. Job holds his comb rather high."
+
+"Do you mean to say this two-for-a-cent town has a boss?"
+
+"Silas Grantley was born here," said Mr. Ball--for even the worm will
+turn. "This town's got a noble history."
+
+"I don't care anything about Silas Grantley. What I want to know is, how
+this rascal manages to make anything out of the political pickings of a
+town like Leith."
+
+"Well, Job ain't exactly a rascal, Mr. Crewe. He's got a good many of
+them hill farmers in a position of--of gratitude. Enough to control the
+Republican caucus."
+
+"Do you mean he buys their votes?" demanded Mr. Crewe.
+
+"It's like this," explained Mr. Ball, "if one of 'em falls behind in his
+grocery bill, for example, he can always get money from Job. Job takes a
+mortgage, but he don't often close down on 'm. And Job has been
+collectin' credentials in Avalon County for upward of forty years."
+
+"Collecting credentials?"
+
+"Yes. Gets a man nominated to State and county conventions that can't go,
+and goes himself with a bunch of credentials. He's in a position to
+negotiate. He was in all them railrud fights with Jethro Bass, and now he
+does business with Hilary Vane or Brush Bascom when anything especial's
+goin' on. You'd ought to see him, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"I guess I won't waste my time with any picayune boss if the United
+Northeastern Railroads has any hand in this matter," declared Mr. Crewe.
+"Wind her up."
+
+This latter remark was addressed to a long-suffering chauffeur who looked
+like a Sicilian brigand.
+
+"I didn't exactly like to suggest it," said Mr. Ball, rubbing his hands
+and raising his voice above the whir of the machine, "but of course I
+knew Mr. Flint was an intimate friend. A word to him from you--"
+
+But by this Mr. Crewe had got in his second speed and was sweeping around
+a corner lined with farmers' teams, whose animals were behaving like
+circus horses. On his own driveway, where he arrived in incredibly brief
+time, he met his stenographer, farm superintendent, secretary,
+housekeeper, and general utility man, Mr. Raikes. Mr. Raikes was elderly,
+and showed signs of needing a vacation.
+
+"Telephone Mr. Flint, Raikes, and tell him I would like an appointment at
+his earliest convenience, on important business."
+
+Mr. Raikes, who was going for his daily stroll beside the river, wheeled
+and made for the telephone, and brought back the news that Mr. Flint
+would be happy to see Mr. Crewe the next afternoon at four o'clock.
+
+This interview, about which there has been so much controversy in the
+newspapers, and denials and counter-denials from the press bureaus of
+both gentlemen,--this now historic interview began at four o'clock
+precisely the next day. At that hour Mr. Crewe was ushered into that
+little room in which Mr. Flint worked when at Fairview. Like Frederick
+the Great and other famous captains, Mr. Flint believed in an iron
+bedstead regime. The magnate was, as usual, fortified behind his oak
+desk; the secretary with a bend in his back was in modest evidence; and
+an elderly man of comfortable proportions, with a large gold watch-charm
+portraying the rising sun, and who gave, somehow, the polished impression
+of a marble, sat near the window smoking a cigar. Mr. Crewe approached
+the desk with that genial and brisk manner for which he was noted and
+held out his hand to the railroad president.
+
+"We are both business men, and both punctual, Mr. Flint," he said, and
+sat down in the empty chair beside his host, eyeing without particular
+favour him of the watch-charm, whose cigar was not a very good one. "I
+wanted to have a little private conversation with you which might be of
+considerable interest to us both." And Mr. Crewe laid down on the desk a
+somewhat formidable roll of papers.
+
+"I trust the presence of Senator Whitredge will not deter you," answered
+Mr. Flint.  "He is an old friend of mine."
+
+Mr. Crewe was on his feet again with surprising alacrity, and beside the
+senator's chair.
+
+"How are you, Senator?" he said, "I have never had the pleasure of
+meeting you, but I know you by reputation."
+
+The senator got to his feet. They shook hands, and exchanged cordial
+greetings; and during the exchange Mr. Crewe looked out of the window,
+and the senator's eyes were fixed on the telephone receiver on Mr.
+Flint's desk. As neither gentleman took hold of the other's fingers very
+hard, they fell apart quickly.
+
+"I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Crewe," said the senator. Mr. Crewe sat
+down again, and not being hampered by those shrinking qualities so fatal
+to success he went on immediately:--"There is nothing which I have to
+say that the senator cannot hear. I made the appointment with you, Mr.
+Flint, to talk over a matter which may be of considerable importance to
+us both. I have made up my mind to go to the Legislature."
+
+Mr. Crewe naturally expected to find visible effects of astonishment and
+joy on the faces of his hearers at such not inconsiderable news. Mr.
+Flint, however, looked serious enough, though the senator smiled as he
+blew his smoke out of the window.
+
+"Have you seen Job Braden, Mr. Crewe?" he asked, with genial jocoseness.
+"They tell me that Job is still alive and kicking over in your parts."
+
+"Thank you, Senator," said Mr. Crewe, "that brings me to the very point I
+wish to emphasize. Everywhere in Leith I am met with the remark, 'Have
+you seen Job Braden?' And I always answer, 'No, I haven't seen Mr.
+Braden, and I don't intend to see him."'
+
+Mr. Whitredge laughed, and blew out a ring of smoke. Mr. Flint's face
+remained sober.
+
+"Now, Mr. Flint," Mr. Crewe went on, "you and I understand each other,
+and we're on the same side of the fence. I have inherited some interests
+in corporations myself, and I have acquired an interest in others. I am a
+director in several. I believe that it is the duty of property to protect
+itself, and the duty of all good men in politics,--such as the senator
+here,"--(bow from Mr. Whitredge) to protect property. I am a practical
+man, and I think I can convince you, if you don't see it already, that my
+determination to go to the Legislature is an advantageous thing for your
+railroad."
+
+"The advent of a reputable citizen into politics is always a good thing
+for the railroad, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"Exactly," Mr. Crewe agreed, ignoring the non-committal quality of this
+remark, "and if you get a citizen who is a not inconsiderable property
+holder, a gentleman, and a college graduate,--a man who, by study and
+predilection, is qualified to bring about improved conditions in the
+State, so much the better."
+
+"So much the better," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"I thought you would see it that way," Mr. Crewe continued. "Now a man of
+your calibre must have studied to some extent the needs of the State, and
+it must have struck you that certain improvements go hand in hand with
+the prosperity of your railroad."
+
+"Have a cigar, Mr. Crewe. Have another, Senator?" said Mr. Flint. "I
+think that is safe as a general proposition, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"To specify," said Mr. Crewe, laying his hand on the roll of papers he
+had brought, "I have here bills which I have carefully drawn up and which
+I will leave for your consideration. One is to issue bonds for ten
+millions to build State roads."
+
+"Ten millions!" said Mr. Flint, and the senator whistled mildly.
+
+"Think about it," said Mr. Crewe, "the perfection of the highways through
+the State, instead of decreasing your earnings, would increase them
+tremendously. Visitors by the tens of thousands would come in
+automobiles, and remain and buy summer places. The State would have its
+money back in taxes and business in no time at all. I wonder somebody
+hasn't seen it before--the stupidity of the country legislator is
+colossal. And we want forestry laws, and laws for improving the condition
+of the farmers--all practical things. They are all there," Mr. Crewe
+declared, slapping the bundle; "read them, Mr. Flint. If you have any
+suggestions to make, kindly note them on the margin, and I shall be glad
+to go over them with you."
+
+By this time the senator was in a rare posture for him--he was seated
+upright.
+
+"As you know, I am a very busy man, Mr. Crewe," said the railroad
+president.
+
+"No one appreciates that more fully than I do, Mr. Flint," said Mr.
+Crewe; "I haven't many idle hours myself. I think you will find the bills
+and my comments on them well worth your consideration from the point of
+view of advantage to your railroad. They are typewritten, and in concrete
+form. In fact, the Northeastern Railroads and myself must work together
+to our mutual advantage--that has become quite clear to me. I shall have
+need of your help in passing the measures."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't quite understand you, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint,
+putting down the papers.
+
+"That is," said Mr. Crewe, "if you approve of the bills, and I am
+confident that I shall be able to convince you."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" asked the railroad president.
+
+"Well, in the first place," said Mr. Crewe, unabashed, "send word to your
+man Braden that you've seen me and it's all right."
+
+"I assure you," answered Mr. Flint, giving evidence for the first time of
+a loss of patience, "that neither the Northeastern Railroads nor myself,
+have any more to do with this Braden than you have."
+
+Mr. Crewe, being a man of the world, looked incredulous.
+
+"Senator," Mr. Flint continued, turning to Mr. Whitredge, "you know as
+much about politics in this State as any man of my acquaintance, have you
+ever heard of any connection between this Braden and the Northeastern
+Railroads?"
+
+The senator had a laugh that was particularly disarming.
+
+"Bless your soul, no," he replied. "You will pardon me, Mr. Crewe, but
+you must have been listening to some farmer's tale. The railroad is the
+bugaboo in all these country romances. I've seen old Job Braden at
+conventions ever since I was a lad. He's a back number, one of the few
+remaining disciples and imitators of Jethro Bass: talks like him and acts
+like him. In the old days when there were a lot of little railroads, he
+and Bijah Bixby and a few others used to make something out of them, but
+since the consolidation, and Mr. Flint's presidency, Job stays at home.
+They tell me he runs Leith yet. You'd better go over and fix it up with
+him."
+
+A somewhat sarcastic smile of satisfaction was playing over Mr. Flint's
+face as he listened to the senator's words. As a matter of fact, they
+were very nearly true as regarded Job Braden, but Mr. Crewe may be
+pardoned for thinking that Mr. Flint was not showing him quite the
+confidence due from one business and corporation man to another. He was
+by no means abashed,--Mr. Crewe had too much spirit for that. He merely
+became--as a man whose watchword is "thorough" will--a little more
+combative.
+
+"Well, read the bills anyway, Mr. Flint, and I'll come and go over them
+with you. You can't fail to see my arguments, and all I ask is that you
+throw the weight of your organization at the State capital for them when
+they come up."
+
+Mr. Flint drummed on the table.
+
+"The men who have held office in this State," he said, "have always been
+willing to listen to any suggestion I may have thought proper to make to
+them. This is undoubtedly because I am at the head of the property which
+pays the largest taxes. Needless to say I am chary of making suggestions.
+But I am surprised that you should have jumped at a conclusion which is
+the result of a popular and unfortunately prevalent opinion that the
+Northeastern Railroads meddled in any way with the government or politics
+of this State. I am glad of this opportunity of assuring you that we do
+not," he continued, leaning forward and holding up his hand to ward off
+interruption, "and I know that Senator Whitredge will bear me out in this
+statement, too."
+
+The senator nodded gravely. Mr. Crewe, who was anything but a fool, and
+just as assertive as Mr. Flint, cut in.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Flint," he said, "I know what a lobby is. I haven't been
+a director in railroads myself for nothing. I have no objection to a
+lobby. You employ counsel before the Legislature, don't you--"
+
+"We do," said Mr. Flint, interrupting, "the best and most honourable
+counsel we can find in the State. When necessary, they appear before the
+legislative committees. As a property holder in the State, and an admirer
+of its beauties, and as its well-wisher, it will give me great pleasure
+to look over your bills, and use whatever personal influence I may have
+as a citizen to forward them, should they meet my approval. And I am
+especially glad to do this as a neighbour, Mr. Crewe. As a neighbour," he
+repeated, significantly.
+
+The president of the Northeastern Railroads rose as he spoke these words,
+and held out his hand to Mr. Crewe. It was perhaps a coincidence that the
+senator rose also.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll call around again in about two weeks.
+Come and see me sometime, Senator." "Thank you," said the senator, "I
+shall be happy. And if you are ever in your automobile near the town of
+Ramsey, stop at my little farm, Mr. Crewe. I trust to be able soon to
+congratulate you on a step which I am sure will be but the beginning of
+a long and brilliant political career."
+
+"Thanks," said Mr. Crewe; "by the bye, if you could see your way to drop
+a hint to that feller Braden, I should be much obliged."
+
+The senator shook his head and laughed.
+
+"Job is an independent cuss," he said, "I'm afraid he'd regard that as an
+unwarranted trespass on his preserves."
+
+Mr. Crewe was ushered out by the stooping secretary, Mr. Freeman; who,
+instead of seizing Mr. Crewe's hand as he had Austen Vane's, said not a
+word. But Mr. Crewe would have been interested if he could have heard Mr.
+Flint's first remark to the senator after the door was closed on his
+back. It did not relate to Mr. Crewe, but to the subject under discussion
+which he had interrupted; namely, the Republican candidates for the
+twenty senatorial districts of the State.
+
+On its way back to Leith the red motor paused in front of Mr. Ball's
+store, and that gentleman was summoned in the usual manner.
+
+"Do you see this Braden once in a while?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+Mr. Ball looked knowing.
+
+"Tell him I want to have a talk with him," said Mr. Crewe. "I've been to
+see Mr. Flint, and I think matters can be arranged. And mind you, no word
+about this, Ball."
+
+"I guess I understand a thing or two," said Mr. Ball. "Trust me to handle
+it."
+
+Two days later, as Mr. Crewe was seated in his study, his man entered and
+stood respectfully waiting for the time when he should look up from his
+book.
+
+"Well, what is it now, Waters?"
+
+"If you please, sir," said the man, "a strange message has come over the
+telephone just now that you were to be in room number twelve of the
+Ripton House to-morrow at ten o'clock. They wouldn't give any name, sir,"
+added the dignified Waters, who, to tell the truth, was somewhat
+outraged, nor tell where they telephoned from. But it was a man's voice,
+sir."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+He spent much of the afternoon and evening debating whether or not his
+dignity would permit him to go. But he ordered the motor at half-past
+nine, and at ten o'clock precisely the clerk at the Ripton House was
+bowing to him and handing him, deferentially, a dripping pen.
+
+"Where's room number twelve?" said the direct Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh," said the clerk, and possessing a full share of the worldly wisdom
+of his calling, he smiled broadly. "I guess you'll find him up there, Mr.
+Crewe. Front, show the gentleman to number twelve."
+
+The hall boy knocked on the door of number twelve.
+
+"C--come in," said a voice. "Come in."
+
+Mr. Crewe entered, the hall boy closed the door, and he found himself
+face to face with a comfortable, smooth-faced man seated with great
+placidity on a rocking-chair in the centre of the room, between the bed
+and the marble-topped table: a man to whom, evidently, a rich abundance
+of thought was sufficient company, for he had neither newspaper nor book.
+He rose in a leisurely fashion, and seemed the very essence of the benign
+as he stretched forth his hand.
+
+"I'm Mr. Crewe," the owner of that name proclaimed, accepting the hand
+with no exaggeration of cordiality. The situation jarred on him a trifle.
+
+"I know. Seed you on the road once or twice. How be you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe sat down.
+
+"I suppose you are Mr. Braden," he said.
+
+Mr. Braden sank into the rocker and fingered a waistcoat pocket full of
+cigars that looked like a section of a cartridge-belt.
+
+"T--try one of mine," he said.
+
+"I only smoke once after breakfast," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Abstemious, be you? Never could find that it did me any hurt."
+
+This led to an awkward pause, Mr. Crewe not being a man who found profit
+in idle discussion. He glanced at Mr. Braden's philanthropic and beaming
+countenance, which would have made the fortune of a bishop. It was not
+usual for Mr. Crewe to find it difficult to begin a conversation, or to
+have a companion as self-sufficient as himself. This man Braden had all
+the fun, apparently, in sitting in a chair and looking into space that
+Stonewall Jackson had, or an ordinary man in watching a performance of "A
+Trip to Chinatown." Let it not be inferred, again, that Mr. Crewe was
+abashed; but he was puzzled.
+
+"I had an engagement in Ripton this morning," he said, "to see about some
+business matters. And after I received your telephone I thought I'd drop
+in here."
+
+"Didn't telephone," said Mr. Braden, placidly.
+
+"What!" said Mr. Crewe, "I certainly got a telephone message."
+
+"N--never telephone," said Mr. Braden.
+
+"I certainly got a message from you," Mr. Crewe protested.
+
+"Didn't say it was from me--didn't say so--did they--"
+
+"No," said Mr. Crewe, "but--"
+
+"Told Ball you wanted to have me see you, didn't you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe, when he had unravelled this sentence, did not fancy the way it
+was put.
+
+"I told Ball I was seeing everybody in Leith," he answered, "and that I
+had called on you, and you weren't at home. Ball inferred that you had a
+somewhat singular way of seeing people."
+
+"You don't understand," was Mr. Braden's somewhat enigmatic reply.
+
+"I understand pretty well," said Mr. Crewe. "I'm a candidate for the
+Republican nomination for representative from Leith, and I want your vote
+and influence. You probably know what I have done for the town, and that
+I'm the biggest taxpayer, and an all-the-year-round resident."
+
+"S--some in Noo York--hain't you?"
+
+"Well, you can't expect a man in my position and with my interests to
+stay at home all the time. I feel that I have a right to ask the town for
+this nomination. I have some bills here which I'll request you to read
+over, and you will see that I have ideas which are of real value to the
+State. The State needs waking up-progressive measures. You're a farmer,
+ain't you?"
+
+"Well, I have be'n."
+
+"I can improve the condition of the farmer one hundred per cent, and if
+my road system is followed, he can get his goods to market for about a
+tenth of what it costs him now. We have infinitely valuable forests in
+the State which are being wasted by lumbermen, which ought to be
+preserved. You read those bills, and what I have written about them."
+
+"You don't understand," said Mr. Braden, drawing a little closer and
+waving aside the manuscript with his cigar.
+
+"Don't understand what?"
+
+"Don't seem to understand," repeated Mr. Braden, confidingly laying his
+hand on Mr. Crewe's knee. "Candidate for representative, be you?"
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. Crewe, who was beginning to resent the manner in which
+he deemed he was being played with, "I told you I was."
+
+"M--made all them bills out before you was chose?" said Mr. Braden.
+
+Mr. Crewe grew red in the face.
+
+"I am interested in these questions," he said stiffly.
+
+"Little mite hasty, wahn't it?" Mr. Braden remarked equably, "but you've
+got plenty of time and money to fool with such things, if you've a mind
+to. Them don't amount to a hill of beans in politics. Nobody pays any
+attention to that sort of fireworks down to the capital, and if they was
+to get into committee them Northeastern Railroads fellers'd bury 'em
+deeper than the bottom of Salem pond. They don't want no such things as
+them to pass."
+
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Crewe, "but you haven't read 'em."
+
+"I know what they be," said Mr. Braden, "I've be'n in politics more years
+than you've be'n livin', I guess. I don't want to read 'em," he
+announced, his benign manner unchanged.
+
+"I think you have made a mistake so far as the railroad is concerned, Mr.
+Braden," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm a practical man myself, and I don't indulge
+in moonshine. I am a director in one or two railroads. I have talked this
+matter over with Mr. Flint, and incidentally with Senator Whitredge."
+
+"Knowed Whitredge afore you had any teeth," said Mr. Braden, who did not
+seem to be greatly impressed, "know him intimate. What'd you go to Flint
+for?"
+
+"We have interests in common," said Mr. Crewe, "and I am rather a close
+friend of his. My going to the Legislature will be, I think, to our
+mutual advantage."
+
+"O--ought to have come right to me," said Mr. Braden, leaning over until
+his face was in close proximity to Mr. Crewe's. "Whitredge told you to
+come to me, didn't he?"
+
+Mr. Crewe was a little taken aback.
+
+"The senator mentioned your name," he admitted.
+
+"He knows. Said I was the man to see if you was a candidate, didn't he?
+Told you to talk to Job Braden, didn't he?"
+
+Now Mr. Crewe had no means of knowing whether Senator Whitredge had been
+in conference with Mr. Braden or not.
+
+"The senator mentioned your name casually, in some connection," said Mr.
+Crewe.
+
+"He knows," Mr. Braden repeated, with a finality that spoke volumes for
+the senator's judgment; and he bent over into Mr. Crewe's ear, with the
+air of conveying a mild but well-merited reproof, "You'd ought to come
+right to me in the first place. I could have saved you all that
+unnecessary trouble of seein' folks. There hasn't be'n a representative
+left the town of Leith for thirty years that I hain't agreed to.
+Whitredge knows that. If I say you kin go, you kin go. You understand,"
+said Mr. Braden, with his fingers on Mr. Crewe's knee once more.
+
+Five minutes later Mr. Crewe emerged into the dazzling sun of the Ripton
+square, climbed into his automobile, and turned its head towards Leith,
+strangely forgetting the main engagement which he said had brought him to
+town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE TRIALS OF AN HONOURABLE
+
+It was about this time that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was transformed, by one of
+those subtle and inexplicable changes which occur in American politics,
+into the Honourable Humphrey Crewe. And, as interesting bits of news
+about important people are bound to leak out, it became known in Leith
+that he had subscribed to what is known as a Clipping Bureau. Two weeks
+after the day he left Mr. Braden's presence in the Ripton House the
+principal newspapers of the country contained the startling announcement
+that the well-known summer colony of Leith was to be represented in the
+State Legislature by a millionaire. The Republican nomination, which Mr.
+Crewe had secured, was equivalent to an election.
+
+For a little time after that Mr. Crewe, although naturally an important
+and busy man, scarcely had time to nod to his friends on the road.
+
+"Poor dear Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, "who was so used to dropping in
+to dinner, hasn't had a moment to write me a line to thank me for the
+statesman's diary I bought for him in London this spring. They're in that
+new red leather, and Aylestone says he finds his so useful. I dropped in
+at Wedderburn to-day to see if I could be of any help, and the poor man
+was buttonholed by two reporters who had come all the way from New York
+to see him. I hope he won't overdo it."
+
+It was true. Mr. Crewe was to appear in the Sunday supplements.  "Are our
+Millionaires entering Politics?" Mr. Crewe, with his usual gracious
+hospitality, showed the reporters over the place, and gave them
+suggestions as to the best vantage-points in which to plant their
+cameras. He himself was at length prevailed upon to be taken in a rough
+homespun suit, and with a walking-stick in his hand, appraising with a
+knowing eye a flock of his own sheep. Pressed a little, he consented to
+relate something of the systematic manner in which he had gone about to
+secure this nomination: how he had visited in person the homes of his
+fellow-townsmen. "I knew them all, anyway," he is quoted as saying; "we
+have had the pleasantest of relationships during the many years I have
+been a resident of Leith."
+
+"Beloved of his townspeople," this part of the article was headed. No,
+these were not Mr. Crewe's words--he was too modest for that. When urged
+to give the name of one of his townsmen who might deal with this and
+other embarrassing topics, Mr. Ball was mentioned. "Beloved of his
+townspeople" was Mr. Ball's phrase. "Although a multi-millionaire, no man
+is more considerate of the feelings and the rights of his more humble
+neighbours. Send him to the Legislature! We'd send him to the United
+States Senate if we could. He'll land there, anyway." Such was a random
+estimate (Mr. Ball's) the reporters gathered on their way to Ripton. Mr.
+Crewe did not hesitate to say that the prosperity of the farmers had
+risen as a result of his labours at Wedderburn where the most improved
+machinery and methods were adopted. His efforts to raise the
+agricultural, as well as the moral and intellectual, tone of the
+community had been unceasing.
+
+Then followed an intelligent abstract of the bills he was to introduce
+--the results of a progressive and statesmanlike brain. There was an
+account of him as a methodical and painstaking business man whose
+suggestions to the boards of directors of which he was a member had been
+invaluable. The article ended with a list of the clubs to which he
+belonged, of the societies which he had organized and of those of which
+he was a member,--and it might have been remarked by a discerning reader
+that most of these societies were State affairs. Finally there was a pen
+portrait of an Apollo Belvidere who wore the rough garb of a farmer (on
+the days when the press was present).
+
+Mr. Crewe's incessant trials, which would have taxed a less rugged
+nature, did not end here. About five o'clock one afternoon a
+pleasant-appearing gentleman with a mellifluous voice turned up who
+introduced himself as ex (State) Senator Grady. The senator was from
+Newcastle, that city out of the mysterious depths of which so many
+political stars have arisen. Mr. Crewe cancelled a long-deferred
+engagement with Mrs. Pomfret, and invited the senator to stay to dinner;
+the senator hesitated, explained that he was just passing through Ripton,
+and, as it was a pleasant afternoon, had called to "pay his respects";
+but Mr. Crewe's well-known hospitality would accept no excuses. Mr. Crewe
+opened a box of cigars which he had bought especially for the taste of
+State senators and a particular grade of Scotch whiskey.
+
+They talked politics for four hours. Who would be governor? The senator
+thought Asa Gray would. The railroad was behind him, Mr. Crewe observed
+knowingly. The senator remarked that Mr. Crewe was no gosling. Mr. Crewe,
+as political-geniuses will, asked as many questions as the emperor of
+Germany--pertinent questions about State politics. Senator Grady was
+tremendously impressed with his host's programme of bills, and went over
+them so painstakingly that Mr. Crewe became more and more struck with
+Senator Grady's intelligence. The senator told Mr. Crewe that just such a
+man as he was needed to pull the State out of the rut into which she had
+fallen. Mr. Crewe said that he hoped to find such enlightened men in the
+Legislature as the senator. The senator let it be known that he had read
+the newspaper articles, and had remarked that Mr. Crewe was close to the
+president of the Northeastern Railroads.
+
+"Such a man as you," said the senator, looking at the remainder of the
+Scotch whiskey, "will have the railroad behind you, sure."
+
+"One more drink," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"I must go," said Mr. Grady, pouring it out, but that reminds me. It
+comes over me sudden-like, as I sit here, that you certainly ought to be
+in the new encyclopeedie of the prominent men of the State. But sure you
+have received an application."
+
+"It is probable that my secretary has one," said Mr. Crewe, "but he
+hasn't called it to my attention."
+
+"You must get in that book, Mr. Crewe," said the senator, with an intense
+earnestness which gave the impression of alarm; "after what you've told
+me to-night I'll see to it myself that you get in. It may be that I've
+got some of the sample pages here, if I haven't left them at home," said
+Mr. Grady, fumbling in an ample inside pocket, and drawing forth a
+bundle. "Sure, here they are. Ain't that luck for you? Listen! 'Asa P.
+Gray was born on the third of August, eighteen forty-seven, the seventh
+son of a farmer. See, there's a space in the end they left to fill up
+when he's elicted governor! Here's another. The Honourable Hilary Vane
+comes from one of the oldest Puritan families in the State, the Vanes of
+Camden Street--' Here's another. 'The Honourable Brush Bascom of Putnam
+County is the son of poor but honourable parents--' Look at the picture
+of him. Ain't that a handsome steel-engravin' of the gentleman?"
+
+Mr. Crewe gazed contemplatively at the proof, but was too busy with his
+own thoughts to reflect that there was evidently not much poor or
+honourable about Mr. Bascom now.
+
+"Who's publishing this?" he asked.
+
+"Fogarty and Company; sure they're the best publishers in the State, as
+you know, Mr. Crewe. They have the State printing. Wasn't it fortunate I
+had the proofs with me? Tim Fogarty slipped them into me pocket when I
+was leavin' Newcastle. 'The book is goin' to press the day after
+eliction,' says he, 'John,' says he, 'you know I always rely on your
+judgment, and if you happen to think of anybody between now and then who
+ought to go in, you'll notify me,' says he. When I read the bills
+to-night, and saw the scope of your work, it came over me in a flash that
+Humphrey Crewe was the man they left out. You'll get a good man to write
+your life, and what you done for the town and State, and all them
+societies and bills, won't you? 'Twould be a thousand pities not to have
+it right."
+
+"How much does it cost?" Mr. Crewe inquired.
+
+"Sure I forgot to ask Tim Fogarty. Mebbe he has it here. I signed one
+myself, but I couldn't afford the steelengravin'. Yes, he slipped one in.
+Two hundred dollars for a two-page biography, and, three hundred for the
+steelengravin'. Five hundred dollars. I didn't know it was so cheap as
+that," exclaimed the senator, "and everybody in the State havin' to own
+one in self-protection. You don't happen to have a pen about you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe waved the senator towards his own desk, and Mr. Grady filled
+out the blank.
+
+"It's lucky we are that I didn't drop in after eliction, and the book in
+press," he remarked; "and I hope you'll give him a good photograph.
+This's for you, I'll take this to Tim myself," and he handed the pen for
+Mr. Crewe to sign with.
+
+Mr. Crewe read over the agreement carefully, as a business man should,
+before putting his signature to it. And then the senator, with renewed
+invitations for Mr. Crewe to call on him when he came to Newcastle, took
+his departure. Afterwards Mr. Crewe remained so long in reflection that
+his man Waters became alarmed, and sought him out and interrupted his
+revery.
+
+The next morning Mrs. Pomfret, who was merely "driving by" with her
+daughter Alice and Beatrice Chillingham, spied Mr. Crewe walking about
+among the young trees he was growing near the road, and occasionally
+tapping them with his stout stick. She poked her coachman in the back and
+cried:--"Humphrey, you're such an important man now that I despair of
+ever seeing you again. What was the matter last night?"
+
+"A politician from Newcastle," answered Mr. Crewe, continuing to tap the
+trees, and without so much as a glance at Alice.
+
+"Well, if you're as important as this before you're elected, I can't
+think what it will be afterwards," Mrs. Pomfret lamented. "Poor dear
+Humphrey is so conscientious. When can you come, Humphrey?"
+
+"Don't know," said Mr. Crewe; "I'll try to come tonight, but I may be
+stopped again. Here's Waters now."
+
+The three people in Mrs. Pomfret's victoria were considerably impressed
+to see the dignified Waters hurrying down the slope from the house
+towards them. Mr. Crewe continued to tap the trees, but drew a little
+nearer the carriage.
+
+"If you please, sir," said Waters, "there's a telephone call for you from
+Newcastle. It's urgent, sir."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"They won't give their names, sir."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, and with a grin which spoke volumes for the
+manner in which he was harassed he started towards the house--in no great
+hurry, however. Reaching the instrument, and saying "Hello" in his
+usually gracious manner, he was greeted by a voice with a decided
+Hibernian-American accent.
+
+"Am I talkin' to Mr. Crewe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Humphrey Crewe?"
+
+"Yes--yes, of course you are. Who are you?"
+
+"I'm the president of the Paradise Benevolent and Military Association,
+Mr. Crewe. Boys that work in the mills, you know," continued the voice,
+caressingly. "Sure you've heard of us. We're five hundred strong, and all
+of us good Republicans as the president. We're to have our annual fall
+outing the first of October in Finney Grove, and we'd like to have you
+come down."
+
+"The first of October?" said Mr. Crewe. "I'll consult my engagement
+book."
+
+"We'd like to have a good picture of you in our programme, Mr. Crewe. We
+hope you'll oblige us. You're such an important figure in State politics
+now you'd ought to have a full page."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"What does it cost?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+"Sure," said the caressing voice of the president, "whatever you like."
+
+"I'll send you a check for five dollars, and a picture," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+The answer to this was a hearty laugh, which the telephone reproduced
+admirably. The voice now lost a little of its caressing note and partook
+of a harder quality.
+
+"You're a splendid humorist, Mr. Crewe. Five dollars wouldn't pay for the
+plate and the paper. A gentleman like you could give us twenty-five, and
+never know it was gone. You won't be wanting to stop in the Legislature,
+Mr. Crewe, and we remember our friends in Newcastle."
+
+"Very well, I'll see what I can do. Good-by, I've got an engagement,"
+said Mr. Crewe, and slammed down the telephone. He seated himself in his
+chair, and the pensive mood so characteristic (we are told) of statesmen
+came over him once more.
+
+While these and other conferences and duties too numerous to mention were
+absorbing Mr. Crewe, he was not too busy to bear in mind the pleasure of
+those around him who had not received such an abundance of the world's
+blessings as he. The townspeople of Leith were about to bestow on him
+their greatest gift. What could he do to show his appreciation? Wrestling
+with this knotty problem, a brilliant idea occurred to him,--he would
+have a garden-party: invite everybody in town, and admit them to the
+sanctities of Wedderburn; yes, even of Wedderburn house, that they might
+behold with their own eyes the carved ivory elephants and other contents
+of glass cabinets which reeked of the Sunday afternoons of youth. Being a
+man of action, Mr. Pardriff was summoned at once from Leith and asked for
+his lowest price on eight hundred and fifty invitations and a notice of
+the party in the Ripton Record.
+
+"Goin' to invite Democrats, too?" demanded Mr. Pardriff, glancing at the
+check-list.
+
+"Everybody," said Mr. Crewe, with unparalleled generosity. "I won't draw
+any distinction between friends and enemies. They're all neighbours."
+
+"And some of 'em might, by accident, vote the Republican ticket," Mr.
+Pardriff retorted, narrowing his eyes a little.
+
+Mr. Crewe evidently thought this a negligible suggestion, for he did not
+reply to it, but presently asked for the political news in Ripton.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pardriff, "you know they tried to get Austen Vane to run
+for State senator, don't you?"
+
+"Vane Why, he ain't a full-fledged lawyer yet. I've hired him in an
+unimportant case. Who asked him to run?"
+
+"Young Tom Gaylord and a delegation."
+
+"He couldn't have got it," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Pardriff, "he might have given Billings a hustle
+for the nomination."
+
+"You supported Billings, I noticed," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+Mr. Pardriff winked an eye.
+
+"I'm not ready to walk the ties when I go to Newcastle," he remarked,
+"and Nat ain't quite bankrupt yet. The Gaylords," continued Mr. Pardriff,
+who always took the cynical view of a man of the world, "have had some
+row with the Northeastern over lumber shipments. I understand they're
+goin' to buck 'em for a franchise in the next Legislature, just to make
+it lively. The Gaylords ain't exactly poverty-stricken, but they might as
+well try to move Sawanec Mountain as the Northeastern."
+
+It was a fact that young Tom Gaylord had approached Austen Vane with a
+"delegation" to request him to be a candidate for the Republican
+nomination for the State senate in his district against the railroad
+candidate and Austen's late opponent, the Honourable Nat Billings. It was
+a fact also that Austen had invited the delegation to sit down, although
+there were only two chairs, and that a wrestling match had ensued with
+young Tom, in the progress of which one chair had been broken. Young Tom
+thought it was time to fight the railroad, and perceived in Austen the
+elements of a rebel leader. Austen had undertaken to throw young Tom out
+of a front window, which was a large, old-fashioned one,--and after
+Herculean efforts had actually got him on the ledge, when something in
+the street caught his eye and made him desist abruptly. The something was
+the vision of a young woman in a brown linen suit seated in a runabout
+and driving a horse almost as handsome as Pepper.
+
+When the delegation, after exhausting their mental and physical powers of
+persuasion, had at length taken their departure in disgust, Austen opened
+mechanically a letter which had very much the appearance of an
+advertisement, and bearing a one-cent stamp. It announced that a
+garden-party would take place at Wedderburn, the home of the Honourable
+Humphrey Crewe, at a not very distant date, and the honour of the
+bearer's presence was requested. Refreshments would be served, and the
+Ripton Band would dispense music. Below, in small print, were minute
+directions where to enter, where to hitch your team, and where to go out.
+
+Austen was at a loss to know what fairy godmother had prompted Mr. Crewe
+to send him an invitation, the case of the injured horse not having
+advanced with noticeable rapidity. Nevertheless, the prospect of the
+garden-party dawned radiantly for him above what had hitherto been a
+rather gloomy horizon. Since the afternoon he had driven Victoria to the
+Hammonds' he had had daily debates with an imaginary man in his own
+likeness who, to the detriment of his reading of law, sat across his
+table and argued with him. The imaginary man was unprincipled, and had no
+dignity, but he had such influence over Austen Vane that he had induced
+him to drive twice within sight of Fairview gate, when Austen Vane had
+turned round again. The imaginary man was for going to call on her and
+letting subsequent events take care of themselves; Austen Vane, had an
+uncomfortable quality of reducing a matter first of all to its simplest
+terms. He knew that Mr. Flint's views were as fixed, ineradicable, and
+unchangeable as an epitaph cut in a granite monument; he felt (as Mr.
+Flint had) that their first conversation had been but a forerunner of, a
+strife to come between them; and add to this the facts that Mr. Flint was
+very rich and Austen Vane poor, that Victoria's friends were not his
+friends, and that he had grave doubts that the interest she had evinced
+in him sprang from any other incentive than a desire to have
+communication with various types of humanity, his hesitation as to
+entering Mr. Flint's house was natural enough.
+
+It was of a piece with Mr. Crewe's good fortune of getting what he wanted
+that the day of the garden-party was the best that September could do in
+that country, which is to say that it was very beautiful. A pregnant
+stillness enwrapped the hills, a haze shot with gold dust, like the
+filmiest of veils, softened the distant purple and the blue-black shadows
+under the pines. Austen awoke from his dream in this enchanted borderland
+to find himself in a long line of wagons filled with people in their
+Sunday clothes,--the men in black, and the young women in white, with gay
+streamers, wending their way through the rear-entrance drive of
+Wedderburn, where one of Mr. Crewe's sprucest employees was taking up the
+invitation cards like tickets,--a precaution to prevent the rowdy element
+from Ripton coming and eating up the refreshments. Austen obediently tied
+Pepper in a field, as he was directed, and made his way by a path through
+the woods towards the house, where the Ripton Band could be heard playing
+the second air in the programme, "Don't you wish you'd Waited?"
+
+For a really able account of that memorable entertainment see the Ripton
+Record of that week, for we cannot hope to vie with Mr. Pardriff when his
+heart is really in his work. How describe the noble figure of Mr. Crewe
+as it burst upon Austen when he rounded the corner of the house? Clad in
+a rough-and-ready manner, with a Gladstone collar to indicate the newly
+acquired statesmanship, and fairly radiating geniality, Mr. Crewe stood
+at the foot of the steps while the guests made the circuit of the
+driveway; and they carefully avoided, in obedience to a warning sign, the
+grass circle in the centre. As man and wife confronted him, Mr. Crewe
+greeted them in hospitable but stentorian tones that rose above the
+strains of "Don't you wish you'd Waited?" It was Mr. Ball who introduced
+his townspeople to the great man who was to represent them.
+
+"How are you?" said Mr. Crewe, with his eyes on the geraniums. "Mr. and
+Mrs. Perley Wright, eh? Make yourselves at home. Everything's free
+--you'll find the refreshments on the back porch--just have an eye to the
+signs posted round, that's all." And Mr. and Mrs. Perley Wright,
+overwhelmed by such a welcome, would pass on into a back eddy of
+neighbours, where they would stick, staring at a sign requesting them
+please not to pick the flowers.
+
+"Can't somebody stir 'em up?" Mr. Crewe shouted in an interval when the
+band had stopped to gather strength for a new effort. "Can't somebody
+move 'em round to see the cows and what's in the house and the automobile
+and the horses? Move around the driveway, please. It's so hot here you
+can't breathe. Some of you wanted to see what was in the house. Now's
+your chance."
+
+This graceful appeal had some temporary effect, but the congestion soon
+returned, when a man of the hour appeared, a man whose genius scattered
+the groups and who did more to make the party a success than any single
+individual,--Mr. Hamilton Tooting, in a glorious white silk necktie with
+purple flowers.
+
+"I'll handle 'em, Mr. Crewe," he said; "a little brains'll start 'em
+goin'. Come along here, Mr. Wright, and I'll show you the best cows this
+side of the Hudson Riverall pedigreed prize winners. Hello, Aust, you
+take hold and get the wimmen-folks interested in the cabinets. You know
+where they are."
+
+"There's a person with some sense," remarked Mrs. Pomfret, who had been
+at a little distance among a group of summer-resident ladies and watching
+the affair with shining eyes. "I'll help. Come, Edith; come, Victoria
+where's Victoria?--and dear Mrs. Chillingham. We American women are so
+deplorably lacking in this kind of experience. Alice, take some of the
+women into the garden. I'm going to interest that dear, benevolent man
+who looks so helpless, and doing his best to have a good time."
+
+The dear, benevolent man chanced to be Mr. Job Braden, who was standing
+somewhat apart with his hands in his pockets. He did not move as Mrs.
+Pomfret approached him, holding her glasses to her eyes.
+
+"How are you?" exclaimed that lady, extending a white-gloved hand with a
+cordiality that astonished her friends. "It is so pleasant to see you
+here, Mr.--Mr.--"
+
+"How be you?" said Mr. Braden, taking her fingers in the gingerly manner
+he would have handled one of Mr. Crewe's priceless curios. The giraffe
+Mr. Barnum had once brought to Ripton was not half as interesting as this
+immaculate and mysterious production of foreign dressmakers and French
+maids, but he refrained from betraying it. His eye rested on the
+lorgnette.
+
+"Near-sighted, be you?" he inquired,--a remark so unexpected that for the
+moment Mrs. Pomfret was deprived of speech.
+
+"I manage to see better with--with these," she gasped, "when we get old
+--you know."
+
+"You hain't old," said Mr. Braden, gallantly. "If you be," he added, his
+eye travelling up and down the Parisian curves, I wouldn't have suspected
+it--not a mite."
+
+"I'm afraid you are given to flattery, Mr.--Mr.--" she replied hurriedly.
+"Whom have I the pleasure of speaking to?"
+
+"Job Braden's my name," he answered, "but you have the advantage of me."
+
+"How?" demanded the thoroughly bewildered Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"I hain't heard your name," he said.
+
+"Oh, I'm Mrs. Pomfret--a very old friend of Mr. Crewe's. Whenever he has
+his friends with him, like this, I come over and help him. It is so
+difficult for a bachelor to entertain, Mr. Braden."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Braden, bending alarmingly near her ear, "there's one
+way out of it."
+
+"What's that?" said Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"Git married," declared Mr. Braden.
+
+"How very clever you are, Mr. Braden! I wish poor dear Mr. Crewe would
+get married--a wife could take so many burdens off his shoulders. You
+don't know Mr. Crewe very well, do you?"
+
+"Callate to--so so," said Mr. Braden.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret was at sea again.
+
+"I mean, do you see him often?"
+
+"Seen him once," said Mr. Braden. "G-guess that's enough."
+
+"You're a shrewd judge of human nature, Mr. Braden," she replied, tapping
+him on the shoulder with the lorgnette, "but you can have no idea how
+good he is--how unceasingly he works for others. He is not a man who
+gives much expression to his feelings, as no doubt you have discovered,
+but if you knew him as I do, you would realize how much affection he has
+for his country neighbours and how much he has their welfare at heart."
+
+"Loves 'em--does he--loves 'em?"
+
+"He is like an English gentleman in his sense of responsibility," said
+Mrs. Pomfret; "over there, you know, it is a part of a country
+gentleman's duty to improve the condition of his--his neighbours. And
+then Mr. Crewe is so fond of his townspeople that he couldn't resist
+doing this for them," and she indicated with a sweep of her eyeglasses
+the beatitude with which they were surrounded.
+
+"Wahn't no occasion to," said Mr. Braden.
+
+"What!" cried Mrs. Pomfret, who had been walking on ice for some time.
+
+"This hain't England--is it? Hain't England?"
+
+"No," she admitted, "but--"
+
+"Hain't England," said Mr. Braden, and leaned forward until he was within
+a very few inches of her pearl ear-ring. "He'll be chose all
+right--d-don't fret--he'll be chose."
+
+"My dear Mr. Braden, I've no doubt of it--Mr. Crewe's so popular," she
+cried, removing her ear-ring abruptly from the danger zone. "Do make
+yourself at home," she added, and retired from Mr. Braden's company a
+trifle disconcerted,--a new experience for Mrs. Pomfret. She wondered
+whether all country people were like Mr. Braden, but decided, after
+another experiment or two, that he was an original. More than once during
+the afternoon she caught sight of him, beaming upon the festivities
+around him. But she did not renew the conversation.
+
+To Austen Vane, wandering about the grounds, Mr. Crewe's party presented
+a sociological problem of no small interest. Mr. Crewe himself interested
+him, and he found himself speculating how far a man would go who charged
+the fastnesses of the politicians with a determination not to be denied
+and a bank account to be reckoned with. Austen talked to many of the
+Leith farmers whom he had known from boyhood, thanks to his custom of
+roaming the hills; they were for the most part honest men whose
+occupation in life was the first thought, and they were content to leave
+politics to Mr. Braden--that being his profession. To the most
+intelligent of these Mr. Crewe's garden-party was merely the wanton whim
+of a millionaire. It was an open secret to them that Job Braden for
+reasons of his own had chosen Mr. Crewe to represent them, and they were
+mildly amused at the efforts of Mrs. Pomfret and her assistants to secure
+votes which were as certain as the sun's rising on the morrow.
+
+It was some time before Austen came upon the object of his search--though
+scarce admitting to himself that it had an object. In greeting him, after
+inquiring about his railroad case, Mr. Crewe had indicated with a wave of
+his hand the general direction of the refreshments; but it was not until
+Austen had tried in all other quarters that he made his way towards the
+porch where the lemonade and cake and sandwiches were. It was, after all,
+the most popular place, though to his mind the refreshments had little to
+do with its popularity. From the outskirts of the crowd he perceived
+Victoria presiding over the punchbowl that held the lemonade. He liked to
+think of her as Victoria; the name had no familiarity for him, but seemed
+rather to enhance the unattainable quality of her.
+
+Surrounding Victoria were several clean-looking, freckled, and tanned
+young men of undergraduate age wearing straw hats with coloured ribbons,
+who showed every eagerness to obey and even anticipate the orders she did
+not hesitate to give them. Her eye seemed continually on the alert for
+those of Mr. Crewe's guests who were too bashful to come forward, and
+discerning them she would send one of her lieutenants forward with
+supplies. Sometimes she would go herself to the older people; and once,
+perceiving a tired woman holding a baby (so many brought babies, being
+unable to leave them), Victoria impulsively left her post and seized the
+woman by the arm.
+
+"Do come and sit down," she cried; "there's a chair beside me. And oh,
+what a nice baby! Won't you let me hold him?"
+
+"Why, yes, ma'am," said the woman, looking up at Victoria with grateful,
+patient eyes, and then with awe at what seemed to her the priceless
+embroidery on Victoria's waist, "won't he spoil your dress?"
+
+"Bless him, no," said Victoria, poking her finger into a dimple--for he
+was smiling at her. "What if he does?" and forthwith she seized him in
+her arms and bore him to the porch, amidst the laughter of those who
+beheld her, and sat him down on her knee in front of the lemonade bowl,
+the tired mother beside her. "Will a little lemonade hurt him? Just a
+very, very little, you know?"
+
+"Why, no, ma'am," said the mother.
+
+"And just a teeny bit of cake," begged Victoria, daintily breaking off a
+piece, while the baby gurgled and snatched for it. "Do tell me how old he
+is, and how many more you have."
+
+"He's eleven months on the twenty-seventh," said the mother, "and I've
+got four more." She sighed, her eyes wandering back to the embroidery.
+"What between them and the housework and the butter makin', it hain't
+easy. Be you married?"
+
+"No," said Victoria, laughing and blushing a little.
+
+"You'll make a good wife for somebody," said the woman. "I hope you'll
+get a good man."
+
+"I hope so, too," said Victoria, blushing still deeper amidst the
+laughter, "but there doesn't seem to be much chance of it, and good men
+are very scarce."
+
+"I guess you're right," said the mother, soberly. "Not but what my man's
+good enough, but he don't seem to get along, somehow. The farm's wore
+out, and the mortgage comes around so regular."
+
+"Where do you live?" asked Victoria, suddenly growing serious.
+
+"Fitch's place. 'Tain't very far from the Four Corners, on the Avalon
+road."
+
+"And you are Mrs. Fitch?"
+
+"Callate to be," said the mother. "If it ain't askin' too much, I'd like
+to know your name."
+
+"I'm Victoria Flint. I live not very far from the Four Corners--that is,
+about eight miles. May I come over and see you sometime?"
+
+Although Victoria said this very simply, the mother's eyes widened until
+one might almost have said they expressed a kind of terror.
+
+"Land sakes alive, be you Mr. Flint's daughter? I might have knowed it
+from the lace--that dress must have cost a fortune. But I didn't think to
+find you so common."
+
+Victoria did not smile. She had heard the word "common" so used before,
+and knew that it was meant for a compliment, and she turned to the woman
+with a very expressive light in her eyes.
+
+"I will come to see you--this very week," she said. And just then her
+glance, seemingly drawn in a certain direction, met that of a tall young
+man which had been fixed upon her during the whole of this scene. She
+coloured again, abruptly handed the baby back to his mother, and rose.
+
+"I'm neglecting all these people," she said, "but do sit there and rest
+yourself and--have some more lemonade."
+
+She bowed to Austen, and smiled a little as she filled the glasses, but
+she did not beckon him. She gave no further sign of her knowledge of his
+presence until he stood beside her--and then she looked up at him.
+
+"I have been looking for you, Miss Flint," he said.
+
+"I suppose a man would never think of trying the obvious places first,"
+she replied. "Hastings, don't you see that poor old woman over there? She
+looks so thirsty--give her this."
+
+The boy addressed, with a glance at Austen, did as he was bid, and she
+sent off a second on another errand.
+
+"Let me help," said Austen, seizing the cake; and being seized at the
+same time, by an unusual and inexplicable tremor of shyness, thrust it at
+the baby.
+
+"Oh, he can't have anymore; do you want to kill him?" cried Victoria,
+seizing the plate, and adding mischievously, "I don't believe you're of
+very much use--after all!"
+
+"Then it's time I learned," said Austen. "Here's Mr. Jenney. I'm sure
+he'll have a piece."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Jenney, the same Mr. Jenney of the apple orchard, but
+holding out a horny hand with unmistakable warmth, "how be you, Austen?"
+Looking about him, Mr. Jenney put his hand to his mouth, and added,
+"Didn't expect to see you trailin' on to this here kite." He took a piece
+of cake between his thumb and forefinger and glanced bashfully at
+Victoria.
+
+"Have some lemonade, Mr. Jenney? Do," she urged.
+
+"Well, I don't care if I do," he said, "just a little mite." He did not
+attempt to stop her as she filled the glass to the brim, but continued to
+regard her with a mixture of curiosity and admiration. "Seen you nursin'
+the baby and makin' folks at home. Guess you have the knack of it
+better'n some I could mention."
+
+This was such a palpable stroke at their host that Victoria laughed, and
+made haste to turn the subject from herself.
+
+"Mr. Vane seems to be an old friend of yours," she said.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Jenney, laying his hand on Austen's shoulder, "I callate
+he is. Austen's broke in more'n one of my colts afore he went West and
+shot that feller. He's as good a judge of horse-flesh as any man in this
+part of the State. Hear Tom Gaylord and the boys wanted him to be State
+senator."
+
+"Why didn't you accept, Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Because I don't think the boys could have elected me," answered Austen,
+laughing.
+
+"He's as popular a man as there is in the county," declared Mr. Jenney.
+He was a mite wild as a boy, but sence he's sobered down and won that
+case against the railrud, he could get any office he'd a mind to. He's
+always adoin' little things for folks, Austen is."
+
+"Did--did that case against the railroad make him so popular?" asked
+Victoria, glancing at Austen's broad back--for he had made his escape
+with the cake.
+
+"I guess it helped considerable," Mr. Jenney admitted.
+
+"Why?" asked Victoria.
+
+"Well, it was a fearless thing to do--plumb against his own interests
+with old Hilary Vane. Austen's a bright lawyer, and I have heard it said
+he was in line for his father's place as counsel."
+
+"Do--do people dislike the railroad?"
+
+Mr. Jenney rubbed his beard thoughtfully. He began to wonder who this
+young woman was, and a racial caution seized him.
+
+"Well," he said, "folks has an idea the railrud runs this State to suit
+themselves. I guess they hain't far wrong. I've be'n to the Legislature
+and seen some signs of it. Why, Hilary Vane himself has charge of the
+most considerable part of the politics. Who be you?" Mr. Jenney demanded
+suddenly.
+
+"I'm Victoria Flint," said Victoria.
+
+"Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Jenney, "you don't say so! I might have known
+it--seen you on the rud more than once. But I don't know all you rich
+folks apart. Wouldn't have spoke so frank if I'd knowed who you was."
+
+"I'm glad you did, Mr. Jenney," she answered.  "I wanted to know what
+people think."
+
+"Well, it's almighty complicated," said Mr. Jenney, shaking his head. "I
+don't know by rights what to think. As long as I've said what I have,
+I'll say this: that the politicians is all for the railrud, and I hain't
+got a mite of use for the politicians. I'll vote for a feller like Austen
+Vane every time, if he'll run, and I know other folks that will."
+
+After Mr. Jenney had left her, Victoria stood motionless, gazing off into
+the haze, until she was startled by the voice of Hastings Weare beside
+her.
+
+"Say, Victoria, who is that man?" he asked.
+
+"What man?"
+
+Hastings nodded towards Austen, who, with a cake basket in his hand,
+stood chatting with a group of country people on the edge of the porch.
+
+"Oh, that man!" said Victoria. "His name's Austen Vane, and he's a lawyer
+in Ripton."
+
+"All I can say is," replied Hastings, with a light in his face, "he's one
+I'd like to tie to. I'll bet he could whip any four men you could pick
+out."
+
+Considering that Hastings had himself proposed--although in a very mild
+form--more than once to Victoria, this was generous.
+
+"I daresay he could," she agreed absently.
+
+"It isn't only the way he's built," persisted Hastings, "he looks as if
+he were going to be somebody some day. Introduce me to him, will you?"
+
+"Certainly," said Victoria. "Mr. Vane," she called, "I want to introduce
+an admirer, Mr. Hastings Weare."
+
+"I just wanted to know you," said Hastings, reddening, "and Victoria--I
+mean Miss Flint--said she'd introduce me."
+
+"I'm much obliged to her," said Austen, smiling.
+
+"Are you in politics?" asked Hastings.
+
+"I'm afraid not," answered Austen, with a glance at Victoria.
+
+"You're not helping Humphrey Crewe, are you?"
+
+"No," said Austen, and added with an illuminating smile, "Mr. Crewe
+doesn't need any help."
+
+"I'm glad you're not," exclaimed the downright Hastings, with palpable
+relief in his voice that an idol had not been shattered. "I think
+Humphrey's a fakir, and all this sort of thing tommyrot. He wouldn't get
+my vote by giving me lemonade and cake and letting me look at his cows.
+If you ever run for office, I'd like to cast it for you. My father is
+only a summer resident, but since he has gone out of business he stays
+here till Christmas, and I'll be twenty-one in a year."
+
+Austen had ceased to smile; he was looking into the boy's eyes with that
+serious expression which men and women found irresistible.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Weare," he said simply.
+
+Hastings was suddenly overcome with the shyness of youth. He held out his
+hand, and said, "I'm awfully glad to have met you," and fled.
+
+Victoria, who had looked on with a curious mixture of feelings, turned to
+Austen.
+
+"That was a real tribute," she said.  "Is this the way you affect
+everybody whom you meet?"
+
+They were standing almost alone. The sun was nearing the western hills
+beyond the river, and people had for some time been wending their way
+towards the field where the horses were tied. He did not answer her
+question, but asked one instead.
+
+"Will you let me drive you home?"
+
+"Do you think you deserve to, after the shameful manner in which you have
+behaved?"
+
+"I'm quite sure that I don't deserve to," he answered, still looking down
+at her.
+
+"If you did deserve to, being a woman, I probably shouldn't let you,"
+said Victoria, flashing a look upwards; "as it is, you may."
+
+His face lighted, but she halted in the grass, with her hands behind her,
+and stared at him with a puzzled expression.
+
+"I'm sure you're a dangerous man," she declared. "First you take in poor
+little Hastings, and now you're trying to take me in."
+
+"Then I wish I were still more dangerous," he laughed, "for apparently I
+haven't succeeded."
+
+"I want to talk to you seriously," said Victoria; "that is the only
+reason I'm permitting you to drive me home."
+
+"I am devoutly thankful for the reason then," he said,--"my horse is tied
+in the field."
+
+"And aren't you going to say good-by to your host and hostess?"
+
+"Hostess?" he repeated, puzzled.
+
+"Hostesses," she corrected herself, "Mrs. Pomfret and Alice. I thought
+you had eyes in your head," she added, with a fleeting glance at them.
+
+"Is Crewe engaged to Miss Pomfret?" he asked.
+
+"Are all men simpletons?" said Victoria. "He doesn't know it yet, but he
+is."
+
+"I think I'd know it, if I were," said Austen, with an emphasis that made
+her laugh.
+
+"Sometimes fish don't know they're in a net until--until the morning
+after," said Victoria. "That has a horribly dissipated sound--hasn't it?
+I know to a moral certainty that Mr. Crewe will eventually lead Miss
+Pomfret away from the altar. At present," she could not refrain from
+adding, "he thinks he's in love with some one else."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"It doesn't matter," she replied. "Humphrey's perfectly happy, because he
+believes most women are in love with him, and he's making up his mind in
+that magnificent, thorough way of his whether she is worthy to be endowed
+with his heart and hand, his cows, and all his stocks and bonds. He
+doesn't know he's going to marry Alice. It almost makes one a Calvinist,
+doesn't it. He's predestined, but perfectly happy."
+
+"Who is he in love with?" demanded Austen, ungrammatically.
+
+"I'm going to say good-by to him. I'll meet you in the field, if you
+don't care to come. It's only manners, after all, although the lemonade's
+all gone and I haven't had a drop."
+
+"I'll go along too," he said.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of Mrs. Pomfret?"
+
+"Not a bit!"
+
+"I am," said Victoria, "but I think you'd better come just the same."
+
+Around the corner of the house they found them,--Mr. Crewe urging the
+departing guests to remain, and not to be bashful in the future about
+calling.
+
+"We don't always have lemonade and cake," he was saying, "but you can be
+sure of a welcome, just the same. Good-by, Vane, glad you came. Did they
+show you through the stables? Did you see the mate to the horse I lost?
+Beauty, isn't he? Stir 'em up and get the money. I guess we won't see
+much of each other politically. You're anti-railroad. I don't believe
+that tack'll work--we can't get along without corporations, you know. You
+ought to talk to Flint. I'll give you a letter of introduction to him. I
+don't know what I'd have done without that man Tooting in your father's
+office. He's a wasted genius in Ripton. What? Good-by, you'll find your
+wagon, I guess. Well, Victoria, where have you been keeping yourself?
+I've been so busy I haven't had time to look for you. You're going to
+stay to dinner, and Hastings, and all the people who have helped."
+
+"No, I'm not," answered Victoria, with a glance at Austen, before whom
+this announcement was so delicately made, "I'm going home."
+
+"But when am I to see you?" cried Mr. Crewe, as near genuine alarm as he
+ever got.  You never let me see you. I was going to drive you home in the
+motor by moonlight."
+
+"We all know that you're the most original person, Victoria," said Mrs.
+Pomfret, "full of whims and strange fancies," she added, with the only
+brief look at Austen she had deigned to bestow on him. "It never pays to
+count on you for twenty-four hours. I suppose you're off on another wild
+expedition."
+
+"I think I've earned the right to it," said Victoria;--I've poured
+lemonade for Humphrey's constituents the whole afternoon. And besides, I
+never said I'd stay for dinner. I'm going home. Father's leaving for
+California in the morning."
+
+"He'd better stay at home and look after her," Mrs. Pomfret remarked,
+when Victoria was out of hearing.
+
+Since Mrs. Harry Haynes ran off, one can never tell what a woman will do.
+It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Victoria eloped with a handsome nobody
+like that. Of course he's after her money, but he wouldn't get it, not if
+I know Augustus Flint."
+
+"Is he handsome?" said Mr. Crewe, as though the idea were a new one.
+"Great Scott, I don't believe she gives him a thought. She's only going
+as far as the field with him. She insisted on leaving her horse there
+instead of putting him in the stable."
+
+"Catch Alice going as far as the field with him," said Mrs. Pomfret, "but
+I've done my duty. It's none of my affair."
+
+In the meantime Austen and Victoria had walked on some distance in
+silence.
+
+"I have an idea with whom Mr. Crewe is in love," he said at length.
+
+"So have I," replied Victoria, promptly. "Humphrey's in love with
+himself. All he desires in a wife--if he desires one--is an inanimate and
+accommodating looking-glass, in whom he may see what he conceives to be
+his own image daily. James, you may take the mare home. I'm going to
+drive with Mr. Vane."
+
+She stroked Pepper's nose while Austen undid the hitch-rope from around
+his neck.
+
+"You and I are getting to be friends, aren't we, Pepper?" she asked, as
+the horse, with quivering nostrils, thrust his head into her hand. Then
+she sprang lightly into the buggy by Austen's side. The manner of these
+acts and the generous courage with which she defied opinion appealed to
+him so strongly that his heart was beating faster than Pepper's
+hoof-beats on the turf of the pasture.
+
+"You are very good to come with me," he said gravely, when they had
+reached the road; "perhaps I ought not to have asked you."
+
+"Why?" she asked, with one of her direct looks.
+
+"It was undoubtedly selfish," he said, and added, more lightly, "I don't
+wish to put you into Mrs. Pomfret's bad graces."
+
+Victoria laughed.
+
+"She thought it her duty to tell father the time you drove me to the
+Hammonds'. She said I asked you to do it."
+
+"What did he say?" Austen inquired, looking straight ahead of him.
+
+"He didn't say much," she answered. "Father never does. I think he knows
+that I am to be trusted."
+
+"Even with me?" he asked quizzically, but with a deeper significance.
+
+"I don't think he realizes how dangerous you are," she replied, avoiding
+the issue. "The last time I saw you, you were actually trying to throw a
+fat man out of your window. What a violent life you lead, Mr. Vane. I
+hope you haven't shot any more people--"
+
+"I saw you," he said.
+
+"Is that the way you spend your time in office hours,--throwing people
+out of the windows?"
+
+"It was only Tom Gaylord."
+
+"He's the man Mr. Jenney said wanted you to be a senator, isn't he?" she
+asked.
+
+"You have a good memory," he answered her. "Yes. That's the reason I
+tried to throw him out of the window."
+
+"Why didn't you be a senator?" she asked abruptly. "I always think of you
+in public life. Why waste your opportunities?"
+
+"I'm not at all sure that was an opportunity. It was only some of Tom's
+nonsense. I should have had all the politicians in the district against
+me."
+
+"But you aren't the kind of man who would care about the politicians,
+surely. If Humphrey Crewe can get elected by the people, I should think
+you might."
+
+"I can't afford to give garden-parties and buy lemonade," said Austen,
+and they both laughed. He did not think it worth while mentioning Mr.
+Braden.
+
+"Sometimes I think you haven't a particle of ambition," she said. "I like
+men with ambition."
+
+"I shall try to cultivate it," said Austen.
+
+"You seem to be popular enough."
+
+"Most worthless people are popular, because they don't tread on anybody's
+toes."
+
+"Worthless people don't take up poor people's suits, and win them," she
+said. "I saw Zeb Meader the other day, and he said you could be President
+of the United States."
+
+"Zeb meant that I was eligible--having been born in this country," said
+Austen. "But where did you see him?"
+
+"I--I went to see him."
+
+"All the way to Mercer?"
+
+"It isn't so far in an automobile," she replied, as though in excuse, and
+added, still more lamely, "Zeb and I became great friends, you know, in
+the hospital."
+
+He did not answer, but wondered the more at the simplicity and kindness
+in one brought up as she had been which prompted her to take the trouble
+to see the humblest of her friends: nay, to take the trouble to have
+humble friends.
+
+The road wound along a ridge, and at intervals was spread before them the
+full glory of the September sunset,--the mountains of the west in
+blue-black silhouette against the saffron sky, the myriad dappled clouds,
+the crimson fading from the still reaches of the river, and the
+wine-colour from the eastern hills. Both were silent under the spell, but
+a yearning arose within him when he glanced at the sunset glow on her
+face: would sunsets hereafter bring sadness?
+
+His thoughts ran riot as the light faded in the west. Hers were not
+revealed. And the silence between them seemed gradually to grow into a
+pact, to become a subtler and more intimate element than speech. A faint
+tang of autumn smoke was in the air, a white mist crept along the running
+waters, a silver moon like a new-stamped coin rode triumphant in the sky,
+impatient to proclaim her glory; and the shadows under the ghost-like
+sentinel trees in the pastures grew blacker. At last Victoria looked at
+him.
+
+"You are the only man I know who doesn't insist on talking," she said.
+There are times when--"
+
+"When there is nothing to say," he suggested.
+
+She laughed softly. He tried to remember the sound of it afterwards, when
+he rehearsed this phase of the conversation, but couldn't.
+
+"It's because you like the hills, isn't it?" she asked. "You seem such an
+out-of-door person, and Mr. Jenney said you were always wandering about
+the country-side."
+
+"Mr. Jenney also made other reflections about my youth," said Austen.
+
+She laughed again, acquiescing in his humour, secretly thankful not to
+find him sentimental.
+
+"Mr. Jenney said something else that--that I wanted to ask you about,"
+she went on, breathing more deeply. "It was about the railroad."
+
+"I am afraid you have not come to an authority," he replied.
+
+"You said the politicians would be against you if you tried to become a
+State senator. Do you believe that the politicians are owned by the
+railroad?"
+
+"Has Jenney been putting such things into your head?"
+
+"Not only Mr. Jenney, but--I have heard other people say that. And
+Humphrey Crewe said that you hadn't a chance politically, because you had
+opposed the railroad and had gone against your own interests."
+
+Austen was amazed at this new exhibition of courage on her part, though
+he was sorely pressed.
+
+"Humphrey Crewe isn't much of an authority, either," he said briefly.
+
+"Then you won't tell me?" said Victoria. "Oh, Mr. Vane," she cried, with
+sudden vehemence, "if such things are going on here, I'm sure my father
+doesn't know about them. This is only one State, and the railroad runs
+through so many. He can't know everything, and I have heard him say that
+he wasn't responsible for what the politicians did in his name. If they
+are bad, why don't you go to him and tell him so? I'm sure he'd listen to
+you."
+
+"I'm sure he'd think me a presumptuous idiot," said Austen. "Politicians
+are not idealists anywhere--the very word has become a term of reproach.
+Undoubtedly your father desires to set things right as much as any one
+else--probably more than any one."
+
+"Oh, I know he does," exclaimed Victoria.
+
+"If politics are not all that they should be," he went on, somewhat
+grimly, with an unpleasant feeling of hypocrisy, "we must remember that
+they are nobody's fault in particular, and can't be set right in an
+instant by any one man, no matter how powerful."
+
+She turned her face to him gratefully, but he did not meet her look. They
+were on the driveway of Fairview.
+
+"I suppose you think me very silly for asking such questions," she said.
+
+"No," he answered gravely, "but politics are so intricate a subject that
+they are often not understood by those who are in the midst of them. I
+admire--I think it is very fine in you to want to know."
+
+"You are not one of the men who would not wish a woman to know, are you?"
+
+"No," he said, "no, I'm not."
+
+The note of pain in his voice surprised and troubled her. They were
+almost in sight of the house.
+
+"I asked you to come to Fairview," she said, assuming a lightness of
+tone, "and you never appeared. I thought it was horrid of you to forget,
+after we'd been such friends."
+
+"I didn't forget," replied Austen.
+
+"Then you didn't want to come."
+
+He looked into her eyes, and she dropped them.
+
+"You will have to be the best judge of that," he said.
+
+"But what am I to think?" she persisted.
+
+"Think the best of me you can," he answered, as they drew up on the
+gravel before the open door of Fairview house. A man was standing in the
+moonlight on the porch.
+
+"Is that you, Victoria?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"I was getting worried," said Mr. Flint, coming down on the driveway.
+
+"I'm all right," she said, leaping out of the buggy, "Mr. Vane brought me
+home."
+
+"How are you, Hilary?" said Mr. Flint.
+
+"I'm Austen Vane, Mr. Flint," said Austen.
+
+"How are you?" said Mr. Flint, as curtly as the barest politeness
+allowed. "What was the matter with your own horse, Victoria?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied, after an instant's pause. Austen wondered many
+times whether her lips had trembled. "Mr. Vane asked me to drive with
+him, and I came. Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Vane?"
+
+"No, thanks," said Austen, "I'm afraid I have to go back to Ripton."
+
+"Good-by, and thank you," she said, and gave him her hand. As he pressed
+it, he thought he felt the slightest pressure in return, and then she
+fled up the steps. As he drove away, he turned once to look at the great
+house, with its shades closely drawn, as it stood amidst its setting of
+shrubbery silent under the moon.
+
+An hour later he sat in Hanover Street before the supper Euphrasia had
+saved for him. But though he tried nobly, his heart was not in the
+relation, for her benefit, of Mr. Crewe's garden-party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Mr. CREWE ASSAULTS THE CAPITAL
+
+Those portions of the biographies of great men which deal with the small
+beginnings of careers are always eagerly devoured, and for this reason
+the humble entry of Mr. Crewe into politics may be of interest. Great
+revolutions have had their origins in back cellars; great builders of
+railroads have begun life with packs on their shoulders, trudging over
+the wilderness which they were to traverse in after years in private
+cars. The history of Napoleon Bonaparte has not a Sunday-school moral,
+but we can trace therein the results of industry after the future emperor
+got started. Industry, and the motto "nil desperandum" lived up to, and
+the watchword "thorough," and a torch of unsuspected genius, and
+"l'audace, toujours l'audace," and a man may go far in life.
+
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe possessed, as may have been surmised, a dash of all
+these gifts. For a summary of his character one would not have used the
+phrase (as a contemporary of his remarked) of "a shrinking violet." The
+phrase, after all, would have fitted very few great men; genius is sure
+of itself, and seeks its peers.
+
+The State capital is an old and beautiful and somewhat conservative town.
+Life there has its joys and sorrows and passions, its ambitions, and
+heart-burnings, to be sure; a most absorbing novel could be written about
+it, and the author need not go beyond the city limits or approach the
+state-house or the Pelican Hotel. The casual visitor in that capital
+leaves it with a sense of peace, the echo of church bells in his ear, and
+(if in winter) the impression of dazzling snow.  Comedies do not
+necessarily require a wide stage, nor tragedies an amphitheatre for their
+enactment.
+
+No casual visitor, for instance, would have suspected from the faces or
+remarks of the inhabitants whom he chanced to meet that there was
+excitement in the capital over the prospective arrival of Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe for the legislative session that winter. Legislative sessions, be
+it known, no longer took place in the summer, a great relief to Mr. Crewe
+and to farmers in general, who wished to be at home in haying time.
+
+The capital abounded in comfortable homes and boasted not a dwellings of
+larger pretensions. Chief among these was the Duncan house--still so
+called, although Mr. Duncan, who built it, had been dead these fifteen
+years, and his daughter and heiress, Janet, had married an Italian
+Marquis and lived in a Roman palace, rehabilitated by the Duncan money.
+Mr. Duncan, it may be recalled by some readers of "Coniston," had been a
+notable man in his day, who had married the heiress of the State, and was
+president of the Central Railroad, now absorbed in the United
+Northeastern. The house was a great square of brick, with a wide cornice,
+surrounded by a shaded lawn; solidly built, in the fashion of the days
+when rich people stayed at home, with a conservatory and a library that
+had once been Mr. Duncan's pride. The Marchesa cared very little about
+the library, or about the house, for that matter; a great aunt and uncle,
+spinster and bachelor, were living in it that winter, and they vacated
+for Mr. Crewe. He travelled to the capital on the legislative pass the
+Northeastern Railroads had so kindly given him, and brought down his
+horses and his secretary and servants from Leith a few days before the
+first of January, when the session was to open, and laid out his bills
+for the betterment of the State on that library table where Mr. Duncan
+had lovingly thumbed his folios. Mr. Crewe, with characteristic
+promptitude, set his secretary to work to make a list of the persons of
+influence in the town, preparatory to a series of dinner-parties; he
+dropped into the office of Mr. Ridout, the counsel of the Northeastern
+and of the Winona Corporation in the capital, to pay his respects as a
+man of affairs, and incidentally to leave copies of his bills for the
+improvement of the State. Mr. Ridout was politely interested, and
+promised to read the bills, and agreed that they ought to pass.
+
+Mr. Crewe also examined the Pelican Hotel, so soon to be a hive, and
+stood between the snow-banks in the capital park contemplating the statue
+of the great statesman there, and repeating to himself the quotation
+inscribed beneath. "The People's Government, made for the People, made by
+the People, and answerable to the People." And he wondered, idly,--for
+the day was not cold,--how he would look upon a pedestal with the
+Gladstone collar and the rough woollen coat that would lend themselves so
+readily to reproduction in marble. Stranger things had happened, and
+grateful States had been known to reward benefactors.
+
+At length comes the gala night of nights,--the last of the old year,--and
+the assembling of the five hundred legislators and of the army that is
+wont to attend them. The afternoon trains, steaming hot, are crowded to
+the doors, the station a scene of animation, and Main Street, dazzling in
+snow, is alive with a stream of men, with eddies here and there at the
+curbs and in the entries. What handshaking, and looking over of new
+faces, and walking round and round! What sightseeing by the country
+members and their wives who have come to attend the inauguration of the
+new governor, the Honourable Asa P. Gray! There he is, with the whiskers
+and the tall hat and the comfortable face, which wears already a look of
+gubernatorial dignity and power. He stands for a moment in the lobby of
+the Pelican Hotel,--thronged now to suffocation,--to shake hands genially
+with new friends, who are led up by old friends with two fingers on the
+elbow. The old friends crack jokes and whisper in the ear of the
+governor-to-be, who presently goes upstairs, accompanied by the
+Honourable Hilary Vane, to the bridal suite, which is reserved for him,
+and which has fire-proof carpet on the floor. The Honourable Hilary has a
+room next door, connecting with the new governor's by folding doors, but
+this fact is not generally known to country members. Only old timers,
+like Bijah Bixby and Job Braden, know that the Honourable Hilary's room
+corresponds to one which in the old Pelican was called the Throne Room,
+Number Seven, where Jethro Bass sat in the old days and watched
+unceasingly the groups in the street from the window.
+
+But Jethro Bass has been dead these twenty years, and his lieutenants
+shorn of power. An empire has arisen out of the ashes of the ancient
+kingdoms. Bijah and Job are old, all-powerful still in Clovelly and
+Leith--influential still in their own estimations; still kicking up their
+heels behind, still stuttering and whispering into ears, still "going
+along by when they are talking sly." But there are no guerrillas now, no
+condottieri who can be hired: the empire has a paid and standing army, as
+an empire should. The North Country chiefs, so powerful in the clan
+warfare of bygone days, are generals now,--chiefs of staff. The
+captain-general, with a minute piece of Honey Dew under his tongue, sits
+in Number Seven. A new Number Seven,--with electric lights and a bathroom
+and a brass bed. Tempora mutantur. There is an empire and a feudal
+system, did one but know it. The clans are part of the empire, and each
+chief is responsible for his clan--did one but know it. One doesn't know
+it.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, Duke of Putnam, member of the House, has
+arrived unostentatiously--as is his custom--and is seated in his own
+headquarters, number ten (with a bathroom). Number nine belongs from year
+to year to Mr. Manning, division superintendent of that part of the
+Northeastern which was the old Central,--a thin gentleman with
+side-whiskers. He loves life in the capital so much that he takes his
+vacations there in the winter,--during the sessions of the Legislature,
+--presumably because it is gay. There are other rooms, higher up, of
+important men, to be sure, but to enter which it is not so much of an
+honour. The Honourable Bill Fleming, postmaster of Brampton in Truro
+(Ephraim Prescott being long since dead and Brampton a large place now),
+has his vacation during the session in room thirty-six (no bathroom); and
+the Honourable Elisha Jane, Earl of Haines County in the North Country,
+and United States consul somewhere, is home on his annual vacation in
+room fifty-nine (no bath). Senator Whitredge has a room, and Senator
+Green, and Congressmen Eldridge and Fairplay (no baths, and only
+temporary).
+
+The five hundred who during the next three months are to register the
+laws find quarters as best they can. Not all of them are as luxurious as
+Mr. Crewe in the Duncan house, or the Honourable Brush Bascom in number
+ten of the Pelican, the rent of either of which would swallow the
+legislative salary in no time. The Honourable Nat Billings, senator from
+the Putnam County district, is comfortably installed, to be sure. By
+gradual and unexplained degrees, the constitution of the State has been
+changed until there are only twenty senators. Noble five hundred!
+Steadfast twenty!
+
+A careful perusal of the biographies of great men of the dynamic type
+leads one to the conclusion that much of their success is due to an
+assiduous improvement of every opportunity,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe
+certainly possessed this quality, also. He is in the Pelican Hotel this
+evening, meeting the men that count. Mr. Job Braden, who had come down
+with the idea that he might be of use in introducing the new member from
+Leith to the notables, was met by this remark:--"You can't introduce me
+to any of 'em--they all know who I am. Just point any of 'em out you
+think I ought to know, and I'll go up and talk to 'em. What? Come up to
+my house after a while and smoke a cigar. The Duncan house, you know--the
+big one with the conservatory."
+
+Mr. Crewe was right--they all knew him. The Leith millionaire, the summer
+resident, was a new factor in politics, and the rumours of the size of
+his fortune had reached a high-water mark in the Pelican Hotel that
+evening. Pushing through the crowd in the corridor outside the bridal
+suite waiting to shake hands with the new governor, Mr. Crewe gained an
+entrance in no time, and did not hesitate to interrupt the somewhat
+protracted felicitations of an Irish member of the Newcastle delegation.
+
+"How are you, Governor?" he said, with the bonhomie of a man of the
+world. "I'm Humphrey Crewe, from Leith. You got a letter from me, didn't
+you, congratulating you upon your election? We didn't do badly for you up
+there. What?"
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" said Mr. Gray, with dignified hospitality,
+while their fingers slid over each other's; "I'm glad to welcome you
+here. I've noticed the interest you've taken in the State, and the number
+of ahem--very useful societies to which you belong."
+
+"Good," said Mr. Crewe, "I do what I can. I just dropped in to shake your
+hand, and to say that I hope we'll pull together."
+
+The governor lifted his eyebrows a little.
+
+"Why, I hope so, I'm sere, Mr. Crewe," said he.
+
+"I've looked over the policy of the State for the last twenty years in
+regard to public improvements and the introduction of modern methods as
+concerns husbandry, and I find it deplorable. You and I, Governor, live
+in a progressive age, and we can't afford not to see something done.
+What? It is my desire to do what I can to help make your administration a
+notable advance upon those of your predecessors."
+
+"Why--I greatly appreciate it, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Gray.
+
+"I'm sure you do. I've looked over your record, and I find you've had
+experience in State affairs, and that you are a successful and
+conservative business man. That is the type we want--eh? Business men.
+You've read over the bills I sent you by registered mail?"
+
+"Ahem," said Mr. Gray, "I've been a good deal occupied since election
+day, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"Read 'em," said Mr. Crewe, "and I'll call in on you at the state-house
+day after to-morrow at five o'clock promptly. We'll discuss 'em,
+Governor, and if, by the light of your legislative experience, you have
+any suggestions to make, I shall be glad to hear 'em. Before putting the
+bills in their final shape I've taken the trouble to go over them with my
+friend, Mr. Flint--our mutual friend, let us say."
+
+"I've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Flint," said Mr. Gray. "I--ahem
+--can't say that I know him intimately."
+
+Mr. Crewe looked at Mr. Gray in a manner which plainly indicated that he
+was not an infant.
+
+"My relations with Mr. Flint and the Northeastern have been very
+pleasant," said Mr. Crewe. "I may say that I am somewhat of a practical
+railroad and business man myself."
+
+"We need such men," said Mr. Gray. "Why, how do you do, Cary? How are the
+boys up in Wheeler?"
+
+"Well, good-by, Governor. See you day after to-morrow at five precisely,"
+said Mr. Crewe.
+
+The next official call of Mr. Crewe was on the Speaker-to-be, Mr. Doby of
+Hale (for such matters are cut and dried), but any amount of pounding on
+Mr. Doby's door (number seventy-five) brought no response. Other rural
+members besides Mr. Crewe came and pounded on that door, and went away
+again; but Mr. Job Braden suddenly appeared from another part of the
+corridor, smiling benignly, and apparently not resenting the refusal of
+his previous offers of help.
+
+"W--want the Speaker?" he inquired.
+
+Mr. Crewe acknowledged that he did.
+
+"Ed only sleeps there," said Mr. Braden. "Guess you'll find him in the
+Railroad-Room."
+
+"Railroad Room?"
+
+"Hilary Vane's, Number Seven." Mr. Braden took hold of the lapel of his
+fellow-townsman's coat. "Callated you didn't know it all," he said;
+"that's the reason I come down--so's to help you some."
+
+Mr. Crewe, although he was not wont to take a second place, followed Mr.
+Braden down the stairs to the door next to the governor's, where he
+pushed ahead of his guide, through the group about the doorway,--none of
+whom, however, were attempting to enter. They stared in some surprise at
+Mr. Crewe as he flung open the door without knocking, and slammed it
+behind him in Mr. Braden's face. But the bewilderment caused by this act
+of those without was as nothing to the astonishment of those within--had
+Mr. Crewe but known it. An oil painting of the prominent men gathered
+about the marble-topped table in the centre of the room, with an outline
+key beneath it, would have been an appropriate work of art to hang in the
+state-house, as emblematic of the statesmanship of the past twenty years.
+The Honourable Hilary Vane sat at one end in a padded chair; Mr. Manning,
+the division superintendent, startled out of a meditation, was upright on
+the end of the bed; Mr. Ridout, the Northeastern's capital lawyer, was
+figuring at the other end of the table; the Honourable Brush Bascom was
+bending over a wide, sad-faced gentleman of some two hundred and fifty
+pounds who sat at the centre in his shirt-sleeves, poring over numerous
+sheets in front of him which were covered with names of the five hundred.
+This gentleman was the Honourable Edward Doby of Hale, who, with the kind
+assistance of the other gentlemen above-named, was in this secluded spot
+making up a list of his committees, undisturbed by eager country members.
+At Mr. Crewe's entrance Mr. Bascom, with great presence of mind, laid
+down his hat over the principal list, while Mr. Ridout, taking the hint,
+put the Revised Statutes on the other. There was a short silence; and the
+Speaker-to-be, whose pencil had been knocked out of his hand; recovered
+himself sufficiently to relight an extremely frayed cigar.
+
+Not that Mr. Crewe was in the least abashed. He chose this opportunity to
+make a survey of the situation, nodded to Mr. Ridout, and walked up to
+the padded armchair.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Vane?" he said. "I thought I'd drop in to shake hands
+with you, especially as I have business with the Speaker, and heard he
+was here. But I'm glad to have met you for many reasons. I want you to be
+one of the vice-presidents of the State Economic League--it won't cost
+you anything. Ridout has agreed to let his name go on."
+
+The Honourable Hilary, not being an emotional man, merely grunted as he
+started to rise to his feet. What he was about to say was interrupted by
+a timid knock, and there followed another brief period of silence.
+
+"It ain't anybody," said Mr. Bascom, and crossing the room, turned the
+key in the lock. The timid knock was repeated.
+
+"I suppose you're constantly interrupted here by unimportant people," Mr.
+Crewe remarked.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Vane, slowly, boring into Mr. Crewe with his eye, "that
+statement isn't far out of the way."
+
+"I don't believe you've ever met me, Mr. Vane. I'm Humphrey Crewe. We
+have a good friend in common in Mr. Flint."
+
+The Honourable Hilary's hand passed over Mr. Crewe's lightly.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Crewe," he said, and a faint twinkle appeared in
+his eye. "Job has told everybody you were coming down. Glad to welcome a
+man of your ahem--stamp into politics."
+
+"I'm a plain business man," answered Mr. Crewe, modestly; "and although I
+have considerable occupation, I believe that one in my position has
+duties to perform. I've certain bills--"
+
+"Yes, yes," agreed the Honourable Hilary; "do you know Mr. Brush Bascom
+and Mr. Manning? Allow me to introduce you,--and General Doby."
+
+"How are you, General?" said Mr. Crewe to the Speaker-to-be, "I'm always
+glad to shake the hand of a veteran. Indeed, I have thought that a
+society--"
+
+"I earned my title," said General Doby, somewhat sheepishly, "fighting on
+Governor Brown's staff. There were twenty of us, and we were resistless,
+weren't we, Brush?"
+
+"Twenty on a staff!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh, we furnished our own uniforms and paid our own way--except those of
+us who had passes," declared the General, as though the memory of his
+military career did not give him unalloyed pleasure. "What's the use of
+State sovereignty if you can't have a glittering army to follow the
+governor round?"
+
+Mr. Crewe had never considered this question, and he was not the man to
+waste time in speculation.
+
+"Doubtless you got a letter from me, General Doby," he said. "We did what
+we could up our way to put you in the Speaker's chair."
+
+General Doby creased a little in the middle, to signify that he was
+bowing.
+
+"I trust it will be in my power to reciprocate, Mr. Crewe," he replied.
+
+"We want to treat Mr. Crewe right," Mr. Bascom put in.
+
+"You have probably made a note of my requests," Mr. Crewe continued. "I
+should like to be on the Judiciary Committee, for one thing. Although I
+am not a lawyer, I know something of the principles of law, and I
+understand that this and the Appropriations Committee are the most
+important. I may say with truth that I should be a useful member of that,
+as I am accustomed to sitting on financial boards. As my bills are of
+some considerable importance and deal with practical progressive
+measures, I have no hesitation in asking for the chairmanship of Public
+Improvements,--and of course a membership in the Agricultural is
+essential, as I have bills for them. Gentlemen," he added to the room at
+large, "I have typewritten manifolds of those bills which I shall be
+happy to leave here--at headquarters." And suiting the action to the
+word, he put down a packet on the table.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, accompanied by Mr. Ridout, walked to the
+window and stood staring at the glitter of the electric light on the
+snow. The Honourable Hilary gazed steadily at the table, while General
+Doby blew his nose with painful violence.
+
+"I'll do what I can for you, certainly, Mr. Crewe," he said. "But--what
+is to become of the other four hundred and ninety-nine? The ways of a
+Speaker are hard, Mr. Crewe, and I have to do justice to all."
+
+"Well," answered Mr. Crewe, of course I don't want to be unreasonable,
+and I realize the pressure that's put upon you. But when you consider the
+importance of the work I came down here to do--"
+
+"I do consider it," said the Speaker, politely. "It's a little early to
+talk about the make-up of committees. I hope to be able to get at them by
+Sunday. You may be sure I'll do my best for you."
+
+"We'd better make a note of it," said Mr. Crewe; "give me some paper,"
+and he was reaching around behind General Doby for one of the precious
+sheets under Mr. Bascom's hat, when the general, with great presence of
+mind, sat on it. We have it, from a malicious and untrustworthy source,
+that the Northeastern Railroads paid for a new one.
+
+"Here, here," cried the Speaker, "make the memorandum here."
+
+At this critical juncture a fortunate diversion occurred. A rap--three
+times--of no uncertain quality was heard at the door, and Mr. Brush
+Bascom hastened to open it. A voice cried out:--"Is Manning here? The
+boys are hollering for those passes," and a wiry, sallow gentleman burst
+in, none other than the Honourable Elisha Jane, who was taking his
+consular vacation. When his eyes fell upon Mr. Crewe he halted abruptly,
+looked a little foolish, and gave a questioning glance at the Honourable
+Hilary.
+
+"Mountain passes, Lish? Sit down. Did I ever tell you that story about
+the slide in Rickets Gulch?" asked the Honourable Brush Bascom.  But
+first let me make you acquainted with Mr. Humphrey Crewe of Leith. Mr.
+Crewe has come down here with the finest lot of bills you ever saw, and
+we're all going to take hold and put 'em through. Here, Lish, I'll give
+you a set."
+
+"Read 'em, Mr. Jane," urged Mr. Crewe. "I don't claim much for 'em, but
+perhaps they will help to set a few little matters right--I hope so."
+
+Mr. Jane opened the bills with deliberation, and cast his eyes over the
+headings.
+
+"I'll read 'em this very night, Mr. Crewe," he said solemnly; "this
+meeting you is a particular pleasure, and I have heard in many quarters
+of these measures."
+
+"Well," admitted Mr. Crewe, "they may help some. I have a few other
+matters to attend to this evening, so I must say good-night, gentlemen.
+Don't let me interfere with those I mountain passes, Mr. Manning."
+
+With this parting remark, which proved him to be not merely an idealist
+in politics, but a practical man, Mr. Crewe took his leave. And he was
+too much occupied with his own thoughts to pay any attention to the click
+of the key as it turned in the lock, or to hear United States Senator
+Whitredge rap (three times) on the door after he had turned the corner,
+or to know that presently the sliding doors into the governor's bridal
+suite--were to open a trifle, large enough for the admission of the body
+of the Honourable Asa P. Gray.
+
+Number Seven still keeps up its reputation as the seat of benevolence,
+and great public benefactors still meet there to discuss the welfare of
+their fellow-men: the hallowed council chamber now of an empire, seat of
+the Governor-general of the State, the Honourable Hilary Vane, and his
+advisers. For years a benighted people, with a fond belief in their
+participation of Republican institutions, had elected the noble five
+hundred of the House and the stanch twenty of the Senate. Noble five
+hundreds (biggest Legislature in the world) have come and gone; debated,
+applauded, fought and on occasions denounced, kicked over the traces, and
+even wept--to no avail. Behold that political institution of man,
+representative government There it is on the stage, curtain up, a sublime
+spectacle for all men to see, and thrill over speeches about the Rights
+of Man, and the Forefathers in the Revolution; about Constituents who do
+not constitute. The High Heavens allow it and smile, and it is well for
+the atoms that they think themselves free American representatives, that
+they do not feel the string of predestination around their ankles. The
+senatorial twenty, from their high carved seats, see the strings and
+smile, too; yes, and see their own strings, and smile. Wisdom does not
+wish for flight. "The people" having changed the constitution, the
+blackbirds are reduced from four and forty to a score. This is
+cheaper--for the people.
+
+Democracy on the front of the stage before an applauding audience;
+performers absorbed in their parts, forgetting that the landlord has to
+be paid in money yet to be earned. Behind the stage, the real play, the
+absorbing interest, the high stakes--occasional discreet laughter through
+the peep-hole when an actor makes an impassioned appeal to the gods.
+Democracy in front, the Feudal System, the Dukes and Earls behind--but in
+plain clothes; Democracy in stars and spangles and trappings and
+insignia. Or, a better figure, the Fates weaving the web in that mystic
+chamber, Number Seven, pausing now and again to smile as a new thread is
+put in. Proclamations, constitutions, and creeds crumble before
+conditions; the Law of Dividends is the high law, and the Forum an open
+vent through which the white steam may rise heavenward and be resolved
+again into water.
+
+Mr. Crewe took his seat in the popular assemblage next day, although most
+of the five hundred gave up theirs to the ladies who had come to hear his
+Excellency deliver his inaugural. The Honourable Asa made a splendid
+figure, all agreed, and read his speech in a firm and manly voice. A
+large part of it was about the people; some of it about the sacred
+government they had inherited from their forefathers; still another
+concerned the high character and achievements of the inhabitants within
+the State lines; the name of Abraham Lincoln was mentioned, and, with
+even greater reverence and fervour, the Republican party which had
+ennobled and enriched the people--and incidentally elected the governor.
+There was a noble financial policy, a curtailment of expense. The forests
+should be protected, roads should be built, and, above all, corporations
+should be held to a strict accounting.
+
+Needless to say, the speech gave great satisfaction to all, and many old
+friends left the hall exclaiming that they didn't believe Asa had it in
+him. As a matter of fact (known only to the initiated), Asa didn't have
+it in him until last night, before he squeezed through the crack in the
+folding doors from room number six to room Number Seven. The inspiration
+came to him then, when he was ennobled by the Governor-general, who
+represents the Empire. Perpetual Governor-general, who quickens into life
+puppet governors of his own choosing Asa has agreed, for the honour of
+the title of governor of his State, to act the part, open the fairs, lend
+his magnificent voice to those phrases which it rounds so well. It is
+fortunate, when we smoke a fine cigar from Havana, that we cannot look
+into the factory. The sight would disturb us. It was well for the
+applauding, deep-breathing audience in the state-house that first of
+January that they did not have a glimpse in room Number Seven the night
+before, under the sheets that contained the list of the Speaker's
+committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the
+offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting
+was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him by
+the Honourable Hilary Vane. Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none
+other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel! The
+financial part was written by the Governor-general himself--the
+Honourable Hilary Vane. And when it was all finished and revised, it was
+put into a long envelope which bore this printed address: Augustus P.
+Flint, Pres't United Northeastern Railroads, New York. And came back with
+certain annotations on the margin, which were duly incorporated into it.
+This is the private history (which must never be told) of the document
+which on January first became, as far as fame and posterity is concerned,
+the Honourable Asa P. Gray's--forever and forever.
+
+Mr. Crewe liked the inaugural, and was one of the first to tell Mr. Gray
+so, and to express his pleasure and appreciation of the fact that his
+request (mailed in November) had been complied with, that the substance
+of his bills had been recommended in the governor's programme.
+
+He did not pause to reflect on the maxim, that platforms are made to get
+in by and inaugurals to get started by.
+
+Although annual efforts have been made by various public-spirited
+citizens to build a new state-house, economy--with assistance from room
+Number Seven has triumphed. It is the same state-house from the gallery
+of which poor William Wetherell witnessed the drama of the Woodchuck
+Session, although there are more members now, for the population of the
+State has increased to five hundred thousand. It is well for General
+Doby, with his two hundred and fifty pounds, that he is in the Speaker's
+chair; five hundred seats are a good many for that hall, and painful in a
+long session. The Honourable Brush Bascom can stretch his legs, because
+he is fortunate enough to have a front seat. Upon inquiry, it turns out
+that Mr. Bascom has had a front seat for the last twenty years--he has
+been uniformly lucky in drawing. The Honourable Jacob Botcher (ten years'
+service) is equally fortunate; the Honourable Jake is a man of large
+presence, and a voice that sounds as if it came, oracularly, from the
+caverns of the earth. He is easily heard by the members on the back
+seats, while Mr. Bascom is not. Mr. Ridout, the capital lawyer, is in the
+House this year, and singularly enough has a front seat likewise. It was
+Mr. Crewe's misfortune to draw number 415, in the extreme corner of the
+room, and next the steam radiator. But he was not of the metal to accept
+tamely such a ticketing from the hat of destiny (via the Clerk of the
+House). He complained, as any man of spirit would, and Mr. Utter, the
+polite clerk, is profoundly sorry,--and says it maybe managed. Curiously
+enough, the Honourable Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob Botcher join
+Mr. Crewe in his complaint, and reiterate that it is an outrage that a
+man of such ability and deserving prominence should be among the
+submerged four hundred and seventy. It is managed in a mysterious manner
+we don't pretend to fathom, and behold Mr. Crewe in the front of the
+Forum, in the seats of the mighty, where he can easily be pointed out
+from the gallery at the head of the five hundred, between those shining
+leaders and parliamentarians, the Honourables Brush Bascom and Jake
+Botcher.
+
+For Mr. Crewe has not come to the Legislature, like the country members
+in the rear, to acquire a smattering of parliamentary procedure by the
+day the Speaker is presented with a gold watch, at the end of the
+session. Not he! Not the practical business man, the member of boards,
+the chairman and president of societies. He has studied the Rules of the
+House and parliamentary law, you may be sure. Genius does not come
+unprepared, and is rarely caught napping. After the Legislature
+adjourned that week the following telegram was sent over the wires:--
+
+   Augustus P. Flint, New York.
+
+   Kindly use your influence with Doby to secure my committee
+   appointments. Important as per my conversation with you.
+
+                       Humphrey Crewe.
+
+Nor was Mr. Crewe idle from Saturday to Monday night, when the committees
+were to be announced. He sent to the State Tribune office for fifty
+copies of that valuable paper, which contained a two-column-and-a-half
+article on Mr. Crewe as a legislator and financier and citizen, with a
+summary of his bills and an argument as to how the State would benefit by
+their adoption; an accurate list of Mr. Crewe's societies was inserted,
+and an account of his life's history, and of those ancestors of his who
+had been born or lived within the State. Indeed, the accuracy of this
+article as a whole did great credit to the editor of the State Tribune,
+who must have spent a tremendous amount of painstaking research upon it;
+and the article was so good that Mr. Crewe regretted (undoubtedly for the
+editor's sake) that a request could not be appended to it such as is used
+upon marriage and funeral notices: "New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
+papers please copy."
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it his duty to remedy as much as possible the
+unfortunate limited circulation of the article, and he spent as much as a
+whole day making out a list of friends and acquaintances whom he thought
+worthy to receive a copy of the Tribune--marked personal. Victoria Flint
+got one, and read it to her father at the breakfast table. (Mr. Flint did
+not open his.) Austen Vane wondered why any man in his obscure and
+helpless position should have been honoured, but honoured he was. He sent
+his to Victoria, too, and was surprised to find that she knew his
+handwriting and wrote him a letter to thank him for it: a letter which
+provoked on his part much laughter, and elements of other sensations
+which, according to Charles Reade, should form the ingredients of a good
+novel. But of this matter later.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret and Alice each got one, and each wrote Mr. Crewe appropriate
+congratulations. (Alice's answer supervised.) Mrs. Chillingham got one;
+the Honourable Hilary Vane got one--marked in red ink, lest he should
+have skipped it in his daily perusal of the paper. Mr. Brush, Bascom got
+one likewise. But the list of Mr. Crewe's acquaintances is too long and
+too broad to dwell upon further in these pages.
+
+The Monday-night session came at last, that sensational hour when the
+Speaker makes those decisions to which he is supposed to have given birth
+over Sunday in the seclusion of his country home at Hale. Monday-night
+sessions are, as a rule, confined in attendance to the Honourable Brush
+Bascom and Mr. Ridout and a few other conscientious members who do not
+believe in cheating the State, but to-night all is bustle and confusion,
+and at least four hundred members are pushing down the aisles and
+squeezing past each other into the narrow seats, and reading the State
+Tribune or the ringing words of the governor's inaugural which they find
+in the racks on the back of the seats before them. Speaker Doby, who has
+been apparently deep in conference with the most important members (among
+them Mr. Crewe, to whom he has whispered that a violent snow-storm is
+raging in Hale), raps for order; and after a few preliminaries hands to
+Mr. Utter, the clerk, amidst a breathless silence, the paper on which the
+parliamentary career of so many ambitious statesmen depends.
+
+It is not a pleasure to record the perfidy of man, nor the lack of
+judgment which prevents him, in his circumscribed lights, from
+recognizing undoubted geniuses when he sees them. Perhaps it was jealousy
+on General Doby's part, and a selfish desire to occupy the centre of the
+stage himself, but at any rate we will pass hastily over the disagreeable
+portions of this narrative. Mr. Crewe settled himself with his feet
+extended, and with a complacency which he had rightly earned by leaving
+no stone unturned, to listen. He sat up a little when the Appropriations
+Committee, headed by the Honourable Jake Botcher, did not contain his
+name--but it might have been an oversight of Mr. Utters; when the
+Judiciary (Mr. Ridout's committee) was read it began to look like malice;
+committee after committee was revealed, and the name of Humphrey Crewe
+might not have been contained in the five hundred except as the twelfth
+member of forestry, until it appeared at the top of National Affairs.
+Here was a broad enough field, certainly,--the Trusts, the Tariff, the
+Gold Standard, the Foreign Possessions,--and Mr. Crewe's mind began to
+soar in spite of himself. Public Improvements was reached, and he
+straightened. Mr. Beck, a railroad lawyer from Belfast, led it. Mr. Crewe
+arose, as any man of spirit would, and walked with dignity up the aisle
+and out of the house. This deliberate attempt to crush genius would
+inevitably react on itself. The Honourable Hilary Vane and Mr. Flint
+should be informed of it at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"FOR BILLS MAY COME, AND BILLS MAY GO"
+
+A man with a sense of humour once went to the capital as a member of the
+five hundred from his town, and he never went back again. One reason for
+this was that he died the following year, literally, the doctors said,
+from laughing too much. I know that this statement will be received
+incredulously, and disputed by those who claim that laughter is a good
+thing; the honourable gentleman died from too much of a good thing. He
+was overpowered by having too much to laugh at, and the undiscerning
+thought him a fool, and the Empire had no need of a court jester. But
+many of his sayings have lived, nevertheless. He wrote a poem, said to be
+a plagiarism, which contains the quotation at the beginning of this
+chapter: "For bills may come, and bills may go, but I go on forever." The
+first person singular is supposed to relate to the United Northeastern
+Railroads. It was a poor joke at best.
+
+It is needless to say that the gentleman referred to had a back seat
+among the submerged four hundred and seventy,--and that he kept it. No
+discerning and powerful well-wishers came forward and said to him,
+"Friend, go up higher." He sat, doubled up, in number, and the gods gave
+him compensation in laughter; he disturbed the Solons around him, who
+were interested in what was going on in front, and trying to do their
+duty to their constituents by learning parliamentary procedure before the
+Speaker got his gold watch and shed tears over it.
+
+The gentleman who laughed and died is forgotten, as he deserves to be,
+and it never occurred to anybody that he might have been a philosopher,
+after all. There is something irresistibly funny about predestination;
+about men who are striving and learning and soberly voting upon measures
+with which they have as little to do as guinea-pigs. There were certain
+wise and cynical atheists who did not attend the sessions at all except
+when they received mysterious hints to do so. These were chiefly from
+Newcastle. And there were others who played poker in the state-house
+cellar waiting for the Word to come to them, when they went up and voted
+(prudently counting their chips before they did so), and descended again.
+The man with a sense of humour laughed at these, too, and at the twenty
+blackbirds in the Senate,--but not so heartily. He laughed at their
+gravity, for no gravity can equal that of gentlemen who play with stacked
+cards.
+
+The risible gentleman laughed at the proposed legislation, about which he
+made the song, and he likened it to a stream that rises hopefully in the
+mountains, and takes its way singing at the prospect of reaching the
+ocean, but presently flows into a hole in the ground to fill the
+forgotten caverns of the earth, and is lost to the knowledge and sight of
+man. The caverns he labelled respectively Appropriations, Railroad,
+Judiciary, and their guardians were unmistakably the Honourables Messrs.
+Bascom, Botcher, and Ridout. The greatest cavern of all he called "The
+Senate."
+
+If you listen, you can hear the music of the stream of bills as it is
+rising hopefully and flowing now: "Mr. Crewe of Leith gives notice that
+on to-morrow or some subsequent day he will introduce a bill entitled,
+'An act for the Improvement of the State Highways.' Mr. Crewe of Leith
+gives notice, etc. 'An act for the Improvement of the Practice of
+Agriculture.' 'An act relating to the State Indebtedness.' 'An act to
+increase the State Forest Area.' 'An act to incorporate the State
+Economic League.' 'An act to incorporate the State Children's Charities
+Association.' 'An act in relation to Abandoned Farms.'" These were some
+of the most important, and they were duly introduced on the morrow, and
+gravely referred by the Speaker to various committees. As might be
+expected, a man whose watchword is, "thorough" immediately got a list of
+those committees, and lost no time in hunting up the chairmen and the
+various available members thereof.
+
+As a man of spirit, also, Mr. Crewe wrote to Mr. Flint, protesting as to
+the manner in which he had been treated concerning committees. In the
+course of a week he received a kind but necessarily brief letter from the
+Northeastern's president to remind him that he persisted in a fallacy; as
+a neighbour, Mr. Flint would help him to the extent of his power, but the
+Northeastern Railroads could not interfere in legislative or political
+matters. Mr. Crewe was naturally pained by the lack of confidence of his
+friend; it seems useless to reiterate that he was far from being a fool,
+and no man could be in the capital a day during the session without being
+told of the existence of Number Seven, no matter how little the informant
+might know of what might be going on there. Mr. Crewe had been fortunate
+enough to see the inside of that mysterious room, and, being a
+sufficiently clever man to realize the importance and necessity of
+government by corporations, had been shocked at nothing he had seen or
+heard. However, had he had a glimpse of the Speaker's lists under the
+hopelessly crushed hat of Mr. Bascom, perhaps he might have been shocked,
+after all.
+
+It was about this time that a touching friendship began which ought, in
+justice, to be briefly chronicled. It was impossible for the Honourable
+Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob Botcher to have Mr. Crewe sitting
+between them and not conceive a strong affection for him. The Honourable
+Brush, though not given to expressing his feelings, betrayed some
+surprise at the volumes Mr. Crewe had contributed to the stream of bills;
+and Mr. Botcher, in a Delphic whisper, invited Mr. Crewe to visit him in
+room forty-eight of the Pelican that evening. To tell the truth, Mr.
+Crewe returned the feeling of his companions warmly, and he had even
+entertained the idea of asking them both to dine with him that evening.
+
+Number forty-eight (the Honourable Jake's) was a free-and-easy democratic
+resort. No three knocks and a password before you turn the key here.
+Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard Mr. Botcher's hearty
+voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed transom. The Honourable
+Jake, being a tee-totaller, had no bathroom, and none but his intimate
+friends ever looked in the third from the top bureau drawer.
+
+The proprietor of the Pelican, who in common with the rest of humanity
+had fallen a victim to the rough and honest charms and hearty good
+fellowship of the Honourable Jake, always placed a large padded arm-chair
+in number forty-eight before the sessions, knowing that the Honourable
+Jake's constituency would be uniformly kind to him. There Mr. Botcher was
+wont to sit (when he was not depressing one of the tiles in the rotunda),
+surrounded by his friends and their tobacco smoke, discussing in his
+frank and manly fashion the public questions of the day.
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it a little strange that, whenever he entered a room in
+the Pelican, a silence should succeed the buzz of talk which he had heard
+through the closed transom; but he very naturally attributed this to the
+constraint which ordinary men would be likely to feel in his presence. In
+the mouth of one presumptuous member the word "railroad" was cut in two
+by an agate glance from the Honourable Brush, and Mr. Crewe noted with
+some surprise that the Democratic leader of the House, Mr. Painter, was
+seated on Mr. Botcher's mattress, with an expression that was in singular
+contrast to the look of bold defiance which he had swept over the House
+that afternoon in announcing his opposition policy. The vulgar political
+suggestion might have crept into a more trivial mind than Mr. Crewe's
+that Mr. Painter was being, "put to bed," the bed being very similar to
+that of Procrustes. Mr. Botcher extracted himself from the nooks and
+crannies of his armchair.
+
+"How are you, Crewe?" he said hospitably; "we're all friends here--eh,
+Painter? We don't carry our quarrels outside the swinging doors. You know
+Mr. Crewe--by sight, of course. Do you know these other gentlemen, Crewe?
+I didn't expect you so early."
+
+The "other gentlemen" said that they were happy to make the acquaintance
+of their fellow-member from Leith, and seemingly with one consent began
+to edge towards the door.
+
+"Don't go, boys," Mr. Bascom protested. "Let me finish that story."
+
+Some of "the boys" seemed to regard this statement as humorous,--more
+humorous, indeed, than the story itself. And when it was finished they
+took their departure, a trifle awkwardly, led by Mr. Painter.
+
+"They're a little mite bashful," said Mr. Botcher, apologetically.
+
+"How many more of those bills have you got?" demanded Mr. Bascom, from
+the steam radiator, with characteristic directness.
+
+"I put 'em all in this morning," said Mr. Crewe, "but I have thought
+since of two or three other conditions which might be benefited by
+legislation."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Bascom, kindly, "if you have any more I was going to
+suggest that you distribute 'em round among the boys. That's the way I
+do, and most folks don't guess they're your bills. See?"
+
+"What harm is there in that?" demanded Mr. Crewe. "I'm not ashamed of
+'em."
+
+"Brush was only lookin' at it from the point of view of gettin' 'em
+through," honest Mr. Botcher put in, in stentorian tones. "It doesn't do
+for a new member to be thought a hog about legislation."
+
+Now the Honourable Jacob only meant this in the kindest manner, as we
+know, and to give inexperience a hint from well-intentioned experience.
+On the other hand, Mr. Crewe had a dignity and a position to uphold. He
+was a personality. People who went too far with him were apt to be
+rebuked by a certain glassy quality in his eye, and this now caused the
+Honourable Jake to draw back perceptibly.
+
+"I see no reason why a public-spirited man should be open to such an
+imputation," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Certainly not, certainly not," said Mr. Botcher, in stentorian tones of
+apology, "I was only trying to give you a little friendly advice, but I
+may have put it too strong. Brush and I--I may as well be plain about it,
+Mr. Crewe--have taken a liking to you. Couldn't help it, sir, sitting
+next to you as we do. We take an interest in your career, and we don't
+want you to make any mistakes. Ain't that about it, Brush?"
+
+"That's about it," said Mr. Bascom.
+
+Mr. Crewe was to big a man not to perceive and appreciate the sterling
+philanthropy which lay beneath the exteriors of his new friends, who
+scorned to flatter him.
+
+"I understand the spirit in which your advice is given, gentlemen," he
+replied magnanimously, "and I appreciate it. We are all working for the
+same things, and we all believe that they must be brought about in the
+same practical way. For instance, we know as practical men that the
+railroad pays a large tax in this State, and that property must take a
+hand--a very considerable hand--in legislation. You gentlemen, as
+important factors in the Republican organization, are loyal to--er--that
+property, and perhaps for wholly desirable reasons cannot bring forward
+too many bills under your own names. Whereas I--"
+
+At this point in Mr. Crewe's remarks the Honourable Jacob Botcher was
+seized by an appalling coughing fit which threatened to break his
+arm-chair, probably owing to the fact that he had swallowed something
+which he had in his mouth the wrong way. Mr. Bascom, assisted by Mr.
+Crewe, pounded him relentlessly on the back.
+
+"I read that article in the 'Tribune' about you with great interest,"
+said Mr. Bascom, when Mr. Botcher's coughing had subsided. "I had no idea
+you were so--ahem--well equipped for a political career. But what we
+wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued, as Mr. Crewe showed
+signs of breaking in, "those committee appointments you desired."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, with some pardonable heat, "the Speaker doesn't
+seem to know which side his bread's buttered on."
+
+"What I was going to say," proceeded Mr. Bascom, "was that General Doby
+is a pretty good fellow. Personally, I happen to know that the general
+feels very badly that he couldn't give you what you wanted. He took a
+shine to you that night you saw him."
+
+"Yes," Mr. Botcher agreed, for he had quite recovered, the general felt
+bad--feels bad, I should say. He perceived that you were a man of
+ability, sir--"
+
+"And that was just the reason," said the Honourable Brush, "that he
+couldn't make you more useful just now."
+
+"There's a good deal of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of
+ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones.
+"The competition amongst those--er--who have served the party is very
+keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the
+general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of
+your--er--well-wishers persuaded him to take you off for your own good."
+
+"It wouldn't do for the party leaders to make you too prominent all at
+once," said Mr. Bascom. "You are bound to take an active part in what
+passes here. The general said, 'At all events I will give Mr. Crewe one
+chairmanship by which he can make a name for himself suited to his
+talents,' and he insisted on giving you, in spite of some remonstrances
+from your friends, National Affairs. The general urged, rightly, that
+with your broad view and knowledge of national policy, it was his duty to
+put you in that place whatever people might say."
+
+Mr. Crewe listened to these explanations in some surprise; and being a
+rational man, had to confess that they were--more or less reasonable.
+
+"Scarcely any bills come before that committee," he objected.
+
+"Ah," replied Mr. Bascom, "that is true. But the chairman of that
+committee is generally supposed to be in line for--er--national honours.
+It has not always happened in the past, because the men have not proved
+worthy. But the opportunity is always given to that chairman to make a
+speech upon national affairs which is listened to with the deepest
+interest.
+
+"Is that so?" said Mr. Crewe. He wanted to be of service, as we know. He
+was a man of ideas, and the opening sentences of the speech were already
+occurring to him.
+
+"Let's go upstairs and see the general now," suggested Mr. Botcher,
+smiling that such a happy thought should have occurred to him.
+
+"Why, I guess we couldn't do any better," Mr. Bascom agreed.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm willing to hear what he's got to say,
+anyway."
+
+Taking advantage of this generous concession, Mr. Botcher hastily locked
+the door, and led the way up the stairway to number seventy-five. After a
+knock or two here, the door opened a crack, disclosing, instead of
+General Doby's cherubic countenance, a sallow face with an exceedingly
+pointed nose. The owner of these features, having only Mr. Botcher in his
+line of vision, made what was perhaps an unguarded remark.
+
+"Hello, Jake, the general's in number nine--Manning sent for him about
+half an hour ago."
+
+It was Mr. Botcher himself who almost closed the door on the gentleman's
+sharp nose, and took Mr. Crewe's arm confidingly.
+
+"We'll go up to the desk and see Doby in the morning,--he's busy," said
+the Honourable Jake.
+
+"What's the matter with seeing him now?" Mr. Crewe demanded. "I know
+Manning. He's the division superintendent, isn't he?"
+
+Mr. Botcher and Mr. Bascom exchanged glances.
+
+"Why, yes--" said Mr. Bascom, "yes, he is. He's a great friend of General
+Doby's, and their wives are great friends."
+
+"Intimate friends, sir," said the Honourable Jake
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "we won't bother 'em but a moment."
+
+It was he who led the way now, briskly, the Honourable Brush and the
+Honourable Jake pressing closely after him. It was Mr. Crewe who, without
+pausing to knock, pushed open the door of number nine, which was not
+quite closed; and it was Mr. Crewe who made the important discovery that
+the lugubrious division superintendent had a sense of humour. Mr. Manning
+was seated at a marble-topped table writing on a salmon-coloured card, in
+the act of pronouncing these words:--"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker
+and all the little Speakers, to New York and return."
+
+Mr. Speaker Doby, standing before the marble-topped table with his hands
+in his pockets, heard the noise behind him and turned, and a mournful
+expression spread over his countenance.
+
+"Don't mind me," said Mr. Crewe, waving a hand in the direction of the
+salmon-coloured tickets; "I hope you have a good time, General. When do
+you go?"
+
+"Why," exclaimed the Speaker, "how are you, Mr. Crewe, how are you? It's
+only one of Manning's little jokes."
+
+"That's all right, General," said Mr. Crewe, "I haven't been a director
+in railroads for nothing. I'm not as green as he thinks. Am I, Mr.
+Manning?"
+
+"It never struck me that green was your colour, Mr. Crewe," answered the
+division superintendent, smiling a little as he tore the tickets into
+bits and put them in the waste-basket.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "you needn't have torn 'em up on my account. I
+travel on the pass which the Northeastern gives me as a legislator, and
+I'm thinking seriously of getting Mr. Flint to send me an annual, now
+that I'm in politics and have to cover the State."
+
+"We thought you were a reformer, Mr. Crewe," the Honourable Brush Bascom
+remarked.
+
+"I am a practical man," said Mr. Crewe; "a railroad man, a business mark
+and as such I try to see things as they are."
+
+"Well," said General Doby, who by this time had regained his usual genial
+air of composure, I'm glad you said that, Mr. Crewe. As these gentlemen
+will tell you, if I'd had my wish I'd have had you on every important
+committee in the House."
+
+"Chairman of every important committee, General," corrected the
+Honourable Jacob Botcher.
+
+"Yes, chairman of 'em," assented the general, after a glance at Mr.
+Crewe's countenance to see how this statement fared. "But the fact is,
+the boys are all jealous of you--on the quiet. I suppose you suspected
+something of the kind."
+
+"I should have imagined there might be some little feeling," Mr. Crewe
+assented modestly.
+
+"Exactly," cried the general, "and I had to combat that feeling when I
+insisted upon putting you at the head of National Affairs. It does not do
+for a new member, whatever his prominence in the financial world, to be
+pushed forward too quickly. And unless I am mighty mistaken, Mr. Crewe,"
+he added, with his hand on the new member's shoulder, "you will make
+yourself felt without any boosting from me."
+
+"I did not come here to remain idle, General," answered Mr. Crewe,
+considerably mollified.
+
+"Certainly not," said the general, "and I say to some of those men, 'Keep
+your eye on the gentleman who is Chairman of National Affairs.'"
+
+After a little more of this desultory and pleasant talk, during which
+recourse was, had to the bathroom for several tall and thin glasses
+ranged on the shelf there, Mr. Crewe took his departure in a most equable
+frame of mind. And when the door was closed and locked behind him, Mr.
+Manning dipped his pen in the ink, once more produced from a drawer in
+the table the salmon-coloured tickets, and glanced again at the general
+with a smile.
+
+"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New
+York and return."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Mr. Crewe's Career, Book I., by Winston Churchill
+
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+
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+and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
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+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+[NOTE: This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister
+of England during World War II.]
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. CREWE'S CAREER
+
+By WINSTON CHURCHILL
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE HONOURABLE HILARY VANE SITS FOR HIS PORTRAIT
+
+I may as well begin this story with Mr. Hilary Vane, more frequently
+addressed as the Honourable Hilary Vane, although it was the gentleman's
+proud boast that he had never held an office in his life.  He belonged to
+the Vanes of Camden Street,--a beautiful village in the hills near
+Ripton,--and was, in common with some other great men who had made a
+noise in New York and the nation, a graduate of Camden Wentworth Academy.
+But Mr. Vane, when he was at home, lived on a wide, maple-shaded street
+in the city of Ripton, cared for by an elderly housekeeper who had more
+edges than a new-fangled mowing machine.  The house was a porticoed one
+which had belonged to the Austens for a hundred years or more, for Hilary
+Vane had married, towards middle age, Miss Sarah Austen.  In two years he
+was a widower, and he never tried it again; he had the Austens' house,
+and that many-edged woman, Euphrasia Cotton, the Austens' housekeeper.
+
+The house was of wood, and was painted white as regularly as leap year.
+From the street front to the vegetable garden in the extreme rear it was
+exceedingly long, and perhaps for propriety's sake--Hilary Vane lived at
+one end of it and Euphrasia at the other.  Hilary was sixty-five,
+Euphrasia seventy, which is not old for frugal people, though it is just
+as well to add that there had never been a breath of scandal about either
+of them, in Ripton or elsewhere.  For the Honourable Hilary's modest
+needs one room sufficed, and the front parlour had not been used since
+poor Sarah Austen's demise, thirty years before this story opens.
+
+In those thirty years, by a sane and steady growth, Hilary Vane had
+achieved his present eminent position in the State.  He was trustee for I
+know not how many people and institutions, a deacon in the first church,
+a lawyer of such ability that he sometimes was accorded the courtesy-
+title of "Judge."  His only vice--if it could be called such--was in
+occasionally placing a piece, the size of a pea, of a particular kind of
+plug tobacco under his tongue,--and this was not known to many people.
+Euphrasia could not be called a wasteful person, and Hilary had
+accumulated no small portion of this world's goods, and placed them as
+propriety demanded, where they were not visible to the naked eye: and be
+it added in his favour that he gave as secretly, to institutions and
+hospitals the finances and methods of which were known to him.
+
+As concrete evidence of the Honourable Hilary Vane's importance, when he
+travelled he had only to withdraw from his hip-pocket a book in which
+many coloured cards were neatly inserted, an open-sesame which permitted
+him to sit without payment even in those wheeled palaces of luxury known
+as Pullman cars.  Within the limits of the State he did not even have to
+open the book, but merely say, with a twinkle of his eyes to the
+conductor, "Good morning, John," and John would reply with a bow and a
+genial and usually witty remark, and point him out to a nobody who sat in
+the back of the car.  So far had Mr. Hilary Vane's talents carried him.
+
+The beginning of this eminence dated back to the days before the Empire,
+when there were many little principalities of railroads fighting among
+themselves.  For we are come to a changed America.  There was a time, in
+the days of the sixth Edward of England, when the great landowners found
+it more profitable to consolidate the farms, seize the common lands, and
+acquire riches hitherto undreamed of.  Hence the rising of tailor Ket and
+others, and the leveling of fences and barriers, and the eating of many
+sheep.  It may have been that Mr. Vane had come across this passage in
+English history, but he drew no parallels.  His first position of trust
+had been as counsel for that principality known in the old days as the
+Central Railroad, of which a certain Mr. Duncan had been president, and
+Hilary Vane had fought the Central's battles with such telling effect
+that when it was merged into the one Imperial Railroad, its stockholders-
+-to the admiration of financiers--were guaranteed ten per cent.  It was,
+indeed, rumoured that Hilary drew the Act of Consolidation itself.  At
+any rate, he was too valuable an opponent to neglect, and after a certain
+interval of time Mr. Vane became chief counsel in the State for the
+Imperial Railroad, on which dizzy height we now behold him.  And he
+found, by degrees, that he had no longer time for private practice.
+
+It is perhaps gratuitous to add that the Honourable Hilary Vane was a man
+of convictions.  In politics he would have told you--with some vehemence,
+if you seemed to doubt--that he was a Republican.  Treason to party he
+regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence, as an act for which a man should
+be justly outlawed.  If he were in a mellow mood, with the right quantity
+of Honey Dew tobacco under his tongue, he would perhaps tell you why he
+was a Republican, if he thought you worthy of his confidence.  He
+believed in the gold standard, for one thing; in the tariff (left
+unimpaired in its glory) for another, and with a wave of his hand would
+indicate the prosperity of the nation which surrounded him,--a prosperity
+too sacred to tamper with.
+
+One article of his belief, and in reality the chief article, Mr. Vane
+would not mention to you.  It was perhaps because he had never formulated
+the article for himself.  It might be called a faith in the divine right
+of Imperial Railroads to rule, but it was left out of the verbal creed.
+This is far from implying hypocrisy to Mr. Vane.  It was his foundation-
+rock and too sacred for light conversation.  When he allowed himself to
+be bitter against various "young men with missions" who had sprung up in
+various States of the Union, so-called purifiers of politics, he would
+call them the unsuccessful with a grievance, and recommend to them the
+practice of charity, forbearance, and other Christian virtues.  Thank
+God, his State was not troubled with such.
+
+In person Mr. Hilary Vane was tall, with a slight stoop to his shoulders,
+and he wore the conventional double-breasted black coat, which reached to
+his knees, and square-toed congress boots.  He had a Puritan beard, the
+hawk-like Vane nose, and a twinkling eye that spoke of a sense of humour
+and a knowledge of the world.  In short, he was no man's fool, and on
+occasions had been more than a match for certain New York lawyers with
+national reputations.
+
+It is rare, in this world of trouble, that such an apparently ideal and
+happy state of existence is without a canker.  And I have left the
+revelation of the canker to the last.  Ripton knew it was there, Camden
+Street knew it, and Mr. Vane's acquaintances throughout the State; but
+nobody ever spoke of it.  Euphrasia shed over it the only tears she had
+known since Sarah Austen died, and some of these blotted the only letters
+she wrote.  Hilary Vane did not shed tears, but his friends suspected
+that his heart-strings were torn, and pitied him.  Hilary Vane fiercely
+resented pity, and that was why they did not speak of it.  This trouble
+of his was the common point on which he and Euphrasia touched, and they
+touched only to quarrel.  Let us out with it--Hilary Vane had a wild son,
+whose name was Austen.
+
+Euphrasia knew that in his secret soul Mr. Vane attributed this wildness,
+and what he was pleased to designate as profligacy, to the Austen blood.
+And Euphrasia resented it bitterly.  Sarah Austen had been a young,
+elfish thing when he married her,--a dryad, the elderly and learned Mrs.
+Tredway had called her.  Mr Vane had understood her about as well as he
+would have understood Mary, Queen of Scots, if he had been married to
+that lady.  Sarah Austen had a wild, shy beauty, startled, alert eyes
+like an animal, and rebellious black hair that curled about her ears and
+gave her a faun-like appearance.  With a pipe and the costume of Rosalind
+she would have been perfect.  She had had a habit of running off for the
+day into the hills with her son, and the conventions of Ripton had been
+to her as so many defunct blue laws.  During her brief married life there
+had been periods of defiance from her lasting a week, when she would not
+speak to Hilary or look at him, and these periods would be followed by
+violent spells of weeping in Euphrasia's arms, when the house was no
+place for Hilary.  He possessed by matrimony and intricate mechanism of
+which his really admirable brain could not grasp the first principles; he
+felt for her a real if uncomfortable affection, but when she died he
+heaved a sigh of relief, at which he was immediately horrified.
+
+Austen he understood little better, but his affection for the child may
+be likened to the force of a great river rushing through a narrow gorge,
+and he vied with Euphrasia in spoiling him.  Neither knew what they were
+doing, and the spoiling process was interspersed with occasional and (to
+Austen) unmeaning intervals of severe discipline.  The boy loved the
+streets and the woods and his fellow-beings; his punishments were a
+series of afternoons in the house, during one of which he wrecked the
+bedroom where he was confined, and was soundly whaled with an old slipper
+that broke under the process.  Euphrasia kept the slipper, and once
+showed it to Hilary during a quarrel they had when the boy was grown up
+and gone and the house was silent, and Hilary had turned away, choking,
+and left the room.  Such was his cross.
+
+To make it worse, the boy had love his father.  Nay, still loved him.  As
+a little fellow, after a scolding for some wayward prank, he would throw
+himself into Hilary's arms and cling to him, and would never know how
+near he came to unmanning him.  As Austen grew up, they saw the world in
+different colours: blue to Hilary was red to Austen, and white, black;
+essentials to one were non-essentials to the other; boys and girls, men
+and women, abhorred by one were boon companions to the other.
+
+Austen made fun of the minister, and was compelled to go church twice on
+Sundays and to prayer-meeting on Wednesdays.  Then he went to Camden
+Street, to live with his grandparents in the old Vane house and attend
+Camden Wentworth Academy.  His letters, such as they were, were
+inimitable if crude, but contained not the kind of humour Hilary Vane
+knew.  Camden Wentworth, principal and teachers, was painted to the life;
+and the lad could hardly wait for vacation time to see his father, only
+to begin quarreling with him again.
+
+I pass over escapades in Ripton that shocked one half of the population
+and convulsed the other half.  Austen went to the college which his
+father had attended,--a college of splendid American traditions,--and his
+career there might well have puzzled a father of far greater tolerance
+and catholicity.  Hilary Vane was a trustee, and journeyed more than once
+to talk the matter over with the president, who had been his classmate
+there.
+
+"I love that boy, Hilary," the president had said at length, when pressed
+for a frank opinion,--"there isn't a soul in the place, I believe, that
+doesn't,--undergraduates and faculty,--but he has given me more anxious
+thought than any scholar I have ever had."
+
+"Trouble," corrected Mr. Vane, sententiously.
+
+"Well, yes, trouble," answered the president, smiling, "but upon my soul,
+I think it is all animal spirits."
+
+"A euphemism for the devil," said Hilary, grimly; "he is the animal part
+of us, I have been brought up to believe."
+
+The president was a wise man, and took another tack.
+
+"He has a really remarkable mind, when he chooses to use it.  Every once
+in a while he takes your breath away--but he has to become interested.  A
+few weeks ago Hays came to me direct from his lecture room to tell me
+about a discussion of Austen's in constitutional law.  Hays, you know, is
+not easily enthused, but he declares your son has as fine a legal brain
+as he has come across in his experience.  But since then, I am bound to
+admit," added the president, sadly, "Austen seems not to have looked at a
+lesson."
+
+"'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,'" replied Hilary.
+
+"He'll sober down," said the president, stretching his conviction a
+little, "he has two great handicaps: he learns too easily, and he is too
+popular."  The president looked out of his study window across the
+common, surrounded by the great elms which had been planted when Indian
+lads played among the stumps and the red flag of England had flown from
+the tall pine staff.  The green was covered now with students of a
+conquering race, skylarking to and fro as they looked on at a desultory
+baseball game.   "I verily believe," said the president, "at a word from
+your son, most of them would put on their coats and follow him on any mad
+expedition that came into his mind."
+
+Hilary Vane groaned more than once in the train back to Ripton.  It meant
+nothing to him to be the father of the most popular man in college.
+
+"The mad expedition" came at length in the shape of a fight with the
+townspeople, in which Austen, of course, was the ringleader.  If he had
+inherited his mother's eccentricities, he had height and physique from
+the Vanes, and one result was a week in bed for the son of the local
+plumber and a damage suit against the Honourable Hilary.  Another result
+was that Austen and a Tom Gaylord came back to Ripton on a long
+suspension, which, rumour said, would have been expulsion if Hilary were
+not a trustee.  Tom Gaylord was proud of suspension in such company.
+More of him later.  He was the son of old Tom Gaylord, who owned more
+lumber than any man in the State, and whom Hilary Vane believed to be the
+receptacle of all the vices.
+
+Eventually Austen went back and graduated--not summa cum laude, honesty
+compels me to add.  Then came the inevitable discussion, and to please
+his father he went to the Harvard Law School for two years.  At the end
+of that time, instead of returning to Ripton, a letter had come from him
+with the postmark of a Western State, where he had fled with a classmate
+who owned ranch.  Evidently the worldly consideration to be derived from
+conformity counted little with Austen Vane.  Money was a medium only--not
+an end.  He was in the saddle all day, with nothing but the horizon to
+limit him; he loved his father, and did not doubt his father's love for
+him, and he loved Euphrasia.  He could support himself, but he must see
+life.  The succeeding years brought letters and quaint, useless presents
+to both the occupants of the lonely house,--Navajo blankets and Indian
+jeweler and basket-work,--and Austen little knew how carefully these were
+packed away and surreptitiously gazed at from time to time.  But to
+Hilary the Western career was a disgrace, and such meagre reports of it
+as came from other sources than Austen tended only to confirm him in this
+opinion.
+
+It was commonly said of Mr. Paul Pardriff that not a newspaper fell from
+the press that he did not have a knowledge of its contents.  Certain it
+was that Mr. Pardriff made a specialty of many kinds of knowledge,
+political and otherwise, and, the information he could give--if he chose-
+-about State and national affairs was of a recondite and cynical nature
+that made one wish to forget about the American flag.  Mr. Pardriff was
+under forty, and with these gifts many innocent citizens of Ripton
+naturally wondered why the columns of his newspaper, the Ripton Record,
+did not more closely resemble the spiciness of his talk in the office of
+Gales' Hotel.  The columns contained, instead, such efforts as essays on
+a national flower and the abnormal size of the hats of certain great men,
+notably Andrew Jackson; yes, and the gold standard; and in times of
+political stress they were devoted to a somewhat fulsome praise of
+regular and orthodox Republican candidates,--and praise of any one was
+not in character with the editor.  Ill-natured people said that the
+matter in his paper might possibly be accounted for by the gratitude of
+the candidates, and the fact that Mr. Pardriff and his wife and his maid-
+servant and his hired man travelled on pink mileage books, which could
+only be had for love--not money.  On the other hand, reputable witnesses
+had had it often from Mr. Pardriff that he was a reformer, and not at all
+in sympathy with certain practices which undoubtedly existed.
+
+Some years before--to be exact, the year Austen Vane left the law school-
+-Mr. Pardriff had proposed to exchange the Ripton Record with the editor
+of the Pepper County Plainsman in afar Western State.  The exchange was
+effected, and Mr. Pardriff glanced over the Plainsman regularly once a
+week, though I doubt whether the Western editor ever read the Record
+after the first copy.  One day in June Mr. Pardriff was seated in his
+sanctum above Merrill's drug store when his keen green eyes fell upon the
+following:--
+
+"The Plainsman considers it safe to say that the sympathy of the people
+of Pepper County at large is with Mr. Austen Vane, whose personal
+difficulty with Jim Blodgett resulted so disastrously for Mr. Blodgett.
+The latter gentleman has long made himself obnoxious to local ranch
+owners by his persistent disregard of property lines and property, and it
+will be recalled that he is at present in hot water with the energetic
+Secretary of the Interior for fencing government lands.  Vane, who was
+recently made manager of Ready Money Ranch, is one of the most popular
+young men in the county.  He was unwillingly assisted over the State line
+by his friends.  Although he has never been a citizen of the State, the
+Plainsman trusts that he may soon be back and become one of us.  At last
+report Mr. Blodgett was resting easily."
+
+This article obtained circulation in Ripton, although it was not copied
+into the Record out of deference to the feelings of the Honourable Hilary
+Vane.  In addition to the personal regard Mr. Pardriff professed to have
+for the Honourable Hilary, it maybe well to remember that Austen's father
+was, among other, things, chairman of the State Committee.  Mr. Tredway
+(largest railroad stockholder in Ripton) pursed his lips that were
+already pursed.  Tom Gaylord roared with laughter.  Two or three days
+later the Honourable Hilary, still in blissful ignorance, received a
+letter that agitated him sorely.
+
+"DEAR FATHER: I hope you don't object to receiving a little visit from a
+prodigal, wayward son.  To tell the truth, I have found it convenient to
+leave the Ready Money Ranch for a while, although Bob Tyner is good
+enough to say I may have the place when I come back.  You know I often
+think of you and Phrasie back in Ripton, and I long to see the dear old
+town again.  Expect me when you see me.
+
+"Your aff. son,
+
+"AUSTEN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON THE TREATMENT OF PRODIGALS
+
+While Euphrasia, in a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the
+room which held for her so many memories of Austen's boyhood, even
+beating the carpet with her own hands, Hilary Vane went about his
+business with no apparent lack of diligence.  But he was meditating.  He
+had many times listened to the Reverend Mr. Weightman read the parable
+from the pulpit, but he had never reflected how it would be to be the
+father of a real prodigal.  What was to be done about the calf?  Was
+there to be a calf, or was there not?  To tell the truth, Hilary wanted a
+calf, and yet to have one (in spite of Holy Writ) would seem to set a
+premium on disobedience and riotous living.
+
+Again, Austen had reached thirty, an age when it was not likely he would
+settle down and live an orderly and godly life among civilized beings,
+and therefore a fatted calf was likely to be the first of many follies
+which he (Hilary) would live to regret.  No, he would deal with justice.
+How he dealt will be seen presently, but when he finally reached this
+conclusion, the clipping from the Pepper County Plainsman had not yet
+come before his eyes.
+
+It is worth relating how the clipping did come before his eyes, for no
+one in Ripton had the temerity to speak of it.  Primarily, it was because
+Miss Victoria Flint had lost a terrier, and secondarily, because she was
+a person of strong likes and dislikes.  In pursuit of the terrier she
+drove madly through Leith, which, as everybody knows, is a famous colony
+of rich summer residents.  Victoria probably stopped at every house in
+Leith, and searched them with characteristic vigour and lack of ceremony,
+sometimes entering by the side door, and sometimes by the front, and
+caring very little whether the owners were at home or not.  Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe discovered her in a boa-stall at Wedderburn,--as his place was
+called,--for it made little difference to Victoria that Mr. Crewe was a
+bachelor of marriageable age and millions.  Full, as ever, of practical
+suggestions, Mr. Crewe proposed to telephone to Ripton and put an
+advertisement in the Record, which--as he happened to know--went to press
+the next day.  Victoria would not trust to the telephone, whereupon Mr.
+Crewe offered to drive down with her.
+
+"You'd bore me, Humphrey," said she, as she climbed into her runabout
+with the father and grandfather of the absentee.  Mr. Crewe laughed as
+she drove away.  He had a chemical quality of turning invidious remarks
+into compliments, and he took this one as Victoria's manner of saying
+that she did not wish to disturb so important a man.
+
+Arriving in the hot main street of Ripton, her sharp eyes descried the
+Record sign over the drug store, and in an astonishingly short time she
+was in the empty office.  Mr. Pardriff was at dinner.  She sat down in
+the editorial chair and read a great deal of uninteresting matter, but at
+last found something on the floor (where the wind had blown it) which
+made her laugh.  It was the account of Austen Vane's difficulty with Mr.
+Blodgett.  Victoria did not know Austen, but she knew that the Honourable
+Hilary had a son of that name who had gone West, and this was what
+tickled her.  She thrust the clipping in the pocket of her linen coat
+just as Mr. Pardriff came in.
+
+Her conversation with the editor of the Record proved so entertaining
+that she forgot all about the clipping until she had reached Fairview,
+and had satisfied a somewhat imperious appetite by a combination of lunch
+and afternoon tea.  Fairview was the "summer place" of Mr. Augustus P.
+Flint, her father, on a shelf of the hills in the town of Tunbridge,
+equidistant from Leith and Ripton: and Mr. Flint was the president of the
+Imperial Railroad, no less.
+
+Yes, he had once been plain Gus Flint, many years ago, when he used to
+fetch the pocket-handkerchiefs of Mr. Isaac D. Worthington of Brampton,
+and he was still "Gus" to his friends.  Mr. Flint's had been the brain
+which had largely conceived and executed the consolidation of
+principalities of which the Imperial Railroad was the result and, as
+surely as tough metal prevails, Mr. Flint, after many other trials and
+errors of weaker stuff, had been elected to the place for which he was so
+supremely fitted.  We are so used in America to these tremendous rises
+that a paragraph will suffice to place Mr. Flint in his Aladdin's palace.
+To do him justice, he cared not a fig for the palace, and he would have
+been content with the farmhouse under the hill where his gardener lived.
+You could not fool Mr. Flint on a horse or a farm, and he knew to a dot
+what a railroad was worth by travelling over it.  Like his governor-
+general and dependent, Mr. Hilary Vane, he had married a wife who had
+upset all his calculations.  The lady discovered Mr. Flint's balance in
+the bank, and had proceeded to use it for her own glorification, and the
+irony of it all was that he could defend it from everybody else.  Mrs.
+Flint spent, and Mr. Flint paid the bills; for the first ten years
+protestingly, and after that he gave it up and let her go her own gait.
+
+She had come from the town of Sharon, in another State, through which Mr.
+Flint's railroad also ran, and she had been known as the Rose of that
+place.  She had begun to rise immediately, with the kite-like
+adaptability of the American woman for high altitudes, and the leaden
+weight of the husband at the end of the tail was as nothing to her.  She
+had begun it all by the study of people in hotels while Mr. Flint was
+closeted with officials and directors.  By dint of minute observation and
+reasoning powers and unflagging determination she passed rapidly through
+several strata, and had made a country place out of her husband's farm in
+Tunbridge, so happily and conveniently situated near Leith.  In winter
+they lived on Fifth Avenue.
+
+One daughter alone had halted, for a minute period, this progress, and
+this daughter was Victoria--named by her mother.  Victoria was now
+twenty-one, and was not only of another generation, but might almost have
+been judged of another race than her parents.  The things for which her
+mother had striven she took for granted, and thought of them not at all,
+and she had by nature that simplicity and astonishing frankness of manner
+and speech which was once believed to be an exclusive privilege of
+duchesses.
+
+To return to Fairview.  Victoria, after sharing her five o'clock luncheon
+with her dogs, went to seek her father, for the purpose (if it must be
+told) of asking him for a cheque.  Mr. Flint was at Fairview on the
+average of two days out of the week during the summer, and then he was
+nearly always closeted with a secretary and two stenographers and a long-
+distance telephone in two plain little rooms at the back of the house.
+And Mr. Hilary Vane was often in consultation with him, as he was on the
+present occasion when Victoria flung open the door.  At sight of Mr. Vane
+she halted suddenly on the threshold, and a gleam of mischief came into
+her eye as she thrust her hand into her coat pocket.  The two regarded
+her with the detached air of men whose thread of thought has been broken.
+
+"Well, Victoria," said her father, kindly if resignedly, "what is it
+now?"
+
+"Money," replied Victoria, promptly; "I went to Avalon this morning and
+bought that horse you said I might have."
+
+"What horse?" asked Mr. Flint, vaguely.  "But never mind.  Tell Mr.
+Freeman to make out the cheque."
+
+Mr. Vane glanced at Mr. Flint, and his eyes twinkled.  Victoria, who had
+long ago discovered the secret of the Honey Dew, knew that he was rolling
+it under his tongue and thinking her father a fool for his indulgence.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said; "Austen's coming home, isn't he?"
+She had got this by feminine arts out of Mr. Paul Pardriff, to whom she
+had not confided the fact of her possession of the clipping.
+
+The Honourable Hilary gave a grunt, as he always did when he was
+surprised and displeased, as though some one had prodded him with a stick
+in a sensitive spot.
+
+"Your son?  Why, Vane, you never told me that," said Mr. Flint.  "I
+didn't know that you knew him, Victoria."
+
+"I don't," answered Victoria, "but I'd like to.  What did he do to Mr.
+Blodgett?" she demanded of Hilary.
+
+"Mr. Blodgett!" exclaimed that gentleman.  "I never heard of him.  What's
+happened to him?"
+
+"He will probably recover," she assured him.
+
+The Honourable Hilary, trying in vain to suppress his agitation, rose to
+his feet.
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about, Victoria," he said, but his
+glance was fixed on the clipping in her hand.
+
+"Haven't you seen it?" she asked, giving it to him.
+
+He read it in silence, groaned, and handed it to Mr. Flint, who had been
+drumming on the table and glancing at Victoria with vague disapproval.
+Mr. Flint read it and gave it back to the Honourable Hilary, who groaned
+again and looked out of the window.
+
+"Why do you feel badly about it?" asked Victoria.  "I'd be proud of him,
+if I were you."
+
+"Proud of him" echoed Mr. Vane, grimly.  "Proud of him!"
+
+"Victoria, what do you mean?" said Mr. Flint.
+
+"Why not?" said Victoria.  "He's done nothing to make you ashamed.
+According to that clipping, he's punished a man who richly deserved to be
+punished, and he has the sympathy of an entire county."
+
+Hilary Vane was not a man to discuss his domestic affliction with
+anybody, so he merely grunted and gazed persistently out of the window,
+and was not aware of the fact that Victoria made a little face at him as
+she left the room.  The young are not always impartial judges of the old,
+and Victoria had never forgiven him for carrying to her father the news
+of an escapade of hers in Ripton.
+
+As he drove through the silent forest roads on his way homeward that
+afternoon, the Honourable Hilary revolved the new and intensely
+disagreeable fact in his mind as to how he should treat a prodigal who
+had attempted manslaughter and was a fugitive from justice.  In the
+meantime a tall and spare young man of a red-bronze colour alighted from
+the five o'clock express at Ripton and grinned delightedly at the
+gentlemen who made the station their headquarters about train time.  They
+were privately disappointed that the gray felt hat, although broad-
+brimmed, was not a sombrero, and the respectable, loose-fitting suit of
+clothes was not of buckskin with tassels on the trousers; and likewise
+that he came without the cartridge belt and holster which they had
+pictured in anticipatory sessions on the baggage-trucks.  There could be
+no doubt of the warmth of their greeting as they sidled up and seized a
+hand somewhat larger than theirs, but the welcome had in it an ingredient
+of awe that puzzled the newcomer, who did not hesitate to inquire:--
+
+"What's the matter, Ed?  Why so ceremonious, Perley?"
+
+But his eagerness did not permit him to wait for explanations.  Grasping
+his bag, the only baggage he possessed, he started off at a swinging
+stride for Hanover Street, pausing only to shake the hands of the few who
+recognized him, unconscious of the wild-fire at his back.  Hanover Street
+was empty that drowsy summer afternoon, and he stopped under the well-
+remembered maples before the house and gazed at it long and tenderly;
+even at the windows of that room--open now for the first time in years--
+where he had served so many sentences of imprisonment.  Then he went
+cautiously around by the side and looked in at the kitchen door.  To
+other eyes than his Euphrasia might not have seemed a safe person to
+embrace, but in a moment he had her locked in his arms and weeping.  She
+knew nothing as yet of Mr. Blodgett's misfortunes, but if Austen Vane had
+depopulated a county it would have made no difference in her affection.
+
+"My, but you're a man," exclaimed Euphrasia, backing away at last and
+staring at him with the only complete approval she had ever accorded to
+any human being save one.
+
+"What did you expect, Phrasie?"
+
+"Come, and I'll show you your room," she said, in a gutter she could not
+hide; "it's got all the same pictures in, your mother's pictures, and the
+chair you broke that time when Hilary locked you in.  It's mended."
+
+"Hold on, Phrasie," said Austen, seizing her by the apron-strings, "how
+about the Judge?"  It was by this title he usually designated his father.
+
+"What about him?" demanded Euphrasia, sharply.
+
+"Well, it's his house, for one thing," answered Austen, "and he may
+prefer to have that room--empty."
+
+"Empty!  Turn you out?  I'd like to see him," cried Euphrasia.  "It
+wouldn't take me long to leave him high and dry."
+
+She paused at the sound of wheels, and there was the Honourable Hilary,
+across the garden patch, in the act of slipping out of his buggy at the
+stable door.  In the absence of Luke, the hired man, the chief counsel
+for the railroad was wont to put up the horse himself, and he already had
+the reins festooned from the bit rings when he felt a heavy, hand on his
+shoulder and heard a voice say:--
+
+"How are you, Judge?"
+
+If the truth be told, that voice and that touch threw the Honourable
+Hilary's heart out of beat.  Many days he had been schooling himself for
+this occasion: this very afternoon he had determined his course of
+action, which emphatically did not include a fatted calf.  And now surged
+up a dryad-like memory which had troubled him many a wakeful night, of
+startled, appealing eyes that sought his in vain, and of the son she had
+left him flinging himself into his arms in the face of chastisement.  For
+the moment Hilary Vane, under this traitorous influence, was unable to
+speak.  But he let the hand rest on his shoulder, and at length was able
+to pronounce, in a shamefully shaky voice, the name of his son.
+Whereupon Austen seized him by the other shoulder and turned him round
+and looked into his face.
+
+"The same old Judge," he said.
+
+But Hilary was startled, even as Euphrasia had been.  Was this strange,
+bronzed, quietly humorous young man his son?  Hilary even had to raise
+his eyes a little; he had forgotten how tall Austen was.  Strange
+emotions, unbidden and unwelcome, ran riot in his breast; and Hilary
+Vane, who made no slips before legislative committees or supreme courts,
+actually found himself saying:--
+
+"Euphrasia's got your room ready."
+
+"It's good of you to take me in, Judge," said Austen, patting his
+shoulder.  And then he began, quite naturally to unbuckle the breechings
+and loose the traces, which he did with such deftness and celerity that
+he had the horse unharnessed and in the stall in a twinkling, and had
+hauled the buggy through the stable door, the Honourable Hilary watching
+him the while.  He was troubled, but for the life of him could find no
+adequate words, who usually had the dictionary at his disposal.
+
+"Didn't write me why you came home," said the Honourable Hilary, as his
+son washed his hands at the spigot.
+
+"Didn't I?  Well, the truth was I wanted to see you again, Judge."
+
+His father grunted, not with absolute displeasure, but suspiciously.
+
+"How about Blodgett?" he asked.
+
+"Blodgett?  Have you heard about that?  Who told you?"
+
+"Never mind.  You didn't.  Nothing in your letter about it."
+
+"It wasn't worth mentioning," replied Austen.  "Tyner and the boys liked
+it pretty well, but I didn't think you'd be interested.  It was a local
+affair."
+
+"Not interested!  Not worth mentioning!" exclaimed the Honourable Hilary,
+outraged to discover that his son was modestly deprecating an achievement
+instead of defending a crime.  "Godfrey! murder ain't worth mentioning, I
+presume."
+
+"Not when it isn't successful," said Austen.  "If Blodgett had succeeded,
+I guess you'd have heard of it before you did."
+
+"Do you mean to say this Blodgett tried to kill you?" demanded the
+Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Yes," said his son, "and I've never understood why he didn't.  He's a
+good deal better shot than I am."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and sat down on a bucket and carefully
+prepared a piece of Honey Dew.  He was surprised and agitated.
+
+"Then why are you a fugitive from justice if you were acting in self-
+defence?" he inquired.
+
+"Well, you see there were no witnesses, except a Mexican of Blodgett's,
+and Blodgett runs the Pepper County machine for the railroad out there.
+I'd been wanting to come East and have a look at you for some time, and I
+thought I might as well come now."
+
+"How did this--this affair start?" asked Mr. Vane.
+
+"Blodgett was driving in some of Tyner's calves, and I caught him.  I
+told him what I thought of him, and he shot at me through his pocket.
+That was all."
+
+"All!  You shot him, didn't you?"
+
+"I was lucky enough to hit him first," said Austen.
+
+Extraordinary as it may seem, the Honourable Hilary experienced a sense
+of pride.
+
+"Where did you hit him?" he asked.
+
+It was Euphrasia who took matters in her own hands and killed the fatted
+calf, and the meal to which they presently sat down was very different
+from the frugal suppers Mr. Vane usually had.  But he made no comment.
+It is perhaps not too much to say that he would have been distinctly
+disappointed had it been otherwise.  There was Austen's favourite pie,
+and Austen's favourite cake, all inherited from the Austens, who had
+thought more of the fleshpots than people should.  And the prodigal did
+full justice to the occasion.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CONCERNING THE PRACTICE OF LAW
+
+So instinctively do we hark back to the primeval man that there was a
+tendency to lionize the prodigal in Ripton, which proves the finished
+civilization of the East not to be so far removed from that land of
+outlaws, Pepper County.  Mr. Paul Pardriff, who had a guilty conscience
+about the clipping, and vividly bearing in mind Mr. Blodgett's mishap,
+alone avoided young Mr. Vane; and escaped through the type-setting room
+and down an outside stairway in the rear when that gentleman called.  It
+gave an ironical turn to the incident that Mr. Pardriff was at the moment
+engaged in a "Welcome Home" paragraph meant to be propitiatory.
+
+Austen cared very little for lionizing.  He spent most of his time with
+young Tom Gaylord, now his father's right-hand man in a tremendous lumber
+business.  And Tom, albeit he had become so important, habitually fell
+once more under the domination of the hero of his youthful days.
+Together these two visited haunts of their boyhood, camping and fishing
+and scaling mountains, Tom with an eye to lumbering prospects the while.
+
+After a matter of two or three months bad passed away in this pleasant
+though unprofitable manner, the Honourable Hilary requested the presence
+of his son one morning at his office.  This office was in what had once
+been a large residence, and from its ample windows you could look out
+through the elms on to the square.  Old-fashioned bookcases lined with
+musty books filled the walls, except where a steel engraving of a legal
+light or a railroad map of the State was hung, and the Honourable Hilary
+sat in a Windsor chair at a mahogany table in the middle.
+
+The anteroom next door, where the clerks sat, was also a waiting-room for
+various individuals from the different parts of the State who continually
+sought the counsel's presence.
+
+"Haven't seen much of you since you've be'n home, Austen," his father
+remarked as an opening.
+
+"Your--legal business compels you to travel a great deal," answered
+Austen, turning from the window and smiling.
+
+"Somewhat," said the Honourable Hilary, on whom this pleasantry was not
+lost.  "You've be'n travelling on the lumber business, I take it."
+
+"I know more about it than I did," his son admitted.
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted.
+
+"Caught a good many fish, haven't you?"
+
+Austen crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk beside his
+father's chair.
+
+"See here, Judge," he said, "what are you driving at?  Out with it."
+
+"When are you--going back West?" asked Mr. Vane.
+
+Austen did not answer at once, but looked down into his father's
+inscrutable face.
+
+"Do you want to get rid of me?" he said.
+
+"Sowed enough wild oats, haven't you?" inquired the father.
+
+"I've sowed a good many," Austen admitted.
+
+"Why not settle down?"
+
+"I haven't yet met the lady, Judge," replied his son.
+
+"Couldn't support her if you had," said Mr. Vane.
+
+"Then it's fortunate," said Austen, resolved not to be the necessary
+second in a quarrel.  He knew his father, and perceived that these
+preliminary and caustic openings of his were really olive branches.
+
+"Sometimes I think you might as well be in that outlandish country, for
+all I see of you," said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"You ought to retire from business and try fishing," his son suggested.
+
+The Honourable Hilary sometimes smiled.
+
+"You've got a good brain, Austen, and what's the use of wasting it
+chasing cattle and practising with a pistol on your fellow-beings?  You
+won't have much trouble in getting admitted to the bar.  Come into the
+office."
+
+Austen did not answer at once.  He suspected that it had cost his father
+not a little to make these advances.
+
+"Do you believe you and I could get along, Judge?  How long do you think
+it would last?"
+
+"I've considered that some," answered the Honourable Hilary, "but I won't
+last a great while longer myself."
+
+"You're as sound as a bronco," declared Austen, patting him.
+
+"I never was what you might call dissipated," agreed Mr. Vane, "but men
+don't go on forever.  I've worked hard all my life, and got where I am,
+and I've always thought I'd like to hand it on to you.  It's a position
+of honour and trust, Austen, and one of which any lawyer might be proud."
+
+"My ambition hasn't run in exactly that channel," said his son.
+
+"Didn't know as you had any precise ambition," responded the Honourable
+Hilary, "but I never heard of a man refusing to be chief counsel for a
+great railroad.  I don't say you can be, mind, but I say with work and
+brains it's as easy for the son of Hilary Vane as for anybody else."
+
+"I don't know much about the duties of such a position," said Austen,
+laughing, "but at all events I shall have time to make up my mind how to
+answer Mr. Flint when he comes to me with the proposal.  To speak
+frankly, Judge, I hadn't thought of spending the whole of what might
+otherwise prove a brilliant life in Ripton."
+
+The Honourable Hilary smiled again, and then he grunted.
+
+"I tell you what I'll do," he said; "you come in with me and agree to
+stay five years.  If you've done well for yourself, and want to go to New
+York or some large place at the end of that time, I won't hinder you.
+But I feel it my duty to say, if you don't accept my offer, no son of
+mine shall inherit what I've laid up by hard labour.  It's against
+American doctrine, and it's against my principles.  You can go back to
+Pepper County and get put in jail, but you can't say I haven't warned you
+fairly."
+
+"You ought to leave your fortune to the railroad, Judge," said Austen.
+"Generations to come would bless your name if you put up a new station in
+Ripton and built bridges over Bunker Hill grade crossing and the other
+one on Heath Street where Nic Adams was killed last month.  I shouldn't
+begrudge a cent of the money."
+
+"I suppose I was a fool to talk to you," said the Honourable Hilary,
+getting up.
+
+But his son pushed him down again into the Windsor chair.
+
+"Hold on, Judge," he said, "that was just my way of saying if I accepted
+your offer, it wouldn't be because I yearned after the money.  Thinking
+of it has never kept me awake nights.  Now if you'll allow me to take a
+few days once in a while to let off steam, I'll make a counter proposal,
+in the nature of a compromise."
+
+"What's that?" the Honourable Hilary demanded suspiciously.
+
+"Provided I get admitted to the bar I will take a room in another part of
+this building and pick up what crumbs of practice I can by myself.  Of
+course, sir, I realize that these, if they come at all, will be owing to
+the lustre of your name.  But I should, before I become Mr. Flint's
+right-hand man, like to learn to walk with my own legs."
+
+The speech pleased the Honourable Hilary, and he put out his hand.
+
+"It's a bargain, Austen," he said.
+
+"I don't mind telling you now, Judge, that when I left the West I left it
+for good, provided you and I could live within a decent proximity.  And I
+ought to add that I always intended going into the law after I'd had a
+fling.  It isn't fair to leave you with the impression that this is a
+sudden determination.  Prodigals don't become good as quick as all that."
+
+Ripton caught its breath a second time the day Austen hired a law office,
+nor did the surprise wholly cease when, in one season, he was admitted to
+the bar, for the proceeding was not in keeping with the habits and
+customs of prodigals.  Needless to say, the practice did not immediately
+begin to pour in, but the little office rarely lacked a visitor, and
+sometimes had as many as five or six.  There was an irresistible
+attraction about that room, and apparently very little law read there,
+though sometimes its occupant arose and pushed the visitors into the hall
+and locked the door, and opened the window at the top to let the smoke
+out.  Many of the Honourable Hilary's callers preferred the little room
+in the far corridor to the great man's own office.
+
+These visitors of the elder Mr. Vane's, as has been before hinted, were
+not all clients.  Without burdening the reader too early with a treatise
+on the fabric of a system, suffice it to say that something was
+continually going on that was not law; and gentlemen came and went--fat
+and thin, sharp-eyed and red-faced--who were neither clients nor lawyers.
+These were really secretive gentlemen, though most of them had a hail-
+fellow-well-met manner and a hearty greeting, but when they talked to the
+Honourable Hilary it was with doors shut, and even then they sat very
+close to his ear.  Many of them preferred now to wait in Austen's office
+instead of the anteroom, and some of them were not so cautious with the
+son of Hilary Vane that they did not let drop certain observations to set
+him thinking.  He had a fanciful if somewhat facetious way of calling
+them by feudal titles which made them grin.
+
+"How is the Duke of Putnam this morning?" he would ask of the gentleman
+of whom the Ripton Record would frequently make the following
+announcement: "Among the prominent residents of Putnam County in town
+this week was the Honourable Brush Bascom."
+
+The Honourable Brush and many of his associates, barons and earls, albeit
+the shrewdest of men, did not know exactly how to take the son of Hilary
+Vane.  This was true also of the Honourable Hilary himself, who did not
+wholly appreciate the humour in Austen's parallel of the feudal system.
+Although Austen had set up for himself, there were many ways--not legal--
+in which the son might have been helpful to the father, but the
+Honourable Hilary hesitated, for some unformulated reason, to make use of
+him; and the consequence was that Mr. Hamilton Tooting and other young
+men of a hustling nature in the Honourable Hilary's office found that
+Austen's advent did not tend greatly to lighten a certain class of their
+labours.  In fact, father and son were not much nearer in spirit than
+when ode had been in Pepper County and the other in Ripton.  Caution and
+an instinct which senses obstacles are characteristics of gentlemen in
+Mr. Vane's business.
+
+So two years passed,--years liberally interspersed with expeditions into
+the mountains and elsewhere, and nights spent in the company of Tom
+Gaylord and others.  During this period Austen was more than once
+assailed by the temptation to return to the free life of Pepper County,
+Mr. Blodgett having completely recovered now, and only desiring vengeance
+of a corporal nature.  But a bargain was a bargain, and Austen Vane stuck
+to his end of it, although he had now begun to realize many aspects of a
+situation which he had not before suspected.  He had long foreseen,
+however, that the time was coming when a serious disagreement with his
+father was inevitable.  In addition to the difference in temperament,
+Hilary Vane belonged to one generation and Austen to another.
+
+It happened, as do so many incidents which tend to shape a life, by a
+seeming chance.  It was a Tune evening, and there had been a church
+sociable and basket picnic during the day in a grove in the town of
+Mercer, some ten miles south of Ripton.  The grove was bounded on one
+side by the railroad track, and merged into a thick clump of second
+growth and alders where there was a diagonal grade crossing.  The picnic
+was over and the people preparing to go home when they were startled by a
+crash, followed by the screaming of brakes as a big engine flew past the
+grove and brought a heavy train to a halt some distance down the grade.
+The women shrieked and dropped the dishes they were washing, and the men
+left their horses standing and ran to the crossing and then stood for the
+moment helpless, in horror at the scene which met their eyes.  The wagon
+of one--of their own congregation was in splinters, a man (a farmer of
+the neighbourhood) lying among the alders with what seemed a mortal
+injury.  Amid the lamentations and cries for some one to go to Mercer
+Village for the doctor a young man drove up rapidly and sprang out of a
+buggy, trusting to some one to catch his horse, pushed, through the ring
+of people, and bent over the wounded farmer.  In an instant he had
+whipped out a knife, cut a stick from one of the alders, knotted his
+handkerchief around the man's leg, ran the stick through the knot, and
+twisted the handkerchief until the blood ceased to flow.  They watched
+him, paralyzed, as the helpless in this world watch the capable, and
+before he had finished his task the train crew and some passengers began
+to arrive.
+
+"Have you a doctor aboard, Charley?" the young man asked.
+
+"No," answered the conductor, who had been addressed; "my God, not one,
+Austen."
+
+"Back up your train," said Austen, "and stop your baggage car here.  And
+go to the grove," he added to one of the picnickers, "and bring four or
+five carriage cushions.  And you hold this."
+
+The man beside him took the tourniquet, as he was bid.  Austen Vane drew
+a note-book from his pocket.
+
+"I want this man's name and address," he said, "and the names and
+addresses of every person here, quickly."
+
+He did not lift his voice, but the man who had taken charge of such a
+situation was not to be denied.  They obeyed him, some eagerly, some
+reluctantly, and by that time the train had backed down and the cushions
+had arrived.  They laid these on the floor of the baggage car and lifted
+the man on to them.  His name was Zeb Meader, and he was still
+insensible.  Austen Vane, with a peculiar set look upon his face, sat
+beside him all the way into Ripton.  He spoke only once, and that was to
+tell the conductor to telegraph from Avalon to have the ambulance from
+St. Mary's Hospital meet the train at Ripton.
+
+The next day Hilary Vane, returning from one of his periodical trips to
+the northern part of the State, invaded his son's office.
+
+"What's this they tell me about your saving a man's life?" he asked,
+sinking into one of the vacant chairs and regarding Austen with his
+twinkling eyes.
+
+"I don't know what they tell you," Austen answered.  "I didn't do
+anything but get a tourniquet on his leg and have him put on the train."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and continued to regard his son.  Then he
+cut a piece of Honey Dew.
+
+"Looks bad, does it?" he said.
+
+"Well," replied Austen, "it might have been done better.  It was bungled.
+In a death-trap as cleverly conceived as that crossing, with a down grade
+approaching it, they ought to have got the horse too."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted again, and inserted the Honey Dew.  He
+resolved to ignore the palpable challenge in this remark, which was in
+keeping with this new and serious mien in Austen.
+
+"Get the names of witnesses?" was his next question.
+
+"I took particular pains to do so."
+
+"Hand 'em over to Tooting.  What kind of man is this Meagre?"
+
+"He is rather meagre now," said Austen, smiling a little.  "His name's
+Meader."
+
+"Is he likely to make a fuss?"
+
+"I think he is," said Austen.
+
+"Well," said the Honourable Hilary, "we must have Ham Tooting hurry
+'round and fix it up with him as soon as he can talk, before one of these
+cormorant lawyers gets his claw in him."
+
+Austen said nothing, and after some desultory conversation, in which he
+knew how to indulge when he wished to conceal the fact that he was
+baffled, the Honourable Hilary departed.  That student of human nature,
+Mr. Hamilton Tooting, a young man of a sporting appearance and a free
+vocabulary, made the next attempt.  It is a characteristic of Mr.
+Tooting's kind that, in their efforts to be genial, they often use an
+awkward diminutive of their friends' names.
+
+"Hello, Aust," said Mr. Tooting, "I dropped in to get those witnesses in
+that Meagre accident, before I forget it."
+
+"I think I'll keep 'em," said Austen, making a note out of the Revised
+Statutes.
+
+"Oh, all right, all right," said Mr. Tooting, biting off a piece of his
+cigar.  "Going to handle the case yourself, are you?"
+
+"I may."
+
+"I'm just as glad to have some of 'em off my hands, and this looks to me
+like a nasty one.  I don't like those Mercer people.  The last farmer
+they ran over there raised hell."
+
+"I shouldn't blame this one if he did, if he ever gets well enough," said
+Austen.  Young Mr. Tooting paused with a lighted match halfway to his
+cigar and looked at Austen shrewdly, and then sat down on the desk very
+close to him.
+
+"Say, Aust, it sometimes sickens a man to have to buy these fellows off.
+What?  Poor devils, they don't get anything like what they ought to get,
+do they?  Wait till you see how the Railroad Commission'll whitewash that
+case.  It makes a man want to be independent.  What?"
+
+"This sounds like virtue, Ham."
+
+"I've often thought, too," said Mr. Tooting, "that a man could make more
+money if he didn't wear the collar."
+
+"But not sleep as well, perhaps," said Austen.
+
+"Say, Aust, you're not on the level with me."
+
+"I hope to reach that exalted plane some day, Ham."
+
+"What's got into you?" demanded the usually clear-headed Mr. Tooting, now
+a little bewildered.
+
+"Nothing, yet," said Austen, "but I'm thinking seriously of having a
+sandwich and a piece of apple pie.  Will you come along?"
+
+They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile
+brain for some excuse to reopen the subject.  Despairing of that, he
+decided that any subject would do.
+
+"That Humphrey Crewe up at Leith is smart--smart as paint," he remarked.
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"I've seen him," said Austen.  "He's a young man, isn't he?"
+
+"And natty.  He knows a thing or two for a millionaire that don't have to
+work, and he runs that place of his right up to the handle.  You ought to
+hear him talk about the tariff, and national politics.  I was passing
+there the other day, and he was walking around among the flowerbeds.
+'Ain't your name Tooting?' he hollered.  "I almost fell out of the
+buggy."
+
+"What did he want?" asked Austen, curiously.  Mr. Tooting winked.
+
+"Say, those millionaires are queer, and no mistake.  You'd think a fellow
+that only had to cut coupons wouldn't be lookin' for another job,
+wouldn't you?  He made me hitch my horse, and had me into his study, as
+he called it, and gave me a big glass of whiskey and soda.  A fellow with
+buttons and a striped vest brought it on tiptoe.  Then this Crewe gave me
+a long yellow cigar with a band on it and told me what the State needed,-
+-macadam roads, farmers' institutes, forests, and God knows what.  I told
+him all he had to do was to get permission from old man Flint, and he
+could have 'em."
+
+"What did he say to that?"
+
+"He said Flint was an intimate friend of his.  Then he asked me a whole
+raft of questions about fellows in the neighbourhood I didn't know he'd
+ever heard of.  Say, he wants to go from Leith to the Legislature."
+
+"He can go for all I care," said Austen, as he pushed open the door of
+the restaurant.
+
+For a few days Mr. Meader hung between life and death.  But he came of a
+stock which had for generations thrust its roots into the crevices of
+granite, and was not easily killed by steam-engines.  Austen Vane called
+twice, and then made an arrangement with young Dr. Tredway (one of the
+numerous Ripton Tredways whose money had founded the hospital) that he
+was to see Mr. Meader as soon as he was able to sustain a conversation.
+Dr. Tredway, by the way, was a bachelor, and had been Austen's companion
+on many a boisterous expedition.
+
+When Austen, in response to the doctor's telephone message, stood over
+the iron bed in the spick-and-span men's ward of St. Mary's, a wave of
+that intense feeling he had experienced at the accident swept over him.
+The farmer's beard was overgrown, and the eyes looked up at him as from
+caverns of suffering below the bandage.  They were shrewd eyes, however,
+and proved that Mr. Meader had possession of the five senses--nay, of the
+six.  Austen sat down beside the bed.
+
+"Dr. Tredway tells me you are getting along finely," he said.
+
+"No thanks to the railrud," answered Mr. Meader; "they done their best."
+
+"Did you hear any whistle or any bell?" Austen asked.
+
+"Not a sound," said Mr. Meader; "they even shut off their steam on that
+grade."
+
+Austen Vane, like most men who are really capable of a deep sympathy, was
+not an adept at expressing it verbally.  Moreover, he knew enough of his
+fellow-men to realize that a Puritan farmer would be suspicious of
+sympathy.  The man had been near to death himself, was compelled to spend
+part of the summer, his bread-earning season, in a hospital, and yet no
+appeal or word of complaint had crossed his lips.
+
+"Mr. Meader," said Austen, "I came over here to tell you that in my
+opinion you are entitled to heavy damages from the railroad, and to
+advise you not to accept a compromise.  They will send some one to you
+and offer you a sum far below that which you ought in justice to receive,
+You ought to fight this case."
+
+"How am I going to pay a lawyer, with a mortgage on my farm?" demanded
+Mr. Meader.
+
+"I'm a lawyer," said Austen, "and if you'll take me, I'll defend you
+without charge."
+
+"Ain't you the son of Hilary Vane?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I've heard of him a good many times," said Mr. Meader, as if to ask what
+man had not.  "You're railroad, ain't ye?"
+
+Mr. Meader gazed long and thoughtfully into the young man's face, and the
+suspicion gradually faded from the farmer's blue eyes.
+
+"I like your looks," he said at last.  "I guess you saved my life.  I'm--
+I'm much obliged to you."
+
+When Mr. Tooting arrived later in the day, he found Mr. Meader willing to
+listen, but otherwise strangely non-committal.  With native shrewdness,
+the farmer asked him what office he came from, but did not confide in Mr.
+Tooting the fact that Mr. Vane's son had volunteered to wring more money
+from Mr. Vane's client than Mr. Tooting offered him.  Considerably
+bewildered, that gentleman left the hospital to report the affair to the
+Honourable Hilary, who, at intervals during the afternoon, found himself
+relapsing into speculation.
+
+Inside of a somewhat unpromising shell, Mr. Zeb Meader was a human being,
+and no mean judge of men and motives.  As his convalescence progressed,
+Austen Vane fell into the habit of dropping in from time to time to chat
+with him, and gradually was rewarded by many vivid character sketches of
+Mr. Meader's neighbours in Mercer and its vicinity.  One afternoon, when
+Austen came into the ward, he found at Mr. Meader's bedside a basket of
+fruit which looked too expensive and tempting to have come from any
+dealer's in Ripton.
+
+"A lady came with that," Mr. Meader explained.  "I never was popular
+before I was run over by the cars.  She's be'n here twice.  When she
+fetched it to-day, I kind of thought she was up to some, game, and I
+didn't want to take it."
+
+"Up to some game?" repeated Austen.
+
+"Well, I don't know," continued Mr. Meader, thoughtfully, "the woman here
+tells me she comes regular in the summer time to see sick folks, but from
+the way she made up to me I had an idea that she wanted something.  But l
+don't know.  Thought I'd ask you.  You see, she's railrud."
+
+"Railroad!"
+
+"She's Flint's daughter."
+
+Austen laughed.
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that," he said.  "If Mr. Flint sent his daughter
+with fruit to everybody his railroad injures, she wouldn't have time to
+do anything else.  I doubt if Mr. Flint ever heard of your case."
+
+Mr. Meader considered this, and calculated there was something in it.
+
+"She was a nice, common young lady, and cussed if she didn't make me
+laugh, she has such a funny way of talkin'.  She wanted to know all about
+you."
+
+"What did she want to know?" Austen exclaimed, not unnaturally.
+
+"Well, she wanted to know about the accident, and I told her how you druv
+up and screwed that thing around my leg and backed the train down.  She
+was a good deal took with that."
+
+"I think you are inclined to make too much of it," said Austen.
+
+Three days later, as he was about to enter the ward, Mr. Meader being now
+the only invalid there, he heard a sound which made him pause in the
+doorway.  The sound was feminine laughter of a musical quality that
+struck pleasantly on Austen's ear.  Miss Victoria Flint was sated beside
+Mr. Meader's bed, and qualified friendship had evidently been replaced by
+intimacy since Austen's last visit, for Mr. Meader was laughing, too.
+
+"And now I'm quite sure you have missed your vocation, Mr. Meader," said
+Victoria.  "You would have made a fortune on the stage."
+
+"Me a play-actor!" exclaimed the invalid.  "How much wages do they git?"
+
+"Untold sums," she declared, "if they can talk like you."
+
+"He kind of thought that story funny--same as you," Mr. Meader ruminated,
+and glanced up.  "Drat me," he remarked, "if he ain't a-comin' now!
+I callated he'd run acrost you sometime."
+
+Victoria raised her eyes, sparkling with humour, and they met Austen's.
+
+"We was just talkin' about you," cried Mr. Meader, cordially; "come right
+in."  He turned to Victoria.  "I want to make you acquainted," he said,
+"with Austen Vane."
+
+"And won't you tell him who I am, Mr. Meader?" said Victoria.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Meader, apologetically, "that was stupid of me--wahn't
+it?  But I callated he'd know.  She's the daughter of the railrud
+president--the 'one that was askin' about you."
+
+There was an instant's pause, and the colour stole into Victoria's
+cheeks.  Then she glanced at Austen and bit her lip-and laughed.  Her
+laughter was contagious.
+
+"I suppose I shall have to confess that you have inspired my curiosity,
+Mr. Vane," she said.
+
+Austen's face was sunburned, but it flushed a more vivid red under the
+tan.  It is needless to pretend that a man of his appearance and
+qualities had reached the age of thirty-two without having listened to
+feminine comments of which he was the exclusive subject.  In this remark
+of Victoria's, or rather in the manner in which she made it, he
+recognized a difference.
+
+"It is a tribute, then, to the histrionic talents of Mr. Meader, of which
+you were speaking," he replied laughingly.
+
+Victoria glanced at him with interest as he looked down at Mr. Meader.
+
+"And how is it to-day, Zeb?" he said.
+
+"It ain't so bad as it might be--with sech folks as her and you araound,"
+admitted Mr. Meader.  "I'd almost agree to get run over again.  She was
+askin' about you, and that's a fact, and I didn't slander you, neither.
+But I never callated to comprehend wimmen-folks."
+
+"Now, Mr. Meader," said Victoria, reprovingly, but there were little
+creases about her eyes, "don't be a fraud."
+
+"It's true as gospel," declared the invalid; "they always got the better
+of me.  I had one of 'em after me once, when I was young and prosperin'
+some."
+
+"And yet you have survived triumphant," she exclaimed.
+
+"There wahn't none of 'em like you," said Mr. Meader, "or it might have
+be'n different."
+
+Again her eyes irresistibly sought Austen's,--as though to share with him
+the humour of this remark,--and they laughed together.  Her colour, so
+sensitive, rose again, but less perceptibly this time.  Then she got up.
+
+"That's unfair, Mr. Meader!" she protested.
+
+"I'll leave it to Austen," said Mr. Meader, "if it ain't probable.  He'd
+ought to know."
+
+In spite of a somewhat natural embarrassment, Austen could not but
+acknowledge to himself that Mr. Meader was right.  With a womanly
+movement which he thought infinitely graceful, Victoria leaned over the
+bed.
+
+"Mr. Meader," she said, "I'm beginning to think it's dangerous for me to
+come here twice a week to see you, if you talk this way.  And I'm not a
+bit surprised that that woman didn't get the better of you."
+
+"You hain't a-goin'!" he exclaimed.  "Why, I callated--"
+
+"Good-by," she said quickly; "I'm glad to see that you are doing so
+well."  She raised her head and looked at Austen in a curious,
+inscrutable way.  "Good-by, Mr. Vane," she said; "I--I hope Mr. Blodgett
+has recovered."
+
+Before he could reply she had vanished, and he was staring at the empty
+doorway.  The reference to the unfortunate Mr. Blodgett, after taking his
+breath away, aroused in him an intense curiosity betraying, as it did, a
+certain knowledge of past events in his life in the hitherto unknown
+daughter of Augustus interest could she have in him?  Such a Flint.  What
+question, from similar sources, has heightened the pulse of young men
+from time immemorial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"TIMEO DANAOS"
+
+The proverbial little birds that carry news and prophecies through the
+air were evidently responsible for an official-looking letter which
+Austen received a few mornings later.  On the letter-head was printed
+"The United Northeastern Railroads," and Mr. Austen Vane was informed
+that, by direction of the president, the enclosed was sent to him in an
+entirely complimentary sense.  "The enclosed" was a ticket of red
+cardboard, and its face informed him that he might travel free for the
+rest of the year.  Thoughtfully turning it over, he read on the back the
+following inscription:--
+
+"It is understood that this pass is accepted by its recipient as a
+retainer."
+
+Austen stared at it and whistled.  Then he pushed back his chair, with
+the pass in his hand, and hesitated.  He seized a pen and wrote a few
+lines: "Dear sir, I beg to return the annual pass over the Northeastern
+Railroads with which you have so kindly honoured me"--when he suddenly
+changed his mind again, rose, and made his way through the corridors to
+his father's office.  The Honourable Hilary was absorbed in his daily
+perusal of the Guardian.
+
+"Judge," he asked, "is Mr. Flint up at his place this week?"
+
+The Honourable Hilary coughed.
+
+"He arrived yesterday on the three.  Er--why?"
+
+"I wanted to go up and thank him for this," his son answered, holding up
+the red piece of cardboard.  "Mr. Flint is a very thoughtful man."
+
+The Honourable Hilary tried to look unconcerned, and succeeded.
+
+"Sent you an annual, has he?  Er--I don't know as I'd bother him
+personally, Austen.  Just a pleasant note of acknowledgment."
+
+"I don't flatter myself that my achievements in the law can be
+responsible for it," said Austen.  "The favour must be due to my
+relationship with his eminent chief counsel."
+
+Hilary Vane's keen eyes rested on his son for an instant.  Austen was
+more than ever an enigma to him.
+
+"I guess relationship hasn't got much to do with business," he replied.
+"You have be'n doing--er--better than I expected."
+
+"Thank you, Judge," said Austen, quietly.  "I don't mind saying that I
+would rather have your approbation than--this more substantial
+recognition of merit."
+
+The Honourable Hilary's business was to deal with men, and by reason of
+his ability in so doing he had made a success in life.  He could judge
+motives more than passably well, and play upon weaknesses.  But he left
+Austen's presence that morning vaguely uneasy, with a sense of having
+received from his own son an initial defeat at a game of which he was a
+master.  Under the excuse of looking up some precedents, he locked his
+doors to all comers for two hours, and paced his room.  At one moment he
+reproached himself for not having been frank; for not having told Austen
+roundly that this squeamishness about a pass was unworthy of a strong man
+of affairs; yes, for not having revealed to him the mysteries of railroad
+practice from the beginning.  But frankness was not an ingredient of the
+Honourable Hilary's nature, and Austen was not the kind of man who would
+accept a hint and a wink.  Hilary Vane had formless forebodings, and
+found himself for once in his life powerless to act.
+
+The cost of living in Ripton was not so high that Austen Vane could not
+afford to keep a horse and buggy.  The horse, which he tended himself,
+was appropriately called Pepper; Austen had found him in the hills, and
+he was easily the finest animal in Ripton: so good, in fact, that Mr.
+Humphrey Crewe (who believed he had an eye for horses) had peremptorily
+hailed Austen from a motorcar and demanded the price, as was Mr. Crewe's
+wont when he saw a thing he desired.  He had been somewhat surprised and
+not inconsiderably offended by the brevity and force of the answer which
+he had received.
+
+On the afternoon of the summer's day in which Austen had the conversation
+with his father just related, Pepper was trotting at a round clip through
+the soft and shady wood roads toward the town of Tunbridge; the word
+"town" being used in the New England sense, as a piece of territory about
+six miles by six.  The fact that automobiles full of laughing people from
+Leith hummed by occasionally made no apparent difference to Pepper, who
+knew only the master hand on the reins; the reality that the wood roads
+were climbing great hills the horse did not seem to feel.  Pepper knew
+every lane and by-path within twenty miles of Ripton, and exhibited such
+surprise as a well-bred horse may when he was slowed down at length and
+turned into a hard, blue-stone driveway under a strange granite arch with
+the word "Fairview" cut in Gothic letters above it, and two great lamps
+in wrought-iron brackets at the sides.  It was Austen who made a note of
+the gratings over the drains, and of the acres of orderly forest in a
+mysterious and seemingly enchanted realm.  Intimacy with domains was new
+to him, and he began to experience an involuntary feeling of restraint
+which was new to him likewise, and made him chafe in spite of himself.
+The estate seemed to be the visible semblance of a power which troubled
+him.
+
+Shortly after passing an avenue neatly labelled "Trade's Drive" the road
+wound upwards through a ravine the sides of which were covered with a
+dense shrubbery which had the air of having always been there, and yet
+somehow looked expensive.  At the top of the ravine was a sharp curve;
+and Austen, drawing breath, found himself swung, as it were, into space,
+looking off across miles of forest-covered lowlands to an ultramarine
+mountain in the hazy south,--Sawanec.  As if in obedience to a telepathic
+command of his master, Pepper stopped.
+
+Drinking his fill of this scene, Austen forgot an errand which was not
+only disagreeable, but required some fortitude for its accomplishment.
+The son had this in common with the Honourable Hilary--he hated heroics;
+and the fact that the thing smacked of heroics was Austen's only
+deterrent.  And then there was a woman in this paradise!  These gradual
+insinuations into his revery at length made him turn.  A straight avenue
+of pear-shaped, fifteen-year-old maples led to the house, a massive
+colonial structure of wood that stretched across the shelf; and he had
+tightened the reins and started courageously up the avenue when he
+perceived that it ended in a circle on which there was no sign of a
+hitching-post.  And, worse than this, on the balconied, uncovered porch
+which he would have to traverse to reach the doorway he saw the sheen and
+glimmer of women's gowns grouped about wicker tables, and became aware
+that his approach was the sole object of the scrutiny of an afternoon tea
+party.
+
+As he reached the circle it was a slight relief to learn that Pepper was
+the attraction.  No horse knew better than Pepper when he was being
+admired, and he arched his neck and lifted his feet and danced in the
+sheer exhilaration of it.  A smooth-faced, red-cheeked gentleman in gray
+flannels leaned over the balustrade and made audible comments in a
+penetrating voice which betrayed the fact that he was Mr. Humphrey Crewe.
+
+"Saw him on the street in Ripton last year.  Good hock action, hasn't
+he?--that's rare in trotters around here.  Tried to buy him.  Feller
+wouldn't sell.  His name's Vane--he's drivin' him now."
+
+A lady of a somewhat commanding presence was beside him.  She was perhaps
+five and forty, her iron-gray hair was dressed to perfection, her figure
+all that Parisian art could make it, and she was regarding Austen with
+extreme deliberation through the glasses which she had raised to a high-
+bridged nose.
+
+"Politics is certainly your career, Humphrey," she remarked, "you have
+such a wonderful memory for faces.  I don't see how he does it, do you,
+Alice?" she demanded of a tall girl beside her, who was evidently her
+daughter, but lacked her personality.
+
+"I don't know," said Alice.
+
+"It's because I've been here longer than anybody else, Mrs. Pomfret,"
+answered Mr. Crewe, not very graciously, "that's all.  Hello."  This last
+to Austen.
+
+"Hello," said Austen.
+
+"Who do you want to see?" inquired Mr. Crewe, with the admirable tact for
+which he was noted.
+
+Austen looked at him for the first time.
+
+"Anybody who will hold my horse," he answered quietly.
+
+By this time the conversation had drawn the attention of the others at
+the tables, and one or two smiled at Austen's answer.  Mrs. Flint, with a
+"Who is it?" arose to repel a social intrusion.  She was an overdressed
+lady, inclining to embonpoint, but traces of the Rose of Sharon were
+still visible.
+
+"Why don't you drive 'round to the stables?" suggested Mr. Crewe, unaware
+of a smile.
+
+Austen did not answer.  He was, in fact, looking towards the doorway, and
+the group on the porch were surprised to see a gleam of mirthful
+understanding start in his eyes.  An answering gleam was in Victoria's,
+who had at that moment, by a singular coincidence, come out of the house.
+She came directly down the steps and out on the gravel, and held her hand
+to him in the buggy, and he flushed with pleasure as he grasped it.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said.  "I am so glad you have called.
+Humphrey, just push the stable button, will you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe obeyed with no very good grace, while the tea-party went back
+to their seats.  Mrs. Flint supposed he had come to sell Victoria the
+horse; while Mrs. Pomfret, who had taken him in from crown to boots,
+remarked that he looked very much like a gentleman.
+
+"I came to see your father for a few moments--on business," Austen
+explained.
+
+She lifted her face to his with a second searching look.
+
+"I'll take you to him," she said.
+
+By this time a nimble groom had appeared from out o a shrubbery path and
+seized Pepper's head.  Austen alighted and followed Victoria into a
+great, cool hallway, and through two darkened rooms, bewilderingly
+furnished and laden with the scent of flowers, into a narrow passage
+beyond.  She led the way simply, not speaking, and her silence seemed to
+betoken the completeness of an understanding between them, as of a long
+acquaintance.
+
+In a plain white-washed room, behind a plain oaken desk, sat Mr. Flint--a
+plain man.  Austen thought he would have known him had he seen him on the
+street.  The other things in the room were letter-files, a safe, a long-
+distance telephone, and a thin private secretary with a bend in his back.
+Mr. Flint looked up from his desk, and his face, previously bereft of
+illumination, lighted when he saw his daughter.  Austen liked that in
+him.
+
+"Well, Vic, what is it now?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Austen Vane to see you," said Victoria, and with a quick glance at
+Austen she left him standing on the threshold.  Mr. Flint rose.  His eyes
+were deep-set in a square, hard head, and he appeared to be taking Austen
+in without directly looking at him; likewise, one felt that Mr. Flint's
+handshake was not an absolute gift of his soul.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?  I don't remember ever to have had the pleasure
+of seeing you, although your father and I have been intimately connected
+for many years."
+
+So the president's manner was hearty, but not the substance.  It came,
+Austen thought, from a rarity of meeting with men on a disinterested
+footing; and he could not but wonder how Mr. Flint would treat the angels
+in heaven if he ever got there, where there were no franchises to be had.
+Would he suspect them of designs upon his hard won harp and halo?  Austen
+did not dislike Mr. Flint; the man's rise, his achievements, his
+affection for his daughter, he remembered.  But he was also well aware
+that Mr. Flint had thrown upon him the onus of the first move in a game
+which the railroad president was used to playing every day.  The dragon
+was on his home ground and had the choice of weapons.
+
+"I do not wish to bother you long," said Austen.
+
+"No bother," answered Mr. Flint, "no bother to make the acquaintance of
+the son of my old friend, Hilary Vane.  Sit down--sit down.  And while I
+don't believe any man should depend upon his father to launch him in the
+world, yet it must be a great satisfaction to you, Mr. Vane, to have such
+a father.  Hilary Vane and I have been intimately associated for many
+years, and my admiration for him has increased with every year.  It is to
+men of his type that the prosperity, the greatness, of this nation is
+largely due,--conservative, upright, able, content to confine himself to
+the difficult work for which he is so eminently fitted, without
+spectacular meddling in things in which he can have no concern.
+Therefore I welcome the opportunity to know you, sir, for I understand
+that you have settled down to follow in his footsteps and that you will
+make a name for yourself.  I know the independence of young men--I was
+young once myself.  But after all, Mr. Vane, experience is the great
+teacher, and perhaps there is some little advice which an old man can
+give you that may be of service.  As your father's son, it is always at
+your disposal.  Have a cigar."
+
+The thin secretary continued to flit about the room, between the letter-
+files and the desk.  Austen had found it infinitely easier to shoot Mr.
+Blodgett than to engage in a duel with the president of the United
+Railroad.
+
+"I smoke a pipe," he said.
+
+"Too many young men smoke cigars--and those disgusting cigarettes," said
+Mr. Flint, with conviction.  "There are a lot of worthless young men in
+these days, anyhow.  They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke,
+and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and
+cumber the earth generally.  There's a young man named Crewe over at
+Leith, for instance--you may have seen him.  Not that he's dissipated--
+but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the stock market to
+make you sick, and don't know any more about 'em than my farmer."
+
+During this diatribe Austen saw his opening growing smaller and smaller.
+If he did not make a dash for it, it would soon be closed entirely.
+
+"I received a letter this morning, Mr. Flint, enclosing me an annual
+pass--"
+
+"Did Upjohn send you one?" Mr. Flint cut in; "he ought to have done so
+long ago.  It was probably an oversight that he did not, Mr. Vane.  We
+try to extend the courtesies of the road to persons who are looked up to
+in their communities.  The son of Hilary Vane is at all times welcome to
+one."
+
+Mr. Flint paused to light his cigar, and Austen summoned his resolution.
+Second by second it was becoming more and more difficult and seemingly
+more ungracious to return a gift so graciously given, a gift of no
+inconsiderable intrinsic value.  Moreover, Mr. Flint had ingeniously
+contrived almost to make the act, in Austen's eyes, that of a picayune
+upstart.  Who was he to fling back an annual pass in the face of the
+president of the Northeastern Railroads?
+
+"I had first thought of writing you a letter, Mr. Flint," he said, "but
+it seemed to me that, considering your relations with my father, the
+proper thing to do was to come to you and tell you why I cannot take the
+pass."
+
+The thin secretary paused in his filing, and remained motionless with his
+body bent over the drawer.
+
+"Why you cannot take it, Mr. Vane?" said the railroad president.  "I'm
+afraid I don't understand."
+
+"I appreciate the--the kindness," said Austen, "and I will try to
+explain."  He drew the red cardboard from his pocket and turned it over.
+"On the back of this is printed, in small letters, 'It is understood that
+this pass is accepted by the recipient as a retainer.'"
+
+"Well," Mr. Flint interrupted, smiling somewhat blandly, "how much money
+do you think that pass would save an active young lawyer in a year?  Is
+three hundred dollars too much?  Three hundred dollars is not an
+insignificant sum to a young man on the threshold of his practice, is
+it?"
+
+Austen looked at Mr. Flint.
+
+"Any sum is insignificant when it restricts a lawyer from the acceptance
+of just causes, Mr. Flint.  As I understand the matter, it is the custom
+of your railroad to send these passes to the young lawyers of the State
+the moment they begin to give signs of ability.  This past would prevent
+me from serving clients who might have righteous claims against your
+railroads, and--permit me to speak frankly--in my opinion the practice
+tends to make it difficult for poor people who have been injured to get
+efficient lawyers."
+
+"Your own father is retained by the railroad," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"As their counsel," answered Austen.  "I have a pride in my profession,
+Mr. Flint, as no doubt you have in yours.  If I should ever acquire
+sufficient eminence to be sought as counsel for a railroad, I should make
+my own terms with it.  I should not allow its management alone to decide
+upon the value of my retainer, and my services in its behalf would be
+confined strictly to professional ones."
+
+Mr. Flint drummed on the table.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean that I would not engage, for a fee or a pass, to fight the
+political battles of a railroad, or undertake any political manipulation
+in its behalf whatever."
+
+Mr. Flint leaned forward aggressively.
+
+"How long do you think a railroad would pay dividends if it did not adopt
+some means of defending itself from the blackmail politician of the State
+legislatures, Mr. Vane?  The railroads of which I have the honour to be
+president pay a heavy tag in this and other States.  We would pay a much
+heavier one if we didn't take precautions to protect ourselves.  But I do
+not intend to quarrel with you, Mr. Vane," he continued quickly,
+perceiving that Austen was about to answer him, "nor do I wish to leave
+you with the impression that the Northeastern Railroads meddle unduly in
+politics."
+
+Austen knew not how to answer.  He had not gone there to discuss this
+last and really great question with Mr. Flint, but he wondered whether
+the president actually thought him the fledgling he proclaimed.  Austen
+laid his pass on Mr. Flint's desk, and rose.
+
+"I assure you, Mr. Flint, that the spirit which prompted my visit was not
+a contentious one.  I cannot accept the pass, simply because I do not
+wish to be retained."
+
+Mr. Flint eyed him.  There was a mark of dignity, of silent power, on
+this tall scapegrace of a son of Hilary Vane that the railroad president
+had missed at first--probably because he had looked only for the
+scapegrace.  Mr. Flint ardently desired to treat the matter in the
+trifling aspect in which he believed he saw it, to carry it off genially.
+But an instinct not yet formulated told the president that he was face to
+face with an enemy whose potential powers were not to be despised, and he
+bristled in spite of himself.
+
+"There is no statute I know of by which a lawyer can be compelled to
+accept a retainer against his will, Mr. Vane," he replied, and overcame
+himself with an effort.  "But I hope that you will permit me," he added
+in another tone, "as an old friend of your father's and as a man of some
+little experience in the world, to remark that intolerance is a
+characteristic of youth.  I had it in the days of Mr. Isaac D.
+Worthington, whom you do not remember.  I am not addicted to flattery,
+but I hope and believe you have a career before you.  Talk to your
+father.  Study the question on both sides,--from the point of view of men
+who are honestly trying, in the face of tremendous difficulties, to
+protect innocent stockholders as well as to conduct a corporation in the
+interests of the people at large, and for their general prosperity.  Be
+charitable, young man, and judge not hastily."
+
+Years before, when poor Sarah Austen had adorned the end of his table,
+Hilary Vane had raised his head after the pronouncement of grace to
+surprise a look in his wife's eyes which strangely threw him into a white
+heat of anger.  That look (and he at intervals had beheld it afterwards)
+was the true presentment of the soul of the woman whose body was his.  It
+was not--as Hilary Vane thought it--a contempt for the practice of
+thanking one's Maker for daily bread, but a contempt for cant of one who
+sees the humour in cant.  A masculine version of that look Mr. Flint now
+beheld in the eyes of Austen Vane, and the enraging effect on the
+president of the United Railroads was much the same as it had been on his
+chief counsel.  Who was this young man of three and thirty to agitate him
+so?  He trembled, though not visibly, yet took Austen's hand
+mechanically.
+
+"Good day, Mr. Vane," he said;  "Mr. Freeman will help you to find your
+horse."
+
+The thin secretary bowed, and before he reached the door into the passage
+Mr. Flint had opened another at the back of the room and stepped out on a
+close-cropped lawn flooded with afternoon sunlight.  In the passage
+Austen perceived a chair, and in the chair was seated patiently none
+other than Mr. Brush Bascom--political Duke of Putnam.  Mr. Bascom's
+little agate eyes glittered in the dim light.
+
+"Hello, Austen," he said, "since when have you took to comin' here?"
+
+"It's a longer trip from Putnam than from Ripton, Brush," said Austen,
+and passed on, leaving Mr. Bascom with a puzzled mind.  Something very
+like a smile passed over Mr. Freeman's face as he led the way silently
+out of a side entrance and around the house.  The circle of the drive was
+empty, the tea-party had gone--and Victoria.  Austen assured himself that
+her disappearance relieved him: having virtually quarrelled with her
+father, conversation would have been awkward; and yet he looked for her.
+
+They found the buggy and Pepper in the paved courtyard of the stables.
+As Austen took the reins the secretary looked up at him, his mild blue
+eyes burning with an unsuspected fire.  He held out his hand.
+
+"I want to congratulate you," he said.
+
+"What for?" asked Austen, taking the hand in some embarrassment.
+
+"For speaking like a man," said the secretary, and he turned on his heel
+and left him.
+
+This strange action, capping, as it did, a stranger experience, gave
+Austen food for thought as he let Pepper take his own pace down the
+trade's road.  Presently he got back into the main drive where it clung
+to a steep, forest-covered side hill, when his attention was distracted
+by the sight of a straight figure in white descending amidst the foliage
+ahead.  His instinctive action was to pull Pepper down to a walk,
+scarcely analyzing his motives; then he had time, before reaching the
+spot where their paths would cross, to consider and characteristically to
+enjoy the unpropitious elements arrayed against a friendship with
+Victoria Flint.
+
+She halted on a flagstone of the descending path some six feet above the
+roadway, and stood expectant.  The Rose of Sharon, five and twenty years
+before, would have been coy--would have made believe to have done it by
+accident.  But the Rose of Sharon, with all her beauty, would have had no
+attraction for Austen Vane.  Victoria had much of her mother's good
+looks, the figure of a Diana, and her clothes were of a severity and
+correctness in keeping with her style; they merely added to the sum total
+of the effect upon Austen.  Of course he stopped the buggy immediately
+beneath her, and her first question left him without any breath.  No
+woman he had ever known seized the essentials as she did.
+
+"What have you been doing to my father?" she asked.
+
+"Why?" exclaimed Austen.
+
+"Because he's in such a bad temper," said Victoria.  "You must have put
+him in it.  It can't be possible that you came all the way up here to
+quarrel with him.  Nobody ever dares to quarrel with him."
+
+"I didn't come up to quarrel with him," said Austen.
+
+"What's the trouble?" asked Victoria.
+
+The humour of this question was too much for him, and he laughed.
+Victoria's eyes laughed a little, but there was a pucker in her forehead.
+
+"Won't you tell me?" she demanded, "or must I get it out of him?"
+
+"I am afraid," said Austen, slowly, "that you must get it out of him--if
+he hasn't forgotten it."
+
+"Forgotten it, dear old soul!" cried Victoria.  "I met him just now and
+tried to make him look at the new Guernseys, and he must have been
+disturbed quite a good deal when he's cross as a bear to me.  He really
+oughtn't to be upset like that, Mr. Vane, when he comes up here to rest.
+I am afraid that you are rather a terrible person, although you look so
+nice.  Won't you tell me what you did to him?"
+
+Austen was non-plussed.
+
+"Nothing intentional," he answered earnestly, "but it wouldn't be fair to
+your father if I gave you my version of a business conversation that
+passed between us, would it?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said Victoria.  She sat down on the flagstone with her
+elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and looked at him
+thoughtfully.  He knew well enough that a wise general would have
+retreated--horse, foot, and baggage; but Pepper did not stir.
+
+"Do you know," said Victoria, "I have an idea you came up here about Zeb
+Meader."
+
+"Zeb Meader!"
+
+"Yes.  I told my father about him,--how you rescued him, and how you went
+to see him in the hospital, and what a good man he is, and how poor."
+
+"Oh, did you!" exclaimed Austen.
+
+"Yes.  And I told him the accident wasn't Zeb's fault, that the train
+didn't whistle or ring, and that the crossing was a blind one."
+
+"And what did he say?" asked Austen, curiously.
+
+"He said that on a railroad as big as his something of the kind must
+happen occasionally.  And he told me if Zeb didn't make a fuss and act
+foolishly, he would have no cause to regret it."
+
+"And did you tell Zeb?" asked Austen.
+
+"Yes," Victoria admitted, "but I'm sorry I did, now."
+
+"What did Zeb say?"
+
+Victoria laughed in spite of herself, and gave a more or less exact
+though kindly imitation of Mr. Meader's manner.
+
+"He said that wimmen-folks had better stick to the needle and the duster,
+and not go pokin' about law business that didn't concern 'em.  But the
+worst of it was," added Victoria, with some distress, "he won't accept
+any more fruit.  Isn't he silly?  He won't get it into his head that I
+give him the fruit, and not my father.  I suspect that he actually
+believes my father sent me down there to tell him that."
+
+Austen was silent, for the true significance of this apparently obscure
+damage case to the Northeastern Railroads was beginning to dawn on him.
+The public was not in the best of humours towards railroads: there was
+trouble about grade crossings, and Mr. Meader's mishap and the manner of
+his rescue by the son of the corporation counsel had given the accident a
+deplorable publicity.  Moreover, if it had dawned on Augustus Flint that
+the son of Hilary Vane might prosecute the suit, it was worth while
+taking a little pains with Mr. Meader and Mr. Austen Vane.  Certain small
+fires have been known to light world-wide conflagrations.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" asked Victoria.  "It isn't at all polite
+to forget the person you are talking to."
+
+"I haven't forgotten you," said Austen, with a smile.  How could he--
+sitting under her in this manner?
+
+"Besides," said Victoria, mollified, "you haven't an answered my
+question."
+
+"Which question?"
+
+She scrutinized him thoughtfully, and with feminine art made the kind of
+an attack that rarely fails.
+
+"Why are you such an enigma, Mr. Vane?"  she demanded.  "Is it because
+you're a lawyer, or because you've been out West and seen so much of life
+and shot so many people?"
+
+Austen laughed, yet he had tingling symptoms because she showed enough
+interest in him to pronounce him a riddle.  But he instantly became
+serious as the purport of the last charge came home to him.
+
+"I suppose I am looked upon as a sort of Jesse James," he said.  "As it
+happens, I have never shot but one man, and I didn't care very much for
+that."
+
+Victoria got up and came down a step and gave him her hand.  He took it,
+nor was he the first to relinquish the hold; and a colour rose delicately
+in her face as she drew her fingers away.
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you," she said.
+
+"You didn't offend me," he replied quickly.  "I merely wished you to know
+that I wasn't a brigand."
+
+Victoria smiled.
+
+"I really didn't think so--you are much too solemn.  I have to go now,
+and--you haven't told me anything."
+
+She crossed the road and began to descend the path on the other side.
+Twice he glanced back, after he had started, and once surprised her
+poised lightly among the leaves, looking over her shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+The next time Austen visited the hospital Mr. Meader had a surprise in
+store for him.  After passing the time of day, as was his custom, the
+patient freely discussed the motives which had led him to refuse any more
+of Victoria's fruit.
+
+"I hain't got nothing against her," he declared; "I tried to make that
+plain.  She's as nice and common a young lady as I ever see, and I don't
+believe she had a thing to do with it.  But I suspicioned they was up to
+somethin' when she brought them baskets.  And when she give me the
+message from old Flint, I was sure of it."
+
+"Miss Flint was entirely innocent, I'm sure," said Austen, emphatically.
+
+"If I could see old Flint, I'd tell him what I thought of him usin'
+wimmen-folks to save 'em money," said Mr. Meader.  "I knowed she wahn't
+that kind.  And then that other thing come right on top of it."
+
+"What other thing?"
+
+"Say," demanded Mr. Meader, "don't you know?"
+
+"I know nothing," said Austen.
+
+"Didn't know Hilary Vane's be'n here?"
+
+"My father!" Austen ejaculated.
+
+"Gittin' after me pretty warm, so they be.  Want to know what my price is
+now.  But say, I didn't suppose your fayther'd come here without lettin'
+you know."
+
+Austen was silent.  The truth was that for a few moments he could not
+command himself sufficiently to speak.
+
+"He is the chief counsel for the road," he said at length; "I am not
+connected with it."
+
+"I guess you're on the right track.  He's a pretty smooth talker, your
+fayther.  Just dropped in to see how I be, since his son was interested.
+Talked a sight of law gibberish I didn't understand.  Told me I didn't
+have much of a case; said the policy of the railrud was to be liberal,
+and wanted to know what I thought I ought to have."
+
+"Well?" said Austen, shortly.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Mender, "he didn't git a mite of satisfaction out of me.
+I've seen enough of his kind of folks to know how to deal with 'em, and I
+told him so.  I asked him what they meant by sending that slick Mr.
+Tooting 'raound to offer me five hundred dollars.  I said I was willin'
+to trust my case on that crossin' to a jury."
+
+Austen smiled, in spite of his mingled emotions.
+
+"What else did Mr. Vane say?" he asked.
+
+Not a great sight more.  Said a good many folks were foolish enough to
+spend money and go to law when they'd done better to trust to the
+liberality of the railrud.  Liberality!  Adams' widow done well to trust
+their liberality, didn't she?  He wanted to know one more thing, but I
+didn't give him any satisfaction."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you how he got 'raound to it.  Guess he never did,
+quite.  He wanted to know what lawyer was to have my case.  Wahn't none
+of his affair, and I callated if you'd wanted him to know just yet, you'd
+have toad him."
+
+Austen laid his hand on the farmer's, as he rose to go.
+
+"Zeb," he said, "I never expect to have a more exemplary client."
+
+Mr. Mender shot a glance at him.
+
+"Mebbe I spoke a mite too free about your fayther, Austen," he said; "you
+and him seem kind of different."
+
+"The Judge and I understand each other," answered Austen.
+
+He had got as far as the door, when he stopped, swung on his heel, and
+came back to the bedside.
+
+"It's my duty to tell you, Zeb, that in order to hush this thing up they
+may offer you more than you can get from a jury.  In that case I should
+have to advise you to accept."
+
+He was aware that, while he made this statement, Zeb Meader's eyes were
+riveted on him, and he knew that the farmer was weighing him in the
+balance.
+
+"Sell out?" exclaimed Mr. Meader.  "You advise me to sell out?"
+
+Austen did not get angry.  He understood this man and the people from
+which he sprang.
+
+"The question is for you to decide--whether you can get more money by a
+settlement."
+
+"Money!" cried Zeb Meader, "I have found it pretty hard to git, but
+there's some things I won't do for it.  There's a reason why they want
+this case hushed up, the way they've be'n actin'.  I ain't lived in
+Mercer and Putnam County all my life for nothin'.  Hain't I seen 'em run
+their dirty politics there under Brush Bascom for the last twenty-five
+years?  There's no man has an office or a pass in that county but what
+Bascom gives it to him, and Bascom's the railrud tool."  Suddenly Zeb
+raised himself in bed.  "Hev' they be'n tamperin' with you?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Austen, dispassionately.  He had hardly heard what Zeb
+had said; his mind had been going onward.  "Yes.  They sent me an annual
+pass, and I took it back."
+
+Zeb Meader did not speak for a few moments.
+
+"I guess I was a little hasty, Austen," he said at length.
+
+"I might have known you wouldn't sell out.  If you're' willin' to take
+the risk, you tell 'em ten thousand dollars wouldn't tempt me."
+
+"All right, Zeb," said Austen.
+
+He left the hospital and struck out across the country towards the slopes
+of Sawanec, climbed them, and stood bareheaded in the evening light,
+gazing over the still, wide valley northward to the wooded ridges where
+Leith and Fairview lay hidden.  He had come to the parting of the ways of
+life, and while he did not hesitate to choose his path, a Vane
+inheritance, though not dominant, could not fail at such a juncture to
+point out the pleasantness of conformity.  Austen's affection for Hilary
+Vane was real; the loneliness of the elder man appealed to the son, who
+knew that his father loved him in his own way.  He dreaded the wrench
+there.
+
+And nature, persuasive in that quarter, was not to be stilled in a field
+more completely her own.  The memory and suppliance of a minute will
+scarce suffice one of Austen's temperament for a lifetime; and his eyes,
+flying with the eagle high across the valley, searched the velvet folds
+of the ridges, as they lay in infinite shades of green in the level
+light, for the place where the enchanted realm might be.  Just what the
+state of his feelings were at this time towards Victoria Flint is too
+vague--accurately to be painted, but he was certainly not ready to give
+way to the attraction he felt for her.  His sense of humour intervened if
+he allowed himself to dream; there was a certain folly in pursuing the
+acquaintance, all the greater now that he was choosing the path of
+opposition to the dragon.  A young woman, surrounded as she was, could be
+expected to know little of the subtleties of business and political
+morality: let him take Zeb Meader's case, and her loyalty would naturally
+be with her father,--if she thought of Austen Vane at all.
+
+And yet the very contradiction of her name, Victoria joined with Flint,
+seemed to proclaim that she did not belong to her father or to the Rose
+of Sharon.  Austen permitted himself to dwell, as he descended the
+mountain in the gathering darkness, upon the fancy of the springing of a
+generation of ideals from a generation of commerce which boded well for
+the Republic.  And Austen Vane, in common with that younger and travelled
+generation, thought largely in terms of the Republic.  Pepper County and
+Putnam County were all one to him--pieces of his native land.  And as
+such, redeemable.
+
+It was long past the supper hour when he reached the house in Hanover
+Street; but Euphrasia, who many a time in days gone by had fared forth
+into the woods to find Sarah Austen, had his supper hot for him.
+Afterwards he lighted his pipe and went out into the darkness, and
+presently perceived a black figure seated meditatively on the granite
+doorstep.
+
+"Is that you, Judge?" said Austen.
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted in response.
+
+"Be'n on another wild expedition, I suppose."
+
+"I went up Sawanec to stretch my legs a little," Austen answered, sitting
+down beside his father.
+
+"Funny," remarked the Honourable Hilary, "I never had this mania for
+stretchin' my legs after I was grown."
+
+"Well," said Austen, "I like to go into the woods and climb the hills and
+get aired out once in a while."
+
+"I heard of your gettin' aired out yesterday, up Tunbridge way," said the
+Honourable Hilary.
+
+"I supposed you would hear of it," answered Austen.
+
+"I was up there to-day.  Gave Mr. Flint your pass did you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Didn't see fit to mention it to me first--did you?  Said you were going
+up to thank him for it."
+
+Austen considered this.
+
+"You have put me in the wrong, Judge," he replied after a little.  "I
+made that remark ironically.  I I am afraid we cannot agree on the motive
+which prompted me."
+
+"Your conscience a little finer than your father's--is it?"
+
+"No," said Austen, "I don't honestly think it is.  I've thought a good
+deal in the last few years about the difference in our ways of looking at
+things.  I believe that two men who try to be honest may conscientiously
+differ.  But I also believe that certain customs have gradually grown up
+in railroad practice which are more or less to be deplored from the point
+of view of the honour of the profession.  I think they are not perhaps--
+realized even by the eminent men in the law."
+
+"Humph!" said the Honourable Hilary.  But he did not press his son for
+the enumeration of these customs.  After all the years he had disapproved
+of Austen's deeds it seemed strange indeed to be called to account by the
+prodigal for his own.  Could it be that this boy whom he had so often
+chastised took a clearer view of practical morality than himself?  It was
+preposterous.  But why the uneasiness of the past few years?  Why had he
+more than once during that period, for the first time in his life,
+questioned a hitherto absolute satisfaction in his position of chief
+counsel for the Northeastern Railroads?  Why had he hesitated to initiate
+his son into many of the so-called duties of a railroad lawyer?  Austen
+had never verbally arraigned those duties until to-night.
+
+Contradictory as it may seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable
+Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as
+when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of
+Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more
+than ever.  A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride
+made the acknowledgment of possible professional lapses for the benefit
+of his employer not to be thought of.  He therefore assumed the same
+attitude as had Mr. Flint, and forced the burden of explanation upon
+Austen, relying surely on the disinclination of his son to be specific.
+And Austen, considering his relationship, could not be expected to fathom
+these mental processes.
+
+"See here, Judge," he said, greatly embarrassed by the real affection he
+felt, "I don't want to seem like a prig and appear to be sitting in
+judgment upon a man of your experience and position especially since I
+have the honour to be your son, and have made a good deal of trouble by a
+not irreproachable existence.  Since we have begun on the subject,
+however, I think I ought to tell you that I have taken the case of Zeb
+Meader against the Northeastern Railroads."
+
+"Wahn't much need of telling me, was there?" remarked the Honourable
+Hilary, dryly.  "I'd have found it out as soon as anybody else."
+
+"There was this need of telling you," answered Austen, steadily,
+"although I am not in partnership with you, I bear your name.  And in-as-
+much as I am to have a suit against your client, it has occurred to me
+that you would like me to move--elsewhere."
+
+The Honourable Hilary was silent for a long time.
+
+"Want to move--do YOU?  Is that it?"
+
+"Only because my presence may embarrass you."
+
+"That wahn't in the contract," said the Honourable Hilary; "you've got a
+right to take any fool cases you've a mind to.  Folks know pretty well
+I'm not mixed up in 'em."
+
+Austen did not smile; he could well understand his father's animus in
+this matter.  As he looked up at the gable of his old home against the
+stars, he did not find the next sentence any easier.
+
+"And then," he continued, "in taking, a course so obviously against your
+wishes and judgment it occurred to me--well, that I was eating at your
+table and sleeping in your house."
+
+To his son's astonishment, Hilary Vane turned on him almost truculently.
+
+"I thought the time'd come when you'd want to go off again,--gypsying,"
+he cried.
+
+"I'd stay right here in Ripton, Judge.  I believe my work is in this
+State."
+
+The Honour could see through a millstone with a hole in it.  The effect
+of Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the
+one was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up.  And
+yet a growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining
+years in that house should Austen leave it again, never to return.
+
+"I knew you had this Meader business in mind," he said.  "I knew you had
+fanciful notions about--some things.  Never told you I didn't want you
+here, did I?"
+
+"No," said Austen, "but--"
+
+Would have told you if I hadn't wanted you--wouldn't I?"
+
+"I hope so, Judge," said Austen, who understood something of the feeling
+which underlay this brusquenees.  That knowledge made matters all the
+harder for him.
+
+"It was your mother's house--you're entitled to that, anyway," said the
+Honourable Hilary, "but what I want to know is, why you didn't advise
+that eternal fool of a Meader to accept what we offered him.  You'll
+never get a county jury to give as much."
+
+"I did advise him to accept it," answered Austen.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" the Honourable Hilary demanded.
+
+"Well, judge, if you really want my opinion, an honest farmer like Meader
+is suspicious of any corporation which has such zealous and loyal
+retainers as Ham Tooting and Brush Bascom."  And Austen thought with a
+return of the pang which had haunted him at intervals throughout the
+afternoon, that he might almost have added to these names that of Hilary
+Vane.  Certainly Zeb Meader had not spared his father.
+
+"Life," observed the Honourable Hilary, unconsciously using a phrase from
+the 'Book of Arguments,' "is a survival of the fittest."
+
+"How do you define 'the fittest?'" asked Austen.  "Are they the men who
+have the not unusual and certainly not exalted gift of getting money from
+their fellow creatures by the use of any and all weapons that may be at
+hand? who believe the acquisition of wealth to be exempt from the
+practice of morality?  Is Mr. Flint your example of the fittest type to
+exist and survive, or Gladstone or Wilberforce or Emerson or Lincoln?"
+
+"Emerson!" cried the Honourable Hilary, the name standing out in red
+letters before his eyes.  He had never read a line of the philosopher's
+writings, not even the charge to "hitch your wagon to a star" (not in the
+"Book of Arguments").  Sarah Austen had read Emerson in the woods, and
+her son's question sounded so like the unintelligible but unanswerable
+flashes with which the wife had on rare occasions opposed the husband's
+authority that Hilary Vane found his temper getting the best of him--The
+name of Emerson was immutably fixed in his mind as the synonym for
+incomprehensible, foolish habits and beliefs.  "Don't talk Emerson to
+me," he exclaimed.  "And as for Brush Bascom, I've known him for thirty
+years, and he's done as much for the Republican party as any man in this
+State."
+
+This vindication of Mr. Bascom naturally brought to a close a
+conversation which had already continued too long.  The Honourable Hilary
+retired to rest; but--if Austen had known it--not to sleep until the
+small hours of the morning.
+
+It was not until the ensuing spring that the case of Mr. Zebulun Meader
+against the United Northeastern Railroads came up for trial in Bradford,
+the county-seat of Putnam County, and we do not wish to appear to give it
+too great a weight in the annals of the State.  For one thing, the weekly
+newspapers did not mention it; and Mr. Paul Pardriff, when urged to give
+an account of the proceedings in the Ripton Record, said it was a matter
+of no importance, and spent the afternoon writing an editorial about the
+domestic habits of the Aztecs.  Mr. Pardriff, however, had thought the
+matter of sufficient interest personally to attend the trial, and for the
+journey he made use of a piece of green cardboard which he habitually
+carried in his pocket.  The editor of the Bradford Champion did not have
+to use his yellow cardboard, yet his columns may be searched in vain for
+the event.
+
+Not that it was such a great event, one of hundreds of railroad accidents
+that come to court.  The son of Hilary Vane was the plaintiff's counsel;
+and Mr. Meader, although he had not been able to work since his release
+from the hospital, had been able to talk, and the interest taken in the
+case by the average neglected citizen in Putnam proved that the weekly
+newspaper is not the only disseminator of news.
+
+The railroad's side of the case was presented by that genial and able
+practitioner of Putnam County, Mr. Nathaniel Billings, who travelled from
+his home in Williamstown by the exhibition of a red ticket.  Austen Vane
+had to pay his own way from Ripton, but as he handed back the mileage
+book, the conductor leaned over and whispered something in his ear that
+made him smile, and Austen thought he would rather have that little drop
+of encouragement than a pass.  And as he left the car at Bradford, two
+grizzled and hard-handed individuals arose and wished him good luck.
+
+He needed encouragement,--what young lawyer does not on his first
+important case?  And he did not like to think of the future if he lost
+this.  But in this matter he possessed a certain self-confidence which
+arose from a just and righteous anger against the forces opposing him and
+a knowledge of their tactics.  To his mind his client was not Zeb Meader
+alone, but the host of victims who had been maimed and bought off because
+it was cheaper than to give the public a proper protection.
+
+The court room was crowded.  Mr. Zeb Meader, pale but determined, was
+surrounded by a knot of Mercer neighbours, many of whom were witnesses.
+The agate eyes of Mr. Brush Bascom flashed from the audience, and Mr. Nat
+Billings bustled forward to shake Austen's hand.  Nat was one of those
+who called not infrequently upon the Honourable Hilary in Ripton, and had
+sat on Austen's little table.
+
+"Glad to see you, Austen," he cried, so that the people might hear; and
+added, in a confidentially lower tone, "We lawyers understand that these
+little things make no difference, eh?"
+
+"I'm willing to agree to that if you are, Nat," Austen answered.  He
+looked at the lawyer's fleshy face, blue-black where it was shaven, and
+at Mr. Billings' shifty eyes and mouth, which its muscles could not quite
+keep in place.  Mr. Billings also had nicked teeth.  But he did his best
+to hide these obvious disadvantages by a Falstaffian bonhomie,--for Mr.
+Billings was growing stout.
+
+"I tried it once or twice, my friend, when I was younger.  It's noble,
+but it don't pay," said Mr. Billings, still confidential.  "Brush is
+sour--look at him.  But I understand how you feel.  I'm the kind of
+feller that speaks out, and what I can't understand is, why the old man
+let you get into it."
+
+"He knew you were going to be on the other side, Nat, and wanted to teach
+me a lesson.  I suppose it is folly to contest a case where the Railroad
+Commission has completely exonerated your client," Austen added
+thoughtfully.
+
+Mr. Billings' answer was to wink, very slowly, with one eye; and shortly
+after these pleasantries were over, the case was called.  A fragrant wind
+blew in at the open windows, and Nature outside was beginning to array
+herself in myriad hues of green.  Austen studied the jury, and wondered
+how many points of his argument he could remember, but when he had got to
+his feet the words came to him.  If we should seek an emblem for King
+David's smooth, round stone which he flung at Goliath, we should call it
+the truth--for the truth never fails to reach the mark.  Austen's opening
+was not long, his words simple and not dramatic, but he seemed to charge
+them with something of the same magnetic force that compelled people to
+read and believe "Uncle Ton's Cabin" and the "Song of the Shirt."
+Spectators and jury listened intently.
+
+Some twenty witnesses appeared for the plaintiff, all of whom declared
+that they had heard neither bell nor whistle.  Most of these witnesses
+had been in the grove, two or three in the train; two, residents of the
+vicinity, testified that they had complained to the Railroad Commission
+about that crossing, and had received evasive answers to the effect that
+it was the duty of citizens to look out for themselves.  On cross-
+examination they declared they had no objection to grade crossings which
+were properly safeguarded; this crossing was a death-trap.  (Stricken
+out.)  Mr. Billings made the mistake of trying to prove that one of these
+farmers--a clear-eyed, full-chested man with a deep voice--had an animus
+against the railroad dating from a controversy concerning the shipping of
+milk.
+
+"I have an animus, your Honour," said the witness, quietly.  "When the
+railrud is represented by the kind of politicians we have in Putnam, it's
+natural I should hain't it?"
+
+This answer, although stricken out, was gleefully received.
+
+In marked contrast to the earnestness of young Mr. Vane, who then rested,
+Mr. Billings treated the affair from the standpoint of a man of large
+practice who usually has more weighty matters to attend to.  This was so
+comparatively trivial as not to be dignified by a serious mien.  He
+quoted freely from the "Book of Arguments," reminding the jury of the
+debt of gratitude the State owed to the Northeastern Railroads for doing
+so much for its people; and if they were to eliminate all grade
+crossings, there would be no dividends for the stockholders.  Besides,
+the law was that the State should pay half when a crossing was
+eliminated, and the State could not afford it.  Austen had suggested, in
+his opening, that it was cheaper for the railroad as well as the State to
+kill citizens.  He asked permission to inquire of the learned counsel for
+the defence by what authority he declared that the State could not afford
+to enter into a policy by which grade crossings would gradually be
+eliminated.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Billings, "the fact that all bills introduced to this end
+never get out of committee."
+
+"May I ask," said Austen, innocently, "who has been chairman of that
+particular committee in the lower House for the last five sessions?"
+
+Mr. Billings was saved the embarrassment of answering this question by a
+loud voice in the rear calling out:--
+
+"Brush Bascom!"
+
+A roar of laughter shook the court room, and all eyes were turned on
+Brush, who continued to sit unconcernedly with his legs crossed and his
+arm over the back of the seat.  The offender was put out, order was
+restored, and Mr. Billings declared, with an injured air, that he failed
+to see why the counsel for the plaintiff saw fit to impugn Mr. Bascom.
+
+"I merely asked a question," said Austere; "far be it from me to impugn
+any man who has held offices in the gift of the people for the last
+twenty years."
+
+Another gale of laughter followed this, during which Mr. Billings
+wriggled his mouth and gave a strong impression that such tactics and
+such levity were to be deplored.
+
+For the defence, the engineer and fireman both swore that the bell had
+been rung before the crossing was reached.  Austen merely inquired
+whether this was not when they had left the station at North Mercer, two
+miles away.  No, it was nearer.  Pressed to name the exact spot, they
+could only conjecture, but near enough to be heard on the crossing.
+Other witnesses--among them several picnickers in the grove--swore that
+they had heard the bell.  One of these Austen asked if he was not the
+member from Mercer in the last Legislature, and Mr. Billings, no longer
+genial, sprang to his feet with an objection.
+
+"I merely wish to show, your Honour," said Austen, "that this witness
+accepted a pass from the Northeastern Railroads when he went to the
+Legislature, and that he has had several trip passes for himself and his
+family since."
+
+The objection was not sustained, and Mr. Billings noted an exception.
+
+Another witness, upon whose appearance the audience tittered audibly, was
+Dave Skinner, boss of Mercer.  He had lived, he said, in the town of
+Mercer all his life, and maintained that he was within a hundred yards of
+the track when the accident occurred, and heard the bell ring.
+
+Is it not a fact," said Austen to this witness, "that Mr. Brush Bascom
+has a mortgage on your farm?"
+
+"I can show, your Honour," Austen continued, when Mr. Billings had
+finished his protest, "that this man was on his way to Riverside to pay
+his quarterly instalment."
+
+Mr. Bascom was not present at the afternoon session.  Mr. Billings'
+summing up was somewhat impassioned, and contained more quotations from
+the "Book of Arguments."  He regretted, he said, the obvious appeals to
+prejudice against a railroad corporation that was honestly trying to do
+its duty-yes, and more than its duty.
+
+Misjudged, misused, even though friendless, it would continue to serve
+the people.  So noble, indeed, was the picture which Mr. Billings'
+eloquence raised up that his voice shook with emotion as he finished.
+
+In the opinion of many of the spectators Austen Vane had yet to learn the
+art of oratory.  He might with propriety have portrayed the suffering and
+loss of the poor farmer who was his client; he merely quoted from the
+doctor's testimony to the effect that Mr. Meader would never again be
+able to do physical labour of the sort by which he had supported himself,
+and ended up by calling the attention of the jury to the photographs and
+plans of the crossing he had obtained two days after the accident,
+requesting them to note the facts that the public highway, approaching
+through a dense forest and underbrush at an angle of thirty-three
+degrees, climbed the railroad embankment at that point, and a train could
+not be seen until the horse was actually on the track.
+
+The jury was out five minutes after the judge's charge, and gave Mr.
+Zebulun Meader a verdict of six thousand dollars and costs,--a popular
+verdict, from the evident approval with which it was received in the
+court room.  Quiet being restored, Mr. Billings requested, somewhat
+vehemently, that the case be transferred on the exceptions to the Supreme
+Court, that the stenographer write out the evidence, and that he might
+have three weeks in which to prepare a draft.  This was granted.
+
+Zeb Meader, true to his nature, was self-contained throughout the
+congratulations he received, but his joy was nevertheless intense.
+
+"You shook 'em up good, Austen," he said, making his way to where his
+counsel stood.  "I suspicioned you'd do it.  But how about this here
+appeal?"
+
+"Billings is merely trying to save the face of his railroad," Austen
+answered, smiling.  "He hasn't the least notion of allowing this case to
+come up again--take my word for it."
+
+"I guess your word's good," said Zeb.  "And I want to tell you one thing,
+as an old man.  I've been talkin' to Putnam County folks some, and you
+hain't lost nothin' by this."
+
+"How am I to get along without the friendship of Brush Bascom?" asked
+Austen, soberly.
+
+Mr. Meader, who had become used to this mild sort of humour, relaxed
+sufficiently to laugh.
+
+"Brush did seem a mite disgruntled," he remarked.
+
+Somewhat to Austen's embarrassment, Mr. Mender's friends were pushing
+forward.  One grizzled veteran took him by the hand and looked
+thoughtfully into his face.
+
+"I've lived a good many years," he said,  "but I never heerd 'em talked up
+to like that.  You're my candidate for governor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ENTER THE LION
+
+It is a fact, as Shakespeare has so tersely hinted, that fame sometimes
+comes in the line of duty.  To be sure, if Austen Vane had been Timothy
+Smith, the Mender case might not have made quite so many ripples in the
+pond with which this story is concerned.  Austen did what he thought was
+right.  In the opinion of many of his father's friends whom he met from
+time to time he had made a good-sized stride towards ruin, and they did
+not hesitate to tell him so--Mr. Chipman, president of the Ripton
+National Bank; Mr. Greene, secretary and treasurer of the Hawkeye Paper
+Company, who suggested with all kindness that, however noble it may be,
+it doesn't pay to tilt at windmills.
+
+"Not unless you wreck the windmill," answered Austen.  A new and very
+revolutionary point of view to Mr. Greene, who repeated it to Professor
+Brewer, urging that gentleman to take Austen in hand.  But the professor
+burst out laughing, and put the saying into circulation.
+
+Mr. Silas Tredway, whose list of directorships is too long to print, also
+undertook to remonstrate with the son of his old friend, Hilary Vane.
+The young lawyer heard him respectfully.  The cashiers of some of these
+gentlemen, who were younger men, ventured to say--when out of hearing--
+that they admired the championship of Mr. Mender, but it would never do.
+To these, likewise, Austen listened good-naturedly enough, and did not
+attempt to contradict them.  Changing the angle of the sun-dial does not
+affect the time of day.
+
+It was not surprising that young Tom Gaylord, when he came back from New
+York and heard of Austen's victory, should have rushed to his office and
+congratulated him in a rough but hearty fashion.  Even though Austen had
+won a suit against the Gaylord Lumber Company, young Tom would have
+congratulated him.  Old Tom was a different matter.  Old Tom, hobbling
+along under the maples, squinted at Austen and held up his stick.
+
+"Damn you, you're a lawyer, ain't you?" cried the old man.
+
+Austen, well used to this kind of greeting from Mr. Gaylord, replied that
+he didn't think himself much of one.
+
+"Damn it, I say you are.  Some day I may have use for you," said old Tom,
+and walked on.
+
+"No," said young Tom, afterwards, in explanation of this extraordinary
+attitude of his father, "it isn't principle.  He's had a row with the
+Northeastern about lumber rates, and swears he'll live till he gets even
+with 'em."
+
+If Professor Brewer (Ripton's most clear-sighted citizen) had made the
+statement that Hilary Vane--away down in the bottom of his heart--was
+secretly proud of his son, the professor would probably have lost his
+place on the school board, the water board, and the library committee.
+The way the worldly-wise professor discovered the secret was this: he had
+gone to Bradford to hear the case, for he had been a dear friend of Sarah
+Austen.  Two days later Hilary Vane saw the professor on his little
+porch, and lingered.  Mr. Brewer suspected why, led carefully up to the
+subject, and not being discouraged--except by numerous grunts--gave the
+father an account of the proceedings by no means unfavourable to the son.
+Some people like paregoric; the Honourable Hilary took his without undue
+squirming, with no visible effects to Austen.
+
+Life in the office continued, with one or two exceptions, the even tenor
+of its way.  Apparently, so far as the Honourable Hilary was concerned,
+his son had never been to Bradford.  But the Honourable Brush Bascom,
+when he came on mysterious business to call on the chief counsel, no
+longer sat on Austen's table; this was true of other feudal lords and
+retainers: of Mr. Nat Billings, who, by the way, did not file his draft
+after all.  Not that Mr. Billings wasn't polite, but he indulged no
+longer in slow winks at the expense of the honourable Railroad
+Commission.
+
+Perhaps the most curious result of the Meader case to be remarked in
+passing, was upon Mr. Hamilton Tooting.  Austen, except when he fled to
+the hills, was usually the last to leave the office, Mr. Tooting often
+the first.  But one evening Mr. Tooting waited until the force had gone,
+and entered Austen's room with his hand outstretched.
+
+"Put her there, Aust," he said.
+
+Austen put her there.
+
+"I've been exercisin' my thinker some the last few months," observed Mr.
+Tooting, seating himself on the desk.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of nervous prostration, Ham?"
+
+"Say," exclaimed Mr. Tooting, with a vexed laugh, "why are you always
+jollying me?  You ain't any older than I am."
+
+"I'm not as old, Ham.  I don't begin to have your knowledge of the
+world."
+
+"Come off," said Mr. Tooting, who didn't know exactly how to take this
+compliment.  "I came in here to have a serious talk.  I've been thinking
+it over, and I don't know but what you did right."
+
+"Well, Ham, if you don't know, I don't know how I am to convince you."
+
+"Hold on.  Don't go twistin' around that way--you make me dizzy."  He
+lowered his voice confidentially, although there was no one within five
+walls of them.  "I know the difference between a gold brick and a
+government bond, anyhow.  I believe bucking the railroad's going to pay
+in a year or so.  I got on to it as soon as you did, I guess, but when a
+feller's worn the collar as long as I have and has to live, it ain't easy
+to cut loose--you understand."
+
+"I understand," answered Austen, gravely.
+
+"I thought I'd let you know I didn't take any too much trouble with
+Meader last summer to get the old bird to accept a compromise."
+
+"That was good of you, Ham."
+
+"I knew what you was up to," said Mr. Tooting, giving Austen a friendly
+poke with his cigar.
+
+"You showed your usual acumen, Mr. Tooting," said Austen, as he rose to
+put on his coat.  Mr. Tooting regarded him uneasily.
+
+"You're a deep one, Aust," he declared; "some day you and, me must get
+together."
+
+Mr. Billings' desire for ultimate justice not being any stronger than
+Austen suspected, in due time Mr. Meader got his money.  His counsel
+would have none of it,--a decision not at all practical, and on the whole
+disappointing.  There was, to be sure, an influx into Austen's office of
+people who had been run over in the past, and it was Austen's unhappy
+duty to point out to these that they had signed (at the request of
+various Mr. Tootings) little slips of paper which are technically known
+as releases.  But the first hint of a really material advantage to be
+derived from his case against the railroad came from a wholly unexpected
+source, in the shape of a letter in the mail one August morning.
+
+     "DEAR SIR: Having remarked with some interest the verdict for a
+     client of yours against the United Northeastern Railroads, I wish
+     you would call and see me at your earliest convenience.
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     "HUMPHREY CREWE."
+
+Although his curiosity was aroused, Austen was of two minds whether to
+answer this summons, the truth being that Mr. Crewe had not made, on the
+occasions on which they had had intercourse, the most favourable of
+impressions.  However, it is not for the struggling lawyer to scorn any
+honourable brief, especially from a gentleman.  of stocks and bonds and
+varied interests like Mr. Crewe, with whom contentions of magnitude are
+inevitably associated.   As he spun along behind Pepper on the Leith road
+that climbed Willow Brook on the afternoon he had made the appointment,
+Austen smiled to himself over his anticipations, and yet---being human-
+let his fancy play.
+
+The broad acres of Wedderburn stretched across many highways, but the
+manor-house (as it had been called) stood on an eminence whence one could
+look for miles down the Yale of the Blue.  It had once been a farmhouse,
+but gradually the tail had begun to wag the dog, and the farmhouse
+became, like the original stone out of which the Irishman made the soup,
+difficult to find.  Once the edifice had been on the road, but the road
+had long ago been removed to a respectful distance, and Austen entered
+between two massive pillars built of granite blocks on a musical gravel
+drive.
+
+Humphrey Crewe was on the porch, his hands in his pockets, as Austen
+drove up.
+
+"Hello," he said, in a voice probably meant to be hospitable, but which
+had a peremptory ring, "don't stand on ceremony.  Hitch your beast and
+come along in."
+
+Having, as it were, superintended the securing of Pepper, Mr. Crewe led
+the way through the house to the study, pausing once or twice to point
+out to Austen a carved ivory elephant procured at great expense in China,
+and a piece of tapestry equally difficult of purchase.  The study itself
+was no mere lounging place of a man of pleasure, but sober and formidable
+books were scattered through the cases: "Turner's Evolution of the
+Railroad," "Graham's Practical Forestry," "Eldridge's  Finance"; while
+whole shelves of modern husbandry proclaimed that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was
+no amateur farmer.  There was likewise a shelf devoted to road building,
+several to knotty-looking pamphlets, and half a wall of neatly labelled
+pigeonholes.  For decoration, there was an oar garnished with a ribbon,
+and several groups of college undergraduates, mostly either in puffed
+ties or scanty attire, and always prominent in these groups, and always
+unmistakable, was Mr. Humphrey Crewe himself.
+
+Mr. Crewe was silent awhile, that this formidable array of things might
+make the proper impression upon his visitor.
+
+"It was lucky you came to-day, Vane," he said at length. "I am due in
+New York to-morrow for a directors' meeting, and I have a conference in
+Chicago with a board of trustees of which I am a member on the third.
+Looking at my array of pamphlets, eh?  I've been years in collecting
+them,--ever since I left college.  Those on railroads ought especially to
+interest you--I'm somewhat of a railroad man myself."
+
+"I didn't know that," said Austen.
+
+"Had two or three blocks of stock in subsidiary lines that had to be
+looked after.  It was a nuisance at first," said Mr. Crewe, "but I didn't
+shirk it.  I made up my mind I'd get to the bottom of the railroad
+problem, and I did.  It's no use doing a thing at all unless you do it
+well."  Mr. Crewe, his hands still in his pockets, faced Austen
+smilingly.  "Now I'll bet you didn't know I was a railroad man until you
+came in here.  To tell the truth, it was about a railroad matter that I
+sent for you."
+
+Mr. Crewe lit a cigar, but he did not offer one to Austen, as he had to
+Mr. Tooting.  "I wanted to see what you were like," he continued, with
+refreshing frankness.  "Of course, I'd seen you on the road.  But you can
+get more of an idea of a man by talkin' to him, you know."
+
+"You can if he'll talk," said Austen, who was beginning to enjoy his
+visit.
+
+Mr. Crewe glanced at him keenly.  Few men are fools at all points of the
+compass, and Mr. Crewe was far from this.
+
+"You did well in that little case you had against the Northeastern.  I
+heard about it."
+
+"I did my best," answered Austen, and he smiled again.
+
+"As some great man has remarked," observed Mr. Crewe, "it isn't what we
+do, it's how we do it.  Take pains over the smaller cases, and the larger
+cases will come of themselves, eh?"
+
+"I live in hope," said Austen, wondering how soon this larger case was
+going to unfold itself.
+
+"Let me see," said Mr. Crewe, "isn't your father the chief attorney in
+this State for the Northeastern?  How do you happen to be on the other
+side?"
+
+"By the happy accident of obtaining a client," said Austen.
+
+Mr. Crewe glanced at him again.  In spite of himself, respect was growing
+in him.  He had expected to find a certain amount of eagerness and
+subserviency--though veiled; here was a man of different calibre than he
+looked for in Ripton.
+
+"The fact is," he declared, "I have a grievance against the Northeastern
+Railroads, and I have made up my mind that you are the man for me."
+
+"You may have reason to regret your choice," Austen suggested.
+
+"I think not," replied Mr. Crewe, promptly; "I believe I know a man when
+I see one, and you inspire me with confidence.  This matter will have a
+double interest for you, as I understand you are fond of horses."
+
+"Horses?"
+
+"Yes," Mr. Crewe continued, gaining a little heat at the word, "I bought
+the finest-lookin' pair you ever saw in New York this spring,--all-around
+action, manners, conformation, everything; I'll show 'em to you.  One of
+'em's all right now; this confounded railroad injured the other gettin'
+him up here.  I've put in a claim.  They say they didn't, my man says
+they did.  He tells me the horse was thrown violently against the sides
+of the car several times.  He's internally injured.  I told 'em I'd sue
+'em, and I've decided that you are the man to take the case--on
+conditions."
+
+Austen's sense of humour saved him,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe had begun to
+interest him.  He rose and walked to the window and looked out for a few
+moments over the flower garden before he replied:--
+
+"On what conditions?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "frankly, I don't want to pay more than the horse
+is worth, and it's business to settle on the fee in case you win.  I
+thought--"
+
+"You thought," said Austen, "that I might not charge as much as the next
+man."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I knew that if you took the case, you'd fight it
+through, and I want to get even with 'em.  Their claim agent had the
+impudence to suggest that the horse had been doctored by the dealer in
+New York.  To tell me that I, who have been buying horses all my life,
+was fooled.  The veterinary swears the animal is ruptured.  I'm a citizen
+of Avalon County, though many people call me a summer resident; I've done
+business here and helped improve the neighbourhood for years.  It will be
+my policy to employ home talent Avalon County lawyers, for instance.  I
+may say, without indiscretion, that I intend from now on to take even a
+greater interest in public affairs.  The trouble is in this country that
+men in my position do not feel their responsibilities."
+
+"Public spirit is a rare virtue," Austen remarked, seeing that he was
+expected to say something.  "Avalon County appreciates the compliment,--
+if I may be permitted to answer for it."
+
+"I want to do the right thing," said Mr. Crewe.  "In fact, I have almost
+made up my mind to go to the Legislature this year.  I know it would be a
+sacrifice of time, in a sense, and all that, but--"  He paused, and
+looked at Austen.
+
+"The Legislature needs leavening."
+
+"Precisely," exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "and when I look around me and see the
+things crying to be done in this State, and no lawmaker with sense and
+foresight enough to propose them, it makes me sick.  Now, for instance,"
+he continued, and rose with an evident attempt to assault the forestry
+shelves.  But Austen rose too.
+
+"I'd like to go over that with you, Mr. Crewe," said he, "but I have to
+be back in Ripton."
+
+"How about my case?" his host demanded, with a return to his former
+abruptness.
+
+"What about it?" asked Austen.
+
+"Are you going to take it?"
+
+"Struggling lawyers don't refuse business."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "that's sensible.  But what are you going to
+charge?"
+
+"Now," said Austen, with entire good humour, "when you get on that
+ground, you are dealing no longer with one voracious unit, but with a
+whole profession,--a profession, you will allow me to add, which in
+dignity is second to none.  In accordance with the practice of the best
+men in that profession, I will charge you what I believe is fair--not
+what I think you are able and willing to pay.  Should you dispute the
+bill, I will not stoop to quarrel with you, but, try to live on bread and
+butter a while longer."
+
+Mr. Crewe was silent for a moment.  It would not be exact to say
+uncomfortable, for it is to be doubted whether he ever got so.  But he
+felt dimly that the relations of patron and patronized were becoming
+somewhat jumbled.
+
+"All right," said he, "I guess we can let it go at that.  Hello!  What
+the deuce are those women doing here again?"
+
+This irrelevant exclamation was caused by the sight through the open
+French window--of three ladies in the flower garden, two of whom were
+bending over the beds.  The third, upon whose figure Austen's eyes were
+riveted, was seated on a stone bench set in a recess of pines, and
+looking off into the Yale of the Blue.  With no great eagerness, but
+without apology to Austen, Mr. Crewe stepped out of the window and
+approached them; and as this was as good a way as any to his horse and
+buggy, Austen followed.  One of the ladies straightened at their
+appearance, scrutinized them through the glasses she held in her hand,
+and Austen immediately recognized her as the irreproachable Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"We didn't mean to disturb you, Humphrey," she said.  "We knew you would
+be engaged in business, but I told Alice as we drove by I could not
+resist stopping for one more look at your Canterbury bells.  I knew you
+wouldn't mind, but you mustn't leave your--affairs,--not for an instant."
+
+The word "affairs" was accompanied by a brief inspection of Austen Vane.
+
+"That's all right," answered Mr. Crewe; "it doesn't cost anything to look
+at flowers, that's what they're for.  Cost something to put 'em in.  I
+got that little feller Ridley to lay 'em out--I believe I told you.  He's
+just beginning.  Hello, Alice."
+
+"I think he did it very well, Humphrey," said Miss Pomfret.
+
+"Passably," said Mr. Crewe.  "I told him what I wanted and drew a rough
+sketch of the garden and the colour scheme."
+
+"Then you did it, and not Mr. Ridley.  I rather suspected it," said Mrs.
+Pomfret; "you have such clear and practical ideas about things,
+Humphrey."
+
+"It's simple enough," said Mr. Crewe, deprecatingly, "after you've seen a
+few hundred gardens and get the general underlying principle."
+
+"It's very clever," Alice murmured.
+
+"Not at all.  A little application will do wonders.  A certain definite
+colour massed here, another definite colour there, and so forth."
+
+Mr. Crewe spoke as though Alice's praise irritated him slightly.  He
+waved his hand to indicate the scheme in general, and glanced at Victoria
+on the stone bench.  From her (Austen thought) seemed to emanate a silent
+but mirthful criticism, although she continued to gaze persistently down
+the valley, apparently unaware of their voices.  Mr. Crewe looked as if
+he would have liked to reach her, but the two ladies filled the narrow
+path, and Mrs. Pomfret put her fingers on his sleeve.
+
+"Humphrey, you must explain it to us.  I am so interested in gardens I'm
+going to have one if Electrics increase their dividend."
+
+Mr. Crewe began, with no great ardour, to descant on the theory of
+planting, and Austen resolved to remain pocketed and ignored no longer.
+He retraced his steps and made his way rapidly by another path towards
+Victoria, who turned her head at his approach, and rose.  He acknowledged
+an inward agitation with the vision in his eye of the tall, white figure
+against the pines, clad with the art which, in mysterious simplicity,
+effaces itself.
+
+"I was wondering," she said, as she gave him her hand, "how long it would
+be before you spoke to me."
+
+"You gave me no chance," said Austen, quickly.
+
+"Do you deserve one?" she asked.
+
+Before he could answer, Mr. Crewe's explanation of his theories had come
+lamely to a halt.  Austen was aware of the renewed scrutiny of Mrs.
+Pomfret, and then Mr. Crewe, whom no social manacles could shackle, had
+broken past her and made his way to them.  He continued to treat the
+ground on which Austen was standing as unoccupied.
+
+"Hello, Victoria," he said, "you don't know anything about gardens, do
+you?"
+
+"I don't believe you do either," was Victoria's surprising reply.
+
+Mr. Crewe laughed at this pleasantry.
+
+"How are you going to prove it?" he demanded.
+
+"By comparing what you've done with Freddie Ridley's original plan," said
+Victoria.
+
+Mr. Crewe was nettled.
+
+"Ridley has a lot to learn," he retorted.  "He had no conception of what
+was appropriate here."
+
+"Freddie was weak," said Victoria, but he needed the money.  Don't you
+know Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I've been talking to him--on business."
+
+"Oh," said Victoria, "I had no means of knowing.  Mrs. Pomfret, I want to
+introduce Mr. Vane, and Miss Pomfret, Mr. Vane."
+
+Mrs. Pomfret, who had been hovering on the outskirts of this duel,
+inclined her head the fraction of an inch, but Alice put out her hand
+with her sweetest manner.
+
+"When did you arrive?" she asked.
+
+"Well, the fact is, I haven't arrived yet," said Austen.
+
+"Not arrived" exclaimed Alice, with a puzzled glance into Victoria's
+laughing eyes.
+
+"Perhaps Humphrey will help you along," Victoria suggested, turning to
+him.  "He might be induced to give you his celebrated grievance about his
+horses."
+
+"I have given it to him," said Mr. Crewe, briefly.
+
+"Cheer up, Mr. Vane, your fortune is made," said Victoria.
+
+"Victoria," said Mrs. Pomfret, in her most imperial voice, "we ought to
+be going instantly, or we shan't have time to drop you at the Hammonds'."
+
+"I'll take you over in the new motor car," said Mr. Crewe, with his air
+of conferring a special train.
+
+"How much is gasoline by the gallon?" inquired Victoria.
+
+"I did a favour once for the local manager, and get a special price,"
+said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, taking his hand, "don't forget you are
+coming to dinner to-night.  Four people gave out at the last minute, and
+there will be just Alice and myself.  I've asked old Mr. Fitzhugh."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll have the motor car brought around."
+
+The latter part of this remark was, needless to say, addressed to
+Victoria.
+
+"It's awfully good of you, Humphrey," she answered, "but the Hammonds are
+on the road to Ripton, and I am going to ask Mr. Vane to drive me down
+there behind that adorable horse of his."
+
+This announcement produced a varied effect upon those who heard it,
+although all experienced surprise.  Mrs. Pomfret, in addition to an anger
+which she controlled only as the result of long practice, was horrified,
+and once more levelled her glasses at Austen.
+
+"I think, Victoria, you had better come with us," she said.  "We shall
+have plenty of time, if we hurry."
+
+By this time Austen had recovered his breath.
+
+"I'll be ready in an instant," he said, and made brief but polite adieus
+to the three others.
+
+"Good-by," said Alice, vaguely.
+
+"Let me know when anything develops," said Mr. Crewe, with his back to
+his attorney.
+
+Austen found Victoria, her colour heightened a little, waiting for him by
+the driveway.  The Pomfrets had just driven off, and Mr. Crewe was
+nowhere to be seen.
+
+"I do not know what you will think of me for taking this for granted, Mr.
+Vane," she said as he took his seat beside her, "but I couldn't resist
+the chance of driving behind your horse."
+
+"I realized," he answered smilingly, "that Pepper was the attraction, and
+I have more reason than ever to be grateful to him."
+
+She glanced covertly at the Vane profile, at the sure, restraining hands
+on the reins which governed with so nice a touch the mettle of the horse.
+His silence gave her time to analyze again her interest in this man,
+which renewed itself at every meeting.  In the garden she had been struck
+by the superiority of a nature which set at naught what had been, to some
+smaller spirits, a difficult situation.  She recognized this quality as
+inborn, but, not knowing of Sarah Austen, she wondered where he got it.
+Now it was the fact that he refrained from comment that pleased her most.
+
+"Did Humphrey actually send for you to take up the injured horse case?"
+she asked.
+
+Austen flushed.
+
+"I'm afraid he did.  You seem to know all about it," he added.
+
+"Know all about it  Every one within twenty miles of Leith knows about
+it.  I'm sure the horse was doctored when he bought him."
+
+"Take care, you may be called as a witness."
+
+"What I want to know is, why you accepted such a silly case," said
+Victoria.
+
+Austen looked quizzically into her upturned face, and she dropped her
+eyes.
+
+"That's exactly what I should have asked myself,--after a while," he
+said.
+
+She laughed with a delicious understanding of "after a while."
+
+"I suppose you think me frightfully forward," she said, in a lowered
+voice, "inviting myself to drive and asking you such a question when I
+scarcely know you.  But I just couldn't go on with Mrs. Pomfret,--she
+irritated me so,--and my front teeth are too valuable to drive with
+Humphrey Crewe."
+
+Austen smiled, and secretly agreed with her.
+
+"I should have offered, if I had dared," he said.
+
+"Dared! I didn't know that was your failing.  I don't believe you even
+thought of it."
+
+"Nevertheless, the idea occurred to me, and terrified me," said Austen.
+
+"Why?" she asked, turning upon him suddenly.  "Why did it terrify you?"
+
+"I should have been presuming upon an accidental acquaintance, which I
+had no means of knowing you wished to continue," he replied, staring at
+his horse's head.
+
+"And I?" Victoria asked.  "Presumption multiplies tenfold in a woman,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"A woman confers," said Austen.
+
+She smiled, but with a light in her eyes.  This simple sentence seemed to
+reveal yet more of an inner man different from some of those with whom
+her life had been cast.  It was an American point of view--this choosing
+to believe that the woman conferred.  After offering herself as his
+passenger Victoria, too, had had a moment of terror: the action had been
+the result of an impulse which she did not care to attempt to define.
+She changed the subject.
+
+"You have been winning laurels since I saw you last summer," she said.
+"I hear incidentally you have made our friend Zeb Meader a rich man."
+
+"As riches go, in the town of Mercer," Austen laughed.  "As for my
+laurels, they have not yet begun to chafe."
+
+Here was a topic he would have avoided, and yet he was curious to
+discover what her attitude would be.  He had antagonized her father, and
+the fact that he was the son of Hilary Vane had given his antagonism
+prominence.
+
+"I am glad you did it for Zeb."
+
+"I should have done it for anybody--much as I like Zeb," he replied
+briefly.
+
+She glanced at him.
+
+"It was--courageous of you," she said.
+
+"I have never looked upon it in that light," he answered.  "May I ask you
+how you heard of it?"
+
+She coloured, but faced the question.
+
+"I heard it from my father, at first, and I took an interest--on Zeb
+Meader's account," she added hastily.
+
+Austen was silent.
+
+"Of course," she continued, "I felt a little like boasting of an
+'accidental acquaintance' with the man who saved Zeb Meader's life."
+
+Austen laughed.  Then he drew Pepper down to a walk, and turned to her.
+
+"The power of making it more than an accidental acquaintance lies with
+you," he said quietly.
+
+"I have always had an idea that aggression was a man's prerogative,"
+Victoria answered lightly.  "And seeing that you have not appeared at
+Fairview for something over a year, I can only conclude that you do not
+choose to exercise it in this case."
+
+Austen was in a cruel quandary.
+
+"I did wish to come," he answered simply, "but--the fact that I have had
+a disagreement with your father has--made it difficult."
+"Nonsense" exclaimed Victoria; "just because you have won a suit against
+his railroad.  You don't know my father, Mr. Vane.  He isn't the kind of
+man with whom that would make any difference.  You ought to talk it over
+with him.  He thinks you were foolish to take Zeb Meader's side."
+
+"And you?" Austen demanded quickly.
+
+"You see, I'm a woman," said Victoria, "and I'm prejudiced--for Zeb
+Meader.  Women are always prejudiced,--that's our trouble.  It seemed to
+me that Zeb was old, and unfortunate, and ought to be compensated, since
+he is unable to work.  But of course I suppose I can't be expected to
+understand."
+
+It was true that she could not be expected to understand.  He might not
+tell her that his difference with Mr. Flint was not a mere matter of
+taking a small damage suit against his railroad, but a fundamental one.
+And Austen recognized that the justification of his attitude meant an
+arraignment of Victoria's father.
+
+"I wish you might know my father better, Mr. Vane," she went on, "I wish
+you might know him as I know him, if it were possible.  You see, I have
+been his constant companion all my life, and I think very few people
+understand him as I do, and realize his fine qualities.  He makes no
+attempt to show his best side to the world.  His life has been spent in
+fighting, and I am afraid he is apt to meet the world on that footing.
+He is a man of such devotion to his duty that he rarely has a day to
+himself, and I have known him to sit up until the small hours of the
+morning to settle some little matter of justice.  I do not think I am
+betraying his confidence when I say that he is impressed with your
+ability, and that he liked your manner the only time he ever talked to
+you.  He believes that you have got, in some way, a wrong idea of what he
+is trying to do.  Why don't you come up and talk to him again?"
+
+"I am afraid your kindness leads you to overrate my importance," Austen
+replied, with mingled feelings.  Victoria's confidence in her father made
+the situation all the more hopeless.
+
+"I'm sure I don't," she answered quickly; "ever since--ever since I first
+laid eyes upon you I have had a kind of belief in you."
+
+"Belief?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes," she said, "belief that--that you had a future.  I can't describe
+it," she continued, the colour coming into her face again; "one feels
+that way about some people without being able to put the feeling into
+words.  And  have a feeling, too, that I should like you to be friends
+with my father."
+
+Neither of them, perhaps, realized the rapidity with which "accidental
+acquaintance" had melted into intimacy.  Austen's blood ran faster, but
+it was characteristic of him that he tried to steady himself, for he was
+a Vane.  He had thought of her many times during the past year, but
+gradually the intensity of the impression had faded until it had been so
+unexpectedly and vividly renewed to-day.  He was not a man to lose his
+head, and the difficulties of the situation made him pause and choose his
+words, while he dared not so much as glance at her as she sat in the
+sunlight beside him.
+
+"I should like to be friends with your father," he answered gravely,--the
+statement being so literally true as to have its pathetically humorous
+aspect.
+
+"I'll tell him so, Mr. Vane," she said.
+
+Austen turned, with a seriousness that dismayed her.
+
+"I must ask you as a favour not to do that," he said.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"In the first place," he answered quietly, "I cannot afford to have Mr.
+Flint misunderstand my motives.  And I ought not to mislead you," he went
+on.  "In periods of public controversy, such as we are passing through at
+present, sometimes men's views differ so sharply as to make intercourse
+impossible.  Your father and I might not agree--politically, let us say.
+For instance," he added, with evident hesitation, "my father and I
+disagree."
+
+Victoria was silent.  And presently they came to a wire fence overgrown
+with Virginia creeper, which divided the shaded road from a wide lawn.
+
+"Here we are at the Hammonds', and--thank you," she said.
+
+Any reply he might have made was forestalled.  The insistent and
+intolerant horn of an automobile, followed now by the scream of the
+gears, broke the stillness of the country-side, and a familiar voice
+cried out--
+
+"Do you want the whole road?"
+
+Austen turned into the Hammonds' drive as the bulldog nose of a motor
+forged ahead, and Mr. Crewe swung in the driver's seat.
+
+"Hello, Victoria," he shouted, "you people ought to have ear-trumpets."
+
+The car swerved, narrowly missed a watering fountain where the word
+"Peace" was inscribed, and shot down the hill.
+
+"That manner," said Victoria, as she jumped out of the buggy, "is a
+valuable political asset."
+
+"Does he really intend to go into politics?" Austen asked curiously.
+
+"'Intend' is a mild word applied to Humphrey," she answered;
+"'determined' would suit him better.  According to him, there is no game
+that cannot be won by dynamics.  'Get out of the way' is his motto.  Mrs.
+Pomfret will tell you how he means to cover the State with good roads
+next year, and take a house in Washington the year after."  She held out
+her hand.   "Good-by,--and I am ever so much obliged to you for bringing
+me here."
+
+He drove away towards Ripton with many things to think about, with a last
+picture of her in his mind as she paused for an instant in the flickering
+shadows, stroking Pepper's forehead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS
+
+It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of
+his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these
+pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected.  Mr.
+Crewe by no means underestimated this claim upon the community, and he
+had of late been declaring that he was no summer resident.  Wedderburn
+was his home, and there he paid his taxes.  Undoubtedly, they were less
+than city taxes.
+
+Although a young man, Mr. Crewe was in all respects a model citizen, and
+a person of many activities.  He had built a farmers' club, to which the
+farmers, in gross ingratitude, had never gone.  Now it was a summer
+residence and distinctly rentable.  He had a standing offer to erect a
+library in the village of Leith provided the town would furnish the
+ground, the books, and permit the name of Crewe to be carved in stone
+over the doorway.  The indifference of the town pained him, and he was
+naturally not a little grieved at the lack of proper feeling of the
+country people of America towards those who would better their
+conditions.  He had put a large memorial window in the chapel to his
+family.
+
+Mr. Crewe had another standing offer to be one of five men to start a
+farming experiment station--which might pay dividends.  He, was a church
+warden; president of a society for turning over crops (which he had
+organized); a member of the State Grange; president of the embryo State
+Economic League (whatever that was); and chairman of the Local
+Improvement Board--also a creation of his own.  By these tokens, and
+others too numerous to mention, it would seem that the inhabitants of
+Leith would have jumped at the chance to make such a man one of the five
+hundred in their State Legislature.
+
+To Whitman is attributed the remark that genius is almost one hundred per
+cent directness, but whether or not this applied to Mr. Humphrey Crewe
+remains to be seen.  "Dynamics" more surely expressed him.  It would not
+seem to be a very difficult feat, to be sure, to get elected to a State
+Legislature of five hundred which met once a year: once in ten years,
+indeed, might have been more appropriate for the five hundred.  The town
+of Leith with its thousand inhabitants had one representative, and Mr.
+Crewe had made up his mind he was to be that representative.
+
+There was, needless to say, great excitement in Leith over Mr. Crewe's
+proposed venture into the unknown seas of politics.  I mean, of course,
+that portion of Leith which recognized in Mr. Crewe an eligible bachelor
+and a person of social importance, for these qualities were not
+particularly appealing to the three hundred odd farmers whose votes were
+expected to send him rejoicing to the State capital.
+
+"It is so rare with us for a gentleman to go into politics, that we ought
+to do everything we can to elect him," Mrs. Pomfret went about declaring.
+"Women do so much in England, I wonder they don't do more here.  I was
+staying at Aylestone Court last year when the Honourable Billy Aylestone
+was contesting the family seat with a horrid Radical, and I assure you,
+my dear, I got quite excited.  We did nothing from morning till night but
+electioneer for the Honourable Billy, and kissed all the babies in the
+borough.  The mothers were so grateful.  Now, Edith, do tell Jack instead
+of playing tennis and canoeing all day he ought to help.  It's the duty
+of all young men to help.  Noblesse oblige, you know.  I can't understand
+Victoria.  She really has influence with these country people, but she
+says it's all nonsense.  Sometimes I think Victoria has a common streak
+in her--and no wonder.  The other day she actually drove to the Hammonds'
+in a buggy with an unknown lawyer from Ripton.  But I told you about it.
+Tell your gardener and the people that do your haying, dear, and your
+chicken woman.  My chicken woman is most apathetic, but do you wonder,
+with the life they lead?"
+
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe might have had, with King Charles, the watchword
+"Thorough."  He sent to the town clerk for a check-list, and proceeded to
+honour each of the two hundred Republican voters with a personal visit.
+This is a fair example of what took place in the majority of cases.
+
+Out of a cloud of dust emerges an automobile, which halts, with
+protesting brakes, in front of a neat farmhouse, guarded by great maples.
+Persistent knocking by a chauffeur at last brings a woman to the door.
+Mrs. Jenney has a pleasant face and an ample figure.
+
+"Mr. Jenney live here?" cries Mr. Crewe from the driver's seat.
+
+"Yes," says Mrs. Jenney, smiling.
+
+"Tell him I want to see him."
+
+"Guess you'll find him in the apple orchard."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+The chauffeur takes down the bars, Mr. Jenney pricks up his ears, and
+presently--to his amazement--perceives a Leviathan approaching him,
+careening over the ruts of his wood road.  Not being an emotional person,
+he continues to pick apples until he is summarily hailed.  Then he goes
+leisurely towards the Leviathan.
+
+"Are you Mr. Jenney?"
+
+"Callate to be," says Mr. Jenney, pleasantly.
+
+"I'm Humphrey Crewe."
+
+"How be you?" says Mr. Jenney, his eyes wandering over the Leviathan.
+
+How are the apples this year?" asks Mr. Crewe, graciously.
+
+"Fair to middlin'," says Mr. Jenney.
+
+"Have you ever tasted my Pippins?" says Mr. Crewe.  "A little science in
+cultivation helps along.  I'm going to send you a United States
+government pamphlet on the fruit we can raise here."
+
+Mr. Jenney makes an awkward pause by keeping silent on the subject of the
+pamphlet until he shall see it.
+
+"Do you take much interest in politics?"
+
+"Not a great deal," answers Mr. Jenney.
+
+"That's the trouble with Americans," Mr. Crewe declares, "they don't care
+who represents 'em, or whether their government's good or bad."
+
+"Guess that's so," replies Mr. Jenney, politely.
+
+"That sort of thing's got to stop," declares Mr. Crewe; "I'm a candidate
+for the Republican nomination for representative."
+
+"I want to know!" ejaculates Mr. Jenney, pulling his beard.  One would
+never suspect that this has been one of Mr. Jenney's chief topics of
+late.
+
+"I'll see that the interests of this town are cared for."
+
+"Let's see," says Mr. Jenney, "there's five hundred in the House, ain't
+there?"
+
+"It's a ridiculous number," says Mr. Crewe, with truth.
+
+"Gives everybody a chance to go," says Mr. Jenney.  "I was thar in '78,
+and enjoyed it some."
+
+"Who are you for?" demanded Mr. Crewe, combating the tendency of the
+conversation to slip into a pocket.
+
+"Little early yet, hain't it?  Hain't made up my mind.  Who's the
+candidates?" asks Mr. Jenney, continuing to stroke his beard.
+
+"I don't know," says Mr. Crewe, "but I do know I've done something for
+this town, and I hope you'll take it into consideration.  Come and see me
+when you go to the village.  I'll give you a good cigar, and that
+pamphlet, and we'll talk matters over."
+
+"Never would have thought to see one of them things in my orchard," says
+Mr. Jenney.  "How much do they cost?  Much as a locomotive, don't they?"
+
+It would not be exact to say that, after some weeks of this sort of
+campaigning, Mr. Crewe was discouraged, for such writhe vitality with
+which nature had charged him that he did not know the meaning of the
+word.  He was merely puzzled, as a June-bug is puzzled when it bumps up
+against a wire window-screen.  He had pledged to him his own gardener,
+Mrs. Pomfret's, the hired men of three of his neighbours, a few modest
+souls who habitually took off their hats to him, and Mr. Ball, of the
+village, who sold groceries to Wedderburn and was a general handy man for
+the summer people.  Mr. Ball was an agitator by temperament and a
+promoter by preference.  If you were a summer resident of importance and
+needed anything from a sewing-machine to a Holstein heifer, Mr. Ball, the
+grocer, would accommodate you.  When Mrs. Pomfret's cook became inebriate
+and refractory, Mr. Ball was sent for, and enticed her to the station and
+on board of a train; when the Chillinghams' tank overflowed, Mr. Ball
+found the proper valve and saved the house from being washed away.  And
+it was he who, after Mrs. Pomfret, took the keenest interest in Mr.
+Crewe's campaign.  At length came one day when Mr. Crewe pulled up in
+front of the grocery store and called, as his custom was, loudly for Mr.
+Ball.  The fact that Mr. Ball was waiting on customers made no
+difference, and presently that gentleman appeared, rubbing his hands
+together.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" he said, "automobile going all right?"
+
+"What's the matter with these fellers?" said Mr. Crewe.  "Haven't I done
+enough for the town?  Didn't I get 'em rural free delivery?  Didn't I
+subscribe to the meeting-house and library, and don't I pay more taxes
+than anybody else?"
+
+"Certain," assented Mr. Ball, eagerly, "certain you do."  It did not seem
+to occur to him that it was unfair to make him responsible for the scurvy
+ingratitude of his townsmen.  He stepped gingerly down into the dust and
+climbed up on the tool box.
+
+"Look out," said Mr. Crewe, "don't scratch the varnish.  What is it?"
+
+Mr. Ball shifted obediently to the rubber-covered step, and bent his face
+to his patron's ear.
+
+"It's railrud," he said.
+
+"Railroad!" shouted Mr. Crewe, in a voice that made the grocer clutch his
+arm in terror.  "Don't pinch me like that.  Railroad!  This town ain't
+within ten miles of the railroad."
+
+"For the love of David," said Mr. Ball, "don't talk so loud, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"What's the railroad got to do with it?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+Mr. Ball glanced around him, to make sure that no one was within shouting
+distance.
+
+"What's the railrud got to do with anything in this State?" inquired Mr.
+Ball, craftily.
+
+"That's different," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I'm a corporation man
+myself.  They've got to defend 'emselves."
+
+"Certain.  I ain't got anything again' 'em," Mr. Ball agreed quickly.  "I
+guess they know what they're about.  By the bye, Mr. Crewe," he added,
+coming dangerously near the varnish again, and drawing back, "you hain't
+happened to have seen Job Braden, have you?"
+
+"Job Braden!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "Job Braden!  What's all this mystery
+about Job Braden?  Somebody whispers that name in my ear every day.  If
+you mean that smooth-faced cuss that stutters and lives on Braden's Hill,
+I called on him, but he was out.  If you see him, tell him to come up to
+Wedderburn, and I'll talk with him."
+
+Mr. Ball made a gesture to indicate a feeling divided between respect for
+Mr. Crewe and despair at the hardihood of such a proposition.
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, Job wouldn't go."
+
+"Wouldn't go?"
+
+"He never pays visits,--folks go to him."
+
+"He'd come to see me, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I--I'm afraid riot, Mr. Crewe.  Job holds his comb rather high."
+
+"Do you mean to say this two-for-a-cent town has a boss?"
+
+"Silas Grantley was born here," said Mr. Ball--for even the worm will
+turn.  "This town's got a noble history."
+
+"I don't care anything about Silas Grantley.  What I want to know is, how
+this rascal manages to make anything out of the political pickings of a
+town like Leith."
+
+"Well, Job ain't exactly a rascal, Mr. Crewe.  He's got a good many of
+them hill farmers in a position of--of gratitude.  Enough to control the
+Republican caucus."
+
+"Do you mean he buys their votes?" demanded Mr. Crewe.
+
+"It's like this," explained Mr. Ball, "if one of 'em falls behind in his
+grocery bill, for example, he can always get money from Job.  Job takes a
+mortgage, but he don't often close down on 'm.  And Job has been
+collectin' credentials in Avalon County for upward of forty years."
+
+"Collecting credentials?"
+
+"Yes.  Gets a man nominated to State and county conventions that can't
+go, and goes himself with a bunch of credentials.  He's in a position to
+negotiate.  He was in all them railrud fights with Jethro Bass, and now
+he does business with Hilary Vane or Brush Bascom when anything
+especial's goin' on.  You'd ought to see him, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"I guess I won't waste my time with any picayune boss if the United
+Northeastern Railroads has any hand in this matter," declared Mr. Crewe.
+"Wind her up."
+
+This latter remark was addressed to a long-suffering chauffeur who looked
+like a Sicilian brigand.
+
+"I didn't exactly like to suggest it," said Mr. Ball, rubbing his hands
+and raising his voice above the whir of the machine, "but of course I
+knew Mr. Flint was an intimate friend.  A word to him from you--"
+
+But by this Mr. Crewe had got in his second speed and was sweeping around
+a corner lined with farmers' teams, whose animals were behaving like
+circus horses.  On his own driveway, where he arrived in incredibly brief
+time, he met his stenographer, farm superintendent, secretary,
+housekeeper, and general utility man, Mr. Raikes.  Mr. Raikes was
+elderly, and showed signs of needing a vacation.
+
+"Telephone Mr. Flint, Raikes, and tell him I would like an appointment at
+his earliest convenience, on important business."
+
+Mr. Raikes, who was going for his daily stroll beside the river, wheeled
+and made for the telephone, and brought back the news that Mr. Flint
+would be happy to see Mr. Crewe the next afternoon at four o'clock.
+
+This interview, about which there has been so much controversy in the
+newspapers, and denials and counter-denials from the press bureaus of
+both gentlemen,--this now historic interview began at four o'clock
+precisely the next day.  At that hour Mr. Crewe was ushered into that
+little room in which Mr. Flint worked when at Fairview.  Like Frederick
+the Great and other famous captains, Mr. Flint believed in an iron
+bedstead regime.  The magnate was, as usual, fortified behind his oak
+desk; the secretary with a bend in his back was in modest evidence; and
+an elderly man of comfortable proportions, with a large gold watch-charm
+portraying the rising sun, and who gave, somehow, the polished impression
+of a marble, sat near the window smoking a cigar.  Mr. Crewe approached
+the desk with that genial and brisk manner for which he was noted and
+held out his hand to the railroad president.
+
+"We are both business men, and both punctual, Mr. Flint," he said, and
+sat down in the empty chair beside his host, eyeing without particular
+favour him of the watch-charm, whose cigar was not a very good one.  "I
+wanted to have a little private conversation with you which might be of
+considerable interest to us both."  And Mr. Crewe laid down on the desk a
+somewhat formidable roll of papers.
+
+"I trust the presence of Senator Whitredge will not deter you," answered
+Mr. Flint.   "He is an old friend of mine."
+
+Mr. Crewe was on his feet again with surprising alacrity, and beside the
+senator's chair.
+
+"How are you, Senator?" he said, "I have never had the pleasure of
+meeting you, but I know you by reputation."
+
+The senator got to his feet.  They shook hands, and exchanged cordial
+greetings; and during the exchange Mr. Crewe looked out of the window,
+and the senator's eyes were fixed on the telephone receiver on Mr.
+Flint's desk.  As neither gentleman took hold of the other's fingers very
+hard, they fell apart quickly.
+
+"I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Crewe," said the senator.  Mr. Crewe
+sat down again, and not being hampered by those shrinking qualities so
+fatal to success he went on immediately:--
+
+"There is nothing which I have to say that the senator cannot hear.  I
+made the appointment with you, Mr. Flint, to talk over a matter which may
+be of considerable importance to us both.  I have made up my mind to go
+to the Legislature."
+
+Mr. Crewe naturally expected to find visible effects of astonishment and
+joy on the faces of his hearers at such not inconsiderable news.  Mr.
+Flint, however, looked serious enough, though the senator smiled as he
+blew his smoke out of the window.
+
+"Have you seen Job Braden, Mr. Crewe?" he asked, with genial jocoseness.
+"They tell me that Job is still alive and kicking over in your parts."
+
+"Thank you, Senator," said Mr. Crewe, "that brings me to the very point I
+wish to emphasize.  Everywhere in Leith I am met with the remark, 'Have
+you seen Job Braden?'  And I always answer, 'No, I haven't seen Mr.
+Braden, and I don't intend to see him."'
+
+Mr. Whitredge laughed, and blew out a ring of smoke.  Mr. Flint's face
+remained sober.
+
+"Now, Mr. Flint," Mr. Crewe went on, "you and I understand each other,
+and we're on the same side of the fence.  I have inherited some interests
+in corporations myself, and I have acquired an interest in others.  I am
+a director in several.  I believe that it is the duty of property to
+protect itself, and the duty of all good men in politics,--such as the
+senator here,"--(bow from Mr. Whitredge) to protect property.  I am a
+practical man, and I think I can convince you, if you don't see it
+already, that my determination to go to the Legislature is an
+advantageous thing for your railroad."
+
+"The advent of a reputable citizen into politics is always a good thing
+for the railroad, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"Exactly," Mr. Crewe agreed, ignoring the non-committal quality of this
+remark, "and if you get a citizen who is a not inconsiderable property
+holder, a gentleman, and a college graduate,--a man who, by study and
+predilection, is qualified to bring about improved conditions in the
+State, so much the better."
+
+"So much the better," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"I thought you would see it that way," Mr. Crewe continued.  "Now a man
+of your calibre must have studied to some extent the needs of the State,
+and it must have struck you that certain improvements go hand in hand
+with the prosperity of your railroad."
+
+"Have a cigar, Mr. Crewe.  Have another, Senator?" said Mr. Flint.  "I
+think that is safe as a general proposition, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"To specify," said Mr. Crewe, laying his hand on the roll of papers he
+had brought, "I have here bills which I have carefully drawn up and which
+I will leave for your consideration.  One is to issue bonds for ten
+millions to build State roads."
+
+"Ten millions!" said Mr. Flint, and the senator whistled mildly.
+
+"Think about it," said Mr. Crewe, "the perfection of the highways through
+the State, instead of decreasing your earnings, would increase them
+tremendously.  Visitors by the tens of thousands would come in
+automobiles, and remain and buy summer places.  The State would have its
+money back in taxes and business in no time at all.  I wonder somebody
+hasn't seen it before--the stupidity of the country legislator is
+colossal.  And we want forestry laws, and laws for improving the
+condition of the farmers--all practical things.  They are all there," Mr.
+Crewe declared, slapping the bundle; "read them, Mr. Flint.  If you have
+any suggestions to make, kindly note them on the margin, and I shall be
+glad to go over them with you."
+
+By this time the senator was in a rare posture for him--he was seated
+upright.
+
+"As you know, I am a very busy man, Mr. Crewe," said the railroad
+president.
+
+"No one appreciates that more fully than I do, Mr. Flint," said Mr.
+Crewe; "I haven't many idle hours myself.  I think you will find the
+bills and my comments on them well worth your consideration from the
+point of view of advantage to your railroad.  They are typewritten, and
+in concrete form.  In fact, the Northeastern Railroads and myself must
+work together to our mutual advantage--that has become quite clear to me.
+I shall have need of your help in passing the measures."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't quite understand you, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint,
+putting down the papers.
+
+"That is," said Mr. Crewe, "if you approve of the bills, and I am
+confident that I shall be able to convince you."
+
+"What do you want me to do?"  asked the railroad president.
+
+"Well, in the first place," said Mr. Crewe, unabashed, "send word to your
+man Braden that you've seen me and it's all right."
+
+"I assure you," answered Mr. Flint, giving evidence for the first time of
+a loss of patience, "that neither the Northeastern Railroads nor myself,
+have any more to do with this Braden than you have."
+
+Mr. Crewe, being a man of the world, looked incredulous.
+
+"Senator," Mr. Flint continued, turning to Mr. Whitredge, "you know as
+much about politics in this State as any man of my acquaintance, have you
+ever heard of any connection between this Braden and the Northeastern
+Railroads?"
+
+The senator had a laugh that was particularly disarming.
+
+"Bless your soul, no," he replied.  "You will pardon me, Mr. Crewe, but
+you must have been listening to some farmer's tale.  The railroad is the
+bugaboo in all these country romances.  I've seen old Job Braden at
+conventions ever since I was a lad.  He's a back number, one of the few
+remaining disciples and imitators of Jethro Bass: talks like him and acts
+like him.  In the old days when there were a lot of little railroads, he
+and Bijah Bixby and a few others used to make something out of them, but
+since the consolidation, and Mr. Flint's presidency, Job stays at home.
+They tell me he runs Leith yet.  You'd better go over and fix it up with
+him."
+
+A somewhat sarcastic smile of satisfaction was playing over Mr. Flint's
+face as he listened to the senator's words.  As a matter of fact, they
+were very nearly true as regarded Job Braden, but Mr. Crewe may be
+pardoned for thinking that Mr. Flint was not showing him quite the
+confidence due from one business and corporation man to another.  He was
+by no means abashed,--Mr. Crewe had too much spirit for that.  He merely
+became--as a man whose watchword is "thorough" will--a little more
+combative.
+
+"Well, read the bills anyway, Mr. Flint, and I'll come and go over them
+with you.  You can't fail to see my arguments, and all I ask is that you
+throw the weight of your organization at the State capital for them when
+they come up."
+
+Mr. Flint drummed on the table.
+
+"The men who have held office in this State," he said, "have always been
+willing to listen to any suggestion I may have thought proper to make to
+them.  This is undoubtedly because I am at the head of the property which
+pays the largest taxes.  Needless to say I am chary of making
+suggestions.  But I am surprised that you should have jumped at a
+conclusion which is the result of a popular and unfortunately prevalent
+opinion that the Northeastern Railroads meddled in any way with the
+government or politics of this State.  I am glad of this opportunity of
+assuring you that we do not," he continued, leaning forward and holding
+up his hand to ward off interruption, "and I know that Senator Whitredge
+will bear me out in this statement, too."
+
+The senator nodded gravely.  Mr. Crewe, who was anything but a fool, and
+just as assertive as Mr. Flint, cut in.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Flint," he said, "I know what a lobby is.  I haven't been
+a director in railroads myself for nothing.  I have no objection to a
+lobby.  You employ counsel before the Legislature, don't you--"
+
+"We do," said Mr. Flint, interrupting, "the best and most honourable
+counsel we can find in the State.  When necessary, they appear before the
+legislative committees.  As a property holder in the State, and an
+admirer of its beauties, and as its well-wisher, it will give me great
+pleasure to look over your bills, and use whatever personal influence I
+may have as a citizen to forward them, should they meet my approval.  And
+I am especially glad to do this as a neighbour, Mr. Crewe.  As a
+neighbour," he repeated, significantly.
+
+The president of the Northeastern Railroads rose as he spoke these words,
+and held out his hand to Mr. Crewe.  It was perhaps a coincidence that
+the senator rose also.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll call around again in about two weeks.
+Come and see me sometime, Senator."  Thank you," said the senator, "I
+shall be happy.  And if you are ever in your automobile near the town of
+Ramsey, stop at my little farm, Mr. Crewe.  I trust to be able soon to
+congratulate you on a step which I am sure will be but the beginning of a
+long and brilliant political career."
+
+"Thanks," said Mr. Crewe; "by the bye, if you could see your way to drop
+a hint to that feller Braden, I should be much obliged."
+
+The senator shook his head and laughed.
+
+"Job is an independent cuss," he said, "I'm afraid he'd regard that as an
+unwarranted trespass on his preserves."
+
+Mr. Crewe was ushered out by the stooping secretary, Mr. Freeman; who,
+instead of seizing Mr. Crewe's hand as he had Austen Vane's, said not a
+word.  But Mr. Crewe would have been interested if he could have heard
+Mr. Flint's first remark to the senator after the door was closed on his
+back.  It did not relate to Mr. Crewe, but to the subject under
+discussion which he had interrupted; namely, the Republican candidates
+for the twenty senatorial districts of the State.
+
+On its way back to Leith the red motor paused in front of Mr. Ball's
+store, and that gentleman was summoned in the usual manner.
+
+"Do you see this Braden once in a while?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+Mr. Ball looked knowing.
+
+"Tell him I want to have a talk with him," said Mr. Crewe.  "I've been to
+see Mr. Flint, and I think matters can be arranged.  And mind you, no
+word about this, Ball."
+
+"I guess I understand a thing or two," said Mr. Ball.  "Trust me to
+handle it."
+
+Two days later, as Mr. Crewe was seated in his study, his man entered and
+stood respectfully waiting for the time when he should look up from his
+book.
+
+"Well, what is it now, Waters?"
+
+"If you please, sir," said the man, "a strange message has come over the
+telephone just now that you were to be in room number twelve of the
+Ripton House to-morrow at ten o'clock.  They wouldn't give any name,
+sir," added the dignified Waters, who, to tell the truth, was somewhat
+outraged, nor tell where they telephoned from.  But it was a man's voice,
+sir."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+He spent much of the afternoon and evening debating whether or not his
+dignity would permit him to go.  But he ordered the motor at half-past
+nine, and at ten o'clock precisely the clerk at the Ripton House was
+bowing to him and handing him, deferentially, a dripping pen.
+
+"Where's room number twelve?" said the direct Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh," said the clerk, and possessing a full share of the worldly wisdom
+of his calling, he smiled broadly.  "I guess you'll find him up there,
+Mr. Crewe.  Front, show the gentleman to number twelve."
+
+The hall boy knocked on the door of number twelve.
+
+"C--come in," said a voice.  "Come in."
+
+Mr. Crewe entered, the hall boy closed the door, and he found himself
+face to face with a comfortable, smooth-faced man seated with great
+placidity on a rocking-chair in the centre of the room, between the bed
+and the marble-topped table: a man to whom, evidently, a rich abundance
+of thought was sufficient company, for he had neither newspaper nor book.
+He rose in a leisurely fashion, and seemed the very essence of the benign
+as he stretched forth his hand.
+
+"I'm Mr. Crewe," the owner of that name proclaimed, accepting the hand
+with no exaggeration of cordiality.  The situation jarred on him a
+trifle.
+
+"I know.  Seed you on the road once or twice.  How be you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe sat down.
+
+"I suppose you are Mr. Braden," he said.
+
+Mr. Braden sank into the rocker and fingered a waistcoat pocket full of
+cigars that looked like a section of a cartridge-belt.
+
+"T--try one of mine," he said.
+
+"I only smoke once after breakfast," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Abstemious, be you?  Never could find that it did me any hurt."
+
+This led to an awkward pause, Mr. Crewe not being a man who found profit
+in idle discussion.  He glanced at Mr. Braden's philanthropic and beaming
+countenance, which would have made the fortune of a bishop.  It was not
+usual for Mr. Crewe to find it difficult to begin a conversation, or to
+have a companion as self-sufficient as himself.  This man Braden had all
+the fun, apparently, in sitting in a chair and looking into space that
+Stonewall Jackson had, or an ordinary man in watching a performance of "A
+Trip to Chinatown."  Let it not be inferred, again, that Mr. Crewe was
+abashed; but he was puzzled.
+
+"I had an engagement in Ripton this morning," he said, "to see about some
+business matters.  And after I received your telephone I thought I'd drop
+in here."
+
+"Didn't telephone," said Mr. Braden, placidly.
+
+"What!" said Mr. Crewe, "I certainly got a telephone message."
+
+"N--never telephone," said Mr. Braden.
+
+"I certainly got a message from you," Mr. Crewe protested.
+
+"Didn't say it was from me--didn't say so--did they--"
+
+"No," said Mr. Crewe, "but--"
+
+"Told Ball you wanted to have me see you, didn't you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe, when he had unravelled this sentence, did not fancy the way it
+was put.
+
+"I told Ball I was seeing everybody in Leith," he answered, "and that I
+had called on you, and you weren't at home.  Ball inferred that you had a
+somewhat singular way of seeing people."
+
+"You don't understand," was Mr. Braden's somewhat enigmatic reply.
+
+"I understand pretty well," said Mr. Crewe.  "I'm a candidate for the
+Republican nomination for representative from Leith, and I want your vote
+and influence.  You probably know what I have done for the town, and that
+I'm the biggest taxpayer, and an all-the-year-round resident."
+
+"S--some in Noo York--hain't you?"
+
+"Well, you can't expect a man in my position and with my interests to
+stay at home all the time.  I feel that I have a right to ask the town
+for this nomination.  I have some bills here which I'll request you to
+read over, and you will see that I have ideas which are of real value to
+the State.  The State needs waking up-progressive measures.  You're a
+farmer, ain't you?"
+
+"Well, I have be'n."
+
+"I can improve the condition of the farmer one hundred per cent, and if
+my road system is followed, he can get his goods to market for about a
+tenth of what it costs him now.  We have infinitely valuable forests in
+the State which are being wasted by lumbermen, which ought to be
+preserved.  You read those bills, and what I have written about them."
+
+"You don't understand," said Mr. Braden, drawing a little closer and
+waving aside the manuscript with his cigar.
+
+"Don't understand what?"
+
+"Don't seem to understand," repeated Mr. Braden, confidingly laying his
+hand on Mr. Crewe's knee.  "Candidate for representative, be you?"
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. Crewe, who was beginning to resent the manner in which
+he deemed he was being played with, "I told you I was."
+
+"M--made all them bills out before you was chose?" said Mr. Braden.
+
+Mr. Crewe grew red in the face.
+
+"I am interested in these questions," he said stiffly.
+
+"Little mite hasty, wahn't it?" Mr. Braden remarked equably, "but you've
+got plenty of time and money to fool with such things, if you've a mind
+to.  Them don't amount to a hill of beans in politics.  Nobody pays any
+attention to that sort of fireworks down to the capital, and if they was
+to get into committee them Northeastern Railroads fellers'd bury 'em
+deeper than the bottom of Salem pond.  They don't want no such things as
+them to pass."
+
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Crewe, "but you haven't read 'em."
+
+"I know what they be," said Mr. Braden, "I've be'n in politics more years
+than you've be'n livin', I guess.  I don't want to read 'em," he
+announced, his benign manner unchanged.
+
+"I think you have made a mistake so far as the railroad is concerned, Mr.
+Braden," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm a practical man myself, and I don't indulge
+in moonshine.  I am a director in one or two railroads.  I have talked
+this matter over with Mr. Flint, and incidentally with Senator
+Whitredge."
+
+"Knowed Whitredge afore you had any teeth," said Mr. Braden, who did not
+seem to be greatly impressed, "know him intimate.  What'd you go to Flint
+for?"
+
+"We have interests in common," said Mr. Crewe, "and I am rather a close
+friend of his.  My going to the Legislature will be, I think, to our
+mutual advantage."
+
+"O--ought to have come right to me," said Mr. Braden, leaning over until
+his face was in close proximity to Mr. Crewe's.  "Whitredge told you to
+come to me, didn't he?"
+
+Mr. Crewe was a little taken aback.
+
+"The senator mentioned your name," he admitted.
+
+"He knows.  Said I was the man to see if you was a candidate, didn't he?
+Told you to talk to Job Braden, didn't he?"
+
+Now Mr. Crewe had no means of knowing whether Senator Whitredge had been
+in conference with Mr. Braden or not.
+
+"The senator mentioned your name casually, in some connection," said Mr.
+Crewe.
+
+"He knows," Mr. Braden repeated, with a finality that spoke volumes for
+the senator's judgment; and he bent over into Mr. Crewe's ear, with the
+air of conveying a mild but well-merited reproof, "You'd ought to come
+right to me in the first place.  I could have saved you all that
+unnecessary trouble of seein' folks.  There hasn't be'n a representative
+left the town of Leith for thirty years that I hain't agreed to.
+Whitredge knows that.  If I say you kin go, you kin go.  You understand,"
+said Mr. Braden, with his fingers on Mr. Crewe's knee once more.
+
+Five minutes later Mr. Crewe emerged into the dazzling sun of the Ripton
+square, climbed into his automobile, and turned its head towards Leith,
+strangely forgetting the main engagement which he said had brought him to
+town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE TRIALS OF AN HONOURABLE
+
+It was about this time that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was transformed, by one of
+those subtle and inexplicable changes which occur in American politics,
+into the Honourable Humphrey Crewe.  And, as interesting bits of news
+about important people are bound to leak out, it became known in Leith
+that he had subscribed to what is known as a Clipping Bureau.  Two weeks
+after the day he left Mr. Braden's presence in the Ripton House the
+principal newspapers of the country contained the startling announcement
+that the well-known summer colony of Leith was to be represented in the
+State Legislature by a millionaire.  The Republican nomination, which Mr.
+Crewe had secured, was equivalent to an election.
+
+For a little time after that Mr. Crewe, although naturally an important
+and busy man, scarcely had time to nod to his friends on the road.
+
+"Poor dear Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, "who was so used to dropping in
+to dinner, hasn't had a moment to write me a line to thank me for the
+statesman's diary I bought for him in London this spring.  They're in
+that new red leather, and Aylestone says he finds his so useful.  I
+dropped in at Wedderburn to-day to see if I could be of any help, and the
+poor man was buttonholed by two reporters who had come all the way from
+New York to see him.  I hope he won't overdo it."
+
+It was true.  Mr. Crewe was to appear in the Sunday supplements.   "Are
+our Millionaires entering Politics?"  Mr. Crewe, with his usual gracious
+hospitality, showed the reporters over the place, and gave them
+suggestions as to the best vantage-points in which to plant their
+cameras.  He himself was at length prevailed upon to be taken in a rough
+homespun suit, and with a walking-stick in his hand, appraising with a
+knowing eye a flock of his own sheep.  Pressed a little, he consented to
+relate something of the systematic manner in which he had gone about to
+secure this nomination: how he had visited in person the homes of his
+fellow-townsmen.  "I knew them all, anyway," he is quoted as saying; "we
+have had the pleasantest of relationships during the many years I have
+been a resident of Leith."
+
+"Beloved of his townspeople," this part of the article was headed.  No,
+these were not Mr. Crewe's words--he was too modest for that.  When urged
+to give the name of one of his townsmen who might deal with this and
+other embarrassing topics, Mr. Ball was mentioned.  "Beloved of his
+townspeople" was Mr. Ball's phrase.  "Although a multi-millionaire, no man
+is more considerate of the feelings and the rights of his more humble
+neighbours.  Send him to the Legislature!  We'd send him to the United
+States Senate if we could.  He'll land there, anyway."  Such was a random
+estimate (Mr. Ball's) the reporters gathered on their way to Ripton.  Mr.
+Crewe did not hesitate to say that the prosperity of the farmers had
+risen as a result of his labours at Wedderburn where the most improved
+machinery and methods were adopted.  His efforts to raise the
+agricultural, as well as the moral and intellectual, tone of the
+community had been unceasing.
+
+Then followed an intelligent abstract of the bills he was to introduce--
+the results of a progressive and statesmanlike brain.  There was an
+account of him as a methodical and painstaking business man whose
+suggestions to the boards of directors of which he was a member had been
+invaluable.  The article ended with a list of the clubs to which he
+belonged, of the societies which he had organized and of those of which
+he was a member,--and it might have been remarked by a discerning reader
+that most of these societies were State affairs.  Finally there was a pen
+portrait of an Apollo Belvidere who wore the rough garb of a farmer (on
+the days when the press was present).
+
+Mr. Crewe's incessant trials, which would have taxed a less rugged
+nature, did not end here.  About five o'clock one afternoon a pleasant-
+appearing gentleman with a mellifluous voice turned up who introduced
+himself as ex (State) Senator Grady.  The senator was from Newcastle,
+that city out of the mysterious depths of which so many political stars
+have arisen.  Mr. Crewe cancelled a long-deferred engagement with Mrs.
+Pomfret, and invited the senator to stay to dinner; the senator
+hesitated, explained that he was just passing through Ripton, and, as it
+was a pleasant afternoon, had called to "pay his respects"; but Mr.
+Crewe's well-known hospitality would accept no excuses.  Mr. Crewe opened
+a box of cigars which he had bought especially for the taste of State
+senators and a particular grade of Scotch whiskey.
+
+They talked politics for four hours.  Who would be governor?  The senator
+thought Asa Gray would.  The railroad was behind him, Mr. Crewe observed
+knowingly.  The senator remarked that Mr. Crewe was no gosling.  Mr.
+Crewe, as political-geniuses will, asked as many questions as the emperor
+of Germany--pertinent questions about State politics.  Senator Grady was
+tremendously impressed with his host's programme of bills, and went over
+them so painstakingly that Mr. Crewe became more and more struck with
+Senator Grady's intelligence.  The senator told Mr. Crewe that just such
+a man as he was needed to pull the State out of the rut into which she
+had fallen.  Mr. Crewe said that he hoped to find such enlightened men in
+the Legislature as the senator.  The senator let it be known that he had
+read the newspaper articles, and had remarked that Mr. Crewe was close to
+the president of the Northeastern Railroads.
+
+"Such a man as you," said the senator, looking at the remainder of the
+Scotch whiskey, "will have the railroad behind you, sure."
+
+"One more drink," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"I must go," said Mr. Grady, pouring it out, but that reminds me.  It
+comes over me sudden-like, as I sit here, that you certainly ought to be
+in the new encyclopeedie of the prominent men of the State.  But sure you
+have received an application."
+
+"It is probable that my secretary has one," said Mr. Crewe, "but he
+hasn't called it to my attention."
+
+"You must get in that book, Mr. Crewe," said the senator, with an intense
+earnestness which gave the impression of alarm; "after what you've told
+me to-night I'll see to it myself that you get in.  It may be that I've
+got some of the sample pages here, if I haven't left them at home," said
+Mr. Grady, fumbling in an ample inside pocket, and drawing forth a
+bundle.  "Sure, here they are.  Ain't that luck for you?  Listen!  'Asa
+P. Gray was born on the third of August, eighteen forty-seven, the
+seventh son of a farmer.  See, there's a space in the end they left to
+fill up when he's elicted governor!  Here's another.  The Honourable
+Hilary Vane comes from one of the oldest Puritan families in the State,
+the Vanes of Camden Street--' Here's another.  'The Honourable Brush
+Bascom of Putnam County is the son of poor but honourable parents--' Look
+at the picture of him.  Ain't that a handsome steel-engravin' of the
+gentleman?"
+
+Mr. Crewe gazed contemplatively at the proof, but was too busy with his
+own thoughts to reflect that there was evidently not much poor or
+honourable about Mr. Bascom now.
+
+"Who's publishing this?" he asked.
+
+"Fogarty and Company; sure they're the best publishers in the State, as
+you know, Mr. Crewe.  They have the State printing.  Wasn't it fortunate
+I had the proofs with me?  Tim Fogarty slipped them into me pocket when I
+was leavin' Newcastle.  'The book is goin' to press the day after
+eliction,' says he, 'John,' says he, 'you know I always rely on your
+judgment, and if you happen to think of anybody between now and then who
+ought to go in, you'll notify me,' says he.  When I read the bills to-
+night, and saw the scope of your work, it came over me in a flash that
+Humphrey Crewe was the man they left out.  You'll get a good man to write
+your life, and what you done for the town and State, and all them
+societies and bills, won't you?  'Twould be a thousand pities not to have
+it right."
+
+"How much does it cost?" Mr. Crewe inquired.
+
+"Sure I forgot to ask Tim Fogarty.  Mebbe he has it here.  I signed one
+myself, but I couldn't afford the steelengravin'.  Yes, he slipped one
+in.  Two hundred dollars for a two-page biography, and, three hundred for
+the steelengravin'.  Five hundred dollars.  I didn't know it was so cheap
+as that," exclaimed the senator, "and everybody in the State havin' to
+own one in self-protection.  You don't happen to have a pen about you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe waved the senator towards his own desk, and Mr. Grady filled
+out the blank.
+
+"It's lucky we are that I didn't drop in after eliction, and the book in
+press," he remarked; "and I hope you'll give him a good photograph.
+This's for you, I'll take this to Tim myself," and he handed the pen for
+Mr. Crewe to sign with.
+
+Mr. Crewe read over the agreement carefully, as a business man should,
+before putting his signature to it.  And then the senator, with renewed
+invitations for Mr. Crewe to call on him when he came to Newcastle, took
+his departure.  Afterwards Mr. Crewe remained so long in reflection that
+his man Waters became alarmed, and sought him out and interrupted his
+revery.
+
+The next morning Mrs. Pomfret, who was merely "driving by" with her
+daughter Alice and Beatrice Chillingham, spied Mr. Crewe walking about
+among the young trees he was growing near the road, and occasionally
+tapping them with his stout stick.  She poked her coachman in the back
+and cried:--
+
+"Humphrey, you're such an important man now that I despair of ever seeing
+you again.  What was the matter last night?"
+
+"A politician from Newcastle," answered Mr. Crewe, continuing to tap the
+trees, and without so much as a glance at Alice.
+
+"Well, if you're as important as this before you're elected, I can't
+think what it will be afterwards," Mrs. Pomfret lamented.  "Poor dear
+Humphrey is so conscientious.  When can you come, Humphrey?"
+
+"Don't know," said Mr. Crewe; "I'll try to come tonight, but I may be
+stopped again.  Here's Waters now."
+
+The three people in Mrs. Pomfret's victoria were considerably impressed
+to see the dignified Waters hurrying down the slope from the house
+towards them.  Mr. Crewe continued to tap the trees, but drew a little
+nearer the carriage.
+
+"If you please, sir," said Waters, "there's a telephone call for you from
+Newcastle.  It's urgent, sir."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"They won't give their names, sir."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, and with a grin which spoke volumes for the
+manner in which he was harassed he started towards the house--in no great
+hurry, however.  Reaching the instrument, and saying "Hello" in his
+usually gracious manner, he was greeted by a voice with a decided
+Hibernian-American accent.
+
+"Am I talkin' to Mr. Crewe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Humphrey Crewe?"
+
+"Yes--yes, of course you are.  Who are you?"
+
+"I'm the president of the Paradise Benevolent and Military Association,
+Mr. Crewe.  Boys that work in the mills, you know," continued the voice,
+caressingly.  "Sure you've heard of us.  We're five hundred strong, and
+all of us good Republicans as the president.  We're to have our annual
+fall outing the first of October in Finney Grove, and we'd like to have
+you come down."
+
+"The first of October?" said Mr. Crewe.  "I'll consult my engagement
+book."
+
+"We'd like to have a good picture of you in our programme, Mr. Crewe.  We
+hope you'll oblige us.  You're such an important figure in State politics
+now you'd ought to have a full page."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"What does it cost?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+"Sure," said the caressing voice of the president, "whatever you like."
+
+"I'll send you a check for five dollars, and a picture," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+The answer to this was a hearty laugh, which the telephone reproduced
+admirably.  The voice now lost a little of its caressing note and partook
+of a harder quality.
+
+"You're a splendid humorist, Mr. Crewe.  Five dollars wouldn't pay for
+the plate and the paper.  A gentleman like you could give us twenty-five,
+and never know it was gone.  You won't be wanting to stop in the
+Legislature, Mr. Crewe, and we remember our friends in Newcastle."
+
+"Very well, I'll see what I can do.  Good-by, I've got an engagement,"
+said Mr. Crewe, and slammed down the telephone.  He seated himself in his
+chair, and the pensive mood so characteristic (we are told) of statesmen
+came over him once more.
+
+While these and other conferences and duties too numerous to mention were
+absorbing Mr. Crewe, he was not too busy to bear in mind the pleasure of
+those around him who had not received such an abundance of the world's
+blessings as he.  The townspeople of Leith were about to bestow on him
+their greatest gift.  What could he do to show his appreciation?
+Wrestling with this knotty problem, a brilliant idea occurred to him,--he
+would have a garden-party: invite everybody in town, and admit them to
+the sanctities of Wedderburn; yes, even of Wedderburn house, that they
+might behold with their own eyes the carved ivory elephants and other
+contents of glass cabinets which reeked of the Sunday afternoons of
+youth.  Being a man of action, Mr. Pardriff was summoned at once from
+Leith and asked for his lowest price on eight hundred and fifty
+invitations and a notice of the party in the Ripton Record.
+
+"Goin' to invite Democrats, too?" demanded Mr. Pardriff, glancing at the
+check-list.
+
+"Everybody," said Mr. Crewe, with unparalleled generosity.  "I won't draw
+any distinction between friends and enemies.  They're all neighbours."
+
+"And some of 'em might, by accident, vote the Republican ticket," Mr.
+Pardriff retorted, narrowing his eyes a little.
+
+Mr. Crewe evidently thought this a negligible suggestion, for he did not
+reply to it, but presently asked for the political news in Ripton.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pardriff, "you know they tried to get Austen Vane to run
+for State senator, don't you?"
+
+"Vane  Why, he ain't a full-fledged lawyer yet.  I've hired him in an
+unimportant case.  Who asked him to run?"
+
+"Young Tom Gaylord and a delegation."
+
+"He couldn't have got it," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Pardriff, "he might have given Billings a hustle
+for the nomination."
+
+"You supported Billings, I noticed," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+Mr. Pardriff winked an eye.
+
+"I'm not ready to walk the ties when I go to Newcastle," he remarked,
+"and Nat ain't quite bankrupt yet.  The Gaylords," continued Mr.
+Pardriff, who always took the cynical view of a man of the world, "have
+had some row with the Northeastern over lumber shipments.  I understand
+they're goin' to buck 'em for a franchise in the next Legislature, just
+to make it lively.  The Gaylords ain't exactly poverty-stricken, but they
+might as well try to move Sawanec Mountain as the Northeastern."
+
+It was a fact that young Tom Gaylord had approached Austen Vane with a
+"delegation" to request him to be a candidate for the Republican
+nomination for the State senate in his district against the railroad
+candidate and Austen's late opponent, the Honourable Nat Billings.  It
+was a fact also that Austen had invited the delegation to sit down,
+although there were only two chairs, and that a wrestling match had
+ensued with young Tom, in the progress of which one chair had been
+broken.  Young Tom thought it was time to fight the railroad, and
+perceived in Austen the elements of a rebel leader.  Austen had
+undertaken to throw young Tom out of a front window, which was a large,
+old-fashioned one,--and after Herculean efforts had actually got him on
+the ledge, when something in the street caught his eye and made him
+desist abruptly.  The something was the vision of a young woman in a
+brown linen suit seated in a runabout and driving a horse almost as
+handsome as Pepper.
+
+When the delegation, after exhausting their mental and physical powers of
+persuasion, had at length taken their departure in disgust, Austen opened
+mechanically a letter which had very much the appearance of an
+advertisement, and bearing a one-cent stamp.  It announced that a garden-
+party would take place at Wedderburn, the home of the Honourable Humphrey
+Crewe, at a not very distant date, and the honour of the bearer's
+presence was requested.  Refreshments would be served, and the Ripton
+Band would dispense music.  Below, in small print, were minute directions
+where to enter, where to hitch your team, and where to go out.
+
+Austen was at a loss to know what fairy godmother had prompted Mr. Crewe
+to send him an invitation, the case of the injured horse not having
+advanced with noticeable rapidity.  Nevertheless, the prospect of the
+garden-party dawned radiantly for him above what had hitherto been a
+rather gloomy horizon.  Since the afternoon he had driven Victoria to the
+Hammonds' he had had daily debates with an imaginary man in his own
+likeness who, to the detriment of his reading of law, sat across his
+table and argued with him.  The imaginary man was unprincipled, and had
+no dignity, but he had such influence over Austen Vane that he had
+induced him to drive twice within sight of Fairview gate, when Austen
+Vane had turned round again.  The imaginary man was for going to call on
+her and letting subsequent events take care of themselves; Austen Vane,
+had an uncomfortable quality of reducing a matter first of all to its
+simplest terms.  He knew that Mr. Flint's views were as fixed,
+ineradicable, and unchangeable as an epitaph cut in a granite monument;
+he felt (as Mr. Flint had) that their first conversation had been but a
+forerunner of, a strife to come between them; and add to this the facts
+that Mr. Flint was very rich and Austen Vane poor, that Victoria's
+friends were not his friends, and that he had grave doubts that the
+interest she had evinced in him sprang from any other incentive than a
+desire to have communication with various types of humanity, his
+hesitation as to entering Mr. Flint's house was natural enough.
+
+It was of a piece with Mr. Crewe's good fortune of getting what he wanted
+that the day of the garden-party was the best that September could do in
+that country, which is to say that it was very beautiful.  A pregnant
+stillness enwrapped the hills, a haze shot with gold dust, like the
+filmiest of veils, softened the distant purple and the blue-black shadows
+under the pines.  Austen awoke from his dream in this enchanted
+borderland to find himself in a long line of wagons filled with people in
+their Sunday clothes,--the men in black, and the young women in white,
+with gay streamers, wending their way through the rear-entrance drive of
+Wedderburn, where one of Mr. Crewe's sprucest employees was taking up the
+invitation cards like tickets,--a precaution to prevent the rowdy element
+from Ripton coming and eating up the refreshments.  Austen obediently
+tied Pepper in a field, as he was directed, and made his way by a path
+through the woods towards the house, where the Ripton Band could be heard
+playing the second air in the programme, "Don't you wish you'd Waited?"
+
+For a really able account of that memorable entertainment see the Ripton
+Record of that week, for we cannot hope to vie with Mr. Pardriff when his
+heart is really in his work.  How describe the noble figure of Mr. Crewe
+as it burst upon Austen when he rounded the corner of the house?  Clad in
+a rough-and-ready manner, with a Gladstone collar to indicate the newly
+acquired statesmanship, and fairly radiating geniality, Mr. Crewe stood
+at the foot of the steps while the guests made the circuit of the
+driveway; and they carefully avoided, in obedience to a warning sign, the
+grass circle in the centre.  As man and wife confronted him, Mr. Crewe
+greeted them in hospitable but stentorian tones that rose above the
+strains of "Don't you wish you'd Waited?"  It was Mr. Ball who introduced
+his townspeople to the great man who was to represent them.
+
+"How are you?" said Mr. Crewe, with his eyes on the geraniums.  "Mr. and
+Mrs. Perley Wright, eh?  Make yourselves at home.  Everything's free--
+you'll find the refreshments on the back porch--just have an eye to the
+signs posted round, that's all."  And Mr. and Mrs. Perley Wright,
+overwhelmed by such a welcome, would pass on into a back eddy of
+neighbours, where they would stick, staring at a sign requesting them
+please not to pick the flowers.
+
+"Can't somebody stir 'em up?" Mr. Crewe shouted in an interval when the
+band had stopped to gather strength for a new effort.  "Can't somebody
+move 'em round to see the cows and what's in the house and the automobile
+and the horses?  Move around the driveway, please.  It's so hot here you
+can't breathe.  Some of you wanted to see what was in the house.  Now's
+your chance."
+
+This graceful appeal had some temporary effect, but the congestion soon
+returned, when a man of the hour appeared, a man whose genius scattered
+the groups and who did more to make the party a success than any single
+individual,--Mr. Hamilton Tooting, in a glorious white silk necktie with
+purple flowers.
+
+"I'll handle 'em, Mr. Crewe," he said; "a little brains'll start 'em
+goin'.  Come along here, Mr. Wright, and I'll show you the best cows this
+side of the Hudson Riverall pedigreed prize winners.  Hello, Aust, you
+take hold and get the wimmen-folks interested in the cabinets.  You know
+where they are."
+
+"There's a person with some sense," remarked Mrs. Pomfret, who had been
+at a little distance among a group of summer-resident ladies and watching
+the affair with shining eyes.  "I'll help.  Come, Edith; come, Victoria
+where's Victoria?--and dear Mrs. Chillingham.  We American women are so
+deplorably lacking in this kind of experience.  Alice, take some of the
+women into the garden.  I'm going to interest that dear, benevolent man
+who looks so helpless, and doing his best to have a good time."
+
+The dear, benevolent man chanced to be Mr. Job Braden, who was standing
+somewhat apart with his hands in his pockets.  He did not move as Mrs.
+Pomfret approached him, holding her glasses to her eyes.
+
+"How are you?" exclaimed that lady, extending a white-gloved hand with a
+cordiality that astonished her friends.  "It is so pleasant to see you
+here, Mr.--Mr.--"
+
+"How be you?" said Mr. Braden, taking her fingers in the gingerly manner
+he would have handled one of Mr. Crewe's priceless curios.  The giraffe
+Mr. Barnum had once brought to Ripton was not half as interesting as this
+immaculate and mysterious production of foreign dressmakers and French
+maids, but he refrained from betraying it.  His eye rested on the
+lorgnette.
+
+"Near-sighted, be you?" he inquired,--a remark so unexpected that for the
+moment Mrs. Pomfret was deprived of speech.
+
+"I manage to see better with--with these," she gasped, "when we get old--
+you know."
+
+"You hain't old," said Mr. Braden, gallantly.  "If you be," he added, his
+eye travelling up and down the Parisian curves,  I wouldn't have
+suspected it--not a mite."
+
+"I'm afraid you are given to flattery, Mr.--Mr.--" she replied hurriedly.
+"Whom have I the pleasure of speaking to?"
+
+"Job Braden's my name," he answered, "but you have the advantage of me."
+
+"How?" demanded the thoroughly bewildered Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"I hain't heard your name," he said.
+
+"Oh, I'm Mrs. Pomfret--a very old friend of Mr. Crewe's.  Whenever he has
+his friends with him, like this, I come over and help him.  It is so
+difficult for a bachelor to entertain, Mr. Braden."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Braden, bending alarmingly near her ear, "there's one
+way out of it."
+
+"What's that?"  said Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"Git married," declared Mr. Braden.
+
+"How very clever you are, Mr. Braden!  I wish poor dear Mr. Crewe would
+get married--a wife could take so many burdens off his shoulders.  You
+don't know Mr. Crewe very well, do you?"
+
+"Callate to--so so," said Mr. Braden.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret was at sea again.
+
+"I mean, do you see him often?"
+
+"Seen him once," said Mr. Braden.  "G-guess that's enough."
+
+"You're a shrewd judge of human nature, Mr. Braden," she replied, tapping
+him on the shoulder with the lorgnette, "but you can have no idea how
+good he is--how unceasingly he works for others.  He is not a man who
+gives much expression to his feelings, as no doubt you have discovered,
+but if you knew him as I do, you would realize how much affection he has
+for his country neighbours and how much he has their welfare at heart."
+
+"Loves 'em--does he--loves 'em?"
+
+"He is like an English gentleman in his sense of responsibility," said
+Mrs. Pomfret; "over there, you know, it is a part of a country
+gentleman's duty to improve the condition of his--his neighbours.  And
+then Mr. Crewe is so fond of his townspeople that he couldn't resist
+doing this for them," and she indicated with a sweep of her eyeglasses
+the beatitude with which they were surrounded.
+
+"Wahn't no occasion to," said Mr. Braden.
+
+"What!" cried Mrs. Pomfret, who had been walking on ice for some time.
+
+"This hain't England--is it?  Hain't England?"
+
+"No," she admitted, "but--"
+
+"Hain't England," said Mr. Braden, and leaned forward until he was within
+a very few inches of her pearl ear-ring.  "He'll be chose all right--d-
+don't fret--he'll be chose."
+
+"My dear Mr. Braden, I've no doubt of it--Mr. Crewe's so popular," she
+cried, removing her ear-ring abruptly from the danger zone.  "Do make
+yourself at home," she added, and retired from Mr. Braden's company a
+trifle disconcerted,--a new experience for Mrs. Pomfret.  She wondered
+whether all country people were like Mr. Braden, but decided, after
+another experiment or two, that he was an original.  More than once
+during the afternoon she caught sight of him, beaming upon the
+festivities around him.  But she did not renew the conversation.
+
+To Austen Vane, wandering about the grounds, Mr. Crewe's party presented
+a sociological problem of no small interest.  Mr. Crewe himself
+interested him, and he found himself speculating how far a man would go
+who charged the fastnesses of the politicians with a determination not to
+be denied and a bank account to be reckoned with.  Austen talked to many
+of the Leith farmers whom he had known from boyhood, thanks to his custom
+of roaming the hills; they were for the most part honest men whose
+occupation in life was the first thought, and they were content to leave
+politics to Mr. Braden--that being his profession.  To the most
+intelligent of these Mr. Crewe's garden-party was merely the wanton whim
+of a millionaire.  It was an open secret to them that Job Braden for
+reasons of his own had chosen Mr. Crewe to represent them, and they were
+mildly amused at the efforts of Mrs. Pomfret and her assistants to secure
+votes which were as certain as the sun's rising on the morrow.
+
+It was some time before Austen came upon the object of his search--though
+scarce admitting to himself that it had an object.  In greeting him,
+after inquiring about his railroad case, Mr. Crewe had indicated with a
+wave of his hand the general direction of the refreshments; but it was
+not until Austen had tried in all other quarters that he made his way
+towards the porch where the lemonade and cake and sandwiches were.  It
+was, after all, the most popular place, though to his mind the
+refreshments had little to do with its popularity.  From the outskirts of
+the crowd he perceived Victoria presiding over the punchbowl that held
+the lemonade.  He liked to think of her as Victoria; the name had no
+familiarity for him, but seemed rather to enhance the unattainable
+quality of her.
+
+Surrounding Victoria were several clean-looking, freckled, and tanned
+young men of undergraduate age wearing straw hats with coloured ribbons,
+who showed every eagerness to obey and even anticipate the orders she did
+not hesitate to give them.  Her eye seemed continually on the alert for
+those of Mr. Crewe's guests who were too bashful to come forward, and
+discerning them she would send one of her lieutenants forward with
+supplies.  Sometimes she would go herself to the older people; and once,
+perceiving a tired woman holding a baby (so many brought babies, being
+unable to leave them), Victoria impulsively left her post and seized the
+woman by the arm.
+
+"Do come and sit down," she cried; "there's a chair beside me.  And oh,
+what a nice baby!  Won't you let me hold him?"
+
+"Why, yes, ma'am," said the woman, looking up at Victoria with grateful,
+patient eyes, and then with awe at what seemed to her the priceless
+embroidery on Victoria's waist, "won't he spoil your dress?"
+
+"Bless him, no," said Victoria, poking her finger into a dimple--for he
+was smiling at her.  "What if he does?" and forthwith she seized him in
+her arms and bore him to the porch, amidst the laughter of those who
+beheld her, and sat him down on her knee in front of the lemonade bowl,
+the tired mother beside her.  "Will a little lemonade hurt him?  Just a
+very, very little, you know?"
+
+"Why, no, ma'am," said the mother.
+
+"And just a teeny bit of cake," begged Victoria, daintily breaking off a
+piece, while the baby gurgled and snatched for it.  "Do tell me how old
+he is, and how many more you have."
+
+"He's eleven months on the twenty-seventh," said the mother, "and I've
+got four more."  She sighed, her eyes wandering back to the embroidery.
+"What between them and the housework and the butter makin', it hain't
+easy.  Be you married?"
+
+"No," said Victoria, laughing and blushing a little.
+
+"You'll make a good wife for somebody," said the woman.  "I hope you'll
+get a good man."
+
+"I hope so, too," said Victoria, blushing still deeper amidst the
+laughter, "but there doesn't seem to be much chance of it, and good men
+are very scarce."
+
+"I guess you're right," said the mother, soberly.  "Not but what my man's
+good enough, but he don't seem to get along, somehow.  The farm's wore
+out, and the mortgage comes around so regular."
+
+"Where do you live?" asked Victoria, suddenly growing serious.
+
+"Fitch's place.  'Tain't very far from the Four Corners, on the Avalon
+road."
+
+"And you are Mrs. Fitch?"
+
+"Callate to be," said the mother.  "If it ain't askin' too much, I'd like
+to know your name."
+
+"I'm Victoria Flint.  I live not very far from the Four Corners--that is,
+about eight miles.  May I come over and see you sometime?"
+
+Although Victoria said this very simply, the mother's eyes widened until
+one might almost have said they expressed a kind of terror.
+
+"Land sakes alive, be you Mr. Flint's daughter?  I might have knowed it
+from the lace--that dress must have cost a fortune.  But I didn't think
+to find you so common."
+
+Victoria did not smile.  She had heard the word "common" so used before,
+and knew that it was meant for a compliment, and she turned to the woman
+with a very expressive light in her eyes.
+
+"I will come to see you--this very week," she said.  And just then her
+glance, seemingly drawn in a certain direction, met that of a tall young
+man which had been fixed upon her during the whole of this scene.  She
+coloured again, abruptly handed the baby back to his mother, and rose.
+
+"I'm neglecting all these people," she said, "but do sit there and rest
+yourself and--have some more lemonade."
+
+She bowed to Austen, and smiled a little as she filled the glasses, but
+she did not beckon him.  She gave no further sign of her knowledge of his
+presence until he stood beside her--and then she looked up at him.
+
+"I have been looking for you, Miss Flint," he said.
+
+"I suppose a man would never think of trying the obvious places first,"
+she replied.  "Hastings, don't you see that poor old woman over there?
+She looks so thirsty--give her this."
+
+The boy addressed, with a glance at Austen, did as he was bid, and she
+sent off a second on another errand.
+
+"Let me help," said Austen, seizing the cake; and being seized at the
+same time, by an unusual and inexplicable tremor of shyness, thrust it at
+the baby.
+
+"Oh, he can't have anymore; do you want to kill him?" cried Victoria,
+seizing the plate, and adding mischievously, "I don't believe you're of
+very much use--after all!"
+
+"Then it's time I learned," said Austen.  "Here's Mr. Jenney.  I'm sure
+he'll have a piece."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Jenney, the same Mr. Jenney of the apple orchard, but
+holding out a horny hand with unmistakable warmth, "how be you, Austen?"
+Looking about him, Mr. Jenney put his hand to his mouth, and added,
+"Didn't expect to see you trailin' on to this here kite."  He took a
+piece of cake between his thumb and forefinger and glanced bashfully at
+Victoria.
+
+"Have some lemonade, Mr. Jenney?  Do," she urged.
+
+"Well, I don't care if I do," he said, "just a little mite."  He did not
+attempt to stop her as she filled the glass to the brim, but continued to
+regard her with a mixture of curiosity and admiration.  "Seen you nursin'
+the baby and makin' folks at home.  Guess you have the knack of it
+better'n some I could mention."
+
+This was such a palpable stroke at their host that Victoria laughed, and
+made haste to turn the subject from herself.
+
+"Mr. Vane seems to be an old friend of yours," she said.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Jenney, laying his hand on Austen's shoulder, "I callate
+he is.  Austen's broke in more'n one of my colts afore he went West and
+shot that feller.  He's as good a judge of horse-flesh as any man in this
+part of the State.  Hear Tom Gaylord and the boys wanted him to be State
+senator."
+
+"Why didn't you accept, Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Because I don't think the boys could have elected me," answered Austen,
+laughing.
+
+"He's as popular a man as there is in the county," declared Mr. Jenney.
+He was a mite wild as a boy, but sence he's sobered down and won that
+case against the railrud, he could get any office he'd a mind to.  He's
+always adoin' little things for folks, Austen is."
+
+"Did--did that case against the railroad make him so popular?" asked
+Victoria, glancing at Austen's broad back--for he had made his escape
+with the cake.
+
+"I guess it helped considerable," Mr. Jenney admitted.
+
+"Why?" asked Victoria.
+
+"Well, it was a fearless thing to do--plumb against his own interests
+with old Hilary Vane.  Austen's a bright lawyer, and I have heard it said
+he was in line for his father's place as counsel."
+
+"Do--do people dislike the railroad?"
+
+Mr. Jenney rubbed his beard thoughtfully.  He began to wonder who this
+young woman was, and a racial caution seized him.
+
+"Well," he said, "folks has an idea the railrud runs this State to suit
+themselves.  I guess they hain't far wrong.  I've be'n to the Legislature
+and seen some signs of it.  Why, Hilary Vane himself has charge of the
+most considerable part of the politics.  Who be you?" Mr. Jenney demanded
+suddenly.
+
+"I'm Victoria Flint," said Victoria.
+
+"Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Jenney, "you don't say so!  I might have known
+it--seen you on the rud more than once.  But I don't know all you rich
+folks apart.  Wouldn't have spoke so frank if I'd knowed who you was."
+
+"I'm glad you did, Mr. Jenney," she answered.   "I wanted to know what
+people think."
+
+"Well, it's almighty complicated," said Mr. Jenney, shaking his head.  "I
+don't know by rights what to think.  As long as I've said what I have,
+I'll say this: that the politicians is all for the railrud, and I hain't
+got a mite of use for the politicians.  I'll vote for a feller like
+Austen Vane every time, if he'll run, and I know other folks that will."
+
+After Mr. Jenney had left her, Victoria stood motionless, gazing off into
+the haze, until she was startled by the voice of Hastings Weare beside
+her.
+
+"Say, Victoria, who is that man?" he asked.
+
+"What man?"
+
+Hastings nodded towards Austen, who, with a cake basket in his hand,
+stood chatting with a group of country people on the edge of the porch.
+
+"Oh, that man!" said Victoria.  "His name's Austen Vane, and he's a
+lawyer in Ripton."
+
+"All I can say is," replied Hastings, with a light in his face, "he's one
+I'd like to tie to.  I'll bet he could whip any four men you could pick
+out."
+
+Considering that Hastings had himself proposed--although in a very mild
+form--more than once to Victoria, this was generous.
+
+"I daresay he could," she agreed absently.
+
+"It isn't only the way he's built," persisted Hastings, "he looks as if
+he were going to be somebody some day.  Introduce me to him, will you?"
+
+"Certainly," said Victoria.  "Mr. Vane," she called, "I want to introduce
+an admirer, Mr. Hastings Weare."
+
+"I just wanted to know you," said Hastings, reddening, "and Victoria--I
+mean Miss Flint--said she'd introduce me."
+
+"I'm much obliged to her," said Austen, smiling.
+
+"Are you in politics?" asked Hastings.
+
+"I'm afraid not," answered Austen, with a glance at Victoria.
+
+"You're not helping Humphrey Crewe, are you?"
+
+"No," said Austen, and added with an illuminating smile, "Mr. Crewe
+doesn't need any help."
+
+"I'm glad you're not," exclaimed the downright Hastings, with palpable
+relief in his voice that an idol had not been shattered.  "I think
+Humphrey's a fakir, and all this sort of thing tommyrot.  He wouldn't get
+my vote by giving me lemonade and cake and letting me look at his cows.
+If you ever run for office, I'd like to cast it for you.  My father is
+only a summer resident, but since he has gone out of business he stays
+here till Christmas, and I'll be twenty-one in a year."
+
+Austen had ceased to smile; he was looking into the boy's eyes with that
+serious expression which men and women found irresistible.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Weare," he said simply.
+
+Hastings was suddenly overcome with the shyness of youth.  He held out
+his hand, and said, "I'm awfully glad to have met you," and fled.
+
+Victoria, who had looked on with a curious mixture of feelings, turned to
+Austen.
+
+"That was a real tribute," she said.   "Is this the way you affect
+everybody whom you meet?"
+
+They were standing almost alone.  The sun was nearing the western hills
+beyond the river, and people had for some time been wending their way
+towards the field where the horses were tied.  He did not answer her
+question, but asked one instead.
+
+"Will you let me drive you home?"
+
+"Do you think you deserve to, after the shameful manner in which you have
+behaved?"
+
+"I'm quite sure that I don't deserve to," he answered, still looking down
+at her.
+
+"If you did deserve to, being a woman, I probably shouldn't let you,"
+said Victoria, flashing a look upwards; "as it is, you may."
+
+His face lighted, but she halted in the grass, with her hands behind her,
+and stared at him with a puzzled expression.
+
+"I'm sure you're a dangerous man," she declared.  "First you take in poor
+little Hastings, and now you're trying to take me in."
+
+"Then I wish I were still more dangerous," he laughed, "for apparently I
+haven't succeeded."
+
+"I want to talk to you seriously," said Victoria; "that is the only
+reason I'm permitting you to drive me home."
+
+"I am devoutly thankful for the reason then," he said,--"my horse is tied
+in the field."
+
+"And aren't you going to say good-by to your host and hostess?"
+
+"Hostess?" he repeated, puzzled.
+
+"Hostesses," she corrected herself, "Mrs. Pomfret and Alice.  I thought
+you had eyes in your head," she added, with a fleeting glance at them.
+
+"Is Crewe engaged to Miss Pomfret?" he asked.
+
+"Are all men simpletons?" said Victoria.  "He doesn't know it yet, but he
+is."
+
+"I think I'd know it, if I were," said Austen, with an emphasis that made
+her laugh.
+
+"Sometimes fish don't know they're in a net until--until the morning
+after," said Victoria.  "That has a horribly dissipated sound--hasn't it?
+I know to a moral certainty that Mr. Crewe will eventually lead Miss
+Pomfret away from the altar.  At present," she could not refrain from
+adding, "he thinks he's in love with some one else."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"It doesn't matter," she replied.  "Humphrey's perfectly happy, because
+he believes most women are in love with him, and he's making up his mind
+in that magnificent, thorough way of his whether she is worthy to be
+endowed with his heart and hand, his cows, and all his stocks and bonds.
+He doesn't know he's going to marry Alice.  It almost makes one a
+Calvinist, doesn't it.  He's predestined, but perfectly happy."
+
+"Who is he in love with?" demanded Austen, ungrammatically.
+
+"I'm going to say good-by to him.  I'll meet you in the field, if you
+don't care to come.  It's only manners, after all, although the
+lemonade's all gone and I haven't had a drop."
+
+"I'll go along too," he said.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of Mrs. Pomfret?"
+
+"Not a bit!"
+
+"I am," said Victoria, "but I think you'd better come just the same."
+
+Around the corner of the house they found them,--Mr. Crewe urging the
+departing guests to remain, and not to be bashful in the future about
+calling.
+
+"We don't always have lemonade and cake," he was saying, "but you can be
+sure of a welcome, just the same.  Good-by, Vane, glad you came.  Did
+they show you through the stables?  Did you see the mate to the horse I
+lost?  Beauty, isn't he?  Stir 'em up and get the money.  I guess we
+won't see much of each other politically.  You're anti-railroad.  I don't
+believe that tack'll work--we can't get along without corporations, you
+know.  You ought to talk to Flint.  I'll give you a letter of
+introduction to him.  I don't know what I'd have done without that man
+Tooting in your father's office.  He's a wasted genius in Ripton.  What?
+Good-by, you'll find your wagon, I guess.  Well, Victoria, where have you
+been keeping yourself?  I've been so busy I haven't had time to look for
+you.  You're going to stay to dinner, and Hastings, and all the people
+who have helped."
+
+"No, I'm not," answered Victoria, with a glance at Austen, before whom
+this announcement was so delicately made, "I'm going home."
+
+"But when am I to see you?" cried Mr. Crewe, as near genuine alarm as he
+ever got.   You never let me see you.  I was going to drive you home in
+the motor by moonlight."
+
+"We all know that you're the most original person, Victoria," said Mrs.
+Pomfret, "full of whims and strange fancies," she added, with the only
+brief look at Austen she had deigned to bestow on him.  "It never pays to
+count on you for twenty-four hours.  I suppose you're off on another wild
+expedition."
+
+"I think I've earned the right to it," said Victoria;--
+
+I've poured lemonade for Humphrey's constituents the whole afternoon.
+And besides, I never said I'd stay for dinner.  I'm going home.  Father's
+leaving for California in the morning."
+
+"He'd better stay at home and look after her," Mrs. Pomfret remarked,
+when Victoria was out of hearing.
+
+Since Mrs. Harry Haynes ran off, one can never tell what a woman will do.
+It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Victoria eloped with a handsome nobody
+like that.  Of course he's after her money, but he wouldn't get it, not
+if I know Augustus Flint."
+
+"Is he handsome?" said Mr. Crewe, as though the idea were a new one.
+"Great Scott, I don't believe she gives him a thought.  She's only going
+as far as the field with him.  She insisted on leaving her horse there
+instead of putting him in the stable."
+
+"Catch Alice going as far as the field with him," said Mrs. Pomfret, "but
+I've done my duty.  It's none of my affair."
+
+In the meantime Austen and Victoria had walked on some distance in
+silence.
+
+"I have an idea with whom Mr. Crewe is in love," he said at length.
+
+"So have I," replied Victoria, promptly.  "Humphrey's in love with
+himself.  All he desires in a wife--if he desires one--is an inanimate
+and accommodating looking-glass, in whom he may see what he conceives to
+be his own image daily.  James, you may take the mare home.  I'm going to
+drive with Mr. Vane."
+
+She stroked Pepper's nose while Austen undid the hitch-rope from around
+his neck.
+
+"You and I are getting to be friends, aren't we, Pepper?" she asked, as
+the horse, with quivering nostrils, thrust his head into her hand.  Then
+she sprang lightly into the buggy by Austen's side.  The manner of these
+acts and the generous courage with which she defied opinion appealed to
+him so strongly that his heart was beating faster than Pepper's hoof-
+beats on the turf of the pasture.
+
+"You are very good to come with me," he said gravely, when they had
+reached the road; "perhaps I ought not to have asked you."
+
+"Why?" she asked, with one of her direct looks.
+
+"It was undoubtedly selfish," he said, and added, more lightly, "I don't
+wish to put you into Mrs. Pomfret's bad graces."
+
+Victoria laughed.
+
+"She thought it her duty to tell father the time you drove me to the
+Hammonds'.  She said I asked you to do it."
+
+"What did he say?" Austen inquired, looking straight ahead of him.
+
+"He didn't say much," she answered.  "Father never does.  I think he
+knows that I am to be trusted."
+
+"Even with me?" he asked quizzically, but with a deeper significance.
+
+"I don't think he realizes how dangerous you are," she replied, avoiding
+the issue.  "The last time I saw you, you were actually trying to throw a
+fat man out of your window.  What a violent life you lead, Mr. Vane.  I
+hope you haven't shot any more people--"
+
+"I saw you," he said.
+
+"Is that the way you spend your time in office hours,--throwing people
+out of the windows?"
+
+"It was only Tom Gaylord."
+
+"He's the man Mr. Jenney said wanted you to be a senator, isn't he?" she
+asked.
+
+"You have a good memory," he answered her.  "Yes.  That's the reason I
+tried to throw him out of the window."
+
+"Why didn't you be a senator?" she asked abruptly.  "I always think of
+you in public life.  Why waste your opportunities?"
+
+"I'm not at all sure that was an opportunity.  It was only some of Tom's
+nonsense.  I should have had all the politicians in the district against
+me."
+
+"But you aren't the kind of man who would care about the politicians,
+surely.  If Humphrey Crewe can get elected by the people, I should think
+you might."
+
+"I can't afford to give garden-parties and buy lemonade," said Austen,
+and they both laughed.  He did not think it worth while mentioning Mr.
+Braden.
+
+"Sometimes I think you haven't a particle of ambition," she said.  "I
+like men with ambition."
+
+"I shall try to cultivate it," said Austen.
+
+"You seem to be popular enough."
+
+"Most worthless people are popular, because they don't tread on anybody's
+toes."
+
+"Worthless people don't take up poor people's suits, and win them," she
+said.  "I saw Zeb Meader the other day, and he said you could be
+President of the United States."
+
+"Zeb meant that I was eligible--having been born in this country," said
+Austen.  "But where did you see him?"
+
+"I--I went to see him."
+
+"All the way to Mercer?"
+
+"It isn't so far in an automobile," she replied, as though in excuse, and
+added, still more lamely, "Zeb and I became great friends, you know, in
+the hospital."
+
+He did not answer, but wondered the more at the simplicity and kindness
+in one brought up as she had been which prompted her to take the trouble
+to see the humblest of her friends: nay, to take the trouble to have
+humble friends.
+
+The road wound along a ridge, and at intervals was spread before them the
+full glory of the September sunset,--the mountains of the west in blue-
+black silhouette against the saffron sky, the myriad dappled clouds, the
+crimson fading from the still reaches of the river, and the wine-colour
+from the eastern hills.  Both were silent under the spell, but a yearning
+arose within him when he glanced at the sunset glow on her face: would
+sunsets hereafter bring sadness?
+
+His thoughts ran riot as the light faded in the west.  Hers were not
+revealed.  And the silence between them seemed gradually to grow into a
+pact, to become a subtler and more intimate element than speech.  A faint
+tang of autumn smoke was in the air, a white mist crept along the running
+waters, a silver moon like a new-stamped coin rode triumphant in the sky,
+impatient to proclaim her glory; and the shadows under the ghost-like
+sentinel trees in the pastures grew blacker.  At last Victoria looked at
+him.
+
+"You are the only man I know who doesn't insist on talking," she said.
+There are times when--"
+
+"When there is nothing to say," he suggested.
+
+She laughed softly.  He tried to remember the sound of it afterwards,
+when he rehearsed this phase of the conversation, but couldn't.
+
+"It's because you like the hills, isn't it?" she asked.  "You seem such
+an out-of-door person, and Mr. Jenney said you were always wandering
+about the country-side."
+
+"Mr. Jenney also made other reflections about my youth," said Austen.
+
+She laughed again, acquiescing in his humour, secretly thankful not to
+find him sentimental.
+
+"Mr. Jenney said something else that--that I wanted to ask you about,"
+she went on, breathing more deeply.  "It was about the railroad."
+
+"I am afraid you have not come to an authority," he replied.
+
+"You said the politicians would be against you if you tried to become a
+State senator.  Do you believe that the politicians are owned by the
+railroad?"
+
+"Has Jenney been putting such things into your head?"
+
+"Not only Mr. Jenney, but--I have heard other people say that.  And
+Humphrey Crewe said that you hadn't a chance politically, because you had
+opposed the railroad and had gone against your own interests."
+
+Austen was amazed at this new exhibition of courage on her part, though
+he was sorely pressed.
+
+"Humphrey Crewe isn't much of an authority, either," he said briefly.
+
+"Then you won't tell me?" said Victoria.  "Oh, Mr. Vane," she cried, with
+sudden vehemence, "if such things are going on here, I'm sure my father
+doesn't know about them.  This is only one State, and the railroad runs
+through so many.  He can't know everything, and I have heard him say that
+he wasn't responsible for what the politicians did in his name.  If they
+are bad, why don't you go to him and tell him so?  I'm sure he'd listen
+to you."
+
+"I'm sure he'd think me a presumptuous idiot," said Austen.  "Politicians
+are not idealists anywhere--the very word has become a term of reproach.
+Undoubtedly your father desires to set things right as much as any one
+else--probably more than any one."
+
+"Oh, I know he does," exclaimed Victoria.
+
+"If politics are not all that they should be," he went on, somewhat
+grimly, with an unpleasant feeling of hypocrisy, "we must remember that
+they are nobody's fault in particular, and can't be set right in an
+instant by any one man, no matter how powerful."
+
+She turned her face to him gratefully, but he did not meet her look.
+They were on the driveway of Fairview.
+
+"I suppose you think me very silly for asking such questions," she said.
+
+"No," he answered gravely, "but politics are so intricate a subject that
+they are often not understood by those who are in the midst of them.  I
+admire--I think it is very fine in you to want to know."
+
+"You are not one of the men who would not wish a woman to know, are you?"
+
+"No," he said, "no, I'm not."
+
+The note of pain in his voice surprised and troubled her.  They were
+almost in sight of the house.
+
+"I asked you to come to Fairview," she said, assuming a lightness of
+tone, "and you never appeared.  I thought it was horrid of you to forget,
+after we'd been such friends."
+
+"I didn't forget," replied Austen.
+
+"Then you didn't want to come."
+
+He looked into her eyes, and she dropped them.
+
+"You will have to be the best judge of that," he said.
+
+"But what am I to think?" she persisted.
+
+"Think the best of me you can," he answered, as they drew up on the
+gravel before the open door of Fairview house.  A man was standing in the
+moonlight on the porch.
+
+"Is that you, Victoria?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"I was getting worried," said Mr. Flint, coming down on the driveway.
+
+"I'm all right," she said, leaping out of the buggy, "Mr. Vane brought me
+home."
+
+"How are you, Hilary?" said Mr. Flint.
+
+"I'm Austen Vane, Mr. Flint," said Austen.
+
+"How are you?" said Mr. Flint, as curtly as the barest politeness
+allowed.  "What was the matter with your own horse, Victoria?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied, after an instant's pause.  Austen wondered many
+times whether her lips had trembled.  "Mr. Vane asked me to drive with
+him, and I came.  Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Vane?"
+
+"No, thanks," said Austen, "I'm afraid I have to go back to Ripton."
+
+"Good-by, and thank you," she said, and gave him her hand.  As he pressed
+it, he thought he felt the slightest pressure in return, and then she
+fled up the steps.  As he drove away, he turned once to look at the great
+house, with its shades closely drawn, as it stood amidst its setting of
+shrubbery silent under the moon.
+
+An hour later he sat in Hanover Street before the supper Euphrasia had
+saved for him.  But though he tried nobly, his heart was not in the
+relation, for her benefit, of Mr. Crewe's garden-party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Mr. CREWE ASSAULTS THE CAPITAL
+
+Those portions of the biographies of great men which deal with the small
+beginnings of careers are always eagerly devoured, and for this reason
+the humble entry of Mr. Crewe into politics may be of interest.  Great
+revolutions have had their origins in back cellars; great builders of
+railroads have begun life with packs on their shoulders, trudging over
+the wilderness which they were to traverse in after years in private
+cars.  The history of Napoleon Bonaparte has not a Sunday-school moral,
+but we can trace therein the results of industry after the future emperor
+got started.  Industry, and the motto "nil desperandum" lived up to, and
+the watchword "thorough," and a torch of unsuspected genius, and
+"l'audace, toujours l'audace," and a man may go far in life.
+
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe possessed, as may have been surmised, a dash of all
+these gifts.  For a summary of his character one would not have used the
+phrase (as a contemporary of his remarked) of "a shrinking violet."  The
+phrase, after all, would have fitted very few great men; genius is sure
+of itself, and seeks its peers.
+
+The State capital is an old and beautiful and somewhat conservative town.
+Life there has its joys and sorrows and passions, its ambitions, and
+heart-burnings, to be sure; a most absorbing novel could be written about
+it, and the author need not go beyond the city limits or approach the
+state-house or the Pelican Hotel.  The casual visitor in that capital
+leaves it with a sense of peace, the echo of church bells in his ear, and
+(if in winter) the impression of dazzling snow.   Comedies do not
+necessarily require a wide stage, nor tragedies an amphitheatre for their
+enactment.
+
+No casual visitor, for instance, would have suspected from the faces or
+remarks of the inhabitants whom he chanced to meet that there was
+excitement in the capital over the prospective arrival of Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe for the legislative session that winter.  Legislative sessions, be
+it known, no longer took place in the summer, a great relief to Mr. Crewe
+and to farmers in general, who wished to be at home in haying time.
+
+The capital abounded in comfortable homes and boasted not a dwellings of
+larger pretensions.  Chief among these was the Duncan house--still so
+called, although Mr. Duncan, who built it, had been dead these fifteen
+years, and his daughter and heiress, Janet, had married an Italian
+Marquis and lived in a Roman palace, rehabilitated by the Duncan money.
+Mr. Duncan, it may be recalled by some readers of "Coniston," had been a
+notable man in his day, who had married the heiress of the State, and was
+president of the Central Railroad, now absorbed in the United
+Northeastern.  The house was a great square of brick, with a wide
+cornice, surrounded by a shaded lawn; solidly built, in the fashion of
+the days when rich people stayed at home, with a conservatory and a
+library that had once been Mr. Duncan's pride.  The Marchesa cared very
+little about the library, or about the house, for that matter; a great
+aunt and uncle, spinster and bachelor, were living in it that winter, and
+they vacated for Mr. Crewe.  He travelled to the capital on the
+legislative pass the Northeastern Railroads had so kindly given him, and
+brought down his horses and his secretary and servants from Leith a few
+days before the first of January, when the session was to open, and laid
+out his bills for the betterment of the State on that library table where
+Mr. Duncan had lovingly thumbed his folios.  Mr. Crewe, with
+characteristic promptitude, set his secretary to work to make a list of
+the persons of influence in the town, preparatory to a series of dinner-
+parties; he dropped into the office of Mr. Ridout, the counsel of the
+Northeastern and of the Winona Corporation in the capital, to pay his
+respects as a man of affairs, and incidentally to leave copies of his
+bills for the improvement of the State.  Mr. Ridout was politely
+interested, and promised to read the bills, and agreed that they ought to
+pass.
+
+Mr. Crewe also examined the Pelican Hotel, so soon to be a hive, and
+stood between the snow-banks in the capital park contemplating the statue
+of the great statesman there, and repeating to himself the quotation
+inscribed beneath.  "The People's Government, made for the People, made
+by the People, and answerable to the People."  And he wondered, idly,--
+for the day was not cold,--how he would look upon a pedestal with the
+Gladstone collar and the rough woollen coat that would lend themselves so
+readily to reproduction in marble.  Stranger things had happened, and
+grateful States had been known to reward benefactors.
+
+At length comes the gala night of nights,--the last of the old year,--and
+the assembling of the five hundred legislators and of the army that is
+wont to attend them.  The afternoon trains, steaming hot, are crowded to
+the doors, the station a scene of animation, and Main Street, dazzling in
+snow, is alive with a stream of men, with eddies here and there at the
+curbs and in the entries.  What handshaking, and looking over of new
+faces, and walking round and round!  What sightseeing by the country
+members and their wives who have come to attend the inauguration of the
+new governor, the Honourable Asa P. Gray!  There he is, with the whiskers
+and the tall hat and the comfortable face, which wears already a look of
+gubernatorial dignity and power.  He stands for a moment in the lobby of
+the Pelican Hotel,--thronged now to suffocation,--to shake hands genially
+with new friends, who are led up by old friends with two fingers on the
+elbow.  The old friends crack jokes and whisper in the ear of the
+governor-to-be, who presently goes upstairs, accompanied by the
+Honourable Hilary Vane, to the bridal suite, which is reserved for him,
+and which has fire-proof carpet on the floor.  The Honourable Hilary has
+a room next door, connecting with the new governor's by folding doors,
+but this fact is not generally known to country members.  Only old
+timers, like Bijah Bixby and Job Braden, know that the Honourable
+Hilary's room corresponds to one which in the old Pelican was called the
+Throne Room, Number Seven, where Jethro Bass sat in the old days and
+watched unceasingly the groups in the street from the window.
+
+But Jethro Bass has been dead these twenty years, and his lieutenants
+shorn of power.  An empire has arisen out of the ashes of the ancient
+kingdoms.  Bijah and Job are old, all-powerful still in Clovelly and
+Leith--influential still in their own estimations; still kicking up their
+heels behind, still stuttering and whispering into ears, still "going
+along by when they are talking sly."  But there are no guerrillas now, no
+condottieri who can be hired: the empire has a paid and standing army, as
+an empire should.  The North Country chiefs, so powerful in the clan
+warfare of bygone days, are generals now,--chiefs of staff.  The captain-
+general, with a minute piece of Honey Dew under his tongue, sits in
+Number Seven.  A new Number Seven,--with electric lights and a bathroom
+and a brass bed.  Tempora mutantur.  There is an empire and a feudal
+system, did one but know it.  The clans are part of the empire, and each
+chief is responsible for his clan--did one but know it.  One doesn't know
+it.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, Duke of Putnam, member of the House, has
+arrived unostentatiously--as is his custom--and is seated in his own
+headquarters, number ten (with a bathroom).  Number nine belongs from
+year to year to Mr. Manning, division superintendent of that part of the
+Northeastern which was the old Central,--a thin gentleman with side-
+whiskers.  He loves life in the capital so much that he takes his
+vacations there in the winter,--during the sessions of the Legislature,--
+presumably because it is gay.  There are other rooms, higher up, of
+important men, to be sure, but to enter which it is not so much of an
+honour.  The Honourable Bill Fleming, postmaster of Brampton in Truro
+(Ephraim Prescott being long since dead and Brampton a large place now),
+has his vacation during the session in room thirty-six (no bathroom); and
+the Honourable Elisha Jane, Earl of Haines County in the North Country,
+and United States consul somewhere, is home on his annual vacation in
+room fifty-nine (no bath).  Senator Whitredge has a room, and Senator
+Green, and Congressmen Eldridge and Fairplay (no baths, and only
+temporary).
+
+The five hundred who during the next three months are to register the
+laws find quarters as best they can.  Not all of them are as luxurious as
+Mr. Crewe in the Duncan house, or the Honourable Brush Bascom in number
+ten of the Pelican, the rent of either of which would swallow the
+legislative salary in no time.  The Honourable Nat Billings, senator from
+the Putnam County district, is comfortably installed, to be sure.  By
+gradual and unexplained degrees, the constitution of the State has been
+changed until there are only twenty senators.  Noble five hundred!
+Steadfast twenty!
+
+A careful perusal of the biographies of great men of the dynamic type
+leads one to the conclusion that much of their success is due to an
+assiduous improvement of every opportunity,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe
+certainly possessed this quality, also.  He is in the Pelican Hotel this
+evening, meeting the men that count.  Mr. Job Braden, who had come down
+with the idea that he might be of use in introducing the new member from
+Leith to the notables, was met by this remark:--
+
+"You can't introduce me to any of 'em--they all know who I am.  Just
+point any of 'em out you think I ought to know, and I'll go up and talk
+to 'em.  What?  Come up to my house after a while and smoke a cigar.  The
+Duncan house, you know--the big one with the conservatory."
+
+Mr. Crewe was right--they all knew him.  The Leith millionaire, the
+summer resident, was a new factor in politics, and the rumours of the
+size of his fortune had reached a high-water mark in the Pelican Hotel
+that evening.  Pushing through the crowd in the corridor outside the
+bridal suite waiting to shake hands with the new governor, Mr. Crewe
+gained an entrance in no time, and did not hesitate to interrupt the
+somewhat protracted felicitations of an Irish member of the Newcastle
+delegation.
+
+"How are you, Governor?" he said, with the bonhomie of a man of the
+world.  "I'm Humphrey Crewe, from Leith.  You got a letter from me,
+didn't you, congratulating you upon your election?  We didn't do badly
+for you up there.  What?"
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" said Mr. Gray, with dignified hospitality,
+while their fingers slid over each other's; "I'm glad to welcome you
+here.  I've noticed the interest you've taken in the State, and the
+number of ahem--very useful societies to which you belong."
+
+"Good," said Mr. Crewe, "I do what I can.  I just dropped in to shake
+your hand, and to say that I hope we'll pull together."
+
+The governor lifted his eyebrows a little.
+
+"Why, I hope so, I'm sere, Mr. Crewe," said he.
+
+"I've looked over the policy of the State for the last twenty years in
+regard to public improvements and the introduction of modern methods as
+concerns husbandry, and I find it deplorable.  You and I, Governor, live
+in a progressive age, and we can't afford not to see something done.
+What?  It is my desire to do what I can to help make your administration
+a notable advance upon those of your predecessors."
+
+"Why--I greatly appreciate it, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Gray.
+
+"I'm sure you do.  I've looked over your record, and I find you've had
+experience in State affairs, and that you are a successful and
+conservative business man.  That is the type we want--eh?  Business men.
+You've read over the bills I sent you by registered mail?"
+
+"Ahem," said Mr. Gray, "I've been a good deal occupied since election
+day, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"Read 'em," said Mr. Crewe, "and I'll call in on you at the state-house
+day after to-morrow at five o'clock promptly.  We'll discuss 'em,
+Governor, and if, by the light of your legislative experience, you have
+any suggestions to make, I shall be glad to hear 'em.  Before putting the
+bills in their final shape I've taken the trouble to go over them with my
+friend, Mr. Flint--our mutual friend, let us say."
+
+"I've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Flint," said Mr. Gray.  "I--ahem--
+can't say that I know him intimately."
+
+Mr. Crewe looked at Mr. Gray in a manner which plainly indicated that he
+was not an infant.
+
+"My relations with Mr. Flint and the Northeastern have been very
+pleasant," said Mr. Crewe.  "I may say that I am somewhat of a practical
+railroad and business man myself."
+
+"We need such men," said Mr. Gray.  "Why, how do you do, Cary?  How are
+the boys up in Wheeler?"
+
+"Well, good-by, Governor.  See you day after to-morrow at five
+precisely," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+The next official call of Mr. Crewe was on the Speaker-to-be, Mr. Doby of
+Hale (for such matters are cut and dried), but any amount of pounding on
+Mr. Doby's door (number seventy-five) brought no response.  Other rural
+members besides Mr. Crewe came and pounded on that door, and went away
+again; but Mr. Job Braden suddenly appeared from another part of the
+corridor, smiling benignly, and apparently not resenting the refusal of
+his previous offers of help.
+
+"W--want the Speaker?" he inquired.
+
+Mr. Crewe acknowledged that he did.
+
+"Ed only sleeps there," said Mr. Braden.  "Guess you'll find him in the
+Railroad-Room."
+
+"Railroad Room?"
+
+"Hilary Vane's, Number Seven."  Mr. Braden took hold of the lapel of his
+fellow-townsman's coat.  "Callated you didn't know it all," he said;
+"that's the reason I come down--so's to help you some."
+
+Mr. Crewe, although he was not wont to take a second place, followed Mr.
+Braden down the stairs to the door next to the governor's, where he
+pushed ahead of his guide, through the group about the doorway,--none of
+whom, however, were attempting to enter.  They stared in some surprise at
+Mr. Crewe as he flung open the door without knocking, and slammed it
+behind him in Mr. Braden's face.  But the bewilderment caused by this act
+of those without was as nothing to the astonishment of those within--had
+Mr. Crewe but known it.  An oil painting of the prominent men gathered
+about the marble-topped table in the centre of the room, with an outline
+key beneath it, would have been an appropriate work of art to hang in the
+state-house, as emblematic of the statesmanship of the past twenty years.
+The Honourable Hilary Vane sat at one end in a padded chair; Mr. Manning,
+the division superintendent, startled out of a meditation, was upright on
+the end of the bed; Mr. Ridout, the Northeastern's capital lawyer, was
+figuring at the other end of the table; the Honourable Brush Bascom was
+bending over a wide, sad-faced gentleman of some two hundred and fifty
+pounds who sat at the centre in his shirt-sleeves, poring over numerous
+sheets in front of him which were covered with names of the five hundred.
+This gentleman was the Honourable Edward Doby of Hale, who, with the kind
+assistance of the other gentlemen above-named, was in this secluded spot
+making up a list of his committees, undisturbed by eager country members.
+At Mr. Crewe's entrance Mr. Bascom, with great presence of mind, laid
+down his hat over the principal list, while Mr. Ridout, taking the hint,
+put the Revised Statutes on the other.  There was a short silence; and
+the Speaker-to-be, whose pencil had been knocked out of his hand;
+recovered himself sufficiently to relight an extremely frayed cigar.
+
+Not that Mr. Crewe was in the least abashed.  He chose this opportunity
+to make a survey of the situation, nodded to Mr. Ridout, and walked up to
+the padded armchair.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Vane?" he said.  "I thought I'd drop in to shake hands
+with you, especially as I have business with the Speaker, and heard he
+was here.  But I'm glad to have met you for many reasons.  I want you to
+be one of the vice-presidents of the State Economic League--it won't cost
+you anything.  Ridout has agreed to let his name go on."
+
+The Honourable Hilary, not being an emotional man, merely grunted as he
+started to rise to his feet.  What he was about to say was interrupted by
+a timid knock, and there followed another brief period of silence.
+
+"It ain't anybody," said Mr. Bascom, and crossing the room, turned the
+key in the lock.  The timid knock was repeated.
+
+"I suppose you're constantly interrupted here by unimportant people," Mr.
+Crewe remarked.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Vane, slowly, boring into Mr. Crewe with his eye, "that
+statement isn't far out of the way."
+
+"I don't believe you've ever met me, Mr. Vane.  I'm Humphrey Crewe.  We
+have a good friend in common in Mr. Flint."
+
+The Honourable Hilary's hand passed over Mr. Crewe's lightly.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Crewe," he said, and a faint twinkle appeared in
+his eye.  "Job has told everybody you were coming down.  Glad to welcome
+a man of your ahem--stamp into politics."
+
+"I'm a plain business man," answered Mr. Crewe, modestly; "and although I
+have considerable occupation, I believe that one in my position has
+duties to perform.  I've certain bills--"
+
+"Yes, yes," agreed the Honourable Hilary; "do you know Mr. Brush Bascom
+and Mr. Manning?  Allow me to introduce you,--and General Doby."
+
+"How are you, General?" said Mr. Crewe to the Speaker-to-be, "I'm always
+glad to shake the hand of a veteran.  Indeed, I have thought that a
+society--"
+
+"I earned my title," said General Doby, somewhat sheepishly, "fighting on
+Governor Brown's staff.  There were twenty of us, and we were resistless,
+weren't we, Brush?"
+
+"Twenty on a staff!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh, we furnished our own uniforms and paid our own way--except those of
+us who had passes," declared the General, as though the memory of his
+military career did not give him unalloyed pleasure.  "What's the use of
+State sovereignty if you can't have a glittering army to follow the
+governor round?"
+
+Mr. Crewe had never considered this question, and he was not the man to
+waste time in speculation.
+
+"Doubtless you got a letter from me, General Doby," he said.  "We did
+what we could up our way to put you in the Speaker's chair."
+
+General Doby creased a little in the middle, to signify that he was
+bowing.
+
+"I trust it will be in my power to reciprocate, Mr. Crewe," he replied.
+
+"We want to treat Mr. Crewe right," Mr. Bascom put in.
+
+"You have probably made a note of my requests," Mr. Crewe continued.  "I
+should like to be on the Judiciary Committee, for one thing.  Although I
+am not a lawyer, I know something of the principles of law, and I
+understand that this and the Appropriations Committee are the most
+important.  I may say with truth that I should be a useful member of
+that, as I am accustomed to sitting on financial boards.  As my bills are
+of some considerable importance and deal with practical progressive
+measures, I have no hesitation in asking for the chairmanship of Public
+Improvements,--and of course a membership in the Agricultural is
+essential, as I have bills for them.  Gentlemen," he added to the room at
+large, "I have typewritten manifolds of those bills which I shall be
+happy to leave here--at headquarters."  And suiting the action to the
+word, he put down a packet on the table.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, accompanied by Mr. Ridout, walked to the
+window and stood staring at the glitter of the electric light on the
+snow.  The Honourable Hilary gazed steadily at the table, while General
+Doby blew his nose with painful violence.
+
+"I'll do what I can for you, certainly, Mr. Crewe," he said.  "But--what
+is to become of the other four hundred and ninety-nine?  The ways of a
+Speaker are hard, Mr. Crewe, and I have to do justice to all."
+
+"Well," answered Mr. Crewe,  of course I don't want to be unreasonable,
+and I realize the pressure that's put upon you.  But when you consider
+the importance of the work I came down here to do--"
+
+"I do consider it," said the Speaker, politely.  "It's a little early to
+talk about the make-up of committees.  I hope to be able to get at them
+by Sunday.  You may be sure I'll do my best for you."
+
+"We'd better make a note of it," said Mr. Crewe; "give me some paper,"
+and he was reaching around behind General Doby for one of the precious
+sheets under Mr. Bascom's hat, when the general, with great presence of
+mind, sat on it.  We have it, from a malicious and untrustworthy source,
+that the Northeastern Railroads paid for a new one.
+
+"Here, here," cried the Speaker, "make the memorandum here."
+
+At this critical juncture a fortunate diversion occurred.  A rap--three
+times--of no uncertain quality was heard at the door, and Mr. Brush
+Bascom hastened to open it.  A voice cried out:--
+
+"Is Manning here?  The boys are hollering for those passes," and a wiry,
+sallow gentleman burst in, none other than the Honourable Elisha Jane,
+who was taking his consular vacation.  When his eyes fell upon Mr. Crewe
+he halted abruptly, looked a little foolish, and gave a questioning
+glance at the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Mountain passes, Lish?  Sit down.  Did I ever tell you that story about
+the slide in Rickets Gulch?" asked the Honourable Brush Bascom.   But
+first let me make you acquainted with Mr. Humphrey Crewe of Leith.  Mr.
+Crewe has come down here with the finest lot of bills you ever saw, and
+we're all going to take hold and put 'em through.  Here, Lish, I'll give
+you a set."
+
+"Read 'em, Mr. Jane," urged Mr. Crewe.  "I don't claim much for 'em, but
+perhaps they will help to set a few little matters right--I hope so."
+
+Mr. Jane opened the bills with deliberation, and cast his eyes over the
+headings.
+
+I'll read 'em this very night, Mr. Crewe," he said solemnly; "this
+meeting you is a particular pleasure, and I have heard in many quarters
+of these measures."
+
+"Well," admitted Mr. Crewe, "they may help some.  I have a few other
+matters to attend to this evening, so I must say good-night, gentlemen.
+Don't let me interfere with those I mountain passes, Mr. Manning."
+
+With this parting remark, which proved him to be not merely an idealist
+in politics, but a practical man, Mr. Crewe took his leave.  And he was
+too much occupied with his own thoughts to pay any attention to the click
+of the key as it turned in the lock, or to hear United States Senator
+Whitredge rap (three times) on the door after he had turned the corner,
+or to know that presently the sliding doors into the governor's bridal
+suite--were to open a trifle, large enough for the admission of the body
+of the Honourable Asa P. Gray.
+
+Number Seven still keeps up its reputation as the seat of benevolence,
+and great public benefactors still meet there to discuss the welfare of
+their fellow-men: the hallowed council chamber now of an empire, seat of
+the Governor-general of the State, the Honourable Hilary Vane, and his
+advisers.  For years a benighted people, with a fond belief in their
+participation of Republican institutions, had elected the noble five
+hundred of the House and the stanch twenty of the Senate.  Noble five
+hundreds (biggest Legislature in the world) have come and gone; debated,
+applauded, fought and on occasions denounced, kicked over the traces, and
+even wept--to no avail.  Behold that political institution of man,
+representative government  There it is on the stage, curtain up, a
+sublime spectacle for all men to see, and thrill over speeches about the
+Rights of Man, and the Forefathers in the Revolution; about Constituents
+who do not constitute.  The High Heavens allow it and smile, and it is
+well for the atoms that they think themselves free American
+representatives, that they do not feel the string of predestination
+around their ankles.  The senatorial twenty, from their high carved
+seats, see the strings and smile, too; yes, and see their own strings,
+and smile.  Wisdom does not wish for flight.  "The people" having changed
+the constitution, the blackbirds are reduced from four and forty to a
+score.  This is cheaper--for the people.
+
+Democracy on the front of the stage before an applauding audience;
+performers absorbed in their parts, forgetting that the landlord has to
+be paid in money yet to be earned.  Behind the stage, the real play, the
+absorbing interest, the high stakes--occasional discreet laughter through
+the peep-hole when an actor makes an impassioned appeal to the gods.
+Democracy in front, the Feudal System, the Dukes and Earls behind--but in
+plain clothes; Democracy in stars and spangles and trappings and
+insignia.  Or, a better figure, the Fates weaving the web in that mystic
+chamber, Number Seven, pausing now and again to smile as a new thread is
+put in.  Proclamations, constitutions, and creeds crumble before
+conditions; the Law of Dividends is the high law, and the Forum an open
+vent through which the white steam may rise heavenward and be resolved
+again into water.
+
+Mr. Crewe took his seat in the popular assemblage next day, although most
+of the five hundred gave up theirs to the ladies who had come to hear his
+Excellency deliver his inaugural.  The Honourable Asa made a splendid
+figure, all agreed, and read his speech in a firm and manly voice.  A
+large part of it was about the people; some of it about the sacred
+government they had inherited from their forefathers; still another
+concerned the high character and achievements of the inhabitants within
+the State lines; the name of Abraham Lincoln was mentioned, and, with
+even greater reverence and fervour, the Republican party which had
+ennobled and enriched the people--and incidentally elected the governor.
+There was a noble financial policy, a curtailment of expense.  The
+forests should be protected, roads should be built, and, above all,
+corporations should be held to a strict accounting.
+
+Needless to say, the speech gave great satisfaction to all, and many old
+friends left the hall exclaiming that they didn't believe Asa had it in
+him.  As a matter of fact (known only to the initiated), Asa didn't have
+it in him until last night, before he squeezed through the crack in the
+folding doors from room number six to room Number Seven.  The inspiration
+came to him then, when he was ennobled by the Governor-general, who
+represents the Empire.  Perpetual Governor-general, who quickens into
+life puppet governors of his own choosing  Asa has agreed, for the honour
+of the title of governor of his State, to act the part, open the fairs,
+lend his magnificent voice to those phrases which it rounds so well.  It
+is fortunate, when we smoke a fine cigar from Havana, that we cannot look
+into the factory.  The sight would disturb us.  It was well for the
+applauding, deep-breathing audience in the state-house that first of
+January that they did not have a glimpse in room Number Seven the night
+before, under the sheets that contained the list of the Speaker's
+committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the
+offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting
+was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him by
+the Honourable Hilary Vane.  Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none
+other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel!
+The financial part was written by the Governor-general himself--the
+Honourable Hilary Vane.  And when it was all finished and revised, it was
+put into a long envelope which bore this printed address: Augustus P.
+Flint, Pres't United Northeastern Railroads, New York.  And came back
+with certain annotations on the margin, which were duly incorporated into
+it.  This is the private history (which must never be told) of the
+document which on January first became, as far as fame and posterity is
+concerned, the Honourable Asa P. Gray's--forever and forever.
+
+Mr. Crewe liked the inaugural, and was one of the first to tell Mr. Gray
+so, and to express his pleasure and appreciation of the fact that his
+request (mailed in November) had been complied with, that the substance
+of his bills had been recommended in the governor's programme.
+
+He did not pause to reflect on the maxim, that platforms are made to get
+in by and inaugurals to get started by.
+
+Although annual efforts have been made by various public-spirited
+citizens to build a new state-house, economy--with assistance from room
+Number Seven has triumphed.  It is the same state-house from the gallery
+of which poor William Wetherell witnessed the drama of the Woodchuck
+Session, although there are more members now, for the population of the
+State has increased to five hundred thousand.  It is well for General
+Doby, with his two hundred and fifty pounds, that he is in the Speaker's
+chair; five hundred seats are a good many for that hall, and painful in a
+long session.  The Honourable Brush Bascom can stretch his legs, because
+he is fortunate enough to have a front seat.  Upon inquiry, it turns out
+that Mr. Bascom has had a front seat for the last twenty years--he has
+been uniformly lucky in drawing.  The Honourable Jacob Botcher (ten
+years' service) is equally fortunate; the Honourable Jake is a man of
+large presence, and a voice that sounds as if it came, oracularly, from
+the caverns of the earth.  He is easily heard by the members on the back
+seats, while Mr. Bascom is not.  Mr. Ridout, the capital lawyer, is in
+the House this year, and singularly enough has a front seat likewise.  It
+was Mr. Crewe's misfortune to draw number 415, in the extreme corner of
+the room, and next the steam radiator.  But he was not of the metal to
+accept tamely such a ticketing from the hat of destiny (via the Clerk of
+the House).  He complained, as any man of spirit would, and Mr. Utter,
+the polite clerk, is profoundly sorry,--and says it maybe managed.
+Curiously enough, the Honourable Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob
+Botcher join Mr. Crewe in his complaint, and reiterate that it is an
+outrage that a man of such ability and deserving prominence should be
+among the submerged four hundred and seventy.  It is managed in a
+mysterious manner we don't pretend to fathom, and behold Mr. Crewe in the
+front of the Forum, in the seats of the mighty, where he can easily be
+pointed out from the gallery at the head of the five hundred, between
+those shining leaders and parliamentarians, the Honourables Brush Bascom
+and Jake Botcher.
+
+For Mr. Crewe has not come to the Legislature, like the country members
+in the rear, to acquire a smattering of parliamentary procedure by the
+day the Speaker is presented with a gold watch, at the end of the
+session.  Not he!  Not the practical business man, the member of boards,
+the chairman and president of societies.  He has studied the Rules of the
+House and parliamentary law, you may be sure.  Genius does not come
+unprepared, and is rarely caught napping.  After the Legislature
+adjourned that week the following telegram was sent over the wires:--
+
+     Augustus P. Flint, New York.
+
+     Kindly use your influence with Doby to secure my committee
+     appointments.  Important as per my conversation with you.
+
+                                             Humphrey Crewe.
+
+Nor was Mr. Crewe idle from Saturday to Monday night, when the committees
+were to be announced.  He sent to the State Tribune office for fifty
+copies of that valuable paper, which contained a two-column-and-a-half
+article on Mr. Crewe as a legislator and financier and citizen, with a
+summary of his bills and an argument as to how the State would benefit by
+their adoption; an accurate list of Mr. Crewe's societies was inserted,
+and an account of his life's history, and of those ancestors of his who
+had been born or lived within the State.  Indeed, the accuracy of this
+article as a whole did great credit to the editor of the State Tribune,
+who must have spent a tremendous amount of painstaking research upon it;
+and the article was so good that Mr. Crewe regretted (undoubtedly for the
+editor's sake) that a request could not be appended to it such as is used
+upon marriage and funeral notices: "New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
+papers please copy."
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it his duty to remedy as much as possible the
+unfortunate limited circulation of the article, and he spent as much as a
+whole day making out a list of friends and acquaintances whom he thought
+worthy to receive a copy of the Tribune--marked personal.  Victoria Flint
+got one, and read it to her father at the breakfast table.  (Mr. Flint
+did not open his.) Austen Vane wondered why any man in his obscure and
+helpless position should have been honoured, but honoured he was.  He
+sent his to Victoria, too, and was surprised to find that she knew his
+handwriting and wrote him a letter to thank him for it: a letter which
+provoked on his part much laughter, and elements of other sensations
+which, according to Charles Reade, should form the ingredients of a good
+novel.  But of this matter later.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret and Alice each got one, and each wrote Mr. Crewe appropriate
+congratulations.  (Alice's answer supervised.) Mrs. Chillingham got one;
+the Honourable Hilary Vane got one--marked in red ink, lest he should
+have skipped it in his daily perusal of the paper.  Mr. Brush, Bascom got
+one likewise.  But the list of Mr. Crewe's acquaintances is too long and
+too broad to dwell upon further in these pages.
+
+The Monday-night session came at last, that sensational hour when the
+Speaker makes those decisions to which he is supposed to have given birth
+over Sunday in the seclusion of his country home at Hale.  Monday-night
+sessions are, as a rule, confined in attendance to the Honourable Brush
+Bascom and Mr. Ridout and a few other conscientious members who do not
+believe in cheating the State, but to-night all is bustle and confusion,
+and at least four hundred members are pushing down the aisles and
+squeezing past each other into the narrow seats, and reading the State
+Tribune or the ringing words of the governor's inaugural which they find
+in the racks on the back of the seats before them.  Speaker Doby, who has
+been apparently deep in conference with the most important members (among
+them Mr. Crewe, to whom he has whispered that a violent snow-storm is
+raging in Hale), raps for order; and after a few preliminaries hands to
+Mr. Utter, the clerk, amidst a breathless silence, the paper on which the
+parliamentary career of so many ambitious statesmen depends.
+
+It is not a pleasure to record the perfidy of man, nor the lack of
+judgment which prevents him, in his circumscribed lights, from
+recognizing undoubted geniuses when he sees them.  Perhaps it was
+jealousy on General Doby's part, and a selfish desire to occupy the
+centre of the stage himself, but at any rate we will pass hastily over
+the disagreeable portions of this narrative.  Mr. Crewe settled himself
+with his feet extended, and with a complacency which he had rightly
+earned by leaving no stone unturned, to listen.  He sat up a little when
+the Appropriations Committee, headed by the Honourable Jake Botcher, did
+not contain his name--but it might have been an oversight of Mr. Utters;
+when the Judiciary (Mr. Ridout's committee) was read it began to look
+like malice; committee after committee was revealed, and the name of
+Humphrey Crewe might not have been contained in the five hundred except
+as the twelfth member of forestry, until it appeared at the top of
+National Affairs.  Here was a broad enough field, certainly,--the Trusts,
+the Tariff, the Gold Standard, the Foreign Possessions,--and Mr. Crewe's
+mind began to soar in spite of himself.  Public Improvements was reached,
+and he straightened.  Mr. Beck, a railroad lawyer from Belfast, led it.
+Mr. Crewe arose, as any man of spirit would, and walked with dignity up
+the aisle and out of the house.  This deliberate attempt to crush genius
+would inevitably react on itself.  The Honourable Hilary Vane and Mr.
+Flint should be informed of it at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"FOR BILLS MAY COME, AND BILLS MAY GO"
+
+A man with a sense of humour once went to the capital as a member of the
+five hundred from his town, and he never went back again.  One reason for
+this was that he died the following year, literally, the doctors said,
+from laughing too much.  I know that this statement will be received
+incredulously, and disputed by those who claim that laughter is a good
+thing; the honourable gentleman died from too much of a good thing.  He
+was overpowered by having too much to laugh at, and the undiscerning
+thought him a fool, and the Empire had no need of a court jester.  But
+many of his sayings have lived, nevertheless.  He wrote a poem, said to
+be a plagiarism, which contains the quotation at the beginning of this
+chapter: "For bills may come, and bills may go, but I go on forever."
+The first person singular is supposed to relate to the United
+Northeastern Railroads.  It was a poor joke at best.
+
+It is needless to say that the gentleman referred to had a back seat
+among the submerged four hundred and seventy,--and that he kept it.  No
+discerning and powerful well-wishers came forward and said to him,
+"Friend, go up higher."  He sat, doubled up, in number, and the gods gave
+him compensation in laughter; he disturbed the Solons around him, who
+were interested in what was going on in front, and trying to do their
+duty to their constituents by learning parliamentary procedure before the
+Speaker got his gold watch and shed tears over it.
+
+The gentleman who laughed and died is forgotten, as he deserves to be,
+and it never occurred to anybody that he might have been a philosopher,
+after all.  There is something irresistibly funny about predestination;
+about men who are striving and learning and soberly voting upon measures
+with which they have as little to do as guinea-pigs.  There were certain
+wise and cynical atheists who did not attend the sessions at all except
+when they received mysterious hints to do so.  These were chiefly from
+Newcastle.  And there were others who played poker in the state-house
+cellar waiting for the Word to come to them, when they went up and voted
+(prudently counting their chips before they did so), and descended again.
+The man with a sense of humour laughed at these, too, and at the twenty
+blackbirds in the Senate,--but not so heartily.  He laughed at their
+gravity, for no gravity can equal that of gentlemen who play with stacked
+cards.
+
+The risible gentleman laughed at the proposed legislation, about which he
+made the song, and he likened it to a stream that rises hopefully in the
+mountains, and takes its way singing at the prospect of reaching the
+ocean, but presently flows into a hole in the ground to fill the
+forgotten caverns of the earth, and is lost to the knowledge and sight of
+man.  The caverns he labelled respectively Appropriations, Railroad,
+Judiciary, and their guardians were unmistakably the Honourables Messrs.
+Bascom, Botcher, and Ridout.  The greatest cavern of all he called "The
+Senate."
+
+If you listen, you can hear the music of the stream of bills as it is
+rising hopefully and flowing now: "Mr. Crewe of Leith gives notice that
+on to-morrow or some subsequent day he will introduce a bill entitled,
+'An act for the Improvement of the State Highways.'  Mr. Crewe of Leith
+gives notice, etc.  'An act for the Improvement of the Practice of
+Agriculture.' 'An act relating to the State Indebtedness.' 'An act to
+increase the State Forest Area.' 'An act to incorporate the State
+Economic League.' 'An act to incorporate the State Children's Charities
+Association.' 'An act in relation to Abandoned Farms.'"  These were some
+of the most important, and they were duly introduced on the morrow, and
+gravely referred by the Speaker to various committees.  As might be
+expected, a man whose watchword is, "thorough" immediately got a list of
+those committees, and lost no time in hunting up the chairmen and the
+various available members thereof.
+
+As a man of spirit, also, Mr. Crewe wrote to Mr. Flint, protesting as to
+the manner in which he had been treated concerning committees.  In the
+course of a week he received a kind but necessarily brief letter from the
+Northeastern's president to remind him that he persisted in a fallacy; as
+a neighbour, Mr. Flint would help him to the extent of his power, but the
+Northeastern Railroads could not interfere in legislative or political
+matters.  Mr. Crewe was naturally pained by the lack of confidence of his
+friend; it seems useless to reiterate that he was far from being a fool,
+and no man could be in the capital a day during the session without being
+told of the existence of Number Seven, no matter how little the informant
+might know of what might be going on there.  Mr. Crewe had been fortunate
+enough to see the inside of that mysterious room, and, being a
+sufficiently clever man to realize the importance and necessity of
+government by corporations, had been shocked at nothing he had seen or
+heard.  However, had he had a glimpse of the Speaker's lists under the
+hopelessly crushed hat of Mr. Bascom, perhaps he might have been shocked,
+after all.
+
+It was about this time that a touching friendship began which ought, in
+justice, to be briefly chronicled.  It was impossible for the Honourable
+Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob Botcher to have Mr. Crewe sitting
+between them and not conceive a strong affection for him.  The Honourable
+Brush, though not given to expressing his feelings, betrayed some
+surprise at the volumes Mr. Crewe had contributed to the stream of bills;
+and Mr. Botcher, in a Delphic whisper, invited Mr. Crewe to visit him in
+room forty-eight of the Pelican that evening.  To tell the truth, Mr.
+Crewe returned the feeling of his companions warmly, and he had even
+entertained the idea of asking them both to dine with him that evening.
+
+Number forty-eight (the Honourable Jake's) was a free-and-easy democratic
+resort.  No three knocks and a password before you turn the key here.
+Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard Mr. Botcher's hearty
+voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed transom.  The Honourable
+Jake, being a tee-totaller, had no bathroom, and none but his intimate
+friends ever looked in the third from the top bureau drawer.
+
+The proprietor of the Pelican, who in common with the rest of humanity
+had fallen a victim to the rough and honest charms and hearty good
+fellowship of the Honourable Jake, always placed a large padded arm-chair
+in number forty-eight before the sessions, knowing that the Honourable
+Jake's constituency would be uniformly kind to him.  There Mr. Botcher
+was wont to sit (when he was not depressing one of the tiles in the
+rotunda), surrounded by his friends and their tobacco smoke, discussing
+in his frank and manly fashion the public questions of the day.
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it a little strange that, whenever he entered a room in
+the Pelican, a silence should succeed the buzz of talk which he had heard
+through the closed transom; but he very naturally attributed this to the
+constraint which ordinary men would be likely to feel in his presence.
+In the mouth of one presumptuous member the word "railroad" was cut in
+two by an agate glance from the Honourable Brush, and Mr. Crewe noted
+with some surprise that the Democratic leader of the House, Mr. Painter,
+was seated on Mr. Botcher's mattress, with an expression that was in
+singular contrast to the look of bold defiance which he had swept over
+the House that afternoon in announcing his opposition policy.  The vulgar
+political suggestion might have crept into a more trivial mind than Mr.
+Crewe's that Mr. Painter was being, "put to bed," the bed being very
+similar to that of Procrustes.  Mr. Botcher extracted himself from the
+nooks and crannies of his armchair.
+
+"How are you, Crewe?" he said hospitably; "we're all friends here--eh,
+Painter?  We don't carry our quarrels outside the swinging doors.  You
+know Mr. Crewe--by sight, of course.  Do you know these other gentlemen,
+Crewe?  I didn't expect you so early."
+
+The "other gentlemen" said that they were happy to make the acquaintance
+of their fellow-member from Leith, and seemingly with one consent began
+to edge towards the door.
+
+"Don't go, boys," Mr. Bascom protested.  "Let me finish that story."
+
+Some of "the boys" seemed to regard this statement as humorous,--more
+humorous, indeed, than the story itself.  And when it was finished they
+took their departure, a trifle awkwardly, led by Mr. Painter.
+
+"They're a little mite bashful," said Mr. Botcher, apologetically.
+
+"How many more of those bills have you got?" demanded Mr. Bascom, from
+the steam radiator, with characteristic directness.
+
+"I put 'em all in this morning," said Mr. Crewe, "but I have thought
+since of two or three other conditions which might be benefited by
+legislation."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Bascom, kindly, "if you have any more I was going to
+suggest that you distribute 'em round among the boys.  That's the way I
+do, and most folks don't guess they're your bills.  See?"
+
+"What harm is there in that?" demanded Mr. Crewe.  "I'm not ashamed of
+'em."
+
+"Brush was only lookin' at it from the point of view of gettin' 'em
+through," honest Mr. Botcher put in, in stentorian tones.  "It doesn't do
+for a new member to be thought a hog about legislation."
+
+Now the Honourable Jacob only meant this in the kindest manner, as we
+know, and to give inexperience a hint from well-intentioned experience.
+On the other hand, Mr. Crewe had a dignity and a position to uphold.  He
+was a personality.  People who went too far with him were apt to be
+rebuked by a certain glassy quality in his eye, and this now caused the
+Honourable Jake to draw back perceptibly.
+
+"I see no reason why a public-spirited man should be open to such an
+imputation," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Certainly not, certainly not," said Mr. Botcher, in stentorian tones of
+apology, "I was only trying to give you a little friendly advice, but I
+may have put it too strong.  Brush and I--I may as well be plain about
+it, Mr. Crewe--have taken a liking to you.  Couldn't help it, sir,
+sitting next to you as we do.  We take an interest in your career, and we
+don't want you to make any mistakes.  Ain't that about it, Brush?"
+
+"That's about it," said Mr. Bascom.
+
+Mr. Crewe was to big a man not to perceive and appreciate the sterling
+philanthropy which lay beneath the exteriors of his new friends, who
+scorned to flatter him.
+
+"I understand the spirit in which your advice is given, gentlemen," he
+replied magnanimously, "and I appreciate it.  We are all working for the
+same things, and we all believe that they must be brought about in the
+same practical way.  For instance, we know as practical men that the
+railroad pays a large tax in this State, and that property must take a
+hand--a very considerable hand--in legislation.  You gentlemen, as
+important factors in the Republican organization, are loyal to--er--that
+property, and perhaps for wholly desirable reasons cannot bring forward
+too many bills under your own names.  Whereas I--"
+
+At this point in Mr. Crewe's remarks the Honourable Jacob Botcher was
+seized by an appalling coughing fit which threatened to break his arm-
+chair, probably owing to the fact that he had swallowed something which
+he had in his mouth the wrong way.  Mr. Bascom, assisted by Mr. Crewe,
+pounded him relentlessly on the back.
+
+"I read that article in the 'Tribune' about you with great interest,"
+said Mr. Bascom, when Mr. Botcher's coughing had subsided.  "I had no
+idea you were so--ahem--well equipped for a political career.  But what
+we wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued, as Mr. Crewe
+showed signs of breaking in, "those committee appointments you desired."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, with some pardonable heat, "the Speaker doesn't
+seem to know which side his bread's buttered on."
+
+"What I was going to say," proceeded Mr. Bascom, "was that General Doby
+is a pretty good fellow.  Personally, I happen to know that the general
+feels very badly that he couldn't give you what you wanted.  He took a
+shine to you that night you saw him."
+
+"Yes," Mr. Botcher agreed, for he had quite recovered, the general felt
+bad--feels bad, I should say.  He perceived that you were a man of
+ability, sir--"
+
+"And that was just the reason," said the Honourable Brush, "that he
+couldn't make you more useful just now."
+
+"There's a good deal of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of
+ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones.
+"The competition amongst those--er--who have served the party is very
+keen for the positions you desired.  I personally happen to know that the
+general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of
+your--er--well-wishers persuaded him to take you off for your own good."
+
+"It wouldn't do for the party leaders to make you too prominent all at
+once," said Mr. Bascom.  "You are bound to take an active part in what
+passes here.  The general said, 'At all events I will give Mr. Crewe one
+chairmanship by which he can make a name for himself suited to his
+talents,' and he insisted on giving you, in spite of some remonstrances
+from your friends, National Affairs.  The general urged, rightly, that
+with your broad view and knowledge of national policy, it was his duty to
+put you in that place whatever people might say."
+
+Mr. Crewe listened to these explanations in some surprise; and being a
+rational man, had to confess that they were--more or less reasonable.
+
+"Scarcely any bills come before that committee," he objected.
+
+"Ah," replied Mr. Bascom, "that is true.  But the chairman of that
+committee is generally supposed to be in line for--er--national honours.
+It has not always happened in the past, because the men have not proved
+worthy.  But the opportunity is always given to that chairman to make a
+speech upon national affairs which is listened to with the deepest
+interest.
+
+"Is that so?" said Mr. Crewe.  He wanted to be of service, as we know.
+He was a man of ideas, and the opening sentences of the speech were
+already occurring to him.
+
+"Let's go upstairs and see the general now," suggested Mr. Botcher,
+smiling that such a happy thought should have occurred to him.
+
+"Why, I guess we couldn't do any better," Mr. Bascom agreed.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm willing to hear what he's got to say,
+anyway."
+
+Taking advantage of this generous concession, Mr. Botcher hastily locked
+the door, and led the way up the stairway to number seventy-five.  After
+a knock or two here, the door opened a crack, disclosing, instead of
+General Doby's cherubic countenance, a sallow face with an exceedingly
+pointed nose.  The owner of these features, having only Mr. Botcher in
+his line of vision, made what was perhaps an unguarded remark.
+
+"Hello, Jake, the general's in number nine--Manning sent for him about
+half an hour ago."
+
+It was Mr. Botcher himself who almost closed the door on the gentleman's
+sharp nose, and took Mr. Crewe's arm confidingly.
+
+"We'll go up to the desk and see Doby in the morning,--he's busy," said
+the Honourable Jake.
+
+"What's the matter with seeing him now?" Mr. Crewe demanded.  "I know
+Manning.  He's the division superintendent, isn't he?"
+
+Mr. Botcher and Mr. Bascom exchanged glances.
+
+"Why, yes--"said Mr. Bascom, "yes, he is.  He's a great friend of General
+Doby's, and their wives are great friends."
+
+"Intimate friends, sir," said the Honourable Jake
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "we won't bother 'em but a moment."
+
+It was he who led the way now, briskly, the Honourable Brush and the
+Honourable Jake pressing closely after him.  It was Mr. Crewe who,
+without pausing to knock, pushed open the door of number nine, which was
+not quite closed; and it was Mr. Crewe who made the important discovery
+that the lugubrious division superintendent had a sense of humour.  Mr.
+Manning was seated at a marble-topped table writing on a salmon-coloured
+card, in the act of pronouncing these words:--
+
+"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New
+York and return."
+
+Mr. Speaker Doby, standing before the marble-topped table with his hands
+in his pockets, heard the noise behind him and turned, and a mournful
+expression spread over his countenance.
+
+"Don't mind me," said Mr. Crewe, waving a hand in the direction of the
+salmon-coloured tickets; "I hope you have a good time, General.  When do
+you go?"
+
+"Why," exclaimed the Speaker, "how are you, Mr. Crewe, how are you?  It's
+only one of Manning's little jokes."
+
+"That's all right, General," said Mr. Crewe, "I haven't been a director
+in railroads for nothing.  I'm not as green as he thinks.  Am I, Mr.
+Manning?"
+
+"It never struck me that green was your colour, Mr. Crewe," answered the
+division superintendent, smiling a little as he tore the tickets into
+bits and put them in the waste-basket.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "you needn't have torn 'em up on my account.  I
+travel on the pass which the Northeastern gives me as a legislator, and
+I'm thinking seriously of getting Mr. Flint to send me an annual, now
+that I'm in politics and have to cover the State."
+
+"We thought you were a reformer, Mr. Crewe," the Honourable Brush Bascom
+remarked.
+
+"I am a practical man," said Mr. Crewe; "a railroad man, a business mark
+and as such I try to see things as they are."
+
+"Well," said General Doby, who by this time had regained his usual genial
+air of composure,  I'm glad you said that, Mr. Crewe.  As these gentlemen
+will tell you, if I'd had my wish I'd have had you on every important
+committee in the House."
+
+"Chairman of every important committee, General," corrected the
+Honourable Jacob Botcher.
+
+"Yes, chairman of 'em," assented the general, after a glance at Mr.
+Crewe's countenance to see how this statement fared.  "But the fact is,
+the boys are all jealous of you--on the quiet.  I suppose you suspected
+something of the kind."
+
+"I should have imagined there might be some little feeling," Mr. Crewe
+assented modestly.
+
+"Exactly," cried the general, "and I had to combat that feeling when I
+insisted upon putting you at the head of National Affairs.  It does not
+do for a new member, whatever his prominence in the financial world, to
+be pushed forward too quickly.  And unless I am mighty mistaken, Mr.
+Crewe," he added, with his hand on the new member's shoulder, "you will
+make yourself felt without any boosting from me."
+
+"I did not come here to remain idle, General," answered Mr. Crewe,
+considerably mollified.
+
+"Certainly not," said the general, "and I say to some of those men, 'Keep
+your eye on the gentleman who is Chairman of National Affairs.'"
+
+After a little more of this desultory and pleasant talk, during which
+recourse was, had to the bathroom for several tall and thin glasses
+ranged on the shelf there, Mr. Crewe took his departure in a most equable
+frame of mind.  And when the door was closed and locked behind him, Mr.
+Manning dipped his pen in the ink, once more produced from a drawer in
+the table the salmon-coloured tickets, and glanced again at the general
+with a smile.
+
+"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New
+York and return."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Fame sometimes comes in the line of duty
+Genius is almost one hundred percent directness
+In a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the room
+It's noble, but it don't pay
+Treason to party he regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Mr. Crewe's Career, V1
+by Winston Churchill
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Mr. Crewe's Career, V1, by Churchill
+#6 in our series by this Winston Churchill
+
+This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister 
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+Title: Mr. Crewe's Career, V1
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: January, 2003  [Etext #3681]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 07/17/01]
+[Last modified date = 11/06/01]
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+Edition: 11
+
+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Mr. Crewe's Career, V1, by Churchill
+*******This file should be named wc06v11.txt or wc06v11.zip********
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+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+[NOTE: This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister
+of England during World War II.]
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. CREWE'S CAREER
+
+By WINSTON CHURCHILL
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE HONOURABLE HILARY VANE SITS FOR HIS PORTRAIT
+
+I may as well begin this story with Mr. Hilary Vane, more frequently
+addressed as the Honourable Hilary Vane, although it was the gentleman's
+proud boast that he had never held an office in his life.  He belonged to
+the Vanes of Camden Street,--a beautiful village in the hills near
+Ripton,--and was, in common with some other great men who had made a
+noise in New York and the nation, a graduate of Camden Wentworth Academy.
+But Mr. Vane, when he was at home, lived on a wide, maple-shaded street
+in the city of Ripton, cared for by an elderly housekeeper who had more
+edges than a new-fangled mowing machine.  The house was a porticoed one
+which had belonged to the Austens for a hundred years or more, for Hilary
+Vane had married, towards middle age, Miss Sarah Austen.  In two years he
+was a widower, and he never tried it again; he had the Austens' house,
+and that many-edged woman, Euphrasia Cotton, the Austens' housekeeper.
+
+The house was of wood, and was painted white as regularly as leap year.
+From the street front to the vegetable garden in the extreme rear it was
+exceedingly long, and perhaps for propriety's sake--Hilary Vane lived at
+one end of it and Euphrasia at the other.  Hilary was sixty-five,
+Euphrasia seventy, which is not old for frugal people, though it is just
+as well to add that there had never been a breath of scandal about either
+of them, in Ripton or elsewhere.  For the Honourable Hilary's modest
+needs one room sufficed, and the front parlour had not been used since
+poor Sarah Austen's demise, thirty years before this story opens.
+
+In those thirty years, by a sane and steady growth, Hilary Vane had
+achieved his present eminent position in the State.  He was trustee for I
+know not how many people and institutions, a deacon in the first church,
+a lawyer of such ability that he sometimes was accorded the courtesy-
+title of "Judge."  His only vice--if it could be called such--was in
+occasionally placing a piece, the size of a pea, of a particular kind of
+plug tobacco under his tongue,--and this was not known to many people.
+Euphrasia could not be called a wasteful person, and Hilary had
+accumulated no small portion of this world's goods, and placed them as
+propriety demanded, where they were not visible to the naked eye: and be
+it added in his favour that he gave as secretly, to institutions and
+hospitals the finances and methods of which were known to him.
+
+As concrete evidence of the Honourable Hilary Vane's importance, when he
+travelled he had only to withdraw from his hip-pocket a book in which
+many coloured cards were neatly inserted, an open-sesame which permitted
+him to sit without payment even in those wheeled palaces of luxury known
+as Pullman cars.  Within the limits of the State he did not even have to
+open the book, but merely say, with a twinkle of his eyes to the
+conductor, "Good morning, John," and John would reply with a bow and a
+genial and usually witty remark, and point him out to a nobody who sat in
+the back of the car.  So far had Mr. Hilary Vane's talents carried him.
+
+The beginning of this eminence dated back to the days before the Empire,
+when there were many little principalities of railroads fighting among
+themselves.  For we are come to a changed America.  There was a time, in
+the days of the sixth Edward of England, when the great landowners found
+it more profitable to consolidate the farms, seize the common lands, and
+acquire riches hitherto undreamed of.  Hence the rising of tailor Ket and
+others, and the leveling of fences and barriers, and the eating of many
+sheep.  It may have been that Mr. Vane had come across this passage in
+English history, but he drew no parallels.  His first position of trust
+had been as counsel for that principality known in the old days as the
+Central Railroad, of which a certain Mr. Duncan had been president, and
+Hilary Vane had fought the Central's battles with such telling effect
+that when it was merged into the one Imperial Railroad, its stockholders-
+-to the admiration of financiers--were guaranteed ten per cent.  It was,
+indeed, rumoured that Hilary drew the Act of Consolidation itself.  At
+any rate, he was too valuable an opponent to neglect, and after a certain
+interval of time Mr. Vane became chief counsel in the State for the
+Imperial Railroad, on which dizzy height we now behold him.  And he
+found, by degrees, that he had no longer time for private practice.
+
+It is perhaps gratuitous to add that the Honourable Hilary Vane was a man
+of convictions.  In politics he would have told you--with some vehemence,
+if you seemed to doubt--that he was a Republican.  Treason to party he
+regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence, as an act for which a man should
+be justly outlawed.  If he were in a mellow mood, with the right quantity
+of Honey Dew tobacco under his tongue, he would perhaps tell you why he
+was a Republican, if he thought you worthy of his confidence.  He
+believed in the gold standard, for one thing; in the tariff (left
+unimpaired in its glory) for another, and with a wave of his hand would
+indicate the prosperity of the nation which surrounded him,--a prosperity
+too sacred to tamper with.
+
+One article of his belief, and in reality the chief article, Mr. Vane
+would not mention to you.  It was perhaps because he had never formulated
+the article for himself.  It might be called a faith in the divine right
+of Imperial Railroads to rule, but it was left out of the verbal creed.
+This is far from implying hypocrisy to Mr. Vane.  It was his foundation-
+rock and too sacred for light conversation.  When he allowed himself to
+be bitter against various "young men with missions" who had sprung up in
+various States of the Union, so-called purifiers of politics, he would
+call them the unsuccessful with a grievance, and recommend to them the
+practice of charity, forbearance, and other Christian virtues.  Thank
+God, his State was not troubled with such.
+
+In person Mr. Hilary Vane was tall, with a slight stoop to his shoulders,
+and he wore the conventional double-breasted black coat, which reached to
+his knees, and square-toed congress boots.  He had a Puritan beard, the
+hawk-like Vane nose, and a twinkling eye that spoke of a sense of humour
+and a knowledge of the world.  In short, he was no man's fool, and on
+occasions had been more than a match for certain New York lawyers with
+national reputations.
+
+It is rare, in this world of trouble, that such an apparently ideal and
+happy state of existence is without a canker.  And I have left the
+revelation of the canker to the last.  Ripton knew it was there, Camden
+Street knew it, and Mr. Vane's acquaintances throughout the State; but
+nobody ever spoke of it.  Euphrasia shed over it the only tears she had
+known since Sarah Austen died, and some of these blotted the only letters
+she wrote.  Hilary Vane did not shed tears, but his friends suspected
+that his heart-strings were torn, and pitied him.  Hilary Vane fiercely
+resented pity, and that was why they did not speak of it.  This trouble
+of his was the common point on which he and Euphrasia touched, and they
+touched only to quarrel.  Let us out with it--Hilary Vane had a wild son,
+whose name was Austen.
+
+Euphrasia knew that in his secret soul Mr. Vane attributed this wildness,
+and what he was pleased to designate as profligacy, to the Austen blood.
+And Euphrasia resented it bitterly.  Sarah Austen had been a young,
+elfish thing when he married her,--a dryad, the elderly and learned Mrs.
+Tredway had called her.  Mr Vane had understood her about as well as he
+would have understood Mary, Queen of Scots, if he had been married to
+that lady.  Sarah Austen had a wild, shy beauty, startled, alert eyes
+like an animal, and rebellious black hair that curled about her ears and
+gave her a faun-like appearance.  With a pipe and the costume of Rosalind
+she would have been perfect.  She had had a habit of running off for the
+day into the hills with her son, and the conventions of Ripton had been
+to her as so many defunct blue laws.  During her brief married life there
+had been periods of defiance from her lasting a week, when she would not
+speak to Hilary or look at him, and these periods would be followed by
+violent spells of weeping in Euphrasia's arms, when the house was no
+place for Hilary.  He possessed by matrimony and intricate mechanism of
+which his really admirable brain could not grasp the first principles; he
+felt for her a real if uncomfortable affection, but when she died he
+heaved a sigh of relief, at which he was immediately horrified.
+
+Austen he understood little better, but his affection for the child may
+be likened to the force of a great river rushing through a narrow gorge,
+and he vied with Euphrasia in spoiling him.  Neither knew what they were
+doing, and the spoiling process was interspersed with occasional and (to
+Austen) unmeaning intervals of severe discipline.  The boy loved the
+streets and the woods and his fellow-beings; his punishments were a
+series of afternoons in the house, during one of which he wrecked the
+bedroom where he was confined, and was soundly whaled with an old slipper
+that broke under the process.  Euphrasia kept the slipper, and once
+showed it to Hilary during a quarrel they had when the boy was grown up
+and gone and the house was silent, and Hilary had turned away, choking,
+and left the room.  Such was his cross.
+
+To make it worse, the boy had love his father.  Nay, still loved him.  As
+a little fellow, after a scolding for some wayward prank, he would throw
+himself into Hilary's arms and cling to him, and would never know how
+near he came to unmanning him.  As Austen grew up, they saw the world in
+different colours: blue to Hilary was red to Austen, and white, black;
+essentials to one were non-essentials to the other; boys and girls, men
+and women, abhorred by one were boon companions to the other.
+
+Austen made fun of the minister, and was compelled to go church twice on
+Sundays and to prayer-meeting on Wednesdays.  Then he went to Camden
+Street, to live with his grandparents in the old Vane house and attend
+Camden Wentworth Academy.  His letters, such as they were, were
+inimitable if crude, but contained not the kind of humour Hilary Vane
+knew.  Camden Wentworth, principal and teachers, was painted to the life;
+and the lad could hardly wait for vacation time to see his father, only
+to begin quarreling with him again.
+
+I pass over escapades in Ripton that shocked one half of the population
+and convulsed the other half.  Austen went to the college which his
+father had attended,--a college of splendid American traditions,--and his
+career there might well have puzzled a father of far greater tolerance
+and catholicity.  Hilary Vane was a trustee, and journeyed more than once
+to talk the matter over with the president, who had been his classmate
+there.
+
+"I love that boy, Hilary," the president had said at length, when pressed
+for a frank opinion,--"there isn't a soul in the place, I believe, that
+doesn't,--undergraduates and faculty,--but he has given me more anxious
+thought than any scholar I have ever had."
+
+"Trouble," corrected Mr. Vane, sententiously.
+
+"Well, yes, trouble," answered the president, smiling, "but upon my soul,
+I think it is all animal spirits."
+
+"A euphemism for the devil," said Hilary, grimly; "he is the animal part
+of us, I have been brought up to believe."
+
+The president was a wise man, and took another tack.
+
+"He has a really remarkable mind, when he chooses to use it.  Every once
+in a while he takes your breath away--but he has to become interested.  A
+few weeks ago Hays came to me direct from his lecture room to tell me
+about a discussion of Austen's in constitutional law.  Hays, you know, is
+not easily enthused, but he declares your son has as fine a legal brain
+as he has come across in his experience.  But since then, I am bound to
+admit," added the president, sadly, "Austen seems not to have looked at a
+lesson."
+
+"'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,'" replied Hilary.
+
+"He'll sober down," said the president, stretching his conviction a
+little, "he has two great handicaps: he learns too easily, and he is too
+popular."  The president looked out of his study window across the
+common, surrounded by the great elms which had been planted when Indian
+lads played among the stumps and the red flag of England had flown from
+the tall pine staff.  The green was covered now with students of a
+conquering race, skylarking to and fro as they looked on at a desultory
+baseball game.   "I verily believe," said the president, "at a word from
+your son, most of them would put on their coats and follow him on any mad
+expedition that came into his mind."
+
+Hilary Vane groaned more than once in the train back to Ripton.  It meant
+nothing to him to be the father of the most popular man in college.
+
+"The mad expedition" came at length in the shape of a fight with the
+townspeople, in which Austen, of course, was the ringleader.  If he had
+inherited his mother's eccentricities, he had height and physique from
+the Vanes, and one result was a week in bed for the son of the local
+plumber and a damage suit against the Honourable Hilary.  Another result
+was that Austen and a Tom Gaylord came back to Ripton on a long
+suspension, which, rumour said, would have been expulsion if Hilary were
+not a trustee.  Tom Gaylord was proud of suspension in such company.
+More of him later.  He was the son of old Tom Gaylord, who owned more
+lumber than any man in the State, and whom Hilary Vane believed to be the
+receptacle of all the vices.
+
+Eventually Austen went back and graduated--not summa cum laude, honesty
+compels me to add.  Then came the inevitable discussion, and to please
+his father he went to the Harvard Law School for two years.  At the end
+of that time, instead of returning to Ripton, a letter had come from him
+with the postmark of a Western State, where he had fled with a classmate
+who owned ranch.  Evidently the worldly consideration to be derived from
+conformity counted little with Austen Vane.  Money was a medium only--not
+an end.  He was in the saddle all day, with nothing but the horizon to
+limit him; he loved his father, and did not doubt his father's love for
+him, and he loved Euphrasia.  He could support himself, but he must see
+life.  The succeeding years brought letters and quaint, useless presents
+to both the occupants of the lonely house,--Navajo blankets and Indian
+jeweler and basket-work,--and Austen little knew how carefully these were
+packed away and surreptitiously gazed at from time to time.  But to
+Hilary the Western career was a disgrace, and such meagre reports of it
+as came from other sources than Austen tended only to confirm him in this
+opinion.
+
+It was commonly said of Mr. Paul Pardriff that not a newspaper fell from
+the press that he did not have a knowledge of its contents.  Certain it
+was that Mr. Pardriff made a specialty of many kinds of knowledge,
+political and otherwise, and, the information he could give--if he chose-
+-about State and national affairs was of a recondite and cynical nature
+that made one wish to forget about the American flag.  Mr. Pardriff was
+under forty, and with these gifts many innocent citizens of Ripton
+naturally wondered why the columns of his newspaper, the Ripton Record,
+did not more closely resemble the spiciness of his talk in the office of
+Gales' Hotel.  The columns contained, instead, such efforts as essays on
+a national flower and the abnormal size of the hats of certain great men,
+notably Andrew Jackson; yes, and the gold standard; and in times of
+political stress they were devoted to a somewhat fulsome praise of
+regular and orthodox Republican candidates,--and praise of any one was
+not in character with the editor.  Ill-natured people said that the
+matter in his paper might possibly be accounted for by the gratitude of
+the candidates, and the fact that Mr. Pardriff and his wife and his maid-
+servant and his hired man travelled on pink mileage books, which could
+only be had for love--not money.  On the other hand, reputable witnesses
+had had it often from Mr. Pardriff that he was a reformer, and not at all
+in sympathy with certain practices which undoubtedly existed.
+
+Some years before--to be exact, the year Austen Vane left the law school-
+-Mr. Pardriff had proposed to exchange the Ripton Record with the editor
+of the Pepper County Plainsman in afar Western State.  The exchange was
+effected, and Mr. Pardriff glanced over the Plainsman regularly once a
+week, though I doubt whether the Western editor ever read the Record
+after the first copy.  One day in June Mr. Pardriff was seated in his
+sanctum above Merrill's drug store when his keen green eyes fell upon the
+following:--
+
+"The Plainsman considers it safe to say that the sympathy of the people
+of Pepper County at large is with Mr. Austen Vane, whose personal
+difficulty with Jim Blodgett resulted so disastrously for Mr. Blodgett.
+The latter gentleman has long made himself obnoxious to local ranch
+owners by his persistent disregard of property lines and property, and it
+will be recalled that he is at present in hot water with the energetic
+Secretary of the Interior for fencing government lands.  Vane, who was
+recently made manager of Ready Money Ranch, is one of the most popular
+young men in the county.  He was unwillingly assisted over the State line
+by his friends.  Although he has never been a citizen of the State, the
+Plainsman trusts that he may soon be back and become one of us.  At last
+report Mr. Blodgett was resting easily."
+
+This article obtained circulation in Ripton, although it was not copied
+into the Record out of deference to the feelings of the Honourable Hilary
+Vane.  In addition to the personal regard Mr. Pardriff professed to have
+for the Honourable Hilary, it maybe well to remember that Austen's father
+was, among other, things, chairman of the State Committee.  Mr. Tredway
+(largest railroad stockholder in Ripton) pursed his lips that were
+already pursed.  Tom Gaylord roared with laughter.  Two or three days
+later the Honourable Hilary, still in blissful ignorance, received a
+letter that agitated him sorely.
+
+"DEAR FATHER: I hope you don't object to receiving a little visit from a
+prodigal, wayward son.  To tell the truth, I have found it convenient to
+leave the Ready Money Ranch for a while, although Bob Tyner is good
+enough to say I may have the place when I come back.  You know I often
+think of you and Phrasie back in Ripton, and I long to see the dear old
+town again.  Expect me when you see me.
+
+"Your aff. son,
+
+"AUSTEN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON THE TREATMENT OF PRODIGALS
+
+While Euphrasia, in a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the
+room which held for her so many memories of Austen's boyhood, even
+beating the carpet with her own hands, Hilary Vane went about his
+business with no apparent lack of diligence.  But he was meditating.  He
+had many times listened to the Reverend Mr. Weightman read the parable
+from the pulpit, but he had never reflected how it would be to be the
+father of a real prodigal.  What was to be done about the calf?  Was
+there to be a calf, or was there not?  To tell the truth, Hilary wanted a
+calf, and yet to have one (in spite of Holy Writ) would seem to set a
+premium on disobedience and riotous living.
+
+Again, Austen had reached thirty, an age when it was not likely he would
+settle down and live an orderly and godly life among civilized beings,
+and therefore a fatted calf was likely to be the first of many follies
+which he (Hilary) would live to regret.  No, he would deal with justice.
+How he dealt will be seen presently, but when he finally reached this
+conclusion, the clipping from the Pepper County Plainsman had not yet
+come before his eyes.
+
+It is worth relating how the clipping did come before his eyes, for no
+one in Ripton had the temerity to speak of it.  Primarily, it was because
+Miss Victoria Flint had lost a terrier, and secondarily, because she was
+a person of strong likes and dislikes.  In pursuit of the terrier she
+drove madly through Leith, which, as everybody knows, is a famous colony
+of rich summer residents.  Victoria probably stopped at every house in
+Leith, and searched them with characteristic vigour and lack of ceremony,
+sometimes entering by the side door, and sometimes by the front, and
+caring very little whether the owners were at home or not.  Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe discovered her in a boa-stall at Wedderburn,--as his place was
+called,--for it made little difference to Victoria that Mr. Crewe was a
+bachelor of marriageable age and millions.  Full, as ever, of practical
+suggestions, Mr. Crewe proposed to telephone to Ripton and put an
+advertisement in the Record, which--as he happened to know--went to press
+the next day.  Victoria would not trust to the telephone, whereupon Mr.
+Crewe offered to drive down with her.
+
+"You'd bore me, Humphrey," said she, as she climbed into her runabout
+with the father and grandfather of the absentee.  Mr. Crewe laughed as
+she drove away.  He had a chemical quality of turning invidious remarks
+into compliments, and he took this one as Victoria's manner of saying
+that she did not wish to disturb so important a man.
+
+Arriving in the hot main street of Ripton, her sharp eyes descried the
+Record sign over the drug store, and in an astonishingly short time she
+was in the empty office.  Mr. Pardriff was at dinner.  She sat down in
+the editorial chair and read a great deal of uninteresting matter, but at
+last found something on the floor (where the wind had blown it) which
+made her laugh.  It was the account of Austen Vane's difficulty with Mr.
+Blodgett.  Victoria did not know Austen, but she knew that the Honourable
+Hilary had a son of that name who had gone West, and this was what
+tickled her.  She thrust the clipping in the pocket of her linen coat
+just as Mr. Pardriff came in.
+
+Her conversation with the editor of the Record proved so entertaining
+that she forgot all about the clipping until she had reached Fairview,
+and had satisfied a somewhat imperious appetite by a combination of lunch
+and afternoon tea.  Fairview was the "summer place" of Mr. Augustus P.
+Flint, her father, on a shelf of the hills in the town of Tunbridge,
+equidistant from Leith and Ripton: and Mr. Flint was the president of the
+Imperial Railroad, no less.
+
+Yes, he had once been plain Gus Flint, many years ago, when he used to
+fetch the pocket-handkerchiefs of Mr. Isaac D. Worthington of Brampton,
+and he was still "Gus" to his friends.  Mr. Flint's had been the brain
+which had largely conceived and executed the consolidation of
+principalities of which the Imperial Railroad was the result and, as
+surely as tough metal prevails, Mr. Flint, after many other trials and
+errors of weaker stuff, had been elected to the place for which he was so
+supremely fitted.  We are so used in America to these tremendous rises
+that a paragraph will suffice to place Mr. Flint in his Aladdin's palace.
+To do him justice, he cared not a fig for the palace, and he would have
+been content with the farmhouse under the hill where his gardener lived.
+You could not fool Mr. Flint on a horse or a farm, and he knew to a dot
+what a railroad was worth by travelling over it.  Like his governor-
+general and dependent, Mr. Hilary Vane, he had married a wife who had
+upset all his calculations.  The lady discovered Mr. Flint's balance in
+the bank, and had proceeded to use it for her own glorification, and the
+irony of it all was that he could defend it from everybody else.  Mrs.
+Flint spent, and Mr. Flint paid the bills; for the first ten years
+protestingly, and after that he gave it up and let her go her own gait.
+
+She had come from the town of Sharon, in another State, through which Mr.
+Flint's railroad also ran, and she had been known as the Rose of that
+place.  She had begun to rise immediately, with the kite-like
+adaptability of the American woman for high altitudes, and the leaden
+weight of the husband at the end of the tail was as nothing to her.  She
+had begun it all by the study of people in hotels while Mr. Flint was
+closeted with officials and directors.  By dint of minute observation and
+reasoning powers and unflagging determination she passed rapidly through
+several strata, and had made a country place out of her husband's farm in
+Tunbridge, so happily and conveniently situated near Leith.  In winter
+they lived on Fifth Avenue.
+
+One daughter alone had halted, for a minute period, this progress, and
+this daughter was Victoria--named by her mother.  Victoria was now
+twenty-one, and was not only of another generation, but might almost have
+been judged of another race than her parents.  The things for which her
+mother had striven she took for granted, and thought of them not at all,
+and she had by nature that simplicity and astonishing frankness of manner
+and speech which was once believed to be an exclusive privilege of
+duchesses.
+
+To return to Fairview.  Victoria, after sharing her five o'clock luncheon
+with her dogs, went to seek her father, for the purpose (if it must be
+told) of asking him for a cheque.  Mr. Flint was at Fairview on the
+average of two days out of the week during the summer, and then he was
+nearly always closeted with a secretary and two stenographers and a long-
+distance telephone in two plain little rooms at the back of the house.
+And Mr. Hilary Vane was often in consultation with him, as he was on the
+present occasion when Victoria flung open the door.  At sight of Mr. Vane
+she halted suddenly on the threshold, and a gleam of mischief came into
+her eye as she thrust her hand into her coat pocket.  The two regarded
+her with the detached air of men whose thread of thought has been broken.
+
+"Well, Victoria," said her father, kindly if resignedly, "what is it
+now?"
+
+"Money," replied Victoria, promptly; "I went to Avalon this morning and
+bought that horse you said I might have."
+
+"What horse?" asked Mr. Flint, vaguely.  "But never mind.  Tell Mr.
+Freeman to make out the cheque."
+
+Mr. Vane glanced at Mr. Flint, and his eyes twinkled.  Victoria, who had
+long ago discovered the secret of the Honey Dew, knew that he was rolling
+it under his tongue and thinking her father a fool for his indulgence.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said; "Austen's coming home, isn't he?"
+She had got this by feminine arts out of Mr. Paul Pardriff, to whom she
+had not confided the fact of her possession of the clipping.
+
+The Honourable Hilary gave a grunt, as he always did when he was
+surprised and displeased, as though some one had prodded him with a stick
+in a sensitive spot.
+
+"Your son?  Why, Vane, you never told me that," said Mr. Flint.  "I
+didn't know that you knew him, Victoria."
+
+"I don't," answered Victoria, "but I'd like to.  What did he do to Mr.
+Blodgett?" she demanded of Hilary.
+
+"Mr. Blodgett!" exclaimed that gentleman.  "I never heard of him.  What's
+happened to him?"
+
+"He will probably recover," she assured him.
+
+The Honourable Hilary, trying in vain to suppress his agitation, rose to
+his feet.
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about, Victoria," he said, but his
+glance was fixed on the clipping in her hand.
+
+"Haven't you seen it?" she asked, giving it to him.
+
+He read it in silence, groaned, and handed it to Mr. Flint, who had been
+drumming on the table and glancing at Victoria with vague disapproval.
+Mr. Flint read it and gave it back to the Honourable Hilary, who groaned
+again and looked out of the window.
+
+"Why do you feel badly about it?" asked Victoria.  "I'd be proud of him,
+if I were you."
+
+"Proud of him" echoed Mr. Vane, grimly.  "Proud of him!"
+
+"Victoria, what do you mean?" said Mr. Flint.
+
+"Why not?" said Victoria.  "He's done nothing to make you ashamed.
+According to that clipping, he's punished a man who richly deserved to be
+punished, and he has the sympathy of an entire county."
+
+Hilary Vane was not a man to discuss his domestic affliction with
+anybody, so he merely grunted and gazed persistently out of the window,
+and was not aware of the fact that Victoria made a little face at him as
+she left the room.  The young are not always impartial judges of the old,
+and Victoria had never forgiven him for carrying to her father the news
+of an escapade of hers in Ripton.
+
+As he drove through the silent forest roads on his way homeward that
+afternoon, the Honourable Hilary revolved the new and intensely
+disagreeable fact in his mind as to how he should treat a prodigal who
+had attempted manslaughter and was a fugitive from justice.  In the
+meantime a tall and spare young man of a red-bronze colour alighted from
+the five o'clock express at Ripton and grinned delightedly at the
+gentlemen who made the station their headquarters about train time.  They
+were privately disappointed that the gray felt hat, although broad-
+brimmed, was not a sombrero, and the respectable, loose-fitting suit of
+clothes was not of buckskin with tassels on the trousers; and likewise
+that he came without the cartridge belt and holster which they had
+pictured in anticipatory sessions on the baggage-trucks.  There could be
+no doubt of the warmth of their greeting as they sidled up and seized a
+hand somewhat larger than theirs, but the welcome had in it an ingredient
+of awe that puzzled the newcomer, who did not hesitate to inquire:--
+
+"What's the matter, Ed?  Why so ceremonious, Perley?"
+
+But his eagerness did not permit him to wait for explanations.  Grasping
+his bag, the only baggage he possessed, he started off at a swinging
+stride for Hanover Street, pausing only to shake the hands of the few who
+recognized him, unconscious of the wild-fire at his back.  Hanover Street
+was empty that drowsy summer afternoon, and he stopped under the well-
+remembered maples before the house and gazed at it long and tenderly;
+even at the windows of that room--open now for the first time in years--
+where he had served so many sentences of imprisonment.  Then he went
+cautiously around by the side and looked in at the kitchen door.  To
+other eyes than his Euphrasia might not have seemed a safe person to
+embrace, but in a moment he had her locked in his arms and weeping.  She
+knew nothing as yet of Mr. Blodgett's misfortunes, but if Austen Vane had
+depopulated a county it would have made no difference in her affection.
+
+"My, but you're a man," exclaimed Euphrasia, backing away at last and
+staring at him with the only complete approval she had ever accorded to
+any human being save one.
+
+"What did you expect, Phrasie?"
+
+"Come, and I'll show you your room," she said, in a gutter she could not
+hide; "it's got all the same pictures in, your mother's pictures, and the
+chair you broke that time when Hilary locked you in.  It's mended."
+
+"Hold on, Phrasie," said Austen, seizing her by the apron-strings, "how
+about the Judge?"  It was by this title he usually designated his father.
+
+"What about him?" demanded Euphrasia, sharply.
+
+"Well, it's his house, for one thing," answered Austen, "and he may
+prefer to have that room--empty."
+
+"Empty!  Turn you out?  I'd like to see him," cried Euphrasia.  "It
+wouldn't take me long to leave him high and dry."
+
+She paused at the sound of wheels, and there was the Honourable Hilary,
+across the garden patch, in the act of slipping out of his buggy at the
+stable door.  In the absence of Luke, the hired man, the chief counsel
+for the railroad was wont to put up the horse himself, and he already had
+the reins festooned from the bit rings when he felt a heavy, hand on his
+shoulder and heard a voice say:--
+
+"How are you, Judge?"
+
+If the truth be told, that voice and that touch threw the Honourable
+Hilary's heart out of beat.  Many days he had been schooling himself for
+this occasion: this very afternoon he had determined his course of
+action, which emphatically did not include a fatted calf.  And now surged
+up a dryad-like memory which had troubled him many a wakeful night, of
+startled, appealing eyes that sought his in vain, and of the son she had
+left him flinging himself into his arms in the face of chastisement.  For
+the moment Hilary Vane, under this traitorous influence, was unable to
+speak.  But he let the hand rest on his shoulder, and at length was able
+to pronounce, in a shamefully shaky voice, the name of his son.
+Whereupon Austen seized him by the other shoulder and turned him round
+and looked into his face.
+
+"The same old Judge," he said.
+
+But Hilary was startled, even as Euphrasia had been.  Was this strange,
+bronzed, quietly humorous young man his son?  Hilary even had to raise
+his eyes a little; he had forgotten how tall Austen was.  Strange
+emotions, unbidden and unwelcome, ran riot in his breast; and Hilary
+Vane, who made no slips before legislative committees or supreme courts,
+actually found himself saying:--
+
+"Euphrasia's got your room ready."
+
+"It's good of you to take me in, Judge," said Austen, patting his
+shoulder.  And then he began, quite naturally to unbuckle the breechings
+and loose the traces, which he did with such deftness and celerity that
+he had the horse unharnessed and in the stall in a twinkling, and had
+hauled the buggy through the stable door, the Honourable Hilary watching
+him the while.  He was troubled, but for the life of him could find no
+adequate words, who usually had the dictionary at his disposal.
+
+"Didn't write me why you came home," said the Honourable Hilary, as his
+son washed his hands at the spigot.
+
+"Didn't I?  Well, the truth was I wanted to see you again, Judge."
+
+His father grunted, not with absolute displeasure, but suspiciously.
+
+"How about Blodgett?" he asked.
+
+"Blodgett?  Have you heard about that?  Who told you?"
+
+"Never mind.  You didn't.  Nothing in your letter about it."
+
+"It wasn't worth mentioning," replied Austen.  "Tyner and the boys liked
+it pretty well, but I didn't think you'd be interested.  It was a local
+affair."
+
+"Not interested!  Not worth mentioning!" exclaimed the Honourable Hilary,
+outraged to discover that his son was modestly deprecating an achievement
+instead of defending a crime.  "Godfrey! murder ain't worth mentioning, I
+presume."
+
+"Not when it isn't successful," said Austen.  "If Blodgett had succeeded,
+I guess you'd have heard of it before you did."
+
+"Do you mean to say this Blodgett tried to kill you?" demanded the
+Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Yes," said his son, "and I've never understood why he didn't.  He's a
+good deal better shot than I am."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and sat down on a bucket and carefully
+prepared a piece of Honey Dew.  He was surprised and agitated.
+
+"Then why are you a fugitive from justice if you were acting in self-
+defence?" he inquired.
+
+"Well, you see there were no witnesses, except a Mexican of Blodgett's,
+and Blodgett runs the Pepper County machine for the railroad out there.
+I'd been wanting to come East and have a look at you for some time, and I
+thought I might as well come now."
+
+"How did this--this affair start?" asked Mr. Vane.
+
+"Blodgett was driving in some of Tyner's calves, and I caught him.  I
+told him what I thought of him, and he shot at me through his pocket.
+That was all."
+
+"All!  You shot him, didn't you?"
+
+"I was lucky enough to hit him first," said Austen.
+
+Extraordinary as it may seem, the Honourable Hilary experienced a sense
+of pride.
+
+"Where did you hit him?" he asked.
+
+It was Euphrasia who took matters in her own hands and killed the fatted
+calf, and the meal to which they presently sat down was very different
+from the frugal suppers Mr. Vane usually had.  But he made no comment.
+It is perhaps not too much to say that he would have been distinctly
+disappointed had it been otherwise.  There was Austen's favourite pie,
+and Austen's favourite cake, all inherited from the Austens, who had
+thought more of the fleshpots than people should.  And the prodigal did
+full justice to the occasion.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CONCERNING THE PRACTICE OF LAW
+
+So instinctively do we hark back to the primeval man that there was a
+tendency to lionize the prodigal in Ripton, which proves the finished
+civilization of the East not to be so far removed from that land of
+outlaws, Pepper County.  Mr. Paul Pardriff, who had a guilty conscience
+about the clipping, and vividly bearing in mind Mr. Blodgett's mishap,
+alone avoided young Mr. Vane; and escaped through the type-setting room
+and down an outside stairway in the rear when that gentleman called.  It
+gave an ironical turn to the incident that Mr. Pardriff was at the moment
+engaged in a "Welcome Home" paragraph meant to be propitiatory.
+
+Austen cared very little for lionizing.  He spent most of his time with
+young Tom Gaylord, now his father's right-hand man in a tremendous lumber
+business.  And Tom, albeit he had become so important, habitually fell
+once more under the domination of the hero of his youthful days.
+Together these two visited haunts of their boyhood, camping and fishing
+and scaling mountains, Tom with an eye to lumbering prospects the while.
+
+After a matter of two or three months bad passed away in this pleasant
+though unprofitable manner, the Honourable Hilary requested the presence
+of his son one morning at his office.  This office was in what had once
+been a large residence, and from its ample windows you could look out
+through the elms on to the square.  Old-fashioned bookcases lined with
+musty books filled the walls, except where a steel engraving of a legal
+light or a railroad map of the State was hung, and the Honourable Hilary
+sat in a Windsor chair at a mahogany table in the middle.
+
+The anteroom next door, where the clerks sat, was also a waiting-room for
+various individuals from the different parts of the State who continually
+sought the counsel's presence.
+
+"Haven't seen much of you since you've be'n home, Austen," his father
+remarked as an opening.
+
+"Your--legal business compels you to travel a great deal," answered
+Austen, turning from the window and smiling.
+
+"Somewhat," said the Honourable Hilary, on whom this pleasantry was not
+lost.  "You've be'n travelling on the lumber business, I take it."
+
+"I know more about it than I did," his son admitted.
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted.
+
+"Caught a good many fish, haven't you?"
+
+Austen crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk beside his
+father's chair.
+
+"See here, Judge," he said, "what are you driving at?  Out with it."
+
+"When are you--going back West?" asked Mr. Vane.
+
+Austen did not answer at once, but looked down into his father's
+inscrutable face.
+
+"Do you want to get rid of me?" he said.
+
+"Sowed enough wild oats, haven't you?" inquired the father.
+
+"I've sowed a good many," Austen admitted.
+
+"Why not settle down?"
+
+"I haven't yet met the lady, Judge," replied his son.
+
+"Couldn't support her if you had," said Mr. Vane.
+
+"Then it's fortunate," said Austen, resolved not to be the necessary
+second in a quarrel.  He knew his father, and perceived that these
+preliminary and caustic openings of his were really olive branches.
+
+"Sometimes I think you might as well be in that outlandish country, for
+all I see of you," said the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"You ought to retire from business and try fishing," his son suggested.
+
+The Honourable Hilary sometimes smiled.
+
+"You've got a good brain, Austen, and what's the use of wasting it
+chasing cattle and practising with a pistol on your fellow-beings?  You
+won't have much trouble in getting admitted to the bar.  Come into the
+office."
+
+Austen did not answer at once.  He suspected that it had cost his father
+not a little to make these advances.
+
+"Do you believe you and I could get along, Judge?  How long do you think
+it would last?"
+
+"I've considered that some," answered the Honourable Hilary, "but I won't
+last a great while longer myself."
+
+"You're as sound as a bronco," declared Austen, patting him.
+
+"I never was what you might call dissipated," agreed Mr. Vane, "but men
+don't go on forever.  I've worked hard all my life, and got where I am,
+and I've always thought I'd like to hand it on to you.  It's a position
+of honour and trust, Austen, and one of which any lawyer might be proud."
+
+"My ambition hasn't run in exactly that channel," said his son.
+
+"Didn't know as you had any precise ambition," responded the Honourable
+Hilary, "but I never heard of a man refusing to be chief counsel for a
+great railroad.  I don't say you can be, mind, but I say with work and
+brains it's as easy for the son of Hilary Vane as for anybody else."
+
+"I don't know much about the duties of such a position," said Austen,
+laughing, "but at all events I shall have time to make up my mind how to
+answer Mr. Flint when he comes to me with the proposal.  To speak
+frankly, Judge, I hadn't thought of spending the whole of what might
+otherwise prove a brilliant life in Ripton."
+
+The Honourable Hilary smiled again, and then he grunted.
+
+"I tell you what I'll do," he said; "you come in with me and agree to
+stay five years.  If you've done well for yourself, and want to go to New
+York or some large place at the end of that time, I won't hinder you.
+But I feel it my duty to say, if you don't accept my offer, no son of
+mine shall inherit what I've laid up by hard labour.  It's against
+American doctrine, and it's against my principles.  You can go back to
+Pepper County and get put in jail, but you can't say I haven't warned you
+fairly."
+
+"You ought to leave your fortune to the railroad, Judge," said Austen.
+"Generations to come would bless your name if you put up a new station in
+Ripton and built bridges over Bunker Hill grade crossing and the other
+one on Heath Street where Nic Adams was killed last month.  I shouldn't
+begrudge a cent of the money."
+
+"I suppose I was a fool to talk to you," said the Honourable Hilary,
+getting up.
+
+But his son pushed him down again into the Windsor chair.
+
+"Hold on, Judge," he said, "that was just my way of saying if I accepted
+your offer, it wouldn't be because I yearned after the money.  Thinking
+of it has never kept me awake nights.  Now if you'll allow me to take a
+few days once in a while to let off steam, I'll make a counter proposal,
+in the nature of a compromise."
+
+"What's that?" the Honourable Hilary demanded suspiciously.
+
+"Provided I get admitted to the bar I will take a room in another part of
+this building and pick up what crumbs of practice I can by myself.  Of
+course, sir, I realize that these, if they come at all, will be owing to
+the lustre of your name.  But I should, before I become Mr. Flint's
+right-hand man, like to learn to walk with my own legs."
+
+The speech pleased the Honourable Hilary, and he put out his hand.
+
+"It's a bargain, Austen," he said.
+
+"I don't mind telling you now, Judge, that when I left the West I left it
+for good, provided you and I could live within a decent proximity.  And I
+ought to add that I always intended going into the law after I'd had a
+fling.  It isn't fair to leave you with the impression that this is a
+sudden determination.  Prodigals don't become good as quick as all that."
+
+Ripton caught its breath a second time the day Austen hired a law office,
+nor did the surprise wholly cease when, in one season, he was admitted to
+the bar, for the proceeding was not in keeping with the habits and
+customs of prodigals.  Needless to say, the practice did not immediately
+begin to pour in, but the little office rarely lacked a visitor, and
+sometimes had as many as five or six.  There was an irresistible
+attraction about that room, and apparently very little law read there,
+though sometimes its occupant arose and pushed the visitors into the hall
+and locked the door, and opened the window at the top to let the smoke
+out.  Many of the Honourable Hilary's callers preferred the little room
+in the far corridor to the great man's own office.
+
+These visitors of the elder Mr. Vane's, as has been before hinted, were
+not all clients.  Without burdening the reader too early with a treatise
+on the fabric of a system, suffice it to say that something was
+continually going on that was not law; and gentlemen came and went--fat
+and thin, sharp-eyed and red-faced--who were neither clients nor lawyers.
+These were really secretive gentlemen, though most of them had a hail-
+fellow-well-met manner and a hearty greeting, but when they talked to the
+Honourable Hilary it was with doors shut, and even then they sat very
+close to his ear.  Many of them preferred now to wait in Austen's office
+instead of the anteroom, and some of them were not so cautious with the
+son of Hilary Vane that they did not let drop certain observations to set
+him thinking.  He had a fanciful if somewhat facetious way of calling
+them by feudal titles which made them grin.
+
+"How is the Duke of Putnam this morning?" he would ask of the gentleman
+of whom the Ripton Record would frequently make the following
+announcement: "Among the prominent residents of Putnam County in town
+this week was the Honourable Brush Bascom."
+
+The Honourable Brush and many of his associates, barons and earls, albeit
+the shrewdest of men, did not know exactly how to take the son of Hilary
+Vane.  This was true also of the Honourable Hilary himself, who did not
+wholly appreciate the humour in Austen's parallel of the feudal system.
+Although Austen had set up for himself, there were many ways--not legal--
+in which the son might have been helpful to the father, but the
+Honourable Hilary hesitated, for some unformulated reason, to make use of
+him; and the consequence was that Mr. Hamilton Tooting and other young
+men of a hustling nature in the Honourable Hilary's office found that
+Austen's advent did not tend greatly to lighten a certain class of their
+labours.  In fact, father and son were not much nearer in spirit than
+when ode had been in Pepper County and the other in Ripton.  Caution and
+an instinct which senses obstacles are characteristics of gentlemen in
+Mr. Vane's business.
+
+So two years passed,--years liberally interspersed with expeditions into
+the mountains and elsewhere, and nights spent in the company of Tom
+Gaylord and others.  During this period Austen was more than once
+assailed by the temptation to return to the free life of Pepper County,
+Mr. Blodgett having completely recovered now, and only desiring vengeance
+of a corporal nature.  But a bargain was a bargain, and Austen Vane stuck
+to his end of it, although he had now begun to realize many aspects of a
+situation which he had not before suspected.  He had long foreseen,
+however, that the time was coming when a serious disagreement with his
+father was inevitable.  In addition to the difference in temperament,
+Hilary Vane belonged to one generation and Austen to another.
+
+It happened, as do so many incidents which tend to shape a life, by a
+seeming chance.  It was a Tune evening, and there had been a church
+sociable and basket picnic during the day in a grove in the town of
+Mercer, some ten miles south of Ripton.  The grove was bounded on one
+side by the railroad track, and merged into a thick clump of second
+growth and alders where there was a diagonal grade crossing.  The picnic
+was over and the people preparing to go home when they were startled by a
+crash, followed by the screaming of brakes as a big engine flew past the
+grove and brought a heavy train to a halt some distance down the grade.
+The women shrieked and dropped the dishes they were washing, and the men
+left their horses standing and ran to the crossing and then stood for the
+moment helpless, in horror at the scene which met their eyes.  The wagon
+of one--of their own congregation was in splinters, a man (a farmer of
+the neighbourhood) lying among the alders with what seemed a mortal
+injury.  Amid the lamentations and cries for some one to go to Mercer
+Village for the doctor a young man drove up rapidly and sprang out of a
+buggy, trusting to some one to catch his horse, pushed, through the ring
+of people, and bent over the wounded farmer.  In an instant he had
+whipped out a knife, cut a stick from one of the alders, knotted his
+handkerchief around the man's leg, ran the stick through the knot, and
+twisted the handkerchief until the blood ceased to flow.  They watched
+him, paralyzed, as the helpless in this world watch the capable, and
+before he had finished his task the train crew and some passengers began
+to arrive.
+
+"Have you a doctor aboard, Charley?" the young man asked.
+
+"No," answered the conductor, who had been addressed; "my God, not one,
+Austen."
+
+"Back up your train," said Austen, "and stop your baggage car here.  And
+go to the grove," he added to one of the picnickers, "and bring four or
+five carriage cushions.  And you hold this."
+
+The man beside him took the tourniquet, as he was bid.  Austen Vane drew
+a note-book from his pocket.
+
+"I want this man's name and address," he said, "and the names and
+addresses of every person here, quickly."
+
+He did not lift his voice, but the man who had taken charge of such a
+situation was not to be denied.  They obeyed him, some eagerly, some
+reluctantly, and by that time the train had backed down and the cushions
+had arrived.  They laid these on the floor of the baggage car and lifted
+the man on to them.  His name was Zeb Meader, and he was still
+insensible.  Austen Vane, with a peculiar set look upon his face, sat
+beside him all the way into Ripton.  He spoke only once, and that was to
+tell the conductor to telegraph from Avalon to have the ambulance from
+St. Mary's Hospital meet the train at Ripton.
+
+The next day Hilary Vane, returning from one of his periodical trips to
+the northern part of the State, invaded his son's office.
+
+"What's this they tell me about your saving a man's life?" he asked,
+sinking into one of the vacant chairs and regarding Austen with his
+twinkling eyes.
+
+"I don't know what they tell you," Austen answered.  "I didn't do
+anything but get a tourniquet on his leg and have him put on the train."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted, and continued to regard his son.  Then he
+cut a piece of Honey Dew.
+
+"Looks bad, does it?" he said.
+
+"Well," replied Austen, "it might have been done better.  It was bungled.
+In a death-trap as cleverly conceived as that crossing, with a down grade
+approaching it, they ought to have got the horse too."
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted again, and inserted the Honey Dew.  He
+resolved to ignore the palpable challenge in this remark, which was in
+keeping with this new and serious mien in Austen.
+
+"Get the names of witnesses?" was his next question.
+
+"I took particular pains to do so."
+
+"Hand 'em over to Tooting.  What kind of man is this Meagre?"
+
+"He is rather meagre now," said Austen, smiling a little.  "His name's
+Meader."
+
+"Is he likely to make a fuss?"
+
+"I think he is," said Austen.
+
+"Well," said the Honourable Hilary, "we must have Ham Tooting hurry
+'round and fix it up with him as soon as he can talk, before one of these
+cormorant lawyers gets his claw in him."
+
+Austen said nothing, and after some desultory conversation, in which he
+knew how to indulge when he wished to conceal the fact that he was
+baffled, the Honourable Hilary departed.  That student of human nature,
+Mr. Hamilton Tooting, a young man of a sporting appearance and a free
+vocabulary, made the next attempt.  It is a characteristic of Mr.
+Tooting's kind that, in their efforts to be genial, they often use an
+awkward diminutive of their friends' names.
+
+"Hello, Aust," said Mr. Tooting, "I dropped in to get those witnesses in
+that Meagre accident, before I forget it."
+
+"I think I'll keep 'em," said Austen, making a note out of the Revised
+Statutes.
+
+"Oh, all right, all right," said Mr. Tooting, biting off a piece of his
+cigar.  "Going to handle the case yourself, are you?"
+
+"I may."
+
+"I'm just as glad to have some of 'em off my hands, and this looks to me
+like a nasty one.  I don't like those Mercer people.  The last farmer
+they ran over there raised hell."
+
+"I shouldn't blame this one if he did, if he ever gets well enough," said
+Austen.  Young Mr. Tooting paused with a lighted match halfway to his
+cigar and looked at Austen shrewdly, and then sat down on the desk very
+close to him.
+
+"Say, Aust, it sometimes sickens a man to have to buy these fellows off.
+What?  Poor devils, they don't get anything like what they ought to get,
+do they?  Wait till you see how the Railroad Commission'll whitewash that
+case.  It makes a man want to be independent.  What?"
+
+"This sounds like virtue, Ham."
+
+"I've often thought, too," said Mr. Tooting, "that a man could make more
+money if he didn't wear the collar."
+
+"But not sleep as well, perhaps," said Austen.
+
+"Say, Aust, you're not on the level with me."
+
+"I hope to reach that exalted plane some day, Ham."
+
+"What's got into you?" demanded the usually clear-headed Mr. Tooting, now
+a little bewildered.
+
+"Nothing, yet," said Austen, "but I'm thinking seriously of having a
+sandwich and a piece of apple pie.  Will you come along?"
+
+They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile
+brain for some excuse to reopen the subject.  Despairing of that, he
+decided that any subject would do.
+
+"That Humphrey Crewe up at Leith is smart--smart as paint," he remarked.
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"I've seen him," said Austen.  "He's a young man, isn't he?"
+
+"And natty.  He knows a thing or two for a millionaire that don't have to
+work, and he runs that place of his right up to the handle.  You ought to
+hear him talk about the tariff, and national politics.  I was passing
+there the other day, and he was walking around among the flowerbeds.
+'Ain't your name Tooting?' he hollered.  "I almost fell out of the
+buggy."
+
+"What did he want?" asked Austen, curiously.  Mr. Tooting winked.
+
+"Say, those millionaires are queer, and no mistake.  You'd think a fellow
+that only had to cut coupons wouldn't be lookin' for another job,
+wouldn't you?  He made me hitch my horse, and had me into his study, as
+he called it, and gave me a big glass of whiskey and soda.  A fellow with
+buttons and a striped vest brought it on tiptoe.  Then this Crewe gave me
+a long yellow cigar with a band on it and told me what the State needed,-
+-macadam roads, farmers' institutes, forests, and God knows what.  I told
+him all he had to do was to get permission from old man Flint, and he
+could have 'em."
+
+"What did he say to that?"
+
+"He said Flint was an intimate friend of his.  Then he asked me a whole
+raft of questions about fellows in the neighbourhood I didn't know he'd
+ever heard of.  Say, he wants to go from Leith to the Legislature."
+
+"He can go for all I care," said Austen, as he pushed open the door of
+the restaurant.
+
+For a few days Mr. Meader hung between life and death.  But he came of a
+stock which had for generations thrust its roots into the crevices of
+granite, and was not easily killed by steam-engines.  Austen Vane called
+twice, and then made an arrangement with young Dr. Tredway (one of the
+numerous Ripton Tredways whose money had founded the hospital) that he
+was to see Mr. Meader as soon as he was able to sustain a conversation.
+Dr. Tredway, by the way, was a bachelor, and had been Austen's companion
+on many a boisterous expedition.
+
+When Austen, in response to the doctor's telephone message, stood over
+the iron bed in the spick-and-span men's ward of St. Mary's, a wave of
+that intense feeling he had experienced at the accident swept over him.
+The farmer's beard was overgrown, and the eyes looked up at him as from
+caverns of suffering below the bandage.  They were shrewd eyes, however,
+and proved that Mr. Meader had possession of the five senses--nay, of the
+six.  Austen sat down beside the bed.
+
+"Dr. Tredway tells me you are getting along finely," he said.
+
+"No thanks to the railrud," answered Mr. Meader; "they done their best."
+
+"Did you hear any whistle or any bell?" Austen asked.
+
+"Not a sound," said Mr. Meader; "they even shut off their steam on that
+grade."
+
+Austen Vane, like most men who are really capable of a deep sympathy, was
+not an adept at expressing it verbally.  Moreover, he knew enough of his
+fellow-men to realize that a Puritan farmer would be suspicious of
+sympathy.  The man had been near to death himself, was compelled to spend
+part of the summer, his bread-earning season, in a hospital, and yet no
+appeal or word of complaint had crossed his lips.
+
+"Mr. Meader," said Austen, "I came over here to tell you that in my
+opinion you are entitled to heavy damages from the railroad, and to
+advise you not to accept a compromise.  They will send some one to you
+and offer you a sum far below that which you ought in justice to receive,
+You ought to fight this case."
+
+"How am I going to pay a lawyer, with a mortgage on my farm?" demanded
+Mr. Meader.
+
+"I'm a lawyer," said Austen, "and if you'll take me, I'll defend you
+without charge."
+
+"Ain't you the son of Hilary Vane?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I've heard of him a good many times," said Mr. Meader, as if to ask what
+man had not.  "You're railroad, ain't ye?"
+
+Mr. Meader gazed long and thoughtfully into the young man's face, and the
+suspicion gradually faded from the farmer's blue eyes.
+
+"I like your looks," he said at last.  "I guess you saved my life.  I'm--
+I'm much obliged to you."
+
+When Mr. Tooting arrived later in the day, he found Mr. Meader willing to
+listen, but otherwise strangely non-committal.  With native shrewdness,
+the farmer asked him what office he came from, but did not confide in Mr.
+Tooting the fact that Mr. Vane's son had volunteered to wring more money
+from Mr. Vane's client than Mr. Tooting offered him.  Considerably
+bewildered, that gentleman left the hospital to report the affair to the
+Honourable Hilary, who, at intervals during the afternoon, found himself
+relapsing into speculation.
+
+Inside of a somewhat unpromising shell, Mr. Zeb Meader was a human being,
+and no mean judge of men and motives.  As his convalescence progressed,
+Austen Vane fell into the habit of dropping in from time to time to chat
+with him, and gradually was rewarded by many vivid character sketches of
+Mr. Meader's neighbours in Mercer and its vicinity.  One afternoon, when
+Austen came into the ward, he found at Mr. Meader's bedside a basket of
+fruit which looked too expensive and tempting to have come from any
+dealer's in Ripton.
+
+"A lady came with that," Mr. Meader explained.  "I never was popular
+before I was run over by the cars.  She's be'n here twice.  When she
+fetched it to-day, I kind of thought she was up to some, game, and I
+didn't want to take it."
+
+"Up to some game?" repeated Austen.
+
+"Well, I don't know," continued Mr. Meader, thoughtfully, "the woman here
+tells me she comes regular in the summer time to see sick folks, but from
+the way she made up to me I had an idea that she wanted something.  But l
+don't know.  Thought I'd ask you.  You see, she's railrud."
+
+"Railroad!"
+
+"She's Flint's daughter."
+
+Austen laughed.
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that," he said.  "If Mr. Flint sent his daughter
+with fruit to everybody his railroad injures, she wouldn't have time to
+do anything else.  I doubt if Mr. Flint ever heard of your case."
+
+Mr. Meader considered this, and calculated there was something in it.
+
+"She was a nice, common young lady, and cussed if she didn't make me
+laugh, she has such a funny way of talkin'.  She wanted to know all about
+you."
+
+"What did she want to know?" Austen exclaimed, not unnaturally.
+
+"Well, she wanted to know about the accident, and I told her how you druv
+up and screwed that thing around my leg and backed the train down.  She
+was a good deal took with that."
+
+"I think you are inclined to make too much of it," said Austen.
+
+Three days later, as he was about to enter the ward, Mr. Meader being now
+the only invalid there, he heard a sound which made him pause in the
+doorway.  The sound was feminine laughter of a musical quality that
+struck pleasantly on Austen's ear.  Miss Victoria Flint was sated beside
+Mr. Meader's bed, and qualified friendship had evidently been replaced by
+intimacy since Austen's last visit, for Mr. Meader was laughing, too.
+
+"And now I'm quite sure you have missed your vocation, Mr. Meader," said
+Victoria.  "You would have made a fortune on the stage."
+
+"Me a play-actor!" exclaimed the invalid.  "How much wages do they git?"
+
+"Untold sums," she declared, "if they can talk like you."
+
+"He kind of thought that story funny--same as you," Mr. Meader ruminated,
+and glanced up.  "Drat me," he remarked, "if he ain't a-comin' now!
+I callated he'd run acrost you sometime."
+
+Victoria raised her eyes, sparkling with humour, and they met Austen's.
+
+"We was just talkin' about you," cried Mr. Meader, cordially; "come right
+in."  He turned to Victoria.  "I want to make you acquainted," he said,
+"with Austen Vane."
+
+"And won't you tell him who I am, Mr. Meader?" said Victoria.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Meader, apologetically, "that was stupid of me--wahn't
+it?  But I callated he'd know.  She's the daughter of the railrud
+president--the 'one that was askin' about you."
+
+There was an instant's pause, and the colour stole into Victoria's
+cheeks.  Then she glanced at Austen and bit her lip-and laughed.  Her
+laughter was contagious.
+
+"I suppose I shall have to confess that you have inspired my curiosity,
+Mr. Vane," she said.
+
+Austen's face was sunburned, but it flushed a more vivid red under the
+tan.  It is needless to pretend that a man of his appearance and
+qualities had reached the age of thirty-two without having listened to
+feminine comments of which he was the exclusive subject.  In this remark
+of Victoria's, or rather in the manner in which she made it, he
+recognized a difference.
+
+"It is a tribute, then, to the histrionic talents of Mr. Meader, of which
+you were speaking," he replied laughingly.
+
+Victoria glanced at him with interest as he looked down at Mr. Meader.
+
+"And how is it to-day, Zeb?" he said.
+
+"It ain't so bad as it might be--with sech folks as her and you araound,"
+admitted Mr. Meader.  "I'd almost agree to get run over again.  She was
+askin' about you, and that's a fact, and I didn't slander you, neither.
+But I never callated to comprehend wimmen-folks."
+
+"Now, Mr. Meader," said Victoria, reprovingly, but there were little
+creases about her eyes, "don't be a fraud."
+
+"It's true as gospel," declared the invalid; "they always got the better
+of me.  I had one of 'em after me once, when I was young and prosperin'
+some."
+
+"And yet you have survived triumphant," she exclaimed.
+
+"There wahn't none of 'em like you," said Mr. Meader, "or it might have
+be'n different."
+
+Again her eyes irresistibly sought Austen's,--as though to share with him
+the humour of this remark,--and they laughed together.  Her colour, so
+sensitive, rose again, but less perceptibly this time.  Then she got up.
+
+"That's unfair, Mr. Meader!" she protested.
+
+"I'll leave it to Austen," said Mr. Meader, "if it ain't probable.  He'd
+ought to know."
+
+In spite of a somewhat natural embarrassment, Austen could not but
+acknowledge to himself that Mr. Meader was right.  With a womanly
+movement which he thought infinitely graceful, Victoria leaned over the
+bed.
+
+"Mr. Meader," she said, "I'm beginning to think it's dangerous for me to
+come here twice a week to see you, if you talk this way.  And I'm not a
+bit surprised that that woman didn't get the better of you."
+
+"You hain't a-goin'!" he exclaimed.  "Why, I callated--"
+
+"Good-by," she said quickly; "I'm glad to see that you are doing so
+well."  She raised her head and looked at Austen in a curious,
+inscrutable way.  "Good-by, Mr. Vane," she said; "I--I hope Mr. Blodgett
+has recovered."
+
+Before he could reply she had vanished, and he was staring at the empty
+doorway.  The reference to the unfortunate Mr. Blodgett, after taking his
+breath away, aroused in him an intense curiosity betraying, as it did, a
+certain knowledge of past events in his life in the hitherto unknown
+daughter of Augustus interest could she have in him?  Such a Flint.  What
+question, from similar sources, has heightened the pulse of young men
+from time immemorial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"TIMEO DANAOS"
+
+The proverbial little birds that carry news and prophecies through the
+air were evidently responsible for an official-looking letter which
+Austen received a few mornings later.  On the letter-head was printed
+"The United Northeastern Railroads," and Mr. Austen Vane was informed
+that, by direction of the president, the enclosed was sent to him in an
+entirely complimentary sense.  "The enclosed" was a ticket of red
+cardboard, and its face informed him that he might travel free for the
+rest of the year.  Thoughtfully turning it over, he read on the back the
+following inscription:--
+
+"It is understood that this pass is accepted by its recipient as a
+retainer."
+
+Austen stared at it and whistled.  Then he pushed back his chair, with
+the pass in his hand, and hesitated.  He seized a pen and wrote a few
+lines: "Dear sir, I beg to return the annual pass over the Northeastern
+Railroads with which you have so kindly honoured me"--when he suddenly
+changed his mind again, rose, and made his way through the corridors to
+his father's office.  The Honourable Hilary was absorbed in his daily
+perusal of the Guardian.
+
+"Judge," he asked, "is Mr. Flint up at his place this week?"
+
+The Honourable Hilary coughed.
+
+"He arrived yesterday on the three.  Er--why?"
+
+"I wanted to go up and thank him for this," his son answered, holding up
+the red piece of cardboard.  "Mr. Flint is a very thoughtful man."
+
+The Honourable Hilary tried to look unconcerned, and succeeded.
+
+"Sent you an annual, has he?  Er--I don't know as I'd bother him
+personally, Austen.  Just a pleasant note of acknowledgment."
+
+"I don't flatter myself that my achievements in the law can be
+responsible for it," said Austen.  "The favour must be due to my
+relationship with his eminent chief counsel."
+
+Hilary Vane's keen eyes rested on his son for an instant.  Austen was
+more than ever an enigma to him.
+
+"I guess relationship hasn't got much to do with business," he replied.
+"You have be'n doing--er--better than I expected."
+
+"Thank you, Judge," said Austen, quietly.  "I don't mind saying that I
+would rather have your approbation than--this more substantial
+recognition of merit."
+
+The Honourable Hilary's business was to deal with men, and by reason of
+his ability in so doing he had made a success in life.  He could judge
+motives more than passably well, and play upon weaknesses.  But he left
+Austen's presence that morning vaguely uneasy, with a sense of having
+received from his own son an initial defeat at a game of which he was a
+master.  Under the excuse of looking up some precedents, he locked his
+doors to all comers for two hours, and paced his room.  At one moment he
+reproached himself for not having been frank; for not having told Austen
+roundly that this squeamishness about a pass was unworthy of a strong man
+of affairs; yes, for not having revealed to him the mysteries of railroad
+practice from the beginning.  But frankness was not an ingredient of the
+Honourable Hilary's nature, and Austen was not the kind of man who would
+accept a hint and a wink.  Hilary Vane had formless forebodings, and
+found himself for once in his life powerless to act.
+
+The cost of living in Ripton was not so high that Austen Vane could not
+afford to keep a horse and buggy.  The horse, which he tended himself,
+was appropriately called Pepper; Austen had found him in the hills, and
+he was easily the finest animal in Ripton: so good, in fact, that Mr.
+Humphrey Crewe (who believed he had an eye for horses) had peremptorily
+hailed Austen from a motorcar and demanded the price, as was Mr. Crewe's
+wont when he saw a thing he desired.  He had been somewhat surprised and
+not inconsiderably offended by the brevity and force of the answer which
+he had received.
+
+On the afternoon of the summer's day in which Austen had the conversation
+with his father just related, Pepper was trotting at a round clip through
+the soft and shady wood roads toward the town of Tunbridge; the word
+"town" being used in the New England sense, as a piece of territory about
+six miles by six.  The fact that automobiles full of laughing people from
+Leith hummed by occasionally made no apparent difference to Pepper, who
+knew only the master hand on the reins; the reality that the wood roads
+were climbing great hills the horse did not seem to feel.  Pepper knew
+every lane and by-path within twenty miles of Ripton, and exhibited such
+surprise as a well-bred horse may when he was slowed down at length and
+turned into a hard, blue-stone driveway under a strange granite arch with
+the word "Fairview" cut in Gothic letters above it, and two great lamps
+in wrought-iron brackets at the sides.  It was Austen who made a note of
+the gratings over the drains, and of the acres of orderly forest in a
+mysterious and seemingly enchanted realm.  Intimacy with domains was new
+to him, and he began to experience an involuntary feeling of restraint
+which was new to him likewise, and made him chafe in spite of himself.
+The estate seemed to be the visible semblance of a power which troubled
+him.
+
+Shortly after passing an avenue neatly labelled "Trade's Drive" the road
+wound upwards through a ravine the sides of which were covered with a
+dense shrubbery which had the air of having always been there, and yet
+somehow looked expensive.  At the top of the ravine was a sharp curve;
+and Austen, drawing breath, found himself swung, as it were, into space,
+looking off across miles of forest-covered lowlands to an ultramarine
+mountain in the hazy south,--Sawanec.  As if in obedience to a telepathic
+command of his master, Pepper stopped.
+
+Drinking his fill of this scene, Austen forgot an errand which was not
+only disagreeable, but required some fortitude for its accomplishment.
+The son had this in common with the Honourable Hilary--he hated heroics;
+and the fact that the thing smacked of heroics was Austen's only
+deterrent.  And then there was a woman in this paradise!  These gradual
+insinuations into his revery at length made him turn.  A straight avenue
+of pear-shaped, fifteen-year-old maples led to the house, a massive
+colonial structure of wood that stretched across the shelf; and he had
+tightened the reins and started courageously up the avenue when he
+perceived that it ended in a circle on which there was no sign of a
+hitching-post.  And, worse than this, on the balconied, uncovered porch
+which he would have to traverse to reach the doorway he saw the sheen and
+glimmer of women's gowns grouped about wicker tables, and became aware
+that his approach was the sole object of the scrutiny of an afternoon tea
+party.
+
+As he reached the circle it was a slight relief to learn that Pepper was
+the attraction.  No horse knew better than Pepper when he was being
+admired, and he arched his neck and lifted his feet and danced in the
+sheer exhilaration of it.  A smooth-faced, red-cheeked gentleman in gray
+flannels leaned over the balustrade and made audible comments in a
+penetrating voice which betrayed the fact that he was Mr. Humphrey Crewe.
+
+"Saw him on the street in Ripton last year.  Good hock action, hasn't
+he?--that's rare in trotters around here.  Tried to buy him.  Feller
+wouldn't sell.  His name's Vane--he's drivin' him now."
+
+A lady of a somewhat commanding presence was beside him.  She was perhaps
+five and forty, her iron-gray hair was dressed to perfection, her figure
+all that Parisian art could make it, and she was regarding Austen with
+extreme deliberation through the glasses which she had raised to a high-
+bridged nose.
+
+"Politics is certainly your career, Humphrey," she remarked, "you have
+such a wonderful memory for faces.  I don't see how he does it, do you,
+Alice?" she demanded of a tall girl beside her, who was evidently her
+daughter, but lacked her personality.
+
+"I don't know," said Alice.
+
+"It's because I've been here longer than anybody else, Mrs. Pomfret,"
+answered Mr. Crewe, not very graciously, "that's all.  Hello."  This last
+to Austen.
+
+"Hello," said Austen.
+
+"Who do you want to see?" inquired Mr. Crewe, with the admirable tact for
+which he was noted.
+
+Austen looked at him for the first time.
+
+"Anybody who will hold my horse," he answered quietly.
+
+By this time the conversation had drawn the attention of the others at
+the tables, and one or two smiled at Austen's answer.  Mrs. Flint, with a
+"Who is it?" arose to repel a social intrusion.  She was an overdressed
+lady, inclining to embonpoint, but traces of the Rose of Sharon were
+still visible.
+
+"Why don't you drive 'round to the stables?" suggested Mr. Crewe, unaware
+of a smile.
+
+Austen did not answer.  He was, in fact, looking towards the doorway, and
+the group on the porch were surprised to see a gleam of mirthful
+understanding start in his eyes.  An answering gleam was in Victoria's,
+who had at that moment, by a singular coincidence, come out of the house.
+She came directly down the steps and out on the gravel, and held her hand
+to him in the buggy, and he flushed with pleasure as he grasped it.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said.  "I am so glad you have called.
+Humphrey, just push the stable button, will you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe obeyed with no very good grace, while the tea-party went back
+to their seats.  Mrs. Flint supposed he had come to sell Victoria the
+horse; while Mrs. Pomfret, who had taken him in from crown to boots,
+remarked that he looked very much like a gentleman.
+
+"I came to see your father for a few moments--on business," Austen
+explained.
+
+She lifted her face to his with a second searching look.
+
+"I'll take you to him," she said.
+
+By this time a nimble groom had appeared from out o a shrubbery path and
+seized Pepper's head.  Austen alighted and followed Victoria into a
+great, cool hallway, and through two darkened rooms, bewilderingly
+furnished and laden with the scent of flowers, into a narrow passage
+beyond.  She led the way simply, not speaking, and her silence seemed to
+betoken the completeness of an understanding between them, as of a long
+acquaintance.
+
+In a plain white-washed room, behind a plain oaken desk, sat Mr. Flint--a
+plain man.  Austen thought he would have known him had he seen him on the
+street.  The other things in the room were letter-files, a safe, a long-
+distance telephone, and a thin private secretary with a bend in his back.
+Mr. Flint looked up from his desk, and his face, previously bereft of
+illumination, lighted when he saw his daughter.  Austen liked that in
+him.
+
+"Well, Vic, what is it now?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Austen Vane to see you," said Victoria, and with a quick glance at
+Austen she left him standing on the threshold.  Mr. Flint rose.  His eyes
+were deep-set in a square, hard head, and he appeared to be taking Austen
+in without directly looking at him; likewise, one felt that Mr. Flint's
+handshake was not an absolute gift of his soul.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vane?  I don't remember ever to have had the pleasure
+of seeing you, although your father and I have been intimately connected
+for many years."
+
+So the president's manner was hearty, but not the substance.  It came,
+Austen thought, from a rarity of meeting with men on a disinterested
+footing; and he could not but wonder how Mr. Flint would treat the angels
+in heaven if he ever got there, where there were no franchises to be had.
+Would he suspect them of designs upon his hard won harp and halo?  Austen
+did not dislike Mr. Flint; the man's rise, his achievements, his
+affection for his daughter, he remembered.  But he was also well aware
+that Mr. Flint had thrown upon him the onus of the first move in a game
+which the railroad president was used to playing every day.  The dragon
+was on his home ground and had the choice of weapons.
+
+"I do not wish to bother you long," said Austen.
+
+"No bother," answered Mr. Flint, "no bother to make the acquaintance of
+the son of my old friend, Hilary Vane.  Sit down--sit down.  And while I
+don't believe any man should depend upon his father to launch him in the
+world, yet it must be a great satisfaction to you, Mr. Vane, to have such
+a father.  Hilary Vane and I have been intimately associated for many
+years, and my admiration for him has increased with every year.  It is to
+men of his type that the prosperity, the greatness, of this nation is
+largely due,--conservative, upright, able, content to confine himself to
+the difficult work for which he is so eminently fitted, without
+spectacular meddling in things in which he can have no concern.
+Therefore I welcome the opportunity to know you, sir, for I understand
+that you have settled down to follow in his footsteps and that you will
+make a name for yourself.  I know the independence of young men--I was
+young once myself.  But after all, Mr. Vane, experience is the great
+teacher, and perhaps there is some little advice which an old man can
+give you that may be of service.  As your father's son, it is always at
+your disposal.  Have a cigar."
+
+The thin secretary continued to flit about the room, between the letter-
+files and the desk.  Austen had found it infinitely easier to shoot Mr.
+Blodgett than to engage in a duel with the president of the United
+Railroad.
+
+"I smoke a pipe," he said.
+
+"Too many young men smoke cigars--and those disgusting cigarettes," said
+Mr. Flint, with conviction.  "There are a lot of worthless young men in
+these days, anyhow.  They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke,
+and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and
+cumber the earth generally.  There's a young man named Crewe over at
+Leith, for instance--you may have seen him.  Not that he's dissipated--
+but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the stock market to
+make you sick, and don't know any more about 'em than my farmer."
+
+During this diatribe Austen saw his opening growing smaller and smaller.
+If he did not make a dash for it, it would soon be closed entirely.
+
+"I received a letter this morning, Mr. Flint, enclosing me an annual
+pass--"
+
+"Did Upjohn send you one?" Mr. Flint cut in; "he ought to have done so
+long ago.  It was probably an oversight that he did not, Mr. Vane.  We
+try to extend the courtesies of the road to persons who are looked up to
+in their communities.  The son of Hilary Vane is at all times welcome to
+one."
+
+Mr. Flint paused to light his cigar, and Austen summoned his resolution.
+Second by second it was becoming more and more difficult and seemingly
+more ungracious to return a gift so graciously given, a gift of no
+inconsiderable intrinsic value.  Moreover, Mr. Flint had ingeniously
+contrived almost to make the act, in Austen's eyes, that of a picayune
+upstart.  Who was he to fling back an annual pass in the face of the
+president of the Northeastern Railroads?
+
+"I had first thought of writing you a letter, Mr. Flint," he said, "but
+it seemed to me that, considering your relations with my father, the
+proper thing to do was to come to you and tell you why I cannot take the
+pass."
+
+The thin secretary paused in his filing, and remained motionless with his
+body bent over the drawer.
+
+"Why you cannot take it, Mr. Vane?" said the railroad president.  "I'm
+afraid I don't understand."
+
+"I appreciate the--the kindness," said Austen, "and I will try to
+explain."  He drew the red cardboard from his pocket and turned it over.
+"On the back of this is printed, in small letters, 'It is understood that
+this pass is accepted by the recipient as a retainer.'"
+
+"Well," Mr. Flint interrupted, smiling somewhat blandly, "how much money
+do you think that pass would save an active young lawyer in a year?  Is
+three hundred dollars too much?  Three hundred dollars is not an
+insignificant sum to a young man on the threshold of his practice, is
+it?"
+
+Austen looked at Mr. Flint.
+
+"Any sum is insignificant when it restricts a lawyer from the acceptance
+of just causes, Mr. Flint.  As I understand the matter, it is the custom
+of your railroad to send these passes to the young lawyers of the State
+the moment they begin to give signs of ability.  This past would prevent
+me from serving clients who might have righteous claims against your
+railroads, and--permit me to speak frankly--in my opinion the practice
+tends to make it difficult for poor people who have been injured to get
+efficient lawyers."
+
+"Your own father is retained by the railroad," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"As their counsel," answered Austen.  "I have a pride in my profession,
+Mr. Flint, as no doubt you have in yours.  If I should ever acquire
+sufficient eminence to be sought as counsel for a railroad, I should make
+my own terms with it.  I should not allow its management alone to decide
+upon the value of my retainer, and my services in its behalf would be
+confined strictly to professional ones."
+
+Mr. Flint drummed on the table.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
+
+"I mean that I would not engage, for a fee or a pass, to fight the
+political battles of a railroad, or undertake any political manipulation
+in its behalf whatever."
+
+Mr. Flint leaned forward aggressively.
+
+"How long do you think a railroad would pay dividends if it did not adopt
+some means of defending itself from the blackmail politician of the State
+legislatures, Mr. Vane?  The railroads of which I have the honour to be
+president pay a heavy tag in this and other States.  We would pay a much
+heavier one if we didn't take precautions to protect ourselves.  But I do
+not intend to quarrel with you, Mr. Vane," he continued quickly,
+perceiving that Austen was about to answer him, "nor do I wish to leave
+you with the impression that the Northeastern Railroads meddle unduly in
+politics."
+
+Austen knew not how to answer.  He had not gone there to discuss this
+last and really great question with Mr. Flint, but he wondered whether
+the president actually thought him the fledgling he proclaimed.  Austen
+laid his pass on Mr. Flint's desk, and rose.
+
+"I assure you, Mr. Flint, that the spirit which prompted my visit was not
+a contentious one.  I cannot accept the pass, simply because I do not
+wish to be retained."
+
+Mr. Flint eyed him.  There was a mark of dignity, of silent power, on
+this tall scapegrace of a son of Hilary Vane that the railroad president
+had missed at first--probably because he had looked only for the
+scapegrace.  Mr. Flint ardently desired to treat the matter in the
+trifling aspect in which he believed he saw it, to carry it off genially.
+But an instinct not yet formulated told the president that he was face to
+face with an enemy whose potential powers were not to be despised, and he
+bristled in spite of himself.
+
+"There is no statute I know of by which a lawyer can be compelled to
+accept a retainer against his will, Mr. Vane," he replied, and overcame
+himself with an effort.  "But I hope that you will permit me," he added
+in another tone, "as an old friend of your father's and as a man of some
+little experience in the world, to remark that intolerance is a
+characteristic of youth.  I had it in the days of Mr. Isaac D.
+Worthington, whom you do not remember.  I am not addicted to flattery,
+but I hope and believe you have a career before you.  Talk to your
+father.  Study the question on both sides,--from the point of view of men
+who are honestly trying, in the face of tremendous difficulties, to
+protect innocent stockholders as well as to conduct a corporation in the
+interests of the people at large, and for their general prosperity.  Be
+charitable, young man, and judge not hastily."
+
+Years before, when poor Sarah Austen had adorned the end of his table,
+Hilary Vane had raised his head after the pronouncement of grace to
+surprise a look in his wife's eyes which strangely threw him into a white
+heat of anger.  That look (and he at intervals had beheld it afterwards)
+was the true presentment of the soul of the woman whose body was his.  It
+was not--as Hilary Vane thought it--a contempt for the practice of
+thanking one's Maker for daily bread, but a contempt for cant of one who
+sees the humour in cant.  A masculine version of that look Mr. Flint now
+beheld in the eyes of Austen Vane, and the enraging effect on the
+president of the United Railroads was much the same as it had been on his
+chief counsel.  Who was this young man of three and thirty to agitate him
+so?  He trembled, though not visibly, yet took Austen's hand
+mechanically.
+
+"Good day, Mr. Vane," he said;  "Mr. Freeman will help you to find your
+horse."
+
+The thin secretary bowed, and before he reached the door into the passage
+Mr. Flint had opened another at the back of the room and stepped out on a
+close-cropped lawn flooded with afternoon sunlight.  In the passage
+Austen perceived a chair, and in the chair was seated patiently none
+other than Mr. Brush Bascom--political Duke of Putnam.  Mr. Bascom's
+little agate eyes glittered in the dim light.
+
+"Hello, Austen," he said, "since when have you took to comin' here?"
+
+"It's a longer trip from Putnam than from Ripton, Brush," said Austen,
+and passed on, leaving Mr. Bascom with a puzzled mind.  Something very
+like a smile passed over Mr. Freeman's face as he led the way silently
+out of a side entrance and around the house.  The circle of the drive was
+empty, the tea-party had gone--and Victoria.  Austen assured himself that
+her disappearance relieved him: having virtually quarrelled with her
+father, conversation would have been awkward; and yet he looked for her.
+
+They found the buggy and Pepper in the paved courtyard of the stables.
+As Austen took the reins the secretary looked up at him, his mild blue
+eyes burning with an unsuspected fire.  He held out his hand.
+
+"I want to congratulate you," he said.
+
+"What for?" asked Austen, taking the hand in some embarrassment.
+
+"For speaking like a man," said the secretary, and he turned on his heel
+and left him.
+
+This strange action, capping, as it did, a stranger experience, gave
+Austen food for thought as he let Pepper take his own pace down the
+trade's road.  Presently he got back into the main drive where it clung
+to a steep, forest-covered side hill, when his attention was distracted
+by the sight of a straight figure in white descending amidst the foliage
+ahead.  His instinctive action was to pull Pepper down to a walk,
+scarcely analyzing his motives; then he had time, before reaching the
+spot where their paths would cross, to consider and characteristically to
+enjoy the unpropitious elements arrayed against a friendship with
+Victoria Flint.
+
+She halted on a flagstone of the descending path some six feet above the
+roadway, and stood expectant.  The Rose of Sharon, five and twenty years
+before, would have been coy--would have made believe to have done it by
+accident.  But the Rose of Sharon, with all her beauty, would have had no
+attraction for Austen Vane.  Victoria had much of her mother's good
+looks, the figure of a Diana, and her clothes were of a severity and
+correctness in keeping with her style; they merely added to the sum total
+of the effect upon Austen.  Of course he stopped the buggy immediately
+beneath her, and her first question left him without any breath.  No
+woman he had ever known seized the essentials as she did.
+
+"What have you been doing to my father?" she asked.
+
+"Why?" exclaimed Austen.
+
+"Because he's in such a bad temper," said Victoria.  "You must have put
+him in it.  It can't be possible that you came all the way up here to
+quarrel with him.  Nobody ever dares to quarrel with him."
+
+"I didn't come up to quarrel with him," said Austen.
+
+"What's the trouble?" asked Victoria.
+
+The humour of this question was too much for him, and he laughed.
+Victoria's eyes laughed a little, but there was a pucker in her forehead.
+
+"Won't you tell me?" she demanded, "or must I get it out of him?"
+
+"I am afraid," said Austen, slowly, "that you must get it out of him--if
+he hasn't forgotten it."
+
+"Forgotten it, dear old soul!" cried Victoria.  "I met him just now and
+tried to make him look at the new Guernseys, and he must have been
+disturbed quite a good deal when he's cross as a bear to me.  He really
+oughtn't to be upset like that, Mr. Vane, when he comes up here to rest.
+I am afraid that you are rather a terrible person, although you look so
+nice.  Won't you tell me what you did to him?"
+
+Austen was non-plussed.
+
+"Nothing intentional," he answered earnestly, "but it wouldn't be fair to
+your father if I gave you my version of a business conversation that
+passed between us, would it?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said Victoria.  She sat down on the flagstone with her
+elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and looked at him
+thoughtfully.  He knew well enough that a wise general would have
+retreated--horse, foot, and baggage; but Pepper did not stir.
+
+"Do you know," said Victoria, "I have an idea you came up here about Zeb
+Meader."
+
+"Zeb Meader!"
+
+"Yes.  I told my father about him,--how you rescued him, and how you went
+to see him in the hospital, and what a good man he is, and how poor."
+
+"Oh, did you!" exclaimed Austen.
+
+"Yes.  And I told him the accident wasn't Zeb's fault, that the train
+didn't whistle or ring, and that the crossing was a blind one."
+
+"And what did he say?" asked Austen, curiously.
+
+"He said that on a railroad as big as his something of the kind must
+happen occasionally.  And he told me if Zeb didn't make a fuss and act
+foolishly, he would have no cause to regret it."
+
+"And did you tell Zeb?" asked Austen.
+
+"Yes," Victoria admitted, "but I'm sorry I did, now."
+
+"What did Zeb say?"
+
+Victoria laughed in spite of herself, and gave a more or less exact
+though kindly imitation of Mr. Meader's manner.
+
+"He said that wimmen-folks had better stick to the needle and the duster,
+and not go pokin' about law business that didn't concern 'em.  But the
+worst of it was," added Victoria, with some distress, "he won't accept
+any more fruit.  Isn't he silly?  He won't get it into his head that I
+give him the fruit, and not my father.  I suspect that he actually
+believes my father sent me down there to tell him that."
+
+Austen was silent, for the true significance of this apparently obscure
+damage case to the Northeastern Railroads was beginning to dawn on him.
+The public was not in the best of humours towards railroads: there was
+trouble about grade crossings, and Mr. Meader's mishap and the manner of
+his rescue by the son of the corporation counsel had given the accident a
+deplorable publicity.  Moreover, if it had dawned on Augustus Flint that
+the son of Hilary Vane might prosecute the suit, it was worth while
+taking a little pains with Mr. Meader and Mr. Austen Vane.  Certain small
+fires have been known to light world-wide conflagrations.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" asked Victoria.  "It isn't at all polite
+to forget the person you are talking to."
+
+"I haven't forgotten you," said Austen, with a smile.  How could he--
+sitting under her in this manner?
+
+"Besides," said Victoria, mollified, "you haven't an answered my
+question."
+
+"Which question?"
+
+She scrutinized him thoughtfully, and with feminine art made the kind of
+an attack that rarely fails.
+
+"Why are you such an enigma, Mr. Vane?"  she demanded.  "Is it because
+you're a lawyer, or because you've been out West and seen so much of life
+and shot so many people?"
+
+Austen laughed, yet he had tingling symptoms because she showed enough
+interest in him to pronounce him a riddle.  But he instantly became
+serious as the purport of the last charge came home to him.
+
+"I suppose I am looked upon as a sort of Jesse James," he said.  "As it
+happens, I have never shot but one man, and I didn't care very much for
+that."
+
+Victoria got up and came down a step and gave him her hand.  He took it,
+nor was he the first to relinquish the hold; and a colour rose delicately
+in her face as she drew her fingers away.
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you," she said.
+
+"You didn't offend me," he replied quickly.  "I merely wished you to know
+that I wasn't a brigand."
+
+Victoria smiled.
+
+"I really didn't think so--you are much too solemn.  I have to go now,
+and--you haven't told me anything."
+
+She crossed the road and began to descend the path on the other side.
+Twice he glanced back, after he had started, and once surprised her
+poised lightly among the leaves, looking over her shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
+
+The next time Austen visited the hospital Mr. Meader had a surprise in
+store for him.  After passing the time of day, as was his custom, the
+patient freely discussed the motives which had led him to refuse any more
+of Victoria's fruit.
+
+"I hain't got nothing against her," he declared; "I tried to make that
+plain.  She's as nice and common a young lady as I ever see, and I don't
+believe she had a thing to do with it.  But I suspicioned they was up to
+somethin' when she brought them baskets.  And when she give me the
+message from old Flint, I was sure of it."
+
+"Miss Flint was entirely innocent, I'm sure," said Austen, emphatically.
+
+"If I could see old Flint, I'd tell him what I thought of him usin'
+wimmen-folks to save 'em money," said Mr. Meader.  "I knowed she wahn't
+that kind.  And then that other thing come right on top of it."
+
+"What other thing?"
+
+"Say," demanded Mr. Meader, "don't you know?"
+
+"I know nothing," said Austen.
+
+"Didn't know Hilary Vane's be'n here?"
+
+"My father!" Austen ejaculated.
+
+"Gittin' after me pretty warm, so they be.  Want to know what my price is
+now.  But say, I didn't suppose your fayther'd come here without lettin'
+you know."
+
+Austen was silent.  The truth was that for a few moments he could not
+command himself sufficiently to speak.
+
+"He is the chief counsel for the road," he said at length; "I am not
+connected with it."
+
+"I guess you're on the right track.  He's a pretty smooth talker, your
+fayther.  Just dropped in to see how I be, since his son was interested.
+Talked a sight of law gibberish I didn't understand.  Told me I didn't
+have much of a case; said the policy of the railrud was to be liberal,
+and wanted to know what I thought I ought to have."
+
+"Well?" said Austen, shortly.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Mender, "he didn't git a mite of satisfaction out of me.
+I've seen enough of his kind of folks to know how to deal with 'em, and I
+told him so.  I asked him what they meant by sending that slick Mr.
+Tooting 'raound to offer me five hundred dollars.  I said I was willin'
+to trust my case on that crossin' to a jury."
+
+Austen smiled, in spite of his mingled emotions.
+
+"What else did Mr. Vane say?" he asked.
+
+Not a great sight more.  Said a good many folks were foolish enough to
+spend money and go to law when they'd done better to trust to the
+liberality of the railrud.  Liberality!  Adams' widow done well to trust
+their liberality, didn't she?  He wanted to know one more thing, but I
+didn't give him any satisfaction."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you how he got 'raound to it.  Guess he never did,
+quite.  He wanted to know what lawyer was to have my case.  Wahn't none
+of his affair, and I callated if you'd wanted him to know just yet, you'd
+have toad him."
+
+Austen laid his hand on the farmer's, as he rose to go.
+
+"Zeb," he said, "I never expect to have a more exemplary client."
+
+Mr. Mender shot a glance at him.
+
+"Mebbe I spoke a mite too free about your fayther, Austen," he said; "you
+and him seem kind of different."
+
+"The Judge and I understand each other," answered Austen.
+
+He had got as far as the door, when he stopped, swung on his heel, and
+came back to the bedside.
+
+"It's my duty to tell you, Zeb, that in order to hush this thing up they
+may offer you more than you can get from a jury.  In that case I should
+have to advise you to accept."
+
+He was aware that, while he made this statement, Zeb Meader's eyes were
+riveted on him, and he knew that the farmer was weighing him in the
+balance.
+
+"Sell out?" exclaimed Mr. Meader.  "You advise me to sell out?"
+
+Austen did not get angry.  He understood this man and the people from
+which he sprang.
+
+"The question is for you to decide--whether you can get more money by a
+settlement."
+
+"Money!" cried Zeb Meader, "I have found it pretty hard to git, but
+there's some things I won't do for it.  There's a reason why they want
+this case hushed up, the way they've be'n actin'.  I ain't lived in
+Mercer and Putnam County all my life for nothin'.  Hain't I seen 'em run
+their dirty politics there under Brush Bascom for the last twenty-five
+years?  There's no man has an office or a pass in that county but what
+Bascom gives it to him, and Bascom's the railrud tool."  Suddenly Zeb
+raised himself in bed.  "Hev' they be'n tamperin' with you?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes," answered Austen, dispassionately.  He had hardly heard what Zeb
+had said; his mind had been going onward.  "Yes.  They sent me an annual
+pass, and I took it back."
+
+Zeb Meader did not speak for a few moments.
+
+"I guess I was a little hasty, Austen," he said at length.
+
+"I might have known you wouldn't sell out.  If you're' willin' to take
+the risk, you tell 'em ten thousand dollars wouldn't tempt me."
+
+"All right, Zeb," said Austen.
+
+He left the hospital and struck out across the country towards the slopes
+of Sawanec, climbed them, and stood bareheaded in the evening light,
+gazing over the still, wide valley northward to the wooded ridges where
+Leith and Fairview lay hidden.  He had come to the parting of the ways of
+life, and while he did not hesitate to choose his path, a Vane
+inheritance, though not dominant, could not fail at such a juncture to
+point out the pleasantness of conformity.  Austen's affection for Hilary
+Vane was real; the loneliness of the elder man appealed to the son, who
+knew that his father loved him in his own way.  He dreaded the wrench
+there.
+
+And nature, persuasive in that quarter, was not to be stilled in a field
+more completely her own.  The memory and suppliance of a minute will
+scarce suffice one of Austen's temperament for a lifetime; and his eyes,
+flying with the eagle high across the valley, searched the velvet folds
+of the ridges, as they lay in infinite shades of green in the level
+light, for the place where the enchanted realm might be.  Just what the
+state of his feelings were at this time towards Victoria Flint is too
+vague--accurately to be painted, but he was certainly not ready to give
+way to the attraction he felt for her.  His sense of humour intervened if
+he allowed himself to dream; there was a certain folly in pursuing the
+acquaintance, all the greater now that he was choosing the path of
+opposition to the dragon.  A young woman, surrounded as she was, could be
+expected to know little of the subtleties of business and political
+morality: let him take Zeb Meader's case, and her loyalty would naturally
+be with her father,--if she thought of Austen Vane at all.
+
+And yet the very contradiction of her name, Victoria joined with Flint,
+seemed to proclaim that she did not belong to her father or to the Rose
+of Sharon.  Austen permitted himself to dwell, as he descended the
+mountain in the gathering darkness, upon the fancy of the springing of a
+generation of ideals from a generation of commerce which boded well for
+the Republic.  And Austen Vane, in common with that younger and travelled
+generation, thought largely in terms of the Republic.  Pepper County and
+Putnam County were all one to him--pieces of his native land.  And as
+such, redeemable.
+
+It was long past the supper hour when he reached the house in Hanover
+Street; but Euphrasia, who many a time in days gone by had fared forth
+into the woods to find Sarah Austen, had his supper hot for him.
+Afterwards he lighted his pipe and went out into the darkness, and
+presently perceived a black figure seated meditatively on the granite
+doorstep.
+
+"Is that you, Judge?" said Austen.
+
+The Honourable Hilary grunted in response.
+
+"Be'n on another wild expedition, I suppose."
+
+"I went up Sawanec to stretch my legs a little," Austen answered, sitting
+down beside his father.
+
+"Funny," remarked the Honourable Hilary, "I never had this mania for
+stretchin' my legs after I was grown."
+
+"Well," said Austen, "I like to go into the woods and climb the hills and
+get aired out once in a while."
+
+"I heard of your gettin' aired out yesterday, up Tunbridge way," said the
+Honourable Hilary.
+
+"I supposed you would hear of it," answered Austen.
+
+"I was up there to-day.  Gave Mr. Flint your pass did you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Didn't see fit to mention it to me first--did you?  Said you were going
+up to thank him for it."
+
+Austen considered this.
+
+"You have put me in the wrong, Judge," he replied after a little.  "I
+made that remark ironically.  I I am afraid we cannot agree on the motive
+which prompted me."
+
+"Your conscience a little finer than your father's--is it?"
+
+"No," said Austen, "I don't honestly think it is.  I've thought a good
+deal in the last few years about the difference in our ways of looking at
+things.  I believe that two men who try to be honest may conscientiously
+differ.  But I also believe that certain customs have gradually grown up
+in railroad practice which are more or less to be deplored from the point
+of view of the honour of the profession.  I think they are not perhaps--
+realized even by the eminent men in the law."
+
+"Humph!" said the Honourable Hilary.  But he did not press his son for
+the enumeration of these customs.  After all the years he had disapproved
+of Austen's deeds it seemed strange indeed to be called to account by the
+prodigal for his own.  Could it be that this boy whom he had so often
+chastised took a clearer view of practical morality than himself?  It was
+preposterous.  But why the uneasiness of the past few years?  Why had he
+more than once during that period, for the first time in his life,
+questioned a hitherto absolute satisfaction in his position of chief
+counsel for the Northeastern Railroads?  Why had he hesitated to initiate
+his son into many of the so-called duties of a railroad lawyer?  Austen
+had never verbally arraigned those duties until to-night.
+
+Contradictory as it may seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable
+Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as
+when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of
+Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more
+than ever.  A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride
+made the acknowledgment of possible professional lapses for the benefit
+of his employer not to be thought of.  He therefore assumed the same
+attitude as had Mr. Flint, and forced the burden of explanation upon
+Austen, relying surely on the disinclination of his son to be specific.
+And Austen, considering his relationship, could not be expected to fathom
+these mental processes.
+
+"See here, Judge," he said, greatly embarrassed by the real affection he
+felt, "I don't want to seem like a prig and appear to be sitting in
+judgment upon a man of your experience and position especially since I
+have the honour to be your son, and have made a good deal of trouble by a
+not irreproachable existence.  Since we have begun on the subject,
+however, I think I ought to tell you that I have taken the case of Zeb
+Meader against the Northeastern Railroads."
+
+"Wahn't much need of telling me, was there?" remarked the Honourable
+Hilary, dryly.  "I'd have found it out as soon as anybody else."
+
+"There was this need of telling you," answered Austen, steadily,
+"although I am not in partnership with you, I bear your name.  And in-as-
+much as I am to have a suit against your client, it has occurred to me
+that you would like me to move--elsewhere."
+
+The Honourable Hilary was silent for a long time.
+
+"Want to move--do YOU?  Is that it?"
+
+"Only because my presence may embarrass you."
+
+"That wahn't in the contract," said the Honourable Hilary; "you've got a
+right to take any fool cases you've a mind to.  Folks know pretty well
+I'm not mixed up in 'em."
+
+Austen did not smile; he could well understand his father's animus in
+this matter.  As he looked up at the gable of his old home against the
+stars, he did not find the next sentence any easier.
+
+"And then," he continued, "in taking, a course so obviously against your
+wishes and judgment it occurred to me--well, that I was eating at your
+table and sleeping in your house."
+
+To his son's astonishment, Hilary Vane turned on him almost truculently.
+
+"I thought the time'd come when you'd want to go off again,--gypsying,"
+he cried.
+
+"I'd stay right here in Ripton, Judge.  I believe my work is in this
+State."
+
+The Honour could see through a millstone with a hole in it.  The effect
+of Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the
+one was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up.  And
+yet a growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining
+years in that house should Austen leave it again, never to return.
+
+"I knew you had this Meader business in mind," he said.  "I knew you had
+fanciful notions about--some things.  Never told you I didn't want you
+here, did I?"
+
+"No," said Austen, "but--"
+
+Would have told you if I hadn't wanted you--wouldn't I?"
+
+"I hope so, Judge," said Austen, who understood something of the feeling
+which underlay this brusquenees.  That knowledge made matters all the
+harder for him.
+
+"It was your mother's house--you're entitled to that, anyway," said the
+Honourable Hilary, "but what I want to know is, why you didn't advise
+that eternal fool of a Meader to accept what we offered him.  You'll
+never get a county jury to give as much."
+
+"I did advise him to accept it," answered Austen.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" the Honourable Hilary demanded.
+
+"Well, judge, if you really want my opinion, an honest farmer like Meader
+is suspicious of any corporation which has such zealous and loyal
+retainers as Ham Tooting and Brush Bascom."  And Austen thought with a
+return of the pang which had haunted him at intervals throughout the
+afternoon, that he might almost have added to these names that of Hilary
+Vane.  Certainly Zeb Meader had not spared his father.
+
+"Life," observed the Honourable Hilary, unconsciously using a phrase from
+the 'Book of Arguments,' "is a survival of the fittest."
+
+"How do you define 'the fittest?'" asked Austen.  "Are they the men who
+have the not unusual and certainly not exalted gift of getting money from
+their fellow creatures by the use of any and all weapons that may be at
+hand? who believe the acquisition of wealth to be exempt from the
+practice of morality?  Is Mr. Flint your example of the fittest type to
+exist and survive, or Gladstone or Wilberforce or Emerson or Lincoln?"
+
+"Emerson!" cried the Honourable Hilary, the name standing out in red
+letters before his eyes.  He had never read a line of the philosopher's
+writings, not even the charge to "hitch your wagon to a star" (not in the
+"Book of Arguments").  Sarah Austen had read Emerson in the woods, and
+her son's question sounded so like the unintelligible but unanswerable
+flashes with which the wife had on rare occasions opposed the husband's
+authority that Hilary Vane found his temper getting the best of him--The
+name of Emerson was immutably fixed in his mind as the synonym for
+incomprehensible, foolish habits and beliefs.  "Don't talk Emerson to
+me," he exclaimed.  "And as for Brush Bascom, I've known him for thirty
+years, and he's done as much for the Republican party as any man in this
+State."
+
+This vindication of Mr. Bascom naturally brought to a close a
+conversation which had already continued too long.  The Honourable Hilary
+retired to rest; but--if Austen had known it--not to sleep until the
+small hours of the morning.
+
+It was not until the ensuing spring that the case of Mr. Zebulun Meader
+against the United Northeastern Railroads came up for trial in Bradford,
+the county-seat of Putnam County, and we do not wish to appear to give it
+too great a weight in the annals of the State.  For one thing, the weekly
+newspapers did not mention it; and Mr. Paul Pardriff, when urged to give
+an account of the proceedings in the Ripton Record, said it was a matter
+of no importance, and spent the afternoon writing an editorial about the
+domestic habits of the Aztecs.  Mr. Pardriff, however, had thought the
+matter of sufficient interest personally to attend the trial, and for the
+journey he made use of a piece of green cardboard which he habitually
+carried in his pocket.  The editor of the Bradford Champion did not have
+to use his yellow cardboard, yet his columns may be searched in vain for
+the event.
+
+Not that it was such a great event, one of hundreds of railroad accidents
+that come to court.  The son of Hilary Vane was the plaintiff's counsel;
+and Mr. Meader, although he had not been able to work since his release
+from the hospital, had been able to talk, and the interest taken in the
+case by the average neglected citizen in Putnam proved that the weekly
+newspaper is not the only disseminator of news.
+
+The railroad's side of the case was presented by that genial and able
+practitioner of Putnam County, Mr. Nathaniel Billings, who travelled from
+his home in Williamstown by the exhibition of a red ticket.  Austen Vane
+had to pay his own way from Ripton, but as he handed back the mileage
+book, the conductor leaned over and whispered something in his ear that
+made him smile, and Austen thought he would rather have that little drop
+of encouragement than a pass.  And as he left the car at Bradford, two
+grizzled and hard-handed individuals arose and wished him good luck.
+
+He needed encouragement,--what young lawyer does not on his first
+important case?  And he did not like to think of the future if he lost
+this.  But in this matter he possessed a certain self-confidence which
+arose from a just and righteous anger against the forces opposing him and
+a knowledge of their tactics.  To his mind his client was not Zeb Meader
+alone, but the host of victims who had been maimed and bought off because
+it was cheaper than to give the public a proper protection.
+
+The court room was crowded.  Mr. Zeb Meader, pale but determined, was
+surrounded by a knot of Mercer neighbours, many of whom were witnesses.
+The agate eyes of Mr. Brush Bascom flashed from the audience, and Mr. Nat
+Billings bustled forward to shake Austen's hand.  Nat was one of those
+who called not infrequently upon the Honourable Hilary in Ripton, and had
+sat on Austen's little table.
+
+"Glad to see you, Austen," he cried, so that the people might hear; and
+added, in a confidentially lower tone, "We lawyers understand that these
+little things make no difference, eh?"
+
+"I'm willing to agree to that if you are, Nat," Austen answered.  He
+looked at the lawyer's fleshy face, blue-black where it was shaven, and
+at Mr. Billings' shifty eyes and mouth, which its muscles could not quite
+keep in place.  Mr. Billings also had nicked teeth.  But he did his best
+to hide these obvious disadvantages by a Falstaffian bonhomie,--for Mr.
+Billings was growing stout.
+
+"I tried it once or twice, my friend, when I was younger.  It's noble,
+but it don't pay," said Mr. Billings, still confidential.  "Brush is
+sour--look at him.  But I understand how you feel.  I'm the kind of
+feller that speaks out, and what I can't understand is, why the old man
+let you get into it."
+
+"He knew you were going to be on the other side, Nat, and wanted to teach
+me a lesson.  I suppose it is folly to contest a case where the Railroad
+Commission has completely exonerated your client," Austen added
+thoughtfully.
+
+Mr. Billings' answer was to wink, very slowly, with one eye; and shortly
+after these pleasantries were over, the case was called.  A fragrant wind
+blew in at the open windows, and Nature outside was beginning to array
+herself in myriad hues of green.  Austen studied the jury, and wondered
+how many points of his argument he could remember, but when he had got to
+his feet the words came to him.  If we should seek an emblem for King
+David's smooth, round stone which he flung at Goliath, we should call it
+the truth--for the truth never fails to reach the mark.  Austen's opening
+was not long, his words simple and not dramatic, but he seemed to charge
+them with something of the same magnetic force that compelled people to
+read and believe "Uncle Ton's Cabin" and the "Song of the Shirt."
+Spectators and jury listened intently.
+
+Some twenty witnesses appeared for the plaintiff, all of whom declared
+that they had heard neither bell nor whistle.  Most of these witnesses
+had been in the grove, two or three in the train; two, residents of the
+vicinity, testified that they had complained to the Railroad Commission
+about that crossing, and had received evasive answers to the effect that
+it was the duty of citizens to look out for themselves.  On cross-
+examination they declared they had no objection to grade crossings which
+were properly safeguarded; this crossing was a death-trap.  (Stricken
+out.)  Mr. Billings made the mistake of trying to prove that one of these
+farmers--a clear-eyed, full-chested man with a deep voice--had an animus
+against the railroad dating from a controversy concerning the shipping of
+milk.
+
+"I have an animus, your Honour," said the witness, quietly.  "When the
+railrud is represented by the kind of politicians we have in Putnam, it's
+natural I should hain't it?"
+
+This answer, although stricken out, was gleefully received.
+
+In marked contrast to the earnestness of young Mr. Vane, who then rested,
+Mr. Billings treated the affair from the standpoint of a man of large
+practice who usually has more weighty matters to attend to.  This was so
+comparatively trivial as not to be dignified by a serious mien.  He
+quoted freely from the "Book of Arguments," reminding the jury of the
+debt of gratitude the State owed to the Northeastern Railroads for doing
+so much for its people; and if they were to eliminate all grade
+crossings, there would be no dividends for the stockholders.  Besides,
+the law was that the State should pay half when a crossing was
+eliminated, and the State could not afford it.  Austen had suggested, in
+his opening, that it was cheaper for the railroad as well as the State to
+kill citizens.  He asked permission to inquire of the learned counsel for
+the defence by what authority he declared that the State could not afford
+to enter into a policy by which grade crossings would gradually be
+eliminated.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Billings, "the fact that all bills introduced to this end
+never get out of committee."
+
+"May I ask," said Austen, innocently, "who has been chairman of that
+particular committee in the lower House for the last five sessions?"
+
+Mr. Billings was saved the embarrassment of answering this question by a
+loud voice in the rear calling out:--
+
+"Brush Bascom!"
+
+A roar of laughter shook the court room, and all eyes were turned on
+Brush, who continued to sit unconcernedly with his legs crossed and his
+arm over the back of the seat.  The offender was put out, order was
+restored, and Mr. Billings declared, with an injured air, that he failed
+to see why the counsel for the plaintiff saw fit to impugn Mr. Bascom.
+
+"I merely asked a question," said Austere; "far be it from me to impugn
+any man who has held offices in the gift of the people for the last
+twenty years."
+
+Another gale of laughter followed this, during which Mr. Billings
+wriggled his mouth and gave a strong impression that such tactics and
+such levity were to be deplored.
+
+For the defence, the engineer and fireman both swore that the bell had
+been rung before the crossing was reached.  Austen merely inquired
+whether this was not when they had left the station at North Mercer, two
+miles away.  No, it was nearer.  Pressed to name the exact spot, they
+could only conjecture, but near enough to be heard on the crossing.
+Other witnesses--among them several picnickers in the grove--swore that
+they had heard the bell.  One of these Austen asked if he was not the
+member from Mercer in the last Legislature, and Mr. Billings, no longer
+genial, sprang to his feet with an objection.
+
+"I merely wish to show, your Honour," said Austen, "that this witness
+accepted a pass from the Northeastern Railroads when he went to the
+Legislature, and that he has had several trip passes for himself and his
+family since."
+
+The objection was not sustained, and Mr. Billings noted an exception.
+
+Another witness, upon whose appearance the audience tittered audibly, was
+Dave Skinner, boss of Mercer.  He had lived, he said, in the town of
+Mercer all his life, and maintained that he was within a hundred yards of
+the track when the accident occurred, and heard the bell ring.
+
+Is it not a fact," said Austen to this witness, "that Mr. Brush Bascom
+has a mortgage on your farm?"
+
+"I can show, your Honour," Austen continued, when Mr. Billings had
+finished his protest, "that this man was on his way to Riverside to pay
+his quarterly instalment."
+
+Mr. Bascom was not present at the afternoon session.  Mr. Billings'
+summing up was somewhat impassioned, and contained more quotations from
+the "Book of Arguments."  He regretted, he said, the obvious appeals to
+prejudice against a railroad corporation that was honestly trying to do
+its duty-yes, and more than its duty.
+
+Misjudged, misused, even though friendless, it would continue to serve
+the people.  So noble, indeed, was the picture which Mr. Billings'
+eloquence raised up that his voice shook with emotion as he finished.
+
+In the opinion of many of the spectators Austen Vane had yet to learn the
+art of oratory.  He might with propriety have portrayed the suffering and
+loss of the poor farmer who was his client; he merely quoted from the
+doctor's testimony to the effect that Mr. Meader would never again be
+able to do physical labour of the sort by which he had supported himself,
+and ended up by calling the attention of the jury to the photographs and
+plans of the crossing he had obtained two days after the accident,
+requesting them to note the facts that the public highway, approaching
+through a dense forest and underbrush at an angle of thirty-three
+degrees, climbed the railroad embankment at that point, and a train could
+not be seen until the horse was actually on the track.
+
+The jury was out five minutes after the judge's charge, and gave Mr.
+Zebulun Meader a verdict of six thousand dollars and costs,--a popular
+verdict, from the evident approval with which it was received in the
+court room.  Quiet being restored, Mr. Billings requested, somewhat
+vehemently, that the case be transferred on the exceptions to the Supreme
+Court, that the stenographer write out the evidence, and that he might
+have three weeks in which to prepare a draft.  This was granted.
+
+Zeb Meader, true to his nature, was self-contained throughout the
+congratulations he received, but his joy was nevertheless intense.
+
+"You shook 'em up good, Austen," he said, making his way to where his
+counsel stood.  "I suspicioned you'd do it.  But how about this here
+appeal?"
+
+"Billings is merely trying to save the face of his railroad," Austen
+answered, smiling.  "He hasn't the least notion of allowing this case to
+come up again--take my word for it."
+
+"I guess your word's good," said Zeb.  "And I want to tell you one thing,
+as an old man.  I've been talkin' to Putnam County folks some, and you
+hain't lost nothin' by this."
+
+"How am I to get along without the friendship of Brush Bascom?" asked
+Austen, soberly.
+
+Mr. Meader, who had become used to this mild sort of humour, relaxed
+sufficiently to laugh.
+
+"Brush did seem a mite disgruntled," he remarked.
+
+Somewhat to Austen's embarrassment, Mr. Mender's friends were pushing
+forward.  One grizzled veteran took him by the hand and looked
+thoughtfully into his face.
+
+"I've lived a good many years," he said,  "but I never heerd 'em talked up
+to like that.  You're my candidate for governor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ENTER THE LION
+
+It is a fact, as Shakespeare has so tersely hinted, that fame sometimes
+comes in the line of duty.  To be sure, if Austen Vane had been Timothy
+Smith, the Mender case might not have made quite so many ripples in the
+pond with which this story is concerned.  Austen did what he thought was
+right.  In the opinion of many of his father's friends whom he met from
+time to time he had made a good-sized stride towards ruin, and they did
+not hesitate to tell him so--Mr. Chipman, president of the Ripton
+National Bank; Mr. Greene, secretary and treasurer of the Hawkeye Paper
+Company, who suggested with all kindness that, however noble it may be,
+it doesn't pay to tilt at windmills.
+
+"Not unless you wreck the windmill," answered Austen.  A new and very
+revolutionary point of view to Mr. Greene, who repeated it to Professor
+Brewer, urging that gentleman to take Austen in hand.  But the professor
+burst out laughing, and put the saying into circulation.
+
+Mr. Silas Tredway, whose list of directorships is too long to print, also
+undertook to remonstrate with the son of his old friend, Hilary Vane.
+The young lawyer heard him respectfully.  The cashiers of some of these
+gentlemen, who were younger men, ventured to say--when out of hearing--
+that they admired the championship of Mr. Mender, but it would never do.
+To these, likewise, Austen listened good-naturedly enough, and did not
+attempt to contradict them.  Changing the angle of the sun-dial does not
+affect the time of day.
+
+It was not surprising that young Tom Gaylord, when he came back from New
+York and heard of Austen's victory, should have rushed to his office and
+congratulated him in a rough but hearty fashion.  Even though Austen had
+won a suit against the Gaylord Lumber Company, young Tom would have
+congratulated him.  Old Tom was a different matter.  Old Tom, hobbling
+along under the maples, squinted at Austen and held up his stick.
+
+"Damn you, you're a lawyer, ain't you?" cried the old man.
+
+Austen, well used to this kind of greeting from Mr. Gaylord, replied that
+he didn't think himself much of one.
+
+"Damn it, I say you are.  Some day I may have use for you," said old Tom,
+and walked on.
+
+"No," said young Tom, afterwards, in explanation of this extraordinary
+attitude of his father, "it isn't principle.  He's had a row with the
+Northeastern about lumber rates, and swears he'll live till he gets even
+with 'em."
+
+If Professor Brewer (Ripton's most clear-sighted citizen) had made the
+statement that Hilary Vane--away down in the bottom of his heart--was
+secretly proud of his son, the professor would probably have lost his
+place on the school board, the water board, and the library committee.
+The way the worldly-wise professor discovered the secret was this: he had
+gone to Bradford to hear the case, for he had been a dear friend of Sarah
+Austen.  Two days later Hilary Vane saw the professor on his little
+porch, and lingered.  Mr. Brewer suspected why, led carefully up to the
+subject, and not being discouraged--except by numerous grunts--gave the
+father an account of the proceedings by no means unfavourable to the son.
+Some people like paregoric; the Honourable Hilary took his without undue
+squirming, with no visible effects to Austen.
+
+Life in the office continued, with one or two exceptions, the even tenor
+of its way.  Apparently, so far as the Honourable Hilary was concerned,
+his son had never been to Bradford.  But the Honourable Brush Bascom,
+when he came on mysterious business to call on the chief counsel, no
+longer sat on Austen's table; this was true of other feudal lords and
+retainers: of Mr. Nat Billings, who, by the way, did not file his draft
+after all.  Not that Mr. Billings wasn't polite, but he indulged no
+longer in slow winks at the expense of the honourable Railroad
+Commission.
+
+Perhaps the most curious result of the Meader case to be remarked in
+passing, was upon Mr. Hamilton Tooting.  Austen, except when he fled to
+the hills, was usually the last to leave the office, Mr. Tooting often
+the first.  But one evening Mr. Tooting waited until the force had gone,
+and entered Austen's room with his hand outstretched.
+
+"Put her there, Aust," he said.
+
+Austen put her there.
+
+"I've been exercisin' my thinker some the last few months," observed Mr.
+Tooting, seating himself on the desk.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of nervous prostration, Ham?"
+
+"Say," exclaimed Mr. Tooting, with a vexed laugh, "why are you always
+jollying me?  You ain't any older than I am."
+
+"I'm not as old, Ham.  I don't begin to have your knowledge of the
+world."
+
+"Come off," said Mr. Tooting, who didn't know exactly how to take this
+compliment.  "I came in here to have a serious talk.  I've been thinking
+it over, and I don't know but what you did right."
+
+"Well, Ham, if you don't know, I don't know how I am to convince you."
+
+"Hold on.  Don't go twistin' around that way--you make me dizzy."  He
+lowered his voice confidentially, although there was no one within five
+walls of them.  "I know the difference between a gold brick and a
+government bond, anyhow.  I believe bucking the railroad's going to pay
+in a year or so.  I got on to it as soon as you did, I guess, but when a
+feller's worn the collar as long as I have and has to live, it ain't easy
+to cut loose--you understand."
+
+"I understand," answered Austen, gravely.
+
+"I thought I'd let you know I didn't take any too much trouble with
+Meader last summer to get the old bird to accept a compromise."
+
+"That was good of you, Ham."
+
+"I knew what you was up to," said Mr. Tooting, giving Austen a friendly
+poke with his cigar.
+
+"You showed your usual acumen, Mr. Tooting," said Austen, as he rose to
+put on his coat.  Mr. Tooting regarded him uneasily.
+
+"You're a deep one, Aust," he declared; "some day you and, me must get
+together."
+
+Mr. Billings' desire for ultimate justice not being any stronger than
+Austen suspected, in due time Mr. Meader got his money.  His counsel
+would have none of it,--a decision not at all practical, and on the whole
+disappointing.  There was, to be sure, an influx into Austen's office of
+people who had been run over in the past, and it was Austen's unhappy
+duty to point out to these that they had signed (at the request of
+various Mr. Tootings) little slips of paper which are technically known
+as releases.  But the first hint of a really material advantage to be
+derived from his case against the railroad came from a wholly unexpected
+source, in the shape of a letter in the mail one August morning.
+
+     "DEAR SIR: Having remarked with some interest the verdict for a
+     client of yours against the United Northeastern Railroads, I wish
+     you would call and see me at your earliest convenience.
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     "HUMPHREY CREWE."
+
+Although his curiosity was aroused, Austen was of two minds whether to
+answer this summons, the truth being that Mr. Crewe had not made, on the
+occasions on which they had had intercourse, the most favourable of
+impressions.  However, it is not for the struggling lawyer to scorn any
+honourable brief, especially from a gentleman.  of stocks and bonds and
+varied interests like Mr. Crewe, with whom contentions of magnitude are
+inevitably associated.   As he spun along behind Pepper on the Leith road
+that climbed Willow Brook on the afternoon he had made the appointment,
+Austen smiled to himself over his anticipations, and yet---being human-
+let his fancy play.
+
+The broad acres of Wedderburn stretched across many highways, but the
+manor-house (as it had been called) stood on an eminence whence one could
+look for miles down the Yale of the Blue.  It had once been a farmhouse,
+but gradually the tail had begun to wag the dog, and the farmhouse
+became, like the original stone out of which the Irishman made the soup,
+difficult to find.  Once the edifice had been on the road, but the road
+had long ago been removed to a respectful distance, and Austen entered
+between two massive pillars built of granite blocks on a musical gravel
+drive.
+
+Humphrey Crewe was on the porch, his hands in his pockets, as Austen
+drove up.
+
+"Hello," he said, in a voice probably meant to be hospitable, but which
+had a peremptory ring, "don't stand on ceremony.  Hitch your beast and
+come along in."
+
+Having, as it were, superintended the securing of Pepper, Mr. Crewe led
+the way through the house to the study, pausing once or twice to point
+out to Austen a carved ivory elephant procured at great expense in China,
+and a piece of tapestry equally difficult of purchase.  The study itself
+was no mere lounging place of a man of pleasure, but sober and formidable
+books were scattered through the cases: "Turner's Evolution of the
+Railroad," "Graham's Practical Forestry," "Eldridge's  Finance"; while
+whole shelves of modern husbandry proclaimed that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was
+no amateur farmer.  There was likewise a shelf devoted to road building,
+several to knotty-looking pamphlets, and half a wall of neatly labelled
+pigeonholes.  For decoration, there was an oar garnished with a ribbon,
+and several groups of college undergraduates, mostly either in puffed
+ties or scanty attire, and always prominent in these groups, and always
+unmistakable, was Mr. Humphrey Crewe himself.
+
+Mr. Crewe was silent awhile, that this formidable array of things might
+make the proper impression upon his visitor.
+
+"It was lucky you came to-day, Vane," he said at length. "I am due in
+New York to-morrow for a directors' meeting, and I have a conference in
+Chicago with a board of trustees of which I am a member on the third.
+Looking at my array of pamphlets, eh?  I've been years in collecting
+them,--ever since I left college.  Those on railroads ought especially to
+interest you--I'm somewhat of a railroad man myself."
+
+"I didn't know that," said Austen.
+
+"Had two or three blocks of stock in subsidiary lines that had to be
+looked after.  It was a nuisance at first," said Mr. Crewe, "but I didn't
+shirk it.  I made up my mind I'd get to the bottom of the railroad
+problem, and I did.  It's no use doing a thing at all unless you do it
+well."  Mr. Crewe, his hands still in his pockets, faced Austen
+smilingly.  "Now I'll bet you didn't know I was a railroad man until you
+came in here.  To tell the truth, it was about a railroad matter that I
+sent for you."
+
+Mr. Crewe lit a cigar, but he did not offer one to Austen, as he had to
+Mr. Tooting.  "I wanted to see what you were like," he continued, with
+refreshing frankness.  "Of course, I'd seen you on the road.  But you can
+get more of an idea of a man by talkin' to him, you know."
+
+"You can if he'll talk," said Austen, who was beginning to enjoy his
+visit.
+
+Mr. Crewe glanced at him keenly.  Few men are fools at all points of the
+compass, and Mr. Crewe was far from this.
+
+"You did well in that little case you had against the Northeastern.  I
+heard about it."
+
+"I did my best," answered Austen, and he smiled again.
+
+"As some great man has remarked," observed Mr. Crewe, "it isn't what we
+do, it's how we do it.  Take pains over the smaller cases, and the larger
+cases will come of themselves, eh?"
+
+"I live in hope," said Austen, wondering how soon this larger case was
+going to unfold itself.
+
+"Let me see," said Mr. Crewe, "isn't your father the chief attorney in
+this State for the Northeastern?  How do you happen to be on the other
+side?"
+
+"By the happy accident of obtaining a client," said Austen.
+
+Mr. Crewe glanced at him again.  In spite of himself, respect was growing
+in him.  He had expected to find a certain amount of eagerness and
+subserviency--though veiled; here was a man of different calibre than he
+looked for in Ripton.
+
+"The fact is," he declared, "I have a grievance against the Northeastern
+Railroads, and I have made up my mind that you are the man for me."
+
+"You may have reason to regret your choice," Austen suggested.
+
+"I think not," replied Mr. Crewe, promptly; "I believe I know a man when
+I see one, and you inspire me with confidence.  This matter will have a
+double interest for you, as I understand you are fond of horses."
+
+"Horses?"
+
+"Yes," Mr. Crewe continued, gaining a little heat at the word, "I bought
+the finest-lookin' pair you ever saw in New York this spring,--all-around
+action, manners, conformation, everything; I'll show 'em to you.  One of
+'em's all right now; this confounded railroad injured the other gettin'
+him up here.  I've put in a claim.  They say they didn't, my man says
+they did.  He tells me the horse was thrown violently against the sides
+of the car several times.  He's internally injured.  I told 'em I'd sue
+'em, and I've decided that you are the man to take the case--on
+conditions."
+
+Austen's sense of humour saved him,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe had begun to
+interest him.  He rose and walked to the window and looked out for a few
+moments over the flower garden before he replied:--
+
+"On what conditions?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "frankly, I don't want to pay more than the horse
+is worth, and it's business to settle on the fee in case you win.  I
+thought--"
+
+"You thought," said Austen, "that I might not charge as much as the next
+man."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I knew that if you took the case, you'd fight it
+through, and I want to get even with 'em.  Their claim agent had the
+impudence to suggest that the horse had been doctored by the dealer in
+New York.  To tell me that I, who have been buying horses all my life,
+was fooled.  The veterinary swears the animal is ruptured.  I'm a citizen
+of Avalon County, though many people call me a summer resident; I've done
+business here and helped improve the neighbourhood for years.  It will be
+my policy to employ home talent Avalon County lawyers, for instance.  I
+may say, without indiscretion, that I intend from now on to take even a
+greater interest in public affairs.  The trouble is in this country that
+men in my position do not feel their responsibilities."
+
+"Public spirit is a rare virtue," Austen remarked, seeing that he was
+expected to say something.  "Avalon County appreciates the compliment,--
+if I may be permitted to answer for it."
+
+"I want to do the right thing," said Mr. Crewe.  "In fact, I have almost
+made up my mind to go to the Legislature this year.  I know it would be a
+sacrifice of time, in a sense, and all that, but--"  He paused, and
+looked at Austen.
+
+"The Legislature needs leavening."
+
+"Precisely," exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "and when I look around me and see the
+things crying to be done in this State, and no lawmaker with sense and
+foresight enough to propose them, it makes me sick.  Now, for instance,"
+he continued, and rose with an evident attempt to assault the forestry
+shelves.  But Austen rose too.
+
+"I'd like to go over that with you, Mr. Crewe," said he, "but I have to
+be back in Ripton."
+
+"How about my case?" his host demanded, with a return to his former
+abruptness.
+
+"What about it?" asked Austen.
+
+"Are you going to take it?"
+
+"Struggling lawyers don't refuse business."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "that's sensible.  But what are you going to
+charge?"
+
+"Now," said Austen, with entire good humour, "when you get on that
+ground, you are dealing no longer with one voracious unit, but with a
+whole profession,--a profession, you will allow me to add, which in
+dignity is second to none.  In accordance with the practice of the best
+men in that profession, I will charge you what I believe is fair--not
+what I think you are able and willing to pay.  Should you dispute the
+bill, I will not stoop to quarrel with you, but, try to live on bread and
+butter a while longer."
+
+Mr. Crewe was silent for a moment.  It would not be exact to say
+uncomfortable, for it is to be doubted whether he ever got so.  But he
+felt dimly that the relations of patron and patronized were becoming
+somewhat jumbled.
+
+"All right," said he, "I guess we can let it go at that.  Hello!  What
+the deuce are those women doing here again?"
+
+This irrelevant exclamation was caused by the sight through the open
+French window--of three ladies in the flower garden, two of whom were
+bending over the beds.  The third, upon whose figure Austen's eyes were
+riveted, was seated on a stone bench set in a recess of pines, and
+looking off into the Yale of the Blue.  With no great eagerness, but
+without apology to Austen, Mr. Crewe stepped out of the window and
+approached them; and as this was as good a way as any to his horse and
+buggy, Austen followed.  One of the ladies straightened at their
+appearance, scrutinized them through the glasses she held in her hand,
+and Austen immediately recognized her as the irreproachable Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"We didn't mean to disturb you, Humphrey," she said.  "We knew you would
+be engaged in business, but I told Alice as we drove by I could not
+resist stopping for one more look at your Canterbury bells.  I knew you
+wouldn't mind, but you mustn't leave your--affairs,--not for an instant."
+
+The word "affairs" was accompanied by a brief inspection of Austen Vane.
+
+"That's all right," answered Mr. Crewe; "it doesn't cost anything to look
+at flowers, that's what they're for.  Cost something to put 'em in.  I
+got that little feller Ridley to lay 'em out--I believe I told you.  He's
+just beginning.  Hello, Alice."
+
+"I think he did it very well, Humphrey," said Miss Pomfret.
+
+"Passably," said Mr. Crewe.  "I told him what I wanted and drew a rough
+sketch of the garden and the colour scheme."
+
+"Then you did it, and not Mr. Ridley.  I rather suspected it," said Mrs.
+Pomfret; "you have such clear and practical ideas about things,
+Humphrey."
+
+"It's simple enough," said Mr. Crewe, deprecatingly, "after you've seen a
+few hundred gardens and get the general underlying principle."
+
+"It's very clever," Alice murmured.
+
+"Not at all.  A little application will do wonders.  A certain definite
+colour massed here, another definite colour there, and so forth."
+
+Mr. Crewe spoke as though Alice's praise irritated him slightly.  He
+waved his hand to indicate the scheme in general, and glanced at Victoria
+on the stone bench.  From her (Austen thought) seemed to emanate a silent
+but mirthful criticism, although she continued to gaze persistently down
+the valley, apparently unaware of their voices.  Mr. Crewe looked as if
+he would have liked to reach her, but the two ladies filled the narrow
+path, and Mrs. Pomfret put her fingers on his sleeve.
+
+"Humphrey, you must explain it to us.  I am so interested in gardens I'm
+going to have one if Electrics increase their dividend."
+
+Mr. Crewe began, with no great ardour, to descant on the theory of
+planting, and Austen resolved to remain pocketed and ignored no longer.
+He retraced his steps and made his way rapidly by another path towards
+Victoria, who turned her head at his approach, and rose.  He acknowledged
+an inward agitation with the vision in his eye of the tall, white figure
+against the pines, clad with the art which, in mysterious simplicity,
+effaces itself.
+
+"I was wondering," she said, as she gave him her hand, "how long it would
+be before you spoke to me."
+
+"You gave me no chance," said Austen, quickly.
+
+"Do you deserve one?" she asked.
+
+Before he could answer, Mr. Crewe's explanation of his theories had come
+lamely to a halt.  Austen was aware of the renewed scrutiny of Mrs.
+Pomfret, and then Mr. Crewe, whom no social manacles could shackle, had
+broken past her and made his way to them.  He continued to treat the
+ground on which Austen was standing as unoccupied.
+
+"Hello, Victoria," he said, "you don't know anything about gardens, do
+you?"
+
+"I don't believe you do either," was Victoria's surprising reply.
+
+Mr. Crewe laughed at this pleasantry.
+
+"How are you going to prove it?" he demanded.
+
+"By comparing what you've done with Freddie Ridley's original plan," said
+Victoria.
+
+Mr. Crewe was nettled.
+
+"Ridley has a lot to learn," he retorted.  "He had no conception of what
+was appropriate here."
+
+"Freddie was weak," said Victoria, but he needed the money.  Don't you
+know Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I've been talking to him--on business."
+
+"Oh," said Victoria, "I had no means of knowing.  Mrs. Pomfret, I want to
+introduce Mr. Vane, and Miss Pomfret, Mr. Vane."
+
+Mrs. Pomfret, who had been hovering on the outskirts of this duel,
+inclined her head the fraction of an inch, but Alice put out her hand
+with her sweetest manner.
+
+"When did you arrive?" she asked.
+
+"Well, the fact is, I haven't arrived yet," said Austen.
+
+"Not arrived" exclaimed Alice, with a puzzled glance into Victoria's
+laughing eyes.
+
+"Perhaps Humphrey will help you along," Victoria suggested, turning to
+him.  "He might be induced to give you his celebrated grievance about his
+horses."
+
+"I have given it to him," said Mr. Crewe, briefly.
+
+"Cheer up, Mr. Vane, your fortune is made," said Victoria.
+
+"Victoria," said Mrs. Pomfret, in her most imperial voice, "we ought to
+be going instantly, or we shan't have time to drop you at the Hammonds'."
+
+"I'll take you over in the new motor car," said Mr. Crewe, with his air
+of conferring a special train.
+
+"How much is gasoline by the gallon?" inquired Victoria.
+
+"I did a favour once for the local manager, and get a special price,"
+said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, taking his hand, "don't forget you are
+coming to dinner to-night.  Four people gave out at the last minute, and
+there will be just Alice and myself.  I've asked old Mr. Fitzhugh."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll have the motor car brought around."
+
+The latter part of this remark was, needless to say, addressed to
+Victoria.
+
+"It's awfully good of you, Humphrey," she answered, "but the Hammonds are
+on the road to Ripton, and I am going to ask Mr. Vane to drive me down
+there behind that adorable horse of his."
+
+This announcement produced a varied effect upon those who heard it,
+although all experienced surprise.  Mrs. Pomfret, in addition to an anger
+which she controlled only as the result of long practice, was horrified,
+and once more levelled her glasses at Austen.
+
+"I think, Victoria, you had better come with us," she said.  "We shall
+have plenty of time, if we hurry."
+
+By this time Austen had recovered his breath.
+
+"I'll be ready in an instant," he said, and made brief but polite adieus
+to the three others.
+
+"Good-by," said Alice, vaguely.
+
+"Let me know when anything develops," said Mr. Crewe, with his back to
+his attorney.
+
+Austen found Victoria, her colour heightened a little, waiting for him by
+the driveway.  The Pomfrets had just driven off, and Mr. Crewe was
+nowhere to be seen.
+
+"I do not know what you will think of me for taking this for granted, Mr.
+Vane," she said as he took his seat beside her, "but I couldn't resist
+the chance of driving behind your horse."
+
+"I realized," he answered smilingly, "that Pepper was the attraction, and
+I have more reason than ever to be grateful to him."
+
+She glanced covertly at the Vane profile, at the sure, restraining hands
+on the reins which governed with so nice a touch the mettle of the horse.
+His silence gave her time to analyze again her interest in this man,
+which renewed itself at every meeting.  In the garden she had been struck
+by the superiority of a nature which set at naught what had been, to some
+smaller spirits, a difficult situation.  She recognized this quality as
+inborn, but, not knowing of Sarah Austen, she wondered where he got it.
+Now it was the fact that he refrained from comment that pleased her most.
+
+"Did Humphrey actually send for you to take up the injured horse case?"
+she asked.
+
+Austen flushed.
+
+"I'm afraid he did.  You seem to know all about it," he added.
+
+"Know all about it  Every one within twenty miles of Leith knows about
+it.  I'm sure the horse was doctored when he bought him."
+
+"Take care, you may be called as a witness."
+
+"What I want to know is, why you accepted such a silly case," said
+Victoria.
+
+Austen looked quizzically into her upturned face, and she dropped her
+eyes.
+
+"That's exactly what I should have asked myself,--after a while," he
+said.
+
+She laughed with a delicious understanding of "after a while."
+
+"I suppose you think me frightfully forward," she said, in a lowered
+voice, "inviting myself to drive and asking you such a question when I
+scarcely know you.  But I just couldn't go on with Mrs. Pomfret,--she
+irritated me so,--and my front teeth are too valuable to drive with
+Humphrey Crewe."
+
+Austen smiled, and secretly agreed with her.
+
+"I should have offered, if I had dared," he said.
+
+"Dared! I didn't know that was your failing.  I don't believe you even
+thought of it."
+
+"Nevertheless, the idea occurred to me, and terrified me," said Austen.
+
+"Why?" she asked, turning upon him suddenly.  "Why did it terrify you?"
+
+"I should have been presuming upon an accidental acquaintance, which I
+had no means of knowing you wished to continue," he replied, staring at
+his horse's head.
+
+"And I?" Victoria asked.  "Presumption multiplies tenfold in a woman,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"A woman confers," said Austen.
+
+She smiled, but with a light in her eyes.  This simple sentence seemed to
+reveal yet more of an inner man different from some of those with whom
+her life had been cast.  It was an American point of view--this choosing
+to believe that the woman conferred.  After offering herself as his
+passenger Victoria, too, had had a moment of terror: the action had been
+the result of an impulse which she did not care to attempt to define.
+She changed the subject.
+
+"You have been winning laurels since I saw you last summer," she said.
+"I hear incidentally you have made our friend Zeb Meader a rich man."
+
+"As riches go, in the town of Mercer," Austen laughed.  "As for my
+laurels, they have not yet begun to chafe."
+
+Here was a topic he would have avoided, and yet he was curious to
+discover what her attitude would be.  He had antagonized her father, and
+the fact that he was the son of Hilary Vane had given his antagonism
+prominence.
+
+"I am glad you did it for Zeb."
+
+"I should have done it for anybody--much as I like Zeb," he replied
+briefly.
+
+She glanced at him.
+
+"It was--courageous of you," she said.
+
+"I have never looked upon it in that light," he answered.  "May I ask you
+how you heard of it?"
+
+She coloured, but faced the question.
+
+"I heard it from my father, at first, and I took an interest--on Zeb
+Meader's account," she added hastily.
+
+Austen was silent.
+
+"Of course," she continued, "I felt a little like boasting of an
+'accidental acquaintance' with the man who saved Zeb Meader's life."
+
+Austen laughed.  Then he drew Pepper down to a walk, and turned to her.
+
+"The power of making it more than an accidental acquaintance lies with
+you," he said quietly.
+
+"I have always had an idea that aggression was a man's prerogative,"
+Victoria answered lightly.  "And seeing that you have not appeared at
+Fairview for something over a year, I can only conclude that you do not
+choose to exercise it in this case."
+
+Austen was in a cruel quandary.
+
+"I did wish to come," he answered simply, "but--the fact that I have had
+a disagreement with your father has--made it difficult."
+"Nonsense" exclaimed Victoria; "just because you have won a suit against
+his railroad.  You don't know my father, Mr. Vane.  He isn't the kind of
+man with whom that would make any difference.  You ought to talk it over
+with him.  He thinks you were foolish to take Zeb Meader's side."
+
+"And you?" Austen demanded quickly.
+
+"You see, I'm a woman," said Victoria, "and I'm prejudiced--for Zeb
+Meader.  Women are always prejudiced,--that's our trouble.  It seemed to
+me that Zeb was old, and unfortunate, and ought to be compensated, since
+he is unable to work.  But of course I suppose I can't be expected to
+understand."
+
+It was true that she could not be expected to understand.  He might not
+tell her that his difference with Mr. Flint was not a mere matter of
+taking a small damage suit against his railroad, but a fundamental one.
+And Austen recognized that the justification of his attitude meant an
+arraignment of Victoria's father.
+
+"I wish you might know my father better, Mr. Vane," she went on, "I wish
+you might know him as I know him, if it were possible.  You see, I have
+been his constant companion all my life, and I think very few people
+understand him as I do, and realize his fine qualities.  He makes no
+attempt to show his best side to the world.  His life has been spent in
+fighting, and I am afraid he is apt to meet the world on that footing.
+He is a man of such devotion to his duty that he rarely has a day to
+himself, and I have known him to sit up until the small hours of the
+morning to settle some little matter of justice.  I do not think I am
+betraying his confidence when I say that he is impressed with your
+ability, and that he liked your manner the only time he ever talked to
+you.  He believes that you have got, in some way, a wrong idea of what he
+is trying to do.  Why don't you come up and talk to him again?"
+
+"I am afraid your kindness leads you to overrate my importance," Austen
+replied, with mingled feelings.  Victoria's confidence in her father made
+the situation all the more hopeless.
+
+"I'm sure I don't," she answered quickly; "ever since--ever since I first
+laid eyes upon you I have had a kind of belief in you."
+
+"Belief?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes," she said, "belief that--that you had a future.  I can't describe
+it," she continued, the colour coming into her face again; "one feels
+that way about some people without being able to put the feeling into
+words.  And  have a feeling, too, that I should like you to be friends
+with my father."
+
+Neither of them, perhaps, realized the rapidity with which "accidental
+acquaintance" had melted into intimacy.  Austen's blood ran faster, but
+it was characteristic of him that he tried to steady himself, for he was
+a Vane.  He had thought of her many times during the past year, but
+gradually the intensity of the impression had faded until it had been so
+unexpectedly and vividly renewed to-day.  He was not a man to lose his
+head, and the difficulties of the situation made him pause and choose his
+words, while he dared not so much as glance at her as she sat in the
+sunlight beside him.
+
+"I should like to be friends with your father," he answered gravely,--the
+statement being so literally true as to have its pathetically humorous
+aspect.
+
+"I'll tell him so, Mr. Vane," she said.
+
+Austen turned, with a seriousness that dismayed her.
+
+"I must ask you as a favour not to do that," he said.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"In the first place," he answered quietly, "I cannot afford to have Mr.
+Flint misunderstand my motives.  And I ought not to mislead you," he went
+on.  "In periods of public controversy, such as we are passing through at
+present, sometimes men's views differ so sharply as to make intercourse
+impossible.  Your father and I might not agree--politically, let us say.
+For instance," he added, with evident hesitation, "my father and I
+disagree."
+
+Victoria was silent.  And presently they came to a wire fence overgrown
+with Virginia creeper, which divided the shaded road from a wide lawn.
+
+"Here we are at the Hammonds', and--thank you," she said.
+
+Any reply he might have made was forestalled.  The insistent and
+intolerant horn of an automobile, followed now by the scream of the
+gears, broke the stillness of the country-side, and a familiar voice
+cried out--
+
+"Do you want the whole road?"
+
+Austen turned into the Hammonds' drive as the bulldog nose of a motor
+forged ahead, and Mr. Crewe swung in the driver's seat.
+
+"Hello, Victoria," he shouted, "you people ought to have ear-trumpets."
+
+The car swerved, narrowly missed a watering fountain where the word
+"Peace" was inscribed, and shot down the hill.
+
+"That manner," said Victoria, as she jumped out of the buggy, "is a
+valuable political asset."
+
+"Does he really intend to go into politics?" Austen asked curiously.
+
+"'Intend' is a mild word applied to Humphrey," she answered;
+"'determined' would suit him better.  According to him, there is no game
+that cannot be won by dynamics.  'Get out of the way' is his motto.  Mrs.
+Pomfret will tell you how he means to cover the State with good roads
+next year, and take a house in Washington the year after."  She held out
+her hand.   "Good-by,--and I am ever so much obliged to you for bringing
+me here."
+
+He drove away towards Ripton with many things to think about, with a last
+picture of her in his mind as she paused for an instant in the flickering
+shadows, stroking Pepper's forehead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS
+
+It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of
+his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these
+pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected.  Mr.
+Crewe by no means underestimated this claim upon the community, and he
+had of late been declaring that he was no summer resident.  Wedderburn
+was his home, and there he paid his taxes.  Undoubtedly, they were less
+than city taxes.
+
+Although a young man, Mr. Crewe was in all respects a model citizen, and
+a person of many activities.  He had built a farmers' club, to which the
+farmers, in gross ingratitude, had never gone.  Now it was a summer
+residence and distinctly rentable.  He had a standing offer to erect a
+library in the village of Leith provided the town would furnish the
+ground, the books, and permit the name of Crewe to be carved in stone
+over the doorway.  The indifference of the town pained him, and he was
+naturally not a little grieved at the lack of proper feeling of the
+country people of America towards those who would better their
+conditions.  He had put a large memorial window in the chapel to his
+family.
+
+Mr. Crewe had another standing offer to be one of five men to start a
+farming experiment station--which might pay dividends.  He, was a church
+warden; president of a society for turning over crops (which he had
+organized); a member of the State Grange; president of the embryo State
+Economic League (whatever that was); and chairman of the Local
+Improvement Board--also a creation of his own.  By these tokens, and
+others too numerous to mention, it would seem that the inhabitants of
+Leith would have jumped at the chance to make such a man one of the five
+hundred in their State Legislature.
+
+To Whitman is attributed the remark that genius is almost one hundred per
+cent directness, but whether or not this applied to Mr. Humphrey Crewe
+remains to be seen.  "Dynamics" more surely expressed him.  It would not
+seem to be a very difficult feat, to be sure, to get elected to a State
+Legislature of five hundred which met once a year: once in ten years,
+indeed, might have been more appropriate for the five hundred.  The town
+of Leith with its thousand inhabitants had one representative, and Mr.
+Crewe had made up his mind he was to be that representative.
+
+There was, needless to say, great excitement in Leith over Mr. Crewe's
+proposed venture into the unknown seas of politics.  I mean, of course,
+that portion of Leith which recognized in Mr. Crewe an eligible bachelor
+and a person of social importance, for these qualities were not
+particularly appealing to the three hundred odd farmers whose votes were
+expected to send him rejoicing to the State capital.
+
+"It is so rare with us for a gentleman to go into politics, that we ought
+to do everything we can to elect him," Mrs. Pomfret went about declaring.
+"Women do so much in England, I wonder they don't do more here.  I was
+staying at Aylestone Court last year when the Honourable Billy Aylestone
+was contesting the family seat with a horrid Radical, and I assure you,
+my dear, I got quite excited.  We did nothing from morning till night but
+electioneer for the Honourable Billy, and kissed all the babies in the
+borough.  The mothers were so grateful.  Now, Edith, do tell Jack instead
+of playing tennis and canoeing all day he ought to help.  It's the duty
+of all young men to help.  Noblesse oblige, you know.  I can't understand
+Victoria.  She really has influence with these country people, but she
+says it's all nonsense.  Sometimes I think Victoria has a common streak
+in her--and no wonder.  The other day she actually drove to the Hammonds'
+in a buggy with an unknown lawyer from Ripton.  But I told you about it.
+Tell your gardener and the people that do your haying, dear, and your
+chicken woman.  My chicken woman is most apathetic, but do you wonder,
+with the life they lead?"
+
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe might have had, with King Charles, the watchword
+"Thorough."  He sent to the town clerk for a check-list, and proceeded to
+honour each of the two hundred Republican voters with a personal visit.
+This is a fair example of what took place in the majority of cases.
+
+Out of a cloud of dust emerges an automobile, which halts, with
+protesting brakes, in front of a neat farmhouse, guarded by great maples.
+Persistent knocking by a chauffeur at last brings a woman to the door.
+Mrs. Jenney has a pleasant face and an ample figure.
+
+"Mr. Jenney live here?" cries Mr. Crewe from the driver's seat.
+
+"Yes," says Mrs. Jenney, smiling.
+
+"Tell him I want to see him."
+
+"Guess you'll find him in the apple orchard."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+The chauffeur takes down the bars, Mr. Jenney pricks up his ears, and
+presently--to his amazement--perceives a Leviathan approaching him,
+careening over the ruts of his wood road.  Not being an emotional person,
+he continues to pick apples until he is summarily hailed.  Then he goes
+leisurely towards the Leviathan.
+
+"Are you Mr. Jenney?"
+
+"Callate to be," says Mr. Jenney, pleasantly.
+
+"I'm Humphrey Crewe."
+
+"How be you?" says Mr. Jenney, his eyes wandering over the Leviathan.
+
+How are the apples this year?" asks Mr. Crewe, graciously.
+
+"Fair to middlin'," says Mr. Jenney.
+
+"Have you ever tasted my Pippins?" says Mr. Crewe.  "A little science in
+cultivation helps along.  I'm going to send you a United States
+government pamphlet on the fruit we can raise here."
+
+Mr. Jenney makes an awkward pause by keeping silent on the subject of the
+pamphlet until he shall see it.
+
+"Do you take much interest in politics?"
+
+"Not a great deal," answers Mr. Jenney.
+
+"That's the trouble with Americans," Mr. Crewe declares, "they don't care
+who represents 'em, or whether their government's good or bad."
+
+"Guess that's so," replies Mr. Jenney, politely.
+
+"That sort of thing's got to stop," declares Mr. Crewe; "I'm a candidate
+for the Republican nomination for representative."
+
+"I want to know!" ejaculates Mr. Jenney, pulling his beard.  One would
+never suspect that this has been one of Mr. Jenney's chief topics of
+late.
+
+"I'll see that the interests of this town are cared for."
+
+"Let's see," says Mr. Jenney, "there's five hundred in the House, ain't
+there?"
+
+"It's a ridiculous number," says Mr. Crewe, with truth.
+
+"Gives everybody a chance to go," says Mr. Jenney.  "I was thar in '78,
+and enjoyed it some."
+
+"Who are you for?" demanded Mr. Crewe, combating the tendency of the
+conversation to slip into a pocket.
+
+"Little early yet, hain't it?  Hain't made up my mind.  Who's the
+candidates?" asks Mr. Jenney, continuing to stroke his beard.
+
+"I don't know," says Mr. Crewe, "but I do know I've done something for
+this town, and I hope you'll take it into consideration.  Come and see me
+when you go to the village.  I'll give you a good cigar, and that
+pamphlet, and we'll talk matters over."
+
+"Never would have thought to see one of them things in my orchard," says
+Mr. Jenney.  "How much do they cost?  Much as a locomotive, don't they?"
+
+It would not be exact to say that, after some weeks of this sort of
+campaigning, Mr. Crewe was discouraged, for such writhe vitality with
+which nature had charged him that he did not know the meaning of the
+word.  He was merely puzzled, as a June-bug is puzzled when it bumps up
+against a wire window-screen.  He had pledged to him his own gardener,
+Mrs. Pomfret's, the hired men of three of his neighbours, a few modest
+souls who habitually took off their hats to him, and Mr. Ball, of the
+village, who sold groceries to Wedderburn and was a general handy man for
+the summer people.  Mr. Ball was an agitator by temperament and a
+promoter by preference.  If you were a summer resident of importance and
+needed anything from a sewing-machine to a Holstein heifer, Mr. Ball, the
+grocer, would accommodate you.  When Mrs. Pomfret's cook became inebriate
+and refractory, Mr. Ball was sent for, and enticed her to the station and
+on board of a train; when the Chillinghams' tank overflowed, Mr. Ball
+found the proper valve and saved the house from being washed away.  And
+it was he who, after Mrs. Pomfret, took the keenest interest in Mr.
+Crewe's campaign.  At length came one day when Mr. Crewe pulled up in
+front of the grocery store and called, as his custom was, loudly for Mr.
+Ball.  The fact that Mr. Ball was waiting on customers made no
+difference, and presently that gentleman appeared, rubbing his hands
+together.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" he said, "automobile going all right?"
+
+"What's the matter with these fellers?" said Mr. Crewe.  "Haven't I done
+enough for the town?  Didn't I get 'em rural free delivery?  Didn't I
+subscribe to the meeting-house and library, and don't I pay more taxes
+than anybody else?"
+
+"Certain," assented Mr. Ball, eagerly, "certain you do."  It did not seem
+to occur to him that it was unfair to make him responsible for the scurvy
+ingratitude of his townsmen.  He stepped gingerly down into the dust and
+climbed up on the tool box.
+
+"Look out," said Mr. Crewe, "don't scratch the varnish.  What is it?"
+
+Mr. Ball shifted obediently to the rubber-covered step, and bent his face
+to his patron's ear.
+
+"It's railrud," he said.
+
+"Railroad!" shouted Mr. Crewe, in a voice that made the grocer clutch his
+arm in terror.  "Don't pinch me like that.  Railroad!  This town ain't
+within ten miles of the railroad."
+
+"For the love of David," said Mr. Ball, "don't talk so loud, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"What's the railroad got to do with it?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+Mr. Ball glanced around him, to make sure that no one was within shouting
+distance.
+
+"What's the railrud got to do with anything in this State?" inquired Mr.
+Ball, craftily.
+
+"That's different," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I'm a corporation man
+myself.  They've got to defend 'emselves."
+
+"Certain.  I ain't got anything again' 'em," Mr. Ball agreed quickly.  "I
+guess they know what they're about.  By the bye, Mr. Crewe," he added,
+coming dangerously near the varnish again, and drawing back, "you hain't
+happened to have seen Job Braden, have you?"
+
+"Job Braden!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "Job Braden!  What's all this mystery
+about Job Braden?  Somebody whispers that name in my ear every day.  If
+you mean that smooth-faced cuss that stutters and lives on Braden's Hill,
+I called on him, but he was out.  If you see him, tell him to come up to
+Wedderburn, and I'll talk with him."
+
+Mr. Ball made a gesture to indicate a feeling divided between respect for
+Mr. Crewe and despair at the hardihood of such a proposition.
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, Job wouldn't go."
+
+"Wouldn't go?"
+
+"He never pays visits,--folks go to him."
+
+"He'd come to see me, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I--I'm afraid riot, Mr. Crewe.  Job holds his comb rather high."
+
+"Do you mean to say this two-for-a-cent town has a boss?"
+
+"Silas Grantley was born here," said Mr. Ball--for even the worm will
+turn.  "This town's got a noble history."
+
+"I don't care anything about Silas Grantley.  What I want to know is, how
+this rascal manages to make anything out of the political pickings of a
+town like Leith."
+
+"Well, Job ain't exactly a rascal, Mr. Crewe.  He's got a good many of
+them hill farmers in a position of--of gratitude.  Enough to control the
+Republican caucus."
+
+"Do you mean he buys their votes?" demanded Mr. Crewe.
+
+"It's like this," explained Mr. Ball, "if one of 'em falls behind in his
+grocery bill, for example, he can always get money from Job.  Job takes a
+mortgage, but he don't often close down on 'm.  And Job has been
+collectin' credentials in Avalon County for upward of forty years."
+
+"Collecting credentials?"
+
+"Yes.  Gets a man nominated to State and county conventions that can't
+go, and goes himself with a bunch of credentials.  He's in a position to
+negotiate.  He was in all them railrud fights with Jethro Bass, and now
+he does business with Hilary Vane or Brush Bascom when anything
+especial's goin' on.  You'd ought to see him, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"I guess I won't waste my time with any picayune boss if the United
+Northeastern Railroads has any hand in this matter," declared Mr. Crewe.
+"Wind her up."
+
+This latter remark was addressed to a long-suffering chauffeur who looked
+like a Sicilian brigand.
+
+"I didn't exactly like to suggest it," said Mr. Ball, rubbing his hands
+and raising his voice above the whir of the machine, "but of course I
+knew Mr. Flint was an intimate friend.  A word to him from you--"
+
+But by this Mr. Crewe had got in his second speed and was sweeping around
+a corner lined with farmers' teams, whose animals were behaving like
+circus horses.  On his own driveway, where he arrived in incredibly brief
+time, he met his stenographer, farm superintendent, secretary,
+housekeeper, and general utility man, Mr. Raikes.  Mr. Raikes was
+elderly, and showed signs of needing a vacation.
+
+"Telephone Mr. Flint, Raikes, and tell him I would like an appointment at
+his earliest convenience, on important business."
+
+Mr. Raikes, who was going for his daily stroll beside the river, wheeled
+and made for the telephone, and brought back the news that Mr. Flint
+would be happy to see Mr. Crewe the next afternoon at four o'clock.
+
+This interview, about which there has been so much controversy in the
+newspapers, and denials and counter-denials from the press bureaus of
+both gentlemen,--this now historic interview began at four o'clock
+precisely the next day.  At that hour Mr. Crewe was ushered into that
+little room in which Mr. Flint worked when at Fairview.  Like Frederick
+the Great and other famous captains, Mr. Flint believed in an iron
+bedstead regime.  The magnate was, as usual, fortified behind his oak
+desk; the secretary with a bend in his back was in modest evidence; and
+an elderly man of comfortable proportions, with a large gold watch-charm
+portraying the rising sun, and who gave, somehow, the polished impression
+of a marble, sat near the window smoking a cigar.  Mr. Crewe approached
+the desk with that genial and brisk manner for which he was noted and
+held out his hand to the railroad president.
+
+"We are both business men, and both punctual, Mr. Flint," he said, and
+sat down in the empty chair beside his host, eyeing without particular
+favour him of the watch-charm, whose cigar was not a very good one.  "I
+wanted to have a little private conversation with you which might be of
+considerable interest to us both."  And Mr. Crewe laid down on the desk a
+somewhat formidable roll of papers.
+
+"I trust the presence of Senator Whitredge will not deter you," answered
+Mr. Flint.   "He is an old friend of mine."
+
+Mr. Crewe was on his feet again with surprising alacrity, and beside the
+senator's chair.
+
+"How are you, Senator?" he said, "I have never had the pleasure of
+meeting you, but I know you by reputation."
+
+The senator got to his feet.  They shook hands, and exchanged cordial
+greetings; and during the exchange Mr. Crewe looked out of the window,
+and the senator's eyes were fixed on the telephone receiver on Mr.
+Flint's desk.  As neither gentleman took hold of the other's fingers very
+hard, they fell apart quickly.
+
+"I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Crewe," said the senator.  Mr. Crewe
+sat down again, and not being hampered by those shrinking qualities so
+fatal to success he went on immediately:--
+
+"There is nothing which I have to say that the senator cannot hear.  I
+made the appointment with you, Mr. Flint, to talk over a matter which may
+be of considerable importance to us both.  I have made up my mind to go
+to the Legislature."
+
+Mr. Crewe naturally expected to find visible effects of astonishment and
+joy on the faces of his hearers at such not inconsiderable news.  Mr.
+Flint, however, looked serious enough, though the senator smiled as he
+blew his smoke out of the window.
+
+"Have you seen Job Braden, Mr. Crewe?" he asked, with genial jocoseness.
+"They tell me that Job is still alive and kicking over in your parts."
+
+"Thank you, Senator," said Mr. Crewe, "that brings me to the very point I
+wish to emphasize.  Everywhere in Leith I am met with the remark, 'Have
+you seen Job Braden?'  And I always answer, 'No, I haven't seen Mr.
+Braden, and I don't intend to see him."'
+
+Mr. Whitredge laughed, and blew out a ring of smoke.  Mr. Flint's face
+remained sober.
+
+"Now, Mr. Flint," Mr. Crewe went on, "you and I understand each other,
+and we're on the same side of the fence.  I have inherited some interests
+in corporations myself, and I have acquired an interest in others.  I am
+a director in several.  I believe that it is the duty of property to
+protect itself, and the duty of all good men in politics,--such as the
+senator here,"--(bow from Mr. Whitredge) to protect property.  I am a
+practical man, and I think I can convince you, if you don't see it
+already, that my determination to go to the Legislature is an
+advantageous thing for your railroad."
+
+"The advent of a reputable citizen into politics is always a good thing
+for the railroad, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"Exactly," Mr. Crewe agreed, ignoring the non-committal quality of this
+remark, "and if you get a citizen who is a not inconsiderable property
+holder, a gentleman, and a college graduate,--a man who, by study and
+predilection, is qualified to bring about improved conditions in the
+State, so much the better."
+
+"So much the better," said Mr. Flint.
+
+"I thought you would see it that way," Mr. Crewe continued.  "Now a man
+of your calibre must have studied to some extent the needs of the State,
+and it must have struck you that certain improvements go hand in hand
+with the prosperity of your railroad."
+
+"Have a cigar, Mr. Crewe.  Have another, Senator?" said Mr. Flint.  "I
+think that is safe as a general proposition, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"To specify," said Mr. Crewe, laying his hand on the roll of papers he
+had brought, "I have here bills which I have carefully drawn up and which
+I will leave for your consideration.  One is to issue bonds for ten
+millions to build State roads."
+
+"Ten millions!" said Mr. Flint, and the senator whistled mildly.
+
+"Think about it," said Mr. Crewe, "the perfection of the highways through
+the State, instead of decreasing your earnings, would increase them
+tremendously.  Visitors by the tens of thousands would come in
+automobiles, and remain and buy summer places.  The State would have its
+money back in taxes and business in no time at all.  I wonder somebody
+hasn't seen it before--the stupidity of the country legislator is
+colossal.  And we want forestry laws, and laws for improving the
+condition of the farmers--all practical things.  They are all there," Mr.
+Crewe declared, slapping the bundle; "read them, Mr. Flint.  If you have
+any suggestions to make, kindly note them on the margin, and I shall be
+glad to go over them with you."
+
+By this time the senator was in a rare posture for him--he was seated
+upright.
+
+"As you know, I am a very busy man, Mr. Crewe," said the railroad
+president.
+
+"No one appreciates that more fully than I do, Mr. Flint," said Mr.
+Crewe; "I haven't many idle hours myself.  I think you will find the
+bills and my comments on them well worth your consideration from the
+point of view of advantage to your railroad.  They are typewritten, and
+in concrete form.  In fact, the Northeastern Railroads and myself must
+work together to our mutual advantage--that has become quite clear to me.
+I shall have need of your help in passing the measures."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't quite understand you, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint,
+putting down the papers.
+
+"That is," said Mr. Crewe, "if you approve of the bills, and I am
+confident that I shall be able to convince you."
+
+"What do you want me to do?"  asked the railroad president.
+
+"Well, in the first place," said Mr. Crewe, unabashed, "send word to your
+man Braden that you've seen me and it's all right."
+
+"I assure you," answered Mr. Flint, giving evidence for the first time of
+a loss of patience, "that neither the Northeastern Railroads nor myself,
+have any more to do with this Braden than you have."
+
+Mr. Crewe, being a man of the world, looked incredulous.
+
+"Senator," Mr. Flint continued, turning to Mr. Whitredge, "you know as
+much about politics in this State as any man of my acquaintance, have you
+ever heard of any connection between this Braden and the Northeastern
+Railroads?"
+
+The senator had a laugh that was particularly disarming.
+
+"Bless your soul, no," he replied.  "You will pardon me, Mr. Crewe, but
+you must have been listening to some farmer's tale.  The railroad is the
+bugaboo in all these country romances.  I've seen old Job Braden at
+conventions ever since I was a lad.  He's a back number, one of the few
+remaining disciples and imitators of Jethro Bass: talks like him and acts
+like him.  In the old days when there were a lot of little railroads, he
+and Bijah Bixby and a few others used to make something out of them, but
+since the consolidation, and Mr. Flint's presidency, Job stays at home.
+They tell me he runs Leith yet.  You'd better go over and fix it up with
+him."
+
+A somewhat sarcastic smile of satisfaction was playing over Mr. Flint's
+face as he listened to the senator's words.  As a matter of fact, they
+were very nearly true as regarded Job Braden, but Mr. Crewe may be
+pardoned for thinking that Mr. Flint was not showing him quite the
+confidence due from one business and corporation man to another.  He was
+by no means abashed,--Mr. Crewe had too much spirit for that.  He merely
+became--as a man whose watchword is "thorough" will--a little more
+combative.
+
+"Well, read the bills anyway, Mr. Flint, and I'll come and go over them
+with you.  You can't fail to see my arguments, and all I ask is that you
+throw the weight of your organization at the State capital for them when
+they come up."
+
+Mr. Flint drummed on the table.
+
+"The men who have held office in this State," he said, "have always been
+willing to listen to any suggestion I may have thought proper to make to
+them.  This is undoubtedly because I am at the head of the property which
+pays the largest taxes.  Needless to say I am chary of making
+suggestions.  But I am surprised that you should have jumped at a
+conclusion which is the result of a popular and unfortunately prevalent
+opinion that the Northeastern Railroads meddled in any way with the
+government or politics of this State.  I am glad of this opportunity of
+assuring you that we do not," he continued, leaning forward and holding
+up his hand to ward off interruption, "and I know that Senator Whitredge
+will bear me out in this statement, too."
+
+The senator nodded gravely.  Mr. Crewe, who was anything but a fool, and
+just as assertive as Mr. Flint, cut in.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Flint," he said, "I know what a lobby is.  I haven't been
+a director in railroads myself for nothing.  I have no objection to a
+lobby.  You employ counsel before the Legislature, don't you--"
+
+"We do," said Mr. Flint, interrupting, "the best and most honourable
+counsel we can find in the State.  When necessary, they appear before the
+legislative committees.  As a property holder in the State, and an
+admirer of its beauties, and as its well-wisher, it will give me great
+pleasure to look over your bills, and use whatever personal influence I
+may have as a citizen to forward them, should they meet my approval.  And
+I am especially glad to do this as a neighbour, Mr. Crewe.  As a
+neighbour," he repeated, significantly.
+
+The president of the Northeastern Railroads rose as he spoke these words,
+and held out his hand to Mr. Crewe.  It was perhaps a coincidence that
+the senator rose also.
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll call around again in about two weeks.
+Come and see me sometime, Senator."  Thank you," said the senator, "I
+shall be happy.  And if you are ever in your automobile near the town of
+Ramsey, stop at my little farm, Mr. Crewe.  I trust to be able soon to
+congratulate you on a step which I am sure will be but the beginning of a
+long and brilliant political career."
+
+"Thanks," said Mr. Crewe; "by the bye, if you could see your way to drop
+a hint to that feller Braden, I should be much obliged."
+
+The senator shook his head and laughed.
+
+"Job is an independent cuss," he said, "I'm afraid he'd regard that as an
+unwarranted trespass on his preserves."
+
+Mr. Crewe was ushered out by the stooping secretary, Mr. Freeman; who,
+instead of seizing Mr. Crewe's hand as he had Austen Vane's, said not a
+word.  But Mr. Crewe would have been interested if he could have heard
+Mr. Flint's first remark to the senator after the door was closed on his
+back.  It did not relate to Mr. Crewe, but to the subject under
+discussion which he had interrupted; namely, the Republican candidates
+for the twenty senatorial districts of the State.
+
+On its way back to Leith the red motor paused in front of Mr. Ball's
+store, and that gentleman was summoned in the usual manner.
+
+"Do you see this Braden once in a while?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+Mr. Ball looked knowing.
+
+"Tell him I want to have a talk with him," said Mr. Crewe.  "I've been to
+see Mr. Flint, and I think matters can be arranged.  And mind you, no
+word about this, Ball."
+
+"I guess I understand a thing or two," said Mr. Ball.  "Trust me to
+handle it."
+
+Two days later, as Mr. Crewe was seated in his study, his man entered and
+stood respectfully waiting for the time when he should look up from his
+book.
+
+"Well, what is it now, Waters?"
+
+"If you please, sir," said the man, "a strange message has come over the
+telephone just now that you were to be in room number twelve of the
+Ripton House to-morrow at ten o'clock.  They wouldn't give any name,
+sir," added the dignified Waters, who, to tell the truth, was somewhat
+outraged, nor tell where they telephoned from.  But it was a man's voice,
+sir."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+He spent much of the afternoon and evening debating whether or not his
+dignity would permit him to go.  But he ordered the motor at half-past
+nine, and at ten o'clock precisely the clerk at the Ripton House was
+bowing to him and handing him, deferentially, a dripping pen.
+
+"Where's room number twelve?" said the direct Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh," said the clerk, and possessing a full share of the worldly wisdom
+of his calling, he smiled broadly.  "I guess you'll find him up there,
+Mr. Crewe.  Front, show the gentleman to number twelve."
+
+The hall boy knocked on the door of number twelve.
+
+"C--come in," said a voice.  "Come in."
+
+Mr. Crewe entered, the hall boy closed the door, and he found himself
+face to face with a comfortable, smooth-faced man seated with great
+placidity on a rocking-chair in the centre of the room, between the bed
+and the marble-topped table: a man to whom, evidently, a rich abundance
+of thought was sufficient company, for he had neither newspaper nor book.
+He rose in a leisurely fashion, and seemed the very essence of the benign
+as he stretched forth his hand.
+
+"I'm Mr. Crewe," the owner of that name proclaimed, accepting the hand
+with no exaggeration of cordiality.  The situation jarred on him a
+trifle.
+
+"I know.  Seed you on the road once or twice.  How be you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe sat down.
+
+"I suppose you are Mr. Braden," he said.
+
+Mr. Braden sank into the rocker and fingered a waistcoat pocket full of
+cigars that looked like a section of a cartridge-belt.
+
+"T--try one of mine," he said.
+
+"I only smoke once after breakfast," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Abstemious, be you?  Never could find that it did me any hurt."
+
+This led to an awkward pause, Mr. Crewe not being a man who found profit
+in idle discussion.  He glanced at Mr. Braden's philanthropic and beaming
+countenance, which would have made the fortune of a bishop.  It was not
+usual for Mr. Crewe to find it difficult to begin a conversation, or to
+have a companion as self-sufficient as himself.  This man Braden had all
+the fun, apparently, in sitting in a chair and looking into space that
+Stonewall Jackson had, or an ordinary man in watching a performance of "A
+Trip to Chinatown."  Let it not be inferred, again, that Mr. Crewe was
+abashed; but he was puzzled.
+
+"I had an engagement in Ripton this morning," he said, "to see about some
+business matters.  And after I received your telephone I thought I'd drop
+in here."
+
+"Didn't telephone," said Mr. Braden, placidly.
+
+"What!" said Mr. Crewe, "I certainly got a telephone message."
+
+"N--never telephone," said Mr. Braden.
+
+"I certainly got a message from you," Mr. Crewe protested.
+
+"Didn't say it was from me--didn't say so--did they--"
+
+"No," said Mr. Crewe, "but--"
+
+"Told Ball you wanted to have me see you, didn't you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe, when he had unravelled this sentence, did not fancy the way it
+was put.
+
+"I told Ball I was seeing everybody in Leith," he answered, "and that I
+had called on you, and you weren't at home.  Ball inferred that you had a
+somewhat singular way of seeing people."
+
+"You don't understand," was Mr. Braden's somewhat enigmatic reply.
+
+"I understand pretty well," said Mr. Crewe.  "I'm a candidate for the
+Republican nomination for representative from Leith, and I want your vote
+and influence.  You probably know what I have done for the town, and that
+I'm the biggest taxpayer, and an all-the-year-round resident."
+
+"S--some in Noo York--hain't you?"
+
+"Well, you can't expect a man in my position and with my interests to
+stay at home all the time.  I feel that I have a right to ask the town
+for this nomination.  I have some bills here which I'll request you to
+read over, and you will see that I have ideas which are of real value to
+the State.  The State needs waking up-progressive measures.  You're a
+farmer, ain't you?"
+
+"Well, I have be'n."
+
+"I can improve the condition of the farmer one hundred per cent, and if
+my road system is followed, he can get his goods to market for about a
+tenth of what it costs him now.  We have infinitely valuable forests in
+the State which are being wasted by lumbermen, which ought to be
+preserved.  You read those bills, and what I have written about them."
+
+"You don't understand," said Mr. Braden, drawing a little closer and
+waving aside the manuscript with his cigar.
+
+"Don't understand what?"
+
+"Don't seem to understand," repeated Mr. Braden, confidingly laying his
+hand on Mr. Crewe's knee.  "Candidate for representative, be you?"
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. Crewe, who was beginning to resent the manner in which
+he deemed he was being played with, "I told you I was."
+
+"M--made all them bills out before you was chose?" said Mr. Braden.
+
+Mr. Crewe grew red in the face.
+
+"I am interested in these questions," he said stiffly.
+
+"Little mite hasty, wahn't it?" Mr. Braden remarked equably, "but you've
+got plenty of time and money to fool with such things, if you've a mind
+to.  Them don't amount to a hill of beans in politics.  Nobody pays any
+attention to that sort of fireworks down to the capital, and if they was
+to get into committee them Northeastern Railroads fellers'd bury 'em
+deeper than the bottom of Salem pond.  They don't want no such things as
+them to pass."
+
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Crewe, "but you haven't read 'em."
+
+"I know what they be," said Mr. Braden, "I've be'n in politics more years
+than you've be'n livin', I guess.  I don't want to read 'em," he
+announced, his benign manner unchanged.
+
+"I think you have made a mistake so far as the railroad is concerned, Mr.
+Braden," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm a practical man myself, and I don't indulge
+in moonshine.  I am a director in one or two railroads.  I have talked
+this matter over with Mr. Flint, and incidentally with Senator
+Whitredge."
+
+"Knowed Whitredge afore you had any teeth," said Mr. Braden, who did not
+seem to be greatly impressed, "know him intimate.  What'd you go to Flint
+for?"
+
+"We have interests in common," said Mr. Crewe, "and I am rather a close
+friend of his.  My going to the Legislature will be, I think, to our
+mutual advantage."
+
+"O--ought to have come right to me," said Mr. Braden, leaning over until
+his face was in close proximity to Mr. Crewe's.  "Whitredge told you to
+come to me, didn't he?"
+
+Mr. Crewe was a little taken aback.
+
+"The senator mentioned your name," he admitted.
+
+"He knows.  Said I was the man to see if you was a candidate, didn't he?
+Told you to talk to Job Braden, didn't he?"
+
+Now Mr. Crewe had no means of knowing whether Senator Whitredge had been
+in conference with Mr. Braden or not.
+
+"The senator mentioned your name casually, in some connection," said Mr.
+Crewe.
+
+"He knows," Mr. Braden repeated, with a finality that spoke volumes for
+the senator's judgment; and he bent over into Mr. Crewe's ear, with the
+air of conveying a mild but well-merited reproof, "You'd ought to come
+right to me in the first place.  I could have saved you all that
+unnecessary trouble of seein' folks.  There hasn't be'n a representative
+left the town of Leith for thirty years that I hain't agreed to.
+Whitredge knows that.  If I say you kin go, you kin go.  You understand,"
+said Mr. Braden, with his fingers on Mr. Crewe's knee once more.
+
+Five minutes later Mr. Crewe emerged into the dazzling sun of the Ripton
+square, climbed into his automobile, and turned its head towards Leith,
+strangely forgetting the main engagement which he said had brought him to
+town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE TRIALS OF AN HONOURABLE
+
+It was about this time that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was transformed, by one of
+those subtle and inexplicable changes which occur in American politics,
+into the Honourable Humphrey Crewe.  And, as interesting bits of news
+about important people are bound to leak out, it became known in Leith
+that he had subscribed to what is known as a Clipping Bureau.  Two weeks
+after the day he left Mr. Braden's presence in the Ripton House the
+principal newspapers of the country contained the startling announcement
+that the well-known summer colony of Leith was to be represented in the
+State Legislature by a millionaire.  The Republican nomination, which Mr.
+Crewe had secured, was equivalent to an election.
+
+For a little time after that Mr. Crewe, although naturally an important
+and busy man, scarcely had time to nod to his friends on the road.
+
+"Poor dear Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, "who was so used to dropping in
+to dinner, hasn't had a moment to write me a line to thank me for the
+statesman's diary I bought for him in London this spring.  They're in
+that new red leather, and Aylestone says he finds his so useful.  I
+dropped in at Wedderburn to-day to see if I could be of any help, and the
+poor man was buttonholed by two reporters who had come all the way from
+New York to see him.  I hope he won't overdo it."
+
+It was true.  Mr. Crewe was to appear in the Sunday supplements.   "Are
+our Millionaires entering Politics?"  Mr. Crewe, with his usual gracious
+hospitality, showed the reporters over the place, and gave them
+suggestions as to the best vantage-points in which to plant their
+cameras.  He himself was at length prevailed upon to be taken in a rough
+homespun suit, and with a walking-stick in his hand, appraising with a
+knowing eye a flock of his own sheep.  Pressed a little, he consented to
+relate something of the systematic manner in which he had gone about to
+secure this nomination: how he had visited in person the homes of his
+fellow-townsmen.  "I knew them all, anyway," he is quoted as saying; "we
+have had the pleasantest of relationships during the many years I have
+been a resident of Leith."
+
+"Beloved of his townspeople," this part of the article was headed.  No,
+these were not Mr. Crewe's words--he was too modest for that.  When urged
+to give the name of one of his townsmen who might deal with this and
+other embarrassing topics, Mr. Ball was mentioned.  "Beloved of his
+townspeople" was Mr. Ball's phrase.  "Although a multi-millionaire, no man
+is more considerate of the feelings and the rights of his more humble
+neighbours.  Send him to the Legislature!  We'd send him to the United
+States Senate if we could.  He'll land there, anyway."  Such was a random
+estimate (Mr. Ball's) the reporters gathered on their way to Ripton.  Mr.
+Crewe did not hesitate to say that the prosperity of the farmers had
+risen as a result of his labours at Wedderburn where the most improved
+machinery and methods were adopted.  His efforts to raise the
+agricultural, as well as the moral and intellectual, tone of the
+community had been unceasing.
+
+Then followed an intelligent abstract of the bills he was to introduce--
+the results of a progressive and statesmanlike brain.  There was an
+account of him as a methodical and painstaking business man whose
+suggestions to the boards of directors of which he was a member had been
+invaluable.  The article ended with a list of the clubs to which he
+belonged, of the societies which he had organized and of those of which
+he was a member,--and it might have been remarked by a discerning reader
+that most of these societies were State affairs.  Finally there was a pen
+portrait of an Apollo Belvidere who wore the rough garb of a farmer (on
+the days when the press was present).
+
+Mr. Crewe's incessant trials, which would have taxed a less rugged
+nature, did not end here.  About five o'clock one afternoon a pleasant-
+appearing gentleman with a mellifluous voice turned up who introduced
+himself as ex (State) Senator Grady.  The senator was from Newcastle,
+that city out of the mysterious depths of which so many political stars
+have arisen.  Mr. Crewe cancelled a long-deferred engagement with Mrs.
+Pomfret, and invited the senator to stay to dinner; the senator
+hesitated, explained that he was just passing through Ripton, and, as it
+was a pleasant afternoon, had called to "pay his respects"; but Mr.
+Crewe's well-known hospitality would accept no excuses.  Mr. Crewe opened
+a box of cigars which he had bought especially for the taste of State
+senators and a particular grade of Scotch whiskey.
+
+They talked politics for four hours.  Who would be governor?  The senator
+thought Asa Gray would.  The railroad was behind him, Mr. Crewe observed
+knowingly.  The senator remarked that Mr. Crewe was no gosling.  Mr.
+Crewe, as political-geniuses will, asked as many questions as the emperor
+of Germany--pertinent questions about State politics.  Senator Grady was
+tremendously impressed with his host's programme of bills, and went over
+them so painstakingly that Mr. Crewe became more and more struck with
+Senator Grady's intelligence.  The senator told Mr. Crewe that just such
+a man as he was needed to pull the State out of the rut into which she
+had fallen.  Mr. Crewe said that he hoped to find such enlightened men in
+the Legislature as the senator.  The senator let it be known that he had
+read the newspaper articles, and had remarked that Mr. Crewe was close to
+the president of the Northeastern Railroads.
+
+"Such a man as you," said the senator, looking at the remainder of the
+Scotch whiskey, "will have the railroad behind you, sure."
+
+"One more drink," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"I must go," said Mr. Grady, pouring it out, but that reminds me.  It
+comes over me sudden-like, as I sit here, that you certainly ought to be
+in the new encyclopeedie of the prominent men of the State.  But sure you
+have received an application."
+
+"It is probable that my secretary has one," said Mr. Crewe, "but he
+hasn't called it to my attention."
+
+"You must get in that book, Mr. Crewe," said the senator, with an intense
+earnestness which gave the impression of alarm; "after what you've told
+me to-night I'll see to it myself that you get in.  It may be that I've
+got some of the sample pages here, if I haven't left them at home," said
+Mr. Grady, fumbling in an ample inside pocket, and drawing forth a
+bundle.  "Sure, here they are.  Ain't that luck for you?  Listen!  'Asa
+P. Gray was born on the third of August, eighteen forty-seven, the
+seventh son of a farmer.  See, there's a space in the end they left to
+fill up when he's elicted governor!  Here's another.  The Honourable
+Hilary Vane comes from one of the oldest Puritan families in the State,
+the Vanes of Camden Street--' Here's another.  'The Honourable Brush
+Bascom of Putnam County is the son of poor but honourable parents--' Look
+at the picture of him.  Ain't that a handsome steel-engravin' of the
+gentleman?"
+
+Mr. Crewe gazed contemplatively at the proof, but was too busy with his
+own thoughts to reflect that there was evidently not much poor or
+honourable about Mr. Bascom now.
+
+"Who's publishing this?" he asked.
+
+"Fogarty and Company; sure they're the best publishers in the State, as
+you know, Mr. Crewe.  They have the State printing.  Wasn't it fortunate
+I had the proofs with me?  Tim Fogarty slipped them into me pocket when I
+was leavin' Newcastle.  'The book is goin' to press the day after
+eliction,' says he, 'John,' says he, 'you know I always rely on your
+judgment, and if you happen to think of anybody between now and then who
+ought to go in, you'll notify me,' says he.  When I read the bills to-
+night, and saw the scope of your work, it came over me in a flash that
+Humphrey Crewe was the man they left out.  You'll get a good man to write
+your life, and what you done for the town and State, and all them
+societies and bills, won't you?  'Twould be a thousand pities not to have
+it right."
+
+"How much does it cost?" Mr. Crewe inquired.
+
+"Sure I forgot to ask Tim Fogarty.  Mebbe he has it here.  I signed one
+myself, but I couldn't afford the steelengravin'.  Yes, he slipped one
+in.  Two hundred dollars for a two-page biography, and, three hundred for
+the steelengravin'.  Five hundred dollars.  I didn't know it was so cheap
+as that," exclaimed the senator, "and everybody in the State havin' to
+own one in self-protection.  You don't happen to have a pen about you?"
+
+Mr. Crewe waved the senator towards his own desk, and Mr. Grady filled
+out the blank.
+
+"It's lucky we are that I didn't drop in after eliction, and the book in
+press," he remarked; "and I hope you'll give him a good photograph.
+This's for you, I'll take this to Tim myself," and he handed the pen for
+Mr. Crewe to sign with.
+
+Mr. Crewe read over the agreement carefully, as a business man should,
+before putting his signature to it.  And then the senator, with renewed
+invitations for Mr. Crewe to call on him when he came to Newcastle, took
+his departure.  Afterwards Mr. Crewe remained so long in reflection that
+his man Waters became alarmed, and sought him out and interrupted his
+revery.
+
+The next morning Mrs. Pomfret, who was merely "driving by" with her
+daughter Alice and Beatrice Chillingham, spied Mr. Crewe walking about
+among the young trees he was growing near the road, and occasionally
+tapping them with his stout stick.  She poked her coachman in the back
+and cried:--
+
+"Humphrey, you're such an important man now that I despair of ever seeing
+you again.  What was the matter last night?"
+
+"A politician from Newcastle," answered Mr. Crewe, continuing to tap the
+trees, and without so much as a glance at Alice.
+
+"Well, if you're as important as this before you're elected, I can't
+think what it will be afterwards," Mrs. Pomfret lamented.  "Poor dear
+Humphrey is so conscientious.  When can you come, Humphrey?"
+
+"Don't know," said Mr. Crewe; "I'll try to come tonight, but I may be
+stopped again.  Here's Waters now."
+
+The three people in Mrs. Pomfret's victoria were considerably impressed
+to see the dignified Waters hurrying down the slope from the house
+towards them.  Mr. Crewe continued to tap the trees, but drew a little
+nearer the carriage.
+
+"If you please, sir," said Waters, "there's a telephone call for you from
+Newcastle.  It's urgent, sir."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"They won't give their names, sir."
+
+"All right," said Mr. Crewe, and with a grin which spoke volumes for the
+manner in which he was harassed he started towards the house--in no great
+hurry, however.  Reaching the instrument, and saying "Hello" in his
+usually gracious manner, he was greeted by a voice with a decided
+Hibernian-American accent.
+
+"Am I talkin' to Mr. Crewe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mr. Humphrey Crewe?"
+
+"Yes--yes, of course you are.  Who are you?"
+
+"I'm the president of the Paradise Benevolent and Military Association,
+Mr. Crewe.  Boys that work in the mills, you know," continued the voice,
+caressingly.  "Sure you've heard of us.  We're five hundred strong, and
+all of us good Republicans as the president.  We're to have our annual
+fall outing the first of October in Finney Grove, and we'd like to have
+you come down."
+
+"The first of October?" said Mr. Crewe.  "I'll consult my engagement
+book."
+
+"We'd like to have a good picture of you in our programme, Mr. Crewe.  We
+hope you'll oblige us.  You're such an important figure in State politics
+now you'd ought to have a full page."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"What does it cost?" Mr. Crewe demanded.
+
+"Sure," said the caressing voice of the president, "whatever you like."
+
+"I'll send you a check for five dollars, and a picture," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+The answer to this was a hearty laugh, which the telephone reproduced
+admirably.  The voice now lost a little of its caressing note and partook
+of a harder quality.
+
+"You're a splendid humorist, Mr. Crewe.  Five dollars wouldn't pay for
+the plate and the paper.  A gentleman like you could give us twenty-five,
+and never know it was gone.  You won't be wanting to stop in the
+Legislature, Mr. Crewe, and we remember our friends in Newcastle."
+
+"Very well, I'll see what I can do.  Good-by, I've got an engagement,"
+said Mr. Crewe, and slammed down the telephone.  He seated himself in his
+chair, and the pensive mood so characteristic (we are told) of statesmen
+came over him once more.
+
+While these and other conferences and duties too numerous to mention were
+absorbing Mr. Crewe, he was not too busy to bear in mind the pleasure of
+those around him who had not received such an abundance of the world's
+blessings as he.  The townspeople of Leith were about to bestow on him
+their greatest gift.  What could he do to show his appreciation?
+Wrestling with this knotty problem, a brilliant idea occurred to him,--he
+would have a garden-party: invite everybody in town, and admit them to
+the sanctities of Wedderburn; yes, even of Wedderburn house, that they
+might behold with their own eyes the carved ivory elephants and other
+contents of glass cabinets which reeked of the Sunday afternoons of
+youth.  Being a man of action, Mr. Pardriff was summoned at once from
+Leith and asked for his lowest price on eight hundred and fifty
+invitations and a notice of the party in the Ripton Record.
+
+"Goin' to invite Democrats, too?" demanded Mr. Pardriff, glancing at the
+check-list.
+
+"Everybody," said Mr. Crewe, with unparalleled generosity.  "I won't draw
+any distinction between friends and enemies.  They're all neighbours."
+
+"And some of 'em might, by accident, vote the Republican ticket," Mr.
+Pardriff retorted, narrowing his eyes a little.
+
+Mr. Crewe evidently thought this a negligible suggestion, for he did not
+reply to it, but presently asked for the political news in Ripton.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pardriff, "you know they tried to get Austen Vane to run
+for State senator, don't you?"
+
+"Vane  Why, he ain't a full-fledged lawyer yet.  I've hired him in an
+unimportant case.  Who asked him to run?"
+
+"Young Tom Gaylord and a delegation."
+
+"He couldn't have got it," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Pardriff, "he might have given Billings a hustle
+for the nomination."
+
+"You supported Billings, I noticed," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+Mr. Pardriff winked an eye.
+
+"I'm not ready to walk the ties when I go to Newcastle," he remarked,
+"and Nat ain't quite bankrupt yet.  The Gaylords," continued Mr.
+Pardriff, who always took the cynical view of a man of the world, "have
+had some row with the Northeastern over lumber shipments.  I understand
+they're goin' to buck 'em for a franchise in the next Legislature, just
+to make it lively.  The Gaylords ain't exactly poverty-stricken, but they
+might as well try to move Sawanec Mountain as the Northeastern."
+
+It was a fact that young Tom Gaylord had approached Austen Vane with a
+"delegation" to request him to be a candidate for the Republican
+nomination for the State senate in his district against the railroad
+candidate and Austen's late opponent, the Honourable Nat Billings.  It
+was a fact also that Austen had invited the delegation to sit down,
+although there were only two chairs, and that a wrestling match had
+ensued with young Tom, in the progress of which one chair had been
+broken.  Young Tom thought it was time to fight the railroad, and
+perceived in Austen the elements of a rebel leader.  Austen had
+undertaken to throw young Tom out of a front window, which was a large,
+old-fashioned one,--and after Herculean efforts had actually got him on
+the ledge, when something in the street caught his eye and made him
+desist abruptly.  The something was the vision of a young woman in a
+brown linen suit seated in a runabout and driving a horse almost as
+handsome as Pepper.
+
+When the delegation, after exhausting their mental and physical powers of
+persuasion, had at length taken their departure in disgust, Austen opened
+mechanically a letter which had very much the appearance of an
+advertisement, and bearing a one-cent stamp.  It announced that a garden-
+party would take place at Wedderburn, the home of the Honourable Humphrey
+Crewe, at a not very distant date, and the honour of the bearer's
+presence was requested.  Refreshments would be served, and the Ripton
+Band would dispense music.  Below, in small print, were minute directions
+where to enter, where to hitch your team, and where to go out.
+
+Austen was at a loss to know what fairy godmother had prompted Mr. Crewe
+to send him an invitation, the case of the injured horse not having
+advanced with noticeable rapidity.  Nevertheless, the prospect of the
+garden-party dawned radiantly for him above what had hitherto been a
+rather gloomy horizon.  Since the afternoon he had driven Victoria to the
+Hammonds' he had had daily debates with an imaginary man in his own
+likeness who, to the detriment of his reading of law, sat across his
+table and argued with him.  The imaginary man was unprincipled, and had
+no dignity, but he had such influence over Austen Vane that he had
+induced him to drive twice within sight of Fairview gate, when Austen
+Vane had turned round again.  The imaginary man was for going to call on
+her and letting subsequent events take care of themselves; Austen Vane,
+had an uncomfortable quality of reducing a matter first of all to its
+simplest terms.  He knew that Mr. Flint's views were as fixed,
+ineradicable, and unchangeable as an epitaph cut in a granite monument;
+he felt (as Mr. Flint had) that their first conversation had been but a
+forerunner of, a strife to come between them; and add to this the facts
+that Mr. Flint was very rich and Austen Vane poor, that Victoria's
+friends were not his friends, and that he had grave doubts that the
+interest she had evinced in him sprang from any other incentive than a
+desire to have communication with various types of humanity, his
+hesitation as to entering Mr. Flint's house was natural enough.
+
+It was of a piece with Mr. Crewe's good fortune of getting what he wanted
+that the day of the garden-party was the best that September could do in
+that country, which is to say that it was very beautiful.  A pregnant
+stillness enwrapped the hills, a haze shot with gold dust, like the
+filmiest of veils, softened the distant purple and the blue-black shadows
+under the pines.  Austen awoke from his dream in this enchanted
+borderland to find himself in a long line of wagons filled with people in
+their Sunday clothes,--the men in black, and the young women in white,
+with gay streamers, wending their way through the rear-entrance drive of
+Wedderburn, where one of Mr. Crewe's sprucest employees was taking up the
+invitation cards like tickets,--a precaution to prevent the rowdy element
+from Ripton coming and eating up the refreshments.  Austen obediently
+tied Pepper in a field, as he was directed, and made his way by a path
+through the woods towards the house, where the Ripton Band could be heard
+playing the second air in the programme, "Don't you wish you'd Waited?"
+
+For a really able account of that memorable entertainment see the Ripton
+Record of that week, for we cannot hope to vie with Mr. Pardriff when his
+heart is really in his work.  How describe the noble figure of Mr. Crewe
+as it burst upon Austen when he rounded the corner of the house?  Clad in
+a rough-and-ready manner, with a Gladstone collar to indicate the newly
+acquired statesmanship, and fairly radiating geniality, Mr. Crewe stood
+at the foot of the steps while the guests made the circuit of the
+driveway; and they carefully avoided, in obedience to a warning sign, the
+grass circle in the centre.  As man and wife confronted him, Mr. Crewe
+greeted them in hospitable but stentorian tones that rose above the
+strains of "Don't you wish you'd Waited?"  It was Mr. Ball who introduced
+his townspeople to the great man who was to represent them.
+
+"How are you?" said Mr. Crewe, with his eyes on the geraniums.  "Mr. and
+Mrs. Perley Wright, eh?  Make yourselves at home.  Everything's free--
+you'll find the refreshments on the back porch--just have an eye to the
+signs posted round, that's all."  And Mr. and Mrs. Perley Wright,
+overwhelmed by such a welcome, would pass on into a back eddy of
+neighbours, where they would stick, staring at a sign requesting them
+please not to pick the flowers.
+
+"Can't somebody stir 'em up?" Mr. Crewe shouted in an interval when the
+band had stopped to gather strength for a new effort.  "Can't somebody
+move 'em round to see the cows and what's in the house and the automobile
+and the horses?  Move around the driveway, please.  It's so hot here you
+can't breathe.  Some of you wanted to see what was in the house.  Now's
+your chance."
+
+This graceful appeal had some temporary effect, but the congestion soon
+returned, when a man of the hour appeared, a man whose genius scattered
+the groups and who did more to make the party a success than any single
+individual,--Mr. Hamilton Tooting, in a glorious white silk necktie with
+purple flowers.
+
+"I'll handle 'em, Mr. Crewe," he said; "a little brains'll start 'em
+goin'.  Come along here, Mr. Wright, and I'll show you the best cows this
+side of the Hudson Riverall pedigreed prize winners.  Hello, Aust, you
+take hold and get the wimmen-folks interested in the cabinets.  You know
+where they are."
+
+"There's a person with some sense," remarked Mrs. Pomfret, who had been
+at a little distance among a group of summer-resident ladies and watching
+the affair with shining eyes.  "I'll help.  Come, Edith; come, Victoria
+where's Victoria?--and dear Mrs. Chillingham.  We American women are so
+deplorably lacking in this kind of experience.  Alice, take some of the
+women into the garden.  I'm going to interest that dear, benevolent man
+who looks so helpless, and doing his best to have a good time."
+
+The dear, benevolent man chanced to be Mr. Job Braden, who was standing
+somewhat apart with his hands in his pockets.  He did not move as Mrs.
+Pomfret approached him, holding her glasses to her eyes.
+
+"How are you?" exclaimed that lady, extending a white-gloved hand with a
+cordiality that astonished her friends.  "It is so pleasant to see you
+here, Mr.--Mr.--"
+
+"How be you?" said Mr. Braden, taking her fingers in the gingerly manner
+he would have handled one of Mr. Crewe's priceless curios.  The giraffe
+Mr. Barnum had once brought to Ripton was not half as interesting as this
+immaculate and mysterious production of foreign dressmakers and French
+maids, but he refrained from betraying it.  His eye rested on the
+lorgnette.
+
+"Near-sighted, be you?" he inquired,--a remark so unexpected that for the
+moment Mrs. Pomfret was deprived of speech.
+
+"I manage to see better with--with these," she gasped, "when we get old--
+you know."
+
+"You hain't old," said Mr. Braden, gallantly.  "If you be," he added, his
+eye travelling up and down the Parisian curves,  I wouldn't have
+suspected it--not a mite."
+
+"I'm afraid you are given to flattery, Mr.--Mr.--" she replied hurriedly.
+"Whom have I the pleasure of speaking to?"
+
+"Job Braden's my name," he answered, "but you have the advantage of me."
+
+"How?" demanded the thoroughly bewildered Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"I hain't heard your name," he said.
+
+"Oh, I'm Mrs. Pomfret--a very old friend of Mr. Crewe's.  Whenever he has
+his friends with him, like this, I come over and help him.  It is so
+difficult for a bachelor to entertain, Mr. Braden."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Braden, bending alarmingly near her ear, "there's one
+way out of it."
+
+"What's that?"  said Mrs. Pomfret.
+
+"Git married," declared Mr. Braden.
+
+"How very clever you are, Mr. Braden!  I wish poor dear Mr. Crewe would
+get married--a wife could take so many burdens off his shoulders.  You
+don't know Mr. Crewe very well, do you?"
+
+"Callate to--so so," said Mr. Braden.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret was at sea again.
+
+"I mean, do you see him often?"
+
+"Seen him once," said Mr. Braden.  "G-guess that's enough."
+
+"You're a shrewd judge of human nature, Mr. Braden," she replied, tapping
+him on the shoulder with the lorgnette, "but you can have no idea how
+good he is--how unceasingly he works for others.  He is not a man who
+gives much expression to his feelings, as no doubt you have discovered,
+but if you knew him as I do, you would realize how much affection he has
+for his country neighbours and how much he has their welfare at heart."
+
+"Loves 'em--does he--loves 'em?"
+
+"He is like an English gentleman in his sense of responsibility," said
+Mrs. Pomfret; "over there, you know, it is a part of a country
+gentleman's duty to improve the condition of his--his neighbours.  And
+then Mr. Crewe is so fond of his townspeople that he couldn't resist
+doing this for them," and she indicated with a sweep of her eyeglasses
+the beatitude with which they were surrounded.
+
+"Wahn't no occasion to," said Mr. Braden.
+
+"What!" cried Mrs. Pomfret, who had been walking on ice for some time.
+
+"This hain't England--is it?  Hain't England?"
+
+"No," she admitted, "but--"
+
+"Hain't England," said Mr. Braden, and leaned forward until he was within
+a very few inches of her pearl ear-ring.  "He'll be chose all right--d-
+don't fret--he'll be chose."
+
+"My dear Mr. Braden, I've no doubt of it--Mr. Crewe's so popular," she
+cried, removing her ear-ring abruptly from the danger zone.  "Do make
+yourself at home," she added, and retired from Mr. Braden's company a
+trifle disconcerted,--a new experience for Mrs. Pomfret.  She wondered
+whether all country people were like Mr. Braden, but decided, after
+another experiment or two, that he was an original.  More than once
+during the afternoon she caught sight of him, beaming upon the
+festivities around him.  But she did not renew the conversation.
+
+To Austen Vane, wandering about the grounds, Mr. Crewe's party presented
+a sociological problem of no small interest.  Mr. Crewe himself
+interested him, and he found himself speculating how far a man would go
+who charged the fastnesses of the politicians with a determination not to
+be denied and a bank account to be reckoned with.  Austen talked to many
+of the Leith farmers whom he had known from boyhood, thanks to his custom
+of roaming the hills; they were for the most part honest men whose
+occupation in life was the first thought, and they were content to leave
+politics to Mr. Braden--that being his profession.  To the most
+intelligent of these Mr. Crewe's garden-party was merely the wanton whim
+of a millionaire.  It was an open secret to them that Job Braden for
+reasons of his own had chosen Mr. Crewe to represent them, and they were
+mildly amused at the efforts of Mrs. Pomfret and her assistants to secure
+votes which were as certain as the sun's rising on the morrow.
+
+It was some time before Austen came upon the object of his search--though
+scarce admitting to himself that it had an object.  In greeting him,
+after inquiring about his railroad case, Mr. Crewe had indicated with a
+wave of his hand the general direction of the refreshments; but it was
+not until Austen had tried in all other quarters that he made his way
+towards the porch where the lemonade and cake and sandwiches were.  It
+was, after all, the most popular place, though to his mind the
+refreshments had little to do with its popularity.  From the outskirts of
+the crowd he perceived Victoria presiding over the punchbowl that held
+the lemonade.  He liked to think of her as Victoria; the name had no
+familiarity for him, but seemed rather to enhance the unattainable
+quality of her.
+
+Surrounding Victoria were several clean-looking, freckled, and tanned
+young men of undergraduate age wearing straw hats with coloured ribbons,
+who showed every eagerness to obey and even anticipate the orders she did
+not hesitate to give them.  Her eye seemed continually on the alert for
+those of Mr. Crewe's guests who were too bashful to come forward, and
+discerning them she would send one of her lieutenants forward with
+supplies.  Sometimes she would go herself to the older people; and once,
+perceiving a tired woman holding a baby (so many brought babies, being
+unable to leave them), Victoria impulsively left her post and seized the
+woman by the arm.
+
+"Do come and sit down," she cried; "there's a chair beside me.  And oh,
+what a nice baby!  Won't you let me hold him?"
+
+"Why, yes, ma'am," said the woman, looking up at Victoria with grateful,
+patient eyes, and then with awe at what seemed to her the priceless
+embroidery on Victoria's waist, "won't he spoil your dress?"
+
+"Bless him, no," said Victoria, poking her finger into a dimple--for he
+was smiling at her.  "What if he does?" and forthwith she seized him in
+her arms and bore him to the porch, amidst the laughter of those who
+beheld her, and sat him down on her knee in front of the lemonade bowl,
+the tired mother beside her.  "Will a little lemonade hurt him?  Just a
+very, very little, you know?"
+
+"Why, no, ma'am," said the mother.
+
+"And just a teeny bit of cake," begged Victoria, daintily breaking off a
+piece, while the baby gurgled and snatched for it.  "Do tell me how old
+he is, and how many more you have."
+
+"He's eleven months on the twenty-seventh," said the mother, "and I've
+got four more."  She sighed, her eyes wandering back to the embroidery.
+"What between them and the housework and the butter makin', it hain't
+easy.  Be you married?"
+
+"No," said Victoria, laughing and blushing a little.
+
+"You'll make a good wife for somebody," said the woman.  "I hope you'll
+get a good man."
+
+"I hope so, too," said Victoria, blushing still deeper amidst the
+laughter, "but there doesn't seem to be much chance of it, and good men
+are very scarce."
+
+"I guess you're right," said the mother, soberly.  "Not but what my man's
+good enough, but he don't seem to get along, somehow.  The farm's wore
+out, and the mortgage comes around so regular."
+
+"Where do you live?" asked Victoria, suddenly growing serious.
+
+"Fitch's place.  'Tain't very far from the Four Corners, on the Avalon
+road."
+
+"And you are Mrs. Fitch?"
+
+"Callate to be," said the mother.  "If it ain't askin' too much, I'd like
+to know your name."
+
+"I'm Victoria Flint.  I live not very far from the Four Corners--that is,
+about eight miles.  May I come over and see you sometime?"
+
+Although Victoria said this very simply, the mother's eyes widened until
+one might almost have said they expressed a kind of terror.
+
+"Land sakes alive, be you Mr. Flint's daughter?  I might have knowed it
+from the lace--that dress must have cost a fortune.  But I didn't think
+to find you so common."
+
+Victoria did not smile.  She had heard the word "common" so used before,
+and knew that it was meant for a compliment, and she turned to the woman
+with a very expressive light in her eyes.
+
+"I will come to see you--this very week," she said.  And just then her
+glance, seemingly drawn in a certain direction, met that of a tall young
+man which had been fixed upon her during the whole of this scene.  She
+coloured again, abruptly handed the baby back to his mother, and rose.
+
+"I'm neglecting all these people," she said, "but do sit there and rest
+yourself and--have some more lemonade."
+
+She bowed to Austen, and smiled a little as she filled the glasses, but
+she did not beckon him.  She gave no further sign of her knowledge of his
+presence until he stood beside her--and then she looked up at him.
+
+"I have been looking for you, Miss Flint," he said.
+
+"I suppose a man would never think of trying the obvious places first,"
+she replied.  "Hastings, don't you see that poor old woman over there?
+She looks so thirsty--give her this."
+
+The boy addressed, with a glance at Austen, did as he was bid, and she
+sent off a second on another errand.
+
+"Let me help," said Austen, seizing the cake; and being seized at the
+same time, by an unusual and inexplicable tremor of shyness, thrust it at
+the baby.
+
+"Oh, he can't have anymore; do you want to kill him?" cried Victoria,
+seizing the plate, and adding mischievously, "I don't believe you're of
+very much use--after all!"
+
+"Then it's time I learned," said Austen.  "Here's Mr. Jenney.  I'm sure
+he'll have a piece."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Jenney, the same Mr. Jenney of the apple orchard, but
+holding out a horny hand with unmistakable warmth, "how be you, Austen?"
+Looking about him, Mr. Jenney put his hand to his mouth, and added,
+"Didn't expect to see you trailin' on to this here kite."  He took a
+piece of cake between his thumb and forefinger and glanced bashfully at
+Victoria.
+
+"Have some lemonade, Mr. Jenney?  Do," she urged.
+
+"Well, I don't care if I do," he said, "just a little mite."  He did not
+attempt to stop her as she filled the glass to the brim, but continued to
+regard her with a mixture of curiosity and admiration.  "Seen you nursin'
+the baby and makin' folks at home.  Guess you have the knack of it
+better'n some I could mention."
+
+This was such a palpable stroke at their host that Victoria laughed, and
+made haste to turn the subject from herself.
+
+"Mr. Vane seems to be an old friend of yours," she said.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Jenney, laying his hand on Austen's shoulder, "I callate
+he is.  Austen's broke in more'n one of my colts afore he went West and
+shot that feller.  He's as good a judge of horse-flesh as any man in this
+part of the State.  Hear Tom Gaylord and the boys wanted him to be State
+senator."
+
+"Why didn't you accept, Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Because I don't think the boys could have elected me," answered Austen,
+laughing.
+
+"He's as popular a man as there is in the county," declared Mr. Jenney.
+He was a mite wild as a boy, but sence he's sobered down and won that
+case against the railrud, he could get any office he'd a mind to.  He's
+always adoin' little things for folks, Austen is."
+
+"Did--did that case against the railroad make him so popular?" asked
+Victoria, glancing at Austen's broad back--for he had made his escape
+with the cake.
+
+"I guess it helped considerable," Mr. Jenney admitted.
+
+"Why?" asked Victoria.
+
+"Well, it was a fearless thing to do--plumb against his own interests
+with old Hilary Vane.  Austen's a bright lawyer, and I have heard it said
+he was in line for his father's place as counsel."
+
+"Do--do people dislike the railroad?"
+
+Mr. Jenney rubbed his beard thoughtfully.  He began to wonder who this
+young woman was, and a racial caution seized him.
+
+"Well," he said, "folks has an idea the railrud runs this State to suit
+themselves.  I guess they hain't far wrong.  I've be'n to the Legislature
+and seen some signs of it.  Why, Hilary Vane himself has charge of the
+most considerable part of the politics.  Who be you?" Mr. Jenney demanded
+suddenly.
+
+"I'm Victoria Flint," said Victoria.
+
+"Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Jenney, "you don't say so!  I might have known
+it--seen you on the rud more than once.  But I don't know all you rich
+folks apart.  Wouldn't have spoke so frank if I'd knowed who you was."
+
+"I'm glad you did, Mr. Jenney," she answered.   "I wanted to know what
+people think."
+
+"Well, it's almighty complicated," said Mr. Jenney, shaking his head.  "I
+don't know by rights what to think.  As long as I've said what I have,
+I'll say this: that the politicians is all for the railrud, and I hain't
+got a mite of use for the politicians.  I'll vote for a feller like
+Austen Vane every time, if he'll run, and I know other folks that will."
+
+After Mr. Jenney had left her, Victoria stood motionless, gazing off into
+the haze, until she was startled by the voice of Hastings Weare beside
+her.
+
+"Say, Victoria, who is that man?" he asked.
+
+"What man?"
+
+Hastings nodded towards Austen, who, with a cake basket in his hand,
+stood chatting with a group of country people on the edge of the porch.
+
+"Oh, that man!" said Victoria.  "His name's Austen Vane, and he's a
+lawyer in Ripton."
+
+"All I can say is," replied Hastings, with a light in his face, "he's one
+I'd like to tie to.  I'll bet he could whip any four men you could pick
+out."
+
+Considering that Hastings had himself proposed--although in a very mild
+form--more than once to Victoria, this was generous.
+
+"I daresay he could," she agreed absently.
+
+"It isn't only the way he's built," persisted Hastings, "he looks as if
+he were going to be somebody some day.  Introduce me to him, will you?"
+
+"Certainly," said Victoria.  "Mr. Vane," she called, "I want to introduce
+an admirer, Mr. Hastings Weare."
+
+"I just wanted to know you," said Hastings, reddening, "and Victoria--I
+mean Miss Flint--said she'd introduce me."
+
+"I'm much obliged to her," said Austen, smiling.
+
+"Are you in politics?" asked Hastings.
+
+"I'm afraid not," answered Austen, with a glance at Victoria.
+
+"You're not helping Humphrey Crewe, are you?"
+
+"No," said Austen, and added with an illuminating smile, "Mr. Crewe
+doesn't need any help."
+
+"I'm glad you're not," exclaimed the downright Hastings, with palpable
+relief in his voice that an idol had not been shattered.  "I think
+Humphrey's a fakir, and all this sort of thing tommyrot.  He wouldn't get
+my vote by giving me lemonade and cake and letting me look at his cows.
+If you ever run for office, I'd like to cast it for you.  My father is
+only a summer resident, but since he has gone out of business he stays
+here till Christmas, and I'll be twenty-one in a year."
+
+Austen had ceased to smile; he was looking into the boy's eyes with that
+serious expression which men and women found irresistible.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Weare," he said simply.
+
+Hastings was suddenly overcome with the shyness of youth.  He held out
+his hand, and said, "I'm awfully glad to have met you," and fled.
+
+Victoria, who had looked on with a curious mixture of feelings, turned to
+Austen.
+
+"That was a real tribute," she said.   "Is this the way you affect
+everybody whom you meet?"
+
+They were standing almost alone.  The sun was nearing the western hills
+beyond the river, and people had for some time been wending their way
+towards the field where the horses were tied.  He did not answer her
+question, but asked one instead.
+
+"Will you let me drive you home?"
+
+"Do you think you deserve to, after the shameful manner in which you have
+behaved?"
+
+"I'm quite sure that I don't deserve to," he answered, still looking down
+at her.
+
+"If you did deserve to, being a woman, I probably shouldn't let you,"
+said Victoria, flashing a look upwards; "as it is, you may."
+
+His face lighted, but she halted in the grass, with her hands behind her,
+and stared at him with a puzzled expression.
+
+"I'm sure you're a dangerous man," she declared.  "First you take in poor
+little Hastings, and now you're trying to take me in."
+
+"Then I wish I were still more dangerous," he laughed, "for apparently I
+haven't succeeded."
+
+"I want to talk to you seriously," said Victoria; "that is the only
+reason I'm permitting you to drive me home."
+
+"I am devoutly thankful for the reason then," he said,--"my horse is tied
+in the field."
+
+"And aren't you going to say good-by to your host and hostess?"
+
+"Hostess?" he repeated, puzzled.
+
+"Hostesses," she corrected herself, "Mrs. Pomfret and Alice.  I thought
+you had eyes in your head," she added, with a fleeting glance at them.
+
+"Is Crewe engaged to Miss Pomfret?" he asked.
+
+"Are all men simpletons?" said Victoria.  "He doesn't know it yet, but he
+is."
+
+"I think I'd know it, if I were," said Austen, with an emphasis that made
+her laugh.
+
+"Sometimes fish don't know they're in a net until--until the morning
+after," said Victoria.  "That has a horribly dissipated sound--hasn't it?
+I know to a moral certainty that Mr. Crewe will eventually lead Miss
+Pomfret away from the altar.  At present," she could not refrain from
+adding, "he thinks he's in love with some one else."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"It doesn't matter," she replied.  "Humphrey's perfectly happy, because
+he believes most women are in love with him, and he's making up his mind
+in that magnificent, thorough way of his whether she is worthy to be
+endowed with his heart and hand, his cows, and all his stocks and bonds.
+He doesn't know he's going to marry Alice.  It almost makes one a
+Calvinist, doesn't it.  He's predestined, but perfectly happy."
+
+"Who is he in love with?" demanded Austen, ungrammatically.
+
+"I'm going to say good-by to him.  I'll meet you in the field, if you
+don't care to come.  It's only manners, after all, although the
+lemonade's all gone and I haven't had a drop."
+
+"I'll go along too," he said.
+
+"Aren't you afraid of Mrs. Pomfret?"
+
+"Not a bit!"
+
+"I am," said Victoria, "but I think you'd better come just the same."
+
+Around the corner of the house they found them,--Mr. Crewe urging the
+departing guests to remain, and not to be bashful in the future about
+calling.
+
+"We don't always have lemonade and cake," he was saying, "but you can be
+sure of a welcome, just the same.  Good-by, Vane, glad you came.  Did
+they show you through the stables?  Did you see the mate to the horse I
+lost?  Beauty, isn't he?  Stir 'em up and get the money.  I guess we
+won't see much of each other politically.  You're anti-railroad.  I don't
+believe that tack'll work--we can't get along without corporations, you
+know.  You ought to talk to Flint.  I'll give you a letter of
+introduction to him.  I don't know what I'd have done without that man
+Tooting in your father's office.  He's a wasted genius in Ripton.  What?
+Good-by, you'll find your wagon, I guess.  Well, Victoria, where have you
+been keeping yourself?  I've been so busy I haven't had time to look for
+you.  You're going to stay to dinner, and Hastings, and all the people
+who have helped."
+
+"No, I'm not," answered Victoria, with a glance at Austen, before whom
+this announcement was so delicately made, "I'm going home."
+
+"But when am I to see you?" cried Mr. Crewe, as near genuine alarm as he
+ever got.   You never let me see you.  I was going to drive you home in
+the motor by moonlight."
+
+"We all know that you're the most original person, Victoria," said Mrs.
+Pomfret, "full of whims and strange fancies," she added, with the only
+brief look at Austen she had deigned to bestow on him.  "It never pays to
+count on you for twenty-four hours.  I suppose you're off on another wild
+expedition."
+
+"I think I've earned the right to it," said Victoria;--
+
+I've poured lemonade for Humphrey's constituents the whole afternoon.
+And besides, I never said I'd stay for dinner.  I'm going home.  Father's
+leaving for California in the morning."
+
+"He'd better stay at home and look after her," Mrs. Pomfret remarked,
+when Victoria was out of hearing.
+
+Since Mrs. Harry Haynes ran off, one can never tell what a woman will do.
+It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Victoria eloped with a handsome nobody
+like that.  Of course he's after her money, but he wouldn't get it, not
+if I know Augustus Flint."
+
+"Is he handsome?" said Mr. Crewe, as though the idea were a new one.
+"Great Scott, I don't believe she gives him a thought.  She's only going
+as far as the field with him.  She insisted on leaving her horse there
+instead of putting him in the stable."
+
+"Catch Alice going as far as the field with him," said Mrs. Pomfret, "but
+I've done my duty.  It's none of my affair."
+
+In the meantime Austen and Victoria had walked on some distance in
+silence.
+
+"I have an idea with whom Mr. Crewe is in love," he said at length.
+
+"So have I," replied Victoria, promptly.  "Humphrey's in love with
+himself.  All he desires in a wife--if he desires one--is an inanimate
+and accommodating looking-glass, in whom he may see what he conceives to
+be his own image daily.  James, you may take the mare home.  I'm going to
+drive with Mr. Vane."
+
+She stroked Pepper's nose while Austen undid the hitch-rope from around
+his neck.
+
+"You and I are getting to be friends, aren't we, Pepper?" she asked, as
+the horse, with quivering nostrils, thrust his head into her hand.  Then
+she sprang lightly into the buggy by Austen's side.  The manner of these
+acts and the generous courage with which she defied opinion appealed to
+him so strongly that his heart was beating faster than Pepper's hoof-
+beats on the turf of the pasture.
+
+"You are very good to come with me," he said gravely, when they had
+reached the road; "perhaps I ought not to have asked you."
+
+"Why?" she asked, with one of her direct looks.
+
+"It was undoubtedly selfish," he said, and added, more lightly, "I don't
+wish to put you into Mrs. Pomfret's bad graces."
+
+Victoria laughed.
+
+"She thought it her duty to tell father the time you drove me to the
+Hammonds'.  She said I asked you to do it."
+
+"What did he say?" Austen inquired, looking straight ahead of him.
+
+"He didn't say much," she answered.  "Father never does.  I think he
+knows that I am to be trusted."
+
+"Even with me?" he asked quizzically, but with a deeper significance.
+
+"I don't think he realizes how dangerous you are," she replied, avoiding
+the issue.  "The last time I saw you, you were actually trying to throw a
+fat man out of your window.  What a violent life you lead, Mr. Vane.  I
+hope you haven't shot any more people--"
+
+"I saw you," he said.
+
+"Is that the way you spend your time in office hours,--throwing people
+out of the windows?"
+
+"It was only Tom Gaylord."
+
+"He's the man Mr. Jenney said wanted you to be a senator, isn't he?" she
+asked.
+
+"You have a good memory," he answered her.  "Yes.  That's the reason I
+tried to throw him out of the window."
+
+"Why didn't you be a senator?" she asked abruptly.  "I always think of
+you in public life.  Why waste your opportunities?"
+
+"I'm not at all sure that was an opportunity.  It was only some of Tom's
+nonsense.  I should have had all the politicians in the district against
+me."
+
+"But you aren't the kind of man who would care about the politicians,
+surely.  If Humphrey Crewe can get elected by the people, I should think
+you might."
+
+"I can't afford to give garden-parties and buy lemonade," said Austen,
+and they both laughed.  He did not think it worth while mentioning Mr.
+Braden.
+
+"Sometimes I think you haven't a particle of ambition," she said.  "I
+like men with ambition."
+
+"I shall try to cultivate it," said Austen.
+
+"You seem to be popular enough."
+
+"Most worthless people are popular, because they don't tread on anybody's
+toes."
+
+"Worthless people don't take up poor people's suits, and win them," she
+said.  "I saw Zeb Meader the other day, and he said you could be
+President of the United States."
+
+"Zeb meant that I was eligible--having been born in this country," said
+Austen.  "But where did you see him?"
+
+"I--I went to see him."
+
+"All the way to Mercer?"
+
+"It isn't so far in an automobile," she replied, as though in excuse, and
+added, still more lamely, "Zeb and I became great friends, you know, in
+the hospital."
+
+He did not answer, but wondered the more at the simplicity and kindness
+in one brought up as she had been which prompted her to take the trouble
+to see the humblest of her friends: nay, to take the trouble to have
+humble friends.
+
+The road wound along a ridge, and at intervals was spread before them the
+full glory of the September sunset,--the mountains of the west in blue-
+black silhouette against the saffron sky, the myriad dappled clouds, the
+crimson fading from the still reaches of the river, and the wine-colour
+from the eastern hills.  Both were silent under the spell, but a yearning
+arose within him when he glanced at the sunset glow on her face: would
+sunsets hereafter bring sadness?
+
+His thoughts ran riot as the light faded in the west.  Hers were not
+revealed.  And the silence between them seemed gradually to grow into a
+pact, to become a subtler and more intimate element than speech.  A faint
+tang of autumn smoke was in the air, a white mist crept along the running
+waters, a silver moon like a new-stamped coin rode triumphant in the sky,
+impatient to proclaim her glory; and the shadows under the ghost-like
+sentinel trees in the pastures grew blacker.  At last Victoria looked at
+him.
+
+"You are the only man I know who doesn't insist on talking," she said.
+There are times when--"
+
+"When there is nothing to say," he suggested.
+
+She laughed softly.  He tried to remember the sound of it afterwards,
+when he rehearsed this phase of the conversation, but couldn't.
+
+"It's because you like the hills, isn't it?" she asked.  "You seem such
+an out-of-door person, and Mr. Jenney said you were always wandering
+about the country-side."
+
+"Mr. Jenney also made other reflections about my youth," said Austen.
+
+She laughed again, acquiescing in his humour, secretly thankful not to
+find him sentimental.
+
+"Mr. Jenney said something else that--that I wanted to ask you about,"
+she went on, breathing more deeply.  "It was about the railroad."
+
+"I am afraid you have not come to an authority," he replied.
+
+"You said the politicians would be against you if you tried to become a
+State senator.  Do you believe that the politicians are owned by the
+railroad?"
+
+"Has Jenney been putting such things into your head?"
+
+"Not only Mr. Jenney, but--I have heard other people say that.  And
+Humphrey Crewe said that you hadn't a chance politically, because you had
+opposed the railroad and had gone against your own interests."
+
+Austen was amazed at this new exhibition of courage on her part, though
+he was sorely pressed.
+
+"Humphrey Crewe isn't much of an authority, either," he said briefly.
+
+"Then you won't tell me?" said Victoria.  "Oh, Mr. Vane," she cried, with
+sudden vehemence, "if such things are going on here, I'm sure my father
+doesn't know about them.  This is only one State, and the railroad runs
+through so many.  He can't know everything, and I have heard him say that
+he wasn't responsible for what the politicians did in his name.  If they
+are bad, why don't you go to him and tell him so?  I'm sure he'd listen
+to you."
+
+"I'm sure he'd think me a presumptuous idiot," said Austen.  "Politicians
+are not idealists anywhere--the very word has become a term of reproach.
+Undoubtedly your father desires to set things right as much as any one
+else--probably more than any one."
+
+"Oh, I know he does," exclaimed Victoria.
+
+"If politics are not all that they should be," he went on, somewhat
+grimly, with an unpleasant feeling of hypocrisy, "we must remember that
+they are nobody's fault in particular, and can't be set right in an
+instant by any one man, no matter how powerful."
+
+She turned her face to him gratefully, but he did not meet her look.
+They were on the driveway of Fairview.
+
+"I suppose you think me very silly for asking such questions," she said.
+
+"No," he answered gravely, "but politics are so intricate a subject that
+they are often not understood by those who are in the midst of them.  I
+admire--I think it is very fine in you to want to know."
+
+"You are not one of the men who would not wish a woman to know, are you?"
+
+"No," he said, "no, I'm not."
+
+The note of pain in his voice surprised and troubled her.  They were
+almost in sight of the house.
+
+"I asked you to come to Fairview," she said, assuming a lightness of
+tone, "and you never appeared.  I thought it was horrid of you to forget,
+after we'd been such friends."
+
+"I didn't forget," replied Austen.
+
+"Then you didn't want to come."
+
+He looked into her eyes, and she dropped them.
+
+"You will have to be the best judge of that," he said.
+
+"But what am I to think?" she persisted.
+
+"Think the best of me you can," he answered, as they drew up on the
+gravel before the open door of Fairview house.  A man was standing in the
+moonlight on the porch.
+
+"Is that you, Victoria?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"I was getting worried," said Mr. Flint, coming down on the driveway.
+
+"I'm all right," she said, leaping out of the buggy, "Mr. Vane brought me
+home."
+
+"How are you, Hilary?" said Mr. Flint.
+
+"I'm Austen Vane, Mr. Flint," said Austen.
+
+"How are you?" said Mr. Flint, as curtly as the barest politeness
+allowed.  "What was the matter with your own horse, Victoria?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied, after an instant's pause.  Austen wondered many
+times whether her lips had trembled.  "Mr. Vane asked me to drive with
+him, and I came.  Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Vane?"
+
+"No, thanks," said Austen, "I'm afraid I have to go back to Ripton."
+
+"Good-by, and thank you," she said, and gave him her hand.  As he pressed
+it, he thought he felt the slightest pressure in return, and then she
+fled up the steps.  As he drove away, he turned once to look at the great
+house, with its shades closely drawn, as it stood amidst its setting of
+shrubbery silent under the moon.
+
+An hour later he sat in Hanover Street before the supper Euphrasia had
+saved for him.  But though he tried nobly, his heart was not in the
+relation, for her benefit, of Mr. Crewe's garden-party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Mr. CREWE ASSAULTS THE CAPITAL
+
+Those portions of the biographies of great men which deal with the small
+beginnings of careers are always eagerly devoured, and for this reason
+the humble entry of Mr. Crewe into politics may be of interest.  Great
+revolutions have had their origins in back cellars; great builders of
+railroads have begun life with packs on their shoulders, trudging over
+the wilderness which they were to traverse in after years in private
+cars.  The history of Napoleon Bonaparte has not a Sunday-school moral,
+but we can trace therein the results of industry after the future emperor
+got started.  Industry, and the motto "nil desperandum" lived up to, and
+the watchword "thorough," and a torch of unsuspected genius, and
+"l'audace, toujours l'audace," and a man may go far in life.
+
+Mr. Humphrey Crewe possessed, as may have been surmised, a dash of all
+these gifts.  For a summary of his character one would not have used the
+phrase (as a contemporary of his remarked) of "a shrinking violet."  The
+phrase, after all, would have fitted very few great men; genius is sure
+of itself, and seeks its peers.
+
+The State capital is an old and beautiful and somewhat conservative town.
+Life there has its joys and sorrows and passions, its ambitions, and
+heart-burnings, to be sure; a most absorbing novel could be written about
+it, and the author need not go beyond the city limits or approach the
+state-house or the Pelican Hotel.  The casual visitor in that capital
+leaves it with a sense of peace, the echo of church bells in his ear, and
+(if in winter) the impression of dazzling snow.   Comedies do not
+necessarily require a wide stage, nor tragedies an amphitheatre for their
+enactment.
+
+No casual visitor, for instance, would have suspected from the faces or
+remarks of the inhabitants whom he chanced to meet that there was
+excitement in the capital over the prospective arrival of Mr. Humphrey
+Crewe for the legislative session that winter.  Legislative sessions, be
+it known, no longer took place in the summer, a great relief to Mr. Crewe
+and to farmers in general, who wished to be at home in haying time.
+
+The capital abounded in comfortable homes and boasted not a dwellings of
+larger pretensions.  Chief among these was the Duncan house--still so
+called, although Mr. Duncan, who built it, had been dead these fifteen
+years, and his daughter and heiress, Janet, had married an Italian
+Marquis and lived in a Roman palace, rehabilitated by the Duncan money.
+Mr. Duncan, it may be recalled by some readers of "Coniston," had been a
+notable man in his day, who had married the heiress of the State, and was
+president of the Central Railroad, now absorbed in the United
+Northeastern.  The house was a great square of brick, with a wide
+cornice, surrounded by a shaded lawn; solidly built, in the fashion of
+the days when rich people stayed at home, with a conservatory and a
+library that had once been Mr. Duncan's pride.  The Marchesa cared very
+little about the library, or about the house, for that matter; a great
+aunt and uncle, spinster and bachelor, were living in it that winter, and
+they vacated for Mr. Crewe.  He travelled to the capital on the
+legislative pass the Northeastern Railroads had so kindly given him, and
+brought down his horses and his secretary and servants from Leith a few
+days before the first of January, when the session was to open, and laid
+out his bills for the betterment of the State on that library table where
+Mr. Duncan had lovingly thumbed his folios.  Mr. Crewe, with
+characteristic promptitude, set his secretary to work to make a list of
+the persons of influence in the town, preparatory to a series of dinner-
+parties; he dropped into the office of Mr. Ridout, the counsel of the
+Northeastern and of the Winona Corporation in the capital, to pay his
+respects as a man of affairs, and incidentally to leave copies of his
+bills for the improvement of the State.  Mr. Ridout was politely
+interested, and promised to read the bills, and agreed that they ought to
+pass.
+
+Mr. Crewe also examined the Pelican Hotel, so soon to be a hive, and
+stood between the snow-banks in the capital park contemplating the statue
+of the great statesman there, and repeating to himself the quotation
+inscribed beneath.  "The People's Government, made for the People, made
+by the People, and answerable to the People."  And he wondered, idly,--
+for the day was not cold,--how he would look upon a pedestal with the
+Gladstone collar and the rough woollen coat that would lend themselves so
+readily to reproduction in marble.  Stranger things had happened, and
+grateful States had been known to reward benefactors.
+
+At length comes the gala night of nights,--the last of the old year,--and
+the assembling of the five hundred legislators and of the army that is
+wont to attend them.  The afternoon trains, steaming hot, are crowded to
+the doors, the station a scene of animation, and Main Street, dazzling in
+snow, is alive with a stream of men, with eddies here and there at the
+curbs and in the entries.  What handshaking, and looking over of new
+faces, and walking round and round!  What sightseeing by the country
+members and their wives who have come to attend the inauguration of the
+new governor, the Honourable Asa P. Gray!  There he is, with the whiskers
+and the tall hat and the comfortable face, which wears already a look of
+gubernatorial dignity and power.  He stands for a moment in the lobby of
+the Pelican Hotel,--thronged now to suffocation,--to shake hands genially
+with new friends, who are led up by old friends with two fingers on the
+elbow.  The old friends crack jokes and whisper in the ear of the
+governor-to-be, who presently goes upstairs, accompanied by the
+Honourable Hilary Vane, to the bridal suite, which is reserved for him,
+and which has fire-proof carpet on the floor.  The Honourable Hilary has
+a room next door, connecting with the new governor's by folding doors,
+but this fact is not generally known to country members.  Only old
+timers, like Bijah Bixby and Job Braden, know that the Honourable
+Hilary's room corresponds to one which in the old Pelican was called the
+Throne Room, Number Seven, where Jethro Bass sat in the old days and
+watched unceasingly the groups in the street from the window.
+
+But Jethro Bass has been dead these twenty years, and his lieutenants
+shorn of power.  An empire has arisen out of the ashes of the ancient
+kingdoms.  Bijah and Job are old, all-powerful still in Clovelly and
+Leith--influential still in their own estimations; still kicking up their
+heels behind, still stuttering and whispering into ears, still "going
+along by when they are talking sly."  But there are no guerrillas now, no
+condottieri who can be hired: the empire has a paid and standing army, as
+an empire should.  The North Country chiefs, so powerful in the clan
+warfare of bygone days, are generals now,--chiefs of staff.  The captain-
+general, with a minute piece of Honey Dew under his tongue, sits in
+Number Seven.  A new Number Seven,--with electric lights and a bathroom
+and a brass bed.  Tempora mutantur.  There is an empire and a feudal
+system, did one but know it.  The clans are part of the empire, and each
+chief is responsible for his clan--did one but know it.  One doesn't know
+it.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, Duke of Putnam, member of the House, has
+arrived unostentatiously--as is his custom--and is seated in his own
+headquarters, number ten (with a bathroom).  Number nine belongs from
+year to year to Mr. Manning, division superintendent of that part of the
+Northeastern which was the old Central,--a thin gentleman with side-
+whiskers.  He loves life in the capital so much that he takes his
+vacations there in the winter,--during the sessions of the Legislature,--
+presumably because it is gay.  There are other rooms, higher up, of
+important men, to be sure, but to enter which it is not so much of an
+honour.  The Honourable Bill Fleming, postmaster of Brampton in Truro
+(Ephraim Prescott being long since dead and Brampton a large place now),
+has his vacation during the session in room thirty-six (no bathroom); and
+the Honourable Elisha Jane, Earl of Haines County in the North Country,
+and United States consul somewhere, is home on his annual vacation in
+room fifty-nine (no bath).  Senator Whitredge has a room, and Senator
+Green, and Congressmen Eldridge and Fairplay (no baths, and only
+temporary).
+
+The five hundred who during the next three months are to register the
+laws find quarters as best they can.  Not all of them are as luxurious as
+Mr. Crewe in the Duncan house, or the Honourable Brush Bascom in number
+ten of the Pelican, the rent of either of which would swallow the
+legislative salary in no time.  The Honourable Nat Billings, senator from
+the Putnam County district, is comfortably installed, to be sure.  By
+gradual and unexplained degrees, the constitution of the State has been
+changed until there are only twenty senators.  Noble five hundred!
+Steadfast twenty!
+
+A careful perusal of the biographies of great men of the dynamic type
+leads one to the conclusion that much of their success is due to an
+assiduous improvement of every opportunity,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe
+certainly possessed this quality, also.  He is in the Pelican Hotel this
+evening, meeting the men that count.  Mr. Job Braden, who had come down
+with the idea that he might be of use in introducing the new member from
+Leith to the notables, was met by this remark:--
+
+"You can't introduce me to any of 'em--they all know who I am.  Just
+point any of 'em out you think I ought to know, and I'll go up and talk
+to 'em.  What?  Come up to my house after a while and smoke a cigar.  The
+Duncan house, you know--the big one with the conservatory."
+
+Mr. Crewe was right--they all knew him.  The Leith millionaire, the
+summer resident, was a new factor in politics, and the rumours of the
+size of his fortune had reached a high-water mark in the Pelican Hotel
+that evening.  Pushing through the crowd in the corridor outside the
+bridal suite waiting to shake hands with the new governor, Mr. Crewe
+gained an entrance in no time, and did not hesitate to interrupt the
+somewhat protracted felicitations of an Irish member of the Newcastle
+delegation.
+
+"How are you, Governor?" he said, with the bonhomie of a man of the
+world.  "I'm Humphrey Crewe, from Leith.  You got a letter from me,
+didn't you, congratulating you upon your election?  We didn't do badly
+for you up there.  What?"
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" said Mr. Gray, with dignified hospitality,
+while their fingers slid over each other's; "I'm glad to welcome you
+here.  I've noticed the interest you've taken in the State, and the
+number of ahem--very useful societies to which you belong."
+
+"Good," said Mr. Crewe, "I do what I can.  I just dropped in to shake
+your hand, and to say that I hope we'll pull together."
+
+The governor lifted his eyebrows a little.
+
+"Why, I hope so, I'm sere, Mr. Crewe," said he.
+
+"I've looked over the policy of the State for the last twenty years in
+regard to public improvements and the introduction of modern methods as
+concerns husbandry, and I find it deplorable.  You and I, Governor, live
+in a progressive age, and we can't afford not to see something done.
+What?  It is my desire to do what I can to help make your administration
+a notable advance upon those of your predecessors."
+
+"Why--I greatly appreciate it, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Gray.
+
+"I'm sure you do.  I've looked over your record, and I find you've had
+experience in State affairs, and that you are a successful and
+conservative business man.  That is the type we want--eh?  Business men.
+You've read over the bills I sent you by registered mail?"
+
+"Ahem," said Mr. Gray, "I've been a good deal occupied since election
+day, Mr. Crewe."
+
+"Read 'em," said Mr. Crewe, "and I'll call in on you at the state-house
+day after to-morrow at five o'clock promptly.  We'll discuss 'em,
+Governor, and if, by the light of your legislative experience, you have
+any suggestions to make, I shall be glad to hear 'em.  Before putting the
+bills in their final shape I've taken the trouble to go over them with my
+friend, Mr. Flint--our mutual friend, let us say."
+
+"I've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Flint," said Mr. Gray.  "I--ahem--
+can't say that I know him intimately."
+
+Mr. Crewe looked at Mr. Gray in a manner which plainly indicated that he
+was not an infant.
+
+"My relations with Mr. Flint and the Northeastern have been very
+pleasant," said Mr. Crewe.  "I may say that I am somewhat of a practical
+railroad and business man myself."
+
+"We need such men," said Mr. Gray.  "Why, how do you do, Cary?  How are
+the boys up in Wheeler?"
+
+"Well, good-by, Governor.  See you day after to-morrow at five
+precisely," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+The next official call of Mr. Crewe was on the Speaker-to-be, Mr. Doby of
+Hale (for such matters are cut and dried), but any amount of pounding on
+Mr. Doby's door (number seventy-five) brought no response.  Other rural
+members besides Mr. Crewe came and pounded on that door, and went away
+again; but Mr. Job Braden suddenly appeared from another part of the
+corridor, smiling benignly, and apparently not resenting the refusal of
+his previous offers of help.
+
+"W--want the Speaker?" he inquired.
+
+Mr. Crewe acknowledged that he did.
+
+"Ed only sleeps there," said Mr. Braden.  "Guess you'll find him in the
+Railroad-Room."
+
+"Railroad Room?"
+
+"Hilary Vane's, Number Seven."  Mr. Braden took hold of the lapel of his
+fellow-townsman's coat.  "Callated you didn't know it all," he said;
+"that's the reason I come down--so's to help you some."
+
+Mr. Crewe, although he was not wont to take a second place, followed Mr.
+Braden down the stairs to the door next to the governor's, where he
+pushed ahead of his guide, through the group about the doorway,--none of
+whom, however, were attempting to enter.  They stared in some surprise at
+Mr. Crewe as he flung open the door without knocking, and slammed it
+behind him in Mr. Braden's face.  But the bewilderment caused by this act
+of those without was as nothing to the astonishment of those within--had
+Mr. Crewe but known it.  An oil painting of the prominent men gathered
+about the marble-topped table in the centre of the room, with an outline
+key beneath it, would have been an appropriate work of art to hang in the
+state-house, as emblematic of the statesmanship of the past twenty years.
+The Honourable Hilary Vane sat at one end in a padded chair; Mr. Manning,
+the division superintendent, startled out of a meditation, was upright on
+the end of the bed; Mr. Ridout, the Northeastern's capital lawyer, was
+figuring at the other end of the table; the Honourable Brush Bascom was
+bending over a wide, sad-faced gentleman of some two hundred and fifty
+pounds who sat at the centre in his shirt-sleeves, poring over numerous
+sheets in front of him which were covered with names of the five hundred.
+This gentleman was the Honourable Edward Doby of Hale, who, with the kind
+assistance of the other gentlemen above-named, was in this secluded spot
+making up a list of his committees, undisturbed by eager country members.
+At Mr. Crewe's entrance Mr. Bascom, with great presence of mind, laid
+down his hat over the principal list, while Mr. Ridout, taking the hint,
+put the Revised Statutes on the other.  There was a short silence; and
+the Speaker-to-be, whose pencil had been knocked out of his hand;
+recovered himself sufficiently to relight an extremely frayed cigar.
+
+Not that Mr. Crewe was in the least abashed.  He chose this opportunity
+to make a survey of the situation, nodded to Mr. Ridout, and walked up to
+the padded armchair.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Vane?" he said.  "I thought I'd drop in to shake hands
+with you, especially as I have business with the Speaker, and heard he
+was here.  But I'm glad to have met you for many reasons.  I want you to
+be one of the vice-presidents of the State Economic League--it won't cost
+you anything.  Ridout has agreed to let his name go on."
+
+The Honourable Hilary, not being an emotional man, merely grunted as he
+started to rise to his feet.  What he was about to say was interrupted by
+a timid knock, and there followed another brief period of silence.
+
+"It ain't anybody," said Mr. Bascom, and crossing the room, turned the
+key in the lock.  The timid knock was repeated.
+
+"I suppose you're constantly interrupted here by unimportant people," Mr.
+Crewe remarked.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Vane, slowly, boring into Mr. Crewe with his eye, "that
+statement isn't far out of the way."
+
+"I don't believe you've ever met me, Mr. Vane.  I'm Humphrey Crewe.  We
+have a good friend in common in Mr. Flint."
+
+The Honourable Hilary's hand passed over Mr. Crewe's lightly.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Crewe," he said, and a faint twinkle appeared in
+his eye.  "Job has told everybody you were coming down.  Glad to welcome
+a man of your ahem--stamp into politics."
+
+"I'm a plain business man," answered Mr. Crewe, modestly; "and although I
+have considerable occupation, I believe that one in my position has
+duties to perform.  I've certain bills--"
+
+"Yes, yes," agreed the Honourable Hilary; "do you know Mr. Brush Bascom
+and Mr. Manning?  Allow me to introduce you,--and General Doby."
+
+"How are you, General?" said Mr. Crewe to the Speaker-to-be, "I'm always
+glad to shake the hand of a veteran.  Indeed, I have thought that a
+society--"
+
+"I earned my title," said General Doby, somewhat sheepishly, "fighting on
+Governor Brown's staff.  There were twenty of us, and we were resistless,
+weren't we, Brush?"
+
+"Twenty on a staff!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Oh, we furnished our own uniforms and paid our own way--except those of
+us who had passes," declared the General, as though the memory of his
+military career did not give him unalloyed pleasure.  "What's the use of
+State sovereignty if you can't have a glittering army to follow the
+governor round?"
+
+Mr. Crewe had never considered this question, and he was not the man to
+waste time in speculation.
+
+"Doubtless you got a letter from me, General Doby," he said.  "We did
+what we could up our way to put you in the Speaker's chair."
+
+General Doby creased a little in the middle, to signify that he was
+bowing.
+
+"I trust it will be in my power to reciprocate, Mr. Crewe," he replied.
+
+"We want to treat Mr. Crewe right," Mr. Bascom put in.
+
+"You have probably made a note of my requests," Mr. Crewe continued.  "I
+should like to be on the Judiciary Committee, for one thing.  Although I
+am not a lawyer, I know something of the principles of law, and I
+understand that this and the Appropriations Committee are the most
+important.  I may say with truth that I should be a useful member of
+that, as I am accustomed to sitting on financial boards.  As my bills are
+of some considerable importance and deal with practical progressive
+measures, I have no hesitation in asking for the chairmanship of Public
+Improvements,--and of course a membership in the Agricultural is
+essential, as I have bills for them.  Gentlemen," he added to the room at
+large, "I have typewritten manifolds of those bills which I shall be
+happy to leave here--at headquarters."  And suiting the action to the
+word, he put down a packet on the table.
+
+The Honourable Brush Bascom, accompanied by Mr. Ridout, walked to the
+window and stood staring at the glitter of the electric light on the
+snow.  The Honourable Hilary gazed steadily at the table, while General
+Doby blew his nose with painful violence.
+
+"I'll do what I can for you, certainly, Mr. Crewe," he said.  "But--what
+is to become of the other four hundred and ninety-nine?  The ways of a
+Speaker are hard, Mr. Crewe, and I have to do justice to all."
+
+"Well," answered Mr. Crewe,  of course I don't want to be unreasonable,
+and I realize the pressure that's put upon you.  But when you consider
+the importance of the work I came down here to do--"
+
+"I do consider it," said the Speaker, politely.  "It's a little early to
+talk about the make-up of committees.  I hope to be able to get at them
+by Sunday.  You may be sure I'll do my best for you."
+
+"We'd better make a note of it," said Mr. Crewe; "give me some paper,"
+and he was reaching around behind General Doby for one of the precious
+sheets under Mr. Bascom's hat, when the general, with great presence of
+mind, sat on it.  We have it, from a malicious and untrustworthy source,
+that the Northeastern Railroads paid for a new one.
+
+"Here, here," cried the Speaker, "make the memorandum here."
+
+At this critical juncture a fortunate diversion occurred.  A rap--three
+times--of no uncertain quality was heard at the door, and Mr. Brush
+Bascom hastened to open it.  A voice cried out:--
+
+"Is Manning here?  The boys are hollering for those passes," and a wiry,
+sallow gentleman burst in, none other than the Honourable Elisha Jane,
+who was taking his consular vacation.  When his eyes fell upon Mr. Crewe
+he halted abruptly, looked a little foolish, and gave a questioning
+glance at the Honourable Hilary.
+
+"Mountain passes, Lish?  Sit down.  Did I ever tell you that story about
+the slide in Rickets Gulch?" asked the Honourable Brush Bascom.   But
+first let me make you acquainted with Mr. Humphrey Crewe of Leith.  Mr.
+Crewe has come down here with the finest lot of bills you ever saw, and
+we're all going to take hold and put 'em through.  Here, Lish, I'll give
+you a set."
+
+"Read 'em, Mr. Jane," urged Mr. Crewe.  "I don't claim much for 'em, but
+perhaps they will help to set a few little matters right--I hope so."
+
+Mr. Jane opened the bills with deliberation, and cast his eyes over the
+headings.
+
+I'll read 'em this very night, Mr. Crewe," he said solemnly; "this
+meeting you is a particular pleasure, and I have heard in many quarters
+of these measures."
+
+"Well," admitted Mr. Crewe, "they may help some.  I have a few other
+matters to attend to this evening, so I must say good-night, gentlemen.
+Don't let me interfere with those I mountain passes, Mr. Manning."
+
+With this parting remark, which proved him to be not merely an idealist
+in politics, but a practical man, Mr. Crewe took his leave.  And he was
+too much occupied with his own thoughts to pay any attention to the click
+of the key as it turned in the lock, or to hear United States Senator
+Whitredge rap (three times) on the door after he had turned the corner,
+or to know that presently the sliding doors into the governor's bridal
+suite--were to open a trifle, large enough for the admission of the body
+of the Honourable Asa P. Gray.
+
+Number Seven still keeps up its reputation as the seat of benevolence,
+and great public benefactors still meet there to discuss the welfare of
+their fellow-men: the hallowed council chamber now of an empire, seat of
+the Governor-general of the State, the Honourable Hilary Vane, and his
+advisers.  For years a benighted people, with a fond belief in their
+participation of Republican institutions, had elected the noble five
+hundred of the House and the stanch twenty of the Senate.  Noble five
+hundreds (biggest Legislature in the world) have come and gone; debated,
+applauded, fought and on occasions denounced, kicked over the traces, and
+even wept--to no avail.  Behold that political institution of man,
+representative government  There it is on the stage, curtain up, a
+sublime spectacle for all men to see, and thrill over speeches about the
+Rights of Man, and the Forefathers in the Revolution; about Constituents
+who do not constitute.  The High Heavens allow it and smile, and it is
+well for the atoms that they think themselves free American
+representatives, that they do not feel the string of predestination
+around their ankles.  The senatorial twenty, from their high carved
+seats, see the strings and smile, too; yes, and see their own strings,
+and smile.  Wisdom does not wish for flight.  "The people" having changed
+the constitution, the blackbirds are reduced from four and forty to a
+score.  This is cheaper--for the people.
+
+Democracy on the front of the stage before an applauding audience;
+performers absorbed in their parts, forgetting that the landlord has to
+be paid in money yet to be earned.  Behind the stage, the real play, the
+absorbing interest, the high stakes--occasional discreet laughter through
+the peep-hole when an actor makes an impassioned appeal to the gods.
+Democracy in front, the Feudal System, the Dukes and Earls behind--but in
+plain clothes; Democracy in stars and spangles and trappings and
+insignia.  Or, a better figure, the Fates weaving the web in that mystic
+chamber, Number Seven, pausing now and again to smile as a new thread is
+put in.  Proclamations, constitutions, and creeds crumble before
+conditions; the Law of Dividends is the high law, and the Forum an open
+vent through which the white steam may rise heavenward and be resolved
+again into water.
+
+Mr. Crewe took his seat in the popular assemblage next day, although most
+of the five hundred gave up theirs to the ladies who had come to hear his
+Excellency deliver his inaugural.  The Honourable Asa made a splendid
+figure, all agreed, and read his speech in a firm and manly voice.  A
+large part of it was about the people; some of it about the sacred
+government they had inherited from their forefathers; still another
+concerned the high character and achievements of the inhabitants within
+the State lines; the name of Abraham Lincoln was mentioned, and, with
+even greater reverence and fervour, the Republican party which had
+ennobled and enriched the people--and incidentally elected the governor.
+There was a noble financial policy, a curtailment of expense.  The
+forests should be protected, roads should be built, and, above all,
+corporations should be held to a strict accounting.
+
+Needless to say, the speech gave great satisfaction to all, and many old
+friends left the hall exclaiming that they didn't believe Asa had it in
+him.  As a matter of fact (known only to the initiated), Asa didn't have
+it in him until last night, before he squeezed through the crack in the
+folding doors from room number six to room Number Seven.  The inspiration
+came to him then, when he was ennobled by the Governor-general, who
+represents the Empire.  Perpetual Governor-general, who quickens into
+life puppet governors of his own choosing  Asa has agreed, for the honour
+of the title of governor of his State, to act the part, open the fairs,
+lend his magnificent voice to those phrases which it rounds so well.  It
+is fortunate, when we smoke a fine cigar from Havana, that we cannot look
+into the factory.  The sight would disturb us.  It was well for the
+applauding, deep-breathing audience in the state-house that first of
+January that they did not have a glimpse in room Number Seven the night
+before, under the sheets that contained the list of the Speaker's
+committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the
+offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting
+was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him by
+the Honourable Hilary Vane.  Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none
+other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel!
+The financial part was written by the Governor-general himself--the
+Honourable Hilary Vane.  And when it was all finished and revised, it was
+put into a long envelope which bore this printed address: Augustus P.
+Flint, Pres't United Northeastern Railroads, New York.  And came back
+with certain annotations on the margin, which were duly incorporated into
+it.  This is the private history (which must never be told) of the
+document which on January first became, as far as fame and posterity is
+concerned, the Honourable Asa P. Gray's--forever and forever.
+
+Mr. Crewe liked the inaugural, and was one of the first to tell Mr. Gray
+so, and to express his pleasure and appreciation of the fact that his
+request (mailed in November) had been complied with, that the substance
+of his bills had been recommended in the governor's programme.
+
+He did not pause to reflect on the maxim, that platforms are made to get
+in by and inaugurals to get started by.
+
+Although annual efforts have been made by various public-spirited
+citizens to build a new state-house, economy--with assistance from room
+Number Seven has triumphed.  It is the same state-house from the gallery
+of which poor William Wetherell witnessed the drama of the Woodchuck
+Session, although there are more members now, for the population of the
+State has increased to five hundred thousand.  It is well for General
+Doby, with his two hundred and fifty pounds, that he is in the Speaker's
+chair; five hundred seats are a good many for that hall, and painful in a
+long session.  The Honourable Brush Bascom can stretch his legs, because
+he is fortunate enough to have a front seat.  Upon inquiry, it turns out
+that Mr. Bascom has had a front seat for the last twenty years--he has
+been uniformly lucky in drawing.  The Honourable Jacob Botcher (ten
+years' service) is equally fortunate; the Honourable Jake is a man of
+large presence, and a voice that sounds as if it came, oracularly, from
+the caverns of the earth.  He is easily heard by the members on the back
+seats, while Mr. Bascom is not.  Mr. Ridout, the capital lawyer, is in
+the House this year, and singularly enough has a front seat likewise.  It
+was Mr. Crewe's misfortune to draw number 415, in the extreme corner of
+the room, and next the steam radiator.  But he was not of the metal to
+accept tamely such a ticketing from the hat of destiny (via the Clerk of
+the House).  He complained, as any man of spirit would, and Mr. Utter,
+the polite clerk, is profoundly sorry,--and says it maybe managed.
+Curiously enough, the Honourable Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob
+Botcher join Mr. Crewe in his complaint, and reiterate that it is an
+outrage that a man of such ability and deserving prominence should be
+among the submerged four hundred and seventy.  It is managed in a
+mysterious manner we don't pretend to fathom, and behold Mr. Crewe in the
+front of the Forum, in the seats of the mighty, where he can easily be
+pointed out from the gallery at the head of the five hundred, between
+those shining leaders and parliamentarians, the Honourables Brush Bascom
+and Jake Botcher.
+
+For Mr. Crewe has not come to the Legislature, like the country members
+in the rear, to acquire a smattering of parliamentary procedure by the
+day the Speaker is presented with a gold watch, at the end of the
+session.  Not he!  Not the practical business man, the member of boards,
+the chairman and president of societies.  He has studied the Rules of the
+House and parliamentary law, you may be sure.  Genius does not come
+unprepared, and is rarely caught napping.  After the Legislature
+adjourned that week the following telegram was sent over the wires:--
+
+     Augustus P. Flint, New York.
+
+     Kindly use your influence with Doby to secure my committee
+     appointments.  Important as per my conversation with you.
+
+                                             Humphrey Crewe.
+
+Nor was Mr. Crewe idle from Saturday to Monday night, when the committees
+were to be announced.  He sent to the State Tribune office for fifty
+copies of that valuable paper, which contained a two-column-and-a-half
+article on Mr. Crewe as a legislator and financier and citizen, with a
+summary of his bills and an argument as to how the State would benefit by
+their adoption; an accurate list of Mr. Crewe's societies was inserted,
+and an account of his life's history, and of those ancestors of his who
+had been born or lived within the State.  Indeed, the accuracy of this
+article as a whole did great credit to the editor of the State Tribune,
+who must have spent a tremendous amount of painstaking research upon it;
+and the article was so good that Mr. Crewe regretted (undoubtedly for the
+editor's sake) that a request could not be appended to it such as is used
+upon marriage and funeral notices: "New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
+papers please copy."
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it his duty to remedy as much as possible the
+unfortunate limited circulation of the article, and he spent as much as a
+whole day making out a list of friends and acquaintances whom he thought
+worthy to receive a copy of the Tribune--marked personal.  Victoria Flint
+got one, and read it to her father at the breakfast table.  (Mr. Flint
+did not open his.) Austen Vane wondered why any man in his obscure and
+helpless position should have been honoured, but honoured he was.  He
+sent his to Victoria, too, and was surprised to find that she knew his
+handwriting and wrote him a letter to thank him for it: a letter which
+provoked on his part much laughter, and elements of other sensations
+which, according to Charles Reade, should form the ingredients of a good
+novel.  But of this matter later.
+
+Mrs. Pomfret and Alice each got one, and each wrote Mr. Crewe appropriate
+congratulations.  (Alice's answer supervised.) Mrs. Chillingham got one;
+the Honourable Hilary Vane got one--marked in red ink, lest he should
+have skipped it in his daily perusal of the paper.  Mr. Brush, Bascom got
+one likewise.  But the list of Mr. Crewe's acquaintances is too long and
+too broad to dwell upon further in these pages.
+
+The Monday-night session came at last, that sensational hour when the
+Speaker makes those decisions to which he is supposed to have given birth
+over Sunday in the seclusion of his country home at Hale.  Monday-night
+sessions are, as a rule, confined in attendance to the Honourable Brush
+Bascom and Mr. Ridout and a few other conscientious members who do not
+believe in cheating the State, but to-night all is bustle and confusion,
+and at least four hundred members are pushing down the aisles and
+squeezing past each other into the narrow seats, and reading the State
+Tribune or the ringing words of the governor's inaugural which they find
+in the racks on the back of the seats before them.  Speaker Doby, who has
+been apparently deep in conference with the most important members (among
+them Mr. Crewe, to whom he has whispered that a violent snow-storm is
+raging in Hale), raps for order; and after a few preliminaries hands to
+Mr. Utter, the clerk, amidst a breathless silence, the paper on which the
+parliamentary career of so many ambitious statesmen depends.
+
+It is not a pleasure to record the perfidy of man, nor the lack of
+judgment which prevents him, in his circumscribed lights, from
+recognizing undoubted geniuses when he sees them.  Perhaps it was
+jealousy on General Doby's part, and a selfish desire to occupy the
+centre of the stage himself, but at any rate we will pass hastily over
+the disagreeable portions of this narrative.  Mr. Crewe settled himself
+with his feet extended, and with a complacency which he had rightly
+earned by leaving no stone unturned, to listen.  He sat up a little when
+the Appropriations Committee, headed by the Honourable Jake Botcher, did
+not contain his name--but it might have been an oversight of Mr. Utters;
+when the Judiciary (Mr. Ridout's committee) was read it began to look
+like malice; committee after committee was revealed, and the name of
+Humphrey Crewe might not have been contained in the five hundred except
+as the twelfth member of forestry, until it appeared at the top of
+National Affairs.  Here was a broad enough field, certainly,--the Trusts,
+the Tariff, the Gold Standard, the Foreign Possessions,--and Mr. Crewe's
+mind began to soar in spite of himself.  Public Improvements was reached,
+and he straightened.  Mr. Beck, a railroad lawyer from Belfast, led it.
+Mr. Crewe arose, as any man of spirit would, and walked with dignity up
+the aisle and out of the house.  This deliberate attempt to crush genius
+would inevitably react on itself.  The Honourable Hilary Vane and Mr.
+Flint should be informed of it at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"FOR BILLS MAY COME, AND BILLS MAY GO"
+
+A man with a sense of humour once went to the capital as a member of the
+five hundred from his town, and he never went back again.  One reason for
+this was that he died the following year, literally, the doctors said,
+from laughing too much.  I know that this statement will be received
+incredulously, and disputed by those who claim that laughter is a good
+thing; the honourable gentleman died from too much of a good thing.  He
+was overpowered by having too much to laugh at, and the undiscerning
+thought him a fool, and the Empire had no need of a court jester.  But
+many of his sayings have lived, nevertheless.  He wrote a poem, said to
+be a plagiarism, which contains the quotation at the beginning of this
+chapter: "For bills may come, and bills may go, but I go on forever."
+The first person singular is supposed to relate to the United
+Northeastern Railroads.  It was a poor joke at best.
+
+It is needless to say that the gentleman referred to had a back seat
+among the submerged four hundred and seventy,--and that he kept it.  No
+discerning and powerful well-wishers came forward and said to him,
+"Friend, go up higher."  He sat, doubled up, in number, and the gods gave
+him compensation in laughter; he disturbed the Solons around him, who
+were interested in what was going on in front, and trying to do their
+duty to their constituents by learning parliamentary procedure before the
+Speaker got his gold watch and shed tears over it.
+
+The gentleman who laughed and died is forgotten, as he deserves to be,
+and it never occurred to anybody that he might have been a philosopher,
+after all.  There is something irresistibly funny about predestination;
+about men who are striving and learning and soberly voting upon measures
+with which they have as little to do as guinea-pigs.  There were certain
+wise and cynical atheists who did not attend the sessions at all except
+when they received mysterious hints to do so.  These were chiefly from
+Newcastle.  And there were others who played poker in the state-house
+cellar waiting for the Word to come to them, when they went up and voted
+(prudently counting their chips before they did so), and descended again.
+The man with a sense of humour laughed at these, too, and at the twenty
+blackbirds in the Senate,--but not so heartily.  He laughed at their
+gravity, for no gravity can equal that of gentlemen who play with stacked
+cards.
+
+The risible gentleman laughed at the proposed legislation, about which he
+made the song, and he likened it to a stream that rises hopefully in the
+mountains, and takes its way singing at the prospect of reaching the
+ocean, but presently flows into a hole in the ground to fill the
+forgotten caverns of the earth, and is lost to the knowledge and sight of
+man.  The caverns he labelled respectively Appropriations, Railroad,
+Judiciary, and their guardians were unmistakably the Honourables Messrs.
+Bascom, Botcher, and Ridout.  The greatest cavern of all he called "The
+Senate."
+
+If you listen, you can hear the music of the stream of bills as it is
+rising hopefully and flowing now: "Mr. Crewe of Leith gives notice that
+on to-morrow or some subsequent day he will introduce a bill entitled,
+'An act for the Improvement of the State Highways.'  Mr. Crewe of Leith
+gives notice, etc.  'An act for the Improvement of the Practice of
+Agriculture.' 'An act relating to the State Indebtedness.' 'An act to
+increase the State Forest Area.' 'An act to incorporate the State
+Economic League.' 'An act to incorporate the State Children's Charities
+Association.' 'An act in relation to Abandoned Farms.'"  These were some
+of the most important, and they were duly introduced on the morrow, and
+gravely referred by the Speaker to various committees.  As might be
+expected, a man whose watchword is, "thorough" immediately got a list of
+those committees, and lost no time in hunting up the chairmen and the
+various available members thereof.
+
+As a man of spirit, also, Mr. Crewe wrote to Mr. Flint, protesting as to
+the manner in which he had been treated concerning committees.  In the
+course of a week he received a kind but necessarily brief letter from the
+Northeastern's president to remind him that he persisted in a fallacy; as
+a neighbour, Mr. Flint would help him to the extent of his power, but the
+Northeastern Railroads could not interfere in legislative or political
+matters.  Mr. Crewe was naturally pained by the lack of confidence of his
+friend; it seems useless to reiterate that he was far from being a fool,
+and no man could be in the capital a day during the session without being
+told of the existence of Number Seven, no matter how little the informant
+might know of what might be going on there.  Mr. Crewe had been fortunate
+enough to see the inside of that mysterious room, and, being a
+sufficiently clever man to realize the importance and necessity of
+government by corporations, had been shocked at nothing he had seen or
+heard.  However, had he had a glimpse of the Speaker's lists under the
+hopelessly crushed hat of Mr. Bascom, perhaps he might have been shocked,
+after all.
+
+It was about this time that a touching friendship began which ought, in
+justice, to be briefly chronicled.  It was impossible for the Honourable
+Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob Botcher to have Mr. Crewe sitting
+between them and not conceive a strong affection for him.  The Honourable
+Brush, though not given to expressing his feelings, betrayed some
+surprise at the volumes Mr. Crewe had contributed to the stream of bills;
+and Mr. Botcher, in a Delphic whisper, invited Mr. Crewe to visit him in
+room forty-eight of the Pelican that evening.  To tell the truth, Mr.
+Crewe returned the feeling of his companions warmly, and he had even
+entertained the idea of asking them both to dine with him that evening.
+
+Number forty-eight (the Honourable Jake's) was a free-and-easy democratic
+resort.  No three knocks and a password before you turn the key here.
+Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard Mr. Botcher's hearty
+voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed transom.  The Honourable
+Jake, being a tee-totaller, had no bathroom, and none but his intimate
+friends ever looked in the third from the top bureau drawer.
+
+The proprietor of the Pelican, who in common with the rest of humanity
+had fallen a victim to the rough and honest charms and hearty good
+fellowship of the Honourable Jake, always placed a large padded arm-chair
+in number forty-eight before the sessions, knowing that the Honourable
+Jake's constituency would be uniformly kind to him.  There Mr. Botcher
+was wont to sit (when he was not depressing one of the tiles in the
+rotunda), surrounded by his friends and their tobacco smoke, discussing
+in his frank and manly fashion the public questions of the day.
+
+Mr. Crewe thought it a little strange that, whenever he entered a room in
+the Pelican, a silence should succeed the buzz of talk which he had heard
+through the closed transom; but he very naturally attributed this to the
+constraint which ordinary men would be likely to feel in his presence.
+In the mouth of one presumptuous member the word "railroad" was cut in
+two by an agate glance from the Honourable Brush, and Mr. Crewe noted
+with some surprise that the Democratic leader of the House, Mr. Painter,
+was seated on Mr. Botcher's mattress, with an expression that was in
+singular contrast to the look of bold defiance which he had swept over
+the House that afternoon in announcing his opposition policy.  The vulgar
+political suggestion might have crept into a more trivial mind than Mr.
+Crewe's that Mr. Painter was being, "put to bed," the bed being very
+similar to that of Procrustes.  Mr. Botcher extracted himself from the
+nooks and crannies of his armchair.
+
+"How are you, Crewe?" he said hospitably; "we're all friends here--eh,
+Painter?  We don't carry our quarrels outside the swinging doors.  You
+know Mr. Crewe--by sight, of course.  Do you know these other gentlemen,
+Crewe?  I didn't expect you so early."
+
+The "other gentlemen" said that they were happy to make the acquaintance
+of their fellow-member from Leith, and seemingly with one consent began
+to edge towards the door.
+
+"Don't go, boys," Mr. Bascom protested.  "Let me finish that story."
+
+Some of "the boys" seemed to regard this statement as humorous,--more
+humorous, indeed, than the story itself.  And when it was finished they
+took their departure, a trifle awkwardly, led by Mr. Painter.
+
+"They're a little mite bashful," said Mr. Botcher, apologetically.
+
+"How many more of those bills have you got?" demanded Mr. Bascom, from
+the steam radiator, with characteristic directness.
+
+"I put 'em all in this morning," said Mr. Crewe, "but I have thought
+since of two or three other conditions which might be benefited by
+legislation."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Bascom, kindly, "if you have any more I was going to
+suggest that you distribute 'em round among the boys.  That's the way I
+do, and most folks don't guess they're your bills.  See?"
+
+"What harm is there in that?" demanded Mr. Crewe.  "I'm not ashamed of
+'em."
+
+"Brush was only lookin' at it from the point of view of gettin' 'em
+through," honest Mr. Botcher put in, in stentorian tones.  "It doesn't do
+for a new member to be thought a hog about legislation."
+
+Now the Honourable Jacob only meant this in the kindest manner, as we
+know, and to give inexperience a hint from well-intentioned experience.
+On the other hand, Mr. Crewe had a dignity and a position to uphold.  He
+was a personality.  People who went too far with him were apt to be
+rebuked by a certain glassy quality in his eye, and this now caused the
+Honourable Jake to draw back perceptibly.
+
+"I see no reason why a public-spirited man should be open to such an
+imputation," said Mr. Crewe.
+
+"Certainly not, certainly not," said Mr. Botcher, in stentorian tones of
+apology, "I was only trying to give you a little friendly advice, but I
+may have put it too strong.  Brush and I--I may as well be plain about
+it, Mr. Crewe--have taken a liking to you.  Couldn't help it, sir,
+sitting next to you as we do.  We take an interest in your career, and we
+don't want you to make any mistakes.  Ain't that about it, Brush?"
+
+"That's about it," said Mr. Bascom.
+
+Mr. Crewe was to big a man not to perceive and appreciate the sterling
+philanthropy which lay beneath the exteriors of his new friends, who
+scorned to flatter him.
+
+"I understand the spirit in which your advice is given, gentlemen," he
+replied magnanimously, "and I appreciate it.  We are all working for the
+same things, and we all believe that they must be brought about in the
+same practical way.  For instance, we know as practical men that the
+railroad pays a large tax in this State, and that property must take a
+hand--a very considerable hand--in legislation.  You gentlemen, as
+important factors in the Republican organization, are loyal to--er--that
+property, and perhaps for wholly desirable reasons cannot bring forward
+too many bills under your own names.  Whereas I--"
+
+At this point in Mr. Crewe's remarks the Honourable Jacob Botcher was
+seized by an appalling coughing fit which threatened to break his arm-
+chair, probably owing to the fact that he had swallowed something which
+he had in his mouth the wrong way.  Mr. Bascom, assisted by Mr. Crewe,
+pounded him relentlessly on the back.
+
+"I read that article in the 'Tribune' about you with great interest,"
+said Mr. Bascom, when Mr. Botcher's coughing had subsided.  "I had no
+idea you were so--ahem--well equipped for a political career.  But what
+we wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued, as Mr. Crewe
+showed signs of breaking in, "those committee appointments you desired."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, with some pardonable heat, "the Speaker doesn't
+seem to know which side his bread's buttered on."
+
+"What I was going to say," proceeded Mr. Bascom, "was that General Doby
+is a pretty good fellow.  Personally, I happen to know that the general
+feels very badly that he couldn't give you what you wanted.  He took a
+shine to you that night you saw him."
+
+"Yes," Mr. Botcher agreed, for he had quite recovered, the general felt
+bad--feels bad, I should say.  He perceived that you were a man of
+ability, sir--"
+
+"And that was just the reason," said the Honourable Brush, "that he
+couldn't make you more useful just now."
+
+"There's a good deal of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of
+ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones.
+"The competition amongst those--er--who have served the party is very
+keen for the positions you desired.  I personally happen to know that the
+general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of
+your--er--well-wishers persuaded him to take you off for your own good."
+
+"It wouldn't do for the party leaders to make you too prominent all at
+once," said Mr. Bascom.  "You are bound to take an active part in what
+passes here.  The general said, 'At all events I will give Mr. Crewe one
+chairmanship by which he can make a name for himself suited to his
+talents,' and he insisted on giving you, in spite of some remonstrances
+from your friends, National Affairs.  The general urged, rightly, that
+with your broad view and knowledge of national policy, it was his duty to
+put you in that place whatever people might say."
+
+Mr. Crewe listened to these explanations in some surprise; and being a
+rational man, had to confess that they were--more or less reasonable.
+
+"Scarcely any bills come before that committee," he objected.
+
+"Ah," replied Mr. Bascom, "that is true.  But the chairman of that
+committee is generally supposed to be in line for--er--national honours.
+It has not always happened in the past, because the men have not proved
+worthy.  But the opportunity is always given to that chairman to make a
+speech upon national affairs which is listened to with the deepest
+interest.
+
+"Is that so?" said Mr. Crewe.  He wanted to be of service, as we know.
+He was a man of ideas, and the opening sentences of the speech were
+already occurring to him.
+
+"Let's go upstairs and see the general now," suggested Mr. Botcher,
+smiling that such a happy thought should have occurred to him.
+
+"Why, I guess we couldn't do any better," Mr. Bascom agreed.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm willing to hear what he's got to say,
+anyway."
+
+Taking advantage of this generous concession, Mr. Botcher hastily locked
+the door, and led the way up the stairway to number seventy-five.  After
+a knock or two here, the door opened a crack, disclosing, instead of
+General Doby's cherubic countenance, a sallow face with an exceedingly
+pointed nose.  The owner of these features, having only Mr. Botcher in
+his line of vision, made what was perhaps an unguarded remark.
+
+"Hello, Jake, the general's in number nine--Manning sent for him about
+half an hour ago."
+
+It was Mr. Botcher himself who almost closed the door on the gentleman's
+sharp nose, and took Mr. Crewe's arm confidingly.
+
+"We'll go up to the desk and see Doby in the morning,--he's busy," said
+the Honourable Jake.
+
+"What's the matter with seeing him now?" Mr. Crewe demanded.  "I know
+Manning.  He's the division superintendent, isn't he?"
+
+Mr. Botcher and Mr. Bascom exchanged glances.
+
+"Why, yes--"said Mr. Bascom, "yes, he is.  He's a great friend of General
+Doby's, and their wives are great friends."
+
+"Intimate friends, sir," said the Honourable Jake
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "we won't bother 'em but a moment."
+
+It was he who led the way now, briskly, the Honourable Brush and the
+Honourable Jake pressing closely after him.  It was Mr. Crewe who,
+without pausing to knock, pushed open the door of number nine, which was
+not quite closed; and it was Mr. Crewe who made the important discovery
+that the lugubrious division superintendent had a sense of humour.  Mr.
+Manning was seated at a marble-topped table writing on a salmon-coloured
+card, in the act of pronouncing these words:--
+
+"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New
+York and return."
+
+Mr. Speaker Doby, standing before the marble-topped table with his hands
+in his pockets, heard the noise behind him and turned, and a mournful
+expression spread over his countenance.
+
+"Don't mind me," said Mr. Crewe, waving a hand in the direction of the
+salmon-coloured tickets; "I hope you have a good time, General.  When do
+you go?"
+
+"Why," exclaimed the Speaker, "how are you, Mr. Crewe, how are you?  It's
+only one of Manning's little jokes."
+
+"That's all right, General," said Mr. Crewe, "I haven't been a director
+in railroads for nothing.  I'm not as green as he thinks.  Am I, Mr.
+Manning?"
+
+"It never struck me that green was your colour, Mr. Crewe," answered the
+division superintendent, smiling a little as he tore the tickets into
+bits and put them in the waste-basket.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "you needn't have torn 'em up on my account.  I
+travel on the pass which the Northeastern gives me as a legislator, and
+I'm thinking seriously of getting Mr. Flint to send me an annual, now
+that I'm in politics and have to cover the State."
+
+"We thought you were a reformer, Mr. Crewe," the Honourable Brush Bascom
+remarked.
+
+"I am a practical man," said Mr. Crewe; "a railroad man, a business mark
+and as such I try to see things as they are."
+
+"Well," said General Doby, who by this time had regained his usual genial
+air of composure,  I'm glad you said that, Mr. Crewe.  As these gentlemen
+will tell you, if I'd had my wish I'd have had you on every important
+committee in the House."
+
+"Chairman of every important committee, General," corrected the
+Honourable Jacob Botcher.
+
+"Yes, chairman of 'em," assented the general, after a glance at Mr.
+Crewe's countenance to see how this statement fared.  "But the fact is,
+the boys are all jealous of you--on the quiet.  I suppose you suspected
+something of the kind."
+
+"I should have imagined there might be some little feeling," Mr. Crewe
+assented modestly.
+
+"Exactly," cried the general, "and I had to combat that feeling when I
+insisted upon putting you at the head of National Affairs.  It does not
+do for a new member, whatever his prominence in the financial world, to
+be pushed forward too quickly.  And unless I am mighty mistaken, Mr.
+Crewe," he added, with his hand on the new member's shoulder, "you will
+make yourself felt without any boosting from me."
+
+"I did not come here to remain idle, General," answered Mr. Crewe,
+considerably mollified.
+
+"Certainly not," said the general, "and I say to some of those men, 'Keep
+your eye on the gentleman who is Chairman of National Affairs.'"
+
+After a little more of this desultory and pleasant talk, during which
+recourse was, had to the bathroom for several tall and thin glasses
+ranged on the shelf there, Mr. Crewe took his departure in a most equable
+frame of mind.  And when the door was closed and locked behind him, Mr.
+Manning dipped his pen in the ink, once more produced from a drawer in
+the table the salmon-coloured tickets, and glanced again at the general
+with a smile.
+
+"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New
+York and return."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Fame sometimes comes in the line of duty
+Genius is almost one hundred percent directness
+In a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the room
+It's noble, but it don't pay
+Treason to party he regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Mr. Crewe's Career, V1
+by Winston Churchill
+
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