“Tom, I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe you do, either–it isn’t the good the money does those who receive; it’s the good it does the giver. And the good it does the giver is measured by the amount of sacrifice–the degree of himself that he puts into it–can’t you understand, Tom? I’d give my soul if you could understand.”

“Well, I can’t understand, Laura,” impatiently; “that’s your father’s sentimental side. Of all the fool things,” the Judge slapped the book sheet viciously, “that the old man has put into your head–sentiment is one of the foolest. I tell you, Laura, money talks. There are ten languages spoken in South Harvey, and money talks in all of them, and one dollar does as much as another, and that’s all there is to it.”

She rose with a little sigh. “Well,” she said gently, “we won’t quarrel.” The wife looked intently at the husband, and in that flash of time from beneath her consciousness came renewed strength. Something primeval–the eternal uxorial upon which her whole life rested, possessed her and she smiled, and touched her husband’s thick, black hair gently. For she felt that if the spiritual ties for the moment had failed them, she must pick up some other tie. She was the nest builder indomitable. If the golden thread should drop–there is the string–the straw–the horse hair–the twig. So Laura Van Dorn picked up an appeal to her husband’s affections and continued her predestined work.

“Tom,” she said, with her smile still on her face, “what I really and truly wanted to tell you was about Lila.” The mention of the child’s name brought quick light to the mother’s face. “Lila–think of it, Tom–Lila,” the mother repeated with vast pride. “You must come right out and see her. About an hour ago, she sat gazing at your picture on my dresser, and suddenly without a word from me, she whispered ‘Daddy,’ and then was as shy for a moment, then whispered it again, and then spoke it out loud, and she is as proud as Punch, and keeps saying it over and over! Tom–you must come out and hear it.”

He smiled graciously and replied absently: “Well–Daddy–” And repeated “Daddy–don’t you think father is–” He caught the cloud flashing across her face, and went on: “Oh, I suppose daddy is all right to begin with.” He picked up his law book and the woman drew nearer to him. She put her hand over the page and coaxed:

“Come on, Tom–just for a little minute–come on out and see her. I know she is waiting for you–I know she is just dying to show off to you–and besides, the new rugs have come for the living-room, and I just couldn’t unpack them without you. It would seem so–old–old–old marriedy, and we aren’t going to be that.” She laughed and tried to close the law book.

Their eyes met and she thought for a moment that she was winning her contest. But he put her hand aside gently and answered: “Now, Laura, I’m busy, exceedingly busy. This mine accident is bound to come before me in one form or another soon, and I must be ready for it, and it is a serious matter. There will be all kinds of attacks upon the property.”

“The property?” she asked, and he answered:

“Why, yes–legal attacks upon the mine–to bleed the owners, and I must be ready to guard them against these assaults, and I just can’t jump and run every time Lila coos or you cut a string on a package. I’ll be out to-night and we’ll hear Lila and look at the rugs.” To the disappointment upon her face he replied: “I tell you, Laura, sentiment is going to wreck your life if you don’t check it.”

The man looked into his book without reading. He had come to dislike these little scenes with his wife. He looked from his book out of the window, into the snowy street. He remembered his morning walk. There was no talk of souls in those eyes, no hint of higher things from those lips, no covert taunt of superiority in that face.

That evening at sunset, Judge Van Dorn, with his ulster thrown back to show his fine figure, walked in his character of town Prince homeward up the avenue. His face was amiable; he was gracious to every one. He spoke to rich and poor alike, as was his wont. As he turned into his home yard, he waved at a little face in the window. In the house he was the spirit of good nature itself. He was full of quips and pleasantries and happy turns of speech. But Laura Van Dorn had learned deep in her heart to fear that mood. She was ashamed of her wisdom–degraded by her doubt, and she fought with it.

And yet a man and a woman do not live together as man and wife and parents without learning much that does not come from speech and is not put into formulated conviction. The signs were all for trouble, and in the secret places of her heart she knew these signs.

She knew that this grand manner, this expansive mood, this keying up of attentions to her were the beginnings of a sad and sordid story–a story that she did not entirely understand; would not entirely translate, but a story that sickened her very soul. To keep the table talk going, she said: “Tom, it’s wonderful the way Kenyon is taking to the violin. He has a real gift, I believe.”

“Yes,” answered the husband absently, and then as one who would plunge ahead, began: “By the by–why don’t you have your father and mother and some of the neighbors over to play cards some evening–and what’s the matter with the Fenns? Henry’s kind of down on his luck, and I’ll need him in my next campaign, and I thought if we could have them over some evening–well, what’s the matter with to-morrow evening? They’d enjoy it. You know Mrs. Fenn–I saw her down town this morning, and George Brotherton says Henry’s slipping back to his old ways. And I just thought perhaps–”

But she knew as well as he what he “thought perhaps,” and a cloud trailed over her face.

As gradually those eyes became fixed in his consciousness, through days and weeks and months, a mounting passion for Margaret Fenn kindled in his heart. And slowly he went stone-blind mad. The whole of his world was turned over. Every ambition, every hope, every desire he ever had known was burned out before this passion that was too deep for desire. Whatever lust was in his blood in those first months of his madness grew pale. It seemed to the man who went stalking down the street past her house night after night that the one great, unselfish passion of his life was upon him, loosening the roots of his being, so that any sacrifice he could make, whether of himself or of any one or anything about him, would give him infinite joy. When he met Henry Fenn, Van Dorn was always tempted and often yielded to the temptation to rush up to Fenn with some foolish question that made the sad-eyed man stare and wonder. But just to be that near to her for the moment pleased him. There was no jealousy for Fenn in Van Dorn’s heart; there was only a dog-like infatuation that had swept him away from his reason and seated a fatuous, chattering, impotent, lecherous ape where his intellect should have been. And he knew he was a fool. He knew that he was stark mad. Yet what he did not know was that this madness was a culmination, not a pristine passion new born in his heart. For the maggot in his brain had eaten out a rotten place wherein was the memory of many women’s yieldings, of many women’s tears. One side of his brain worked with rare cunning. He wound the evidence against the men in the mine, taken at the coroner’s hearing, through the labyrinth of the law, and snared them tightly in it. That part of his brain clicked with automatic precision. But sitting beside him was the ape, grinning, leering, ready to rise and master him. So many a night when he was weary, he lay on the couch beside his desk, and the ape came and howled him to a troubled sleep.

On Market Street nearly opposite the Traders’ National Bank during the decades of the eighties and nineties was a smart store front upon which was fastened a large, black and gold sign bearing the words “The Paris Millinery Company” and under these words in smaller letters, “Mrs. Brunhilde Herdicker, Prop.” If Mr. George Brotherton and his Amen Corner might be said to be the clearing house of public opinion in Harvey, the establishment of Mrs. Brunhilde Herdicker, Prop., might well be said to be the center of public clamor. For things started in this establishment–by things one means in general, trouble; variegated of course as to domestic, financial, social, educational, amatory, and at times political. Now the women of Harvey and South Harvey and of Greeley county–and of Hancock and Seymour counties so far as that goes–used the establishment of “The Paris Millinery Company, Mrs. Brunhilde Herdicker, Prop.,” as a club–a highly democratic club–the only place this side of the grave, in fact, where women met upon terms of something like equality.

But her friends had little from Mrs. Bowman more than a smile–a cracked and weather-beaten smile from a broken woman of nearly forty, who was a wife at fifteen, a mother at seventeen, and who had borne six children and buried two in a dozen years.

“There’s Violet,” ventured Mrs. Bowman to Mrs. Dexter. “I haven’t seen her since her marriage.”

To a question Mrs. Bowman replied reluctantly, “Oh–as for Denny Hogan, he is a good enough man, I guess!”

After a pause, Mrs. Bowman thought it wise to add under the wails of the orchestra: “Poor Violet–good hearted girl’s ever lived; so kind to her ma; and what with all that talk when she was in Van Dorn’s office and all the talk about the old man Sands and her in the Company store, I just guess Vi got dead tired of it all and took Denny and run to cover with him.”

Violet Hogan in a black satin,–a cheap black satin, and a black hat–a cheap black hat with a red rose–a most absurdly cheap red rose in it, walked about the place picking things over in a rather supercilious way, and no one noticed her. Mrs. Fenn gave Violet an eyebrow, a beautifully penciled eyebrow on a white marble forehead, above beaming brown eyes that were closed just slightly at the moment. And Mrs. Van Dorn who had kept track of the girl, you may be sure, went over to her and holding out her hand said: “Congratulations, Violet,–I’m so glad to hear–” But Mrs. Denny Hogan having an eyebrow to spare as the gift of Mrs. Fenn passed it on to Mrs. Van Dorn who said, “Oh–” very gently and went to sit on a settee beside Mrs. Brotherton, the mother of the moon-faced Mr. Brotherton and Mrs. Ahab Wright, who always seemed to seek the shade. And then and there, Mrs. Van Dorn had to listen to this solo from Mrs. Brotherton:

By the time Mrs. Brotherton found it necessary to stop for breath, Laura Van Dorn had regained the color that had dimmed as she heard the reference to Henry Fenn. And when she met Mrs. Margaret Fenn at a turn of the aisle, Mrs. Margaret Fenn was the spirit of joy and it seemed that Mrs. Van Dorn was her long lost sister; so Mrs. Margaret Fenn began fumbling her over to find the identifying strawberry mark. At least that is what Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., told Mrs. Nesbit as she sold Mrs. Nesbit the large one with the brown plume.

Let us look at her as she stands by the door waiting to overhaul Mrs. Nesbit. A fine figure of a woman, Margaret Fenn makes there–in her late twenties, with large regular features, big even teeth, clear brown eyes–not bold at all, yet why do they seem so? Perhaps because she is so sure and firm and unhesitating. Her skin is soft and fair as a child’s, bespeaking health and good red blood. The good red blood shows in her lips–red as a wicked flower, red and full and as shameless as a dream. Taller than Mrs. Nesbit she stands, and her clothes hang to her in spite of the fullness of the fashion, in most suggestive lines. She seems to shine out of her clothes a lustrous, shimmering figure, female rather than feminine, and gorgeous rather than lovely. Margaret Fenn is in full bloom; not a drooping petal, not a bending stamen, not a wilted calyx or bruised leaf may be seen about her. She is a perfect flower whose whole being–like that of a flower at its full–seems eager, thrilling, burning with anticipation of the perfect fruit.

“Well,” smiles the eyes and murmurs the voice, and glows the face of the young woman, and she puts out her hand. “Mrs. Nesbit–so glad I’m sure. Isn’t it lovely here? Mrs. Herdicker is so effective.”

“Mrs. Fenn,–” this from the dowager, and the eyebrow that Mrs. Fenn gave to Mrs. Hogan, and Mrs. Hogan gave to Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Van Dorn gave to Mrs. Brotherton and Mrs. Brotherton gave to Mrs. Calvin who, George says, is an old cat, and Mrs. Calvin gave to Mrs. Nesbit for remarks as to the biennial presence of Mr. Calvin in the barn (repeated to Mrs. Calvin), the eyebrow having been around the company comes back to Mrs. Fenn.

After which Mrs. Nesbit moves with what dignity her tonnage will permit out of the perfumed air, out of the concord of sweet sounds into the street. Mrs. Fenn, who was looking for it all the afternoon, that thing she dreaded and anticipated with fear in her heart’s heart, found it. It was exceedingly cold–and also a shoulder of some proportions. And it chilled the flowing sap of the perfect flower so that the flower shivered in the breeze made by the closing door, though the youngest Miss Morton presiding at the door thought it was warm, and Mrs. Herdicker thought it was warm and Mrs. Violet Hogan said to Mrs. Bowman as they went through the same door and met the same air: “My land, Bowman, did you ever see such an oven?” and then as the door closed she added:

“See old Mag Fenn there? I just heard something about her to-day. I bet it’s true.”

“Well, of course,” returned Mrs. Thurston, who was not sure of her ground and had no desire to talk against the rich and powerful, “they say that some one ought to pay something. But, of course, Joe Calvin always wins his suits and the Judge, of course, was the Company’s attorney before he was the Judge–”

“And so the claim agents are signing ’em up for what the Company will give,” cut in the questioner.

“Tom Van Dorn–he’s a smooth one, Lizzie–he’s a smooth one.” Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., looked quickly at Mrs. Thurston and got a smile in reply. That was enough. She continued:

“You’d think he’d know better–wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I don’t know–it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks,” was the non-committal answer of Mrs. Thurston, still cautious about offending the powers.

Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., brushed aside formalities. “Yes–stenographers and hired girls, and biscuit shooters at the Palace and maybe now and then an excursion across the track; but this is different; this is in his own class. They were both here this afternoon, and you should have seen the way she cooed and billed over Laura Van Dorn. Honest, Lizzie, if I’d never heard a word, I’d know something was wrong. And you should have seen old lady Nesbit give her the come-uppins.”

Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., dropped her voice to a confidential tone. “Lizzie?” a pause; “They say you’ve seen ’em together.”

The thought of the quarter page advertisement overcame whatever scruples Mrs. Thurston may have had, and so long as she had the center of the stage she said her lines: “Why I don’t know a single thing–only this: that for–maybe a month or so every few days along about five or six o’clock when the roads are good I’ve seen him coming one way on his wheel, and go down in the country on the Adams road, and about ten minutes later from another way she’d come riding along on her wheel and go down the Adams road into the country following him. Then in an hour or so, they come back, sometimes one of them first–sometimes the other, but I’ve really never seen them together. She might be going to the Adamses; she boarded there once years ago.”

“Yes,–and she hates ’em!” snapped Mrs. Herdicker derisively, and then added, “Well, it’s none of my business so long as they pay for their hats.”

Being a methodical woman Mrs. Herdicker, Prop., wrote the copy for her advertisement and let Mrs. Thurston go in peace. She went into the gathering twilight, and hurried to do a few errands before returning to South Harvey.

At the court house Mrs. Thursston met Henry Fenn coming out of the register of deeds office where he had been filing a deed to some property he had sold, and at Mr. Brotherton’s Amen Corner, she saw Tom Van Dorn smoking upon the bench. The street was filled with bicycles, for that was a time when the bicycle was a highly respectable vehicle of business and pleasure. Mrs. Thurston left Market Street and a dozen wheels passed her. As she turned into her street to South Harvey a bell tinkled. She looked around and saw Margaret Fenn making rapidly for the highway. Mrs. Thurston was human; she waited! And in five minutes Tom Van Dorn came by and went in the same direction!

This chapter must devote itself chiefly to a bargain. In the bargain, Judge Thomas Van Dorn is party of the first part, and Margaret Fenn, wife of Henry Fenn, is party of the second part, and the devil is the broker.

Tom Van Dorn laid hungry eyes upon Margaret Fenn; Margaret Fenn looked ravenously upon all that Van Dorn had; his talent, his position, his worldly goods, estates and chattels. He wanted what she had. He had what she wanted, and by way of commission in negotiating the bargain, the devil took two souls–not such large souls so far as that goes; but still the devil seems to have been the only one in the transaction who profited.

June came–June and the soft night wind, and the warm stars; June with its new, deep foliage and its fragrant grass and trees and flowers; June with a mocking bird singing through the night to its brooding mate; June came with its poets leaning out of windows into the night hearing love songs in the rhythmic whisper of lagging feet strolling under the shade of elms. And under cover of a June night, breathing in the sensuous meaning of the time like a charmed potion, Judge Van Dorn, who personated justice to twenty-five thousand people, went forth a slinking, cringing beast to woo!

Here and there a lamp blinked through the foliage. The footfalls of late homecomers were heard a long way off; the voices of singers–a serenading party out baying at the night–was heard as the breeze carried the music upon its sluggish ebb and flow. To avoid belated homecomers, Judge Van Dorn crossed the street; the clanging electric car did not find him with its search-light, though he felt shielded by its roar as he stepped over the iron railing about the Fenn home and came softly across the lawn upon the grass.

“No–no, Tom. You sit there–I’ll have this swing,” and she slipped into a porch swing and finally he sat down.

“Now, Tom,” she said, “I have given you everything to-night. I am entirely at your mercy; I want you to be as good to me as I have been to you.”

“But, Margaret,” he protested, “is this being good to me, to keep me a prisoner in this chair while you–”

“Tom,” she answered, “there is no one in the house. I’ve just called Henry up by long distance telephone at the Secretary of State’s office in the capitol building. I’ve called him up every hour since he got there this afternoon, to make him remember his promise to me. He hasn’t taken a thing on this trip–I’m sure; I can tell by his voice, for one thing.” The man started to speak. She stopped him: “Now listen, Tom. He’ll have that charter for the Captain’s company within half an hour and will start home on the midnight train. That will give us just an hour together–all alone, Tom, undisturbed.”

She stopped and he sprang toward her, but she fended him off, and gave him a pained look and went on as he sank moaning into his chair: “Tom, dear, how should we spend the first whole hour we have ever had in our lives alone together? I have read and re-read your beautiful letters, dear. Oh, I know some of them by heart. I am yours, Tom–all yours. Now, dear,” he made a motion to rise, “come here by my chair, I want to touch you. But–that’s all.”

“Yes, Margaret,” replied the man. He gripped his arm about her, and continued passionately, “And I’m ready.” In a long minute of ecstasy they were dumb. He went on, “You have good cause–lots of cause–every one knows that. But I–I’ll make it somehow–Oh, I can make it.” He set his teeth fiercely, and repeated, “Oh, I’ll make it, Margaret.”

The night sounds filled their deaf ears, and the pressure of their hands–all so new and strange–filled them with joy, but the joy was shattered by a step upon the sidewalk, and until it died away they were breathless. Then they sat closer together and the woman whispered:

A noise in the house, perhaps of the cat moving through the room behind them, startled them again. The man shook and the woman held her breath; then they both smiled. “Tom–Tom–don’t you see how guilty we are? We mustn’t repeat this; this is our hour, but we must understand each other here and now.” The man did not reply. He who had taken recklessly and ruthlessly all of his life had come to a place where he must give to take. His fortunes were tied up in his answer, so he replied: “Margaret, you know the situation–down town?”

“The judgeship?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“But that will be settled in November. After that is time enough. Oh, eternity is time enough, Tom–I can wait and wait and wait–only if it is to be for eternity, we must not reckon with it now.”

He started after her but she pushed him back with her powerful arms and held him. “Tom, don’t touch me. Tom,” she panted, “Tom.” Her big meaningful eyes met his and she held him for a moment silent. He stepped back and she smiled and kissed his forehead when he had dropped into a chair.

“Now, Tom, time is slipping by. It’s nearly midnight. We’ve got to talk sensibly and calmly. Sit here by me and be as sane as you can. We know we love one another. That’s been said and resaid; that’s settled. Now shall I first break for liberty–or will you? That must all be settled too. We can’t just let things drift. I’m twenty-seven. You’re thirty-five. Life is passing. Now when?”

They shrank before the light of a street car rounding the corner, that gleamed into their retreat. When it had gone, the man bowed his fine, proud, handsome head, and spoke with his eyes upon the ground:

She slipped back into the door, then turned and caught him again and they stood for a terrible moment together. She whirled into the house, clicked the door after her and left him standing a-tremble, gaping and mad in the night. But she knew her strength, and knew his weakness and was not afraid.

She let him moan a wordless lovesong, very low and terrible in the night alone before the door, and did not answer. Then she saw him go softly down the steps, look up and down the street, move guiltily across the yard, hiding behind a bush at a distant footfall, and slip slowly into the sidewalk and go hurrying away from the house. In half an hour she was waiting for Henry Fenn as a cat might wait at a rat hole.

The next day little boys followed Henry Fenn about the streets laughing; Henry Fenn, drunken and debased, whose heart was bleeding. It was late in the afternoon when he appeared in the Amen Corner. His shooting stars were all exploded from their rocket and he was fading into the charred papier-mâche of the reaction that comes from over exhilaration. So he sat on the walnut bench, back of the newspaper counter with his hands on his knees and his eyes staring at the floor while traffic flowed through the establishment oblivious to his presence. Mr. Brotherton watched Fenn but did not try to make him talk. There came a time when trade was slack that Fenn looked for a minute fixedly at Mr. Brotherton, and finally said, shaking his head sadly:

“She says I’ve got to quit!” A pause and another sigh, then: “She says if I ever get drunk again, she’ll quit me like a dog.” Another inspection of the floor; more lugubrious head-shaking followed, after which the eyes closed and the dead voice spoke:

“Well, here’s her chance. Say, George,” he tried to smile, but the light only flickered in his leaden eyes. “I guess I’m orey-eyed enough now to furnish a correct imitation of a gentleman in his cups?”

Fenn got up, took Brotherton back among the books at the rear of the store. The drunken man took from his pocket a fountain pen incased in a silver mounting. He held the silver trinket up and said:

“Let me see it–whose is it, Henry?” asked Brotherton. Fenn answered, “That’s my business.” He paused; then added “and his business.” Another undecided moment, and then Fenn concluded: “And none of your business.”

Suddenly he took his hands off the big man, and said, “I’m going home. If she means business, here’s her chance.”

Brotherton tried to stop him, but Fenn was insistent. Customers were coming in, and so Brotherton let the man go. But all the evening he was worried about his friend. Absentmindedly he went over his stock, straightening up Puck and Judge and Truth and Life, and putting the magazines in their places, sorting the new books into their shelf, putting the standard pirated editions of English authors in their proper place and squaring up the long rows of “The Bonnie Brier Bush” and “A Hazard of New Fortunes” where they would catch the buyers’ eyes upon the counter, in freshly jostled ranks, even and inviting, after the day’s havoc in Harvey’s literary circles. But always Fenn’s face was in Brotherton’s mind. The chatter of the evening passed without Brotherton realizing what it was all about. As for instance, between Grant Adams and Captain Morton over a sprocket which the Captain had invented and Henry Fenn had patented for the Captain. Grant on the other hand kept trying to tell the Captain about his unions organizing in the Valley, and neither was interested in what the other said, yet each was bursting with the importance of what he was saying. But even that comic dialogue could not take Mr. Brotherton’s mind from the search of the sinister connection it was trying to discover, between the fountain pen and Henry Fenn.

Mr. Brotherton kept fountain pens, and Judge Van Dorn said: “There–that one over by the ink eraser–yes, that one–the one in the silver casing–I seem to have mislaid mine. Yale men gave it to me at the reunion in ’91, as president of the class–had my initials on it–ten years–yes,” he looked at the pen offered by the store keeper. “That will do.” Mr. Brotherton watched the Judge as he put the pen in his vest pocket, after it had been filled.

The Judge picked up a Chicago paper, stowed it away with “Anglo-Saxon Supremacy” in his green bag. Then he swung gracefully out of the shop and left Mr. Brotherton wondering where and how Henry Fenn got that pen, and why he did not return it to its owner.

The air of mystery and malice–two unusual atmospheres for Henry Fenn to breathe–which he had put around the pen, impressed his friend with the importance of the thing.

“A mighty smooth proposition,” said Grant Adams, sitting in the Amen Corner reading “A Hazard of New Fortunes,” when Van Dorn had gone.

“Well, say, Grant,” returned Mr. Brotherton, pondering on the subject of the lost pen. “Sometimes I think Tom is just a little too oleaginous–a little too oleaginous,” repeated Mr. Brotherton, pleased with his big word.

“Why, hello–Henry–hello,” said Van Dorn cheerfully. He coughed, in an attempt to swallow the saliva that came rushing into his mouth. Fenn did not answer, but stood and then began to walk around Van Dorn’s desk, eyeing him with glowing-red eyes as he walked. Van Dorn tipped back his chair easily, put his feet on the desk before him, and spoke, “Sit down, Henry–make yourself at home.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Anything gone wrong, Henry?” he asked as the man stood over him glaring at him.

“No,” replied Fenn. “No, nothing’s gone wrong. I’ve just got some exhibits here in a law suit. That’s all.”

He stood over Van Dorn, peering steadfastly at him. First he laid down a torn letter. Van Dorn shuddered almost imperceptibly as he recognized in the crumpled, wrenched paper his writing, but smiled suavely and said, “Well?”

“Well,” croaked Fenn passionately. “That’s exhibit ‘A’. I had to fight a hell-cat for it; and this,” he added as he lay down the silver-mounted pen, “this is exhibit ‘B’. I found that in the porch swing this morning when I went out to get my drink hidden under the house.” He cackled and Van Dorn’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork upon a wave.

“And this,” cried Fenn, as he pulled a revolver, “God damn you, is exhibit ‘C’. Now, don’t you budge, or I’ll blow you to hell–and,” he added, “I guess I’ll do it anyway.”

He stood with the revolver at Van Dorn’s temple–stood over his victim growling like a raging beast. His finger trembled upon the trigger, and he laughed. “So you were going to have a convenient, inexpensive lady friend, were you, Tom!” Fenn cuffed the powerless man’s jaw with an open hand.

“Private snap?” he sneered. “Well, damn your soul–here’s a lady friend of mine,” he poked the cold barrel harder against the trembling man’s temple and cried: “Don’t wiggle, don’t you move.” Then he went on: “Kiss her, you damned egg-sucking pup–when you’ve done flirting with this, I’m going to kill you.”

“Henry,” whispered Van Dorn, “Henry, for God’s sake, let me talk–give me a show, won’t you?”

Fenn moved the barrel of the revolver over between the man’s eyes and cried passionately: “Oh, yes, I’ll give you a show, Tom–the same show you gave me.”

He shifted the revolver suddenly and pulled the trigger; the bullet bored a hole through the book on “Anglo-Saxon Supremacy” on the desk.

Fenn drew in a deep breath. With the shot he had spilled some vial of wrath within him, though Van Dorn could not see the change that was creeping into Fenn’s haggard face.

“You see she’ll shoot, Tom,” said Fenn.

Holding the smoking revolver to the man’s head, Fenn reached for a chair and sat down. His rage was ebbing, and his mind was clear. He withdrew the weapon a few inches, and cried:

“Don’t you budge an inch.”

His hand was limp and shaking, but Van Dorn could not see it. “Tom, Tom,” he cried. “God help me–help me.” He repeated twice the word “me,” then he went on:

“For being what I am–only what I am–” he emphasized the “I.”

“For giving in to your devil as I give into mine–for falling as I have fallen–on another road–I was going to kill you.”

The revolver slipped from his hands. He picked it up by the barrel. He rose crying in a weak voice,

“Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom,” Van Dorn was lifting up in his chair, “Tom, Tom, God help us both poor, hell-cursed men,” sobbed Fenn, and then with a fearful blow he brought the weapon down and struck the white, false forehead that gleamed beneath Fenn’s wet face.

A year and a month and a day, an exceedingly hot day, after Judge Thomas Van Dorn had fallen upon the stair leading to his office and had cut that gash in his forehead which left the white thread of a scar upon his high, broad brow, Judge Van Dorn sat in chambers in his office in the court house, hearing an unimportant matter. Because the day was hot, the Judge wore a gray silk coat, without a vest, and because the matter was unimportant, no newspaper reporters were called in. The matter in hand was highly informal. The Judge, tilted back in his easy chair, toyed with his silken mustache, while counsel for defendant, standing by the desk before which the Judge’s chair was swinging, handled the papers representing the defendant’s answer, to the plaintiff’s pleadings. The plaintiff herself, dressed in rather higher sleeves than would have been thought possible to put upon a human form and make them stand erect, with a rather larger hat than one would have said might be carried by a single human neck without bowing it; the plaintiff above mentioned was rattling the court’s paper knife.

Plaintiff’s counsel, a callow youth from the law offices of Joseph Calvin, to be exact, Joseph Calvin, Jr., sat meekly on the edge of a small chair in the corner and being a chip of the old block, had little to say. The court and said hereinbefore described plaintiff talked freely between whiles as the counsel for said defendant, Henry Fenn, ran over his papers, looking for particular phrases, statements or exhibits which he desired to present to the court.

When counsel for the said defendant had finished, and had put all his papers upon the desk in front of the court, the court reached into his desk, and handed the counsel for defendant a cigar, which with proper apologies to the hereinabove and before described plaintiff, counsel lighted, and said:

“That’s certainly a good one.”

But as the court was writing upon the back of one of the papers, the court did not respond for a moment, but finally said absently, “Yes,–glad you think so; George Brotherton imports them for me.”

And went on writing. Still writing the court said without looking up, “I don’t know of anything else.”

And the counsel for defendant said he didn’t either and putting on his hat, smiling at the plaintiff aforesaid, counsel for said defendant Henry Fenn departed, and after a minute the court ceased writing, folded and blotted the back of the paper, handed it to young Joe Calvin, sitting meekly on the edge of the chair, saying: “Here Joey, take this to the clerk and file it,” and Joey got up from the edge of the chair and vanished, closing the door behind him.

“Well?” said the plaintiff.

“Well?” echoed the court.

“Well,” reiterated the plaintiff, gazing into the eyes of the court with somewhat more eagerness than the law requires under statute therefore made and provided.

“So it’s all over,” she continued, and added: “My part.”

Whereupon the court, then and there being as herein above set forth, did with premeditation, and much show of emotion look up into the eyes of said plaintiff, said eyes being tear-dimmed and extraordinarily beautiful as to their coloring to-wit: brown, as to their expression to-wit: sad and full of love, and furthermore the court did with deliberation and after for a moment while he held the heavy bejeweled hand of said plaintiff above mentioned, and did press said hand to his lips and then did draw the said plaintiff closer and whisper:

“God–God, Margaret, so do I hope so–so do I.”

And perhaps the court for a second thought of a little blue-eyed, fair-haired girl and a gentle woman who lived for him alone in all the world, and perhaps not; for this being a legal paper may set down only such matters as are of evidence. But it is witnessed and may be certified to that the court did drop his eyes for a second or two, that the white thread of a scar upon the forehead of the court did redden for a moment while he held the heavy bejewelled hand of plaintiff, hereinbefore mentioned, and that he did draw a deep breath, and did look out of the window, set high up in the court house, and that he did see the elm trees covering a home which, despite all his perfidy and neglect was full of love for him–love that needed no high sleeves nor great plumy hats, nor twinkling silver bangles, nor jangling gold chatelaines, to make it beautiful. But let us make it of record and set it down here, in this instrument that the court rose, looked into the great brown eyes and the fair face, and seeing the rich, shameless mouth and blazing color upon the features, did then and there fall down in his heart and worship that mask, and did take the hand that he held in both of his and standing before the woman did cry in a deep voice, full of agony:

“For God’s sake, Margaret, let me come to you now–soon.” And she–the plaintiff in this action gazed at the man who had been the court, but who now was man, and replied:

They walked to the door. The court pressed a button as she left, smiling, and when a man appeared with a note book the court said: “I have something to dictate,” and the next day young Joseph Calvin handed the following news item to the Harvey Times and to the South Harvey Derrick.

“A divorce was granted to-day by Judge Thomas Van Dorn of the district court in chambers to Mrs. Margaret Müller Fenn, from Henry Fenn. Charges of cruel and inhuman treatment filed by the attorneys for Mrs. Fenn were not met by Mr. Fenn and the court granted the decree and it was made absolute. It is understood that a satisfactory settlement of the joint property has been made. Mrs. Fenn will continue to hold the position she has held during the year past as chief clerk in the office of the superintendent of the Harvey Improvement Company. Mr. Fenn is former county attorney and is now engaged in the insurance business, having sold his real estate business to Joseph Calvin this morning.”

And thus the decree of divorce between Henry Fenn and Margaret, his wife, whom God had joined together, was made absolute, and further deponent sayeth not.

But the town of Harvey had more or less to say about the divorce and what the town said, more or less concerned Judge Thomas Van Dorn. For although Henry Fenn sober would not speak of the divorce, Henry Fenn drunk, babbled many quotations about the “rare and radiant maiden, who was lost forever more.” He was also wont to quote the line about the lover who held his mistress “something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.”

But one may say this for Judge Van Dorn: that with all his desire for the approval of his fellows, even in South Harvey, even at the meetings of men who he knew differed with him, he did not flinch from attacking on every occasion and with all his eloquence the unions that Grant Adams was promoting. The idea of mutual help upon which they rested seemed to make Van Dorn see red, and he was forever going out of his way to combat the idea. So bitter was his antagonism to the union idea that in the Valley he and Grant Adams became dramatized in the minds of the men as opponents.

But in Harvey, where men regarded Grant Adams’s activities with tolerant indifference and his high talk of bettering industrial conditions as the madness of youth, Judge Van Dorn was the town’s particular idol.

A handsome man he was as he stood out in the open under the bower made by the trees, and with the grace and charm of true oratory, spoke in his natural voice–a soft, penetrating treble that reached to the furthest man in the crowd; tall, well-built, oval-faced, commanding–a judge every inch of him, even if a young judge–was Tom Van Dorn. And when he had finished speaking at the Harvest Home Picnic, or at the laying of the corner stone of the new Masonic Temple, or at the opening of the Grant County fair, men said:

“Well, I know they say Tom Van Dorn is no Joseph, but all the same I’m here to tell you–” and what they were there to tell you would discourage ladies and gentlemen who believe that material punishments always follow either material or spiritual transgressions.

Day after day, through it all he never slept until in some way, by some device, through some trumped up excuse that seemed plausible enough in itself, he had managed to see and speak to Margaret Fenn. Whether in her office in the Light, Heat & Power Company’s building upon a business errand, and he made plenty of such, or upon the street, or in the court house, where she often went upon some business of her chief, or walking home at evening, or coming down in the morning, or upon rare occasions meeting her clandestinely for a moment, or whether at some social function where they were both present–and it of necessity had to be a large function in that event–for the town could register its disapproval of the woman more easily than it could put its opprobrium upon the man; or whether he spoke to her just a word from the sidewalk as he passed her home, always he managed to see her. Always he had one look into her eyes, and so during all the day, she was in his thoughts. It seems strange that a man of great talents could keep the machinery of his mind going and still have an ever present consciousness of a guilty intrigue. Yet there it was. Until he had seen her and spoken to her, it was his day’s important problem to devise some way to bring about the meeting. So with devilish caution and ponderous circumlocution and craft he went about his daily work, serene in the satisfaction that he was being successful in his elaborate deceit; rather gloating at times in the iniquity of one in his position being in so low a business. He wondered what the people would say if they really knew the depths of his infamy, and when he sentenced a poor devil for some minor crime, he would often watch himself as a third party and wonder if he would ever stand up and take his sentence. But he had no fear of that. The little drama between Judge Van Dorn, the prisoner at the bar, and the lover of Margaret Fenn, was for his diversion, rather than for his instruction, and he enjoyed it as an artistic travesty upon the justice he was dispensing.

At last the whole wretched intrigue dramatized itself in one culminating episode. It came in the spring. Dr. Nesbit had put on his white linens just as the trees were in their first gayety of foliage and the spring blooming flowers were at their loveliest.

After a morning in the dirt and grime and misery and injustice and wickedness that made the outer skin over South Harvey and Foley and Magnus and the mining and smelter towns of the valley, the Doctor came driving into the cool beauty of Quality Hill in Harvey with a middle aged man’s sense of relief. South Harvey and its neighbors disheartened him.

He had seen Grant Adams, a man of the Doctor’s own caste by birth, hurrying into a smelter on some organization errand out of overalls in his cheap, ill-fitting clothes, begrimed, heavy featured, dogged and rapidly becoming a part of the industrial dregs. Grant Adams in the smelter, preoccupied with the affairs of that world, and passing definitely into it forever, seemed to the Doctor symbolic of the passing of the America he understood (and loved), into an America that discouraged him. But the beauty and the calm and the restful elm-bordered lawns of Harvey always toned up his spirits. Here, he said to himself was the thing he had helped to create. Here was the town he had founded and cherished. Here were the people whom he really loved–old neighbors, old friends, dear in associations and sweet in memories.

He lifted her high to his shoulder, and came up the porch steps laughing: “Here come jest and youthful jollity, my dear,” and stooping with his grandchild in his arms, kissed the beautiful woman before him.

“Some one is mighty sweet this morning,” and then seeing a package beside her asked: “What’s this–” looking at the address and the sender’s name. “Some one been getting a new dress?”

The child pulling at her mother’s skirts renewed her bleat for food. When Lila had been disposed of Laura sat by her father, took his fat, pudgy hand and said:

“Father, I don’t know what to do; do you mind talking some things over with me. I suppose I should have been to see you anyway in a few days. Have we time to go clear to the bottom of things now?”

She looked up at him with a serious, troubled face, and patted his hand. He felt instinctively the shadow that was on her heart, and his face may have winced. She saw or knew without seeing, the tremor in his soul.

“Poor father–but you know it must come sometime. Let us talk it all out now.”

He nodded his head. He did not trust his voice.

“Well, father dear,” she said slowly. She nodded at the package–a long dress box beside the porch post.

“So there we are.”

The Doctor patted his foot in silence, then replied:

“My poor, poor child–my poor little girl,” and added with a heavy sigh: “And poor Tom–Laura–poor, foolish, devil-ridden Tom.” She assented with her eyes. At the end of a pause she said with anguish in her voice:

“And when we began it was all so beautiful–so beautiful–so wonderful. Of course I’ve known for a long time–ever since before Lila came that it was slipping. Oh, father–I’ve known; I’ve seen every little giving of the tie that bound us, and in my heart deep down, I’ve known all–all–everything–all the whole awful truth–even if I have not had the facts as you’ve had them–you and mother–I suppose.”

“You’re my fine, brave girl,” cried her father, patting her trembling hand. But he could speak no further.

“Oh, no, I’m not brave–I’m not brave,” she answered. “I’m a coward. I have sat by and watched it all slip away, watched him getting further and further from me, saw my hold slipping–slipping–slipping, and saw him getting restless. I’ve seen one awful–” she paused, shuddered, and cried, “Oh, you know, father, that other dreadful affair. I saw that rise, burn itself out and then this one–” she turned away and her body shook.

In a minute she was herself: “I’m foolish I suppose, but I’ve never talked it out before. I won’t do it again. I’m all right now.” She took his hands and continued:

The little pink face of the Doctor began to harden. His big blue eyes began to look through narrow slits in his eyelids, and the pudgy, white-clad figure stood erect. The daughter’s voice broke and as she gripped herself the father reached his bristling pompadour and cried in wrath, “Let him burn–let him burn, girl–hell’s too good for him!”

His voice was high and harsh and merciless. It restored the woman’s poise and she shook her head sorrowfully as she resumed:

“I can’t bear to see it; I–I want to shield him–I must–if I can.” A tremor ran through her again. She caught hold of herself, then went on more calmly. “But things can’t go on this way. Here is this box–”

“Child–child,” cried the Doctor angrily, “you come right home–right home,” he piped with rising wrath. “Right home to mother and me.”

The father turned an impatient face to his daughter, and retorted, “You won’t–you won’t leave that miserable cur–that–that woman hunting dog–won’t leave–”