The Ancient Law

FOR several weeks in August Ordway did not go into Tappahannock, and during his vacation from the warehouse he made himself useful in a number of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, the broken fences mended, the garden kept clear of wiregrass, and even Mrs. Brooke's "rockery" of portulaca, with which she had decorated a mouldering stump, received a sufficient share of his attention to cause the withered plants to grow green again and blossom in profusion. When the long, hot days had drawn to a close, he would go out with a watering-pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums which Emily had planted in the bare spots beside the steps.

"The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, you know," he remarked to her one day. "If it went on forever I should never get bored or tired."

"Do you tire of it?" he asked in a softened voice, turning his gaze upon her.

"I?" she laughed, with a bitterness he had never heard in her tone before, "oh, yes, but I suppose that doesn't count in the long run. Did there ever live a woman who hasn't felt at times like railing against the milk pans and denying the eternal necessity of ham and eggs?"

Though she spoke quite seriously the simplicity of her generalisation brought a humorous light to his eyes; and in his imagination he saw Lydia standing upon the white bearskin rug against the oval mirror and the gold-topped bottles upon her dressing-table.

"Well, if I'd made as shining a success at my job as you have at yours, I think I'd be content," was all he said.

She laughed merrily, and he saw that the natural sweetness of her temper was proof against idle imaginings or vain desires.

"You think then that it is better to do a small thing well than a big thing badly?" she inquired.

"But it isn't a small thing," he protested, "it's a great big thing—it's the very biggest thing of all."

A provoking smile quivered on her lips, and he saw the dimple come and go in her cheek.

"I am glad at least that you like my ham and eggs," she retorted mockingly.

"I do," he answered gravely, "I like your ham and eggs, but I admire your courage, also."

"Not your kind, my dear child—it's the rarest and the costliest of achievements."

"Oh, I don't know how serious you are," she answered lightly, "but it's a little like putting a man on a desert island and saying, 'make your bed or lie on the rocks.' He's pretty apt to make his bed, isn't he?"

"Not in the least. He usually puts up a flag of distress and then sits down in the sand and looks out for a ship."

Her voice lost its merriment. "When my ship shows on the horizon, it will be time enough to hoist my flag."

A reply was on his lips, but before he could utter it, she had turned away and was moving rapidly across the lawn to the house.

The town was dull enough at mid August, he remembered from the blighting experience of last summer; and now, after a fierce drought which had swept the country, he saw the big, fan-shaped leaves on Mrs. Twine's evening glory hanging like dusty rags along the tin roof of the porch. Banks was away, Baxter was away, and the only acquaintance he greeted was Bill Twine, sitting half drunk, in his shirt sleeves and collarless, on the front steps. There was positive relief when, at the end of an hour, he retraced his steps, with Beverly's cigars under his right arm.

After this the summer declined slowly into autumn, and Ordway began to count the long golden afternoons as they dropped one by one into his memory of Cedar Hill. An appeal to Mrs. Brooke, whom he had quite won over by his attentions to Beverly and the children, delayed his moving back into Tappahannock until the beginning of November, and he told himself with satisfaction that it would be possible to awake on frosty October mornings and look out upon the red and gold of the landscape.

"Smith," he asked in a hollow voice, "do you suppose it's really any worse to die by your own hand than by disease?"

"By Jove!" exclaimed Ordway, and the moment afterward, "Come, now, out with it, Banks. How has she been behaving this time?"

Banks lowered his voice, while he glanced suspiciously up at the branches of the cherry tree beneath which they sat.

"She hates the sight of me," he answered, with a groan.

"Nonsense," rejoined Ordway, cheerfully. "Love has before now worn the mask of scorn."

"But it hasn't worn the mask of boredom," retorted the despairing Banks.

For a minute his answer appeared final even to Ordway, who stared blankly over the ripened cornfield across the road, without, for the life of him, being able to frame a single encouraging sentence in reply.

"If it's the last word I speak," pursued Banks, biting desperately at the stem of his pipe, "she cannot abide the sight of me."

"But how does she show it?" demanded Ordway, relieved that he was not expected to combat the former irrefutable statement.

"But perhaps the custom of the place was different?"

"No, sir, it was not custom that kept her," replied Banks, in a bitterness that scorned deception, "for she went with others. It was the same thing about dancing, too, for if I asked her to dance, she would always declare that she didn't have the strength to use her fan, and the minute after I went away, I'd see her floating round the ball-room in somebody else's arms. Once I did get her to start, but she left off after the first round, because, she said, we could not keep in step. And yet I'd kept in step with her ever since we went on roller skates together."

He broke off for an instant, knocked the cold ashes out of his pipe, and plucking a long blade of grass, began chewing it nervously as he talked.

"And yet if you could only have seen her when she came down to the ball-room in her white organdie and blue ribbons," he exclaimed presently, in an agony of recollection.

"Well, I'm rather glad on the whole that I didn't," rejoined Ordway.

"Then, thank heaven, I escaped the test. It's a pretty enough pickle as it is now."

"I could have stood it all," said Banks, "if it hadn't been for the other man. She might have pulled every single strand of my hair out if she'd wanted to, and I'd have grit my teeth and pretended that I liked it. I didn't care how badly she treated me. What hurt me was how well she treated the other man."

"Did she meet him for the first time last summer?" asked Ordway.

"Oh no, she's known him ever since she went North in the spring—but it's worse now than it's ever been and, upon my word, she doesn't seem to have eyes or ears for anybody else."

"So you're positive she means to marry him?"

"She swears she doesn't—that it's only fun, you know. But in my heart I believe it is as good as settled between them."

"Well, if she's made up her mind to it, I don't, for the life of me, see how you're going to stop her," returned Ordway, smiling.

"But a year ago she'd made up her mind to marry me," groaned Banks.

"If she's as variable as that, my dear boy, perhaps the wind will blow her heart back to you again."

"I don't believe she's got one," rejoined Banks, with the merciless dissection of the pure passion; "I sometimes think that she hasn't any more heart than—than—I don't know what."

"Then," replied Banks, "you might have all the good sense that there is in the business, but you wouldn't be in love. Now I love her for what she is, and I don't want her changed even if it would make her kinder. When she used to be sweet I thought sweetness the most fascinating thing on earth, and now that she bangs me, I've come to think that banging is."

"I begin to understand," remarked Ordway, laughing, "why you are not what might be called a successful lover."

"It isn't because I don't know the way," returned Banks gloomily, "it's because I can't practice it even after I've planned it out. Don't I lie awake at night making up all sorts of speeches I'm going to say to her in the morning? Oh, I can be indifferent enough when I'm dressing before the mirror—I've even put on a purple cravat because she hated it, but I've always taken it off again before I went downstairs to breakfast. Then as soon as I lay my eyes upon her, I feel my heart begin to swell as if it would burst out of my waistcoat, and instead of the flippant speeches I've planned, I crawl and whimper just as I did the day before."

"I was just on my way to see you, Smith," said Baxter, as he let fall the reins and held out his great dirty hand, "but I'm too heavy to get out, and if I once sat down on the ground, I reckon it would take more than the whole of Tappahannock to pull me up again."

"Well, go ahead to Cedar Hill," suggested Ordway, "and we'll follow you at a brisk walk."

"No, I won't do that. I can say what I have got to say right here over the wheel, if you'll stand awhile in the dust. Major Leary was in to see me again this morning, and the notion he's got in his head now is that you're the man to run for Mayor of Tappahannock."

"I!" exclaimed Ordway, drawing back slightly as he spoke. "He forgets that I'm out of the question. I refuse, of course."

"Tell him to stop it," broke in Ordway, with a smothered anger in his usually quiet voice, "he's said nothing to me about it, and I decline it absolutely and without consideration!"

"You mean you won't run?" inquired Baxter, in astonishment.

"I mean I won't run—I can't run—put it any way you please."

"I thought you'd put your whole heart and soul into defeating Trend."

"I have, but not that way—where's Trenton whom we've been talking of all summer?"

"He's out of it—consumption, the doctor says—anyway he's going South."

"Then there's but one other man," said Ordway, decisively, "and that's Baxter."

"Me?" said Baxter softly, "you mean me, do you say?" His chuckle shook the buggy until it creaked upon its rusty wheels. "I can't," he added, with a burst of humour, "to tell the truth, I'm afraid."

"Afraid?" repeated Ordway, "you're afraid of Jasper Trend?"

"No," said Baxter, "it ain't Jasper—it's my wife."

He winked slowly as he caught Ordway's eyes, and then picking up the reins, made a movement as if to turn back to Tappahannock. "So you're dead sure then that you can't be talked over?" he asked.

"What do you think of their wanting to make me Mayor, Banks?" he inquired, with a laugh.

Banks started from his gloomy reverie. "Mayor!" he exclaimed almost with animation. "Why, they've shown jolly good sense, that's what I think!"

"Well, you needn't begin to get excited," responded Ordway, "for I didn't accept, and you won't have to quarrel either with me or with Jasper Trend."

"There's one thing you may be sure of," said Banks with energy, "and that is that I'd quarrel with Jasper every time."

"In spite of Milly?" laughed Ordway.

"In spite of Milly," repeated Banks in an awed but determined voice; "she may manage my hair and my cravats and my life to come, but I'll be darned if she's going to manage my vote!"

"All the same I'm glad you can honestly stick to Jasper," said Ordway, "he counts on you now, doesn't he?"

"Oh, I suppose so," returned Banks, without enthusiasm; "at any rate, I think he'd rather she'd marry me than Brown."

There was a moment's silence in which the name brought no association into Ordway's consciousness. Then in a single flashing instant the truth leaped upon him, and the cornfields across the road surged up to meet his eyes like the waves of a high sea.

"Than marry whom?" asked Ordway for the second time, dropping his voice almost to a whisper before the blank surprise in the other's face.

"Oh, his name's Brown—Horatio Brown—I thought I'd told you," answered Banks, and he added a moment later, "you've met him, I believe."

"Yes," said Ordway, with an effort, "he's the handsome chap who came here last June, isn't he?"

"Oh, he's handsome enough," admitted Banks, and he groaned out presently. "You liked him, didn't you?"

Ordway smiled slightly as he met the desperation in the other's look.

WHEN Baxter reached the warehouse the following morning, he found Major Leary pacing restlessly back and forth under the brick archway, with the regular military step at which, during the four years' war, he had marched into battle.

"Come in, sir, come in and sit down," said Baxter, leading the way into his office, and sweeping a pile of newspapers from an armchair with a hospitable gesture.

"Have you seen Smith? and is he all right?" were the Major's first words, as he placed his hat upon the table and took a quick, impatient turn about the room before throwing himself into the chair which the other had emptied. He was a short, erect, nervous man, with a fiery face, a pair of small gray eyes, like steel points, and a long white moustache, discoloured where it overhung his mouth by the faint yellow stain of tobacco.

"Oh, I've see him," answered Baxter in a soothing voice, "but he won't run—there's no use talking. He's dead set against it."

"I told him," returned Baxter, "but, somehow, it didn't look as if he were impressed. He was so positive that he would not even let me put in a word more on the subject. 'Are you dead sure, Smith?' I said, and he answered, 'I'm as dead sure as you are yourself, Baxter.'"

The Major crossed his knees angrily, stretched himself back in his chair, and began pulling nervously at the ends of his moustache.

"Well, I'll have to see him myself," he said authoritatively.

"You may see him as much as you please," replied Baxter, with a soft, offended dignity, "but I'll be mightily surprised, sir, if you get him to change his mind."

"Well, I reckon you're right, Bob," admitted the other, after a moment's reflection, "what he won't do for you, it isn't likely that he'll do for the rest of Tappahannock—but the fact remains that somebody has got to step up and defeat Jasper Trend. Now I ask you pointblank—where'll you get your man?"

"The Lord knows!" sighed Baxter, and he sucked hard at the stem of his pipe.

"Then I tell you if you can't make Smith come out, it's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself."

"It's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself," repeated the Major, rapping the arm of his chair to enforce his words.

"I can't," rejoined Baxter, hopelessly, "I can't sir," and he added an instant afterward, "you see women have got the idea somehow, that politics ain't exactly moral."

"Women!" said the Major, in the dry, contemptuous tone in which he might have uttered the word, "Pshaw!"

"I don't mean just 'women,'" replied Baxter, "I mean my wife."

"Oh!" said the Major, "you mean your wife would be opposed to the whole thing?"

"She wouldn't hear of it, sir, she simply wouldn't hear a word of it."

"I have it, Bob!" he said, slapping his knee until the dust flew out of his striped trousers, "I knew I'd get it in the end and here it is. The very thing, on my word, sir, I've discovered the very thing."

"Then I'm out of it," said Baxter, "an' I'm mighty glad of that."

"Oh, no, you aren't out of it—not just yet," said the Major, "we're to start you in, Bob, you're to start in as a candidate; and then a week before the nomination, something will crop up to make you fall out of the race, and you'll turn over all your votes to Smith. It would be too late, then, for him to back out—he'd simply have to keep in to save the day."

In spite of the roar of delight with which the Major ended his speech, Baxter sat unconvinced and unmoved, shaking his great head in a voiceless protest against the plot.

"It's the only way, I tell you," urged the Major, half pleased, half angry. "After Smith you're by long odds the most popular man in Tappahannock, and if it isn't one of you, it's Jasper Trend and his everlasting barrooms."

"But suppose Smith still declines," said Baxter remembering his wife.

"Oh, he won't—he isn't a blamed fool," returned the Major, "and if he does," he added impressively, "if he does I swear to you I'll go into the race myself."

"Then I'll do it," said the big man, "provided—" he hesitated, cleared his throat, and went on bravely, "provided there's no objection to my telling my wife the scheme"—bending his ear an instant, he drew back with an embarrassed and guilty face, "that's Smith's step in the warehouse. He'll be in here in less than two minutes."

The Major took up his hat, and flung back the door with a hurried movement.

"Well, good-bye, I'll see Smith later about the plans," he returned, "and meanwhile, we'll go hard to work to whip our friend Jasper."

Meeting Ordway an instant later upon the threshold, he passed him with a flourish of his hat, and marched rapidly under the brick archway out into the street.

As his bookkeeper entered Baxter appeared to be absorbed in a newspaper which he had picked up hastily from the pile upon the floor.

"Good-morning," said Ordway, a little surprised; "it looks as if I'd put the fiery Major to flight."

"Smith," said Baxter, dropping his paper, and lifting his big, simple face to the younger man, "Smith, you've got me into a hole, and I want you to pull me out again."

"A hole?" repeated Ordway; then as light broke on him, he laughed aloud and held out his hand. "Oh, I see, he's going to make you Mayor of Tappahannock!"

"He says it's got to be either you or me," he pursued presently, without noticing Ordway's ejaculation, "and on my word, Smith, seeing I've got a wife who's all against it, I think it would be but fair to me to let me off. You're my friend now, ain't you? Well, I'm asking you, Smith, as friend to friend."

A flush passed slowly over Ordway's face, and the unusual colour lent a peculiar animation to his glance. As Baxter met his eyes, he was conscious that they pierced through him, bright blue, sparkling, as incisive as a blade.

"To tell the truth, the thing is all but impossible," said Ordway, after a long pause. "You don't know, I suppose, that I've never even touched politics in Tappahannock."

"That ain't the point, Smith—it's going on three years since you came here—am I right?"

"Yes—three years next March, and it seems a century."

"Well, anyway, you've as good a right as I to be Mayor, and a long sight better one than Jasper Trend has. Come, now, Smith, if you don't get me out of this hole I'm in, heaven knows how I 'm going to face the Major."

"Give me time," said Ordway, quickly, "give me time—a week from to-morrow I am to make my first speech in the town hall. May I have till then?"

Without replying, Ordway walked slowly to the window and stood looking out upon the steep street that crawled up from the railroad track, where an engine whistled. He had held out till now, but with Baxter's last words he had heard in his thoughts a question larger and older than any of which his employer had dreamed. "Why not?" he asked himself again as he looked out upon the sunshine. "Why should not Daniel Smith, for a good purpose, resume the rights which Daniel Ordway has forfeited?" And it appeared to him while he stood there that his decision involved not himself alone, and that the outcome had ceased to be merely an election to the highest office in Tappahannock. Infinitely deep and wide, the problem belonged not only to his individual life, but to the lives of all those who had sinned and paid the penalty of sin and asked of humanity the right and the freedom to begin anew. The impulsive daring which he had almost lived down stirred for an instant in his pulses, and turning quickly he looked at Baxter with a boyish laugh.

"If I go in, Baxter, I go in to win!" he cried.

Looking round him in the perfect October weather, he felt that the emotion in his heart swelled suddenly to rapture. Straight ahead the sunshine sifted in drops through the red and yellow trees that bordered the roadside, while in the field on his right the brown cornricks crowded in even rows to where the arch of the hill was outlined against the deep blue sky. Here was not only peace, but happiness, and his old life, as he glanced back upon it, appeared hollow, futile, a corpse without breath or animation. That was the mere outward form and body of existence; but standing here in the deserted road, with his eyes on the brilliant October fields, he could tell himself that he had come at last into the ways and the understanding of faith. As he had once walked by sight alone and stumbled, so he moved now blindly like a child that is led step by step through the dark.

After the pink sunshade had vanished, Milly's laugh was still blown back to him on the rising wind. With the happy sound of it in his ears, he watched the dust settle again in the road, the tall golden poplars close like a screen after the passing wheels, and the distance resume its aspect of radiant loneliness. Nothing was changed at which he looked, yet he was conscious that the rapture had passed from his thoughts and the beauty from the October landscape. The release that he had won appeared to him as an illusion and a cheat, and lifting his face to the sunshine, he watched, like a prisoner, the flight of the swallows across the sky.

At dinner Beverly noticed his abstraction, and recommended a mint julep, which Emily went out immediately to prepare.

Even with the cheering assistance of the mint julep, however, it was impossible for Ordway to eat his dinner; and making an excuse presently, he rose from the table and went out into the avenue, where he walked slowly up and down in the shadow of the cedars. At the end of his last restless turn, he went indoors for his hat, and coming out again started rapidly toward Tappahannock. With his first decisive step he felt that the larger share of his burden had fallen from him.

The Tappahannock Hotel was a low, whitewashed frame building, withdrawn slightly from the street, where several dejected looking horses, with saddle-bags attached to them, were usually fastened to the iron rings in the hitching-rail upon the sidewalk. The place was the resort chiefly of commercial travellers or of neighbouring farmers, who drove in with wagon loads of garden produce or of sun-cured tobacco; and the number of loungers reclining on the newly painted green benches upon the porch made Ordway aware that the fall trade was already beginning to show signs of life.

"To tell the truth I can't quite size him up," he concluded confidentially. "He don't seem to hev' come either to sell or to buy an' thar's precious little else that ever brings a body to Tappahannock."

"Please add that I wish particularly to see him in private," said Ordway.

Without turning his head the proprietor beckoned, by a movement of his thumb delivered backward over his left shoulder, to a Negro boy, who sat surreptitiously eating peanuts out of a paper bag in his pocket.

"Tell the gentleman in number eighteen, Sol, that Mr. Smith, the people's candidate for Mayor, would like to have a little talk with him in private. I'm mighty glad to see you out in the race, suh," he added, turning again to Ordway, as the Negro disappeared up the staircase.

"Thank you," replied Ordway, with a start, which brought him back from his approaching interview with Gus Wherry to the recollection that he was fighting to become the Mayor of Tappahannock.

Ordway glanced up quickly.

"Did you tell me he got here yesterday?" he asked.

"Last night on the eight-forty-five, which came in two hours after time."

"An accident on the road, wasn't it?"

"Wreck of a freight—now, Mr. Brown, as I was saying——"

At this instant, to Ordway's relief, the messenger landed with a bound on the floor of the hall, and picking himself up, announced with a cheerful grin, that "the gentleman would be powerful pleased to see Mr. Smith upstairs in his room."

WHEN Ordway entered the room, he turned and closed the door carefully behind him, before he advanced to where Wherry stood awaiting him with outstretched hand.

"I can't begin to tell you how I appreciate the honour, Mr. Smith. I didn't expect it—upon my word, I didn't," exclaimed Wherry, with the effusive amiability which made Ordway bite his lip in anger.

"I don't know that I mean it for an honour, but I hope we can get straight to business," returned Ordway shortly.

"Ah, then there's business?" repeated the other, as if in surprise. "I had hoped that you were paying me merely a friendly call. To tell the truth I've the very worst head in the world for business, you know, and I always manage to dodge it whenever I get half a chance."

"Well, you can't dodge it this time, so we may as well have it out."

"The treaty? I made no treaty," returned Ordway gravely.

Laughing pleasantly, Wherry invited his visitor to be seated. Then turning away for an instant, he flung himself into a chair beside a little marble topped table upon which stood a half-emptied bottle of rye whiskey and a pitcher of iced water on a metal tray.

"Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten our conversation in that beastly road?" he demanded, "and the prodigal? Surely you haven't forgotten the prodigal? Why, I never heard anything in my life that impressed me more."

"You told me then distinctly that you had no intention of remaining in Tappahannock."

"I'll tell you so again if you'd like to hear it. Will you have a drink?"

Ordway shook his head with an angry gesture.

"What I want to know," he insisted bluntly, "is why you are here at all?"

Wherry poured out a drink of whiskey, and adding a dash of iced water, tossed it down at a swallow.

"I thought I told you then," he answered, "that I have a little private business in the town. As it's purely personal I hope you'll have no objection to my transacting it."

"You said that afternoon that your presence was, in some way, connected with Jasper Trend's cotton mills."

"I was fool enough to believe that you wanted an honest job," said Ordway; "it did not enter my head that your designs were upon Trend's daughter."

"Didn't it?" inquired Wherry with a smile in which his white teeth flashed brilliantly. "Well, it might have, for I was honest enough about it. Didn't I tell you that a woman was at the bottom of every mess I was ever in?"

"Where is your wife?" asked Ordway.

"Dead," replied Wherry, in a solemn voice.

"If I am not mistaken, you had not less than three at the time of your trial."

"All dead," rejoined Wherry in the same solemn tone, while he drew out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes with a flourish, "there ain't many men that have supported such a treble affliction on the same day."

"I may as well inform you that I don't believe a word you utter."

"It's true all the same. I'll take my oath on the biggest Bible you can find in town."

"Your oath? Pshaw!"

"Well, I always said my word was better," observed Wherry, without the slightest appearance of offence. He wore a pink shirt which set off his fine colouring to advantage, and as he turned aside to pour out a second drink of whiskey, Ordway noticed that his fair hair was brushed carefully across the bald spot in the centre of his head.

"So you've had your eye on her yourself?" exclaimed Wherry. "I declare I'm deuced sorry. Why, in thunder, didn't you tell me so last June?"

A mental nausea that was almost like a physical spasm seized Ordway suddenly, and crossing to the window, he stood looking through the half-closed shutters down into the street below, where a covered wagon rolled slowly downhill, the driver following on foot as he offered a bunch of fowls to the shop-keepers upon the sidewalk. Then the hot, stale, tobacco impregnated air came up to his nostrils, and he turned away with a sensation of disgust.

"If you'd only warned me in time—hang it—I'd have cut out and given you the field," declared Wherry in such apparent sincerity that Ordway resisted an impulse to kick him out into the hall. "That's my way. I always like to play fair and square when I get the chance."

"Well, you've got the chance now, and what's more you've got to make it good."

"And leave you the open?"

"And leave me Tappahannock—yes."

"I don't want Tappahannock. To tell the truth I'm not particularly struck by its attractions."

"In that case you've no objection to leaving immediately, I suppose?"

Ordway placed his hand upon the table with a force which started the glasses rattling on the metal tray.

"I repeat for the last time that you are to leave Milly Trend alone," he said. "Do you understand me?"

"I'm not sure I do," rejoined Wherry, still pleasantly enough. "Would you mind saying that over again in a lower tone?"

"What I want to make plain is that you are not to marry Milly Trend—or any other women in this town," returned Ordway angrily.

"So there are others!" commented Wherry jauntily with his eye on the ceiling.

The pose of his handsome head was so remarkably effective, that Ordway felt his rage increased by the mere external advantages of the man.

"What I intend you to do is to leave Tappahannock for good and all this very evening," he resumed, drawing a sharp breath.

The words appeared to afford Wherry unspeakable amusement.

"I can't," he responded, after a minute in which he had enjoyed his humour to the full, "the train leaves at seven-ten and I've an engagement at eight o'clock."

"You'll break it, that's all."

"But it wouldn't be polite—it's with a lady."

"Oh, come back, I say. Hang it all, don't get into a fury," protested Wherry, clutching the other by the arm, and closing the door which he had half opened. "Here, hold on a minute and let's talk things over quietly. I told you, didn't I? that I wanted to be obliging."

"Then you will go?" asked Ordway, in a milder tone.

"Well, I'll think about it. I've a quick enough wit for little things, but on serious matters my brain works slowly. In the first place now didn't we promise each other that we'd play fair?"

"But you haven't—that's why I came here."

"You're dead wrong. I'm doing it this very minute. I'll keep my mouth shut about you till Judgment Day if you'll just hold off and not pull me back when I'm trying to live honest."

"Honest!" exclaimed Ordway, and turned on his heel.

"The first question was mine. Will you leave to-day or will you not?"

"And if I will not what are you going to do about it?"

"As soon as I hear your decision, I shall let you know."

"Well, say I won't. What is your next move then?"

"In that case I shall go straight to the girl's father after I leave this room."

"By Jove you will! And what will you do when you get there?"

"I shall tell him that to the best of my belief you have a wife—possibly several—now living."

"Then you'll lie," said Wherry, dropping for the first time his persuasive tone.

"That remains to be proved," rejoined Ordway shortly. "At any rate if he needs to be convinced I shall tell him as much as I know about you."

"And how much," demanded Wherry insolently, "does that happen to be?"

"Enough to stop the marriage, that is all I want."

"And suppose he asks you—as he probably will—how in the devil it came to be any business of yours?"

For a moment Ordway looked over the whiskey bottle and through the open window into the street below.

"I don't think that will happen," he answered slowly, "but if it does I shall tell him the whole truth as I know it—about myself as well as about you."

The flush from the whiskey had overspread his face, and in the midst of the general redness his eyes and teeth flashed brilliantly in an angry laugh. An imaginative sympathy for the man moved Ordway almost in spite of himself, and he wondered, in the long pause, what Wherry's early life had been and if his chance in the world were really a fair one?

"I don't want to be hard on you," said Ordway at last; "it's out of the question that you should have Milly Trend, but if you'll give up that idea and go away I'll do what I can to help you—I'll send you half my salary for the next six months until you are able to find a job."

Wherry looked at him with a deliberate wink.

"So you'd like to save your own skin, after all, wouldn't you?" he inquired.

Taking up his hat from the table, Ordway turned toward the door and laid his hand upon the knob before he spoke.

"Is it decided then that I shall go to Jasper Trend?" he asked.

"Well, I wouldn't if I were you," said Wherry, "but that's your affair. On the whole I think that you'll pay more than your share of the price."

"One or more?" enquired Wherry, with a sneer.

"One, I think, will prove quite sufficient for my purpose."

"Well, go ahead," rejoined Wherry, angrily, "but before you strike you'd better be pretty sure you see a snake in the grass. I'd advise you for your own sake to ask Milly Trend first if she expects to marry me."

"What?" cried Ordway, wheeling round, "do you mean she has refused you?"

"Oh, ask her—ask her," retorted Wherry airily, as he turned back to the whiskey bottle.

With an effort he put the question aside, and in the emotional reaction which followed, he felt that his spirit soared into the blue October sky. Emily, looking at him at dinner, thought that she had never seen him so animated, so light-hearted, so boyishly unreserved. When his game of dominoes with Beverly was over, he followed the children out into the orchard, where they were gathering apples into great straw hampers; and as he stood under the fragrant clustering boughs, with the childish laughter in his ears, he felt that his perplexities, his troubles, even his memories had dissolved and vanished into air. An irresponsible happiness swelled in his heart while he watched the golden orchard grass blown like a fringe upon the circular outline of the hill.

A big white moth flew in from the dusk, and fluttered blindly in the circle of light which the lamp threw on the ceiling. He heard the soft whirring of its wings against the plaster, and gradually the sound entered into his thoughts and became a part of his reflections. "Will the moth fall into the flame or will it escape?" he asked, feeling himself powerless to avert the creature's fate. In some strange way his own destiny seemed to be whirling dizzily in that narrow circle of light; and in the pitiless illumination that surrounded it, he saw not only all that was passed, but all that was present as well as all that was yet to come. At the same instant he saw his mother's face as she lay dead with her look of joyous surprise frozen upon her lips; and the face of Lydia when she had lowered a black veil at their last parting; and the face of Alice, his daughter; and of the girl downstairs as he had seen her through the gray twilight; and the face of the epileptic little preacher, who had preached in the prison chapel. And as these faces looked back at him he knew that the illumination in which his soul had struggled so blindly was the light of love. "Yes, it is love," he thought, "and that is the meaning of the circle of light into which I have come out of the darkness."

AT eight o'clock the next morning Ordway entered Jasper Trend's gate, and passed up the gravelled walk between borders of white and yellow chrysanthemums. In a window on his right a canary was singing loudly in a gilt cage; and a moment later, the maid invited him into a room which seemed, as he entered it, to be filled with a jubilant burst of music. As he waited here for the man he had come to see, he felt that, in spite of his terrible purpose, he had found no place in Tappahannock so cheerful as this long room flooded with sunshine, in the midst of which the canary swung back and forth in his wire cage. The furniture was crude enough, the colours of the rugs were unharmonious, the imitation lace of the curtains was offensive to his eyes. Yet the room was made almost attractive by the large windows which gave on the piazza, the borders of chrysanthemums and the smoothly shaven plot of lawn.

His back was turned toward the door when it opened and shut quickly, and Jasper Trend came in, hastily swallowing his last mouthful of breakfast.

"I must ask you to overlook the intimate nature of my question," began Ordway, in a voice which was so repressed that it sounded dull and lifeless, "but I have heard that your daughter intends to marry Horatio Brown. Is this true?"

At the words Jasper, who had prepared himself for a political onslaught, fell back a step or two and stood in the merciless sunlight, blinking at his questioner with his little, watery, pale gray eyes. Each dull red vein in his long nose became suddenly prominent.

"Horatio Brown?" he repeated, "why, I thought you'd come about nothing less than the nomination. What in the devil do you want anyway with Horatio Brown. He can't vote in Tappahannock, can he?"

"I'll answer that in time," replied Ordway, "my motive is more serious than you can possibly realise—it is a question which involves your daughter's happiness—perhaps her life."

"Good Lord, is that so?" exclaimed Jasper, "I don't reckon you're sweet on her yourself, are you?"

"Well, if you ain't," resumed Jasper presently, with a fresh outburst of hilarity, "you're about the only male critter in Tappahannock that don't turn his eyes sooner or later toward my door."

"I've barely a speaking acquaintance with your daughter," returned Ordway shortly, "but her reputation as a beauty is certainly very well deserved."

Mollified by the compliment, Jasper unbent so far as to make an abrupt, jerky motion in the direction of a chair; but shaking his head, Ordway put again bluntly the question he had asked upon the other's entrance.

"Am I to understand seriously that she means to marry Brown?" he demanded.

Jasper twisted his scraggy neck nervously in his loose collar. "Lord, how you do hear things!" he ejaculated. "Now, as far as I can see, thar ain't a single word of truth in all that talk. Just between you and me I don't believe my girl has had her mind on that fellow Brown more'n a minute. I'm dead against it and that'll go a long way with her, you may be sure. Why, only this morning she told me that if she had to choose between the two of 'em, she'd stick to young Banks every time."

"Don't let her do it—for God's sake don't let her do it," he said, and an instant afterward he was out on the gravelled walk between the borders of white and yellow chrysanthemums.

At the gate Milly was standing with a letter in her hand, and when he spoke to her, he watched her face change slowly to the colour of a flower. Never had she appeared softer, prettier, more enticing in his eyes, and he felt for the first time an understanding of the hopeless subjection of Banks.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Smith!" she exclaimed, smiling and blushing as she had smiled and blushed at Wherry the day before, "I was asking Harry Banks yesterday what had become of you?"

"What had become of me?" he repeated in surprise, while he drew back quickly with his hand on the latch of the gate.

"I hadn't seen you for so long," she answered, with a laugh which bore less relation to humour than it did to pleasure. "You used to pass by five times a day, and I got so accustomed to you that I really missed you when you went away."

"Well, I've been in the country all summer, though that hardly counts, for you were out of town yourself."

"Do you think so?" he asked gaily, and the next instant he wondered why the question had passed his lips before it had entered into his thoughts, "the truth is that I know a good deal more about you than you suspect," he added; "I have the honour, you see, to be the confidant of Harry Banks."

"Oh, Harry Banks!" she exclaimed indifferently, as she turned from the gate, while Ordway opened it and passed out into the street.

For the next day or two it seemed to him that the lightness of his heart was reflected in the faces of those about him—that Baxter, Mrs. Brooke, Emily, Beverly each appeared to move in response to some hidden spring within himself. He felt no longer either Beverly's tediousness or Mrs. Brooke's melancholy, for these early October mornings contained a rapture which transfigured the people with whom he lived.

With this unlooked for renewal of hope he threw himself eagerly into the political fight for the control of Tappahannock. It was now Tuesday and on Thursday evening he was to deliver his first speech in the town hall. Already the preparations were made, already the flags were flying from the galleries, and already Baxter had been trimmed for his public appearance upon the platform.

"Oh, you're all right," returned Ordway, cheerfully—so cheerfully that Baxter was struck afresh by the peculiar charm which belonged less to manner than to temperament, "you're all right, old man, but it isn't your clothes that make you so."

"All the same I'll feel better when I get into my old suit again," said Baxter, "I don't know how it is, but, somehow, I seem to have left two-thirds of myself behind in those old clothes. I just wore these down to show 'em off, but I shan't put 'em on again till Thursday."

It was the closing hour at the warehouse, and after a few eager words on the subject of the approaching meeting, Ordway left the office and went out into the deserted building where the old Negro was sweeping the floor with his twig broom. A moment later he was about to pass under the archway, when a man, hurrying in from the street, ran straight into his arms and then staggered back with a laugh of mirthless apology.

"My God, Smith," said the tragic voice of Banks, "I'm half crazy and I must have a word with you alone."

"Speak now," said Ordway, while his heart sank as he looked into the other's face, "It's quite safe—there's no one about but old Abraham."

"I can't speak," returned Banks, preserving with an effort a decent composure of his features, "but it's all up with me—it's worse than I imagined, and there's nothing ahead of me but death."

"I suppose it's small consolation to be told that you look unusually healthy at the minute," replied Ordway, "but don't keep me guessing, Banks. What's happened now?"

"All her indifference—all her pretence of flirting was pure deception," groaned the miserable Banks, "she wanted to throw dust, not only in my eyes, but in Jasper's, also."

"Why, he told me with his own lips that his daughter had given him to understand that she preferred you to Brown."

"And so she did give him to understand—so she did," affirmed Banks, in despair, "but it was all a blind so that he wouldn't make trouble between her and Brown. I tell you, Smith," he concluded, bringing his clenched fist down on the wheel of the wagon, from which a shower of dried mud was scattered into Ordway's face, "I tell you, I don't believe women think any more of telling a lie than we do of taking a cocktail!"

"But how do you know all this, my dear fellow? and when did you discover it?"

"What?" cried Ordway, hardly raising his voice above a whisper. A burning resentment, almost a repulsion swept over him, and he felt that he could have spurned the girl's silly beauty if she had lain at his feet. What was a woman like Milly Trend worth, that she should cost him, a stranger to her, so great a price?

"Tell me all," he said sharply, turning again to his companion. "How did you hear it? Why do you believe it? Have you spoken to Jasper?"

Banks blinked hard for a minute, while a single large round teardrop trickled slowly down his freckled nose.

"I should never have suspected it," he answered, "but for Milly's old black Mammy Delphy, who has lived with her ever since she was born. Aunt Delphy came upon her this morning when she was packing her bag, and by hook or crook, heaven knows how, she managed to get at the truth. Then she came directly to me, for it seems that she hates Brown worse than the devil."

"When did she come to you?"

"A half hour ago. I left her and rushed straight to you."

Ordway drew out his watch, and stood looking at the face of it with a wondering frown.

"You?" cried Banks, "you mean that you will stop her?"

"I mean that I must stop her. There is no question."

As he spoke he had started quickly down the warehouse, scattering as he walked, a pile of trash which the old Negro had swept together in the centre of the floor. So rapid were the long strides with which he moved that Banks, in spite of his frantic haste, could barely keep in step with him as they passed into the street. Ordway's face had changed as if from a spasm of physical pain, and as Banks looked at it in the afternoon light he was startled to find that it was the face of an old man. The brows were bent, the mouth drawn, the skin sallow, and the gray hair upon the temples had become suddenly more prominent than the dark locks above.

"Then you knew Brown before?" asked Banks, with an accession of courage, as they slackened their pace with the beginning of the hill.

At Trend's gate Ordway stopped and looked at his companion with a smile which appeared to throw an artificial light upon his drawn features.

"Will you let me speak to her alone first," he asked, "for a few minutes?"

"I'll take a turn up the street then," returned Banks eagerly, still panting from his hurried walk up the long hill. "She's in the room on the right now," he added, "I can see her feeding the canary."

Ordway nodded indifferently. "I shan't be long," he said, and going inside the gate, passed deliberately up the walk and into the room where Milly stood at the window with her mouth close against the wires of the gilt cage.

At the withdrawal of the lips that had offered him his bit of cake, the canary fluttered from his perch and uttered a sweet, short, questioning note; and in Milly's face, as she came forward, there was something of this birdlike, palpitating entreaty.

"Oh, it is you, Mr. Smith," she said, "I did not hear your ring."

"I didn't ring," responded Ordway, as he took her trembling outstretched hand in which she still held the bit of sponge cake, "I saw you at the window so I came straight in without sending word. What I have to say to you is so important that I dared not lose a minute."

"And it is about me?" asked Milly, with a quiver of her eyelids.

"No, it is about someone else, though it concerns you in a measure. The thing I have to tell you relates directly to a man whom you know as Horatio Brown——"

He spoke so quickly that the girl divined his meaning from his face rather than from his words.

"Then you know him?" she questioned, in a frightened whisper.