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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Carnac's Folly, by Gilbert Parker, v1
+#123 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+
+Title: Carnac's Folly, Volume 1.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6296]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 19, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
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+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARNAC'S FOLLY, BY PARKER, V1 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+CARNAC'S FOLLY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+BOOK I
+I.        IN THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD
+II.       ELEVEN YEARS PASS
+III.      CARNAC'S RETURN
+IV.       THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
+V.        CARNAC AS MANAGER
+VI.       LUKE TARBOE HAS AN OFFER
+VII.      "AT OUR PRICE"
+VIII.     JOHN GRIER MAKES ANOTHER OFFER
+IX.       THE PUZZLE
+X.        DENZIL TELLS HIS STORY
+XI.       CARNAC'S TALK WITH HIS MOTHER
+XII.      CARNAC SAYS GOOD-BYE
+
+BOOK II
+XIII.     CARNAC'S RETURN
+XIV.      THE HOUSE OF THE THREE TREES
+XV.       CARNAC AND JUNTA
+XVI.      JOHN GRIER MAKES A JOURNEY
+XVII.     THE READING OF THE WILL
+
+BOOK III
+XVIII.    A GREAT DECISION
+XIX.      CARNAC BECOMES A CANDIDATE
+XX.       JUNIA AND TARBOE HEAR THE NEWS
+XXI.      THE SECRET MEETING
+XXII.     POINT TO POINT
+XXIII.    THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT
+XXIV.     THE BLUE PAPER
+XXV.      DENZIL TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
+XXVI.     THE CHALLENGE
+XXVII.    EXIT
+XXVIII.   A WOMAN WRITES A LETTER
+XXIX.     CARNAC AND HIS MOTHER
+XXX.      TARBOE HAS A DREAM
+XXXI.     THIS WAY HOME
+XXXII.    'HALVES, PARDNER, HALVES'
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD
+
+"Carnac!  Carnac!  Come and catch me, Carnac!"  It was a day of perfect
+summer and hope and happiness in the sweet, wild world behind the near
+woods and the far circle of sky and pine and hemlock.  The voice that
+called was young and vibrant, and had in it the simple, true soul of
+things.  It had the clearness of a bugle-call-ample and full of life and
+all life's possibilities.  It laughed; it challenged; it decoyed.
+
+Carnac heard the summons and did his best to catch the girl in the wood
+by the tumbling stream, where he had for many an hour emptied out his
+wayward heart; where he had seen his father's logs and timbers caught in
+jams, hunched up on rocky ledges, held by the prong of a rock, where
+man's purpose could, apparently, avail so little.  Then he had watched
+the black-bearded river-drivers with their pike-poles and their levers
+loose the key-logs of the bunch, and the tumbling citizens of the woods
+and streams toss away down the current to the wider waters below.  He was
+only a lad of fourteen, and the girl was only eight, but she--Junia--was
+as spry and graceful a being as ever woke the echoes of a forest.
+
+He was only fourteen, but already he had visions and dreamed dreams.  His
+father--John Grier--was the great lumber-king of Canada, and Junia was
+the child of a lawyer who had done little with his life, but had had
+great joy of his two daughters, who were dear to him beyond telling.
+
+Carnac was one of Nature's freaks or accidents.  He was physically strong
+and daring, but, as a boy, mentally he lacked concentration and decision,
+though very clever.  He was led from thing to thing like a ray of errant
+light, and he did not put a hand on himself, as old Denzil, the partly
+deformed servant of Junia's home, said of him on occasion; and Denzil was
+a man of parts.
+
+Denzil was not far from the two when Junia made her appeal and challenge.
+He loved the girl exceedingly, and he loved Carnac little less, though in
+a different way.  Denzil was French of the French, with habit of mind and
+character wholly his own.
+
+Denzil's head was squat upon his shoulders, and his long, handsome body
+was also squat, because his legs were as short, proportionately, as his
+mind was long.  His face was covered by a well-cared-for beard of dark
+brown, streaked with grey; his features were rugged and fine; and his
+eyes were like two coals burning under a gnarled headland; for his
+forehead, ample and full, had lines which were not lines of age, but of
+concentration.  In his motions he was quiet and free, yet always there
+was a kind of stealthiness in his movements, which made him seem less
+frank than he really was.
+
+For a time, with salient sympathy in his eyes, he watched the two
+children playing.  The whisking of their forms among the trees and over
+the rocks was fine, gracious, and full of life-life without alarm.  At
+length he saw the girl falter slightly, then make a swift deceptive
+movement to avoid the boy who pursued her.  The movement did not delude
+the boy.  He had quickness of anticipation.  An instant later the girl
+was in his arms.
+
+As Denzil gazed, it seemed she was in his arms too long, and a sudden
+anxiety took hold of him.  That anxiety was deepened when he saw the boy
+kiss the girl on the cheek.  This act seemed to discompose the girl, but
+not enough to make drama out of an innocent, yet sensuous thing.  The boy
+had meant nothing more than he had shown, and Denzil traced the act to a
+native sense of luxury in his nature.  Knowing the boy's father and
+mother as he did, it seemed strange that Carnac should have such
+demonstration in his character.  Of all the women he knew, Carnac's
+mother was the most exact and careful, though now and again he thought
+of her as being shrouded, or apart; while the boy's father, the great
+lumber-king, cantankerous, passionate, perspicuous, seemed to have but
+one passion, and that was his business.
+
+It was strange to Denzil that the lumber-king, short, thin, careless in
+his clothes but singularly clean in his person, should have a son so
+little like himself, and also so little like his mother.  He, Denzil, was
+a Catholic, and he could not understand a man like John Grier who, being
+a member of the Episcopal Church, so seldom went to service and so defied
+rules of conduct suitable to his place in the world.
+
+As for the girl, to him she was the seventh wonder of the earth.
+Wantonly alive, dexterously alert to all that came her way, sportive,
+indifferent, joyous, she had all the boy's sprightliness, but none of his
+weaknesses.  She was a born tease; she loved bright and beautiful things;
+she was a keen judge of human nature, and she had buoyant spirits, which,
+however, were counterbalanced by moments of extreme timidity, or, rather,
+reserve and shyness.  On a day like this, when everything in life was
+singing, she must sing too.  Not a mile away was a hut by the river where
+her father had brought his family for the summer's fishing; not a half-
+mile away was a tent which Carnac Grier's father had set up as he passed
+northward on his tour of inspection.  This particular river, and this
+particular part of the river, were trying to the river-man and his clans.
+It needed a dam, and the great lumber-king was planning to make one not
+three hundred yards from where they were.
+
+The boy and the girl resting idly upon a great warm rock had their own
+business to consider.  The boy kept looking at his boots with the brass-
+tipped toes.  He hated them.  The girl was quick to understand.  "Why
+don't you like your boots?" she asked.
+
+A whimsical, exasperated look came into his face.  "I don't know why they
+brass a boy's toes like that, but when I marry I won't wear them--that's
+all," he replied.
+
+"Why do you wear them now?" she asked, smiling.
+
+"You don't know my father."
+
+"He's got plenty of money, hasn't he?" she urged.  "Plenty; and that's
+what I can't understand about him!  There's a lot of waste in river-
+driving, timber-making, out in the shanties and on the river, but he
+don't seem to mind that.  He's got fads, though, about how we are to
+live, and this is one of them."  He looked at the brass-tipped boots
+carefully.  A sudden resolve came into his face.  He turned to the girl
+and flushed as he spoke.  "Look here," he added, "this is the last day
+I'm going to wear these boots.  He's got to buy me a pair without any
+brass clips on them, or I'll kick."
+
+"No, it isn't the last day you're going to wear them, Carnac."
+
+"It is.  I wonder if all boys feel towards their father as I do to mine.
+He don't treat me right.  He--"
+
+"Oh, look," interrupted Junia.  "Look-Carnac!"  She pointed in dismay.
+
+Carnac saw a portion of the bank of the river disappear with Denzil.  He
+ran over to the bank and looked down.  In another moment he had made his
+way to a descending path which led him swiftly to the river's edge.  The
+girl remained at the top.  The boy had said to her: "You stay there.
+I'll tell you what to do."
+
+"Is-is he killed?" she called with emotion.
+
+"Killed!  No.  He's all right," he called back to her.  "I can see him
+move.  Don't be frightened.  He's not in the water.  It was only about a
+thirty-foot fall.  You stay there, and I'll tell you what to do," he
+added.
+
+A few moments later, the boy called up: "He's all right, but his leg is
+broken.  You go to my father's camp--it's near.  People are sure to be
+there, and maybe father too.  You bring them along."
+
+In an instant the girl was gone.  The boy, left behind, busied himself in
+relieving the deformed broken-legged habitant.  He brought some water in
+his straw hat to refresh him.  He removed the rocks and dirt, and dragged
+the little man out.
+
+"It was a close call--bien sur," said Denzil, breathing hard.  "I always
+said that place wasn't safe, but I went on it myself.  That's the way in
+life.  We do what we forbid ourselves to do; we suffer the shames we damn
+in others--but yes."
+
+There was a pause, then he added: "That's what you'll do in your life,
+M'sieu' Carnac.  That's what you'll do."
+
+"Always?"
+
+"Well, you never can tell--but no."
+
+"But you always can tell," remarked the boy.  "The thing is, do what you
+feel you've got to do, and never mind what happens."
+
+"I wish I could walk," remarked the little man, "but this leg of mine is
+broke--ah, bah, it is!"
+
+"Yes, you mustn't try to walk.  Be still," answered the boy.  "They'll be
+here soon."  Slowly and carefully he took off the boot and sock from the
+broken leg, and, with his penknife, opened the seam of the corduroy
+trouser.  "I believe I could set that leg myself," he added.
+
+"I think you could--bagosh," answered Denzil heavily.  "They'll bring a
+rope to haul me up?"
+
+"Junia has a lot of sense, she won't forget anything."
+
+"And if your father's there, he'll not forget anything," remarked Denzil.
+
+"He'll forget to make me wear these boots tomorrow," said the boy
+stubbornly, his chin in his hands, his eyes fixed gloomily on the brass-
+headed toes.
+
+There was a long silence.  At last from the stricken Denzil came the
+words: "You'll have your own way about the boots."
+
+Carnac murmured, and presently said:
+
+"Lucky you fell where you did.  Otherwise, you'd have been in the water,
+and then I couldn't have been of any use."
+
+"I hear them coming--holy, yes!"
+
+Carnac strained his ears.  "Yes, you're right.  I hear them too."
+
+A few moments later, Carnac's father came sliding down the bank, a rope
+in his hands, some workmen remaining above.
+
+"What's the matter here?" he asked.  "A fall, eh!  Dang little fool--
+now, you are a dang little fool, and you know it, Denzil."
+
+He nodded to his boy, then he raised the wounded man's head and
+shoulders, and slipped the noose over until it caught under his arms.
+
+The old lumber-king's movements were swift, sure and exact.  A moment
+later he lifted Denzil in his arms, and carried him over to the steep
+path up which he was presently dragged.
+
+At the top, Denzil turned to Carnac's father.  "M'sieu', Carnac hates
+wearing those brass-toed boots," he said boldly.
+
+The lumber-king looked at his boy acutely.  He blew his nose hard, with a
+bandana handkerchief.  Then he nodded towards the boy.
+
+"He can suit himself about that," he said.
+
+With accomplished deftness, with some sacking and two poles, a hasty but
+comfortable ambulance was made under the skilful direction of the river-
+master.  He had the gift of outdoor life.  He did not speak as he worked,
+but kept humming to himself.
+
+"That's all right," he said, as he saw Denzil on the stretcher.  "We'll
+get on home now."
+
+"Home?" asked his son.
+
+"Yes, Montreal--to-night," replied his father.  "The leg has to be set."
+
+"Why don't you set it?" asked the boy.
+
+The river-master gazed at him attentively.  "Well, I might, with your
+help," he said.  "Come along."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ELEVEN YEARS PASS
+
+Eleven years had passed since Denzil's fall, and in that time much
+history had been made.  Carnac Grier, true to his nature, had travelled
+from incident to incident, from capacity to capacity, apparently without
+system, yet actually with the keenest desire to fulfil himself; with an
+honesty as inveterate as his looks were good and his character filled
+with dark recesses.  In vain had his father endeavoured to induce him to
+enter the lumber business; to him it seemed too conventional and fixed.
+
+Yet, in his way, he knew the business well.  By instinct, over the
+twenty-five years of his life, he had observed and become familiar with
+the main features of the work.  He had once or twice even buried himself
+in the shanties of the backwoods, there to inhale and repulse the fetid
+air, to endure the untoward, half-savage life, the clean, strong food,
+the bitter animosities and the savage friendships.  It was a land where
+sunshine travelled, and in the sun the bright, tuneful birds made lively
+the responsive world.  Sometimes an eagle swooped down the stream; again
+and again, hawks, and flocks of pigeons which frequented the lonely
+groves on the river-side, made vocal the world of air; flocks of wild
+ducks, or geese, went whirring down the long spaces of water between the
+trees on either bank; and some one with a fiddle or a concertina made
+musical the evening, while the singing voices of rough habitants rang
+through the air.
+
+It was all spirited; it smelt good; it felt good; but it was not for
+Carnac.  When he had a revolt against anything in life, the grim storm
+scenes of winter in the shanties under the trees and the snow-swept hills
+came to his mind's eye.  The summer life of the river, and what is called
+"running the river," had for him great charms.  The smell of hundreds of
+thousands of logs in the river, the crushed bark, the slimy ooze were all
+suggestive of life in the making.  But the savage seclusion of the wild
+life in winter repelled his senses.  Besides, the lumber business meant
+endless figures and measurements in stuffy offices and he retreated from
+it all.
+
+He had an artistic bent.  From a small child he had had it, and it grew
+with his years.  He wanted to paint, and he painted; he wanted to sculp
+in clay, and he sculped in clay; but all the time he was conscious it was
+the things he had seen and the life he had lived which made his painting
+and his sculpture worth while.  It was absurd that a man of his great
+outdoor capacity should be the slave of a temperamental quality, and yet
+it was so.  It was no good for his father to condemn, or his mother to
+mourn, he went his own way.
+
+He had seen much of Junia Shale in these years and had grown fond of her,
+but she was away much with an aunt in the West, and she was sent to
+boarding-school, and they saw each other only at intervals.  She liked
+him and showed it, but he was not ready to go farther.  As yet his art
+was everything to him, and he did not think of marriage.  He was care-
+free.  He had a little money of his own, left by an uncle of his mother,
+and he had also an allowance from his mother--none from his father--and
+he was satisfied with life.
+
+His brother, Fabian, being the elder, by five years, had gone into his
+father's business as a partner, and had remained there.  Fabian had at
+last married an elder sister of Junia Shale and settled down in a house
+on the hill, and the lumber-king, John Grier, went on building up his
+splendid business.
+
+At last, Carnac, feeling he was making small headway with his painting,
+determined to go again to New York and Paris.  He had already spent a
+year in each place and it had benefited him greatly.  So, with that
+sudden decision which marked his life, he started for New York.  It was
+immediately after the New Year and the ground was covered with snow.  He
+looked out of the window of the train, and there was only the long line
+of white country broken by the leafless trees and rail-fences and the
+mansard-roofs and low cottages with their stoops, built up with earth to
+keep them warm; and the sheds full of cattle; and here and there a
+sawmill going hard, and factories pounding away and men in fur coats
+driving the small Indian ponies; and the sharp calls of the men with the
+sleigh bringing wood, or meat, or vegetables to market.  He was by nature
+a queer compound of Radical and Conservative, a victim of vision and
+temperament.  He was full of pride, yet fuller of humility of a real
+kind.  As he left Montreal he thought of Junia Shale, and he recalled the
+day eleven years before when he had worn brass-toed boots, and he had
+caught Junia in his arms and kissed her, and Denzil had had his accident.
+Denzil had got unreasonably old since then; but Junia remained as she was
+the joyous day when boyhood took on the first dreams of manhood.
+
+Life was a queer thing, and he had not yet got his bearings in it.  He
+had a desire to reform the world and he wanted to be a great painter or
+sculptor, or both; and he entered New York with a new sense developed.
+He was keen to see, to do, and to feel.  He wanted to make the world ring
+with his name and fame, yet he wanted to do the world good also, if he
+could.  It was a curious state of mind for the English boy, who talked
+French like a native and loved French literature and the French people,
+and was angry with those English-Canadians who were so selfish they would
+never learn French.
+
+Arrived in New York he took lodgings near old Washington Square, where
+there were a few studios near the Bohemian restaurants and a life as
+nearly continental as was possible in a new country.  He got in touch
+with a few artists and began to paint, doing little scenes in the Bowery
+and of the night-life of New York, and visiting the Hudson River and Long
+Island for landscape and seascape sketches.
+
+One day he was going down Broadway, and near Union Square he saved a girl
+from being killed by a street-car.  She had slipped and fallen on the
+track and a car was coming.  It was impossible for her to get away in
+time, and Carnac had sprung to her and got her free.  She staggered to
+her feet, and he saw she was beautiful and foreign.  He spoke to her in
+French and her eyes lighted, for she was French.  She told him at once
+that her name was Luzanne Larue.  He offered to get a cab and take her
+home, but she said no, she was fit to walk, so he went with her slowly to
+her home in one of the poor streets on the East side.  They talked as
+they went, and Carnac saw she was of the lower middle-class, with more
+refinement than was common in that class, and more charm.  She was a
+fascinating girl with fine black eyes, black hair, a complexion of cream,
+and a gift of the tongue.  Carnac could not see that she was very subtle.
+She seemed a marvel of guilelessness.  She had a wonderful head and neck,
+and as he was planning a picture of an early female martyr, he decided to
+ask her to sit to him.
+
+Arrived at her humble home, he was asked to enter, and there he met her
+father, Isel Larue, a French monarchist who had been exiled from Paris
+for plotting against the Government.  He was handsome with snapping black
+eyes, a cruel mouth and a droll and humorous tongue.  He was grateful
+to Carnac for saving his daughter's life.  Coffee and cigarettes were
+produced, and they chatted and smoked while Carnac took in the
+surroundings.  Everything was plain, but spotlessly clean, and he learned
+that Larue made his living by doing odd jobs in an electric firm.  He was
+just home from his work.  Luzanne was employed every afternoon in a
+milliner's shop, but her evenings were free after the housework was done
+at nine o'clock.  Carnac in a burst of enthusiasm asked if she would sit
+to him as a model in the mornings.  Her father instantly said, of course
+she would.
+
+This she did for many days, and sat with her hair down and bared neck, as
+handsome and modest as a female martyr should.  Carnac painted her with
+skill.  Sometimes he would walk with her to lunch and make her eat
+something sustaining, and they talked freely then, though little was said
+while he was painting her.  At last one day the painting was finished,
+and she looked up at him wistfully when he told her he would not need
+another sitting.  Carnac, overcome by her sadness, put his arms round her
+and kissed her mouth, her eyes, her neck ravenously.  She made only a
+slight show of resistance.  When he stopped she said: "Is that the way
+you keep your word to my father?  I am here alone and you embrace me--
+is that fair?"
+
+"No, it isn't, and I promise I won't do it again, Luzanne.  I am sorry.
+I wanted our friendship to benefit us both, and now I've spoiled it all."
+
+"No, you haven't spoiled it all," said Luzanne with a sigh, and she
+buttoned up the neck of her blouse, flushing slightly as she did so.
+Her breast heaved and suddenly she burst into tears.  It was evident she
+wanted Carnac to comfort her, perhaps to kiss her again, but he did not
+do so.  He only stood over her, murmuring penance and asking her to
+forget it.
+
+"I can't forget it--I can't.  No man but my father has ever kissed me
+before.  It makes me, oh! so miserable!" but she smiled through her
+tears.  Suddenly she dried her eyes.  "Once a man tried to kiss me--and
+something more.  He was rich and he'd put money into Madame Margot's
+millinery business.  He was brilliant, and married, but he had no rules
+for his morals--all he wanted was money and pleasures which he bought.
+I was attracted by him, but one day he tried to kiss me.  I slapped his
+face, and then I hated him.  So, when you kissed me to-day, I thought of
+that, and it made me unhappy--but yes."
+
+"You did not slap my face, Luzanne?"
+
+She blushed and hung her head.  "No, I did not; you are not a bad man.
+He would have spoiled my life.  He made it clear I could have all the
+luxuries money could buy--all except marriage!"  She shrugged her
+shoulders.
+
+Carnac was of an impressionable nature, but brought to face the
+possibility of marriage with Luzanne, he shrank.  If ever he married it
+would be a girl like Junia Shale, beautiful, modest, clever and well
+educated.  No, Luzanne could never be for him.  So he forbore doing more
+than ask her to forgive him, and he would take her to lunch-the last
+lunch of the picture-if she would.  With features in chagrin, she put
+on her hat, yet when she turned to him, she was smiling.
+
+He visited her home occasionally, and Luzanne's father had a friend,
+Ingot by name, who was sometimes present.  This man made himself almost
+unbearable at first; but Luzanne pulled Ingot up acridly, and he
+presently behaved well.  Ingot disliked all men in better positions than
+himself, and was a revolutionary of the worst sort--a revolutionary and
+monarchist.  He was only a monarchist because he loved conspiracy and
+hated the Republican rulers who had imprisoned him--"those bombastics,"
+he called them.  It was a constitutional quarrel with the world.
+However, he became tractable, and then he and Larue formed a plot to make
+Carnac marry Luzanne.  It was hatched by Ingot, approved by Larue, and at
+length consented to by the girl, for so far as she could love anyone, she
+loved Carnac; and she made up her mind that if he married her, no matter
+how, she would make him so happy he would forgive all.
+
+About four months after the incident in the studio, a picnic was arranged
+for the Hudson River.  Only the four went.  Carnac had just sold a
+picture at a good price--his Christian Martyr picture--and he was in high
+spirits.  They arrived at the spot arranged for the picnic in time for
+lunch, and Luzanne prepared it.  When the lunch was ready, they sat down.
+There was much gay talk, compliments to Carnac came from both Larue and
+Ingot, and Carnac was excited and buoyant.  He drank much wine and beer,
+and told amusing stories of the French-Canadians which delighted them
+all.  He had a gift of mimicry and he let himself go.
+
+"You got a pretty fine tongue in your head--but of the best," said Ingot
+with a burst of applause.  "You'd make a good actor, a holy good actor.
+You got a way with you.  Coquelin, Salvini, Bernhardt!  Voila, you're
+just as good!  Bagosh, I'd like to see you on the stage."
+
+"So would I," said Larue.  "I think you could play a house full in no
+time and make much cash--I think you could.  Don't you think so,
+Luzanne?"
+
+Luzanne laughed.  "He can act very first-class, I'm sure," she said,
+and she turned and looked Carnac in the eyes.  She was excited, she was
+handsome, she was slim and graceful, and Carnac felt towards her as he
+did the day at the studio, as though he'd like to kiss her.  He knew it
+was not real, but it was the man in him and the sex in her.
+
+For an hour and a half the lunch went on, all growing gayer, and then at
+last Ingot said: "Well, I'm going to have a play now here, and Carnac
+Grier shall act, and we all shall act.  We're going to have a wedding
+ceremony between M'sieu' Grier and Luzanne--but, hush, why not!" he
+added, when Luzanne shook her finger at him, and said she'd do nothing of
+the kind, having, however, agreed to it beforehand.  "Why not!  There's
+nothing in it.  They'll both be married some day and it will be good
+practice for them.  They can learn now how to do it.  It's got to be
+done--but yes.  I'll find a Judge in the village.  Come now, hands up,
+those that will do it."
+
+With a loud laugh Larue held up his hand, Carnac, who was half-drunk, did
+the same, and after a little hesitation Luzanne also.
+
+"Good--a gay little comedy, that's what it is.  I'm off for the Judge,"
+and away went Ingot hard afoot, having already engaged a Judge, called
+Grimshaw, in the village near to perform the ceremony.  When he had gone,
+Larue went off to smoke and Luzanne and Carnac cleared up the lunch-
+things and put all away in the baskets.  When it was finished, Carnac and
+Luzanne sat down under a tree and talked cheerfully, and Luzanne was
+never so effective as she was that day.  They laughed over the mock
+ceremony to be performed.
+
+"I'm a Catholic, you know," said Luzanne, "and it isn't legal in my
+church with no dispensation to be married to a Protestant like you.  But
+as it is, what does it matter!"
+
+"Well, that's true," said Carnac.  "I suppose I ought to be acting the
+lover now; I ought to be kissing you, oughtn't I?"
+
+"As an actor, yes, but as a man, better not unless others are present.
+Wait till the others come.  Wait for witnesses, so that it can look like
+the real thing.
+
+"See, there they come now."  She pointed, and in the near distance Ingot
+could be seen approaching with a short, clean-shaven, roly-poly sort of
+man who did not look legal, but was a real magistrate.  He came waddling
+along in good spirits and rather pompously.  At that moment Larue
+appeared.  Presently Ingot presented the Judge to the would--be bride and
+bridegroom.  "You wish to be married-you are Mr. Grier?" said Judge
+Grimshaw.
+
+"That's me and I'm ready," said Carnac.  "Get on with the show.  What's
+the first thing?"
+
+"Well, the regular thing is to sign some forms, stating age, residence,
+etc., and here they are all ready.  Brought 'em along with me.  Most
+unusual form of ceremony, but it'll do.  It's all right.  Here are the
+papers to sign."
+
+Carnac hastily scratched in the needed information, and Luzanne doing the
+same, the magistrate pocketed the papers.
+
+"Now we can perform the ceremony," said the Judge.  "Mr. Larue, you go
+down there with the young lady and bring her up in form, and Mr. Carnac
+Grier waits here."
+
+Larue went away with Luzanne, and presently turned, and she, with her arm
+in his, came forward.  Carnac stood waiting with a smile on his face, for
+it seemed good acting.  When Luzanne came, her father handed her over,
+and the marriage ceremony proceeded.  Presently it concluded, and
+Grimshaw, who had had more drink than was good for him, wound up the
+ceremony with the words: "And may the Lord have mercy on you!"
+
+Every one laughed, Carnac kissed the bride, and the Judge handed her the
+marriage certificate duly signed.  It was now Carnac's duty to pay in the
+usual way for the ceremony, and he handed the Judge ten dollars; and
+Grimshaw rolled away towards the village, Ingot having also given him
+ten.
+
+"That's as good a piece of acting as I've ever seen," said Larue with a
+grin.  "It beats Coquelin and Henry Irving."
+
+"I didn't think there was much in it," said Carnac, laughing, "though it
+was real enough to cost me ten dollars.  One has to pay for one's fun.
+But I got a wife cheap at the price, and I didn't pay for the wedding
+ring."
+
+"No, the ring was mine," said Larue.  "I had it a long time.  It was my
+engagement ring, and I want it back now."
+
+Luzanne took it off her finger--it was much too large--and gave it to
+him.  "It's easy enough to get another," she said in a queer voice.
+
+"You did the thing in style, young man," said Ingot to Carnac with a nod.
+
+"I'll do it better when it's the real thing," said Carnac.  "I've had my
+rehearsal now, and it seemed almost real."
+
+"It was almost real," said Ingot, with his head turned away from Carnac,
+but he winked at Larue and caught a furtive look from Luzanne's eye.
+
+"I think we'd better have another hour hereabouts, then get back to New
+York," said Larue.  "There's a circus in the village--let us go to that."
+
+At the village, they did the circus, called out praise to the clown, gave
+the elephant some buns, and at five o'clock started back to New York.
+Arrived at New York, they went to a hotel off Broadway for dinner, and
+Carnac signed names in the hotel register as "Mr. and Mrs. Carnac Grier."
+When he did it, he saw a furtive glance pass from Luzanne's eyes to her
+father.  It was disconcerting to him.  Presently the two adjourned to the
+sitting-room, and there he saw that the table was only laid for two.
+That opened his eyes.  The men had disappeared and he and Luzanne were
+alone.  She was sitting on a sofa near the table, showing to good
+advantage.  She was composed, while Carnac was embarrassed.
+Carnac began to take a grip on himself.
+
+The waiter entered.  "When shall I serve dinner, sir?" he said.
+
+Carnac realized that the dinner had been ordered by the two men, and he
+said quietly: "Don't serve it for a half-hour yet--not till I ring,
+please.  Make it ready then.  There's no hurry.  It's early."
+
+The waiter bowed and withdrew with a smile, and Carnac turned to Luzanne.
+She smiled, got up, came over, laid a hand on his arm, and said: "It's
+quiet and nice here, Carnac dear," and she looked up ravishingly in his
+face.
+
+"It's too quiet and it's not at all nice," he suddenly replied.  "Your
+father and Ingot have gone.  They've left us alone on purpose.  This is a
+dirty game and I'm not going to play it any longer.  I've had enough of
+it.  I've had my fill.  I'm going now.  Come, let's go together."
+
+She looked a bit smashed and overdone.  "The dinner!" she said in
+confusion.
+
+"I'll pay for that.  We won't wait any longer.  Come on at once, please."
+
+She put on her things coolly, and he noticed a savage stealthiness as
+she pushed the long pins through her hat and hair.  He left the room.
+Outside the hotel, Carnac held out his hand.
+
+"Good night and good-bye, Luzanne," he said huskily.  "You can get home
+alone, can't you?"
+
+She laughed a little, then she said: "I guess so.  I've lived in New York
+some years.  But you and I are married, Carnac, and you ought to take me
+to your home."
+
+There was something devilish in her smile now.  Then the whole truth
+burst upon Carnac.  "Married--married!  When did I marry you?  Good God!"
+"You married me this afternoon after lunch at Shipton.  I have the
+certificate and I mean to hold you to it."
+
+"You mean to hold me to it--a real marriage to-day at Shipton!  You and
+your father and Ingot tricked me into this."
+
+"He was a real Judge, and it was a real marriage."
+
+"It is a fraud, and I'll unmask it," Carnac declared in anger.
+
+"It would be difficult to prove.  You signed our names in the hotel
+register as Mr. and Mrs. Carnac Grier.  I mean to stick to that name--
+Mrs. Carnac Grier.  I'll make you a good wife, Carnac--do believe it.
+
+"I'll believe nothing but the worst of you ever.  I'll fight the thing
+out, by God!"
+
+She shook her head and smiled.  "I meant you to marry me, when you saved
+my life from the streetcar.  I never saw but one man I wanted to marry,
+and you are that man, Carnac.  You wouldn't ask me, so I made you marry
+me.  You could go farther and fare worse.  Come, take me home--take me
+home, my love.  I want you to love me."
+
+"You little devil!" Carnac declared.  "I'd rather cut my own throat.
+I'm going to have a divorce.  I'm going to teach you and the others a
+lesson you won't forget."
+
+"There isn't a jury in the United States you could convince after what
+you've done.  You've made it impossible.  Go to Judge Grimshaw and see
+what he will say.  Go and ask the hotel people and see what they will
+say.  You're my husband, and I mean you shall live with me, and I'll love
+you better than any woman on earth can love you.  .  .  .  Won't you?"
+She held out her hand.
+
+With an angry exclamation, Carnac refused it, and then she suddenly
+turned on her heel, slipped round a corner and was gone.
+
+Carnac was dumbfounded.  He did not know what to do.  He went dazedly
+home, and slept little that night.  The next day he went out to Shipton
+and saw Judge Grimshaw and told him the whole tale.  The Judge shook his
+head.
+
+"It's too tall a story.  Why, you went through the ceremony as if it was
+the real thing, signed the papers, paid my fee, and kissed the bride.
+You could not get a divorce on such evidence.  I'm sorry for you, if you
+don't want the girl.  She's very nice, and 'd make a good wife.  What
+does she mean to do?"
+
+"I don't know.  She left me in the street and went back to her home.  I
+won't live with her."
+
+"I can't help you anyhow.  She has the certificate.  You are validly
+married.  If I were you, I'd let the matter stand."
+
+So they parted, and Carnac sullenly went back to his apartments.  The
+next day he went to see a lawyer, however.  The lawyer opened his eyes
+at the story.  He had never heard anything like it.
+
+"It doesn't sound as if you were sober when you did it.  Were you, sir?
+It was a mad prank, anyhow!"
+
+"I had been drinking, but I wasn't drunk.  I'd been telling them stories
+and they used them as a means of tempting me to act in the absurd
+marriage ceremony.  Like a fool I consented.  Like a fool--but I wasn't
+drunk."
+
+"No, but when you were in your right mind and sober you signed your names
+as Mr. and Mrs. Carnac Grier in the register of a hotel.  I will try to
+win your case for you, but it won't be easy work.  You see the Judge
+himself told you the same thing.  But it would be a triumph to expose a
+thing of that kind, and I'd like to do it.  It wouldn't be cheap, though.
+You'd have to foot the bill.  Are you rich?"
+
+"No, but my people are," said Carnac.  "I could manage the cash, but
+suppose I lost!"
+
+"Well, you'd have to support the woman.  She could sue you for cruelty
+and desertion, and the damages would be heavy."
+
+Carnac shook his head, paid his fee and left the office.
+
+He did not go near Luzanne.  After a month he went to Paris for eight
+months, and then back to Montreal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CARNAC'S RETURN
+
+Arrived in Montreal, there were attempts by Carnac to settle down to
+ordinary life of quiet work at his art, but it was not effective, nor had
+it been in Paris, though the excitement of working in the great centre
+had stimulated him.  He ever kept saying to himself, "Carnac, you are a
+married man--a married man, by the tricks of rogues!"  In Paris, he could
+more easily obscure it, but in Montreal, a few hundred miles from the
+place of his tragedy, pessimism seized him.  He now repented he did not
+fight it out at once.  It would have been courageous and perhaps
+successful.  But whether successful or not, he would have put himself
+right with his own conscience.  That was the chief thing.  He was
+straightforward, and back again in Canada, Carnac flung reproaches at
+himself.
+
+He knew himself now to be in love with Junia Shale, and because he was
+married he could not approach her.  It galled him.  He was not fond of
+Fabian, for they had little in common, and he had no intimate friends.
+Only his mother was always sympathetic to him, and he loved her.  He saw
+much of her, but little of anyone else.  He belonged to no clubs, and
+there were few artists in Montreal.  So he lived his own life, and when
+he met Junia he cavilled at himself for his madness with Luzanne.  The
+curious thing was he had not had a word from her since the day of the
+mock marriage.  Perhaps she had decided to abandon the thing!  But that
+could do no good, for there was the marriage recorded in the registers of
+New York State.
+
+Meanwhile, things were not going well with others.  There befell a day
+when matters came to a crisis in the Grier family.  Since Fabian's
+marriage with Junia Shale's sister, Sybil, he had become discontented
+with his position in his father's firm.  There was little love between
+him and his father, and that was chiefly the father's fault.  One day,
+the old man stormed at Fabian because of a mistake in the management,
+and was foolish enough to say that Fabian had lost his grip since his
+marriage.
+
+Fabian, enraged, demanded freedom from the partnership, and offered to
+sell his share.  In a fit of anger, the old man offered him what was at
+least ten per cent more than the value of Fabian's share.  The sombre
+Fabian had the offer transferred to paper at once, and it was signed by
+his father--not without compunction, because difficult as Fabian was
+he might go further and fare worse.  As for Fabian's dark-haired, brown-
+faced, brown-eyed wife, to John Grier's mind, it seemed a good thing to
+be rid of her.
+
+When Fabian left the father alone in his office, however, the stark
+temper of the old man broke down.  He had had enough.  He muttered to
+himself.  Presently he was roused by a little knock at the door.  It was
+Junia, brilliant, buoyant, yellow haired, with bright brown eyes,
+tingling cheeks, and white laughing teeth that showed against her red
+lips.  She held up a finger at him.
+
+"I know what you've done, and it's no good at all.  You can't live
+without us, and you mustn't," she said.  The old man glowered still, but
+a reflective smile crawled to his lips.  "No, it's finished," he replied.
+
+"It had to come, and it's done.  It can't be changed.  Fabian wouldn't
+alter it, and I shan't."
+
+His face was stern and dour.  He tangled his short fingers in the hair on
+top of his head.
+
+"I wouldn't say that, if I were you," she responded cheerily.  "Fabian
+showed me the sum you offered for his share.  It's ridiculous.  The
+business isn't worth it."
+
+"What do you know about the business?" remarked the other.
+
+"Well, whatever it was worth an hour ago, it's worth less now," she
+answered with suggestion.  "It's worth much less now," she added.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he asked sharply, sitting upright, his hands
+clasping his knees almost violently, his clean-shaven face showing lines
+of trouble.
+
+"I mean he's going to join the enemy," she answered quickly.
+
+"Join the enemy!" broke from the old man's lips with a startled accent.
+
+"Yes, the firm of Belloc."
+
+The old man did not speak, but a curious whiteness stole over his face.
+"What makes you say that!" he exclaimed, anger in his eyes.
+
+"Well, Fabian has to put money into something," she answered, "and the
+only business he knows is lumber business.  Don't you think it's natural
+he should go to Belloc?"
+
+"Did he ever say so?" asked the old man with savage sullenness.  "Tell
+me.  Did he ever say so?"
+
+The girl shook back her brave head with a laugh.  "Of course he never
+said so, but I know the way he'll go."
+
+
+The old man shook his head.  "I don't believe it.  He's got no love for
+Belloc."
+
+The girl felt like saying, "He's got no love for you," but she refrained.
+She knew that Fabian had love for his father, but he had inherited a love
+for business, and that would overwhelm all other feelings.  She therefore
+said:  "Why don't you get Carnac to come in?  He's got more sense than
+Fabian--and he isn't married!"
+
+She spoke boldly, for she knew the character of the man.  She was only
+nineteen.  She had always come in and gone out of Grier's house and
+office freely and much more since her sister had married Fabian.
+
+A storm gathered between the old man's eyes; his brow knitted.  "Carnac's
+got brains enough, but he goes monkeying about with pictures and statues
+till he's worth naught in the business of life."
+
+"I don't think you understand him," the girl replied.  "I've been trying
+to understand him for twenty-five years," the other said malevolently.
+"He might have been a big man.  He might have bossed this business when
+I'm gone.  It's in him, but he's a fly-away--he's got no sense.  The
+ideas he's got make me sick.  He talks like a damn fool sometimes."
+
+"But if he's a 'damn fool'--is it strange?" She gaily tossed a kiss at
+the king of the lumber world.  "The difference between you and him is
+this: he doesn't care about the things of this world, and you do; but
+he's one of the ablest men in Canada.  If Fabian won't come back, why not
+Carnac?"
+
+"We've never hit it off."
+
+Suddenly he stood up, his face flushed, his hands outthrust themselves in
+rage, his fingers opened and shut in abandonment of temper.
+
+"Why have I two such sons!" he exclaimed.  "I've not been bad.  I've
+squeezed a few; I've struck here and there; I've mauled my enemies, but
+I've been good to my own.  Why can't I run square with my own family?"
+He was purple to the roots of his hair.
+
+Savagery possessed him.  Life was testing him to the nth degree.  "I've
+been a good father, and a good husband!  Why am I treated like this?"
+
+She watched him silently.  Presently, however, the storm seemed to pass.
+He appeared to gain control of himself.
+
+"You want me to have in Carnac?" he asked, with a little fleck of foam
+at the corners of his mouth.
+
+"If you could have Fabian back," she remarked, "but you can't!  It's been
+coming for a long time.  He's got your I.O.U. and he won't return; but
+Carnac's got plenty of stuff in him.  He never was afraid of anything or
+anybody, and if he took a notion, he could do this business as well as
+yourself by and by.  It's all a chance, but if he comes in he'll put
+everything else aside."
+
+"Where is he?" the old man asked.  "He's with his mother at your home."
+
+The old man took his hat from the window-sill.  At that moment a clerk
+appeared with some papers.  "What have you got there?" asked Grier
+sharply.  "The Belloc account for the trouble on the river," answered the
+clerk.
+
+"Give it me," Grier said, and he waved the clerk away.  Then he glanced
+at the account, and a grim smile passed over his face.  "They can't have
+all they want, and they won't get it.  Are you coming with me?" he asked
+of the girl, with a set look in his eyes.  "No.  I'm going back to my
+sister," she answered.
+
+"If he leaves me--if he joins Belloc!" the old man muttered, and again
+his face flushed.
+
+A few moments afterwards the girl watched him till he disappeared up the
+hill.
+
+"I don't believe Carnac will do it," she said to herself.  "He's got the
+sense, the brains, and the energy; but he won't do it."
+
+She heard a voice behind her, and turned.  It was the deformed but potent
+Denzil.  He was greyer now.  His head, a little to one side, seemed sunk
+in his square shoulders, but his eyes were bright.
+
+"It's all a bad scrape--that about Fabian Grier," he said.  "You can't
+ever tell about such things, how they'll go--but no, bagosh!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
+
+John Grier's house had a porch with Corinthian pillars.  Its elevation
+was noble, but it was rather crudely built, and it needed its grove of
+maples to make it pleasant to the eye.  It was large but not too ample,
+and it had certain rooms with distinct character.
+
+Inside the house, John Grier paused a moment before the door of the
+sitting-room where his wife usually sat.  All was silent.  He opened the
+door.  A woman rose to meet him.  She was dressed in black.  Her dark
+hair, slightly streaked with grey, gave her distinction.  Her eyes had
+soft understanding; her lips had a reflective smile.  There was, however,
+uneasiness in her face; her fingers slightly trembled on the linen she
+was holding.
+
+"You're home early, John," she said in a gentle, reserved voice.
+
+He twisted a shoulder.  "Yes, I'm home early," he snapped.  "Your boy
+Fabian has left the business, and I've bought his share."  He named the
+sum.  "Ghastly, ain't it?  But he's gone, and there's no more about it.
+It's a bad thing to marry a woman that can't play fair."
+
+He noted the excessive paleness of his wife's face; the bright eyes
+stared and stared, and the lips trembled.  "Fabian--Fabian gone!" she
+said brokenly.
+
+"Yes, and he ain't coming back."
+
+"What's he going to do?" she asked in a bitter voice.
+
+"Join Belloc--fight his own father--try to do me in the race," growled
+the old man.
+
+"Who told you that?" "Junia, she told me."
+
+"What does she know about it?  Who told her that?" asked the woman with
+faded lips.
+
+"She always had sense, that child.  I wish she was a man."
+
+He suddenly ground his heel, and there was distemper in face and voice;
+his shoulders hunched; his hands were thrust down in his pockets.  He
+wheeled on her.  "Where's your other boy?  Where's Carnac?"
+
+The woman pointed to the lawn.  "He's catching a bit of the city from the
+hill just beyond the pear-tree."
+
+"Painting, eh?  I heard he was here.  I want to talk to him."
+
+"I don't think it will do any good," was the sad reply.  "He doesn't
+think as you do."
+
+"You believe he's a genius," snarled the other.
+
+"You know he is."
+
+"I'll go and find him."
+
+She nodded.  "I wish you luck," she said, but there was no conviction in
+her tone.  Truth was, she did not wish him luck in this.  She watched him
+leave by the French window and stride across the lawn.  A strange,
+troubled expression was in her face.
+
+"They can't pull it off together," she said to herself, and Carnac is too
+full of independence.  He wants nothing from anybody.  He needs no one;
+he follows no one--except me.  Yes, he follows--he loves me.
+
+She watched her husband till he almost viciously thrust aside the bushes
+staying his progress, and broke into the space by the pear-tree where
+Carnac sat with palette and brush, gazing at the distant roofs on which
+the sun was leaving its last kiss.
+
+Carnac got to his feet with a smile, and with a courage in his eye equal
+to that which had ever been in his father's face--in the face of John
+Grier.  It was strange that the other's presence troubled him, that even
+as a small child, to be in the same room for any length of time vexed
+him.  Much of that had passed away.  The independence of the life he
+lived, the freedom from resting upon the financial will of the lumber
+king had given him light, air and confidence.  He loved his mother.  What
+he felt for John Grier was respect and admiration.  He knew he was not
+spoken to now with any indolent purpose.
+
+They had seen little of each other of late years.  His mother had given
+him the money to go to New York and Paris, which helped out his own
+limited income.  He wondered what should bring his father to him now.
+There was interested reflection in his eye.  With his habit of
+visualization, he saw behind John Grier, as he came on now, the long
+procession of logs and timbers which had made his fortune, stretch back
+on the broad St. Lawrence, from the Mattawan to the Madawaska, from the
+Richelieu to the Marmora.  Yet, what was it John Grier had done?  In a
+narrow field he had organized his life perfectly, had developed his
+opportunities, had safeguarded his every move.  The smiling inquiry in
+his face was answered by the old man saying abruptly:
+
+"Fabian's gone.  He's deserted the ship."
+
+The young man had the wish to say in reply, "At last, eh!" but he
+avoided it.
+
+"Where has he gone?"
+
+"I bought him out to-day, and I hear he's going to join Belloc."
+
+"Belloc!  Belloc!  Who told you that?" asked the young man.
+
+"Junia Shale--she told me."
+
+Carnac laughed.  "She knows a lot, but how did she know that?"
+
+"Sheer instinct, and I believe she's right."
+
+"Right--right--to fight you, his own father!" was the inflammable reply.
+
+"Why, that would be a lowdown business!"
+
+"Would it be lower down than your not helping your father, when you can?"
+
+Somehow he yearned over his wayward, fantastic son.  The wilful, splendid
+character of the youth overcame the insistence in the other's nature.
+
+"You seem to be getting on all right," remarked Carnac with the faint
+brown moustache, the fine, showy teeth, the clean-shaven cheeks, and
+auburn hair hanging loosely down.
+
+"You're wrong.  Things aren't doing as well with me as they might.
+Belloc and the others make difficult going.  I've got too much to do
+myself.  I want help."
+
+"You had it in Fabian," remarked Carnac dryly.  "Well, I've lost it, and
+it never was enough.  He hadn't vision, sense and decision."
+
+"And so you come to me, eh?  I always thought you despised me," said
+Carnac.
+
+A half-tender, half-repellent expression came into the old man's face.
+He spoke bluntly.  "I always thought you had three times the brains of
+your brother.  You're not like me, and you're not like your mother;
+there's something in you that means vision, and seeing things, and doing
+them.  If fifteen thousand dollars a year and a share in the business is
+any good to you--"
+
+For an instant there had been pleasure and wonder in the young man's
+eyes, but at the sound of the money and the share in the business he
+shrank back.
+
+"I don't think so, father.  I'm happy enough.  I've got all I want."
+
+"What the devil are you talking about!" the other burst out.  "You've
+got all you want!  You've no home; you've no wife; you've no children;
+you've no place.  You paint, and you sculp, and what's the good of it
+all?  Have you ever thought of that?  What's there in it for you or
+anyone else?  Have you no blood and bones, no sting of life in you?  Look
+what I've done.  I started with little, and I've built up a business
+that, if it goes all right, will be worth millions.  I say, if it goes
+all right, because I've got to carry more than I ought."
+
+Carnac shook his head.  "I couldn't be any help to you.  I'm not a man
+of action.  I think, I devise, but I don't act.  I'd be no good in your
+business no, honestly, I'd be no good.  I don't think money is the end
+of life.  I don't think success is compensation for all you've done and
+still must do.  I want to stand out of it.  You've had your life; you've
+lived it where you wanted to live it.  I haven't, and I'm trying to find
+out where my duty and my labour lies.  It is Art; no doubt.  I don't know
+for sure."
+
+"Good God!" broke in the old man.  "You don't know for sure--you're
+twenty-five years old, and you don't know where you're going!"
+
+"Yes, I know where I'm going--to Heaven by and by!"  This was his
+satirical reply.
+
+"Oh, fasten down; get hold of something that matters.  Now, listen to me.
+I want you to do one thing--the thing I ought to do and can't.  I must
+stay here now that Fabian's gone.  I want you to go to the Madawaska
+River."
+
+"No, I won't go to the Madawaska," replied Carnac after a long pause,
+"but"--with sudden resolution--"if it's any good to you, I'll stay here
+in the business, and you can go to the Madawaska.  Show me what to do
+here; tell me how to do it, and I'll try to help you out for a while--
+if it can be done," he added hastily.  "You go, but I'll stay.  Let's
+talk it over at supper."
+
+He sighed, and turned and gazed warmly at the sunset on the roofs of the
+city; then turned to his father's face, but it was not the same look in
+his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CARNAC AS MANAGER
+
+Carnac was installed in the office, and John Grier went to the Madawaska.
+Before he left, however, he was with Carnac for near a week, showing the
+procedure and the main questions that might arise to be solved.
+
+"It's like this," said Grier in their last talk, "you've got to keep a
+stiff hand over the foremen and overseers, and have strict watch of
+Belloc & Co.  Perhaps there will be trouble when I've gone, but, if it
+does, keep a stiff upper lip, and don't let the gang do you.  You've got
+a quick mind and you know how to act sudden.  Act at once, and damn the
+consequences!  Remember, John Grier's firm has a reputation, and deal
+justly, but firmly, with opposition.  The way it's organized, the
+business almost runs itself.  But that's only when the man at the head
+keeps his finger on the piston-rod.  You savvy, don't you?"
+
+"I savvy all right.  If the Belloc firm cuts up rusty, I'll think of what
+you'd do and try to do it in the same way."
+
+The old man smiled.  He liked the spirit in Carnac.  It was the right
+kind for his business.  "I predict this: if you have one fight with the
+Belloc lot, you'll hate them too.  Keep the flag flying.  Don't get
+rattled.  It's a big job, and it's worth doing in a big way.
+
+"Yes, it's a big job," said Carnac.  "I hope I'll pull it off."
+
+"You'll pull it off, if you bend your mind to it.  But there won't be any
+time for your little pictures and statues.  You'll have to deal with the
+real men, and they'll lose their glamour.  That's the thing about
+business--it's death to sentimentality."
+
+Carnac flushed with indignation.  "So you think Titian and Velasquez and
+Goyot and El Greco and Watteau and Van Dyck and Rembrandt and all the
+rest were sentimentalists, do you?  The biggest men in the world worship
+them.  You aren't just to the greatest intellects.  I suppose Shakespeare
+was a sentimentalist!"
+
+The old man laughed and tapped his son on the shoulder.
+
+"Don't get excited, Carnac.  I'd rather you ran my business well, than be
+Titian or Rembrandt, whoever they were.  If you do this job well, I'll
+think there's a good chance of our working together."
+
+Carnac nodded, but the thought that he could not paint or sculp when he
+was on this work vexed him, and he only set his teeth to see it through.
+"All right, we'll see," he said, and his father went away.
+
+Then Carnac's time of work and trial began.  He was familiar with the
+routine of the business, he had adaptability, he was a quick worker, and
+for a fortnight things went swimmingly.  There was elation in doing work
+not his regular job, and he knew the eyes of the commercial and river
+world were on him.  He did his best and it was an effective best.  Junia
+had been in the City of Quebec, but she came back at the end of a
+fortnight, and went to his office to get a subscription for a local
+charity.  She had a gift in this kind of work.
+
+It was a sunny day in the month of June, and as she entered the office a
+new spirit seemed to enter with her.
+
+The place became distinguished.  She stood in the doorway for a moment,
+radiant, smiling, half embarrassed, then she said: "Please may I for a
+moment, Carnac?"
+
+Carnac was delighted.  "For many moments, Junia."
+
+"I'm not as busy as usual.  I'm glad as glad to see you."
+
+She said with restraint:  "Not for many moments.  I'm here on business.
+It's important.  I wanted to get a subscription from John Grier for the
+Sailors' Hospital which is in a bad way.  Will you give something for
+him?"
+
+Carnac looked at the subscription list.  "I see you've been to Belloc
+first and they've given a hundred dollars.  Was that wise-going to them
+first?  You know how my father feels about Belloc.  And we're the older
+firm."
+
+The girl laughed.  "Oh, that's silly!  Belloc's money is as good as John
+Grier's, and it only happened he was asked first because Fabian was
+present when I took the list, and it's Fabian's writing on the paper
+there."
+
+Carnac nodded.  "That's all right with me, for I'm no foe to Belloc, but
+my father wouldn't have liked it.  He wouldn't have given anything in the
+circumstances."
+
+"Oh, yes, he would!  He's got sense with all his prejudices.  I'll tell
+you what he'd have done: he'd have given a bigger subscription than
+Belloc."
+
+Carnac laughed.  "Well, perhaps you're right; it was clever planning it
+so."
+
+"I didn't plan it.  It was accident, but I had to consider everything and
+I saw how to turn it to account.  So, if you are going to give a
+subscription for John Grier you must do as he would do."
+
+Carnac smiled, put the paper on his desk, and took the pen.
+
+"Make it measure the hate John Grier has to the Belloc firm," she said
+ironically.
+
+Carnac chuckled and wrote.  "Will that do?"  He handed her the paper.
+
+"One hundred and fifty dollars--oh, quite, quite good!" she said.
+"But it's only a half hatred after all.  I'd have made it a whole one."
+
+"You'd have expected John Grier to give two hundred, eh?  But that would
+have been too plain.  It looks all right now, and it must go at that."
+
+She smiled.  "Well, it'll go at that.  You're a good business man.  I see
+you've given up your painting and sculping to do this!  It will please
+your father, but are you satisfied?"
+
+"Satisfied--of course, I'm not; and you know it.  I'm not a money-
+grabber.  I'm an artist if I'm anything, and I'm not doing this
+permanently.  I'm only helping my father while he's in a hole."
+
+The girl suddenly grew serious.  "You mean you're not going to stick to
+the business, and take Fabian's place in it?  He's been for a week with
+Belloc and he's never coming back here.  You have the brains for it; and
+you could make your father happy and inherit his fortune--all of it."
+
+Carnac flushed indignantly.  "I suppose I could, but it isn't big enough
+for me.  I'd rather do one picture that the Luxembourg or the London
+National Gallery would buy than own this whole business.  That's the turn
+of my mind."
+
+"Yes, but if you didn't sell a picture to the Luxembourg or the National
+Gallery.  What then?"
+
+"I'd have a good try for it, that's all.  Do you want me to give up Art
+and take to commerce?  Is that your view?"
+
+"I suggested to John Grier the day that Fabian sold his share that you
+might take his place; and I still think it a good thing, though, of
+course, I like your painting.  But I felt sorry for your father with none
+of his own family to help him; and I thought you might stay with him for
+your family's sake."
+
+"You thought I'd be a martyr for love of John Grier--and cold cash, did
+you?  That isn't the way the blood runs in my veins.  I think John Grier
+might get out of the business now, if he's tired, and sell it and let
+some one else run it.  John Grier is not in want.  If he were, I'd give
+up everything to help him, and I'd not think I was a martyr.  But I've a
+right to make my own career.  It's making the career one likes which gets
+one in the marrow.  I'd take my chances of success as he did.  He has
+enough to live on, he's had success; let him get down and out, if he's
+tired."
+
+The girl held herself firmly.  "Remember John Grier has made a great name
+for himself--as great in his way as Andrew Carnegie or Pierpont Morgan--
+and he's got pride in his name.  He wants his son to carry it on, and in
+a way he's right."
+
+"That's good argument," said Carnac, "but if his name isn't strong enough
+to carry itself, his son can't carry it for him.  That's the way of life.
+How many sons have ever added to their father's fame?  The instances are
+very few.  In the modern world, I can only think of the Pitts in England.
+There's no one else."
+
+The girl now smiled again.  The best part in her was stirred.  She saw.
+Her mind changed.  After a moment she said:  "I think you're altogether
+right about it.  Carnac, you have your own career to make, so make it
+as it best suits yourself.  I'm sorry I spoke to your father as I did.
+I pitied him, and I thought you'd find scope for your talents in the
+business.  It's a big game, but I see now it isn't yours, Carnac."
+
+He nodded, smiling.  "That's it; that's it, I hate the whole thing."
+
+She shook hands.  As his hand enclosed her long slim fingers, he felt he
+wished never to let them go, they were so thrilling; but he did, for the
+thought of Luzanne came to his mind.
+
+"Good-bye, Junia, and don't forget that John Grier's firm is the foe of
+the Belloc business," he said satirically.
+
+She laughed, and went down the hill quickly, and as she went Carnac
+thought he had never seen so graceful a figure.
+
+"What an evil Fate sent Luzanne my way!" he said.
+
+Two days later there came an ugly incident on the river.  There was a
+collision between a gang of John Grier's and Belloc's men and one of
+Grier's men was killed.  At the inquest, it was found that the man met
+his death by his own fault, having first attacked a Belloc man and
+injured him.  The Belloc man showed the injury to the jury, and he was
+acquitted.  Carnac watched the case closely, and instructed his lawyer to
+contend that the general attack was first made by Belloc's men, which was
+true; but the jury decided that this did not affect the individual case,
+and that the John Grier man met his death by his own fault.
+
+"A shocking verdict!" he said aloud in the Court when it was given.
+
+"Sir," said the Coroner, "it is the verdict of men who use their judgment
+after hearing the evidence, and your remark is offensive and criminal."
+
+"If it is criminal, I apologize," said Carnac.
+
+"You must apologize for its offensiveness, or you will be arrested, sir."
+
+This nettled Carnac.  "I will not apologize for its offensiveness," he
+said firmly.
+
+"Constable, arrest this man," said the Coroner, and the constable did so.
+
+"May I be released on bail?" asked Carnac with a smile.
+
+"I am a magistrate.  Yes, you may be released on bail," said the Coroner.
+
+Carnac bowed, and at once a neighbour became security for three thousand
+dollars.  Then Carnac bowed again and left the Court with--it was plain--
+the goodwill of most people present.
+
+Carnac returned to his office with angry feelings at his heart.  The
+Belloc man ought to have been arrested for manslaughter, he thought.  In
+any case, he had upheld the honour of John Grier's firm by his protest,
+and the newspapers spoke not unfavourably of him in their reports.  They
+said he was a man of courage to say what he did, though it was improper,
+from a legal standpoint.  But human nature was human nature!
+
+The trial took place in five days, and Carnac was fined twenty-five
+cents, which was in effect a verdict of not guilty; and so the newspapers
+said.  It was decided that the offence was only legally improper, and it
+was natural that Carnac expressed himself strongly.
+
+Junia was present at the trial.  After it was over, she saw Carnac for a
+moment.  "I think your firm can just pay the price and exist!" she said.
+"It's a terrible sum, and it shows how great a criminal you are!"
+
+"Not a 'thirty-cent' criminal, anyhow," said Carnac.  "It is a moral
+victory, and tell Fabian so.  He's a bit huffy because I got into the
+trouble, I suppose."
+
+"No, he loathed it all.  He's sorry it occurred."
+
+There was no further talk between them, for a subordinate of Carnac's
+came hurriedly to him and said something which Junia did not hear.
+Carnac raised his hat to her, and hurried away.
+
+"Well, it's not so easy as painting pictures," she said.  "He gets fussed
+over these things."
+
+It was later announced by the manager of the main mill that there was
+to be a meeting of workers to agitate for a strike for higher pay.  A
+French-Canadian who had worked in the mills of Maine and who was a red-
+hot socialist was the cause of it.  He had only been in the mills for
+about three months and had spent his spare time inciting well-satisfied
+workmen to strike.  His name was Luc Baste--a shock-haired criminal with
+a huge chest and a big voice, and a born filibuster.  The meeting was
+held and a deputation was appointed to wait on Carnac at his office.
+Word was sent to Carnac, and he said he would see them after the work was
+done for the day.  So in the evening about seven o'clock the deputation
+of six men came, headed by Luc Baste.
+
+"Well, what is it?" Carnac asked calmly.
+
+Luc Baste began, not a statement of facts, but an oration on the rights
+of workers, their downtrodden condition and their beggarly wages.  He
+said they had not enough to keep body and soul together, and that right
+well did their employers know it.  He said there should be an increase of
+a half-dollar a day, or there would be a strike.
+
+Carnac dealt with the matter quickly and quietly.  He said Luc Baste had
+not been among them a long time and evidently did not know what was the
+cost of living in Montreal.  He said the men got good wages, and in any
+case it was not for him to settle a thing of such importance.  This was
+for the head of the firm, John Grier, when he returned.  The wages had
+been raised two years before, and he doubted that John Grier would
+consent to a further rise.  All other men on the river seemed satisfied
+and he doubted these ought to have a cent more a day.  They were getting
+the full value of the work.  He begged all present to think twice before
+they brought about catastrophe.  It would be a catastrophe if John
+Grier's mills should stop working and Belloc's mills should go on as
+before.  It was not like Grier's men to do this sort of thing.
+
+The men seemed impressed, and, presently, after one of them thanking him,
+the deputation withdrew, Luc Baste talking excitedly as they went.  The
+manager of the main mill, with grave face, said:
+
+"No, Mr. Grier, I don't think they'll be satisfied.  You said all that
+could be said, but I think they'll strike after all."
+
+"Well, I hope it won't occur before John Grier gets back," said Carnac.
+
+That night a strike was declared.
+
+Fortunately, only about two-thirds of the men came out, and it could not
+be called a complete success.  The Belloc people were delighted, but they
+lived in daily fear of a strike in their own yards, for agitators were
+busy amongst their workmen.  But the workers waited to see what would
+happen to Grier's men.
+
+Carnac declined to reconsider.  The wages were sufficient and the strike
+unwarranted!  He kept cool, even good-natured, and with only one-third of
+his men at work, he kept things going, and the business went on with
+regularity, if with smaller output.  The Press unanimously supported him,
+for it was felt the strike had its origin in foreign influence, and as
+French Canada had no love for the United States there was journalistic
+opposition to the strike.  Carnac had telegraphed to his father when the
+strike started, but did not urge him to come back.  He knew that Grier
+could do nothing more than he himself was doing, and he dreaded new
+influence over the strikers.  Grier happened to be in the backwoods and
+did not get word for nearly a week; then he wired asking Carnac what the
+present situation was.  Carnac replied he was standing firm, that he
+would not yield a cent increase in wages, and that, so far, all was
+quiet.
+
+It happened, however, that on the day he wired, the strikers tried to
+prevent the non-strikers from going to work and there was a collision.
+The police and a local company of volunteers intervened and then the
+Press condemned unsparingly the whole affair.  This outbreak did good,
+and Luc Baste was arrested for provoking disorder.  No one else was
+arrested, and this was a good thing, for, on the whole, even the men
+that followed Luc did not trust him.  His arrest cleared the air and
+the strike broke.  The next day, all the strikers returned, but Carnac
+refused their wages for the time they were on strike, and he had
+triumphed.
+
+On that very day John Grier started back to Montreal.  He arrived in
+about four days, and when he came, found everything in order.  He went
+straight from his home to the mill and there found Carnac in control.
+
+"Had trouble, eh, Carnac?" he asked with a grin, after a moment of
+greeting.  Carnac shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.
+
+"It's the first strike I ever had in my mills, and I hope it will be the
+last.  I don't believe in knuckling down to labour tyranny, and I'm glad
+you kept your hand steady.  There'll be no more strikes in my mills--I'll
+see to that!"
+
+"They've only just begun, and they'll go on, father.  It's the influence
+of Canucs who have gone to the factories of Maine.  They get bitten there
+with the socialistic craze, and they come back and make trouble.  This
+strike was started by Luc Baste, a French-Canadian, who had been in
+Maine.  You can't stop these things by saying so.  There was no strike
+among Belloc's men!"
+
+"No, but did you have no trouble with Belloc's men?"
+
+Carnac told him of the death of the Grier man after the collision, of his
+own arrest and fine of twenty-five cents and of the attitude of the
+public and the Press.  The old man was jubilant.  "Say, you did the thing
+in style.  It was the only way to do it.  You landed 'em with the protest
+fair and easy.  You're going to be a success in the business, I can see
+that."
+
+Carnac for a moment looked at his father meditatively.  Then, seeing the
+surprise in John Grier's face, he said: "No, I'm not going to be a
+success in it, for I'm not going on with it.  I've had enough.  I'm
+through."
+
+"You've had enough--you're through--just when you've proved you can do
+things as well as I can do them!  You ain't going on!  Great
+Jehoshaphat!"
+
+"I mean it; I'm not going on.  I'm going to quit in another month.
+I can't stick it.  It galls me.  It ain't my job.  I do it, but it's
+artificial, it ain't the real thing.  My heart isn't in it as yours is,
+and I'd go mad if I had to do this all my life.  It's full of excitement
+at times, it's hard work, it's stimulating when you're fighting, but
+other times it's deadly dull and bores me stiff.  I feel as though I were
+pulling a train of cars."
+
+Slowly the old man's face reddened with anger.  "It bores you stiff, eh?
+It's deadly dull at times!  There's only interest in it when there's a
+fight on, eh?  You're right; you're not fit for the job, never was and
+never will be while your mind is what it is.  Don't take a month to go,
+don't take a week, or a day, go this morning after I've got your report
+on what's been done.  It ain't the real thing, eh?  No, it ain't.  It's
+no place for you.  Tell me all there is to tell, and get out; I've had
+enough too, I've had my fill.  'It bores me stiff'!"
+
+John Grier was in a rage, and he would listen to no explanation.  "Come
+now, out with your report."
+
+Carnac was not upset.  He kept cool.  "No need to be so crusty," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LUKE TARBOE HAS AN OFFER
+
+Many a man behind his horses' tails on the countryside has watched the
+wild reckless life of the water with wonder and admiration.  He sees a
+cluster of logs gather and climb, and still gather and climb, and between
+him and that cluster is a rolling waste of timber, round and square.
+
+Suddenly, a being with a red shirt, with loose prairie kind of hat, knee-
+boots, having metal clamps, strikes out from the shore, running on the
+tops of the moving logs till he reaches the jam.  Then the pike-pole, or
+the lever, reaches the heart of the difficulty, and presently the jam
+breaks, and the logs go tumbling into the main, while the vicious-looking
+berserker of the water runs back to the shore over the logs, safe and
+sound.  It is a marvel to the spectator, that men should manipulate the
+river so.  To him it is a life apart; not belonging to the life he lives
+-a passing show.
+
+It was a stark surprise of the river which makes this story possible.
+There was a strike at Bunder's Boom--as it was called--between Bunder and
+Grier's men.  Some foreman of Grier's gang had been needlessly offensive.
+Bunder had been stupidly resentful.  When Grier's men had tried to force
+his hand also, he had resisted.  It chanced that, when an impasse seemed
+possible to be broken only by force, a telegram came to John Grier at
+Montreal telling him of the difficulty.  He lost no time in making his
+way northwards.
+
+But some one else had come upon the scene.  It was Luke Tarboe.  He had
+arrived at a moment when the Belloc river crowd had almost wrecked
+Bunder's Boom, and when a collision between the two gangs seemed
+inevitable.  What he did remained a river legend.  By good temper and
+adroitness, he reconciled the leaders of the two gangs; he bought the
+freedom of the river by a present to Bunder's daughter; he won Bunder
+by four bottles of "Three Star" brandy.  When the police from a town a
+hundred miles away arrived at the same time as John Grier, it was
+to find the Grier and Belloc gangs peacefully prodding side by side.
+
+When the police had gone, John Grier looked Tarboe up and down.  The
+brown face, the clear, strong brown eyes and the brown hatless head rose
+up eighteen inches above his own, making a gallant summit to a robust
+stalk.
+
+"Well, you've done easier things than that in your time, eh?" John Grier
+asked.
+
+Tarboe nodded.  "It was touch and go.  I guess it was the hardest thing I
+ever tried since I've been working for you, but it's come off all right,
+hasn't it?"  He waved a hand to the workmen on the river, to the tumbling
+rushes of logs and timber.  Then he looked far up the stream, with hand
+shading his brown eyes to where a crib-or raft-was following the eager
+stream of logs.  "It's easy going now," he added, and his face had a look
+of pleasure.
+
+"What's your position, and what's your name?" asked John Grier.
+
+"I'm head-foreman of the Skunk Nest's gang--that's this lot, and I got
+here--just in time!  I don't believe you could have done it, Mr. Grier.
+No master is popular in the real sense with his men.  I think they'd have
+turned you down.  So it was lucky I came."
+
+A faint smile hovered at his lips, and his eyes brooded upon the busy
+gangs of men.  "Yes, I've had a lot of luck this time.  There's nothing
+like keeping your head cool and your belly free from drink."  Now he
+laughed broadly.  "By gosh, it's all good!  Do you know, Mr. Grier, I
+came out here a wreck eight years ago.  I left Montreal then with a spot
+in my lungs, that would kill me, they said.  I've never seen Montreal
+since, but I've had a good time out in the woods, in the shanties in the
+winters; on the rivers in the summer.  I've only been as far East as this
+in eight years."
+
+"What do you do in the winter, then?"
+
+"Shanties-shanties all the time.  In the summer this; in the Fall taking
+the men back to the shanties.  Bossing the lot; doing it from love of the
+life that's been given back to me.  Yes, this is the life that makes you
+take things easy.  You don't get fussed out here.  The job I had took a
+bit of doing, but it was done, and I'm lucky to have my boss see the end
+of it."
+
+He smiled benignly upon John Grier.  He knew he was valuable to the Grier
+organization; he knew that Grier had heard of him under another name.
+Now Grier had seen him, and he felt he would like to tell John Grier some
+things about the river he ought to know.  He waved a hand declining the
+cigar offered him by his great chief.
+
+"Thanks, I don't smoke, and I don't drink, and I don't chew; but I eat
+--by gosh, I eat!  Nothing's so good as good food, except good reading."
+
+"Good reading!" exclaimed John Grier.  "Good reading--on the river!"
+
+"Well, it's worked all right, and I read a lot.  I get books from
+Montreal, from the old library at the University."
+
+"At what University?" struck in the lumber-king.  "Oh, Laval!  I
+wouldn't go to McGill.  I wanted to know French, so I went to Laval.
+There I came to know Father Labasse.  He was a great man, Father Labasse.
+He helped me.  I was there three years, and then was told I was going to
+die.  It was Labasse who gave me this tip.  He said, 'Go into the woods;
+put your teeth into the trees; eat the wild herbs, and don't come back
+till you feel well.' Well, I haven't gone back, and I'm not going back."
+
+"What do you do with your wages?" asked the lumber-king.
+
+"I bought land.  I've got a farm of four hundred acres twenty miles from
+here.  I've got a man on it working it."
+
+"Does it pay?"
+
+"Of course.  Do you suppose I'd keep a farm that didn't pay?"
+
+"Who runs it?"
+
+"A man that broke his leg on the river.  One of Belloc's men.  He knows
+all about farming.  He brought his wife and three children up, and there
+he is--making money, and making the land good.  I've made him a partner
+at last.  When it's good enough by and by, I'll probably go and live
+there myself.  Anybody ought to make farming a success, if there's water
+and proper wood and such things," he added.
+
+There was silence for a few moments.  Then John Grier looked Tarboe up
+and down sharply again, noting the splendid physique, the quizzical,
+mirth-provoking eye, and said: "I can give you a better job if you'll
+come to Montreal."
+
+Tarboe shook his head.  "Haven't had a sick day for eight years; I'm as
+hard as nails; I'm as strong as steel.  I love this wild world of the
+woods and fields and--"
+
+"And the shebangs and grog-shops and the dirty, drunken villages?"
+interrupted the old man.
+
+"No, they don't count.  I take them in, but they don't count."
+
+"Didn't you have hard times when you first came?" asked John Grier.
+"Did you get right with the men from the start?"
+
+"A little bit of care is a good thing in any life.  I told them good
+stories, and they liked that.  I used to make the stories up, and they
+liked that also.  When I added some swear words they liked them all the
+better.  I learned how to do it."
+
+"Yes, I've heard of you, but not as Tarboe."
+
+"You heard of me as Renton, eh?"
+
+"Yes, as Renton.  I wonder I never came across you till to-day."
+
+"I kept out of your way; that was the reason.  When you came north, I got
+farther into the backwoods."
+
+"Are you absolutely straight, Tarboe?" asked John Grier eagerly.  "Do
+you do these things in the Garden of Eden way, or can you run a bit
+crooked when it's worth while?"
+
+"If I'd ever seen it worth while, I'd say so.  I could run a bit crooked
+if I was fighting among the big ones, or if we were at war with--Belloc,
+eh!"  A cloud came into the eyes of Tarboe.  "If I was fighting Belloc,
+and he used a weapon to flay me from behind, I'd never turn my back on
+him!"
+
+A grim smile came into Tarboe's face.  His jaw set almost viciously, his
+eyes hardened.  "You people don't play your game very well, Mr. Grier.
+I've seen a lot that wants changing."
+
+"Why don't you change it, then?"
+
+Tarboe laughed.  "If I was boss like you, I'd change it, but I'm not, and
+I stick to my own job."
+
+The old man came close to him, and steadily explored his face and eyes.
+"I've never met anybody like you before.  You're the man can do things
+and won't do them."
+
+"I didn't say that.  I said what I meant--that good health is better than
+everything else in the world, and when you've got it, you should keep it,
+if you can.  I'm going to keep mine."
+
+"Well, keep it in Montreal," said John Grier.  "There's a lot doing there
+worth while.  Is fighting worth anything to one that's got aught in him?
+There's war for the big things.  I believe in war."  He waved a hand.
+"What's the difference between the kind of thing you've done to-day, and
+doing it with the Belloc gang--with the Folson gang--with the Longville
+gang--and all the rest?  It's the same thing.  I was like you when I was
+young.  I could do things you've done to-day while I laid the base of
+what I've got.  How old are you?"
+
+"I'm thirty--almost thirty-one."
+
+"You'll be just as well in Montreal to-morrow as you are here to-day, and
+you'd be twice as clever," said John Grier.  His eyes seemed to pierce
+those of the younger man.  "I like you," he continued, suddenly catching
+Tarboe's arm.  "You're all right, and you wouldn't run straight simply
+because it was the straight thing to do."
+
+Tarboe threw back his head and laughed and nodded.  The old man's eyes
+twinkled.  "By gracious, we're well met!  I never was in a bigger hole in
+my life.  One of my sons has left me.  I bought him out, and he's joined
+my enemy Belloc."
+
+"Yes, I know," remarked Tarboe.
+
+"My other son, he's no good.  He's as strong as a horse--but he's no
+good.  He paints, he sculps.  He doesn't care whether I give him money or
+not.  He earns his living as he wants to earn it.  When Fabian left me, I
+tried Carnac.  I offered to take him in permanently.  He tried it, but he
+wouldn't go on.  He got out.  He's twenty-six.  The papers are beginning
+to talk about him.  He doesn't care for that, except that it brings in
+cash for his statues and pictures.  What's the good of painting and
+statuary, if you can't do the big things?"
+
+"So you think the things you do are as big as the things that
+Shakespeare, or Tennyson, or Titian, or Van Dyck, or Watt, or Rodin do
+--or did?"
+
+"Bigger-much bigger," was the reply.
+
+The younger man smiled.  "Well, that's the way to look at it, I suppose.
+Think the thing you do is better than what anybody else does, and you're
+well started."
+
+"Come and do it too.  You're the only man I've cottoned to in years.
+Come with me, and I'll give you twelve thousand dollars a year; and I'll
+take you into my business.--I'll give you the best chance you ever had.
+You've found your health; come back and keep it.  Don't you long for the
+fight, for your finger at somebody's neck?  That's what I felt when I was
+your age, and I did it, and I'm doing it, but I can't do it as I used to.
+My veins are leaking somewhere."  A strange, sad, faded look came into
+his eyes.  "I don't want my business to be broken by Belloc," he added.
+"Come and help me save it."
+
+"By gosh, I will!" said the young man after a moment, with a sudden
+thirst in his throat and bite to his teeth.  "By gum, yes, I'll go with
+you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"AT OUR PRICE?"
+
+West of the city of Montreal were the works and the offices of John
+Grier.  Here it was that a thing was done without which there might have
+been no real story to tell.  It was a night which marked the close of the
+financial year of the firm.
+
+Upon John Grier had come Carnac.  He had brought with him a small statue
+of a riverman with flannel shirt, scarf about the waist, thick defiant
+trousers and well-weaponed boots.  It was a real figure of the river,
+buoyant, daring, almost vicious.  The head was bare; there were plain
+gold rings in the ears; and the stark, half-malevolent eyes looked out,
+as though searching for a jam of logs or some peril of the river.  In the
+horny right hand was a defiant pike-pole, its handle thrust forward, its
+steel spike stabbing the ground.
+
+At first glance, Carnac saw that John Grier was getting worn and old.
+The eyes were not so flashing as they once were; the lips were curled in
+a half-cynical mood.  The old look of activity was fading; something
+vital had struck soul and body.  He had had a great year.  He had fought
+Belloc and his son Fabian successfully; he had laid new plans and
+strengthened his position.
+
+Tarboe coming into the business had made all the difference to him.
+Tarboe had imagination, skill and decision, he seldom lost his temper; he
+kept a strong hand upon himself.  His control of men was marvellous; his
+knowledge of finance was instinctive; his capacity for organization was
+rare, and he had health unbounded and serene.  It was hard to tell what
+were the principles controlling Tarboe--there was always an element of
+suspicion in his brown and brilliant eyes.  Yet he loved work.  The wind
+of energy seemed to blow through his careless hair.  His hands were like
+iron and steel; his lips were quick and friendly, or ruthless, as seemed
+needed.  To John Grier's eyes he was the epitome of civilization--the
+warrior without a soul.
+
+When Carnac came in now with the statue tucked under his arm, smiling and
+self-contained, it seemed as though something had been done by Fate to
+flaunt John Grier.
+
+With a nod, Carnac put the statue on the table in front of the old man,
+and said: "It's all right, isn't it?  I've lifted that out of the river-
+life.  That's one of the best men you ever had, and he's only one of a
+thousand.  He doesn't belong anywhere.  He's a rover, an adventurer, a
+wanton of the waters.  Look at him.  He's all right, isn't he?"  He asked
+this again.
+
+The timber-man waved the statue aside, and looked at the youth with
+critical eyes.  "I've just been making up the accounts for the year," he
+said.  "It's been the best year I've had in seven.  I've taken the starch
+out of Belloc and Fabian.  I've broken the back of their opposition--I've
+got it like a twig in iron teeth."
+
+"Yes, Tarboe's been some use, hasn't he?" was the suggestive response.
+
+John Grier's eyes hardened.  "You might have done it.  You had it in you.
+The staff of life--courage and daring--were yours, and you wouldn't take
+it on.  What's the result?  I've got a man who's worth two of Fabian and
+Belloc.  And you"--he held up a piece of paper--"see that," he broke off.
+"See that.  It's my record.  That's what I'm worth.  That's what you
+might have handled!"  He took a cigar from his pocket, cut off the blunt
+end, and continued: "You threw your chance aside."  He tapped the paper
+with the point of the cigar.  "That's what Tarboe has helped do.  What
+have you got to show?"  He pointed to the statue.  "I won't say it ain't
+good.  It's a live man from the river.  But what do I want with that,
+when I can have the original man himself!  My boy, the great game of life
+is to fight hard, and never to give in.  If you keep your eyes open,
+things'll happen that'll bring what you want."
+
+He stood up, striking a match to light his cigar.  It was dusk, and the
+light of the match gave a curious, fantastic glimmer to his powerful,
+weird, haggard face.  He was like some remnant of a great life, loose in
+a careless world.
+
+"I tell you," he said, the smoke leaking from his mouth like a drift of
+snow," the only thing worth doing is making the things that matter in the
+commerce and politics of the world."
+
+"I didn't know you were a politician," said Carnac.  "Of course I'm a
+politician," was the inflammable reply.  "What's commerce without
+politics?  It's politics that makes the commerce possible.  There's that
+fellow Barouche--Barode Barouche--he's got no money, but he's a Minister,
+and he can make you rich or poor by planning legislation at Ottawa
+that'll benefit or hamper you.  That's the kind of business that's worth
+doing--seeing into the future, fashioning laws that make good men happy
+and bad men afraid.  Don't I know!  I'm a master-man in my business;
+nothing defeats me.  To me, a forest of wild wood is the future palace of
+a Prime Minister.  A great river is a pathway to the palace, and all the
+thousands of men that work the river are the adventurers that bring the
+booty home--"
+
+"That bring 'the palace to Paris,' eh!" interrupted Carnac, laughing.
+
+"Paris be damned--that bring the forest to Quebec.  How long did it take
+you to make that?" he added with a nod towards the statue.
+
+"Oh, I did it in a day--six hours, I think; and he stood like that for
+three hours out of the six.  He was great, but he'd no more sense of
+civilization than I have of Heaven."
+
+"You don't need to have a sense of Heaven, you need to have a sense of
+Hell.  That prevents you from spoiling your own show.  You're playing
+with life's vital things."
+
+"I wonder how much you've got out of it all, father," Carnac remarked
+with a smile.  He lit a cigarette.  "You do your job in style.  It's been
+a great career, yours.  You've made your big business out of nothing."
+
+"I had something to start with.  Your grandfather had a business worth
+not much, but it was a business, and the fundamental thing is to have
+machinery to work with when you start life.  I had that.  My father was
+narrow, contracted and a blunderer, but he made good in a small way."
+
+"And you in a big way," said Carnac, with admiration and criticism in his
+eyes.
+
+He realized that John Grier had summed him up fairly when he said he was
+playing with life's vital things.  Somehow, he saw the other had a grip
+upon essentials lacking in himself; he had his tooth in the orange, as it
+were, and was sucking the juice of good profit from his labours.  Yet he
+knew how much trickery and vital evasion and harsh aggression there were
+in his father's business life.
+
+As yet he had never seen Tarboe--he had been away in the country the
+whole year nearly--but he imagined a man of strength, abilities,
+penetration and deep power.  He knew that only a man with savage
+instincts could work successfully with John Grier; he knew that Grier
+was without mercy in his business, and that his best year's work had been
+marked by a mandatory power which only a malevolent policy could produce.
+Yet, somehow, he had a feeling that Tarboe had a steadying influence on
+John Grier.  The old man was not so uncontrolled as in bygone days.
+
+"I'd like to see Tarboe," Carnac said suddenly.  "He ain't the same as
+you," snapped John Grier.  "He's bigger, broader, and buskier."  A
+malicious smile crossed over his face.  "He's a bandit--that's what he
+is.  He's got a chest like a horse and lungs like the ocean.  When he's
+got a thing, he's got it like a nail in a branch of young elm.  He's a
+dandy, that fellow."  Suddenly passion came to his eyes.  "You might have
+done it, you've got the brains, and the sense, but you ain't got the
+ambition.  You keep feeling for a thousand things instead of keeping your
+grip on one.  The man that succeeds fastens hard on what he wants to do--
+the one big thing, and he does it, thinking of naught else."
+
+"Well, that's good preaching," remarked Carnac coolly.  "But it doesn't
+mean that a man should stick to one thing, if he finds out he's been
+wrong about it?  We all make mistakes.  Perhaps some day I'll wish I'd
+gone with you."
+
+Grimness came into the old man's face.  Something came into his eyes that
+was strange and revealing.
+
+"Well, I hope you will.  But you had your chance with me, and you threw
+it down like a piece of rotten leather."
+
+"I don't cost you anything," returned Carnac.  "I've paid my own way a
+long time--with mother's help."
+
+"And you're twenty-six years old, and what have you got?  Enough to give
+you bread from day to day-no more.  I was worth seventy thousand dollars
+when I was your age.  I'm worth enough to make a prince rich, and if I'd
+been treated right by those I brought into the world I'd be worth twice
+as much.  Fabian was good as far as he went, but he was a coward.  You"--
+a look of fury entered the dark eyes--"you were no coward, but you didn't
+care a damn.  You wanted to paddle about with muck of imagination--" he
+pointed to the statue on the table.
+
+"Why, your business has been great because of your imagination," was the
+retort.  "You saw things ahead with the artist's eye.  You planned with
+the artist's mind; and brought forth what's to your honour and credit--
+and the piling up of your bank balance.  The only thing that could have
+induced me to work in your business is the looking ahead and planning,
+seeing the one thing to be played off against the other, the fighting of
+strong men, the politics, all the forces which go to make or break your
+business.  Well, I didn't do it, and I'm not sorry.  I have a gift which,
+by training and development, will give me a place among the men who do
+things, if I have good luck--good luck!"
+
+He dwelt upon these last words with an intensity which dreaded something.
+There was retrospection in his eyes.  A cloud seemed to cross his face.
+
+A strong step crunching the path stopped the conversation, and presently
+there appeared the figure of Tarboe.  Certainly the new life had not
+changed Tarboe, had not altered his sturdy, strenuous nature.  His brown
+eyes under the rough thatch of his eyebrow took in the room with
+lightning glance, and he nodded respectfully, yet with great
+friendliness, at John Grier.  He seemed to have news, and he
+glanced with doubt at Carnac.
+
+John Grier understood.  "Go ahead.  What's happened?"
+
+"Nothing that can't wait till I'm introduced to your son," rejoined
+Tarboe.
+
+With a friendly look, free from all furtiveness, Carnac reached out a
+hand, small, graceful, firm.  As Tarboe grasped it in his own big paw, he
+was conscious of a strength in the grip which told him that the physical
+capacity of the "painter-fellow," as he afterwards called Carnac, had
+points worthy of respect.  On the instant, there was admiration on the
+part of each--admiration and dislike.  Carnac liked the new-comer for
+his healthy bearing, for the iron hardness of his head, and for the
+intelligence of his dark eyes.  He disliked him, however, for something
+that made him critical of his father, something covert and devilishly
+alert.  Both John Grier and Tarboe were like two old backwoodsmen, eager
+to reach their goal, and somewhat indifferent to the paths by which they
+travelled to it.
+
+Tarboe, on the other hand, admired the frank, pleasant face of the young
+man, which carried still the irresponsibility of youth, but which
+conveyed to the watchful eye a brave independence, a fervid, and perhaps
+futile, challenge to all the world.  Tarboe understood that this young
+man had a frankness dangerous to the business of life, yet which,
+properly applied, might bring great results.  He disliked Carnac for his
+uncalculating candour; but he realized that, behind all, was something
+disturbing to his life.
+
+"It's a woman," Tarboe said to himself, "it's a woman.  He's made a fool
+of himself."
+
+Tarboe was right.  He had done what no one else had done--he had pierced
+the cloud surrounding Carnac: it was a woman.
+
+"I hear you're pulling things off here," remarked Carnac civilly.  "He
+says"--pointing to John Grier--"that you're making the enemy squirm."
+
+Tarboe nodded, and a half-stealthy smile crept across his face.  "I don't
+think we've lost anything coming our way," he replied.  "We've had good
+luck--"
+
+"And our eyes were open," intervened John Grier.  "You push the brush and
+use the chisel, don't you?" asked Tarboe in spite of himself with slight
+scorn in his tone.
+
+"I push the chisel and use the brush," answered Carnac, smilingly
+correcting him.
+
+"That's a good thing.  Is it yours?" asked Tarboe, nodding and pointing
+to the statue of the riverman.  Carnac nodded.  "Yes, I did that one day.
+I'd like to do you, if you'd let me."
+
+The young giant waved a brawny hand and laughed.  He looked down at his
+knee-boots, with their muddied soles, and then at the statue again on the
+table.  "I don't mind you're doing me.  Turn about is fair play.
+
+"I've done you out of your job."  Then he added to the old man: "It's good
+news I've got.  I've made the contract with the French firm at our
+price."
+
+"At our price!" remarked the other with a grim smile.  "For the lot?"
+
+"Yes, for the lot, and I've made the contracts with the ships to carry
+it."
+
+"At our price?" again asked the old man.  Tarboe nodded.  "Just a little
+better."
+
+"I wouldn't have believed those two things could have been done in the
+time."  Grier rubbed his hands cheerfully.  "That's a good day's work.
+It's the best you've done since you've come."
+
+Carnac watched the scene with interest.  No envy moved him, his soul was
+free from malice.  Evidently Tarboe was a man of power.  Ruthless he
+might be, ruthless and unsparing, but a man of power.
+
+At that instant a clerk entered with a letter in his hand.  "Mrs. Grier
+said to give you this," he remarked to Carnac, handing it to him.
+
+Carnac took it and the clerk departed.  The letter had an American
+postmark, and the handwriting on the letter brought trouble to his eyes.
+He composed himself, however, and tore off the end of the envelope,
+taking out the letter.
+
+It was brief.  It contained only a few lines, but as Carnac read them the
+colour left his face.  "Good God!" he said to himself.  Then he put the
+paper in his pocket, and, with a forced smile and nod to his father and
+Tarboe, left the office.
+
+"That's queer.  The letter seemed to get him in the vitals," said John
+Grier with surprise.
+
+Tarboe nodded, and said to himself: "It's a woman all right."  He smiled
+to himself also.  He had wondered why Carnac and Junia Shale had not come
+to an understanding.  The letter which had turned Carnac pale was the
+interpretation.
+
+"Say, sit down, Tarboe," said John Grier.  "I want to talk with you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JOHN GRIER MAKES ANOTHER OFFER
+
+"I've been keeping my eye on you, Tarboe," John Grier said presently, his
+right hand clutching unconsciously the statue which his boy had left with
+him.
+
+"I didn't suppose you'd forget me when I was making or breaking you."
+
+"You're a winner, Tarboe.  You've got sense and judgment, and you ain't
+afraid to get your own way by any route."
+
+He paused, and gripped the statue closely in his hands.
+
+Tarboe nodded.  In the backwoods he had been without ambition save to be
+master of what he was doing and of the men who were part of his world of
+responsibility.  Then John Grier had pulled him back into industry and he
+had since desired to ascend, to "make good."  Also, he had seen Junia
+often, and for her an aspiration had sprung up in him like a fire in a
+wild place.
+
+When he first saw her, she was standing in the doorway through which
+Carnac had just passed.  The brightness of her face, the wonder of her
+eyes, the glow of her cheek, had made his pulses throb as they had never
+throbbed before.  He had put the thought of her away from him, but it had
+come back constantly until he had found himself looking for her in the
+street, and on the hill that led to John Grier's house.
+
+Tarboe realized that the girl was drawn towards Carnac, and that Carnac
+was drawn towards the girl, but that some dark depths lay between.  The
+letter Carnac had just received seemed to him the plumbline of that
+abyss.  Carnac and the girl were suited to each other--that was clear;
+and the girl was enticing, provoking and bewildering--that was the
+modelling fact.  He had satisfaction that he had displaced Carnac in this
+great business, and there was growing in him a desire to take away the
+chances of the girl from Carnac also.  With his nature it was inevitable.
+Life to him was now a puzzle towards the solution of which he moved with
+conquering conviction.
+
+From John Grier's face now, he realized that something was to be said
+affecting his whole career.  It would, he was sure, alter his foot-steps
+in the future.  He had a profound respect for the little wiry man, with
+the firm body and shrivelled face.
+
+Tarboe watched the revealing expression of the old man's face and the
+motions of his body.  He noticed that the tight grip of the hand on the
+little statue of the riverman had made the fingers pale.  He realized how
+absorbed was the lumber-king, who had given him more confidence than he
+had given to anyone else in the world.  As near as he could come to
+anyone, he had come to John Grier.  There had been differences between
+them, but he, Tarboe, fought for his own idea, and, in nine cases out of
+ten, had conquered.  John Grier had even treated Tarboe's solutions as
+though they were his own.  He had a weird faith in the young giant.  He
+saw now Tarboe's eyes fixed on his fingers, and he released his grip.
+
+"That's the thing between him and me, Tarboe," he said, nodding towards
+the virile bronze.  "Think of my son doing that when he could do all
+this!"  He swept his arm in a great circle which included the horizon
+beyond the doors and the windows.  "It beats me, and because it beats me,
+and because he defies me, I've made up my mind what to do."
+
+"Don't do anything you'd be sorry for, boss.  He ain't a fool because
+he's not what you are."  He nodded towards the statue.  "You think that's
+pottering.  I think it's good stuff.  It will last, perhaps, when what
+you and I do is forgotten."
+
+There was something big and moving in Tarboe.  He was a contradiction.
+A lover of life, he was also reckless in how he got what he wanted.
+If it could not be got by the straight means, then it must be by the
+crooked, and that was where he and Grier lay down together, as it were.
+Yet he had some knowledge that was denied to John Grier.  The soul of the
+greater things was in him.
+
+"Give the boy a chance to work out his life in his own way," he said
+manfully.  "You gave him a chance to do it in your way, and you were
+turned down.  Have faith in him.  He'll probably come out all right in
+the end.
+
+"You mean he'll come my way?" asked the old man almost rabidly.  "You
+mean he'll do the things I want him to do here, as you've done?"
+
+"I guess so," answered Tarboe, but without conviction in his tone.  "I'm
+not sure whether it will be like that or not, but I know you've got a son
+as honest as the stars, and the honest man gets his own in the end."
+
+There was silence for some time, then the old man began walking up and
+down the room, softly, noiselessly.
+
+"You talk sense," he said.  "I care for that boy, but I care for my
+life's work more.  Day in, day out, night in, night out, I've slaved for
+it, prayed for it, believed in it, and tried to make my wife and my boys
+feel as I do about it, and none of them cares as I care.  Look at Fabian
+--over with the enemy, fighting his own father; look at Carnac, out in
+the open, taking his own way."  He paused.
+
+"And your wife?" asked Tarboe almost furtively, because it seemed to him
+that the old man was most unhappy in that particular field.
+
+"She's been a good wife, but she don't care as I do for success and
+money."
+
+"Perhaps you never taught her," remarked Tarboe with silky irony.
+
+"Taught her!  What was there to teach?  She saw me working; she knew the
+life I had to live; she was lifted up with me.  I was giving her
+everything in me to give."
+
+"You mean money and a big house and servants and comfort," said Tarboe
+sardonically.
+
+"Well, ain't that right?" snapped the other.
+
+"Yes, it's all right, but it don't always bring you what you want.  It's
+right, but it's wrong too.  Women want more than that, boss.  Women want
+to be loved--sky high."
+
+All at once Grier felt himself as far removed from Tarboe as he had ever
+been from Carnac, or his wife.  Why was it?  Suddenly Tarboe understood
+that between him and John Grier there must always be a flood.  He
+realized that there was in Grier some touch of the insane thing;
+something apart, remote and terrible.  He was convinced of it, when he
+saw Grier suddenly spring up, and pace the room again like a tortured
+animal.
+
+"You've got great influence with me," he said.  "I was just going to tell
+you something that'd give you pleasure, but what you've said about my boy
+coming back has made me change what I was going to do.  I don't need to
+say I like you.  We were born in the same nest almost.  We've got the
+same ideas."
+
+"Almost," intervened Tarboe.  "Not quite, but almost."
+
+"Well, this is what I've got to say.  You've got youth, courage, and good
+sense, and business ability, and what more does a man want in life, I ask
+you that?" Tarboe nodded, but made no reply.
+
+"Well, I don't feel as strong as I used to do.  I've been breaking up
+this last year, just when we've been knitting the cracks in the building.
+What was in my mind is this--to leave you when I die the whole of my
+business to keep it a success, and get in the way of Belloc, and pay my
+wife so much a year to live on."
+
+"That wouldn't be fair to your wife or your sons."
+
+"As for Carnac, if I left him the business it'd be dead in two years.
+Nothing could save it.  He'd spoil it, because he don't care for it.  I
+bought Fabian out.  As for my wife, she couldn't run it, and--"
+
+"You could sell it," interrupted Tarboe.
+
+"Sell it!  Sell it!" said Grier wildly.  "Sell it to whom?"
+
+"To Belloc," was the malicious reply.  The demon of anger seized the old
+man.
+
+"You say that to me--you--that I should sell to Belloc!  By hell, I'd
+rather burn every stick and board and tree I've got--sweep it out of
+existence, and die a beggar than sell it to Belloc!"  Froth gathered at
+the corners of his mouth, there was tumult in his eyes.  "Belloc!
+Knuckle down to him!  Sell out to him!"
+
+"Well, if you got a profit of twenty per cent. above what it's worth it
+might be well.  That'd be a triumph, not a defeat."
+
+"I see what you mean," said John Grier, the passion slowly going from his
+eyes.  "I see what you mean, but that ain't my way.  I want this business
+to live.  I want Grier's business to live long after John Grier has gone.
+That's why I was going to say to you that in my will I'm going to leave
+you this business, you to pay my wife every year twenty thousand
+dollars."  "And your son, Carnac?"
+
+"Not a sou-not a sou--not a sou--nothing--that's what I meant at first.
+But I've changed my mind now.  I'm going to leave you the business, if
+you'll make a bargain with me.  I want you to run it for three years, and
+take for yourself all the profits over the twenty thousand dollars a year
+that goes to my wife.  There's a lot of money in it, the way you'd work
+it."
+
+"I don't understand about the three years," said Tarboe, with rising
+colour.
+
+"No, because I haven't told you, but you'll take it in now.  I'm going to
+leave you the business as though you were going to have it for ever, but
+I'll make another will dated a week later, in which I leave it to Carnac.
+Something you said makes me think he might come right, and it will be
+playing fair to him to let him run himself alone, maybe with help from
+his mother, for three years.  That's long enough, and perhaps the thought
+of what he might have had will work its way with him.  If it don't--well,
+it won't; that's all; but I want you to have the business long enough to
+baulk Belloc and Fabian the deserter.  I want you for three years to
+fight this fight after I'm gone.  In that second secret will, I'll leave
+you two hundred thousand dollars.  Are you game for it?  Is it
+worthwhile?"
+
+The old man paused, his head bent forward, his eyes alert and searching,
+both hands gripping the table.  There was a long silence, in which the
+ticking of the clock upon the wall seemed unduly loud and in which the
+buzz of cross-cut saws came sounding through the evening air.  Yet Tarboe
+did not reply.
+
+"Have you nothing to say?" asked Grier at last.  "Won't you do it--eh?"
+
+"I'm studying the thing out," answered Tarboe quietly.  "I don't quite
+see about these two wills.  Why shouldn't the second will be found
+first?"
+
+"Because you and I will be the only ones that'll know of it.  That shows
+how much I trust you, Tarboe.  I'll put it away where nobody can get it
+except you or me."
+
+"But if anything should happen to me?"
+
+"Well, I'd leave a letter with my bank, not to be opened for three years,
+or unless you died, and it would say that the will existed, where it was,
+and what its terms were."
+
+"That sounds all right," but there was a cloud on Tarboe's face.
+
+"It's a great business," said Grier, seeing Tarboe's doubt.  "It's the
+biggest thing a man can do--and I'm breaking up."
+
+The old man had said the right thing--"It's a great business!"  It was
+the greatness of the thing that had absorbed Tarboe.  It was the bigness
+made him feel life could be worth living, if the huge machinery were
+always in his fingers.  Yet he had never expected it, and life was a
+problem.  Who could tell?  Perhaps--perhaps, the business would always be
+his in spite of the second will!  Perhaps, he would have his chance to
+make good.  He got to his feet; he held out his hand.
+
+"I'll do it."
+
+"Ain't it worth any thanks?"
+
+"Not between us," declared Tarboe.
+
+"When are you going to do it?"
+
+"To-night--now."  He drew out some paper and sat down with a pen in his
+hand.
+
+"Now," John Grier repeated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PUZZLE
+
+On his way home, with Luzanne's disturbing letter in his pocket, Carnac
+met Junia.  She was supremely Anglo-Saxon; fresh, fervid and buoyant with
+an actual buoyancy of the early spring.  She had tact and ability,
+otherwise she could never have preserved peace between the contending
+factions, Belloc and Fabian, old John Grier, the mother and Carnac.  She
+was as though she sought for nothing, wished nothing but the life in
+which she lived.  Yet her wonderful pliability, her joyful boyishness,
+had behind all a delicate anxiety which only showed in flashes now and
+then, fully understood by no one except Carnac's mother and old Denzil.
+These two having suffered strangely in life had realized that the girl
+was always waiting for a curtain to rise which did not rise, for a voice
+to speak which gave no sound.
+
+Yet since Carnac's coming back there had appeared a slight change in her,
+a bountiful, eager alertness, a sense of wonder and experiment, adding
+new interest to her personality.  Carnac was conscious of this increased
+vitality, was impressed and even provoked by it.  Somehow he felt--for he
+had the telepathic mind--that the girl admired and liked Tarboe.  He did
+not stop to question how or why she should like two people so different
+as Tarboe and himself.
+
+The faint colour of the crimsoning maples was now in her cheek; the light
+of the autumn evening was in her eyes; the soft vitality of September was
+in her motions.  She was attractively alive.  Her hair waved back from
+her forehead with natural grace; her small feet, with perfect ankles,
+made her foothold secure and sedately joyous.  Her brown hand--yet not so
+brown after all--held her hat lightly, and was, somehow, like a signal
+out of a world in which his hopes were lost for the present.
+
+She was dearer to him than all the rest of the world; and he had in his
+hand what kept them apart--a sentence of death, unless he escaped from
+the wanton calling him to fulfil duties into which he had been tricked.
+Luzanne Larue had a terrible hold over him.  He gripped the letter in his
+pocket as a Hopi Indian does the body of a poisonous snake.  The rosy
+sunset gave the girl's face a reflected spiritual glamour; it made her,
+suddenly, a bewildering figure.  Somehow, she seemed a great distance
+from him--as one detached and unfamiliar.
+
+He suddenly felt she knew more than it was possible she should know.
+As she flashed an inquiry into his eyes, it was as though she said: "Why
+don't you tell me everything, and I will help you?"  Or, was it: "Why
+don't you tell me everything and end it all?"  He longed to press her to
+his breast, as he had once done in the woods when Denzil had been
+injured, but that was not possible.  The thought of that far-off day made
+him say to her, rather futilely:
+
+"How is Denzil?  How is Denzil?"
+
+There was swift surprise in her face.  She seemed dumbfounded, and then
+she said:
+
+"Denzil!  He's all right, but he does not like your Mr. Tarboe."
+
+"My Mr. Tarboe!  Where do I come in?"
+
+"Well, he's got what you ought to have had," was the reply.  "What you
+would have had, weren't you a foolish fellow."
+
+"I still don't understand how he is my Mr. Tarboe."
+
+"Well, he wouldn't have been in your father's life if it weren't for you;
+if you had done what your father wished you to do, had--"
+
+"Had sold myself for gold--my freedom, my health, everything to help my
+father's business!  I don't see why he should expect that what he's doing
+some one else should do--"
+
+"That Belloc would do, that Belloc and Fabian would do," said the girl.
+
+"Yes, that's it--what they two would do.  There's no genius in it,
+though my father comes as near being a genius as any man alive.  But
+there's a screw loose somewhere.  .  .  .  It wasn't good enough for me.
+It didn't give me a chance--in things that are of the mind, the spirit--
+my particular gifts, whatever they are.  They would have chafed against
+that life."
+
+"In other words, you're a genius, which your father isn't," the girl said
+almost sarcastically.
+
+A disturbed look came into Carnac's eyes.  "I'd have liked my father to
+be a genius.  Then we'd have hit it off together.  I don't ever feel the
+things he does are the things I want to do; or the things he says are
+those I'd like to say.  He's a strange man.  He lives alone.  He never
+was really near Fabian or me.  We were his sons, but though Fabian is a
+little bit like him in appearance, I'm not, and never was.  I always feel
+that--"  He paused, and she took up the tale:
+
+"That he wasn't the father you'd have made for yourself, eh!"
+
+"I suppose that's it.  Conceit, ain't it?  Perhaps the facts are, I'm one
+of the most useless people that ever wore a coat.  Perhaps the things I
+do aren't going to live beyond me."
+
+"It seems as though your father's business is going to live after him,
+doesn't it?" the girl asked mockingly.  "Where are you going now?" she
+added.
+
+"Well, I'm going to take you home," he said, as he turned and walked by
+her side down the hill.
+
+"Denzil will be glad to see you.  He almost thinks I'm a curse."
+
+Carnac smiled.  "All genius is at once a blessing or a curse.  And what
+does Denzil think of me?"
+
+"Oh--a blessing and a curse!" she said whimsically.
+
+"I don't honestly think I'm a blessing to anybody in this world.
+There's no one belonging to me who believes in me."
+
+"There's Denzil," she said.  "He believes in you."
+
+"He doesn't belong to me; he isn't my family."
+
+"Who are your family?  Is it only those who are bone of your bone and
+flesh of your flesh?  Your family is much wider, because you're a genius.
+It's worldwide--of all kinds.  Denzil belongs to you, because you helped
+to save him years ago; the Catholic Archbishop belongs to you, because
+he's got brains and a love of literature and art; Barode Barouche belongs
+to you, because he's almost a genius too."
+
+"Barouche is a politician," said Carnac with slight derision.
+
+"That's no reason why he shouldn't be a genius."
+
+"He's a Frenchman."
+
+"Haven't Frenchmen genius?" asked the girl.
+
+Carnac laughed.  "Why, of course.  Barode Barouche--yes, he's a great
+one: he can think, he can write, and he can talk; and the talking's the
+best that he does--though I've not heard him speak, but I've read his
+speeches."
+
+"Doesn't he make good laws at Ottawa?"
+
+"He makes laws at Ottawa--whether they're good or not is another
+question.  I shouldn't be a follower of his, if I had my chance though."
+
+"That's because you're not French."
+
+"Oh yes, I'm as French as can be!  I felt at home with the French when I
+was in France.  I was all Gallic.  When I'm here I'm more Gallic than
+Saxon.
+
+"I don't understand it.  Here am I, with all my blood for generations
+Saxon, and yet I feel French.  If I'd been born in the old country, it
+would have been in Limerick or Tralee.  I'd have been Celtic there."
+
+"Yet Barode Barouche is a great man.  He gets drunk sometimes, but he's
+great.  He gets hold of men like Denzil."
+
+"Denzil has queer tastes."
+
+"Yes--he worships you."
+
+"That's not queer, it's abnormal," said Carnac with gusto.
+
+"Then I'm abnormal," she said with a mocking laugh, and swung her hat on
+her fingers like a wheel.  Something stormy and strange swam in Carnac's
+eyes.  All his trouble rushed back on him; the hand in his pocket crushed
+the venomous letter he had received, but he said:
+
+"No, you don't worship me!"
+
+"Who was it said all true intelligence is the slave of genius?" she
+questioned, a little paler than usual, her eye on the last gleam of the
+sun.
+
+"I don't know who said it, but if that's why you worship me, I know how
+hollow it all is," he declared sullenly, for she was pouring carbolic
+acid into a sore.
+
+He wanted to drag the letter from his pocket and hand it her to read; to
+tell her the whole distressful story: but he dared not.  He longed for
+her, and yet he dared not tell her so.  He half drew the letter from his
+pocket, but thrust it back again.  Tell this innocent girl the whole ugly
+story?  It could not be done.  There was but one thing to do--to go away,
+to put this world of French Canada behind him, and leave her free to
+follow her fancy, or some one else's fancy.
+
+Or some one else's fancy?  There was Tarboe.  Tarboe had taken from him
+the place in the business which should be his; he had displaced him in
+his father's affections .  .  .  and now Junia!
+
+He held out a hand to the girl.  "I must go and see my mother."
+
+His eyes abashed her.  She realized there was trouble in the face of the
+man who all her life had been strangely near and dear to her.  With
+impulsiveness, she said "You're in trouble, Carnac.  Let me help you."
+
+For one swift instant he almost yielded.  Then he gripped her hand and
+said: "No-no-no.  It can't be done--not yet."
+
+"Then let Denzil help you.  Here he is," she remarked, and she glanced
+affectionately at the greyish, tousled head of the habitant who was
+working in the garden of her father's house.
+
+Carnac was master of himself again.  "Not a bad idea," he said.  "Denzil!
+Denzil!" he called.
+
+The little man looked up.  An instant later the figure of the girl
+fluttered through the doorway of her home, and Carnac stopped beside
+Denzil in the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DENZIL TELLS HIS STORY
+
+"You keep going, Denzil," remarked Carnac as he lighted his pipe and came
+close to the old servant.
+
+The face of the toiler lighted, the eyes gazed kindly, at Carnac.  "What
+else is there to do?  We must go on.  There's no standing still in the
+world.  We must go on--surelee."
+
+"Even when it's hard going, eh?" asked Carnac, not to get an answer so
+much as to express his own feelings.  "Yes, that's right, m'sieu'; that's
+how it is.  We can't stand still even when it's hard going--but, no,
+bagosh!"
+
+He realized that around Carnac there was a shadow which took its toll of
+light and life.  He had the sound instinct of primitive man.  Strangely
+enough in his own eyes was the look in those of Carnac, a past, hovering
+on the brink of revelation.  His appearance was that of one who had
+suffered; his knotted hands, dark with warm blood, had in them a story of
+life's sorrows; his broad shoulders were stooped with the inertia of long
+regret; his feet clung to the ground as though there was a great weight
+above them.  But a smile shimmered at his mouth, giving to his careworn
+face something almost beautiful, lifting the darkness from his powerful,
+shaggy forehead.  Many men knew Denzil by sight, few knew him in actual
+being.  There was a legend that once he was about to be married, but the
+girl had suddenly gone mad and drowned herself in the river.  No one
+thought it strange that a month later the eldest son of the Tarboe family
+had been found dead in the woods with a gun in his hand and a bullet
+through his heart.  No one had ever linked the death of Denzil's loved
+one with that of Almeric Tarboe.
+
+It was unusual for a Frenchman to give up his life to an English family,
+but that is what he had done, and of late he had watched Junia with new
+eager solicitude.  The day she first saw Tarboe had marked an exciting
+phase in her life.
+
+Denzil had studied her, and he knew vaguely that a fresh interest,
+disturbing, electrifying, had entered into her.  Because it was Tarboe,
+the fifteen years younger brother of that Almeric Tarboe who had died a
+month after his own girl had left this world, his soul was fighting--
+fighting.
+
+As the smoke of Carnac's pipe came curling into the air, Denzil put on
+his coat, and laid the hoe and rake on his shoulder.
+
+"Yes, even when it's hard going we still have to march on--name of God,
+yes!" he repeated, and he looked at Carnac quizzically.
+
+"Where are you going?  Don't you want to talk to me?"
+
+"I'm going home, m'sieu'.  If you'll come with me I'll give you a drink
+of hard cider, the best was ever made."
+
+"I'll come.  Denzil, I've never been in your little house.  That's
+strange, when I've known you so many years."
+
+"It's not too late to mend, m'sieu'.  There ain't much in it, but it's
+all I need."
+
+Carnac stepped with Denzil towards the little house, just in front of
+three pine-trees on the hill, and behind Junia's home.
+
+"I always lock my door--always," said Denzil as he turned a key and
+opened the door.
+
+They entered into the cool shade of a living-room.  There was little
+furniture, yet against the wall was a kind of bunk, comfortable and
+roomy, on which was stretched the skin of a brown bear.  On the wall
+above it was a crucifix, and on the opposite wall was the photograph of a
+girl, good-looking, refined, with large, imaginative eyes, and a face
+that might have been a fortune.
+
+Carnac gazed at it for a moment, absorbed.  "That was your girl, Denzil,
+wasn't it?" he asked.
+
+Denzil nodded.  "The best the world ever had, m'sieu'," he replied, "the
+very best, but she went queer and drowned herself--ah, but yes!"
+
+"She just went queer, eh!" Carnac said, looking Denzil straight in the
+eyes.  "Was there insane blood in her family?"
+
+"She wasn't insane," answered Denzil firmly.  "She'd been bad used--
+terrible."
+
+"That didn't come out at the inquest, did it?"
+
+"Not likely.  She wrote it me.  I'm telling you what I've never told
+anyone."  He shut the door, as though to make a confessional.  "She wrote
+it me, and I wasn't telling anyone-but no.  She'd been away down at
+Quebec City, and there a man got hold of her.  Almeric Tarboe it was--the
+older brother of Luke Tarboe at John Grier's."  Suddenly the face of the
+little man went mad with emotion.  "I--I--" he paused.
+
+Carnac held up his hand.  "No-no-no, don't tell me.  Tarboe--
+I understand, the Unwritten Law.  You haven't told me, but I understand.
+I remember: he was found in the woods with his gun in his hand-dead.
+I read it all by accident long ago; and that was the story, eh!"
+
+"Yes.  She was young, full of imagination.  She loved me, but he was
+clever, and he was high up, and she was low down.  He talked her blind,
+and then in the woods it was, in the woods where he died, that he--"
+
+Suddenly the little man wrung his fingers like one robbed of reason.
+"He was a strongman," he went on, "and she was a girl, weak, but not
+wanton .  .  .  and so she died, telling me, loving me--so she died, and
+so he died, too, in the woods with his gun in his hand.  Yes, 'twas done
+with his own gun--by accident--by accident!  He stumbled, and the gun
+went off.  That was the story at the inquest.  No one knew I was there.
+I was never seen with him and I've never been sorry.  He got what he
+deserved--sacre, yes!"
+
+There was something overwhelming in the face of the little resolute,
+powerful man.  His eyes were aflame.  He was telling for the first time
+the story of his lifelong agony and shame.
+
+"It had to be done.  She was young, so sweet, so good, aye, she was good-
+in her soul she was good, ah, surelee.  That's why she died in the pond.
+No one knew.  The inquest did not bring out anything, but that's why he
+died; and ever since I've been mourning; life has no rest for me.
+I'm not sorry for what I did.  I've told it you because you saved me
+years ago when I fell down the bank.  You were only fourteen then,
+but I've never forgotten.  And she, that sweet young lady, she--she was
+there too; and now when I look at this Tarboe, the brother of that man,
+and see her and know what I know--sacre!"  He waved a hand.  "No-no-no,
+don't think there's anything except what's in the soul.  That man has
+touched ma'm'selle--I don't know why, but he has touched her heart.
+Perhaps by his great bulk, his cleverness, his brains, his way of doing
+things.  In one sense she's his slave, because she doesn't want to think
+of him, and she does.  She wants to think of you--and she does--ah,
+bagosh, yes!"
+
+"Yes, I understand," remarked Carnac morosely.  "I understand."
+
+"Then why do you let her be under Tarboe's influence?  Why don't--"
+
+Carnac thrust out a hand that said silence.  "Denzil, I'll never forget
+what you've told me about yourself.  Some day you'll have to tell it to
+the priest, and then--"
+
+"I'll never tell it till I'm on my death-bed.  Then I'll tell it, sacre
+bapteme, yes!"
+
+"You're a bad Catholic, Denzil," remarked Carnae with emotion, but a
+smile upon his face.
+
+"I may be a bad Catholic, but the man deserved to die, and he died.
+What's the difference, so far's the world's concerned, whether he died by
+accident, or died--as he died.  It's me that feels the fury of the
+damned, and want my girl back every hour: and she can't come.  But some
+day I'll go to M'sieu' Luke Tarboe, and tell him the truth, as I've told
+it you--bagosh, yes!"
+
+"I think he'd try and kill you, if you did.  That's the kind of man he
+is."
+
+"You think if he knew the truth he'd try and kill me--he!"
+
+Carnac paused.  He did not like to say everything in his mind.  "Do you
+think he'd say much and do little?"
+
+"I dunno, I dunno, but I'll tell him the truth and take my chance."
+Suddenly he swung round and stretched out appealing hands.  "Haven't you
+got any sense, m'sieu'?  Don't you see what you should do?  Ma'm'selle
+Junia cares for you.  I know it--I've seen it in her eyes often--often."
+
+With sudden vehemence Carnac caught the wrists of the other.  "It can't
+be, Denzil.  I can't tell you why yet.  I'm going away.  If Tarboe wants
+her--good--good; I must give her a chance."
+
+Denzil shrank.  "There's something wrong, m'sieu'," he said.  Then his
+eyes fastened on Carnac's.  Suddenly, with a strange, shining light in
+them, he added "It will all come right for you and her.  I'll live for
+that.  If you go away, I'll take good care of her."
+
+"Even if--" Carnac paused.
+
+"Yes, even if he makes love to her.  He'll want to marry her, surelee."
+
+"Well, that's not strange," remarked Carnac.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CARNAC'S TALK WITH HIS MOTHER
+
+Carnac went slowly towards his father's house on the hill.  Fixed, as his
+mind was, upon all that had just happened, his eye took fondly from the
+gathering dusk pictures which the artist's mind cherishes--the long
+roadway, with the maples and pines, the stump fences; behind which lay
+the garnered fields, where the plough had made ready the way for the Fall
+wheat; the robins twittering in the scattered trees; the cooing of the
+wood-pigeon; over all, the sky in its perfect purpling blue, and far down
+the horizon the evening-star slowly climbing.  He noted the lizards
+slipping through the stones; he saw where the wheel of a wagon had
+crushed some wild flower-growth; he heard the far call of a milkmaid to
+the cattle; he caught the sweet breath of decaying verdure, and through
+all, the fresh, biting air of the new-land autumn, pleasantly stinging
+his face.
+
+Something kept saying to his mind: "It's all good.  It's life and light,
+and all good."  But his nerves were being tried; his whole nature was
+stirred.
+
+He took the letter from his pocket again, and read it in the fading
+light.  It was native, naive, brutal, and unconsciously clever--and the
+girl who had written it was beautiful.  It had only a few lines.  It
+asked him why he had deserted her, his wife.  It said that he would find
+American law protected the deluded stranger.  It asked if he had so soon
+forgotten the kisses he had given her, and did he not realize they were
+married?  He felt that, with her, beneath all, there was more than
+malice; there was a passion which would run risks to secure its end.
+
+A few moments later he was in the room where his mother, with her strong,
+fine, lonely face, sat sewing by the window.  The door opened squarely on
+her, and he saw how refined and sad, yet self-contained, was the woman
+who had given him birth.  The look in her eyes warmly welcomed him.  Her
+own sorrows made her sensitive to those of others, and as Carnac entered
+she saw something was vexing him.
+
+"Dear lad!" she said.
+
+He was beside her now, and he kissed her cheek.  "Best of all the world,"
+he said; and he did not see that she shrank a little.
+
+"Are you in trouble?" she asked, and her hand touched his shoulder.
+
+The wrong she had done him long ago vexed her.  It was not possible this
+boy could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong.  It
+was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and
+sculpture.  In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the
+end.  She had a surreptitious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought
+that he and John Grier could not hit it off.  It seemed natural that
+both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be
+father and son, should feel for each other the torture of distance,
+a misunderstanding, which only she and one other human being understood.
+
+John Grier was not the boy's father.  Carnac was the son of Barode
+Barouche.
+
+After a moment he said: "Mother, I know why I've come to you.  It's
+because I feel when I'm in trouble, I get helped by being with you."
+
+"How do I help, my boy?" she asked with a sad smile, for he had said
+the thing dearest to her heart.
+
+"When I'm with you, I seem to get a hold on myself.  I've always had a
+strange feeling about you.  I felt when I was a child that you're two
+people; one that lives on some distant, lonely prairie, silent, shadowy
+and terribly loving; and the other, a vocal person, affectionate, alert,
+good and generous."
+
+He paused, but she only shook her head.  After a moment he continued:
+"I know you aren't happy, mother, but maybe you once were--at the start."
+
+She got to her feet, and drew herself up.
+
+"I'm happy in your love, but all the rest--is all the rest.  It isn't
+your father's fault wholly.  He was busy; he forgot me.  Dear, dear boy,
+never give up your soul to things only, keep it for people."
+
+She was naturally straight and composed; yet as she stood there, she had
+a certain lonely splendour like some soft metal burning.  Among her
+fellow-citizens she had place and position, but she took no lead; she was
+always an isolated attachment of local enterprises.  It was in her own
+house where her skill and adaptability had success.  She had brought into
+her soul misery and martyrdom, and all martyrs are lonely and apart.
+
+Sharp visions of what she was really flashed through Carnac's mind, and
+he said:
+
+"Mother, there must be something wrong with you and me.  You were
+naturally a great woman, and sometimes I have a feeling I might be a
+great man, but I don't get started for it.  I suppose, you once had an
+idea you'd play a big part in the world?"
+
+"Girls have dreams," she answered with moist eyes, "and at times I
+thought great things might come to me; but I married and got lost."
+
+"You got lost?" asked Carnac anxiously, for there was a curious note in
+her voice.
+
+She tried to change the effect of her words.
+
+"Yes, I lost myself in somebody else's ambitions I lost myself in the
+storm."
+
+Carnac laughed.  "Father was always a blizzard, wasn't he?  Now here, now
+there, he rushed about making money, humping up his business, and yet why
+shouldn't you have ranged beside him.  I don't understand."
+
+"No, that's the bane of life," she replied.  "We don't understand each
+other.  I can't understand why you don't marry Junia.  You love her.
+You don't understand why I couldn't play as big a part as your father--
+I couldn't.  He was always odd--masterful and odd, and I never could do
+just as he liked."
+
+There was yearning sadness in her eyes.  "Dear Carnac, John Grier is a
+whirlwind, but he's also a still pool in which currents are secretly
+twisting, turning.  His imagination, his power is enormous; but he's
+Oriental, a barbarian."
+
+"You mean he might have had twenty wives?"
+
+"He might have had twenty, and he'd have been the same to all of them,
+because they play no part, except to make his home a place where his body
+can live.  That's the kind of thing, when a wife finds it out, that
+either kills her slowly, or drives her mad."
+
+"It didn't kill you, mother," remarked Carnac with a little laugh.
+
+"No, it didn't kill me."
+
+"And it didn't drive you mad," he continued.
+
+She looked at him with burning intensity.  "Oh, yes, it did--but I became
+sane again."  She gazed out of the window, down the hillside.  "Your
+father will soon be home.  Is there anything you want to say before
+that?"
+
+Carnac wanted to tell his tragic story, but it was difficult.  He caught
+his mother's hand.
+
+"What's the matter, Carnac?  You are in trouble.  I can see it in your
+eyes--I feel it.  Is it money?" she asked.  She knew it was not, yet she
+could not help but ask.  He shook his head in negation.
+
+"Is it business?"
+
+She knew his answer, yet she must make these steps before she said to
+him: "Is it a woman?"
+
+He nodded now.  She caught his eyes and held them with her own.  All the
+silence and sorrow, all the remorse and regret of the past twenty-six
+years gathered in her face.
+
+"Yes and no," he answered with emotion.  "You've quarrelled with Junia?"
+
+"No," he replied.
+
+"Why don't you marry her?" she urged.  "We all would like it, even your
+father."
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Why?"  She leant forward with a slight burning of the cheek.  "Why,
+Carnac?"
+
+He had determined to keep his own secret, to hide the thing which had
+vexed his life, but a sudden feeling overcame his purpose.  With impulse
+he drew out the letter he had received in John Grier's office and handed
+it to her.
+
+"Read that, and then I'll tell you all about it--all I can."
+
+With whitening face, she took the letter and read its few lines.  It was
+written in French, with savage little flourishes and twists, and the name
+signed at the end was "Luzanne."  At last she handed it back, her fingers
+trembling.
+
+"Who is Luzanne, and what does it mean?"  What she had read was
+startling.
+
+He slowly seated himself beside her.  "I will tell you."
+
+When Carnac had ended his painful story, she said to him: "It's terrible
+--oh, terrible.  But there was divorce."
+
+"Yes, but they told me I couldn't get a divorce.  Yet I wish now I'd
+tried for it.  I've never heard a word from the girl till I got that
+letter.  It isn't strange she hasn't moved in the thing till now.  It was
+I that should have acted; and she knew that.  She means business, that's
+clear, and it'll be hard to prove I didn't marry her with eyes wide open.
+It gets between me and my work and my plans for the future; between--"
+
+"Between you and Junia," she said mournfully.  "Don't you think you ought
+to get a divorce for Junia's sake, if nothing else?"
+
+"Yes, of course.  But I'm not sure I could get a divorce--evidence is so
+strong against me, and it was a year ago!  If I can see Luzanne again
+perhaps I can get her to tear up the marriage-lines--that's what I want.
+She isn't all bad.  I must go again to New York; and Junia can wait.  I'm
+not much, I know--not worth waiting for, maybe, but I'm in earnest where
+Junia's concerned.  I could make a little home for her at once, and a
+better one as time went on, if she would marry me."
+
+After a moment of silence, Carnac added: "I'm going to New York.  Don't
+you think I ought to go?"
+
+The gaunt, handsome face of the woman darkened, and then she answered:
+"Yes."
+
+There was silence again for a moment, deep and painful, and then Carnac
+spoke.
+
+"Mother, I don't think father is well.  I see a great change in him.  He
+hasn't long to travel, and some day you'll have everything.  He might
+make you run the business, with Tarboe as manager."
+
+She shuddered slightly.  "With Tarboe--I never thought of that--with
+Tarboe!  .  .  .  Are you going to wait for--your father?  He'll be here
+presently."
+
+"No, I'm off.  I'll go down the garden, through the bushes," he said....
+"Mother, I've got nearer you to-night than in all the rest of my life."
+
+She kissed him fondly.  "You're going away, but I hope you'll come back
+in time."
+
+He knew she meant Junia.
+
+"Yes, I hope I'll come back in time."
+
+A moment later he was gone, out of the sidedoor, through the bushes, and
+down the hill, running like a boy.  He had for the first time talked to
+his mother about the life of their home; the facts she told him stripped
+away the curtain that hid the secret things of life from his eyes.
+
+John Grier almost burst upon his wife.  He opened and shut the door
+noisily; he stamped into the dusky room.
+
+"Isn't it time for a light?" he said with a quizzical nod towards her.
+
+The short visit of Carnac had straightened her back.  "I like the
+twilight.  I don't light up until it's dark, but if you wish--"
+
+"You like the twilight; you don't light up until it's dark, but if I
+wish--ah, that's it!  Have your own way....  I'm the breadwinner; I'm the
+breadwinner; I'm the fighter; I'm the man that makes the machine go; but
+I don't like the twilight, and I don't like to wait until it's dark
+before I light up.  So there it is!"
+
+She said nothing at once, but struck a match, and lit the gas.
+
+"It's easy to give you what you want," she answered after a little.
+"I'm used to it now."
+
+There was something animal-like in the thrust forward of his neck, in the
+anger that mounted to his eyes.  When she had drawn down the blinds, he
+said to her: "Who's been here?"
+
+For an instant she hesitated.  Then she said: "Carnac's been here, but
+that has naught to do with what I said.  I've lived with you for over
+thirty years, and I haven't spoken my mind often, but I'm speaking it
+now."
+
+"Never too late to mend, eh!" he gruffly interposed.  "So Carnac's been
+here!  Putting up his independent clack, eh?  He leaves his old father to
+struggle as best he may, and doesn't care a damn.  That's your son
+Carnac."
+
+How she longed to say to him, "That's not your son Carnac!" but she
+could not.  A greyness crossed over her face.
+
+"Is Carnac staying here?"
+
+She shook her head in negation.
+
+"Well, now I'll tell you about Carnac," he said viciously.  "I'm shutting
+him out of the business of my life.  You understand?"
+
+"You mean--" She paused.
+
+"He's taken his course, let him stick to it.  I'm taking my course, and
+I'll stick to it."
+
+She came close and reached out a faltering hand.  "John, don't do what
+you'll be sorry for."
+
+"I never have."
+
+"When Fabian was born, you remember what you said?  You said: 'Life's
+worth living now.'"
+
+"Yes, but what did I say when Carnac was born?"
+
+"I didn't hear, John," she answered, her face turning white.
+
+"Well, I said naught."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CARNAC SAYS GOOD-BYE
+
+Fabian Grier's house was in a fashionable quarter of a fashionable
+street, the smallest of all built there; but it was happily placed,
+rather apart from others, at the very end of the distinguished promenade.
+Behind it, a little way up the hill, was a Roman Catholic chapel.
+
+The surroundings of the house were rural for a city habitation.  Behind
+it were commendable trees, from one of which a swing was hung.  In a
+corner, which seemed to catch the sun, was a bird-cage on a pole, sought
+by pigeons and doves.  In another corner was a target for the bow and
+arrow-evidence of the vigorous life of the owners of the house.
+
+On the morning after Carnac told his mother he was going away, the doors
+of the house were all open.  Midway between breakfast and lunch, the
+voices of children sang through the dining-room bright with the morning
+sun.  The children were going to the top of the mountain-the two
+youngsters who made the life of Fabian and his wife so busy.  Fabian was
+a man of little speech.  He was slim and dark and quiet, with a black
+moustache and smoothly brushed hair, with a body lithe and composed, yet
+with hands broad, strong, stubborn.
+
+As Junia stood by the dining-room table and looked at the alert,
+expectant children, she wished she also was going now to the mountain-
+top.  But that could not be--not yet.  Carnac had sent a note saying he
+wished to see her, and she had replied through Denzil that her morning
+would be spent with her sister.  "What is it?" she remarked to herself.
+"What is it?  There's nothing wrong.  Yet I feel everything upside down."
+
+Her face turned slowly towards the wide mountain; it caught the light
+upon the steeple of the Catholic chapel.  She shuddered slightly, and an
+expression came into her shadowed eyes not belonging to her personality,
+which was always buoyant.
+
+As she stood absorbed, her mind in a maze of perplexity, a sigh broke
+from her lips.  She suddenly had a conviction about Carnac; she felt his
+coming might bring a crisis; that what he might say must influence her
+whole life.  Carnac--she threw back her head.  Suddenly a sweet,
+appealing, intoxicating look crossed her face.  Carnac!  Yes,
+there was a man, a man of men.
+
+Tarboe got his effects by the impetuous rush of a personality; Carnac by
+something that haunted, that made him more popular absent than present.
+Carnac compelled thought.  When he was away she wanted him; when he was
+near she liked to quarrel with him.  When they were together, one moment
+she wanted to take his hands in her hands, and in the next she wanted to
+push him over some great cliff--he was so maddening.  He provoked the
+devil in her; yet he made her sing the song of Eden.  What was it?
+
+As she asked the question she heard a firm step on the path.  It was
+Carnac.  She turned and stood waiting, leaning against the table,
+watching the door through which he presently came.  He was dressed in
+grey.  His coat was buttoned.  He carried a soft grey hat, and somehow
+his face gave her a feeling that he had come to say good-bye.
+It startled her; and yet, though she was tempted to grip her breast,
+she did not.  Presently she spoke.
+
+"I think you're a very idle man.  Why aren't you at work?"
+
+"I am at work," Carnac said cheerfully.
+
+"Work is not all paint and canvas of course.  There has to be the
+thinking beforehand.  Well, of what are you thinking now?"
+
+"Of the evening train to New York."
+
+His face was turned away from her at the instant, because he did not wish
+to see the effect of his words.  He would have seen that apprehension
+came to her eyes.  Her mouth opened in quick amazement.  It was all too
+startling.  He was going--for how long?
+
+"Why are you going?" she asked, when she had recovered her poise.
+
+"Well, you see I haven't quite learned my painting yet, and I must study
+in great Art centres where one isn't turned down by one's own judgment."
+
+"Ananias!" she said at last.  "Ananias!"
+
+"Why do you say I'm a liar?" he asked, flushing a little, though there
+was intense inquiry in his eyes.  "Because I think it.  It isn't your
+work only that's taking you away."  Suddenly she laughed.  "What a fool
+you are, Carnac!  You're not a good actor.  You're not going away for
+work's sake only."
+
+"Not for work's sake only--that's true."
+
+"Then why do you go?"
+
+"I'm in a mess, Junia.  I've made some mistakes in my life, and I'm going
+to try and put one of them right."
+
+"Is anybody trying to do you harm?" she asked gently.
+
+"Yes, somebody's trying to hurt me."
+
+"Hurt him," she rejoined sharply, and her eyes fastened his.
+
+He was about to say there was no him in the matter, but reason steadied
+him, and he said:
+
+"I'll do my best, Junia.  I wish I could tell you, but I can't.  What's
+to be done must be done by myself alone."
+
+"Then it ought to be done well."
+
+With an instant's impulse he moved towards her.  She went to the window,
+however, and she said: "Here's Fabian.  You'll be glad of that.  You'll
+want to say good-bye to him and Sibyl."  She ran from him to the front
+door.  "Fabian--Fabian, here's a bad boy who wants to tell you things
+he won't tell me."  With these words she went into the garden.
+
+"I don't think he'll tell me," came Fabian's voice.  "Why should he?"
+
+A moment afterwards the two men met.
+
+"Well, what's the trouble, Carnac?" asked Fabian in a somewhat
+challenging voice.
+
+"I'm going away."
+
+"Oh--for how long?" Fabian asked quizzically.  "I don't know--a year,
+perhaps.  I want to make myself a better artist, and also free myself."
+
+Now his eyes were on Junia in her summer-time recreation, and her voice,
+humming a light-opera air, was floating to him through the autumn
+morning.
+
+"Has something got you in its grip, then?"
+
+"I'm the victim of a reckless past, like you."  Something provocative was
+in his voice and in his words.
+
+"Was my past reckless?" asked Fabian with sullen eyes.
+
+"Never so reckless as mine.  You fought, quarrelled, hit, sold and bought
+again, and now you're out against your father, fighting him."
+
+"I had to come out or be crushed."
+
+"I'm not so sure you won't be crushed now you're out.  He plays boldly,
+and he knows his game.  One or the other of you must prevail, and I think
+it won't be you, Fabian.  John Grier does as much thinking in an hour as
+most of us do in a month, and with Tarboe he'll beat you dead.  Tarboe is
+young; he's got the vitality of a rhinoceros.  He knows the business from
+the bark on the tree.  He's a flyer, is Tarboe, and you might have been
+in Tarboe's place and succeeded to the business."
+
+Fabian threw out his arms.  "But no!  Father might live another ten
+years--though I don't think so--and I couldn't have stood it.  He was
+lapping me in the mud."
+
+"He doesn't lap Tarboe in the mud."
+
+"No, and he wouldn't have lapped you in the mud, because you've got
+imagination, and you think wide and long when you want to.  But I'm
+middle-class in business.  I've got no genius for the game.  He didn't
+see my steady qualities were what was needed.  He wanted me to be like
+himself, an eagle, and I was only a robin red-breast."
+
+Suddenly his eyes flashed and his teeth set.  "You couldn't stand him,
+wouldn't put up with his tyranny.  You wanted to live your own life, and
+you're doing it.  When he bought me out, what was there for me to do but
+go into the only business I knew, with the only big man in the business,
+besides John Grier.  I've as good blood as he's got in his veins.  I do
+business straight.
+
+"He didn't want me to do it straight.  That's one of the reasons we fell
+out.  John Grier's a big, ruthless trickster.  I wasn't.  I was for
+playing the straight game, and I played it."
+
+"Well, he's got his own way now.  He's got a man who wouldn't blink at
+throttling his own brother, if it'd do him any good.  Tarboe is iron and
+steel; he's the kind that succeeds.  He likes to rule, and he's going to
+get what he wants mostly."
+
+"Is that why you're going away?" asked Fabian.  "Don't you think it'll
+be just as well not to go, if Tarboe is going to get all he wants?"
+
+"Does Tarboe come here?"
+
+"He's been here twice."
+
+"Visiting?"
+
+"No.  He came on urgent business.  There was trouble between our two
+river-driving camps.  He wanted my help to straighten things out, and he
+got it.  He's pretty quick on the move."
+
+"He wanted you to let him settle it?"
+
+"He settled it, and I agreed.  He knows how to handle men; I'll say that
+for him.  He can run reckless on the logs like a river-driver; he can
+break a jam like an expert.  He's not afraid of man, or log, or devil.
+That's his training.  He got that training from John Grier's firm under
+another name.  I used to know him by reputation long before he took my
+place in the business--my place and yours.  You got loose from the
+business only to get tied up in knots of your own tying," he added.
+"What it is I don't know, but you say you're in trouble and I believe
+you."  Suddenly a sharp look came to his face.  "Is it a woman?"
+
+"It's not a man."
+
+"Well, you ought to know how to handle a woman.  You're popular with
+women.  My wife'll never hear a word against you.  I don't know how you
+do it.  We're so little alike, it makes me feel sometimes we're not
+brothers.  I don't know where you get your temperament from."
+
+"It doesn't matter where I got it, it's mine.  I want to earn my own
+living, and I'm doing it."  Admiration came into Fabian's face.  "Yes,"
+he said, "and you don't borrow--"
+
+"And don't beg or steal.  Mother has given me money, and I'm spending my
+own little legacy, all but five thousand dollars of it."
+
+Fabian came up to his brother slowly.  "If you know what's good for you,
+you'll stay where you are.  You're not the only man that ought to be
+married.  Tarboe's a strong man, and he'll be father's partner.  He's
+handsome in his rough way too, is Tarboe.  He knows what he wants, and
+means to have it, and this is a free country.  Our girls, they have their
+own way.  Why don't you settle it now?  Why don't you marry Junia, and
+take her away with you--if she'll have you?"
+
+"I can't--even if she'll have me."
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid of the law."
+
+An uneasy smile hung at Carnac's lips.  He suddenly caught Fabian's
+shoulder in a strong grip.  "We've never been close friends, Fabian.
+We've always been at sixes and sevens, and yet I feel you'd rather do me
+a good turn than a bad one.  Let me ask you this--that you'll not believe
+anything bad of me till you've heard what I've got to say.  Will you do
+that?"
+
+Fabian nodded.  "Of course.  But if I were you, I wouldn't bet on myself,
+Carnac.  Junia's worth running risks for.  She's got more brains than my
+wife and me together, and she bosses us; but with you, it's different.
+I think you'd boss her.  You're unexpected; you're daring; and you're
+reckless."
+
+"Yes, I certainly am reckless."
+
+"Then why aren't you reckless now?  You're going away.  Why, you haven't
+even told her you love her.  The other man--is here, and--I've seen him
+look at her?  I know by the way she speaks of him how she feels.
+Besides, he's a great masterful creature.  Don't be a fool!  Have a try
+ .  .  .  Junia--Junia," he called.
+
+The figure in the garden with the flowers turned.  There was a flicker of
+understanding in the rare eyes.  The girl held up a bunch of flowers high
+like a torch.
+
+"I'm coming, my children," she called, and, with a laugh, she ran forward
+through the doorway.
+
+"What is it you want, Fabian?" she asked, conscious that in Carnac's
+face was consternation.  "What can I do for you?" she added, with a
+slight flush.
+
+"Nothing for me, but for Carnac--" Fabian stretched out a hand.
+
+She laughed brusquely.  "Oh, Carnac!  Carnac!  Well, I've been making him
+this bouquet."  She held it out towards him.  "It's a farewell bouquet
+for his little journey in the world.  Take it, Carnac, with everybody's
+love--with Fabian's love, with Sibyl's love, with my love.  Take it, and
+good-bye."
+
+With a laugh she caught up her hat from the table, and a moment later she
+was in the street making for the mountain-side up which the children had
+gone.
+
+Carnac placed the bouquet upon the table.  Then he turned to his brother.
+
+"What a damn mess you make of things, Fabian!"
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+All genius is at once a blessing or a curse
+Do what you feel you've got to do, and never mind what happens
+Had got unreasonably old
+How many sons have ever added to their father's fame?
+Never give up your soul to things only, keep it for people
+We do what we forbid ourselves to do
+We suffer the shames we damn in others
+
+
+
+
+
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