FOUND WANTING

The spring and summer had passed, autumn had attained the fullness of its golden beauty, and the inevitable had happened. David and Pepeeta had passed swiftly though not unresistingly through all the intervening stages between a chance acquaintance and an impassioned love.

Any other husband than the quack would have foreseen this catastrophe; but there is one thing blinder than love, and that is egotism such as his. His colossal vanity had not even suspected that a woman who possessed him for her husband could for a single instant bestow a thought of interest on any other man.

Astute student of men, penetrating judge of motive and conduct that he was, he daily beheld the evolution of a tragedy in which he was the victim, with all the indifference of a lamb observing the preparations for its slaughter. Because of this ignorance and indifference, the fellowship of these two young people had been as intimate as that of brother and sister in a home, and this new life had wrought an extraordinary transformation in the habits and character of both.

David had abandoned the Quaker idiom for the speech of ordinary men, and discarded his former habiliments for the most conventional and stylish clothes. Contact with the world had sharpened his native wit, and given him a freedom among men and women, that was fast descending into abandon. Success had stimulated his self-confidence and made him prize those gifts by which he had once aroused the devotion of adoring worshipers in the Quaker meeting house; he soon found that they could be used to victimize the crowds which gathered around the flare of the torch in the public square.

That which his friends had once dignified by the name of spiritual power had deteriorated into something but little above animal magnetism. He had learned to cherish a profound contempt for men and morals, and the shrewd maxims which the quack had instilled into his mind became the governing principles of his conduct. Those qualities which he had inherited from his dissolute father, and which had been so long submerged, were upheaved, while all that he had received from his mother by birth and education sank out of sight and memory. Three elemental passions assumed complete possession of his soul—the love of admiration, of gambling and of the gypsy.

A transformation of an exactly opposite character had been taking place in Pepeeta. Under the sunshine of David's love, and the dew of those spiritual conceptions which had fallen upon her thirsty spirit, the seeds of a beautiful nature, implanted at her birth, germinated and developed with astonishing rapidity. Walking steadily in such light as fell upon her pathway and ever looking for more, her spiritual vision became clearer and clearer every day; and while this affection for God purified her soul, her love for David expanded and transformed her heart. Her unbounded admiration for him blinded her to that process of deterioration in his character which even the quack perceived. To her partial eye a halo still surrounded the head of the young apostate. But while these two new affections wrought this sudden transformation in the gypsy and filled her with a new and exquisite happiness, the circumstances of her life were such that this illumination could not but be attended with pain, for it brought ever new revelations of those ethical inconsistencies in which she discovered herself to be deeply if not hopelessly involved.

There was, in the first place, the inevitable conflict between her new sense of duty, and the life of deception which she was leading. The practice of her art of fortune-telling was daily becoming a source of unendurable pain as she saw more and more clearly the duty of leaving the future to God and living her daily life in humble, child-like faith. And in the second place, she was slowly awaking to the terrifying consciousness that her affection for David was producing a violent and ungovernable disgust for her husband.

By the flood of sorrows which poured from these two discoveries, she seemed to be completely overwhelmed and if, like a diver, she rose to the sunlight now and then, it was only to seize a few breaths of air by which she might be able to endure her existence in the depths to which she was compelled to return.

No wonder that life became a mystery to this poor child. It seemed as if its difficulties increased in a direct ratio with her wish to discharge its duties; as if the darkness gained upon the light, and the burden grew heavy, faster than her shoulders grew strong.

The discovery of the nature of that affection which she felt for David had been slow and unwelcome, coming to her even before David's protestations of his love; yet one day the passionate feelings of their hearts found expression in wild and startling confessions. They were terrified at what they told each other; but it became necessary therefore to seek the comfort of still other confessions and confidences.

Their interviews had steadily become more ardent and more dangerous; and the doctor's negligence giving them the utmost freedom, they often spent hours together in wandering about the cities they visited, or the fields and woods lying near.

On one of these tramps, their relationship reached a critical stage. It was the early morning of a beautiful autumn day that they strolled up Broadway in the city of Cincinnati, turned into the Reading road, and sauntered slowly out into the country.

"In which direction shall we go?" asked David.

"Let us wander without thought or purpose, like those beautiful clouds," Pepeeta answered, pointing upward.

David watched them silently for a moment and then said, "Pepeeta, men and women are like those clouds. They either drift apart forever, or meet and mingle into one. It must be so with us."

She walked silently by his side, sobered by the seriousness of his voice and words.

"Perhaps," he continued, "it makes but little difference what becomes of us, for our lives are like the clouds, a morning mist, a momentary exhalation. And yet, how filled with joy or woe is this moment of parting or commingling! Pepeeta, I have decided that this day must terminate my suspense. I cannot endure it any longer. I must know before night whether our lives are to be united or divided. You have told me that you love me, and yet you will not give yourself to me. What am I to think of this?"

"My friend," she cried with an infinite pain in her voice, "how can you force me to such a decision when you know all the difficulties of my life? How can you thus forget that I have a husband?"

"I do not forget it," he answered bitterly, "I cannot forget it. It is an eternal demonstration of the madness of faith in any kind of Providence. It makes me hate an order which unites a lion to a lamb, and marries a dove to a hawk! You say that you loathe this man! Then leave him and come with me! The world lies before us. We are as free as those clouds!"

"We are not free, and neither are they," she answered. "Something binds them to their pathway, as it binds me to mine. I cannot leave it. I must tread it even though I have to tread it alone."

"You can leave it if you will; but if you will not, I must know the reason why."

"Oh! why will you not see? I have tried so hard to show you! I have told you that there is a voice which speaks within my soul, that to it I must listen and that the inward light of which you told me shines upon the path and I must follow it."

"I could curse that inward light! Must I be always confronted by the ravings of my youth? All my life long must the words of my credulous childhood hang about my neck like a millstone? There is no inward light. You are living a delusion. You are restrained by the conventionalities of life and are the slave of the customs of society. Because the miserable herd of mankind is willing to submit to that galling yoke of marriage, does it follow that you must? By what right can society demand that men and women who abhor each other should be doomed to pass their lives in hopeless agony? Against such laws I protest! I defy those customs. The path of life is short. We go this way but once! Who is to refuse us all the joy that we can find? There will be sorrow enough, any way!"

"Oh! my friend, do not talk so! Do not break my heart! Have pity on me. I know that it is hard for you; but it is I who have to suffer most. It is I who must continually exert this terrible resistance which alone keeps us from being swept away. Have mercy, David! Spare me a little longer. Spare me this one day at least. If any troubled heart had ever need of the rest and peace of such a day as this, it is mine! Let us give ourselves up to these soothing influences. Let us wander. Let us dream and let us love."

"Love! This accursed Platonic affection is not love," he answered savagely.

"David," she said with an enforced calmness, "you must not speak so. It will do no good. There is something in me stronger than this passion. From the bottom of my soul there has come a sense of duty to a power higher than myself and I will be true to it. I believe that it is God who speaks. You may appeal to my mind, and I cannot answer you, but my heart has reasons of its own higher than the reason itself. It was you who told me this! You told me when you were so beautiful, so good, so true that I know you were right, and I shall never doubt it. I am not what I was. I am, oh! so different. I cannot understand; but I am different."

There was in this delicate and ethereal girl who spoke so fearlessly something which held the man, strong in his physical might, in an inexplicable and irresistible awe. Before a mountain, beside the sea, beneath the stars and in the presence of a virtuous woman, emotions of wonder and reverence possess the souls of men.

Subdued by this influence, David said, with more gentleness: "But what are we to do? We cannot live in this way. We have been forced into a situation from which we must escape, even if we have to act against our consciences."

"I do not think that this is so! I do not believe that any one can be placed against his will in a situation that is opposed to his conscience! There must be some other way to do. A door will open. Let us wait and hope a little longer. Let us have another happy day at least," Pepeeta said.

Heaving a sigh and shrugging his shoulders as if to throw off a burden, David answered, "Well, let it be as you wish. I have had to suffer so much that perhaps I can endure it a little longer. I do not want to make you unhappy. I will try."

"Oh! thank you, thank you a thousand times; that is like yourself!" Pepeeta said, her face aglow with gratitude.

It was a light from the soul itself that shone through the thin transparency of that face, pale with thought and suffering, and gave it its new radiance.

The world around them was steeped in autumn beauty. A gigantic smile was on the face of Nature. Fleecy, fleeting clouds were chasing each other across the blue dome of the heavens. The hazy atmosphere of the Indian summer softened the landscape and lent it a mystical and unearthly charm. The forests were resplendent with those brilliant colors which appear like a last flush of life upon the dying face of summer, as she sinks into her wintry grave. The autumn birds were singing; the autumn flowers were blooming; yellow golden rod and scarlet sumach glowed in the corners of the fences; locusts chirped in treetops; grasshoppers stridulated in the meadows, one or two of them making more noise than a whole drove of cattle lying peacefully chewing their cud beneath an umbrageous elm and lifting up their great, tranquil, blinking eyes to the morning sun. Here and there boys and girls could be seen in the vineyards and orchards gathering grapes and apples. Farmers were cutting their grain and stacking it in great brown shocks, digging potatoes, or plowing the fertile soil. Now and then a traveler met or passed them, clucking to his horses and hurrying to the city with his produce. Amid these gracious influences, life gradually lost its stern reality and took on the characteristics of a pleasant dream. The fever and unrest abated, burdens weighed less heavily, sorrow became less poignant; the finer joys of both the waking and sleeping hours of existence were mysteriously blended.

Sharp and irritating as the encounter had been between the two lovers, the momentary antipathy passed away as they moved along. They drew nearer together; they lifted their eyes furtively; their glances met; they smiled; they spoke; their sympathies flowed back into the old channel; their hopes and affections mingled. They gave themselves up to joy with the abandon of youth, falling into that mood in which everything pleases and delights. Nature did not need to tell them her secrets aloud, for they comprehended her whispers and grasped her meaning from sly hints. They melted into her moods.

What joys were theirs! To be young; to be drawn together by an affinity which produced a mysterious and ineffable happiness; to wander aimlessly over the earth; to yield to every passing fancy; to dream; to hope; to love. It was the culminating hour of their lives.

Passing through the little village since called Avondale, they turned down what is now the Clinton Springs road, climbed a hill, descended its other slope, and came upon an old spring house where, as they paused to drink, David scratched their names with his penknife on one of the stones of the walls, where they may be read to-day.

Leaving the turnpike, they entered a grove through which flowed a noisy stream; cast themselves upon a bank, bathed their faces, ate their lunch and rested. There for a few moments, in the tranquil and uplifting influence of the silence and the solitude, all that was best in their natures came to the surface. Pepeeta nestled down among the roots of a great beech tree, her hat flung upon the ground by her side, her arms folded across her bosom, her face upturned like a flower drinking in the sunshine or the rain. At her feet her lover reclined, his head upon his arms and his gaze fixed upon the canopy of leaves which spread above them and through which as the branches swayed in the breeze he caught glimpses of the sky.

Pepeeta broke the silence. "I could stay here forever," she said. "I nestle here in the roots of this great tree like a little child in the arms of its mother. I feel that everything around me is my friend. I feel, not as if I were different from other things, but as if I were a part of them. Do you comprehend? Do you feel that way?"

"More than at any time since leaving home," he said. "That was the way I always felt in the old days—how far away they seem! I could then sit for hours beside a brook like this, and thoughts of God would flow over my soul like water over the stones; and now I do not think of Him at all! It was by a brook like this that we first met. Do you remember, Pepeeta?"

"I shall never forget."

"Are you sure?"

"As certain as that I live."

"Sure—certain! Of what are we sure but the present moment? Into it we ought to crowd all the joys of existence."

Her feminine instinct discovered the return of his thoughts into the old dangerous channel, and her quick wit diverted them.

"Tell me more about your home, and how you felt when you used to sit like this and think."

He determined to yield himself for a little while longer to her will, and said: "In those days Nature possessed for me an irresistible fascination; but the spell is broken now. I then thought that I was face to face with the eternal spirit of the universe. How far I have drifted away from the world in which I then existed! I could never return to it. I am like a bird which has broken its shell and which can never be put back again. I have found another face into which I now look with still deeper wonder than into that of Nature, and which exerts a still deeper fascination. It is the face of a woman, in whom all the beauties of nature seem to be mirrored. She is everything to me; she is the entire universe embodied in a gentle heart."

He gazed at her with a look that made her pulses beat; but she was determined not to permit him to drift back into that dangerous mood from which she had drawn him with such difficulty.

"One time you told me," she said, "that the birds and squirrels were such good friends to you, that if you called them they would come to you like your dog. I should love to see that. Look! There is a squirrel sitting on the limb of this very tree! How saucy he looks! How shy! Bring him to me! I command you! You have said that I am your mistress; go, slave!"

Rising to her feet she pointed to the squirrel. Her lithe form was outlined against the green background of the forest in a pose of exquisite grace and beauty, her eyes glowed with animation, and her lips smiled with the consciousness of power. It was impossible to resist her.

He rose, looked in the direction toward which she pointed, and saw the squirrel cheeping among the branches. Imitating its cries, he began to move slowly toward it. The little creature pricked up its ears, cocked its head on one side, flirted its bushy tail and watched the approaching figure suspiciously. As it drew nearer and nearer, he began to creep down the branches. Stopping now and then to reconnoiter, he started forward again; paused; retreated; returned, and still continued to advance, until he was within a foot or two of David's hand, which he examined first with one eye and then the other and made a motion as if to spring upon it. Suddenly the spell was broken. With a wild flirt of his tail and a loud outcry, he sprang up the tree and disappeared in the foliage.

David watched him until he had vanished, and then turned toward Pepeeta with a look of disappointment and chagrin.

"It is too bad," she cried, hastening toward him sympathetically, "but see, there is a redbird on the top of that old birch tree. Try again! You will have better success this time, I am sure you will."

He determined to make another experiment. The brilliant songster was pouring out his heart in that fine cry of strength and hope which he sends resounding over hill and vale. Suddenly hearing his own voice repeated to him in an echo sweet and pure as his own song, he fluttered his wings, peered this way and that, and sang again. Once more the answering call resounded, true as an image in a mirror.

David now began to move with greater caution than before toward the little creature, who looked at him with curious glances. Back and forth resounded the sweet antiphonal, and the bird hopped down a branch or two. Neither of the actors in this woodland drama removed his eyes from the other, and the spectator watched them both with breathless interest.

Presently David lifted his hands—the palms closed together in the form of a cup or nest. The songster bent farther forward on the twig, and suddenly with a downward plunge shot straight toward them; but just as his tiny feet touched the fingers, turned as the squirrel had done, and uttering a loud cry of terror flew away. David dropped his hands and his eyes.

"I have lost my power," he said sadly.

"You are out of practice, you must exercise it oftener. It will all come back," Pepeeta responded cheerfully.

They walked slowly and silently back to the place where they had been sitting, and David began tossing pebbles into the brook.

"Three times to-day," he said, pausing and turning toward Pepeeta, "I have opened my hands and my heart, and each time the object whose love I sought has fluttered away from me in terror or repugnance."

"Oh! no, not in terror and repugnance," she said eagerly.

"Am I then incapable of exciting love?" he asked.

"You will break my heart if you speak so. I love you more than I love my own life."

"I do not believe it. Can I believe that the squirrel and the redbird love me, when they flee from me? If they had loved me, they would have come to me and nestled to my heart. And so would you. I have come back to the old subject. I cannot refrain any longer. Will you go with me, or will you not?"

"Oh! David," she cried, wringing her hands, "why, why will you break my heart? Why can you not permit me to finish this day in peace? Wait until some other time. Why can you not enjoy this present moment? I could wish it to last forever, if you were only kind. If the flight of time could be stopped, if we could be forever what we are just now, I could not ask for any other thing. See how beautiful the world is. See how happy we are. See how everything hangs just like a balance! Do not speak, do not move; one unkind word would jar and spoil it all."

"It is impossible," he cried roughly, "you must leave your husband and come with me. You cannot put me off any longer. I am desperate."

He was looking at her with eyes no longer full of pleading, but of determination and command.

"What will you do?" he asked.

"Oh!" she answered, trembling, "why will you compel me to act? Let something happen! Wait! It is not necessary always to act! Sometimes it is better to sit still! We are in God's hands. Let us trust Him. Has He not awakened this love in our hearts? He has not made us love and long for each other only to thwart us!"

"Thwart us! Who coaxes the flowers from the ground, only that the frost may nip them? Who opens the bud only to permit it to be devoured by the worm? Who places the babe in its mother's arms only to let it be snatched away by the hand of death? You cannot appeal to me in that way," he retorted, bitterly.

"Do not speak so," she exclaimed with genuine terror. "It is wicked to say such things in this quiet and holy place. Oh! why have you lost that faith you once possessed? What has blinded your eyes to the light that you taught me to see? I see it now! All will be well! Something says to me in my heart, 'All will be well,' if we only follow the light!"

Nothing could have given stronger proof that inspiration and intuition are as natural and legitimate functions of the spiritual nature as sensation and sense perception are of the physical, than her words and looks. They would have convinced and mastered him, except for the self-denial which they demanded of his love! But he was now far past all reason.

"Pepeeta," he cried, approaching her, "you must be mine and mine alone! I can no longer endure the thought of your being the wife of another man. You must come with me. I will not take 'no' for an answer. I command you to leave this man and go with me. It is a worse crime for you to live with him when you hate him than to leave him! Come, let us go! I have money! There are horses to be had. He does not know where we are. Let us fly!"

It was evident that he had brooked her refusal as long as he could. The man was mad. He seized her by the arm.

In a single instant this gentle creature passed through an incredible transformation. She wrenched her arm from his hand and stood before him fearless, resolute, magnificent! Her gypsy training stood her in good stead now. Young as she was when a pupil in that hard school, she had learned from her wild teachers the cardinal principle of their code—loyalty to her marriage vows. They had taught her to believe that this breach was the one unpardonable sin.

She drew a little stiletto from the folds of her dress, placed its point upon her heart and said: "It is not necessary that a gypsy should live; but it is necessary that she should be virtuous!"

Her resplendent beauty, her fearless courage, her invincible determination quenched the wild impulses of the reckless youth in a single instant. All the manhood, all the chivalry of his better nature rose within him and did homage. He threw himself on his knees and frantically besought her pardon.

In an instant the fierce light died from her eyes. She stooped down, laid her hand on his arm, and with an all-forgiving charity lifted him to his feet. They stood regarding each other in silence. All that their souls could reveal had been manifested in actions. The brief scene was terminated by a common impulse. They turned their faces toward the city and walked quietly, each reflecting silently upon the struggle that had been enacted and the denouement which was yet to come.

In her ignorance and inexperience, Pepeeta hoped that a scene so dreadful would quench the madness in her lover's soul; but this revelation of the grandeur of her nature only inflamed his desires the more. The momentary feeling of shame and penitence passed away. His determination to possess her became more fixed than ever and during the homeward walk assumed a definite form.

For a long time a sinister purpose had been rolling about in his soul. That purpose now crystallized into resolution. He determined to commit a crime if need be in order to gain his end.

Nothing can be more astonishing than the rapidity and ease with which the mind becomes habituated to the presence of a criminal intention. The higher faculties are at first disturbed, but they soon become accustomed to the danger, and permit themselves to be destroyed one after another, with only feeble protestations.

TURNED TEMPTER

"All men have their price."
—Walpole.

The plan which David had chosen to compel Pepeeta to abandon her husband was not a new one. For its execution he had already made a partial preparation in an engagement to meet the justice of the peace who had performed her marriage ceremony. The engagement was conditioned upon his failure to persuade the gypsy to accompany him of her own free will.

Immediately after supper he took his way to the place appointed for the meeting. This civil officer had been a companion of the quack's for many years. His natural capacity, which was of the highest order, had secured him one place of honor after another; but he had lost them through the practice of many vices, and had at last sunk to that depth of degradation in which he was willing to barter his honor for almost any price.

The place at which he had agreed to meet David was a low saloon in one of the most disreputable parts of the city, and to this spot the infatuated youth made his way. Now that he was alone with his thoughts, he could not contemplate his purpose without a feeling of dread, and yet he did not pause nor seriously consider its abandonment. His movements, as he elbowed his way among the outcasts who infested this degraded region, were those of a man totally oblivious to his surroundings.

"Curse him," he muttered in an undertone, and did not know that he had spoken.

To talk to one's self is so often a premonitory symptom of either insanity or crime, that a policeman standing on the corner eyed him closely and followed him down the street.

Having reached the door of the saloon, David cast a glance about him, as if ashamed of being observed, and entered. It was a fitting place to hatch an evil deed. The floor was covered with filthy sawdust; the air was rank with the fumes of sour beer and adulterated whisky; the lamps were not yet lighted, and his eyes blinked as he entered the dirty dusk of the interior. Against the wall were rude shelves strewn with bottles, decanters, jugs and glasses. The landlord was leaning against the inside of the bar glaring about him like an octopus. The habitues of the place, looking more like scarecrows than men, stood opposite him with their blear eyes uplifted in ecstasy, draining into their insatiable throats the last precious drops from their upturned glasses.

At a table four human shapes which seemed to be operated by some kind of clumsy mechanical motors rather than animated by sentient spirits were playing a game of chance and slapping the greasy cards down upon the table to the accompaniment of coarse laughter and hideous profanity.

The Quaker, who was not yet thoroughly enough corrupted to witness this spectacle without horror, hurried through the room like a man who has suddenly found himself in a pest-house. The door which he pushed open admitted him to a parlor scarcely less dirty and disgusting that the saloon itself, at the opposite end of which, wreathed in a cloud of tobacco smoke, he beheld the object of his search.

"Well, I see you are here," he said, drawing a chair to the table.

"And waiting," a deep and rich but melancholy voice replied.

"Can't we have a couple of candles? These shadows seem to crawl up my legs and take me by the throat. I feel as if some one were blindfolding and gagging me," said David, looking uneasily about.

The judge ordered the candles, and while they were waiting observed: "You had better accustom yourself to shadows, young man, for you will find plenty of them on the road you are traveling. They deepen with the passing years, along every pathway; but the one on which you are about to set your feet leads into the hopeless dark."

These unexpected words agitated the soul of the young plotter, but while he was still shuddering the barkeeper entered with the candles and set them down on the table between the two men, who found themselves vis-a-vis in the flickering gleams.

They leaned on their elbows and looked into each other's faces. The contrast was remarkable. The countenance of the judge had unquestionably once been noble, and perhaps also beautiful; but the massive features were now coarsened by dissipation. A permanent curl of scorn had wreathed itself around the mouth. A look of ennui brooded over his features. One would as soon expect to see a flower in the crater of a volcano as a smile on the lips of this extinct man.

David's face was young and beautiful. The features were still those of a saint, even if the aureole had for a time been eclipsed by a cloud. These two human beings gazed incredulously at each other for a moment.

"I was once like this youth," the judge was saying to himself with a sigh.

"I shall never be like this beast," thought David with a shudder of repulsion and disgust.

The "Justice" (grotesque parody) broke the silence.

"Did you succeed?" he asked.

"No," said David, sullenly.

"She would not yield, then?"

"No more than adamant or steel."

"You should have pressed her harder."

"I used my utmost skill."

"You are a novitiate, perhaps. An adept would have succeeded."

"Not with her."

"Ah! who ever caught a trout at the first cast? What you need is experience."

"What I want is help."

"And so you have appealed to me? You wish me to go to this woman and tell her that her marriage was a fraud?"

"I do."

"There have been pleasanter tasks."

"Will you do it, or will you not?"

"Suppose she will not believe me?"

"You must compel her."

"Young man, have you no compunctions about this business?" said the judge, leaning forward and looking earnestly into the blue eyes.

"Compunctions?" said David, in a dry echo of the question.

"Yes, compunctions," replied the judge, repeating the word again.

"Oh! some. But for every compunction I have a thousand desperate determinations. Were you ever in love, Judge?"

"Yes, I have been in love, such love as yours, and that is why I am what I am now."

As he uttered these words, he lifted the glass which his hand had been toying with, drained it to the dregs, fixed his eyes on David once more, and after regarding him a moment with a look of pity, said slowly and solemnly: "Young man, I am about to give you good advice. You smile? No wonder! But I beg you to listen to me. Sometimes a shipwrecked sailor makes the best captain, for he knows the force of the tempest. I have no conscience for myself, but some unaccountable emotion impels me to bid you abandon this project. Somehow, as I look at you, I cannot bear to have you become what I am. You seem so young and innocent that I would like to have you stay as you are. I wish to save you. How strange it is. When I look at you, I seem to behold myself as I was at your age."

As he spoke these words the whole expression of his countenance altered, and faint traces of an almost extinguished manhood appeared. It was as if beauty, sunk below the horizon, had been thrown up in a mirage.

So tender an appeal would have broken a heart like David's, except for the madness of illicit love.

"Judge!" he cried, striking the table with his fist, "I did not come here for advice, I came for help. I am determined to have this woman. She is mine by virtue of my desire and my capacity to acquire her! I must have her! I will have her, by fair means or foul. And, Judge, in this case, the foulest means are fair. What seems an act of injustice is in reality an act of mercy. You know her husband, and you know as well as I do that her life with him will be her ruin. You know that the complacency with which she once regarded him has already turned to disgust, and that it is only a single step from disgust to hate and another from hate to murder. She will kill him some day! She cannot help it. It is human nature and if she doesn't I will! Come now, Judge, you will help me, won't you?"

A cynical smile wreathed itself around the mouth of the old roué. In his debauched nature, the oil of sympathy had long ago been exhausted. This was a last despairing flicker. A wick cannot burn alone.

"Help you?" he said languidly. "Oh, yes, I will help you. There is no use trying to save you. You are only another moth! You want the fire, and you will have it! You will burn your wings off as millions have done before you and as millions will do after you. What then? Wings are made to be burned! I burned mine. Probably if I had another pair I would burn them also. It is as useless to moralize to a lover as to a tiger. I am a fool to waste my breath on you. Let us get down to business. You say that she loves you, and that she will be glad to learn that she is free?"

"I do! her heart is on our side. She will believe you, easily!"

"Yes, she will believe me easily! She will believe me too easily! For six thousand years desire has been a synonym for credulity. All men believe what they want to, except myself. I believe everything that I do not want to, and nothing that I do! But no matter. How much am I to get for this job?"

They haggled a while over the price, struck a bargain and shook hands—the same symbol being used among men to seal a compact of love or hate, virtue or vice.

"Be at the Spencer House at eleven o'clock," said David, rising. "You will find us on the balcony. The doctor is to spend the night in a revel with the captain of the Mary Ann, and we shall be uninterrupted. Be an actor. Be a great actor, Judge. You are to deal with a soul which possesses unusual powers of penetration."

"Do not fear! She will be no match for me, for she is innocent—and when was virtue ever a match for vice? She is predestined to her doom! Farewell! Fare-ill, I mean," he muttered under his breath, as David passed from the room.

He gazed after him with his basilisk eyes, drank another glass of whisky and relapsed into reveries.

The mind of the lover was full of tumultuous emotions. On the thin ice of his momentary joy, he hovered like an inexperienced skater over the great deeps of sin which were waiting to engulf him.

There was still an hour before the time when he would have to take his part in the business of the evening. He determined to walk off his excitement, and chose the way along the edge of the river.

It was now quite dark. The stars were shining in the sky and lamps were twinkling in the windows. The streets were almost deserted; the citizens, wearied with the toils of the day, were eating their evening meal, or resting on the balconies and porches. Here and there on the surface of the swift-flowing river a huge steamer swept past, or little ferry-boats shot back and forth like shuttles. His thoughts composed a strangely blended web of good and evil. At the same moment in which he reiterated his resolve to prosecute this deed he consecrated himself to a life of tenderness and devotion to the woman whom he loved with all the energy of his nature! Of such inconsistencies is the soul capable!

It seemed an easy matter to him to control the august forces which he was letting loose! He was like a little child who wanders through a laboratory uncorking bottles and mixing explosives.

Having regained his calmness by a long walk, he hurried back and reached the open space along the river front where peddlers, mountebanks and street venders plied their crafts, just in time to meet the doctor as he drove up with his horses.

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

"Thinks thou there are no serpents in the world
But those who slide along the grassy sod
And sting the luckless foot that presses them?
There are those who in the path of social life
Do bask their skins in Fortune's sun
And sting the soul."      —Joanna Baillie.

That evening's business was one of unprecedented success. Never had the young orator been so brilliant. All the faculties of his mind seemed wrought up to their highest pitch and all its resources under perfect control. The boisterous crowd laughed itself hoarse at his humor, wept itself silly at his pathos, and laid its shekels at his feet.

It is no wonder that such scenes and others like them have generated both satirists and saviors, and that while men like Savonarola have been ready to die for the redemption of such creatures other men, like Juvenal, have sneered.

The three companions returned to the hotel and counted their ill-gotten gains. Pepeeta was sober, David exultant and the doctor hilarious. He pulled out the ends of his long black mustache to their utmost limit, twisted them into ropes, rubbed his hands together, slapped his great thigh and laughed long and loud.

"David, my son," he exclaimed, "you have the touch of Midas; g-g-give us a few years more and we will outrank the fabled Croesus. We shall yet be masters of the world. We shall ride upon its neck as if it w-w-were an ass! How about the old farm life now? Do you want to return to the p-p-plow-tail? Would you rather milk the b-b-brindle cow than the b-b-bedeviled people? This has been a g-g-great night, and I must go and finish it in the c-c-cabin of the Mary Ann with the captain, his mate and the judge. They will know how to appreciate it! Such a t-t-triumph must not be allowed to p-p-pass without a celebration."

He bustled about the room a few moments, kissed his wife, shook hands with David and hastened away.

After he had vanished, David and Pepeeta passed down the long corridor and out upon the balcony of the old Spencer House, to the place appointed for the interview of the judge. The night was bright; a refreshing breeze was blowing up from the river and the frequent intermissions in the gusts of wind that swept over the sleeping city gave the impression that Nature was holding her breath to listen to the tales of love that were being told on city balconies and in country lanes. Under the mysterious influence of the full moon, and of the silence, for the noises of the city had died away, their imaginations were aroused, their emotions quickened, their sensibilities stirred. It seemed impossible that life could be seriously real. Their conceptions of duty and responsibility were sublimated into vague and misty dreams, and the enjoyment of the moment's fleeting pleasures seemed the only reality and end of life.

The two lovers placed their chairs close to the railing and leaning over it looked down into the deserted street or off toward the distant hills swimming like islands on a sea of light, or up to the infinite sky in the immensity of which their individual being seemed to be swallowed up, or down into each other's eyes, in the depths of which they discovered realities which they had never before perceived, and lost sight of those in which they had always believed. For a long time they sat in silence. Afterwards, there came a few whispered interchanges of feeling, as the stillness of a grove is broken by gentle agitations among the leaves, and finally David said,

"Pepeeta, you have long promised to tell me all you knew of your early life; will you do it now?"

"Of what possible interest can it be to you?" she asked.

"It seems to me," he replied, "that I could linger forever over the slightest detail. It is not enough to know what you are. I wish to know how you came to be what you are."

"You must reconcile yourself to ignorance; the origin of my existence is lost in night."

"Did not the doctor discover anything at all from the people in whose possession he found you?"

"Nothing. They kept silence like the grave. He heard from a gypsy in another camp that my parents belonged to a noble family in Spain, and has often said that when he becomes very rich he will go with me to my native land and find them. But I believe, myself, that the veil will never be lifted from the past. I must be content!"

"But you can tell me something of that part of your childhood that you do remember?"

"It is too sad! I do not want to think of anything that happened before I met you. My life began from that moment. Before, I had only dreamed."

He was intoxicated with her beauty and her love; but he carried himself carefully, for he was playing a desperate game and must keep himself under control.

"And do you think," he said, "that having awakened from this dream you can ever fall asleep again?"

"Can the bird ever go back into the shell or the butterfly into the chrysalis? No, no, it is impossible."

"But would you, if you could?"

"Perhaps I ought to want to; but I cannot."

"And do you think that we can drift on forever as we are going?"

"I do not know. I do not dare to think. I only live from day to day."

"And you still refuse to take your future into your own hands?"

"It is not mine. I must accept what has been appointed."

"And you still believe that some door will be opened through which we may escape?"

"With all my heart."

"I wish I could share your faith."

They ceased to speak, and sat silently gazing into each other's faces, the heart of the woman rent with a conflict between desire and duty, that of the man by a tempest of evil passions. At that moment, a slow and heavy step was heard in the hallway. They looked toward the door, and in the shadows saw a man who contemplated them silently for a moment and then advanced.

David rose to meet him.

"I beg your pardon," he said, feigning embarrassment, "I had an errand with the lady, and hoped I should find her alone."

"You may speak, for the gentleman is the friend of my husband and myself," Pepeeta said.

"I will begin, then," he responded, "by asking if you recognize me?" And at that he stepped out into the moonlight.

Pepeeta gave him a searching glance and exclaimed in surprise, "You are the judge who married me."

He let his head fall upon his breast with well-assumed humility, remained a moment in silence, looked up mournfully and said, "I would to God that I had really married you, for then I should not have been bearing this accursed load of guilt that has been crushing me for months."

At these words, Pepeeta sprang from her seat and stood before him with her hands clasped upon her breast.

"Be quick! go on!" she cried, when she had waited in vain for him to proceed.

"Prepare yourself for a revelation of treachery and dishonor. I can conceal my crime no longer. If I hold my peace the very stones in the street will cry out against me."

"Make haste!" Pepeeta exclaimed, imperatively.

"Madam," continued the strange man, "I have betrayed you."

"You have betrayed me?"

"Yes, I have betrayed you. Do you understand? You are not married to your husband. I deceived you as I was bribed to do. I was not a justice. I had no right to perform that ceremony. It was a solemn farce. Your false lover desired to possess the privileges without assuming the responsibilities of marriage."

These words, spoken slowly, solemnly, and with a simulation of candor which would have deceived her even if she had not desired to believe them, produced the most profound impression upon the mind of Pepeeta. She approached the judge and cried: "Sir, I beg you in the name of heaven not to trifle with me! Is what you have told me true?"

"Alas, too true."

"If it is true, you will say it before the God in heaven? Raise your right hand!"

Before an appeal so solemn and a soul so pure a man less corrupt would have faltered; but without a moment's hesitation this depraved, remorseless creature did as she commanded.

"I swear it," he said.

"Oh! sir," she cried, "you cannot understand; but this is the happiest moment of my life!"

"Madam?" he exclaimed, interrogatively and with consummate art.

"It is not necessary for you to know why," she answered; "but on my knees I thank you."

He lifted her up. "What can it mean? I implore you to tell me," he said.

"Do not ask me!" she replied. "I cannot tell you now! My heart is too full."

"But does this mean that I have nothing to regret and that you have forgiven me?"

"It does. For it is against God only you have sinned! As for myself, I bless you from the bottom of my heart!"

She gave him her hand. He took it in his own and held it, looking first at her and then at David with an expression of such surprise as to deceive his accomplice scarcely less than his victim. Young, inexperienced, innocent in this sin at least, she stood between them—helpless.

It is one thing for a woman deliberately to renounce her marriage vows to taste the sweets of forbidden pleasure, but quite another for a heart so loyal to duty, to be betrayed into crime by an ingenuity worthy of devils.

Child of misfortune that she was, victim of a series of untoward and fatal circumstances, she had reason all her life to regret her credulity; but never to reproach herself for wrong intentions. Her heart often betrayed her; but her soul was never corrupted. She ought to have been more careful—alas, yes, she ought—but she meant no sin.

Now that the confidence of Pepeeta had been secured, David's part in this drama became comparatively easy.

He listened to the brief conversation in which by a well-constructed chain of fictitious reasonings the judge riveted upon the too eager mind of the child-wife the conclusion that she was free. When this arch villain had concluded his arguments every suspicion had vanished from her soul, and as he rose to depart she took him by the hand and bade him a kindly and almost affectionate farewell. "Do not afflict yourself with this painful memory," she said gently.

"I shall not need to afflict myself," he replied; "my memory will afflict me, for I am as guilty as if the result had been what I expected; and if in the coming years you find a moment now and then in which you can lift up a prayer for a man who has forfeited his claim to mercy, I beg you to devote it to him who from the depths of his heart wishes you joy. Good-bye."

With many assurances of her pardon, Pepeeta followed him to the door and bade him farewell.

When she returned to David her face was luminous with happiness, and although he had begun already to experience a reaction and to suffer remorse for his successful infamy, it was only like a drop of poison in the ocean of his joy.

"Did I not tell you that all would be well?" she cried, approaching him and extending both her hands. "But how sudden and how strange it is. It is too good to be true. I cannot realize that I am free. I am like a little bird that hops about its cage, peeps through the door which its mistress' hand has opened, and knows not what to think. It wishes to go; but it is frightened. What shall it do, David? Tell it! Shall it fly?"

"I also am too bewildered to act and almost too bewildered to think," he said with unaffected excitement and anxiety, for now that the time and opportunity for him to take so momentous a step had come, his heart failed him. It was only with the most violent effort and under a most pressing necessity that he pulled himself together and continued,

"The little bird must fly, and its mate must fly with it. There are too few hours before daylight and we must not lose a single one. But are you sure that you are quite ready? Is your mind made up? Will you go with me trustfully? Will you accept whatever the future has in store?"

She took him in her strong young arms, printed her first kiss upon his lips, and said: "I will go with you to the ends of the earth! I will go with you through water and through fire! The future cannot bring me anything from which I shall shrink, if it lets us meet it hand in hand!"

Silently and swiftly they gathered together the few necessities of a sudden journey, stole out of the quiet building and hurried away to a livery stable. In a few moments they were rattling down the rough cobble-stone pavement to the river. The ferryman, who had been retained for this very purpose, pretended to be asleep. They aroused him, drove onto the platform of his primitive craft and floated out upon the stream. As the boat swung clear of the shore they heard music issuing from the cabin windows of a steamer under whose stern they were passing. It was the "Mary Ann." They listened. The music ceased for a moment and a deep voice called out "B-b-bravo! Another song!"

They recognized it instantly, and Pepeeta pressed close to the side of her lover.

"You hear it for the last time," he whispered.

"Thank God," she said.

That name uttered in the darkness of the night startled him. The idea that he had cast a shuttle of crime into the great loom upon which the fabric of his life was being woven, took complete possession of his mind. With unerring prescience, he saw that it began to be entangled in the mysterious meshes. A consciousness that he was no longer the master but the victim of his destiny seized him and he shuddered. Pepeeta perceived the shudder through the arm which embraced her.

"You are cold, my love," she said.

"My joy has made me tremble," he replied.

She pressed the hand which was holding hers and looked up into his face with ineffable love.

The swift current seized the boat, twisting it hither and thither till it seemed to the now trembling fugitive a symbol of the stream of tendencies upon which he had launched the frail bark containing their united lives.

"I wonder if I am strong enough to stem it?" he asked himself.

Pepeeta continued to press his hand and that gentle sign of love revived his drooping courage. Perhaps there is no other act so full of reassuring power as the pressure of a human hand. Neither a glance from the eye nor a word from the lips can equal it. The fainting pilgrim, the departing friend, the discouraged toiler, the returning prodigal welcome it beyond all other symbols of helpfulness or love, and the dying saint who leans the hardest on the "rod and the staff of God" as he goes down into the dark valley finds a comfort scarcely less sweet in the warm clasp of a human hand. Just as the courage of this daring navigator of the sea of crime had been restored by this signal of his loved one's trust, the boat grated on the beach.

"Can we find a minister who will marry us at this time of night?" David said to the ferryman, although he had been careful to ask this question before.

"Two blocks south and three east, second door on the right hand side," he answered laconically, as he received the fare.

Such adventurers passed often through his hands and their ways were nothing new.

The fugitives drove hurriedly to the designated house, knocked at the door, were admitted and in a few moments the final act which sealed their fate had been performed.

THE DERELICTS