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Rh shape committed to writing, as “German Books,” in the ninth or rather in the eighth,—we have still to add the probability of their being “ancient songs,” even at that earliest date; all which may perhaps carry us back into the seventh or even sixth century; yet not farther, inasmuch as certain of the poetic personages that figure in them belong historically to the fifth.

Other and more open proof of antiquity lies in the fact, that these Traditions are so universally diffused. There are Danish and Icelandic versions of them, externally more or less altered and distorted, yet substantially real copies, professing indeed to be borrowed from the German; in particular we have the “Niflinga” and the “Wilkina Saga,” composed in the thirteenth century, which still in many ways illustrate the German original. Innumerable other songs and sagas point more remotely in the same direction. Nay, as Von der Hagen informs us, certain rhymed tales, founded on these old adventures, have been recovered from popular recitation, in the Faroe Islands, within these few years.

If we ask now, What lineaments of Fact still exist in these Traditions; what are the Historical events and persons which our primeval Mythuses have here united with, and so strangely metamorphosed? the answer is unsatisfactory enough. The great Northern Immigrations, unspeakably momentous and glorious as they were for the Germans, have wellnigh faded away utterly from all vernacular records. Some traces, nevertheless, some names and dim shadows of occurrences in that grand movement, still linger here; which, in such circumstances, we gather with avidity. There can be no doubt, for example, but this “Etzel, king of Hunland,” is the Attila of history; several of whose real achievements and relations are faintly yet still recognizably pictured forth in these Poems. Thus his first queen is named Halke, and in the Scandinavian versions, Herka; which last (Erca) is also the name that Priscus gives her, in the well-known account of his embassy to Attila. Moreover, it is on his second marriage, which had in fact so mysterious and tragical a character,


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NAME FOR MARKING.

NEW STYLES OF FALL CLOAKS.


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 'daL


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lxiv that the whole catastrophe of the “Nibelungen” turns. It is true, the “Scourge of God” plays but a tame part here; however, his great acts, though all past, are still visible in their fruits: besides, it is on the Northern or German personages that the tradition chiefly dwells.

Taking farther into account the general “Cycle,” or System of Northern Tradition, whereof this “Nibelungen” is the centre and keystone, there is, as indeed we saw in the “Heldenbuch,” a certain Kaiser Ottnit and a Dietrich of Bern; to whom also it seems unreasonable to deny historical existence. This Bern (Verona), as well as the Rabenschlacht (Battle of Ravenna), is continually figuring in these fictions; though whether under Ottnit we are to understand Odoacer the vanquished, and under Dietrich of Bern Theodoricus Veronensis, the victer both at Verona and Ravenna, is by no means so indubitable. Chronological difficulties stand much in the way. For our Dietrich of Bern, as we saw in the “Nibelungen,” is represented as one of Etzel’s Champions: now Attila died about the year 450; and this Ostrogeth Theodoric did not fight his great Battle at Verona till 489; that of Ravenna, which was followed by a three years’ siege, happening next year. So that before Dietrich could become Dietrich of Bern, Etzel had been gone almost half a century from the scene. Startled by this anachronism, some commentators have fished out another Theodoric, eighty years prior to him of Verona, and who actually served in Attila’s hosts, with a retinue of Goths and Germans; with which new Theodoric, however, the old Ottnit, or Odoacer, of the “Heldenbuch” must, in his turn, part company; whereby the case is no whit mended. Certain it


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CHARLES SANGSTER,


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Richard the Third, III. i

York. Well, my dear lord; so must I call you now.

Prince. Ay, brother, to our grief, as it is yours:

Too late he died that might have kept that title,

Which by his death hath lost much majesty.

Rich. How fares our cousin, noble Lord of York?

York. I thank you, gentle uncle. O, my lord,

You said that idle weeds are fast in growth:

The prince my brother hath outgrown me far.

Rich. He hath, my lord.

York. And therefore is he idle?

Rich. O, my fair cousin, I must not say so.

York. Then he is more beholding to you than I.

Rich. He may command me as my sovereign;

But you have power in me as in a kinsman.

York. I pray you, uncle, give me this dagger.

Rich. My dagger, little cousin? with all my heart.

Prince. A beggar, brother?

York. Of my kind uncle, that I know will give;

And, being but a toy, which is no grief to give.

Rich. A greater gift than that I'll give my cousin.

York. A greater gift! O, that's the sword to it.

Rich. Ay, gentle cousin, were it light enough.

York. O, then, I see, you'll part but with light gifts;

In weightier things you'll say a beggar nay.

Rich. It is too weighty for your Grace to wear.

York. I weigh it lightly, were it heavier.

Rich. What! would you have my weapon, little lord?

York. I would, that I might thank you, as you call me.

Rich. How?

York. Little.

Prince. My Lord of York will still be cross in talk.

Uncle, your Grace knows how to bear with him.

 97 dear; cf. n.

99 late: lately

114 toy: trifle

126 cross: given to opposition

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 For the ſoule beeing the bodyes lyfe is the watch by the which the bodyes expreſſeth the workes of nature, charged for a time while the bodye is apparaunt: the courſe runne, the ſoul: retourneth ſubiect to motions diuerſe, by higher Angells.

They be ſtirred vp by the loue of God in themſelues, and be formed by ward of them, and paſſe forward vnder themſelues by defence of them that they ſhal rule. Theſe Angells haue many manner effects: For the Angells that bée ordeined ſingularly to our kéeping, pricke vs to good, and wake vs that we ſleepe not in ſinnes and in vices. ''Act. 12.'' Alſo they refreſh vs Ghoſtlye, that we fall not vnder the burthen of the way into our countrie. ''3. Reg. 9.'' Alſo they put off fiendes, that they hurt vs not. ''Tobie. 8'' And they informe vs in doubts, & make vs certeine. ''Dan. 11. 10.'' Alſo an Angell leadeth vs that we wander not out of the way. ''Tobie. 5. Exod. 32.'' Alſo hee commeth to vs and comforteth vs in ſorrowe and in woe. ''Luke. 23. Gen. 16. Where it is read that an Angell comforted Agar'' that wept full ſore: alſo they haue compaſſion of vs when wée ſinne, leaſt we fall in diſpaire and vaine hope. ''Eſay. 24. Iudic. 2.'' And they aſſiſt vs quicklye leaſt wée ſhoulde fall. Eſay. 24. And they helpe vs againſt enimyes that wée bée not ouercome. ''Gen. 32. & ſecundo Macohebrum penul.'' Alſo they heale our woundes that wée dye not.

Tobities. And they bring our ſinnes to minde, that we ſhould be aſhamed thereof. Ioſu. 2. And they warne vs of Gods will, that we maye doe thereafter. Luke. 2. And they put awaye lets, that wée may ſerue our Lord, ''Exod. 23. Sed precedet te, &c.'' And they viſite vs oft, and warne vs, that we treſpaſſe not. Eſay. 40. Secundum penam, &c. And they bée always in the preſence of God to haue contemplation. ''Luke. 1. & Dan. 7. Decres centena millia, &c.'' Alſo in prayeng they get vs remiſſion. ''Iob. 33. Sicut fuerie.'' And they ceaſe neuer to worſhippe and praiſe God. ''Eſay. 6. Apoc. 5. Non habient reqdiem, &c.''

And they behold God face to face without vaile put betwéene. ''Mat. 18. Angeli corum, &c.'' And in their ſubſtance and vertue, they bée not grieued with the weight or peiſe of the bodie. ''Luke. vlti. Spiritus carnem et oſſa, &c.'' Alſo hée is aboue tune, and worketh in time. For as Dems ſaith, the ſecret vnderſtanding of an Angell is like to God, and worketh ſodeinly. Therefore he vnderſtandeth and knoweth ſodeinly without circumſtaunce or conference of one thing to an other: and by the vertue of his ſubſtance he doth all his déeds in one inſtant: an inſtaunt is a during that abideth not. For an inſtaunt is, and neuer was, neyther ſhall bee. The Philoſopher calleth an Angell Intelligencia: and in Libro de Cauſis, it is written, That an Angell is made in the Orizont of time, and eternitie euerlaſting. ''TREVISA. Orizont is a ſtraunge tearme and much vſed in Aſtronomie: and to inquire and knowe, what the Orizont'' ſignifieth, take héede if a man ſtand on a great hill, either in a great plaine and large, ſo that hee ſée the Firmament or Skye all about without anye lette, hée ſhall ſéeme that the Skye toucheth the earth all about him on euerye ſide, and that a Circle of the Skie compaſſeth the earth all abouts, as farre as his ſight comprehendeth. That Circle is called Orizont, and is the middle Circle betwéen the parte that we ſée of Heauen, and the part that wée ſee not: and this Circle is betweene the foreſayde partes, and is the neathermoſt of that one, and ouermoſt of that other: and ſo is Angells kinde and mankinde ouer thoſe thinges that hée made, and paſſe, and fall by paſſing of time, and neuer in degrée of euerlaſting.

Then conſider of the endleſſe greatneſſe of God, that euer was, and euer ſhall bée, without beginning and without ending. For euerys Angell ſhall but euer without ending: and no Angell than euer without beginning: for euery Angell was made. Alſo if men bee affraide with the ſodeine preſence of an Angell, conſider that a good Angell giveth comforte vnto them, with ſwéete dooinges, and

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 ſwéete ſhewings, as ſaith ''Ambroſe. Lu. 1.ibi. Ve timeas Zacharias, &c. A fiend or euill Angell doth the contrarye, for whome he affraieth with his preſence, he ſmiteth them with more dreadfull feare, as ſaith Ambroſe.'' Alſo an Angell is ſeene when he will. And when he will he is hid from mans ſight, as ſaith S. Ambroſe in the ſame place. Alſo an Angell when he will taketh a bodye couenable to his working, that he maye bée ſéene: and when he hath done his office, he ſeaueth that body that he tooke. ''Iud. 14. Euanuit, &c. And the ſpirit of the Lord began to ſtrengthen him in the hoſt of Dan, And the ſpirit of the Lord came vppon him, and hee went downe to Aſcalon.'' Alſo though an Angell tooke a body for any needfull dooing, hée doth not quicken that bodye, neither giueth thereto lyfe, but onely he moueth it. And ſo ſometime it ſeemeth, that hée eateth and drinketh as a man, and yet be eateth not neither drinketh: But by his might he deſtroieth and waſheth the meate, as appeareth. ''Tobie. 12.'' Where it is ſaid. It ſeemed that the Angell eate & dranke, &c. Alſo an Angell eateth for no néede, but only by might. For as Auſten ſaith vpon Luke, the laſt Chapter. The Sunne beame waſteth the water by might, but the earth ſwalloweth by neceſſitie, And ſo eating was by might touching the ſhewing of the meate and the waſting, but it was not néedfull to the féeding of the body. So theſe light things and plaine, that be ſaid of good Angelles ſhall ſuffice at this time.

¶ Of euill Angells. Chap. 19.
As a good Angell is giuen to men for helpe and kéeping, ſo to euerye man is giuen an euill Angell to aſſailing & attempting. The head of theſe euill ſpirites and leader, is Lucifer, the which as Gregory ſaith, hath that ſame, for he was made more cléere and height then other Angells. For the firſt Angell was beautified as a precious ſtone for whileſt he was aboue all the companies of Angells, by compariſon he was the more bright and cléere then they. But he waring proud againſt his Creator, loſt light and cléereneſſe, and faireneſſe: and as he was worthy, he gate him a foule darke ſhape of Apoſtacie. Thereof ſpeaketh ''Damas. li. 1. Chap. 18.'' Of theſe vertues of Angelles, he that was aboue other, and to whome God had committed the charge of the earth, was not made euill by kind, but good, and of the maker, no fire of maltice in himſelfe, not ſuffering the illumination and worſhip, that the maker had giuen him: by election and choiſe of his owne frée aduiſement, hée turned out of kinde into a thing that is aboue kinde: and became a rebel againſt God, and failing of the firſt good, came into euill. Et infra. He was of the creator made light, and by his owne will he became darkneſſe. Alſo with him was ſent out an endleſſe multitude of Angels, that followed him, and were ordeined vnder him, and wilfullye became euill, and fell out of good into euill. Alſo it is ſayd, that they haue no power neither vertue againſt men, except it be graunted by the diſpoſition and ſufferaunce of God: But by ſufferance of God they diſguiſe themſelues, and take what manner Image, figure, or ſhape them liketh. Then it ſeemeth that all mallice and vncleane thoughts come of their dooing, the which they may put in mans thought: But they may not doe to: men by violence & ſtrength. Alſo that death of men is a chaunge of life, the alterations of Angels loſſe of ſon. After fliding, Angels lack the cléere proſēce of God, as after death men lacke life. Hetherto be Damaſcenes words. Alſo Gregory ſaith, that grace hath forſaken him, and he abideth obſtinate in mallice, ſo that by his will, hee will nothing that is good. He hath frée aduiſement, but it is borne downe, and bendeth alway to euill, without ceaſing: So that alway he forſaketh the good and chooſeth the euill. Therefore it happened as Caſſidore ſayth, he willed and coueted to vſurp ouer the Godhead; and therby loſt proſperitie: alſo becauſe he in an vndue manner coueted highneſſe, that belonged not to him, therefore by a right decrée he fell downe into a lowe place.

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John Hubbard's Husbands

OT five minutes ago a pair of horses with their ears in white clattered away from our door and round the corner. The last glimpse I had of Thomas L. Gilmore, my husband of an hour, he was assisting a blushing young lady who calls me brother into the wedding coach. The circumstances were peculiar and not without their element of pathos. Legally Jenny is his wife, but morally he was pledged to me. Though I am of the male sex I nave little doubt that I could get damages out of him for breach of promise of marriage. It was I, John Hubbard, whom he wooed and won. A score of times has he intimated to me by letter-post that I am the noblest of the other sex. Through the same convenient medium he has admitted an unaccountable but undoubtedly genuine yearning to kiss the hem of my garment (why the hem?), witting not that I have no garment of the kind he means, and consequently no hem to kiss. Otherwise T. L. Gilmore would ere this have been allowed to gratify his passion. I am still able to produce, in a court of justice, a copy of the note in which, after admitting that he was not wholly indifferent to me, I referred him to my mother. But of course I have no intention of making things unpleasant for him. He has taken Jenny with him believing her to be another, so no blame can attach to him. There is no probability of his ever discovering the mistake, unless I give him a hint, and I have already surrendered all claims to him. Yet a rush of thoughts, too turbulent for utterance, well up to my mouth as I take my last look of a husband who must never know me. He is my third. The pathetic and the practical are strangely blended in this life of ours. Gulping my emotions, I take a steady aim with a high-heeled slipper and stove in Thomas L. Gilmore's hat. It is curious that I should find a relief in this. Yet I would that we had parted otherwise than thus.

When the rumble of the wheels died away, I did not return to the wedding breakfast. There was something distasteful about it to me now, and I felt that the congratulatory toasts would fall fulsomely on my ear. The company, of course, laboured under the same misapprehension as the bridegroom. Slipping past the hum of speech-making, I escaped upstairs, and found myself in the room where we had first met. Why my feet should have carried me there I have not the most remote conception, unless it was because the house is of limited dimensions. It would be absurd to say that sentiment had anything to do with it. I may as well say at once that I never cared the smallest of silver coins for Thomas L. Gilmore. Good honest fellow, how well I remember that day, and what an ass I thought him! He sat in the armchair by the window on the antimacassar that my dear mother spreads so carefully over it to hide the rent in the velvet, and gaped at Jenny. I always wondered what men saw in Jenny, though she undoubtedly could pin herself artfully together. They should have seen her ten minutes after they left the house, for in the privacy of the domestic circle Jenny liked her ease, and began to take out the pins the moment the front door closed. At this time Thomas L. Gilmore wore sensible kid gloves, a great improvement on the things he afterwards carried about with him. They, however, were a gift from Jenny, who sent them to him with a note saying that "every stitch in them was worked with her love." It was my other sister, Susy, who sewed them. In our family, you see, we play into each other's hands, and Susy does the sewing. She is the kind of girl that fellows think would make a fine wife for other fellows.

Jenny was at the piano floundering through a march in something, and foolish Thomas L. Gilmore clutched his hands in a nervous ecstasy. It was a daring thing in Jenny to do to try him with music the very first time he had been in the house, for her playing is perhaps the worst thing she does. On the other hand, she has a neat little back, which goes off in shakes and trembles at the slightest provocation, and it shows well on a piano-stool. When T. L. Gilmore ventured a small joke, for making which I had myself been taken to task by Jenny earlier in the day, that innocent little back went into convulsions. This daring experiment of Jenny's was warranted by results. He was a "gentleman farmer," and had come to us with an introduction, two things that perhaps justified my little sister—I am told that Thomas L. Gilmore calls her "Baby"—in putting him to the test at once. Though I am only in my twentieth year, the other two husbands whom I have morally married have, of course, made a cynic Of me, and I already took a far greater interest in Thomas—as he used to sign himself—than he, at this early stage in our acquaintance, took in me. I had been invited upstairs with an eye to business—after Jenny had had him for a little while to herself—and I took in the situation at a glance. My cue at such a time is to say certain pre-arranged sarcastic things to Jenny, so that she may wither me up with pre-arranged smart replies. This is found useful where the victim has, or is supposed to have, a sense of humour. An occasional quarrel excepted, Jenny and I are really the best of friends, and always ready to give each other a lift. It is an understood thing in our family that none of the girls can get married without my assistance. I had already a splendid reputation to look back upon—even though we had missed fire once or twice—and Jenny's time had now evidently come. In our family the girls are the anglers, as it were, but I carry the gaff.

Well, that was our first meeting, and I give it this space because though there was nothing very remarkable about it, so much came of it. It is natural that one should dwell fondly on his first meeting with his third husband. I still feel Thomas L. Gilmore taking my hand in his, and holding it a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. When I heard him clanging the garden gate, I made a bolt for the pantry, just in time to catch Jenny—who is a die-away young thing in company—making off with the cold roast beef.

So far, it must be admitted, Jenny had done the running for herself, and I would be romancing did I pretend that Thomas L. Gilmore was already enamoured of her brother. It was not until he left our pleasant little country town, and returned to the farm, which another man managed for him, that his feelings underwent a change. In other words, for this is what it amounts to, I did not step into the arena until the time for the letter-writing came. Letter-writing is my strong point, and none of our girls happens to be good at it. You may, of course, say that Jenny should not have been writing to a man to whom she was not yet by any means "engaged." I have neither time no inclination to argue that point. What I wish to emphasize is that when the man to whom I now bear such a curious relation left us, he had been "struck" by Jenny, but no more. Her letters to him completed the business, and as I wrote them while she only copied them, it is plain that though this mixes things a little up, it was John Hubbard to whom he ultimately made an offer of the hand which Jenny Hubbard accepted. This will become more and more obvious as you read on.

Considered strictly from the artistic point of view, I am less proud of Thomas L. Gilmore than of some of my earlier conquests. I had brought at least one of them to my feet without even seeing him at all, while I had considerable opportunity of experimenting upon Gilmore before we took to corresponding. When Jenny, for instance, was to take him out for a walk, she would come to me beforehand, and I would put her up to a good thing. The time being autumn, and Thomas evidently a man of sentiment, I sent them strolling in a wood, where they would be compelled to wade through beds of rustling leaves. Jenny had then directions to look around her sadly, and murmur as if to herself, but still just loud enough for him to hear, something about—

As she had no memory, I found it unadvisable to give her more than one of those at a time, in case she should stick in the middle of them, or fire them off prematurely in order to relieve her mind; but it is wonderful how far a couplet a day will go, and Gilmore never knew that the reason why Jenny was so comparatively silent during these walks was because she was saying her quotation over and over to herself. He conceived the notion that she was steeped in poetry just like himself, and that the beauty of Nature made her sad. Milly's husband has the same idea of Milly, and Nell's of Nell. If the three couples should ever happen to go for a walk in a wood late in the year, I have no doubt that force of habit would make the three dear little women all murmur at the same time—

In all kinds of letter-writing I am equally at home. Where it is convenient, I prefer before beginning, it is true, to know something of my correspondent, even though it be nothing more than his views on the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, or the way he divides his hair. But if such information is not forthcoming, I generally know my man after his first letter has been handed over to me. I classify my husbands—her possibilities, Jenny called them—into the Humorous, the Domesticated, and the Sentimental; and I find that so far all the gentlemen with whom I have corresponded with a view to matrimony have fallen under one or other of these heads. Thus the gentleman who, knowing no better, calls Milly his wife, affords us an interesting instance of the Humorous. My most jocular letters to him were masterpieces in their way, and did their work in a very short time. In his answers, which were also full of merry conceits, he used to say that Milly was the cleverest and wittiest girl he had ever met, and that he had taken the liberty of showing her last note to a friend, who had nearly gone into hysterics over it. Milly's reply to his entreaty that she (meaning me) would be his was read aloud to the family before she copied it out for transmission, and was generally looked upon as worthy of the occasion. I was glad to see Milly married and fairly off my hands, however, for she has no sense of humour, and was the cause of constant anxiety to me lest she should miss out the joke now and then, and so perhaps spoil everything at the eleventh hour. I always looked over her copy carefully before it was sent off, and sometimes insisted on her rewriting it. This I found was the only way of ensuring accuracy.

With Mr. Philip Tomlinson, again, who thinks Nell is his wife, I had to pursue other tactics. He was never long in your company without telling you bluntly, whatever your sex, that he was a practical man, who, if he married at all, would choose a wife who would make him a comfortable home. A pretty face he scorned, but he admired a girl who could make dumplings and enjoyed working a sewing-machine. Nell is not just the young person I would have selected myself if I had only been on the look-out for a housekeeper; yet Nell is Mrs. Tomlinson now. This is how we managed Philip. First of all, Nell created a good impression by rushing to the garden when it was announced that Philip's rotund figure could be seen approaching, and being there discovered pulling up weeds. Not knowing certain flowers from weeds, Nell made a terrible mess of the garden, but we felt that, as this was her chance, considerable allowances should be made. The relief in the house, however, was general when Nelly gave up the garden and took Philip indoors. It was now her part to rush off from the drawing-room every little while to see that the scones were not burning, or to talk with the butcher's boy about the leg of mutton he had brought by mistake the day before yesterday. Nell even wanted to make a cake and give Philip some of it with his tea, but the others of us thought that this would be risking too much; so she had to content herself with talking about the cake and answering the door when Philip called, with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows. She had dimpled arms, Nell, and they looked well and business-like covered with flour. When she found, to her consternation, that the caller was Philip, she had of course to blush and explain that she was making a cake. The worst thing about Nell was that she ventured too much, and occasionally startled Philip into looking for his hat by some such injudicious remark as that if she had a horse she would feed him on oats, as they were so much cheaper than corn. However, the letter-writing allayed all his fears, and Philip is one of us now.

The agricultural columns in the newspapers were a great assistance to me in my correspondence with Philip. If it happened to be raining when I wrote to him in the furtherance of Nell's interests, I expressed a fear that the potato crop would suffer. In the same circumstances, when I was courting Milly's husband, I would have remarked that really it was time for a special commission to be appointed to inquire into the state of the weather. My versatility is indeed surprising. In the Philip period I posed as an authority on soup-kitchens, furniture polish, cooking, the trimming of hats, tract distributing, the making of preserves, &c. I never began a letter without having to admit that I had spent the morning in dusting the back parlour or making a pie, and I had always to break off suddenly in case the pancakes were burning. No wonder that Philip was unable to stand it long, and was always writing to me (nominally to Nell) to hasten the happy day. The whole affair was an artistic triumph, mainly owing to Nelly's good sense in putting herself entirely into my hands. Even the quantity of kisses sent was strictly in accordance with my directions.

As I was always a little inclined to the sentimental, less credit is perhaps due to me for my manipulation of Thomas L. Gilmore. Thomas is sentimental even to morbidness, and used to be so carried away by the beauty of my figures of speech that he answered me in verse. These effusions were addressed to Jenny, but of course that was because the author knew no better. In my answers I always told him which lines I liked best, and hoped he would not be angry though I tried to set them to music. Ho said that he would not be angry. Many a pretty thing have I said to T. L. Gilmore about the brevity of life, and the silent tomb, and hearts that beat as one. He has to this day documentary evidence that his "Reflections on the Dying Year" (privately printed) affected me to tears, and that I loved him from the first moment I saw him. I have hinted to him that if he was untrue to me it would break the heart I long ago entrusted to his keeping, and he knows that the rest of the world is nothing to me so long as he is by my side. He has gratified me more than he can think by saying that though his mother was at first adverse to the match, my beautiful letter in which I beseeched her for a little, a very little of her love, for her noble son's sake, has completely brought her round. Jenny had fifty wedding gifts, and thanked every donor in a suitable manner to my dictation. To the young ladies I was artlessly gushing, to the young gentlemen maddeningly formal; the old ladies I almost made to cry by my beautiful references to the days when they too were young, and with the bald-headed men I fear I flirted. As I sit here in the room where I have so frequently wooed and won, within sound of the merry-making downstairs, and sadly light my pipe with Thomas's "Elegy written on a Rotten Tree-trunk," a soft melancholy steals over me and I lean my head upon my hands.

At long intervals I pay a brief visit to my husbands, with feelings that can be more easily imagined than expressed. At such times it is all I can do to keep from bursting into a passion of tears. If they only knew! It affords me food for reflection to note that Philip thinks he has got the most domesticated of wives, and that Milly keeps her reputation a a humorist. But it is when their dear little children crawl up my legs and amuse themselves tearing the buttons off my coat that I feel my position most keenly. What is my relation to these little babbling creatures? They call me uncle, but I am no ordinary uncle to them. Crushing my handkerchief into my eyes to conceal my emotion I lay them in a heap on the floor, and seizing my hat wander off in the direction of my solitary chambers.

title: John Hubbard's Husbands


text: Talk:John Hubbard's Husbands

title: Talk:John Hubbard's Husbands


text:
Author:Charles Sangster

 * Charles Sangster (1822–1893), Canadian poet
 * Charles Sangster (fl. 1839), poet and student who won the Cambridge University Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1839.

title: Author:Charles Sangster


text:
When the Snow Melts

OPHEAVY banks of congealed snow make a funnel of the dripping path between my highland school-house and the high road. Taking to-day a telescopic view down its dreary length, I saw it close in for the first time this week on a speck of black. It proved to be no lost crow, but a human being. Like a blind man restored to sight, I watched this growing blotch of colour in a white world, wading kneedeep through the yielding slush. As he jumped and wriggled his way to the school-house, through the slough of sloppy snow, that met with a drowning gluck as he drew his feet out of it, like a disappointed crocodile snapping at a swimmer, I recognized the clerk of the board. He had taken advantage of the thaw to wade his way to me with the news that the inspector had fixed the examination for the beginning of the month. That was stealing a valuable fortnight from me; but measles had broken out at Tirl, where he would otherwise have been, and the inspector had to take it out of some one. My face blanked, I daresay, as the clerk showed me the intimation in its official envelope, and I already saw my outspoken Fellow of Oxford invading the glen in his overpowering carriage and pair.

The clerk would have been pounds lighter could he have shaken his feet out of the shapeless lumps of muddy snow that hugged his boots. As it was, some of the crust fell off to his vigorous stamping, and the rest he dragged after him into the school-house. I had four pupils: my own boy, Waster Lunny's little girl, and two more toddlers from another farm. The clerk surveyed them quizzically, lost behind their squeaking slates among clammy desks that had forgotten the prick of boys' gully knives, and shook his head. He tried to speak, bat the echo from the empty room startled him into silence, and we went to the kitchen. The loss of the Government grant stared me in the face. To hold my hands over the fire was to see it vanishing up the chimney in smoke. I laced my boots with a heavy heart, determined to take the advice of the board, as conveyed by the clerk, and canvass the farms in person. The farmers might be again persuaded to yoke their idle horses and bring the children through the slush in carts. This mode of conveyance had been abandoned two winter's before, after Tullin's stallion and cart got stuck in a howe of snow, from which the children were rescued one by one by Waster Lunny's on horseback.

The crusted snow in the fields sinks sulkily under our feet (for all the crispness has been taken from it by the thaw), leaving room for a dark film of water, as we work our way down to the ford. One of Waster Lunny's hens, that had distinguished itself earlier in the year by throttling a hungry rat in the henhouse, accompanies us to the limits of the farmer's domain, but cannot be induced to trespass, and our weariest work begins when we reach the river. Winter drowns the stepping-stones by which the swivelling stream is easily crossed in the parched months, and except when there are horse and cart to rumble recklessly over the slipping sand and gravel, there is nothing for it but to wade. The farmers of the district have provided a pair of stilts on which acrobats can ford the rush of water with dry shoes, but our diligent search for them is unsuccessful, and my experience tells me why. They are doubtless hid away among the whins on the other side by some selfish ploughman, in anticipation of his return journey. The clerk plunges boldly into the water, glad to have the slush washed from his cheeping boots at whatever cost, and I follow, with mine dangling round my neck. The white bank is dotted with grey holes, showing where human feet have broken its surface without reaching earth. Evidently mankind is beginning to move about again.

In dark places the trees have melted the snow as it touched them. Their trunks show damp and sodden, the ruts overcharged with a wet green dust, but the palings they insufficiently protect have soft white tops, and it is by them we drag ourselves from farm to farm. At each a cheery welcome. To wile away an hour from the listless farmer is to offer a big bribe for his children. All agree that an effort must be made to have the bairns at the school-house on the examination day, but they shake their heads at the sky when I insist that without regular attendance we are lost. The parents could talk by the hour of the intellectual powers of their boys and girls, but will not risk their lives to save my specific subjects. A promise is at last drawn from some of them to send a cartload of children down to the ford on the morrow, if there be no further fall of snow. The understanding is that Waster Lunny's cart meets them there and carries them to the school-house.

The farms are scattered over the hillsides, squat and silent in the general whiteness. It is afternoon by the time we leave Whinstanes and cut the elbow of the glen where it turns sharply to the right and runs its head into a gully. To us who have fished the river until you lose it in a wilderness of morass, the road presents no special danger, though it is felt rather than seen. Water trickles down the rocks of sandstone, perforating the snowy sheet at their base, and the stream, running deep, squeezes its way between narrow scars. The general effect, even on a sunny days, is depressing and damp. To-day the threatening cliffs scowl across the water into each other's face, suggesting the explosion that must follow if the jammed water were to freeze; and we remember the legend of the girl who fell over the rocks to her death, on her way to market, without any of the eggs being broken in the descent. There is a swirl of water higher up the glen that fascinated the earl's mother-in-law into taking a shower-bath in its reeking foam. At the farm of Brunt Braes, for which the clerk and I were bent, they show the ropes by which she was dangled in mid air across the linn.

Brunt Braes is standing helplessly near his door as we cross the steading dyke, his long face showing red against his good wife's "washing," that hangs hard and brittle from the ropes. The thaw has not been sufficiently keen to soften the linen stiffened by nature's starch. The farmer is a decent man, cursed with a scientific leaning that had brought water-pipes into the house, to burst with the approach of a thaw and flood his house. A monster hole in the swaying ceiling, down which a continuous rush of water, carrying woodwork and plaster in its headlong course, splashes to the parlour floor, gapes over swimming chairs and tables; and all Brunt Braes can do is to wring his hands and tell bis frantic womenkind to "sweep it up." His exasperated wife, too excited to stay with us in the kitchen, finally pushes him out of doors, and we strike down the brae to the manse without further parley. In the circumstances it would be mockery to mention the examination, and we are footsore and weary. A lighted candle stuck by some mischievous boy in the window of a gaunt tower that stands shelterless in a field, though itself a shelter to shivering cattle, winks in the darkness to the wind; the sun has long since sunk behind the hills, and the manse in its ring of cottages stands out invitingly in the night. The snow fast loses its colour.

The minister's story of life at the top of the glen bodes ill for my school attendance. In two Sabbaths the kirk door-key did not leave its rusty nail in the manse library and an attempt at service on the third nearly ended tragically. As the handful of worshippers and their dogs, not one for every dozen pews, were on the point of filing out, a mountain of snow clattered down the roof and fell with a thud on the doorstep. A moment later, and men and women would have been buried. The parishioners stood with their hearts in their mouths, and then, to the whining of their dogs, followed the minister out by the vestry. Later in the evening I cross the road for the key, thought to have been left in the kirk door, and in groping for it my hand strikes a hanging rope. In the still night the bell clangs shrilly, and the ghostly hills murmur in their sleep. The uncanny cry goes from ben to ben round the dreaming glen. I stand as if turned to stone. In the crumbling keep the light blinks itself to death. I sleep at the manse.

title: When the Snow Melts


text: Talk:When the Snow Melts

title: Talk:When the Snow Melts


text:
An Auld Licht Minister

EVER was there a man more uncomfortably loved than our minister. Easie Haggart, his maid-servant, reproved him at the breakfast table. Old wives and grey-beards grumbled by their hearths when he did not look in to despair of their salvation. The maidens of his congregation he told to beware lest they made an idol of him. His two leading elders saw him in conversation with a strange woman, and asked him, in an anonymous letter, if he remembered that he had a wife. Twenty were his years when be came among us, and he knocked a board out of the pulpit the first Sabbath. Before beginning his trial sermon he handed the big Bible down to the precentor to give his arms freer swing. The congregation, in a tremble of excitement, probed his meaning. Not a square inch of paper could be concealed there. Mr. Dishart had hardly any hope for the Auld Lichts. He had none for any other body. Davit Lunan got behind his handkerchief to take a pinch of snuff, and he was on him like a tiger. The call was unanimous. Lunan proposed him.

Every few years the Auld Licht gave way, so to speak, and buried the minister. The congregation turned its empty pockets inside out, and the pastor departed in a farmer's cart. To the Auld Lichts was there the humiliation of seeing their pulpit supplied on alternate Sabbaths by itinerant probationers and. But when they were not starving themselves to support a pastor, they were saving up for a stipend. They retired with compressed lips to their looms and weaved till they weaved another minister. Without the grief of parting with one pastor, there could not be the excitement of choosing another. To have had a minister with them always would have puffed them up.

The Auld Lichts were seldom more than twelve months in making a selection, and in their haste they would have passed our Mr. Dishart and mated with a monster. So many years have elapsed since a providential hand tore the mask from Mr. Watts's face, that no near relative can survive to be pained by a recital of the circumstances. Mr. Watts was a probationer who had occasionally supplied the pulpit, and though not so young as might have been wished (for he had now reached four-and-twenty years), he was seemly in Auld Licht eyes. It was a bumpy parish, and the dominie called approving attention to the way he lifted his legs. He came to Croup with a great reputation, having once on the fast-day refused a token to his wife; and there seemed to be good stuff in a preacher who stopped his sermon to thunder forth, "Sluggard in the laft, awake!" But a breeze from heaven exposed him on Communion Sabbath.

On the evening of this most solemn day the door of the Auld Licht kirk was closed, and the congregation, instead of hobbling to their worn, shining seats, trooped, with their Bibles in their hands, down the Tanage brae. They had a prescriptive right to the public common, or commonty, on Communion Sabbath, and they were not given to miss their chances. It was the Covenanters come back to life. To the summit of the slope a wooden box was slowly hauled by the Auld Licht Session, and round this reverent Auld Lichts and interested outsiders quietly grouped. The sun, drawing itself together in the heavens, no longer intruded on the commonty, and all the braes and houses echoed the cracked and agitated Auld Licht bell.

With slow, majestic tread, the Session advanced up the sloping award, with the boyish minister in its midst, and more cherubic he could scarce have looked though they had been about to offer him up for sacrifice. Communion Sabbath was his grandest opportunity for a sustained effort. Then he held his congregation in the palm of his hand, and the more he squeezed them, the better they were pleased. The box consisted of two compartments—one for the minister, and the other, the lower, for the precentor. He would have been a poor creature who thought this pulpit resembled a puppet-show. The enthusiasm of the boy in the pulpit, who was really wonderful for his size, killed criticism, and Lang Tammas lingered over the psalm-lines with unctuous effect. This was the "tent-preaching."

Mr. Watts was conducting the services on the commonty. It was a fine, still night, and but for the whining of an occasional dog, the clerical drone alone broke the silence. The minister passed from "lastly and briefly" to "I cannot allow this opportunity to pass," and the Auld Lichts bowed their beads in emphatic approval. He seemed in a fair way to beat all past record, when a rush of wind tore up the common and ran straight at the pulpit. It formed in a sieve and passed over the heads of the multitude, who looked up in awe. Lang Tammas in his box below distinctly heard the leaves of the pulpit Bible shiver. Mr. Watts's hands, outstretched to prevent a dire catastrophe, were blown against his side, and twenty sheets of closely written paper floated into the air. The minister (if such he can be called) shrunk back in the box appalled, and the horrified congregation slowly realized that Mr. Watts, the man whom they bad been on the point of calling, "read" from a "paper" concealed in the pulpit. Ten minutes afterwards the Session alone were on the commonty. They looked a little curious, jumping, like trout at flies, at the damning evidence of the minister's guilt fluttering in the air. To sit under a pastor who "read" was to the Auld Lichts like claiming heaven on false pretences.

Mr. Dishart's manner in the pulpit was a remarkable instance of what early application can accomplish. At the age of ten he had entered the University, and from far and near strangers went to his father's kirk to see the inspired boy practising the art of gesticulation in a front gallery pew. The seed sown in those days of his comparative youth bore rich fruit in our Auld Licht Kirk. So long as the pulpit cushions lasted, we only saw him dimly in a cloud of dust, and perhaps it was too much as if he were burning incense. He introduced headaches. Once in a superb transport of enthusiasm he flung his arms over the pulpit and struck Lang Tammas on the head. He would balance himself on his chest on the pulpit boards and pommel the Evil One with both hands, then he would whirl round to the left and clench his fist at Mag Tamson's bonnet. With a marvellous jump be would be on Sam'l Todd's laddie, profanely catching flies. Stiff and erect, he would leap three times in the air. He would gather himself together in a corner for a terrific spring. When you wanted to slip a peppermint lozenge into your mouth, you never knew when you had him. When he wept he seemed to be laughing, and he laughed in a paroxysm of tears. He battled the pulpit door and punched the pulpit trappings with a vindictiveness that was hardly Christian. When he ceased to whirl like a windmill, he assumed the appearance of a pump. The pump pose was the more terrible, for then he glared motionless at Tibbie Mealmaker, as if the upraised arm, or handle, had stuck. It was the calm that presages the storm. Tibbie bore up bravely under the windmill, but the pump affected her to tears. She was stone deaf.

For the first year of his ministry an Auld Licht pastor was a mouse in a circle of cats. The community watched intently for unsound doctrine, both in the kirk and out of it, and when the minister diverged from the narrow path they had him in an instant by the neck. Mr. Dishart, however, who was one of the finest men I ever knew, had been brought up in the true way, and the congregation grew in time despondent. They sat back in their pews with all suspicion of lurking heresy allayed; and only when Mr. Dishart and another minister exchanged pulpits did they lean forward to snap the preacher up. Mr. Dishart was not without his trials. Lang Tammas objected to his unseemly running between stricken houses to save time. It was much questioned whether he did right in insisting that the "ladle" should be handed up to the pulpit for his donation. Those who should have known said that he felt deeply the shortsightedness of the old parish church minister. When Mr. Volume first met him he made a mistake, and clapping him on the head told him he would be a man yet. Then there was the memorable split in the congregation, which comes once in a lifetime to every Auld Licht minister.

The congregation were thinking of approaching him through the medium of Easie Haggart, on the subject of matrimony, for he was turned twenty and had seventy pounds a year, when one day he disappeared in the Edinburgh coach, and when he returned his bride accompanied him. The Auld Lichts nodded their sapient heads into each others faces, but said nothing to the minister. If he did not choose to take them into his confidence, it was no business of theirs. When Sandy Whamond lost his eldership, his wife, Bell Dundas, said that Mrs. Dishart, before her marriage, had been a U.P. But though there was something mysterious about her, the minister would hardly have gone that length.

Easie Haggart was among the thorns in Mr. Dishart's flesh. When he had company, she stood at the door and joined in the congregation. If another minister was present she took a chair and discussed Mr. Dishart's infirmities. The Auld Lichts loved their pastor with a fervour passing the love of women, but they saw even more clearly than himself the necessity for his humiliation. He made his children's boots and taught them, but his Session once complained that his wife looked too like their sister. The latter years of his life was weighed down by a debt of four pounds that his creditor had forgotten all about. He paid it in sixpences and pennies, and died happy.

title: An Auld Licht Minister


text: Talk:An Auld Licht Minister

title: Talk:An Auld Licht Minister


text: Talk:An Auld Licht Official

title: Talk:An Auld Licht Official


text:
Author:Charles Sangster (fl. 1839)

Works

 * "Bannockburn", in A Complete Collection of the English Poems which have obtained the Chancellor's Gold Medal in the University of Cambridge (1859)

title: Author:Charles Sangster (fl. 1839)


text:
McClure's Magazine/Volume 46/Number 1/Consequences

ENRY EASTMAN, a lawyer, aged forty, was standing beside the Flatiron building in a driving November rainstorm, signaling frantically for a taxi. It was six-thirty, and everything on wheels was engaged. The streets were in confusion about him, the sky was in turmoil above him, and the Flatiron building, which seemed about to blow down, threw water like a mill-shoot. Suddenly, out of the brutal struggle of men and cars and machines and people tilting at each other with umbrellas, a quiet, well-mannered limousine paused before him, at the curb, and an agreeable, ruddy countenance confronted him through the open window of the car.

“Don't you want me to pick you up, Mr. Eastman? I'm running directly home now.”

Eastman recognized Kier Cavenaugh, a young man of pleasure, who lived in the house on Central Park South, where he himself had an apartment.

“Don't I?” he exclaimed, bolting into the car. “I'll risk getting your cushions wet without compunction. I came up in a taxi, but I didn't hold it. Bad economy. I thought I saw your car down on Fourteenth Street about half an hour ago.”

The owner of the car smiled. He had a pleasant, round face and round eyes, and a fringe of smooth, yellow hair showed under the rim of his soft felt hat. “With a lot of little broilers fluttering into it? You did. I know some girls who work in the cheap shops down there. I happened to be down-town and I stopped and took a load of them home. I do sometimes. Saves their poor little clothes, you know. Their shoes are never any good.”

Eastman looked at his rescuer. “Aren't they notoriously afraid of cars and smooth young men?” he inquired.

Cavenaugh shook his head. “They know which cars are safe and which are chancy. They put each other wise. You have to take a bunch at a time, of course. The Italian girls can never come along; their men shoot. The girls understand, all right; but their fathers don't. One gets to see queer places, sometimes, taking them home.”

Eastman laughed drily. “Every time I touch the circle of your acquaintance, Cavenaugh, it's a little wider. You must know New York pretty well by this time.”

“Yes, but I'm on my good behavior be1ow Twenty-third Street,” the young man replied with simplicity. “My little friends down there would give me a good character. They're wise little girls. They have grand ways with each other, a romantic code of loyalty. You can find a good many of the lost virtues among them.”

The car was standing still in a traffic block at Fortieth Street, when Cavenaugh suddenly drew his face away from the window and touched Eastman's arm. “Look, please. You see that hansom with the bony gray horse—driver has a broken hat and red flannel around his throat. Can you see who is inside?”

Eastman peered out. The hansom was just cutting across the line, and the driver was making a great fuss about it. bobbing his head and waving his whip. He jerked his dripping old horse into Fortieth Street and clattered off past the Public Library grounds toward Sixth Avenue. “No, I couldn't see the passenger. Someone you know?”

“Could you see whether there was a passenger?” Cavenaugh asked.

“Why, yes. A man, I think. I saw his elbow on the apron. No driver ever behaves like that unless he has a passenger.”

“Yes, I may have been mistaken,” Cavenaugh murmured absent-mindedly. Ten minutes or so later, after Cavenaugh's car had turned off Fifth Avenue into Fifty-eighth Street, Eastman exclaimed, “There's your same cabby, and his cart's empty. He's headed for a drink now, I suppose.” The driver in the broken hat and the red flannel neck cloth was still brandishing the whip over his old gray. He was coming from the west now, and turned down Sixth Avenue, under the elevated.

Cavenaugh's car stopped at the bachelor apartment house between Sixth and Seventh Avenues where he and Eastman lived, and they went up in the elevator together. They were still talking when the lift stopped at Cavenaugh's floor, and Eastman stepped out with him and walked down the hall, finishing his sentence while Cavenaugh found his latch-key. When he opened the door, a wave of fresh cigarette smoke greeted them. Cavenaugh stopped short and stared into his hallway. “Now how in the devil—!” he exclaimed angrily.

“Someone waiting for you? Oh, no, thanks. I wasn't coming in. I have to work to-night. Thank you, but I couldn't.” Eastman nodded and went up the two flights to his own rooms.

Though Eastman did not customarily keep a servant he had this winter a man who had been lent to him by a friend who was abroad. Rollins met him at the door and took his coat and hat.

“Put out my dinner clothes, Rollins, and then get out of here until ten o'clock. I've promised to go for supper to-night. I shan't be dining. I've had a late tea and I'm going to work until ten. You may put out some kumiss and biscuit for me.”

Rollins took himself off, and Eastman settled down at the big table in his sitting-room. He had to read a lot of letters submitted as evidence in a breach of contract case, and before he got very far he found that long paragraphs in some of the letters were written in German. He had a German dictionary at his office, but none here. Rollins had gone, and anyhow, the bookstores would be closed. He remembered having seen a row of dictionaries on the lower shelf of one of Cavenaugh's bookcases. Cavenaugh had a lot of books, though he never read anything but new stuff. Eastman prudently turned down his student's lamp very low—the thing had an evil habit of smoking—and went down two flights to Cavenaugh's door.

The young man himself answered Eastman's ring. He was freshly dressed for the evening, except for a brown smoking jacket, and his yellow hair had been brushed until it shone. He hesitated as he confronted his caller, still holding the door knob, and his round eyes and smooth forehead made their best imitation of a frown. When Eastman began to apologize, Cavenaugh's manner suddenly changed. He caught his arm and jerked him into the narrow hall. “Come in, come in. Right along!” he said excitedly. “Right along,” he repeated as he pushed Eastman before him into his sitting-room. “Well I'll—” he stopped short at the door and looked about his own room with an air of complete mystification. The back window was wide open and a strong wind was blowing in. Cavenaugh walked over to the window and stuck out his head, looking up and down the fire escape. When he pulled his head in, he drew down the sash.

“I had a visitor I wanted you to see,” he explained with a nervous smile. “At least I thought I had. He must have gone out that way,” nodding toward the window.

“Call him back. I only came to borrow a German dictionary, if you have one. Can't stay. Call him back.”

Cavenaugh shook his head despondently. “No use. He's beat it. Nowhere in sight.”

“He must be active. Has us he left something?” Eastman pointed to a very dirty white glove that lay on the floor under the window.

“Yes, that's his.” Cavenaugh reached for his tongs, picked up the glove, and tossed it into the grate, where it quickly shriveled on the coals. Eastman felt that he had happened in upon something disagreeable, possibly something shady, and he wanted to get away at once. Cavenaugh stood staring at the fire and seemed stupid and dazed; so he repeated his request rather sternly, “I think I've seen a German dictionary down there among your books. May I have it?”

Cavenaugh blinked at him. “A German dictionary? Oh, possibly! Those ware my father's. I scarcely know what there is.” He put down the tongs and began to wipe his hands nervously with his handkerchief.

Eastman went over to the bookcase behind the Chesterfield, opened the door, swooped upon the book he wanted and stuck it under his arm. He felt perfectly certain now that something shady had been going on in Cavenaugh's rooms, and he saw no reason why he should come in for any hang-over. “Thanks. I'll send it back to-morrow,” he said curtly as he made for the door.

Cavenaugh followed him. “Wait a moment. I wanted you to see him. You did see his glove,” glancing at the grate.

Eastman laughed disagreeably.” I saw a glove. That's not evidence. Do your friends often use that means of exit? Somewhat inconvenient.”

Cavenaugh gave him a startled glance. “Wouldn't you think so? For an old man, a very rickety old party? The ladders are steep, you know, and rusty.” He approached the window again and put it up softly. In a moment he drew his head back with a jerk. He caught Eastman's arm and shoved him toward the window. “Hurry, please. Look! Down there.” He pointed to the little patch of paved court four flights down.

The square of pavement was so small and the walls about it were so high, that it was a good deal like looking down a well. Four tall buildings backed upon the same court and made a kind of shaft, with flagstones at the bottom, and at the top a square of dark blue with some stars in it. At the bottom of the shaft Eastman saw a black figure, a man in a caped coat and a tall hat stealing cautiously around, not across the square of pavement, keeping close to the dark wall and avoiding the streak of light that fell on the flagstones from a window in the opposite house. Seen from that height he was of course fore-shortened and probably looked more shambling and decrepit than he was. He picked his way along with exaggerated care and looked like a silly old cat crossing a wet street. When he reached the gate that led into an alley way between two buildings, he felt about for the latch, opened the door a mere crack, and then shot out under the feeble lamp that burned in the brick arch over the gateway. The door closed after him..

“He'll get run in,” Eastman remarked curtly, turning away from the window. “That door shouldn't be left unlocked. Any crook could come in. I'll speak to the janitor about it, if you don't mind,” he added sarcastically.

“Wish you would.” Cavenaugh stood brushing down the front of his jacket, first with his right hand and then with his left. “You saw him, didn't you?”

“Enough of him. Seems eccentric. I have to see a lot of buggy people. They don't take me in any more. But I'm keeping you and I'm in a hurry myself. Good night.”

Cavenaugh put out his hand detainingly and started to say something; but Eastman rudely turned his back and went down the hall and out of the door. He had never felt anything shady about Cavenaugh before, and he was sorry he had gone down for the dictionary. In five minutes he was deep in his papers; but in the half hour when he was loafing before he dressed to go out, the young man's curious behavior came into his mind again.

Eastman had merely a neighborly acquaintance with Cavenaugh. He had been to a supper at the young man's rooms once, but he didn't particularly like Cavenaugh's friends; so the next time he was asked, he had another engagement. He liked Cavenaugh himself, if for nothing else than because he was so cheerful and trim and ruddy. A good complexion is always at a premium in New York, especially when it shines reassuringly on a man who does everything in the world to lose it. It encourages fellow mortals as to the inherent vigor of the human organism and the amount of had treatment it will stand for. “Footprints that perhaps another,” etc.

Cavenaugh, he knew, had plenty of money. He was the son of a Pennsylvania preacher, who died soon after he discovered that his ancestral acres were full of petroleum, and Kier had come to New York to burn some of the oil. He was thirty-two and was still at it; spent his life, literally, among the breakers. His motor hit the Park every morning as if it were the first time ever. He took people out to supper every night. He went from restaurant to restaurant, sometimes to half-a-dozen in an evening. The head waiters were his hosts and their cordiality made him happy. They made a life-line for him up Broadway and down Fifth Avenue. Cavenaugh was still fresh and smooth, round and plump, with a lustre to his hair and white teeth and a clear look in his round eyes. He seemed absolutely unwearied and unimpaired; never bored and never carried away.

Eastman always smiled when he met Cavenaugh in the entrance hall, serenely going forth to or returning from gladiatorial combats with joy, or when he saw him rolling smoothly up to the door in his car in the morning after a restful night in one of the remarkable new roadhouses he was always finding. Eastman had seen a good many young men disappear on Cavenaugh's route, and he admired this young man's endurance.

To-night, for the first time, he had got a whiff of something unwholesome about the fellow—bad nerves, bad company, something on hand that he was ashamed of, a visitor old and vicious, who must have had a key to Cavenaugh's apartment, for he was evidently there when Cavenaugh returned at seven o'clock. Probably it was the same man Cavenaugh had seen in the hansom. He must have been able to let himself in, for Cavenaugh kept no man but his chauffeur; or perhaps the janitor had been instructed to let him in. In either case, and whoever he was, it was clear enough that Cavenaugh was ashamed of him and was mixing up in questionable business of some kind.

Eastman, sent Cavenaugh's book back by Rollins, and for the next few weeks he had no word with him beyond a casual greeting when they happened to meet in the hall or the elevator. One Sunday morning Cavenaugh telephoned up to him to ask if he could motor out to a roadhouse in Connecticut that afternoon and have supper; but when Eastman found there were to be other guests he declined.

N New Year's eve Eastman dined at the University Club at six o'clock and hurried home before the usual manifestations of insanity had begun in the streets. When Rollins brought his smoking coat, he asked him whether he wouldn't like to get off early.

“Yes, sir. But won't you be dressing, Mr. Eastman?” he inquired.

“Not to-night.” Eastman handed him a bill. “Bring some change in the morning. There'll be fees.”

Rollins lost no time in putting everything to rights for the night, and Eastman couldn't help wishing that he were in such a hurry to be off somewhere himself. When he heard the hall door close softly, he wondered if there were any place, after all, that he wanted to go. From his window he looked down at the long lines of motors and taxis waiting for a signal to cross Broadway. He thought of some of their problem destinations and decided that none of those places pulled him very hard. The night was warm and wet, the air was drizzly. Vapor hung in clouds about the Times Building, half hid the top of it, and made a luminous haze along Broadway. While he was looking down at the army of wet, black carriage-tops and their reflected headlights and tail-lights, Eastman heard a ring at his door. He deliberated. If it were a caller, the hall porter would have telephoned up. It must be the janitor. When he opened the door, there stood a rosy young man in a tuxedo, without a coat or hat.

“Pardon. Should I have telephoned? I half thought you wouldn't be in.”

Eastman laughed. “Come in, Cavenaugh. You weren't sure whether you wanted company or not, eh, and you were trying to let chance decide it? That was exactly my state of mind. Let's accept the verdict.” When they emerged from the narrow hall into his sitting-room, he pointed out a seat by the fire to his guest. He brought a tray of decanters and soda bottles and placed it on his writing table.

Cavenaugh hesitated. standing by the fire. “Sure you weren't starting for somewhere?”

“Do I look it? No, I was just making up my mind to stick it out alone when you rang. Have one?” he picked up a tall tumbler.

“Yes, thank you. I always do.”

Eastman chuckled. “Lucky boy! So will I. I had a very early dinner. New York is the most arid place on holidays,” he continual as he rattled the ice in the glasses. “When one gets too old to hit the rapids down there, and tired of gobbling food to heathenish dance music, there is absolutely no place where you can get a chop and some milk toast in place, unless you have strong ties of blood brotherhood on upper Fifth Avenue. But you, why aren't you starting for somewhere?”

The young man sipped his soda and shook his head as he replied:

“Oh, I couldn't get a chop, either. I know only flashy people, of course.” He looked up at his host with such a grave and candid expression that Eastman decided that couldn't be anything very crooked about the fellow. His smooth cheeks were positively cherubic.

“Well, what's the matter with them? Aren't they flashing to-night?”

“Only the very new ones seem to flash on New-Year's eve. The older ones fade away. Maybe they are hunting a chop, too.”

“Well”—Eastman sat down—“holiday's do dash one. I was just about to write a letter to a pair of maiden aunts in my old home town, up-state; old coasting hill, snow-covered pines, lights in the church windows. That's what you've saved me from.”

Cavenaugh shook himself. “Oh, I'm sure that wouldn't have been good for you. Pardon me,” he rose and took a photograph from the bookcase, a handsome man in shooting clothes. “Dudley, isn't it? Did you know him well?”

“Yes. An old friend. Terrible thing, wasn't it? I haven't got over the jolt yet.“

“His suicide? Yes, terrible! Did you know his wife?”

“Slightly. Well enough to admire her very much. She must been terribly broken up. I wonder Dudley didn't think of that.”

Cavenaugh replaced the photograph carefully, lit a cigarette, and standing before the fire began to smoke. “Would you mind telling me about him? I never met him, but of course I'd read a lot about him, and I can't help feeling interested. It was a queer thing.”

Eastman took out his cigar case and leaned back in his deep chair. “In the days when I knew him best he hadn't any story, like the happy nations. Everything was properly arranged for him before he was born. He came into the world happy, healthy, clever, straight, with the right sort of connections and the right kind of fortune, neither too large nor too small. He helped to make the world an agreeable place to live in until he was twenty-six. Then he married as he should have married. His wife was a Californian, educated abroad. Beautiful. You have seen her picture?”

Cavenaugh nodded. “Oh, many of them.”

“She was interesting, too. Though she was distinctly a person of the world, she had retained something, just enough of the large Western manner. She had the habit of authority, of calling out a special train if she needed it, of using all our ingenious mechanical contrivances lightly and easily, without over-rating them. She and Dudley knew how to live better than most people. Their house was the most charming one I have ever known in New York. You felt freedom there, and a zest of life, and safety—absolute sanctuary—from everything sordid or petty. A whole society like that would justify the creation of man and would make our planet shine with a soft, peculiar radiance among the constellations. You think I'm putting it on thick?”,

HE young man sighed gently. “Oh, no! One has always felt there must be people like that. I've never known any.”

“They had two children, beautiful ones. After they had been married for eight years, Rosina met this Spaniard. He must have amounted to something. She wasn't a flighty woman. She came home and told Dudley how matters stood. He persuaded her to stay at home for six months and try to pull up. They were both fair-minded people, and I'm as sure as if I were the Almighty, that she did try. But at the end of the time, Rosina went quietly off to Spain, and Dudley went to hunt in the Canadian Rookies. I met his party out there. I didn't know his wife had left him and talked about her a good deal. I noticed that he never drank anything, and his light used to shine through the log chinks of his room until all hours, even after a hard day's hunting. When I got back to New York, rumors were creeping about. Dudley did not come back. He bought a ranch in Wyoming, built a big log house and kept splendid dogs and horses. One of his sisters went out to keep house for him. and the children were there when they were not in school. He had a great many visitors, and everyone who came back talked about how well Dudley kept things going.

“He put in two years out there. Then, last month, he had to come back on business. A trust fund had to be settled up, and he was administrator. I saw him at the club; same light, quick step, same gracious handshake. He was getting gray, and there was something softer in his manner; but he had a fine red tan on his face and said he found it delightful to be here in the reason when everything is going hard. The Madison Avenue house had been closed since Rosina left it. He went there to get some things his sister wanted. That, of course, was the mistake. He went alone, in the afternoon, and didn't go out for dinner—found some sherry and tins of biscuit in the sideboard. He shot himself sometime that night. There were pistols in his smoking-room. They found burnt out candles beside him in the morning. The gas and electricity were shut off. I suppose there, in his own house, among his own things, it was too much for him. He left no letters.”

Cavenaugh blinked and brushed the lapel of his coat. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that every suicide is logical and reasonable, if one knew' all the facts.”

Eastman roused himself. “No, I don't think so. I've known too many fellows who went off like that—more than I deserve, I think—and some of them were absolutely inexplicable. I can understand Dudley; but I can't see why healthy bachelors, with money enough, like ourselves, need such a device. It reminds me of what Dr. Johnson said, that the most discouraging thing about life is the number of fads and hobbies and fake religions it takes to put people through a few years of it.”

“Dr. Johnson? The specialist? Oh, the old fellow!” said Cavenaugh imperturbably. “Yes, that's interesting. Still, I fancy if one knew the facts— Did you know about Wyatt?”

“I don't think so.”

“You wouldn't, probably. He was just a fellow about town who spent money. He wasn't one of the foresteri, though. Had connections here and owned a fine old place over on Staten Island. He went in for botany, and had been all over, hunting things; rusts, I believe. He had a yacht and used to take a gay crowd down about the South Seas, botanizing. He really did botanize, I believe. I never knew such a spender—only not flashy. He helped a lot of fellows and he was awfully good to girls, the kind who come down here to get a little fun, who don't like to work and still aren't really tough, the kind you see talking hard for their dinner. N6body knows what becomes of them, or what they get out of it, and there are hundreds of new ones every year. He helped dozens of 'em; it was he who got me curious about the little shop girls. Well, one afternoon when his tea was brought, he took prussic acid instead. He didn't leave any letters, either; people of any taste don't. They wouldn't leave any material reminder if they could help it. His lawyers found that he had just $314.74 above his debts when he died. He had planned to spend all his money, and then take his tea; he had worked it out carefully.”

Eastman reached for his pipe and pushed his chair away from the fire. “That looks like a considered case, but I don't think philosophical suicides like that are common. I think they usually come from stress of feeling and are really, as the newspapers call them, desperate acts; done without a motive. You remember when Anna Karenina was under the wheels, she kept saying, 'Why am I here?'”

Cavenaugh rubbed his upper lip with his pink finger and made an effort to wrinkle his brows. “May I, please?” reaching for the whiskey. “But have you,” he asked, blinking as the soda flew at him, “have you ever known, yourself, cases that were really in explicable?”

“A few too many. I was in Washington just before Captain Jack Purden was married and I saw a good deal of him. Popular army man, fine record in the Philippines, married a charming girl with lots of money; mutual devotion. It was the gayest wedding of the winter, and they started for Japan. They stopped in San Francisco for a week and missed their boat because, as the bride wrote back to Washington, they were too happy to move. They took the next boat, were both good sailors, had exceptional weather. After they had been out for two weeks, Jack got up from his deck chair one afternoon, yawned, put down his book, and stood before his wife. 'Stop reading for a moment and look at me.' She laughed and asked him why. 'Because you happen to be good to look at.' He nodded to her, went back to the stern and was never seen again. Must have gone down to the lower deck and slipped overboard, behind the machinery. It was the luncheon hour, not many people about; steamer cutting through a soft green sea. That's one of the most baffling cases I know. His friends raked up his past, and it was as trim as a cottage garden. If he'd so much as dropped an ink spot on his fatigue uniform, they'd have found it. He wasn't emotional or moody; wasn't, indeed, very interesting; simply a good soldier, fond of all the pompous little formalities that make up a military man's life. What do you make of that, my boy?”

Cavenaugh stroked his chin. “It's very puzzling, I admit. Still, if one knew everything”

“But we do know everything. His friends wanted to find something to help them out, to help the girl out, to help the case of the human creature.”

“Oh. I don't mean things that people could unearth,” said Cavenaugh uneasily. “But possibly there were things that couldn't be found out.”

Eastman shrugged his shoulders. “It's my experience that when there are 'things' as you call them, they're very apt to be found. There is no such thing as a secret. To make any move at all one has to employ human agencies, employ at least one human agent. Even when the pirates killed the men who buried their gold for them, the bones told the story.”

Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile.

“I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, it means that we can't, after all. go so far afield as we might.” he hesitated, “yes, as we might.”

Eastman looked at him sourly. “Cavenaugh, when you've practised law in New York for twelve years, you find that people can't go far in any direction, except—” He thrust his forefinger sharply at the floor. “Even in that direction, few people can do anything out of the ordinary. Our range is limited. Skip a few baths, and we become personally objectionable. The slightest carelessness can rot a man's integrity or give him ptomaine poisoning. We keep up only by incessant cleansing operations, of mind and body. What we call character, is held together by all sorts of tacks and strings and glue.”

AVENAUGH looked startled. “Come now, it's not so bad as that, is it? I've always thought that a serious man, like you, must know a lot of Launcelots.” When Eastman only laughed, the younger man squirmed about in his chair. He spoke again hastily, as if he were embarrassed. “Your military friend may have had personal experiences, however, that his friends couldn't possibly get a line on. He may accidentally have come to a place where he saw himself in too unpleasant a light. I believe people can be chilled by a draft from outside, somewhere.”

“Outside?” Eastman echoed. “Ah, you mean the far outside! Ghosts, delusions, eh?”

Cavenaugh winced. “That's putting it strong. Why not say tips from the outside? Delusions belong to a diseased mind, don't they? There are some of us who have no minds to speak of, who yet have had experiences. I've had a little something in that line myself and I don't look it, do I?”

Eastman looked at the bland countenance turned toward him. “Not exactly. What's your delusion?”

“It's not a delusion. It's a haunt.”

The lawyer chuckled. “Soul of a lost Casino girl?”

“No; an old gentleman. A most unattractive old gentleman, who follows me about.”

“Does he want money?”

Cavenaugh sat up straight. “No. I wish to God he wanted anything—but the pleasure of my society! I'd let him clean me out to be rid of him. He's a real article. You saw him yourself that night when you came to my rooms to borrow a dictionary, and he went down the fire-escape. You saw him down in the court.”

“Well, I saw somebody down in the court, but I'm too cautious to take it for granted that I saw what you saw. Why, anyhow, should I see your haunt? If it was your friend I saw, he impressed me disagreeably. How did you pick him up?”

Cavenaugh looked gloomy. “That was queer, too. Charley Burke and I had motored out to Long Beach, about a year ago, sometime in October, I think. We had supper and stayed until late. When we were coming home, my car broke down. We hod a lot of girls along who had to get back for morning rehearsals and things; so I sent them all into town in Charley's car, and he was to send a man back to tow me home. I was driving myself, and didn't want to leave my machine. We had not taken a direct road back; so I was stuck in a lonesome, woody place, no houses about. I got chilly and made a fire, and was putting in the time comfortably enough, when this old party steps up. He was in shabby evening clothes and a top hat, and had on his usual white gloves. How he got there, at three o'clock in the morning, miles from any town or railway, I'll leave it to you to figure out. He surely had no car. When I saw him coming up to the fire, I disliked him. He had a silly, apologetic walk. His teeth were chattering, and I asked him to sit down. He got down like a clothes-horse folding up. I offered him a cigarette, and when he took off his gloves I couldn't help noticing how knotted and spotty his hands were. He was asthmatic, and took his breath with a wheeze. 'Haven't you got anything—refreshing in there?' he asked, nodding at the car. When I told him I hadn't, he sighed. 'Ah, you young fellows are greedy. You drink it all up. You drink it all up, all up—up!' he kept chewing it over.”

Cavenaugh paused and looked embarrassed again. “The thing that was most unpleasant is difficult to explain. The old than sat there by the fire and leered at me with a silly sort of admiration that was—well, more than humiliating. 'Gay boy, gay dog!' he would mutter, and when he grinned he showed his teeth, worn and yellow—shells. I remembered that it was better to talk casually to insane people; so I remarked carelessly that I had been out with a party and got stuck.

“'Oh yes, I remember,' he said, 'Flora and Lottie and Maybelle and Marcelline, and poor Kate.'

“He had named them correctly; so I began to think I had been hitting the bright waters too hard.

“Things I drank never had seemed to make me woody; but you can never tell when trouble is going to hit you. I pulled my hat down and tried to look as uncommunicative as possible; but he kept croaking on from time to time, like this: 'Poor Katie! Splendid arms, but dope got her. She took up with Eastern religions after she had her hair dyed, Got to going to a Swami's joint, and smoking opium. Temple of the Lotus, it was called, and the police raided it.'

“This was nonsense, of course; the young woman was in the pink of condition. I let him rave, hut I decided that if something didn't come out for me pretty soon. I'd foot it across Long Island. There wasn't room enough for the two of us. I got up and took another try at my car. He hopped right after me.

“'Good car,' he wheezed, 'better than the little Ford.'

“I'd had a Ford before, but so has everybody; that was a safe guess.

“'Still,' he went on, 'that run in from Huntington Bay in the rain wasn't bad. Arrested for speeding, he-he.'

“It was true I had made such a run, under rather unusual circumstances, and had been arrested. When at last I heard my life-boat snorting up the road, my visitor got up, sighed, and stepped back into the shadow of the trees. I didn't wait to see what became of him, you may believe. That was visitation number one. What do you think of it?”

AVENAUGH looked at his host defiantly. Eastman smiled.

“I think you'd better change your mode of life, Cavenaugh. Had many returns?” he inquired.

“Too many, by far.” The young man took a turn about the room and came back to the fire. Standing by the mantel he lit another cigarette before going on with his story:

“The second visitation happened in the street, early in the evening, about fight o'clock. I was held up in a traffic block before the Plaza. My chauffeur was driving. Old Nibbs steps up out of the crowd, opens the door of my car, gets in and sits down beside me. He had on wilted evening clothes, same as before, and then was some sort of heavy scent about him. Such an unpleasant old party! A thorough-going rotter; you knew it at once. This time he wasn't talkative, as he had been when I first saw him. He leaned back in the car as if he owned it, crossed his hands on his stick and looked out at the crowd—sort of hungrily.

“I own I really felt a loathing compassion for him. We got down the avenue slowly. I kept looking out at the mounted police. But what could I do? Have him pulled? I was afraid to. I was awfully afraid of getting him into the papers.

“'I'm going to the New Astor,' I said at last, 'Can I take you anywhere?'

“No, thank you,' says he. 'I get out when you do. I'm due on West 44th. I'm dining to-night with Marcelline—all that is left of her!'

“He put his hand to his hat brim with a grewsome salute. Such a scandalous, foolish old face as he had! When we pulled up at the Astor. I stuck my hand in my pocket and asked him if he'd like a little loan.

“'No, thank you, but'—he leaned over and whispered, ugh!—'but save a little, save a little. Forty years from now—a little—comes in handy. Save a little.'

“His eyes fairly glittered as he made his remark. I jumped out. I'd have jumped into the North River. When he tripped off, I asked my chauffeur if he'd noticed the man who got into the car with me. He said he knew someone was with me, but he hadn't noticed just when he got in. Want to hear any more?”

Cavenaugh dropped into his chair again. His plump cheeks were a trifle more flushed than usual, but he was perfectly calm. Eastman felt that the young man believed what he was telling him.

“Of course I do. It's very interesting. I don't see quite where you are coming out though.”

Cavenaugh sniffed. “No more do I. I really feel that I've been put upon. I haven't deserved it any more than any other fellow of my kind. Doesn't it impress you disagreeably?”

“Well, rather so. Has anyone else seen your friend?”

“You saw him.”

“We won't count that. As I said, there's no certainty that you and I saw the same person in the court that night. Has anyone else had a look in?”

“People sense him rather than see him. He usually crops up when I'm alone or in a crowd on the street. He never approaches me when I'm with people I know, though I've seen him hanging about the doors of theatres when I come out with a party; loafing around the stage exit, under a wall; or across the street, in a doorway. To be frank. I'm not anxious to introduce him. The third time, it was I who came upon him. In November my driver, Harry, had a sudden attack of appendicitis. I took him to the Presbyterian Hospital in the car, early in the evening. When I came home, I found the old villain in my rooms. I offered him a drink, and he sat down. It was the first time I had seen him in a steady light, with his hat off.

“His face is lined like a railway map, and as to color—Lord, what a liver! His scalp grows tight to his skull, and his hair is dyed until it's perfectly dead, like a piece of black cloth.”

Cavenaugh ran his fingers through his own neatly trimmed thatch, and seemed to forget where he was for a moment.

“I had a twin brother, Brian, who died when we were sixteen. I have a photograph of him on my wall, an enlargement from a kodak of him, doing a high jump, rather good thing, full of action. It seemed to annoy the old gentleman. He kept looking at it and lifting his eyebrows, and finally he got up, tip-toed across the room, and turned the picture to the wall.

“'Boor Brian! Fine fellow, but died young.' says he.

“Next morning, there was the picture, still reversed.”

“Did he stay long?” Eastman asked interestedly.

“Half an hour, by the clock.”

“Did he talk?”

“Well, he rambled.”

“What about?”

Cavenaugh rubbed his pale eyebrows before answering.

“About things that an old man ought to want to forget. His conversation is highly objectionable. Of course he knows me like a book; everything I've ever done or thought. But when he recalls them, he throws a bad light on them, somehow. Things that weren't much off color, look rotten. He doesn't leave one a shred of self-respect, he really doesn't. That's the amount of it.” The young man whipped out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

“You mean he really talks about things that none of your friends know?”

“Oh, dear, yes! Recalls things that happened in school. Anything disagreeable. Funny thing, he always turns Brian's picture to the wall.”

“Does he come often?”

“Yes, oftener, now. Of course I don't know how he gets in down-stairs. The hall boys never see him. But he has a key to my door. I don't know how he got it, but I can hear him turn it in the lock.”

“Why don't you keep your driver with you, or telephone for me to come down?”

“He'd only grin and go down the fire escape as he did before. He's often done it when Harry's come in suddenly. Everybody has to be alone sometimes, you know. Besides, I don't want anybody to see him. He has me there.”

“But why not? Why do you feel responsible for him?”

Cavenaugh smiled wearily. “That's rather the point, isn't it? Why do I? But I absolutely do. That identifies him, more than his knowing all about my life and my affairs.”

ASTMAN looked at Cavenaugh thoughtfully. “Well, I should advise you to go in for something altogether different and new, and go in for it hard; business, engineering, metallurgy, something this old fellow wouldn't be interested in. See if you can make him remember logarithms.”

Cavenaugh sighed. “No, he has me there, too. People never really change; they go on being themselves. But I would never make much trouble. Why can't they let me alone, damn it! I'd never hurt anybody, except, perhaps”

“Except your old gentleman, eh?” Eastman laughed. “Seriously, Cavenaugh, if you want to shake him, I think a year on a ranch would do it. He would never be coaxed far from his favorite haunts. He would dread Montana.”

Cavenaugh pursed up his lips. “So do I!”

“Oh, you think you do. Try it, and you'll find out. A gun and a horse beats all this sort of thing. Besides losing your haunt, you'd be putting ten years in the bank for yourself. I know a good ranch where they take people, if you want to try it.”

“Thank you. I'll consider. Do you think I'm batty?”

“No, but I think you've been doing one sort of thing too long. You need big horizons. Get out of this.”

Cavenaugh smiled meekly. He rose lazily and yawned behind his hand. “It's late, and I've taken your whole evening,” He strolled over to the window' and looked out. “Queer place. New York; rough on the little fellows. Don't you feel sorry for them, the girls especially? I do. What a fight they put up for a little fun! Why, even that old goat is sorry for them, the only decent thing he kept.”

Eastman followed him to the door and stood in the hall, while Cavenaugh waited for the elevator. When the car came up Cavenaugh extended his pink, warm hand. “Good night.”

The cage sank and his rosy countenance disappeared, his round-eyed smile being the last thing to go.

EEKS passed before Eastman saw Cavenaugh again. One morning, just as he was starting for Washington to argue a case before the Supreme Court, Cavenaugh telephoned him at his office to ask him about the Montana ranch he had recommended; said he meant to take his advice and go out there for the spring and summer.

When Eastman got back from Washington, he saw dusty trunks, just up from the trunk room, before Cavenaugh's door. Next morning, when he stopped to see what the young man was about, he found Cavenaugh in his shirt sleeves, packing.

“I'm really going; off to-morrow night. You didn't think it of me, did you?” he asked gaily.

“Oh, I've always had hopes of you!” Eastman declared. “But you are in a hurry, it seems to me.”

“Yes, I am in a hurry.” Cavenaugh shot a pair of leggings into one of the open trunks. “I telegraphed your ranch people, used your name, and they said it would be all right. By the way, some of my crowd are giving a little dinner for me at Rector's to-night. Couldn't you be persuaded, as it's a farewell occasion?” Cavenaugh looked at him hopefully.

Eastman laughed and shook his head. “Sorry, Cavenaugh, but that's too gay a world for me. I've got too much work lined up before me. I wish I had time to stop and look at your guns, though. You seem to know something about guns. You've more than you'll need, but nobody can have too many good ones.” He put down one of the revolvers regretfully. “I'll drop in to see you in the morning, if you're up.”

“I shall be up, all right. I've warned my crowd that I'll cut away before midnight.”

“You won't, though,” Eastman called back over his shoulder as he hurried down-stairs.

The next morning, while Eastman was dressing, Rollins came in greatly excited.

“I'm a little late, sir. I was stopped by Harry, Mr. Cavenaugh's driver. Mr. Cavenaugh shot himself last night, sir.”

Eastman dropped his vest and sat down on his shoe-box. “You're drunk, Rollins,” he shouted. “He's going away to-day!”

“Yes, sir. Harry found him this morning. Ah, he's quite dead, sir. Harry's telephoned for the coroner. Harry don't know what to do with the ticket.”

Eastman pulled on his coat and ran down the stairway. Cavenaugh's trunks were strapped and piled before the door. Harry was walking up and down the hall with a long green railroad ticket in his hand and a look of complete stupidity on his face.

“What shall I do about this ticket, Mr. Eastman?” he whispered. “And what about his trunks? He had me tell the transfer people to come early. They may be here any minute. Yes, sir. I brought him home in the car last night, before twelve, as cheerful as could be.”

“Be quiet, Harry. Where is he?”

“In his bed, sir.”

Eastman went into Cavenaugh's sleeping-room. When he came back to the sitting-room, he looked over the writing table; railway folders, time-tables, receipted bills, nothing else. He looked up for the photograph of Cavenaugh's twin brother. There it was, turned to the wall. Eastman took it down and looked at it; a boy in track clothes, half lying in the air, going over the string shoulders first, above the heads of a crowd of lads who were running and cheering. The face was somewhat blurred by the motion and the bright sunlight. Eastman put the picture back, as he found it. Had Cavenaugh entertained his visitor last night, and had the old man been more convincing than usual? “Well, at any rate, he's seen to it that the old man can't establish identity? What a soft lot they are, fellows like poor Cavenaugh!” Eastman thought of his office as a delightful place.


text: Talk:McClure's Magazine/Volume 46/Number 1/Consequences