King Spruce, A Novel

Two days later the “It-’ll-git-ye’s,” as sombre prophets, were distinctly cheered by the sight of Boss Colin MacLeod borne past Rodburd Ide’s store on a litter. They were hurrying him to the hospital down-river, and he had his teeth set into his lip to keep back the groans.

“No, sir! No fifty more miles of that for you, my boy,” declared Ide, when he was told that MacLeod’s arm and leg were broken. “Into my house you go, and the doctor comes here.” And MacLeod was put to bed in the spare room, weeping quietly.

“It was the head-works warp done it, Mr. Wade,” he moaned, turning hollow eyes upon his sympathizer. “Broke and snapped back. I told him man’s strength couldn’t warp them logs across against that wind, but he was bound to make us do it. He said I was a coward, Mr. Wade. But I took the place at the guide-block to show I wasn’t. And then he cursed me for gettin’ hurt!”

When Wade left the room he found Kate Arden waiting outside. During the days he had been at Castonia the girl had appeared to avoid him. She had paled when he spoke to her, replied curtly, and hurried away as though she feared he was about to broach some topic that would distress her. Yet it was not towards him merely that she had displayed that apprehensive reserve. Not even to Nina Ide did she open her heart, and Nina told Wade of this with wonderment and grief. She had been docile, even to the subterfuge of sitting silent by John Barrett’s bedside when Elva Barrett had resigned her trust to seek Dwight Wade in the wilderness. She had made no comment, asked no questions. She had showed dumb gratitude, and eagerly sought such household tasks as could be intrusted to her untrained hands. But wistful shrinking, the air of a wild thing confined but not tamed, was with her ever.

Now, when she faced Wade outside the door, her eyes shone like stars, her cheeks flamed, and the old fearlessness and determination were in her features.

“I shall take care of him,” she said. “I shall nurse him, and no one but me! I shall know how, Mr. Wade. He’ll need me now. You go and tell them all that I shall nurse him. No one else shall do it.”

It was the woods mate claiming her own. It was more than love as convention has classed it. It was the fire, lighted by the primordial torch of passion, which burns and does not reason, not to be smothered by rebuff or abuse; its pride not the calculating pride of a resentment that can divorce it from its object, but the pride of blind, utter loyalty through all.

Dwight Wade had gone near enough to the heart of things to understand this love.

He looked at her a little while, sympathy lighting his eyes and vibrating in his voice as he answered her:

“You shall have him, poor little girl, because he needs you.”

He opened the door for her, closed it behind her, and left them alone together.

Two days later the “It-’ll-git-ye Club” realized the full climax of ominous prophecy and was correspondingly content. The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt was brought out from Jerusalem dead-water and taken down-river, a helpless hulk of a man grunting stertorous breaths, the right hand, which had waved command all those years along Umcolcus, now hanging helpless at his side, his right leg dangling uselessly as they lifted him along to a wagon.

It was the fate that the choleric tyrant had invited. That last and mightiest rage of his life, when with swollen veins and purple face he had stamped about the head-works platform, had done for Pulaski Britt and his weakened blood-vessels what those who knew him well had predicted. Wade was not surprised, for the suppression of Britt by this means and at this frantic climax in Britt’s affairs was too entirely logical. It came to him suddenly that he felt a sense of relief, and then he wondered with shame whether he had hoped for it. Then he dismissed the speculation as unprofitable and not agreeable. The tyrant was in chains of his own forging. His logs came limping along in scattered squads, and were sent through the sorting-gap and down-river.

The new master of the corporation drive was not cordial when he appeared, hurrying towards headwaters. But he was not hostile, either. He surlily demanded expedition at the Castonia sorting-gap, and went on up-river.

There are some combatants who, seeing a crisis approaching, feel that it is their best policy to sit down and wait until the crisis comes to them. This implies the calculation that perhaps the crisis may go around the other way, but it is not the policy for the intrepid. In his present mood Dwight Wade decided to go to meet the crisis, with head erect and shoulders back.

He addressed the president of the Umcolcus Lumbering and Log-driving Association, requesting a conference with him and the directors of the body. If the letter thinly screened a demand for that conference it was the fault of Dwight Wade’s resolute determination to face the issue.

The letter remained long unanswered. Its receipt was not even acknowledged. The delay seemed to be contemptuous slighting of a possible overture of amicable settlement. Rodburd Ide sadly reasoned to this conviction, and daily gazed towards the south in search of the sheriff bringing writs of attachment with as much trepidation as he had gazed north in the black days when he expected Pulaski Britt.

Dwight Wade was hardly more sanguine. And yet he was heartened by letters from his lawyer, who was up and at the foe once more. The lawyer intimated that an earnest conference was going on among the big fellows of the timber interests. In the past, prior to sittings of the legislature, they had heard the ominous stampings of the farmer’s cowhide boots and the mutterings about unrighteous privileges, filched State timber lands, and unequal taxation. In the secret sessions of those directors the stand-pat roarings of their woods executive had drowned all pacific suggestions of compromise. But now the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt lay at home, unable to lift the ponderous hand which had pounded emphasis.

In the end Wade decided that the big fellows were waiting to settle what they were to say before they summoned him to conference. That he was correct was proven by the letter that came at last. It was a courteous letter; it appointed a time of meeting, and named as the place John Barrett’s office in “Castle Cut ’Em.”

On the evening before Wade left Castonia, Colin MacLeod summoned him, a cheerful convalescent who looked out daily into the new flush of June, and restlessly moved his stiffened limbs in his chair, and counted the days between himself and the free life out-of-doors.

“Mr. Ide was tellin’ me why you are goin’ and where you are goin’,” said MacLeod, with simple earnestness. Kate Arden was sitting with her head on his knee, and he was smoothing her hair gently. “I wanted the little girl to stay here while I talked this to you. I told you about my dream once, man-fashion. I’ve told her about it. I ain’t excusin’ or screenin’ myself. I didn’t know, that’s all. I never tried to fool this little girl, Mr. Wade. They lied who said I did. I pitied her, Mr. Wade. But it’s a hard place to start in lovin’ a girl where I saw her first—and I’d seen some one else before I saw her. But I know now, sir. I’ve told her so all these days that she’s been with me, so true and tender. I reckon I never was in love before. I wouldn’t have acted that way with you, sir, if I really was in love and trusted. But there ain’t no mistake this time, Mr. Wade!” He gulped, a sob in his throat and a smile in his eyes. “I’m her man for ever and ever. She knows it and she’s glad. And I know she’s all mine, and I’m the happiest man in the whole north country.”

He broke in upon Wade’s eager burst of congratulation.

“There’s just one more word I wanted to say—sort of in the way of business, Mr. Wade.” There was a peculiar expression upon his face. “Maybe when you’re outside some one—some one may drop a word or inquire about her business—you know—something about her.” His look of strange significance became deeper, and Wade understood. “All is, you might say that she and Colin MacLeod are goin’ to get married, and Colin MacLeod ain’t askin’ anybody for her—only herself and God. God ain’t denyin’ His Fathership to a girl as good as she is. Colin MacLeod ain’t askin’ anything else—ain’t allowin’ anything else. Say that to ’em. He’s got his own two hands and eleven hundred dollars saved, and the big woods for her and for him. She and I wouldn’t be happy outside the big woods, Mr. Wade. Say it all to ’em, sir, if any one drops a word to you—and they probably will, because you’ve had words with them. You’ll know how to say it. But make it plain that it will be dangerous business for any man to reach out his hand to her or to me with anything in it—and tell ’em it’s Colin MacLeod says that,” he added, bitterly.

“The only things you need, Colin,” cried Wade, advancing towards him, “are good-will and friendship, and both are in the hand I give you.”

At the door he turned.

“Will you wait until I come back, Colin?” he asked. “I would like to stand up with you when you are married—Nina Ide and I.”

“I’ll wait, Mr. Wade,” returned the other, tears of gratitude springing to his eyes. “And may luck go with you in this business.”

That fervent wish, put again into words, followed him next morning when he departed from Castonia. This time it was Tommy Eye who said it—Tommy Eye, fresh down with the rear of the drive, and a very timorous and apprehensive figure of an outlaw. But he seemed to be a little disappointed after Wade had assured him that the matter of Blunder Lake dam would be assumed by the Enchanted Company, and that Tommy himself had nothing to fear.

“I reckon you can do it, Mr. Wade. You can do most anything you set out to,” sighed Tommy. “Howsomever, I kind of figgered on that outlaw business to keep me away from down-river. The city ain’t good for the likes of me. They begin to rattle the keys of the calaboose the minute I get off’n the train.”

“Tommy,” commanded Wade, severely, “don’t you go down-river this season. You stay here and attend to the work we’ve got marked out for you.”

“That’s just as good a wheel-trig as the outlaw proposition would be,” declared Tommy, his face clearing. “Orders from you settles things, Mr. Wade. Here I stay.”

On the morning of his departure Rodburd Ide’s daughter walked with Wade to the store, where the stage started. In the days of their late intimacy the girl had grown into his heart. The sincerity of a sister, self-reliance and womanly sympathy had characterized her attitude towards him from the first; and she had welcomed a friendship which lifted her to a comrade’s level. She was as yet an altruist in matters of the heart; she frankly and openly interested herself only in the loves of others.

Wade knew all the unspoken words that her sympathy dictated when, standing out before them all, she clasped his hand before he clambered over the wheel of the old stage.

He saw no very clear horizon for his own love, but his comrade’s smile heartened him, and the flutter of her handkerchief carried its message of good courage when the stage pitched down the slope that hid Castonia settlement.

The road to “Castle Cut ’Em” lay before him. At that moment the Honorable John Barrett loomed so largely as a foe that Dwight Wade’s thoughts were of his fight. Of his love he hardly dared to think at all.

The “It-’ll-git-ye Club” watched the departure of the stage that day with more than usual interest, also with somewhat deeper gloom.

The knowledge that Dwight Wade and his partner had assumed all blame for the destruction of Blunder Lake dam was current in all the north country.

King Spruce’s delay in visiting punishment only made the situation graver in the estimation of the prophets of evil. King Spruce had many weapons, and in the past had promptly seized the one nearest at hand and dealt a crushing blow when provocation was given. The fact that the new drive-master had passed on without even as much as a threat of retribution was taken as an ominous presage. It was agreed that when King Spruce remained grimly silent so long, in order to revolve a project of retaliation, he must be whittling an especially mighty bludgeon.

The members of the “It-’ll-git-ye Club” very frankly expressed thoughts of this tenor to the half-dozen men who arrived at Castonia in the early morning to take the stage down-river with Wade. The men gloomily agreed. Two of them showed signs of funk at the last moment, and had to be coaxed on board the stage by the young man.

These were the sort of men that Wade had seen a year before in the general rooms of “Castle Cut ’Em.” They were independent operators and stumpage-buyers, who had responded to the messengers and letters that Wade had been sending out.

There were more of them who joined the party at the railroad; others came into the train as it stopped here and there on the way to the junction. All of them seemed impressed by that sense of gloom and apprehension; there was not a sanguine face.

But in their unanimity of dolorousness they displayed a further interesting characteristic. They seemed entirely ready to accept this young man as their leader and their champion; in fact, as he went among them, they confessed that they had come along only because he had assured them that he would bear the brunt of the approaching conflict. The experience of years had shown them that they had no one man or combination of men among themselves who could go up against King Spruce. They even distrusted each other’s honesty, for every man realized all the iniquity of the game of graft and grab that had characterized their dealings with each other and with the main power in the past.

That they should let this new-comer lead them was because he had already proved his mettle and his fearlessness, and the whole north country knew it. He had beaten Pulaski Britt at his own game, he had defied King Spruce, and now he was willing to beard the tyrant in his own castle, and only asked their presence at his back in order that the sight of them might prove his assertions and aid to win some grace for all of them.

Therefore, they had answered his appeal and had gone with him. But they went without alacrity, and were encouraged only by the despondent belief that at least matters could not be made any worse.

CHAPTER XXX

And so it was without high hopes that Wade led the way into the broad stairway to the castle. He wished that the men would pound down their feet on those stairs so that King Spruce would know that they were coming as bold and honest men should come. But his little army tiptoed up, their heavy boots creaking as do the boots of decorous mourners at a funeral.

When he opened the door of the big general room his face did not show that he was disheartened. He had determined not to come to John Barrett as a mere petitioner. He was no longer allowing hope to soften the bitter business of demanding.

He saw the situation more plainly now than he saw it when he had bidden farewell to Elva Barrett in Pogey Notch. There could be no hope of truce between himself and John Barrett. By winning the love of John Barrett’s daughter, by possessing himself of the secret of John Barrett’s shame, he realized that he had committed offences that the pride of Barrett could not pardon. He had followed this by striking the first blow against the autocracy of King Spruce in the north country, and he was now appearing before King Spruce’s high chamberlain as the leader of the rebels whom his deed had spurred to rebellion.

In spite of his great love for Elva Barrett, he felt a sense of exaltation because he had the power to put that love behind him in his dealings with the man he had resolved to fight. It was a relief to convince himself now that Barrett was his implacable foe. Any other belief would have made him less courageous.

And when John Barrett, at sound of the tramp of many feet in the outer room, opened the door of his private office and stood framed there, Dwight Wade welcomed the spectacle of his antagonist. Barrett’s face was saturnine when he surveyed the group.

“I do not understand this, Mr. Wade,” he said. “You and I arranged a conference. But there was no arrangement for a general hearing.”

“The question of conditions on the Umcolcus is a question that takes in all of us who operate there, Mr. Barrett,” said Wade. “I’m present to answer to matters that can be charged to my individual responsibility, but the interests of all of us have a bearing on that responsibility, and we are here to have a fair understanding.”

Barrett stepped back, and motioned the young man to enter the private office.

“If you have come to speak for these men,” he said, “you may step in here, and we will see if we can arrange to have the directors meet them later.”

“Well, Mr. Wade,” he remarked, when they were alone, “so you have become a magnate in the north country in strictly record time!”

“Sarcasm won’t help us any in settling this matter!” cried the young man, warmly. “I can understand very well, Mr. Barrett, how you from your position look down on me in mine. But I have at least become some sort of a business man, and I—”

“You have become an almighty good business man,” declared the land baron, with such a ring of sincerity in his voice that the young man stared at him in sudden astonishment, “and in a little while we will talk business.”

“That is all I’m here to talk,” said Wade, the red coming into his cheeks.

When he had left the group of the lumbermen he noticed that some of them bent lowering looks upon him. They had seen other men invited apart and bought from their purpose. Wade wondered if the Honorable John Davis Barrett was not about to trade amnesty on the Blunder dam charge for betrayal of the men who had come at his back to “Castle Cut ’Em.”

Then a sense of shame at such suspicion came to him, as John Barrett began to speak:

“Mr. Wade,” said he, “you are more of a chap in every way than you were the last time you were in this office, but—you are still young.” From that moment the older man had the advantage. And yet Barrett was not calm. He sat down at his desk, and tossed his papers as he talked. His gaze wavered. His jowls hung heavy and flabby. The marks of his prostrating illness had not left him. But in the gloom of his face there was depression that did not arise from physical causes. Barrett’s bitter experience had drawn its black cloud around him. He pulled out the shelf of his desk, set his elbows upon it as though to steady his nerves, and faced Wade.

“Young man,” he began, “the way the world looks at those things—from the stand-point of some one who hasn’t been through the fire—I can afford to look down on you from my height as a moneyed man, and as something more in this State. An outsider might think so. But, by ——, you are the one that can look down on me, for you are square and clean!”

He would not allow Wade to interrupt.

“I haven’t called you in here to buy or bulldoze you. There is a matter between us that hasn’t been settled. I made you a promise on Jerusalem Mountain that I didn’t keep. I had excuses that seemed good to me then. They don’t look that way now. They didn’t look good to me when I got off my sick-bed at Castonia. Did Rodburd Ide tell you anything about my talk with the girl?”

“He told me, Mr. Barrett.”

The magnate plunged on desperately.

“I don’t think you’re dull, Mr. Wade, but you can’t understand what it meant to me when my child turned on me, spat in my face, and left me. It wasn’t merely the bitterness of that one moment—the blistering memory of it goes to sleep with me and wakes up with me. It’s with me in every look my daughter Elva gives me, though the poor child tries to hide from me that her old faith and trust have left her. I’m not going to whine, young man, but I’m in hell—in hell!”

His voice broke weakly. Then there was silence in the room. Wade heard only the yell of the distant saws and the shuffle of the woodsmen’s feet as they paced the big reception-hall of King Spruce.

Between the two men there was too much understanding for empty words of sympathy.

“Lane is dead,” blurted the millionaire, at last. “What will become of the girl?”

“MacLeod is to marry her. She nursed him through his sickness at Castonia; they love each other very sincerely, Mr. Barrett, and you need have no trouble about her future. Neither of them will ever trouble you; in fact, MacLeod asked me to say as much for him.”

Barrett was silent a long time, his gaze on the floor. He looked up at last, and his eyes shone as though a comforting thought had come to him.

“There’s one thing I can do. I’ve got money enough to make them independent for life. Be my agent in that, Mr. Wade, and—”

“I have another message from MacLeod. I have grown to know the man pretty well, and you’d best take my advice. He says it will be dangerous business for any man to put out a hand to him with anything in it.”

“You mean they won’t take a fortune when I am ready to hand it to them?”

“I mean it, Mr. Barrett. There are strange notions among some of the folks of the big woods. Your money is of no use. I advise you frankly not to offer it. At any rate, I’ll not insult MacLeod by being your messenger.”

The timber magnate whirled his chair and gazed away from Wade, looking into the depths of his big steel vault.

At the end of a few minutes Wade spoke to him, but he did not reply. When the young man accosted him again, after a decent pause, Barrett spoke over his shoulder without turning his face.

“The directors and myself will meet your party in the board-room across the hall in half an hour, Mr. Wade.”

It was not the voice of John Barrett. It was the thin, quavering tone of a man who was mourning, and wished to be left alone.

Wade went quietly away.

He was John Barrett once more when Wade saw him half an hour later at the head of the big table in the directors’ room. All the board was there except Britt.

The lumbermen whom Wade headed stood in solid phalanx at the foot of the room. There were no chairs for them. But they accepted this fact patiently.

Wade, a little in advance of his associates, looked into the face of the Honorable John Barrett, now impassive once more. But there was a strange gleam in the eyes. In the hush it seemed that the directors were waiting for Wade to speak—it was the coldly contemptuous silence of King Spruce ready to hearken.

The young man accepted this waiting as his challenge. He stepped to the lower end of the huge table; John Barrett arose at the other end, and bent forward, leaning on his knuckles.

“Gentlemen,” he said, his tone courteous, his air pacificatory, “Mr. Dwight Wade, of the Enchanted Lumber Association is here to-day to confer with us on those matters that have already been considered by us in executive session. I wish first, with your permission, to inform him on one point that we have already decided. My statement will enable us to avoid discussion of an unpleasant matter—I may say, an unprofitable matter.”

It was plain to be seen that Mr. Barrett was dominating this session, as he had undoubtedly dominated the preliminary session in which the sentiment of King Spruce towards Dwight Wade had been crystallized. Somehow the young man understood that the strange look in Barrett’s eyes meant reassurance.

“The destruction of Blunder Lake dam was a mistake,” continued Barrett, but without even a note of reproach in his voice.

“I am ashamed to have to fight that way for common rights that have been stolen,” said the young man. “It’s nasty fighting, and I don’t want to fight that way any more.”

“We don’t, either,” broke in a director, bluntly. “There’s no money in it.”

“A moment, gentlemen,” interposed Barrett, “I have the floor. I don’t propose to speak any ill of an associate—an unfortunate associate. I refer to Mr. Britt, who has for so many years been our executive in the north woods. But I can say frankly, as I have said to his face, that we have deplored some of his measures as unwise. We have tried to restrain him, but we have not been able to hold him back. Let us be charitable, gentlemen, and say merely that old-fashioned lumbering in this State has been conducted on wrong ideas. The manner of putting in Blunder Lake dam is a case in point. In compromising the present disputes between the timber interests and the other tax-paying interests of the State, I’ll be frank to say that the history of that dam would not be helpful. Prosecuting you, Mr. Wade, would entail going into the history of that dam. Therefore, we shall not prosecute you; and an arrangement has already been made by which you are purged of contempt of court in the matter of the injunction.”

He grew earnest.

“You have undoubtedly come here to tell us, Mr. Wade, that the woods are being butchered for immediate profit; that the present system of lumbering forces operators to use destructive measures. But we can’t enter into argument on that. We admit it. We have been slow about getting together to correct those abuses. We also admit that the time seems to have arrived when we must have a different system. I have been upon my timber tracts during the past year, and have received new light on a great many matters that I had not taken pains to inform myself on. I now view the situation differently, and my associates have coincided with my views.”

For the others it was merely a business confession of error, an appeal for compromise. To Dwight Wade, looking into the eyes of John Barrett and studying his strange expression, it was much more, and his heart beat quickly. “The whole situation will undoubtedly take a new aspect from now on. We propose, on our part, to leave the past just as it is; set mistakes against mistakes, gentlemen, and clean the slates.”

He straightened, dropping his air of confidential appeal.

“Next week, gentlemen, the convention of my party will nominate me to be the next governor of this State. I need not tell you that the nomination means election. I fully realize my responsibilities. I propose to assume them, and to execute them honestly. I declare here before my associates, as I shall later to the people of the State, that if I am elected I shall be a governor of the whole people, and not of any faction. Personally I shall be glad, Mr. Wade, to have you and all others interested come before the next legislature, present complaints and arguments, and let this whole matter be settled justly. You will find that you and your supporters, as well as we, have interests to protect against the demagogues. In the new conditions that are coming to prevail in public matters, those who manage to keep the full measure of their rights are exceedingly fortunate. Against those new conditions it is folly to fight. But in correcting abuses the pendulum sometimes swings too far. I think we can fairly ask you, Mr. Wade, and those operators who may follow your leadership, to join us in protecting what rightfully belongs to us—to all of us. You will understand that I am offering no hint of bulldozing nor inviting corrupt collusion. It has come to a time when we cannot afford to jeopardize our party or our property, and the safety of both is concerned in a full and frank settlement of this question of the timber lands.”

He gazed inquiringly at this young man who had come up to the fortress to fight, and now found fortress and foe dissolving like a mirage. There was but one manly attitude to take towards a public pledge of that sort.

“Mr. Barrett,” declared Wade, earnestly, “on that basis you have my honest co-operation.” He took his hat. There was no excuse for remaining longer in a directors’ meeting of the Umcolcus Lumbering Association. His head whirled with the suddenness of this new situation.

There was a general mumble of indorsement from the men massed at the rear of the room, but one of the group spoke out after a moment’s hesitation: “I’m glad to hear you talk of a square deal before next legislature, Mr. Barrett, but I can’t help rememberin’ that when some of us went up to the state-house two years ago, to see if we couldn’t get a few rights, we butted square up against a lobby that was handlin’ some fifteen thousand dollars of King Spruce’s money to beat us with, and to keep things right where they were.”

There was no mistaking Barrett’s sincerity now.

“Gentlemen,” he cried, “I have just been admitting that there have been mistakes made in handling this matter. I didn’t intend to go into details. It is not a pleasant task. But when I say that this matter shall have fair and square hearing in future, I mean it. And I pledge for myself and my associates—call us ‘King Spruce,’ if that means most to you—that not one dollar will be used by us in the next legislature, except for expenses of counsel and witnesses before the committees—the same legitimate expenses that you of the opposition will incur.”

There was no Thomas among them who could persist in the face of a declaration like that. They dispersed.

Barrett overtook Wade in the corridor, slipped his hand beneath the young man’s arm, and, without a word, led him back into the private office.

“I want to ask you a question, Mr. Wade,” he said, still holding him by the arm. “Once, in stress of feelings and under peculiar circumstances, I promised certain things and did not fulfil them. You therefore have a perfect right to be sceptical as to my good faith now. I ask you—are you?”

“No, Mr. Barrett, I am not,” returned Wade, with simple earnestness.

“Thank you, my boy!” His voice broke on the words. “When even a square and clean man gets to my age he begins to realize that the world is a bigger creditor of his than he had figured in the past,” he went on, after a pause. “In the last few months I have had some bills presented to me that have found me a miserable bankrupt in spite of what my vault holds. You know what my debts are. Linus Lane was right when he told me that my kind of currency couldn’t pay those debts. The dead have gone, leaving me their debtor; the living hold me their debtor still. My boy, when I realize what I owe and how useless that stuff is in there”—he shook his hand at the open door of the vault—“I loathe my money! You know what I owe to one child, and you have brought me word that I can never pay her. You know just as well what I owe to another child—I have taken from her most of her faith and love and happiness. Thank God, I can pay that debt in part, and I know the human heart well enough now to understand that I shall be paying the greater part.”

He left Wade abruptly, and walked to the window and looked down into the street. He beckoned to the young man without turning his head. Wade, coming to his side, saw Elva Barrett’s pony phaeton.

“I told my creditor to come here, and you see she is prompt,” said Barrett, with a wistful smile. “She has accepted what I offer in settlement of my debt, and I offer you my hand, and tell you, with all the earnestness of my soul, that since I have come to realize values I approve my creditor’s judgment. I have agreed to pay promptly on demand. Don’t keep her waiting.”

He pushed his “collateral” out into the corridor, and shut the door behind him.

Wade ran down the stairway, his hat in his hand, and came upon the sidewalk into the glare of the June sunshine. She was there! The silk of the phaeton’s parasol strained a soft and tender light upon her face, and her glorious eyes received him, coming towards her, as though into an embrace. He swayed a little as he crossed the sidewalk, for his eyes swam. And before he reached her he turned and cast one look back at the great building behind him. He seemed to want to reassure himself about something—to see solid bricks and stone—to convince himself that it was not a fairy palace in which he had so amazingly and suddenly found the full fruition of all his hopes.

“What have they been doing to you in the ogres’ den, Dwight, boy?” she asked, a ripple of laughter in her voice.

“I—I don’t know!” he stammered. “It all happened so suddenly. Take me away, sweetheart, where I can see a tree. I want to find my bearings once more!”

The pony trotted away demurely—so demurely that the girl surrendered one hand to him, and he held it tight-clutched between them, wordless, a mist in his eyes.

“Then it did astonish you, after all?” she ventured, breaking the silence.

For reply he pressed her hand. She was first to speak again.

“I know what a strange boy you are, Dwight,” she said, with a touch of humor in her tones. “For the peace of your soul for ever and ever, and the satisfaction of your pride, I want to tell you that my father offered me to you—I did not beg you from my father; but”—she hesitated and looked at him slyly—“I didn’t question the legal tender! Now that you are a business man, I suppose we ought to use business terms!”

But with his great love shining in his eyes, he pointed away from the staring houses, where the road wound on under the trees and the peace of perfect understanding lay beneath.

THE END

Footnotes:

Transcriber’s Note:

Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters’ errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author’s words and intent.