In the Heart of a Fool

But the old year is restless. It has painted the sky of South Harvey with the smoke of a score of smelter chimneys; it has burned in the drab of the dejected-looking houses, and it has added a few dozen new ones for the men and their families who operate the smelter.

So the year moved quickly on. Its tasks were countless. It had another child to teach another message. There was a little girl in the town–a small girl with the bluest eyes in the world and tiny curls–yellow curls that wound so softly around her mother’s fingers that you would think that they were not curls at all but golden dreams of curls that had for the moment come true and would fade back into fairyland whence they came. And the passing year had to prop the child at a window while the dusk came creeping into the quiet house. There she sat waiting, watching, hoping that the proud, handsome man who came at twilight down the way leading to the threshold, would smile at her. She was not old enough to hope he would take her in his arms where she could cuddle and be loved. So the passing year had to take a fine brush and paint upon the small, wistful face a fleeting shadow, the mere ghost of a sadness that came and went as she watched and waited for the father love.

Now, when the old year with all its work lay down in the innumerable company of its predecessors, and the bells rang and the whistles blew in South Harvey to welcome in the new year, the midnight sky was blazoned with the great torches from the smelter chimneys, and the pumps in the oil wells kept up their dolorous whining and complaining, like great insects battening upon an abandoned world. In South Harvey the lights of the saloons and the side of the dragon’s spawn glowed and beckoned men to death. Money tinkled over the bars, and whispered as it was crumpled in the claws of the dragon. For money the scurrying human ants hurried along the dark, half-lighted streets from the ant hills over the mines. For money the cranes of the pumps creaked their monody. For money the half-naked men toiled to their death in the fumes of the smelter. So the New Year’s bells rang a pean of welcome to the money that the New Year would bring with its toll of death.

“Money,” clanged the church bells in the town on the hill. “Money makes wealth and since we have banished our kings and stoned our priests, money is the only thing in our material world that will bring power and power brings pleasure and pleasure brings death.”

“And death? and death? and death?” tolled the church bells that glad New Year, and then ceased in circling waves of sound that enveloped the world, still inquiring–“and death? and death?” fainter and fainter until dawn.

The little boy who heard the bells may have heard their plaintive question; for in the morning twilight, sitting in his nightgown on his high chair looking into the cheerful mouth of the glowing kitchen stove, while the elders prepared breakfast, the child who had been silent for a long time raised his face and asked:

“Grant–what is death?” The youth at his task answered by telling about the buried seed and the quickening plant. The child listened and shook his head.

“Death? Death?” and looked puzzled, as if searching for his words. “Death is the low archway in the journey of life, where we all–high and low, weak and strong, poor and rich, must bow into the dust, remove our earthly trappings, wealth and power and pleasure, before we rise to go upon the next stage of our journey into wider vistas and greener fields.”

The child nodded his head as one who has just appraised and approved a universe, replying sagely, “Oh,” then after a moment he added: “Yes.” And said no more.

But when the sun was up, and the wheels scraped on the gravel walk before the Adams home, and the silvery, infectious laugh of a young mother waked the echoes of the home, as she bundled up Kenyon for his daily journey, the old man and the young man heard the child ask: “Aunty Laura–what is death?” The woman with her own child near in the very midst of life, only laughed and laughed again, and Kenyon laughed and Lila laughed and they all laughed.

Perhaps the sound of their laughter drowned the mournful voices of the bells in Grant Adams’s heart. But the bells of the New Year left within him some stirring of their eternal question. For as the light of day sniffed out, Grant in a cage full of miners, with Dick Bowman and one of his boys standing beside him, going down to the second level of the mine, asked himself the question that had puzzled him: Why did not these men get as much out of life as their fellows on the same pay in the town who work in stores and offices? He could see no particular difference in the intelligence of the men in Harvey and the workers in South Harvey; yet there they were in poorer clothes, with, faces not so quick, clearly not so well kept from a purely animal standpoint, and even if they were sturdier and physically more powerful, yet to the young man working with them in the mine, it seemed that they were a different sort from the white-handed, keen-faced, smooth-shaven, well-groomed clerks of Market Street, and that the clerks were getting the better of life. And Grant cried in his heart: “Why–why–why?”

Then Dick Bowman said: “Red–penny for your thoughts?” The men near by turned to Grant and he said: “Hello, Dick–” Then to the boy: “Well, Mugs, how are you?” He spoke to the others, Casper and Barney and Evans and Hugh and Bill and Dan and Tom and Lew and Gomer and Mike and Dick–excepting Casper Herdicker, mostly Welsh and Irish, and they passed around some more or less ribald greetings. Then they all stepped upon the soft ground and stood in the light of the flickering oil torches that hung suspended from timbers.

At ten o’clock Grant came back to the second level by the hoist in the air shaft and as he started down the low air course branching off from the main passage and leading to the new mule barn, he smelled burning pine; and hurrying around a corner saw that the boy who dumped the pine boards for the mule barn had not taken the boards into the barn, nor even entirely to the barn, but had dumped them in the passage to the windward of the barn, under the leaky torch, and Grant could see down the air course the ends of the boards burning brightly.

Men began poking their heads into the course and calling, “Need any help down there,” and Grant cried, “Yes, go to the pump in the main balcony with your buckets and get water.” The man sent for the wrench appeared down the long passage. Grant yelled,

“Hurry–hurry, man!” But though he came running, the fire seemed to be going faster than he was. They could hear men calling and felt that there was confusion at the end of the air course where it turned into the main passage ahead of the flames. A second torch exploded, scattering the fire far down the course. The man, breathless and exhausted, ran up with the wrench. Then they felt the air in the air course stop moving. They looked at one another. “Yes,” said the man with the wrench, “I told ’em to reverse the fans and when we got the water turned on we’d hold the fire from going to the other end of the passage.” He said this between gasps as he tugged at the water plug with the wrench. He hit it a vicious blow and the cap broke.

“He’s up yon way,” called the boy, pointing in the opposite direction as he ran. “You tell him.” The fire was roaring down the air course behind them, and Grant and the three men knew that in a few minutes the reverse air would be sucking the flames up the air shaft, cutting off the emergency escape for the men on the first and second levels.

Grant knew that the emergency escape was not completed for the third level, but he knew that they were using the air chute for a temporary hoist for the men from the third level and that the main shaft was not running to the third level.

“Run down this passage, Bill,” called Grant. “Get all those fellows. Evans, you call the first level; I’ll skin down this rope to the men below.” In an instant, as the men were flying on their errands, his red head disappeared down the rope into the darkness. At the bottom of the hoist in the third level Grant found forty or fifty men at work. They were startled to see him come down without waiting for the bucket to go up and he called breathlessly as his feet touched the earth: “Boys, there’s a fire above on the next level–I don’t know how bad it is; but it looks bad to me. They may get it out with a hose from the main bottom–if they’ve got hose there that will reach any place.”

“Let’s go up,” cried one of the men. As they started toward him, Grant threw up his hand.

“Hold on now, boys–hold on. The fans will be blowing that fire down this air shaft in a few minutes. How far up have you got the ladders?” he asked.

He pointed at the timbers to be used for the ladders, stepped to the windlass and cried:

“Here, Johnnie–you got no family–get hold of this windlass with me. Ready now–family men first–you, Sam–you, Edwards–you, Lewellyn.”

Then he bent to the wheel and the men in the bucket started up the shaft. The others pounded at the ladder, and those who could find no work clambered up the stairs to the bottom of the gap that separated them from the second level. As the men in the buckets were nearly up to the second level, where the hoist stopped, Grant heard one of them call: “Hurry, hurry–here she comes,” and a second later a hot, smoky wind struck his face and he knew the fan was turned again and soon would be blowing fire down the air course.

The men had the ladder almost finished. The men above on the stairs smelled the smoke and began yelling. The bucket reached the top and was started down. Grant looked up the air shaft and saw the fire–little flickering flames lighting up the shaft near the second level. The air rushing down was smoky and filled with sparks. The ladder was ready and the men made a rush with it up the stairway. Most of their lamps were put out and it was dark in the stairway. The men were uttering hysterical, foolish cries as they rushed upward in their panic. The ladder jolting against the sides of the chamber knocked the men off their feet and there was tumbling and swearing and tripping and struggling.

Grant grabbed the ladder from the men and held it above his head, and called out:

“You men go up there in order. You’ll not get the ladder till you straighten up.”

The emergency-passage was filling with smoke. The men were coughing and gasping.

Up and down the stairs men called:

“Brace up, that’s right.”

“Red’s right.”

“We’ll all go if we don’t straighten up.”

As the top man raised the trapdoor above, Grant and those upon the ladder could see the flames and a great gust of smoke poured down. The man at the top hesitated. On the other side of the partition in the air chute the smoke was pouring and the fire was circling the top of the emergency escape through which the men must pass.

“Go ahead or jump down,” yelled Grant.

Those on the ladder and on the landing who could see up cried:

“Quick, for God’s sake! Hurry!”

And in another second the first man had scrambled through the hole, letting the trapdoor fall upon the head of the scrambling man just under him. He fell, but Grant caught him, and shoved him into the next turn upon the ladder.

The ladder was filling for the last time. The last man was on the first rung. Grant reached under the ladder, caught Dooley about the waist and started up with him. On the ladder Dooley regained consciousness, and Grant shoved him ahead and saw Dooley slip through the trapdoor and then stop in the smoke and fire and stand holding up the door for Grant. The two men smiled through the smoke, and as Grant came through with his clothes afire, he and Dooley looked quickly about them. Their lights were out; but the burning timbers above gave them their directions. They headed down the south passage, but even as they entered it the flames barred them there. Then they turned to go up the passage, and could hear men calling and yelling far down in the dark alley. The torches were gone. Far ahead through the stifling smoke that swirled about the damp timbers overhead, they could see the flickering lights of men running. They started to follow the lamps. Dooley, who was a little man, slowly dropped back. Grant caught his hand and dragged him. Soon they came up to the others, who paused to give them lights. Then they all started to run again, hoping to come out of that passage into the main bottom by the main shaft in another quarter of a mile. Occasionally a man would begin to lag, but some one always stopped to give him a hand. Once Grant passed two men, Tom Williams and Evan Davis, leaning against a timber, Davis fagged, Williams fanning his companion with his cap.

Coal was still going up in the cages. The men in the east and west passages were still at work. Smoke thickened the air. The entrance to the air course was charred, and puffing smoke. The fans relaxed for a moment upon a signal to cease until the course was explored. A hose was playing in the course, but no man had ventured down it. When Grant came out he called to the men with the cage boss: “Where’s Kinnehan–where’s the pit boss?” No one knew. Some little boys–trimmers and drivers–were begging to go up with the coal. Finally the cage boss let them ride up.

While they were wrangling, Grant said: “Lookee here–this is a real fire, men; stop spitting on that air course with the hose and go turn out the men.”

The men from the third level were clamoring at the cage boss to go up.

Grant stopped them: “Now, here–let’s divide off, five in a squad and go after the men on this level, and five in a squad go up to the next level and call the men out there. There’s time if we hurry to save the whole shift.” He tolled them off and they went down the glimmering passages, that were beginning to grow dim with smoke. As he left the main bottom he saw by his watch under a torch that it was nearly eleven o’clock. He ran with his squad down the passage, calling out the men from their little rooms. Three hundred yards down the smoke grew denser. And he met men coming along the passage.

“Are they all out back of you?” he called to the men as they passed. “Yes,” they cried, “except the last three or four rooms.”

The smoke kept rolling along behind them. It blackened the passage ahead of them. Most of the lights the men carried were out. Grant lent a hand, and the swaying procession crawled under the smoke. They went so slowly that one man, then two on their hands and knees, then three more caught up with them and they were too exhausted to drag the senseless man with them. At a puddle in the way they soused the face of the prostrated man in the water. That revived him. They could hear and feel another man across the passage calling feebly for help. Grant and Chopini, speaking different languages, understood the universal call of distress, and together crawled in the dark and felt their way to the feeble voice. Chopini reached the voice first. Grant could just distinguish in the darkness the powerful movement of the Italian, with his head upon the ground like a nosing dog’s as he wormed under the fallen body and got it on his back and bellied over to the group that was slowly moving down the passage toward the glimmering light. As they passed the rooms vacated by the miners, sometimes they put their heads in and got refreshing air, for the smoke moved in a slow, murky current down the passage and did not back into the rooms at first.

“Boys–” gasped Grant, “in here–let’s get in one of these rooms and wall it up.”

The seven looked at him and he crawled to a room; sticking his head in he found it murky. He tried another. The third room was fresh and cool, and he called the men in.

Then all nine dragged one after another of the limp bodies into the room and they began walling the door into the passage. There were two lights on a dozen caps. Grant put out one lamp and they worked by the glimmer of a single lamp. Gradually, but with a speed–slow as it had to be–inspired by deadly terror, the wall went up. They daubed it with mud that seemed to refresh itself from a pool that was hollowed in the floor. After what seemed an age of swiftly accurate work, the wall was waist high; the smoke bellied in, in a gust, and was suddenly sucked out by an air current, and the men at the wall tapping some spring of unknown energy bent frantically to their task. Three of the six men were coming to life. They tried to rise and help. Two crawled forward, and patted the mud in the bottom crevices. The fierce race with death called out every man’s reserves of body and soul.

Then, when the wall was breast high, some one heard a choking cry in the passage. Grant was in the rear of the room, wrestling with a great rock, and did not hear the cry; but Chopini was over the wall, and Dooley followed him, and Evans followed him in an instant. They disappeared down the passage, and when Grant returned, carrying the huge rock to the speeding work at the wall, he heard a voice outside call:

“We’ve got ’em.”

It was but a matter of minutes before the furnace was raging outside. The men in the room could hear it crackle and roar, and the mud in the chinks steamed. The men daubed the chinks again and again.

As the fire roared outside, the men within the room fancied–and perhaps it was the sheer horror of their situation that prompted their fancy–that they could hear the screams of men and mules down the passage toward the main bottom. After an hour, when the roar ceased, they were in a great silence. And as the day grew old and the silence grew deep and the immediate danger past, they began to wait. As they waited they talked. At times they heard a roaring and a crash and they knew that the timbers having burned away, the passages and courses were caving in. By their watches they knew that the night was upon them. And they sat talking nervously through the night, fearing to sleep, dreading what each moment might bring. Lamp after lamp burned out in turn. And still they sat and talked. Here one would drowse–there another lose consciousness and sink to the ground, but always men were talking. The talk never ceased. They were ashamed to talk of women while they were facing death, so they kept upon the only other subjects that will hold men long–God and politics. The talk droned on into morning, through the forenoon, into the night, past midnight, with the thread taken from one man sinking to sleep by another waking up, but it never stopped. The water that seeped into the puddle on the floor moistened their lips as they talked. There was no food save in two lunch buckets that had been left in the room by fleeing miners, and thus went the first day.

By the feeling of the stem of Grant Adams’s watch as he wound it, he judged that they had lived nearly four days in the tomb. Little Mugs Bowman was crying for food, and his father was trying to comfort him, by giving him his shoe leather to chew. Others rolled and moaned in their sleep, and the talk grew unstable and flighty.

Some one said, “Hear that?” and there was silence, and no one heard anything. Again the talk began and droned unevenly along.

“Say, listen,” some one else called beside the first man who had heard the sound.

Again they listened, and because they were nervous perhaps two or three men fancied they heard something. But one said it was the roar of the fire, another said it was the sound of some one calling, and the third said it was the crash of a rock in some distant passageway. The talk did not rise again for a time, but finally it rose wearily, punctuated with sighs. Then two men cried:

“Hear it! There it is again!”

And breathless they all sat, for a second. Then they heard a voice calling, “Hello–hello?” And they tried to cheer.

But the voice did not sound again, and a long time passed. Grant tried to count the minutes as they ticked off in his watch, but his mind would not remain fixed upon the ticking, so he lost track of the time after three minutes had passed. And still the time dragged, the watch kept ticking.

Then they heard the sound again, clearer; and again it called. Then Dick Bowman took up a pick, called:

“Watch out, away from the wall, I’m going to make a hole.”

He struck the wall and struck it again and again, until he made a hole and they cried through it:

The rescuers led the imprisoned miners down the dark passage; Grant Adams was the last man to leave the prison. As he turned an angle of the passage, a great rock fell crashing before him, and a head of dirt caught him and dragged him under. His legs and body were pinioned. Dennis Hogan in front heard the crash, saw Grant fall, and stood back for a moment, as another huge rock slid slowly down and came to rest above the prostrate man. For a second no one moved. Then one man–Ira Dooley–slowly crept toward Grant and began digging with his hands at the dirt around Grant’s legs. Then Casper Herdicker and Chopini came to help. As they stood at Grant’s head, quick as a flash, the rock fell and the two men standing at Grant’s head were crushed like worms. The roof of the passage was working wickedly, and in the flickering light of the lanterns they could see the walls shudder. Then Dick Bowman stepped out. He brought a shovel from a room opening on the passage, and Evan Davis and Tom Williams and Jamey McPherson with shovels began working over Grant, who lay white and frightened, watching the squirming wall above and blowing the dropping dirt from his face as it fell.

The weakened men, led by their rescuers, picked their way through the corpses and went to the top in a cage. Far down in the shaft, the daylight cut them like a knife. And as they mounted higher and higher, they could hear the murmur of voices above them, and Grant could hear the sobs of women and children long before he reached the top. The word that men had been rescued passed out of the shaft house before they could get out of the cage, and a great shout went up.

The men walked out of the shaft house and saw all about them, upon flat cars, upon the dump near the shaft, upon buildings around the shaft house, a great crowd of cheering men and women, pale, drawn, dreadful faces, illumined by eager eyes. Grant lifted his eyes to the crowd. There in a carriage beside Henry Fenn, Grant saw Margaret staring at him, and saw her turn pale and slide down into her husband’s arms, as she recognized Grant’s face among those who had come out of death. Then he saw his father and little Kenyon in the crowd and he dashed through the thick of it to them. There he held the boy high in the air, and cried as the little arms clung about his neck.

The great hoarse whistles roared and the shrill siren whistles screamed and the car bells clanged and the church bells rang. But they did not roar and scream and peal and toll for money and wealth and power, but for life that was returned. As for the army of the dead below, for all their torture, for all their agony and the misery they left behind for society to heal or help or neglect–the army of the dead had its requiem that New Year’s eve, when the bells and whistles and sirens clamored for money that brings wealth, and wealth that brings power, and power that brings pleasure, and pleasure that brings death–and death?–and death?

And thus a New Year in Harvey began its long trip around the sun, with its sorrows and its joys, with its merry pantomime and its mutes mourning upon the hearse, with its freight of cares and compensations and its sad ironies. So let us get on and ride and enjoy the journey.

When Grant Adams had told and retold his story to the reporters and had eaten what Dr. Nesbit would let him eat, it was late in the afternoon. He lay down to sleep with the sun still shining through the shutters in his low-ceiled, west bed room. Through the night his father sat or slept fitfully beside him and when the morning sun was high, and still the young man slept on, the father guarded him, and would let no one enter the house. At noon Grant rose and dressed. He saw the Dexters coming down the road and he went to the door to welcome them. It seemed at first that the stupor of sleep was not entirely out of his brain. He was silent and had to be primed for details of his adventure. He sat down to eat, but when his meal was half finished, there came bursting out of his soul a flame of emotion, and he put down his food, turned half around from the table, grasped the edges of the board with both hands and cried as a fanatic who sees a vision:

“Oh, those men,–those men–those wonderful, beautiful souls of men I saw!–those strong, fearless. Godlike men!–there in the mine, I mean. Evan Davis, Dick Bowman, Pat McCann, Jamey McPherson, Casper Herdicker, Chopini–all of them; yes, Dennis Hogan, drunk as he is sometimes, and Ira Dooley, who’s been in jail for hold-ups–I don’t care which one–those wonderful men, who risked their lives for others, and Casper Herdicker and Chopini, who gave their lives there under the rock for me. My God, my God!”

“I know what you don’t know with all your religion, Mr. Dexter; I know what the Holy Ghost is now. I have seen it. The Holy Ghost is that divine spark in every human soul–however life has smudged it over by circumstance–that rises and envelopes a human creature in a flame of sacrificial love for his kind and makes him joy to die to save others. That’s the Holy Ghost–that’s what is immortal.”

He clenched his great hickory fist and hit the table and lifted his face again, crying: “I saw Dennis Hogan walk up to Death smiling that Irish smile. I saw him standing with a ton of loose dirt hanging over him while he was digging me out! I saw Evan Davis–little, bow-legged Evan Davis–go out into the smoke alone–alone, Mr. Dexter, and they say Evan is a coward–he went out alone and brought back Casper Herdicker’s limp body hugged to his little Welsh breast like a gorilla’s–and saved a man. I saw Dick Bowman do more–when the dirt was dropping from the slipping, working roof into my mouth and eyes, and might have come down in a slide–I lay there and watched Dick working to save me and I heard him order his son to hold a shovel over my face–his own boy.” Grant shuddered and drew the child closer to him, and looked at the group near him with wet eyes. “Ira Dooley and Tom Williams and that little Italian went on their bellies, half dead from the smoke, out into death and brought home three men to safety, and would have died without batting an eye–all three to save one lost man in that passage.” He beat the table again with his fist and cried wildly: “I tell you that’s the Holy Ghost. I know those men may sometimes trick the company if they can. I know Ira Dooley spends lots of good money on ‘the row’; I know Tom gambles off everything he can get his hands on, and that the little Dago probably would have stuck a knife in an enemy over a quarter. But that doesn’t count.”

“Father–father!” cried Grant, as a new wave of emotion surged in from the outer bourne of his soul, “you once said Dick Bowman sold out the town and took money for voting for the Harvey Improvement bond steal. But what if he did? That was merely circumstance. Dick is a little man who has had to fight for money all his life–just enough money to feed his hungry children. And here came an opportunity to get hold of–what was it?–a hundred dollars–” Amos Adams nodded. “Well, then, a hundred dollars, and it would buy so much, and leading citizens came and told him it was all right–men we have educated with our taxes and our surplus money in universities and colleges. And we haven’t educated Dick; we’ve just taught him to fight–to fight for money, and to think money will do everything in God’s beautiful world. So Dick took it. That was the Dick that man and Harvey and America made, father, but I saw the Dick that God made!” He stopped and cried out passionately, “And some day, some day all the world must know this man–this great-souled, common American–that God made!”

Grant’s voice was low, but a thousand impulses struggled across his features for voice and his eyes were infinitely sad as he gazed at the curly, brown hair of the child in his arms playing with the buttons on his coat.

The minister looked at his wife. She was wet-faced and a-tremble, and had her hands over her eyes. Amos Adams’s old, frank face was troubled. The son turned upon him and cried:

Grant Adams rose. He ran his great, strong, copper-freckled hands through his fiery hair and stood with face transfigured, as the face of one staring at some phantasm. “Oh, those men–they risked their lives–Chopini and Casper Herdicker gave their lives for me. Father,” he cried, “I am bought with a price. These men risked all and gave all for me. I am theirs. I have no other right to live except as I serve them.” He drew a deep breath; set his jaw and spoke with all the force he could put into a quiet voice: “I am dedicated to men–to those great-souled, brave, kind men whom God has sent here for man to dwarf and ruin. They have bought me. I am theirs.”

The minister put the question in their minds:

“What are you going to do, Grant?”

“My job,” he cried, “is so big I don’t know where to take hold. But I’m not going to bother to tell those men who sweat and stink and suffer under the injustices of men, about the justice of God. I’ve got one thing in me bigger’n a wolf–it’s this: House them–feed them, clothe them, work them–these working people–and pay them as you people of the middle classes are housed and fed and paid and clad, and crime won’t be the recreation of poverty. And the Lord knows the work of the men who toil with their hands is just as valuable to society as preaching and trading and buying and selling and banking and editing and lawing and doctoring, and insuring and school teaching.”

He stood before the kitchen stove, a tall, awkward, bony, wide-shouldered, loose-wired creature in the first raw stage of full-blown manhood. The red muscles of his jaw worked as his emotions rose in him. His hands were the hands of a fanatic–never still.

“I’ve been down into death and I’ve found something about life,” he went on. “Out of the world’s gross earnings we’re paying too much for superintendence, and rent and machines, and not enough for labor. There’s got to be a new shake-up. And I’m going to help. I don’t know where nor how to begin, but some way I’ll find a hold and I’m going to take it.”

He drew in a long breath, looked around and smiled rather a ragged, ugly smile that showed his big teeth, all white and strong but uneven.

“Well, Grant,” said Mrs. Dexter, “you have cut out a big job for yourself.” The young man nodded soberly.

“Well, we’re going to organize ’em, the first thing. We talked that over in the mine when we had nothing else to talk about–but God and our babies.”

“They have a subscription paper at George Brotherton’s store–you know, Grant,” said Mr. Dexter.

“Well–we ought to put in something, father,–all we’ve got, don’t you think?”

“I tried and tried to get her last night to know how she felt about it,” mused Amos. “I’ve borrowed all I can on the office–and it wouldn’t sell for its debts.”

“You ought to keep your home, I think,” put in Mrs. Dexter quickly, who had her husband’s approving nod.

“They told me,” said the father, “that Mary didn’t feel that way about it. I couldn’t get her. But that was the word she sent.”

“Father,” said Grant with the glow in his face that had died for a minute, “let’s take the chance. Let’s check it up to God good and hard. Let’s sell the house and give it all to those who have lost more than we. We can earn the rent, anyway.”

Mrs. Dexter looked significantly at Kenyon.

“No, that shouldn’t count, either,” said Grant stubbornly. “Dick Bowman didn’t let his boy count when I needed help, and when hundreds of orphaned boys and girls and widows need our help, we shouldn’t hold back for Kenyon.”

“Father,” said Grant, “I don’t know about your Mr. Left. He doesn’t interest me, as he does you, and as for the others–they may be true or all a mockery, for anything I know. But,” he exclaimed, “I’ve seen God face to face and I can’t rest until I’ve given all I am–everything–everything to help those men!”

Then the three went out into the crisp January air–father and son and little Kenyon bundled to the chin. They walked over the prairies under the sunshine and talked together through the short winter afternoon. At its close they were in the timber where the fallen leaves were beginning to pack against the tree trunks and in the ravines. The child listened as the wind played upon its harp, and the rhythm of the rising and falling tide of harmony set his heart a-flutter, and he squeezed his father’s fingers with delight. A redbird flashing through the gray and brown picture gave him joy, and when it sang far down the ravine where the wind organ seemed to be, the child’s eyes brimmed and he dropped behind the elders a few paces to listen and be alone with his ecstasy. And so in the fading day they walked home. The quail piped for the child, and the prairie chicken pounded his drum, and in the prairie grass the slanting sun painted upon the ripples across the distant, rolling hills many pictures that filled the child’s heart so full that he was still, as one who is awed with a great vision. And it was a great vision that filled his soul: the sunset with its splendors, the twilight hovering in the brown woods, the prairie a-quiver with the caresses of the wind, winter-birds throbbing life and ecstasy into the picture, and above and around it all a great, warm, father’s heart symbolizing the loving kindness of the infinite to the child’s heart.

Going home from the Adamses that afternoon, John Dexter mused: “Curious–very curious.” Then he added: “Of course this phase will pass. Probably it is gone now. But I am wondering how fundamental this state of mind is, if it will not appear again–at some crisis later in life.”

“His mother,” said Mrs. Dexter, “was a strong, beautiful woman. She builded deep and wide in that boy. And his father is a wise, earnest, kindly man, even if he may be impractical. Why shouldn’t Grant do all that he dreams of doing?”

“Yes,” returned the minister dryly. “But there is life–there are its temptations. He is of the emotional type, and the wrong woman could bend him away from any purpose that he may have now. Then, suppose he does get past the first gate–the gate of his senses–there’s the temptation to be a fool about his talents if he has any–if this gift of tongues we’ve seen to-day should stay with him–he may get the swelled head. And then,” he concluded sadly, “at the end is the greatest temptation of all–the temptation that comes with power to get power for the sake of power.”

But the two figures that had started Grant’s reverie continued to walk–perhaps a trifle slower than was the wont of either, down Market Street. They walked slowly for two reasons: For her part, she wished to make the most of a parade on Market Street with so grand a person as the Judge of the District Court, and the town’s most distinguished citizen; and for his part, he dawdled because life was going slowly with him in certain quarters: he felt the lack of adventure, and here–at least, she was a stunning figure of a woman! “Yes,” she said, “I heard about them. Henry has just told me that Mr. Brotherton said the Adamses are going to sell their home and give it to the miners’ widows. Isn’t it foolish? It’s all they’ve got in the world, too! Still, really nothing is strange in that family. You know, I boarded with them one winter when I taught the Prospect School. Henry says they want to do something for the laboring people,” she added naïvely.

As she spoke, the man’s eyes wandered over her figure, across her face, and were caught by her eyes that looked at him with something in them entirely irrelevant to the subject that her lips were discussing. His eyes caught up the suggestion of her eyes, and carried it a little further, but he only said: “Yes–queer folks–trying to make a whistle–”

“Out of a pig’s tail,” she laughed. But her eyes thought his eyes had gone just a little too far, so they drooped, and changed the subject.

“Well, I don’t know that I would say exactly a pig’s tail,” he returned, bracketing his words with his most engaging smile, “but I should say out of highly refractory material.”

He went on speaking: “The whole labor trouble, it seems to me, lies in this whistle trade. A smattering of education has made labor dissatisfied. The laboring people are trying to get out of their place, and as a result we have strikes and lawlessness and disrespect for courts, and men going around and making trouble in industry by ‘doing something for labor.’”

“Yes,” she replied, “that is very true.”

But her eyes–her big, liquid, animal eyes were saying, “How handsome you are–you man–you great, strong, masterful man with your brown ulster and brown hat and brown tie, and silken, black mustache.” To which his eyes replied, “And you–you are superb, and such lips and such teeth,” while what he trusted to words was:

“Yes–I believe that the laborer in the mines, for instance, doesn’t care so much about what we would consider hardship. It’s natural to him. It would be hard for us, but he gets used to it! Now, the smelter men in that heat and fumes–they don’t seem to mind it. The agonizing is done largely by these red-mouthed agitators who never did a lick of work in their lives.”

Their elbows touched for a moment as they walked. He drew away politely and her eyes said:

“That’s all right: I didn’t mind that a bit.” But her lips said: “That’s what I tell Mr. Fenn, and, anyway, the work’s got to be done and cultivated people can’t do it. It’s got to be done by the ignorant and coarse and those kind of people.”

His eyes flinched a little at “those kind” of people and she wondered what was wrong. But it was only for a moment that they flinched. Then they told her eyes how fine and desirable she looked, and she replied eyewise with a droop such as the old wolf might have used in replying to Red Riding Hood, “The better to eat you, my child.” Then his voice spoke; his soft, false, vain, mushy voice, and asked casually: “By the way, speaking of Mr. Fenn–how is Henry? I don’t see him much now since he’s quit the law and gone into real estate.”

“Oh, I guess he’s all right,” and her eyes said: That’s so kind of you, indeed; perhaps you might–

But he went on: “You ought to get him out more–come over some night and we’ll make a hand at whist. Mrs. Van Dorn isn’t much of a player, but like all poor players, she enjoys it.” And the eyes continued: But you and I will have a fine time–now please come–soon–very soon.

“Yes, indeed–I don’t play so well, but we’ll come,” and the eyes answered: That is a fair promise, and I’ll be so happy. Then they flashed quickly: But Mrs. Van Dorn must arrange it. He replied: “I’ll tell Mrs. Van Dorn you like whist, and she and you can arrange the evening.”

Then they parted. He walked into the post office, and she walked on to the Wright & Perry store. But instead of returning to his office, he lounged into Mr. Brotherton’s and sat on a bench in the Amen Corner, biting a cigar, waiting for traffic to clear out. Then he said: “George, how is Henry Fenn doing–really?”

His soft, brown hat was tipped over his eyes and his ulster, unbuttoned, displayed his fine figure, and he was clearly proud of it. Brotherton hesitated while he invoiced a row of books.

“Old trouble?” prompted Judge Van Dorn.

“Old trouble,” echoed Mr. Brotherton–“about every three months since he’s been married; something terrible the last time. But say–there’s a man that’s sorry afterwards, and what he doesn’t buy for her after a round with the joy-water isn’t worth talking about. So far, he’s been able to square her that way–I take it. But say–that’ll wear off, and then–” Mr. Brotherton winked a large, mournful, devilish wink as one who was hanging out a storm flag. Judge Van Dorn twirled his mustache, patted his necktie, jostled his hat and smiled, waiting for further details. Instead, he faced a question:

“Why did Henry quit the law for real estate, Judge–the old trouble?”

Mr. Brotherton’s large back was turned when the last phrase was uttered, and Mr. Brotherton made a little significant face at his shelves, and the thought occurred to Mr. Brotherton that Henry Fenn was not the only man whom people pretty generally knew about. After some further talk about Fenn and his affairs, Van Dorn primped a moment before the mirror in the cigar cutter and started for the door.

“By the by, your honor, I forgot about the Mayor’s miners’ relief fund. How is it now?” asked Van Dorn.

“Something past ten thousand here in the county.”

“Any one beat my subscription?” asked Van Dorn.

Brotherton turned around and replied: “Yes–Amos Adams was in here five minutes ago. He has mortgaged his place and so long as he and Grant can’t find kith or kin of Chopini, and Mrs. Herdicker would take nothing–Amos has put $1,500 into the fund. Done it just now–him and Grant.”

The Judge took the paper, looked at the scrawl of the Adamses, and scratching out his subscription, put two thousand where there had been one thousand. He showed it to Brotherton, and added with a smile:

“Who’ll call that–I wonder.”

“What a fine, good-natured, big-hearted fellow Tom Van Dorn is!”

And Mr. Van Dorn, not oblivious to the impression he was making, smiled and bowed and bowed and smiled, and hellowed Dick, and howareyoued Hiram, and goodmorninged John, down the street, into his office. There he found his former partner busy with a laudable plan of defending a client. His client happened to be the Wahoo Fuel Company, which was being assailed by the surviving relatives of something like one hundred dead men. So Mr. Calvin was preparing to show that in entering the mine they had assumed the ordinary risks of mining, and that the neglect of their fellow servants was one of those ordinary risks. And as for the boy ten years old being employed in the mines contrary to law, there were some details of a trip to Austria for that boy and his parents, that had to be arranged with the steamship company by wire that very morning. The Judge sat reading the law, oblivious–judicially–to what was going on, and Joseph Calvin fell to work with a will. But what the young Judge, who could ignore Mr. Calvin’s activities, could not help taking judicial notice of in spite of his law books, were those eyes out there on the street. They were indeed beautiful eyes and they said so much, and yet left much to the imagination–and the imagination of Judge Van Dorn was exceedingly nimble in those little matters, and in many other matters besides. Indeed, so nimble was his imagination that if it hadn’t been for the fact that at Judge Van Dorn’s own extra-judicial suggestion, every lawyer in town, excepting Henry Fenn, who had retired from the law practice, had been retained by the Company an hour after the accident, no one knows how many holes might have been found in Mr. Joseph Calvin’s unaided brief.

As the young Judge sat poring over his law book, Captain Morton came in and after the Captain’s usual circumlocution he said:

The eyes of Margaret Fenn danced around the Captain’s sprocket. So the Judge, thinking to get rid of the Captain and oblige the Fenns with one stroke, sent the Captain away with twenty-five dollars to pay Henry Fenn for getting the patent for the sprocket and securing the charter for the company.

As the Captain left the office of the Judge he greeted Mrs. Van Dorn with an elaborate bow.