The Golden Justice

I.

THE GOLDEN JUSTICE IS RAISED ALOFT.

THERE were many theories about the disastrous collision at the Chippewa Street bridge; but not a word was spoken against that eminent citizen, David Lane.

The place of the event was Keewaydin, a high northern city, on the shores of Lake Michigan, that superb inland sea, which stretches a long arm downward from the general chain of the American Great Lakes. Keewaydin — named for the Northwest Wind — had a population of somewhat more than one hundred thousand souls. It was of a prosperous, comely aspect, and solidly built of an indigenous, yellow-toned brick, the cool warmth of which seemed, somehow, in keeping with the northerly latitude. Through its midst flowed a smooth, canal-like river, which, with tributaries, and basins dredged out in certain marshes, afforded some twenty miles of wharfage for shipping. This river was spanned, at the foot of nearly every other street, by a draw-bridge, — now opening to the bustling traffic by water, now forming again a junction with the solid land, to accommodate the desultory cavalcade of foot-passengers and teams.

The large propeller, Pride of the West, had struck one of these bridges, and two lives had been almost instantly lost.

The story might have been heard exhaustively told at that favorite resort of vessel men and marine gossips, the Johannisberger House, an old, high-porticoed edifice by the river-side, which had once been a family mansion of some note.

“ As I understand it,” said an engineer of the Owl Line steam-tugs, summing up the part of it that related to David Lane, —“ as I understand it, David Lane, he was on the bridge at the time ” —

“ On the draw,” growled the captain of a tug of the rival Diamond Jim Line.

“ On the draw, of course. Where could he ha’been?” retorted the other, as though only a person very near an idiot could have insisted upon so fine a distinction. “ He was on the draw, and the propeller was a-comin’ through. All to once, he see Zelinsky, the bridgetender, drop in a kind o’ fit. Lane rushes forrard, to lend a hand; but what could he do ? It was this here paytent new-fangled turnin’ apparaytus” —

“ They never had n’t ought to be used on the bridges, nohow ; or else they’d ought to have more men to ’em,” interpolated a schooner’s captain.

“ She struck, and he was most killed, himself, for his trouble. And now he’s lyin’ on his back with half his bones broken, and no tellin’ when he ’ll be round again,” concluded the Owl Line engineer.

“ He ’s a man that ain’t never been afraid to lend a hand in most any way,” said the schooner’s captain, with heartyemphasis. “ He’s a whole-souled feller, free with his time and free with his money, — one of the kind that ought to have money, I ’ve always said ; and I’m glad he’s got a pile of it. I s’pose he could buy and sell ’most any one else in Keewaydin.”

“ Pretty free with his temper, too, eh?” put in a skeptical lake steward, temporarily out of employment.

“Well, what if he is? What does it amount to? All of us has to blow off a little steam sometimes ; I do myself.” It was the gruff skipper of the Diamond Jim Line, who spoke again.

“ Nobody gets over it quicker than him, and nobody’s quicker to make it up to a man, afterwards, if he’s ben wrong,” said the schooner’s captain. “I’ve worked for him, gents, and I claim to know. Now, gents, what shall it be ? ”

And the talk was moistened once more, after the fashion at the Johannisberger House, with beverages served by the hands of mine host, Christian Idak, in person.

Such was the account that obtained final acceptance, and such was the excellent repute enjoyed by David Lane. The most censorious, seeking for flaws in his conduct, could find nothing to urge against him save a trivial over-hastiness of temper. But let us look a little into the real circumstances of the case.

David Lane strode forth, that day, from the office of the Northwestern Navigation Company, in a towering rage. He may have hidden it, to some extent, in the office of the company itself, but, once more on West Water Street, without, he gave it full headway. He arrived at the Chippewa Street bridge, by which he was to cross to his own side of town, in a mood that ill beseemed so respectable-looking a gentleman. Nevertheless, he considered himself to have ample justification for it.

He had just heard, from the mouth of plausible Mr. Shadwell, its president, the final refusal of the company to grant him such terms for the carrying of an amount of material from his iron mills as would have enabled him to compete with Eastern rivals for a large and desirable building contract. Why this concession was refused need not here be entered into. Such favors are sometimes done one another by the paladins of trade and finance in a place like Keewaydin, but then again they are denied ; jealousies, rivalries, long-standing grudges, waiting an opportunity to strike, are all to be considered. If any one had been waiting to strike at David Lane, perhaps this was rather a favorable time. The fact is that this capitalist was staggering under some unusually heavy financial burdens, and could ill afford any diminution of either profit or prestige. Wounded pride, self-interest, and local patriotism — for he would have been glad, in the ambitious Western way, that the town should have had the credit, apart from his personal gain — combined to make up his present state of mind. Added to the rest, he had suffered of late a malarious attack, and had slept but little now for several nights past.

He set foot upon the draw just as it had begun to swing, and went round as its only passenger, on its brief excursion. Something aroused him from the bitter preoccupation in which he at first stood plunged, and he became somehow aware that it was an incoming craft of the hostile company for which the draw was turning. Hardly had the reflection passed through his mind, when the bridge-tender uttered a painful, choking cry. “ Help ! ” he called, and again “ Help ! ” and fell prone beneath his capstan bar. He might have been overcome by heart disease or apoplexy, or was, perhaps, only drunk.

The first thought of Lane was to complete the turning of the bridge ; that was the thing of pressing importance,— the man could be looked to afterwards. He rushed to the spot and laid hold upon the capstan. But in this very moment he was seized by a new impulse, so wild and incredible as to resemble madness,—an impulse of veritable frenzy, which remained as much a mystery to himself as it could ever have been to any of those who knew him.

With all his might he dragged back upon the lever instead of expediting its movement forward, thus narrowing instead of enlarging the passage.

The Pride of the West was returning to her dock from one of her usual voyages. Bulky, massive, standing high out of water, she forged ahead with the momentum of her ample size. With a carelessness born of long safety, she had left herself just margin enough to pass if all went well, and not an inch more; and it was now too late to stop.

“ Take that ! ” muttered David Lane, through his set teeth, as if addressing an actual person, and not the mere inanimate hulk of the vessel.

Crash! crash !

Jets of escaping steam, whirling wreaths of smoke, splinters, dust, and over all, upon the ear, the sickening sound of the rending and crunching of precious human handiwork, never meant for such ruinous ordeal.

The bridge was overthrown from its base of glib-moving wheels, and tilted upward at an awkward angle. From beneath two of its heavy trusses, which had fallen, were taken out, when assistance arrived, Stanislaus Zelinsky (bridgetender) dead, and David Lane seriously injured.

The propeller was penetrated by a timber, which, like a lance held in rest, cruelly impaled a passenger, who had gone down to his cabin to throw his few traps together, preparatory to going ashore, and left him mangled and dead against the further wall. He was one Christopher Barclay, of the city of New York, a visitor, who had come out to look after property purchased in these regions many years before.

This was the story told David Lane when he had first recovered consciousness after the shock of his injuries. He had even known this passenger, this Christopher Barclay, — known, at least, of the prominent standing and high consideration enjoyed by him in the world. He knew that this victim was cut off, in the prime of life, from a career of usefulness and honor, and had left behind him a family, dependent upon him, if not for support, at least for the proper direction of their careers.

“Merciful Father in heaven!” he breathed, in an agony of mind yet sharper than his physical pains, “ have I done this? Oh, no, I will not believe it! Have I, henceforth, the guilt of the blood of two of my fellow-creatures upon my soul ? It cannot be ; I will not have it so. It is a greater punishment than I can bear.”

His purpose flew straight towards confession.

“ It was I,” he began. “It was I. I turned ” —

The attendants thought he raved, distracted by his hurts.

“ Yes, yes,” they said, soothingly, “ it was all seen from the vessel’s deck.” (But the fact was it had not been accurately seen from anywhere.) “You were not to blame ; you did all you could. The surgeons think you had better not talk now. You had better try to compose yourself, and lie as quiet as you can.”

This repression but hastened the fever it was intended to avert; the patient fell off into a raging delirium, and hovered between life and death for three months. In this state he seemed to himself to declare his crime, and to suffer almost every conceivable form of expiation for it.

When he became rational again, the thought of confession resumed its sway. As he lay convalescing he even meditated the form of words which his avowal ought to take. But by this date the disaster at the Chippewa Street bridge was long of the past; so many other things had happened in the mean time that it would have required a certain effort of the public imagination to go back to it.

There, too, by his bedside, stood his cherished wife, his beloved daughter. Must he bring disgrace upon them ? Must he tell them the kind of husband and father he had been to them? Was it required of him, now that the harm was irreparable, and disclosure could be of no possible avail ?

It was this daughter, Florence Lane, who proved the strongest of his deterring motives. She was the dearest being in the world to him. She was tall, slender, and willowy, almost a woman now ; she promised to be beautiful, as she was good and clever. She was one who should have a happy and brilliant future before her. Was he to mar it by his infamy ? Oh, no, he could not do it.

Hers was the first figure upon which his eyes rested when they recovered their calmer vision. She bent down and kissed him, with a tender solicitude, lest even this unwonted excitement might be to his detriment.

“ It is delightful to see you almost well again, papa,” she said, in the most tuneful of young voices, marked by the inflections of her fondness.

They had always been the best of friends. The daughter had brought to her father all her troubles, all her childish and girlish interests. Nothing could have been warmer, more complete, and pleasanter to see than the devotion subsisting between the two.

“ Why are you here ? ” demanded the invalid, feebly.

“ I came home to be with you. I could not bear to be far away when you were so ill. I am studying again with Mrs. Miltimore, now,” she replied.

The time passed. David Lane at first vacillated, then postponed his avowal, then wholly abandoned it, and adopted the settled policy of concealment. He set out from home, and traveled widely, for the restoration of his impaired health and vigor. When he came back, he was graver, gentler, quieter, than ever before. This change in character was laid to the physical effects of the accident, from which, it was supposed, he had never fully recovered.

Among the first duties which he took upon himself was that of the support of the family of the deceased bridgetender. He tried to persuade himself that this death, at least, did not lie at his door, but that the man had succumbed to some fatal malady. Nevertheless, the doubt existed, and it was always upon this doubt that he acted. His proceeding was looked upon as a pure piece of benevolence, and it was called for the more since a prejudice had arisen against Zelinsky, as having been intoxicated and responsible for the disaster, so that others might not have been so willing to extend their help. The family consisted of but two members, a wife and infant daughter. The wife did not long survive. The Polish child, prettily named “ Stanislava,” after the “ Stanislaus ” of her father, was then taken charge of by some humble German relatives, with whom she lived, supported by a modest allowance from David Lane.

He next found means to more than make up both to the city and the Northwestern Navigation Company the damage they had sustained at his hands. He took surreptitious steps to advance the interests of the heirs of Christopher Barclay’s estate. By docking and dredging in its vicinity,in the Menomee Marsh, he gave a particular value, for instance, to a waste bit of ground, which came to be known as Barclay’s Island, and to be the site of several flourishing industries. He founded, at about this date, the Lane Public Library, the Lane system of Industrial Schools, and the Lane Free Hospital, and gave as well to every private charity that made demands upon his purse.

He had been well liked before, and he now became the object of an enthusiastic public favor. He was made mayor, and then, for several terms, governor of the State. He accepted these offices, proposing to himself to find in them, also, by an assiduous devotion to the public good, such as is rarely seen, a certain means of atonement.

In the midst of all this he was pursued by insatiate terrors of remorse. He flouted, at times, in the bitterest scorn, all of his own devices.

“ So, too, the robber barons of the Middle Ages,” he would say, “ endeavored to buy immunity for their crimes by indulgence in petty charities.”

It was a harrowing thought with him that the very measures he intended for reparation but added to his own prosperity. Never had he been so flourishing in all his affairs, never so prominent before the world, as now. What a whited sepulchre, what a wolf in sheep’s clothing! he called himself. He lived esteemed and admired of his fellow-men when he should have had only their chastisement and contempt. He turned back again towards formal religion, which, after a fashion not so uncommon with men of bustling and active affairs, he had long neglected. He had the Rev. Edward Brockston, of St. Jude’s, a clergyman of a serious and ascetic vein, one who preached ecclesiastical celibacy and the like, to dine with him, made him the almoner of many private bounties, and gave him a new tower to his church. He thought at one time of laying the whole case before this good man, and offering to abide by his counsel ; but, in the last resort, he could by no means bring himself to the point. The very height to which he had risen was an added obstacle. The distance which he had to fall had but become the greater.

Still he felt upon him the resistless pressure towards confession ; the mystery of the destruction of two innocent human lives seemed imperiously to demand accounting for. He was under the spell of something like that powerful urgency from which the saying has arisen that “murder will out.” He even meditated the woful resource of suicide, and contemplated it with a certain calmness in many of its forms.

At last, however, David Lane found a method of relief, of a bizarre sort, which perhaps none but he, and he only in the most morbidly eccentric of his moods, would ever have hit upon.

At about this time Keewaydin was going to place a figure of Justice on the dome of its city hall, a mammoth, expensive edifice, which had dragged its slow length along for many years, and was now at last completed. The statue was to be its final touch of ornament. It was of plates of beaten zinc, handsomely gilded, well stayed from within, and, like the famed Athena Parthenos, it was about “ six times the height of a man.”

It was the proposition of some ingenious spirit in the board of aldermen that the figure should be made a place of deposit for certain papers, like a corner-stone. The idea was said to be borrowed from the case of the most exemplary meeting-house in town, the gilt ball of which — so rumor ran — contained whiskey and playing-cards, deposited there by graceless wags at the time of its construction. However this may have been, the plan was now utilized most unobjectionably. David Lane, a distinguished townsman, who had had to do with the erection of the building, and was at the time governor of the State, was asked to honor the occasion and deliver the dedicatory address, and he consented to do so.

The civic pile, become that day the centre of public interest, stood in a little green park, near the business heart of the place, but sufficiently removed from its bustle. The square was flanked on three sides by private dwellings, standing comfortably back in their own dooryards, and on the fourth by a cathedral with schools, having a tall clock-tower, from which pleasantly chimed the half and quarter hours. The court-house was of an imposing Renaissance design, built in the main of good red sandstone from the Lake Superior quarries, but this was supplemented, in the great porticoes and elsewhere, after a cheap American way, with iron work, to which imitative painting and sanding gave a far-off semblance of the more solid material. It would never make even a passable ruin, supposing others, like Martinus Scriblerus, to design their buildings, not for present use, but their aspect in decay. Only that which has been substantial and honest in life can be fairly impressive in death.

Before it, at full length, on the grass, lay the Golden Justice. Trammeled up in her hoisting tackle, and surrounded by the curious spectators, she was like the captive Gulliver in Lilliput, or that great statue of Diana at Ephesus, “ which fell down from Jupiter,” or some palladium of the liberties of Keewaydin temporarily overthrown. She was of fair, serene, and noble aspect, well worthy of her destination. Her eyes were not blindfolded, in the usual way. Her brows were deeply shaded by a martial helmet, resting upon loosely-bound tresses that rippled away on either side ; on her thigh was a long, straight-hilted sword, and in her hand, gathered close with the drapery, was the conventional pair of scales. There was something connected with her which, had he noted it, might perhaps have stayed the curious project of David Lane, even in the moment of its execution. But he was too full of his agitated thoughts to spare the golden goddess the requisite scrutiny.

In his address to-day he surpassed himself. He spoke with a genuine eloquence that was a surprise to all who knew him. His words were of a moving force, and his views of the austerest purity. He had almost the look of some stoic sage cast in the antique mould.

“ Fiat justitia, ruat cælum !” he thun dered ; and then, again, for the benefit of the inerudite vulgar, “ Let justice be done, though the heavens fall ! ”

With this his oration was over, and the moment had come to deposit the papers. He dropped into the receptacle the various public documents prepared for it. Then, with cruelly shaking hand and a heart that at first stood still, and next beat so loudly it seemed almost a wonder the by-standers did not hear it, he dropped in with the rest a paper strangely different, indeed, from all the others.

It was a written confession, in full, of his crime.

“ If it be required, in the eternal fitness of things, that this be known,” he breathed forth above it, “ let the paper come down. If it do not come down, by that testimony I shall know that I am absolved before men, at least, and it will remain for me to meet my punishment hereafter. I commit myself to the eternal justice. In the hands of justice I leave my fate.”

The band struck up, shrill cheers rent the air, and salutes of guns were fired. The great statue was hoisted to her feet, tottered a little in the air, — in which attitude she might almost seem to have a certain recognition of the responsibility of her situation, — was slid along the roofs, and finally set in her place on the high central dome.

And there, far aloft, a shining mark and conspicuous signalment before the eyes of all men, rested the Golden Justice, keeping the secret of David Lane.

This was in his first term as governor. In his final term, having enjoyed, meantime, the acquaintance and intimacy of the President, and being of the material of which such dignitaries are made, he was sent as minister to one of the most important of the foreign courts. His wife died, and a sister of his took charge of his household. His daughter, Florence Lane, arrived at woman’s estate, and made a foreign marriage, much talked of in its day. He prolonged his stay abroad many years, and at times almost forgot all that had happened behind him; but there, far back across the sea, in the place of his abode, was his secret, always awaiting him, in the keeping of the Golden Justice.

II.

A MAN OF THE WORLD.

One day, some ten years after the raising aloft of the Golden Justice, the Chippewa Street draw was again on the swing.

The new bridge-tender in charge was a short, stout person, with florid complexion, little, round, protruding gray eyes, and big, coarse fists. He evidently had a very good idea of his own importance. Ludwig Trapschuh laid claim, in fact, to an exhaustive acquaintance with people and things in the vicinity of his bridge. Not exactly of the solid land, nor yet altogether of the water, he belonged in part to both elements, and prided himself on this amphibious character and a sort of sovereignty over the double domain. Added to this, he had a number of outside irons in the fire, small ventures, which were generally unsuccessful, and kept him in straits for money, but never abated his willingness to engage in others of the same sort.

Ludwig Trapschuh had just now slipped one arm into a sleeve of his coat, and was about to go off his post on some private affairs. He was leaving final instructions with his assistant, a denizen of the Milesian Third Ward, newly appointed, and stopped also to intermingle with these a quantity of gossip. The assistant seemed impressed by his seniority and overbearing disposition, and inclined to yield ample reverence to all he said.

“ You must not let no more as fifteen cattle go over at once,” directed Trapschuh ; “and you must not let them teams crowd ahead with themselves too much, one by the other. The draw cannot be open more as ten minyutes. Then must you show the red signal, — or, if it was night, the red lantern,—and no more vessels can pass. You und’stand ? ”

“I believe you, I do.”

“ Sometimes she go round so easy as nothing at all ; and sometimes she jump like she was crazy,” pursued Ludwig Trapschuh, explaining the traits of his bridge. “ You look out for her.”

“ Never fear ! ”

“ Well, now, I got to go and see a couple o’ South Side aldermen. Some o’ them aldermen do yust what I tell ’em, every time, so quick like rollin’ round a log.”

“ It’s great political influence you have, entirely.”

“Well,” responded the other complacently, “ I guess I was a pretty smart feller for my age. I live ’mong them Polanders, and got plenty influenz with them, anyhow. If some managers want them, they know they got to get me, eh? I bet you no one understand them Polanders better as what I do.”

“The Polacks is different agin to the regular Dutch, I believe ? ” said the assistant, in ethnologic speculation.

“ They was worse as Mecklenbergers ; not good for much except saw wood and work on railroads. I bin a Pomeranian myself, but my sister, she got married with Zelinsky, though— He was a kind o’ smart man, what got killed on this bridge.”

“ Well, now ! well now ! ”

“ They build their houses round me, and when my brother-of-law die I have my niece-of-law, Stanislava Zelinsky, to live by me, and we get kind o’ used and stay with them,” said Trapschuh, explaining how it was that he had his abode in the large Polish settlement of the South Side.

There now came by, driving a shabby express-wagon, one of those rowdy young fellows, a type of a certain kind of foreigners of the second generation, who have acquired most of the American vices, without the virtues, and added them to the stock already possessed from abroad. He spoke English perfectly well, or rather perfectly ill, in the slangy way. This was “ Barney ” Trapschuh, a hopeful son of the bridge-tender.

“ The South Side Belle’s comin’ down the river,” said this person, pointing a thumb backward over his shoulder.

“ Where you seen her? ” “ Oh, up there along the docks.”

With this he drove on, and his father turned his attention to a rusty-looking small sloop that soon made her appearance at the draw.

“ Bah, the South Side Belle ! ” he exclaimed in contempt. “ Billy Alfsen ’s goin’ across again after another load o’ peaches. I wish he sink himself to the bottom in that leaky old tub.”

A well-built young Scandinavian, William Alfsen himself, stood on the deck of the sloop with a defiant air, as if conscious of the unfriendly scrutiny to which he was subjected. The sole remaining crew consisted of a tow-headed boy of fifteen.

“ That last load of peaches what he bring was all spoiled ; the fruit inspector had to throw ’em out,” grumbled Trapschuh. “ He makes nothing since he give up his place at the Stamp-Ware Works, — and he got to take care of his old father, besides. He own not even that old sloop ; some ones hold mortgage on it.”

“ Is that so ? ”

“ He’s no good. What he mean by South Side’s Belle, any way ? He mean my niece - of - law, Stanislava, I guess. He hang around that girl all what he can. But I don’t let it, — see ? ”

“ I do,” answered the listener, with continued admiration, though it is not unlikely he had heard the story before, and even more than once, in his short term of service.

“ She got no hurry to bin married, nohow, but when she get ready she must get married with some feller with a few dollars in his pocket, — see ? ”

He would now at last have taken his departure, when the Pride of the West was seen coming up the stream. He chose to profess a peculiar nervousness about this boat, to which he owed his situation, — for David Lane had undoubtedly got it for him on account of his relationship to the slain Zelinsky, — and he stayed to see her through, himself. The bridges below were seen opening and closing for her, like concerted parts of some glib-working machinery. She signaled twice, by the customary whistle. As she drew near, Trapschuh, out of his boasted large acquaintance, identified a little knot of persons standing on her forward deck, by the rail.

“That is Jim DeBow,” said he,— “he’s a big feller on ’Change. And that’s Mrs. DeBow; and that stylish young lady is his daughter, Miss DeBow. I see it in the papers that they bin in Chicago. But that young feller, with them good clothes and such a fine kind o’ look, — I guess I don’t know him; I guess he bin a stranger round here.”

Then a bit of vivid excitement occurred that quite took away his interest in further gossip. When it was over, he looked at his assistant in a morose way, as if an effort had somehow been made to remove him, Trapschuh, from his post at a peculiarly critical moment, and he knew not what would have happened if he had gone. Making a general law of two occurrences, separated by at least fifteen years, he exclaimed, —

“ That boat is always doin’ something, at this bridge.”

The group at the rail had been correctly mentioned, so far as the description went. It was the DeBow family, with a chance acquaintance they had made on the boat, returning from Chicago. _

This stranger was a man of somewhat more than thirty, but appearing younger. He was considerably above the middle height, of robust frame, closely buttoned up in a well-fitting suit of Scotch tweeds, and he stood squarely on his feet, looking with evident interest at all around him. His skin, browned by healthy exposure, contributed to give him a foreign and traveled air. His expression seemed to convey a latent geniality, combined with dignity, experience of the world, and a certain importance in it, while his slightly reserved bearing was free from any shade of pretense. He was called, as his companions had learned, Paul Barclay.

He had conversed chiefly with Miss Justine DeBow. He had been tacitly left to her by the elders, who followed a provincial tradition that the young, as a matter of course, belong to each other, and can be expected to interest themselves little outside their own ranks. The girl was young and pretty, and not far past the school-going age. She had a very symmetrical figure, and an almost purely classic profile, with proudly curling lip. She was on an unusually diminutive scale, to atone for which she affected a certain stateliness of manner, at times of somewhat amusing incongruity. She had a formal, precise little way of speaking, taking care to use the Boston, or English, broad a. She had not been brought up to it, but had acquired it at the Keewaydin Female College, of which institution she had been valedictorian, as she let fall, and where she had been known as a smart, ambitious, spirited little person.

This Paul Barclay had impressed her from the first as very different from the ordinary run of new-comers to Keewaydin. He had let fall chance expressions which opened to her vistas into an ample experience. She said to herself that he was the nearest realization she had yet seen of “a man of the world; ” and a man of the world was at present Miss Justine DeBow’s ideal of all that was superlatively admirable. She had tired already, as is not so uncommon at a certain date with maidens of her years, of the callow youth of her acquaintance; she sighed for one who had seen all, could do all, and might take her away to form part of a more complete and splendid society than any she had ever known.

He had spoken to her admiringly of the view of the town from the water, as they came into the harbor, and of the two long breakwater piers with their light-houses. With the common enough ignorance of one to the manner born, she knew even less of many things about her home than he. It was he who had had to tell her that the Great Lakes were “ a step-mother to ships,” offering no natural refuge in all their thousands of miles of coast, and that the harbors were formed by utilizing the mouths of the small rivers that make into them. He asked her to point out to him Barclay’s Island, and gazed at certain factory buildings upon it, clustered around a mammoth brick chimney, with a good deal of attention.

“ Have you relatives here ? ” inquired his comely young cicerone, attracted by the coincidence of names.

“ Yes, the Thornbrooks.”

The Thornbrooks were an excellent old couple, living in a large square house near the centre of the town, who — their children now all married off — were passing their declining years by themselves in placid comfort.

This led up to nothing in particular, though even this, had her memory gone somewhat further back, or had she applied to her father for information, might have given her certain interesting clues.

DeBow himself took some share in the talk. It was no derogation to him to be called “ Jim” DeBow. The name was used alike by those who knew and those who did not know him, and was a complimentary adoption of him by the general public, such as often happens to local magnates of his sort. Though so “ big a fellow on ’Change,” after the description of Trapschuh, he was small of stature, — in this respect his daughter took after him. He showed a jovial tendency, and had a large, expansive way of talking, of the kind that is called peculiarly Western. His rhetoric took wings, and he followed it by rising upon his heels. He spoke of the commerce of Keewaydin, claiming that more actual tonnage came to that port than to Boston, Baltimore, or Philadelphia.

“We are the American Odessa,” he went on. “Wheat is our great staple; we beat the world on wheat. This wonderful great northwestern country stretching back of us gives a hard, firm grade of cereal that makes men of brain and men of muscle.

“ And you naturally eat a good deal of it, at home ? ”

“ Oh, yes, ha, ha, — very good! We eat it at home, — lots of it ; you ’d better believe we eat it.”

“ Is it your first visit to our section ? ” he asked presently.

“ My first visit.”

“ I shall take great pleasure in showing you ’round on ’Change, or anywhere else, if you will give me a call.”

“ I shall be glad to accept your polite offer, should my engagements permit.”

As to Mrs. DeBow, a faded-looking lady, she appeared to be one of those American mothers, of a certain class, who are left behind by the too rapid movement of the world, and can make no effort to keep up with the development of new and brilliant ideas by their juniors. She seemed to efface herself with an even more than common humility, but Barclay took care to address her some trifling attentions, from which a student of character might have inferred in him a natural kindness of heart, together with a habit of prompt and comprehensive courtesy. The good lady replied to him, “ Yes, sir,” and “ No, sir,” in a sort of fluttered deference.

“ Mamma is a great invalid,” said Justine, managing to draw him away from her at the earliest moment. There were things in both her parents she did not approve of. She might have explained, had she been willing to, that she was driven to her own hauteur of manner as a reaction and protest.

The coffee-colored river was full of animation, at this favorable season for traffic, the last months before the annual close of navigation. All the marine flock that roamed the wide water pastures were coming and going on the peaceful river lane.

The huge steamer for the extreme end of Superior cut across the bows of that for Mackinaw and the lakes eastward. The Owl vied in speed with the Diamond Jim, and the Little Moses with the Ajax and the Excalibur. A wrecking-tug was going out to look after a bark ashore at Whitefish Bay; a steam-barge, laden with flour, tangled itself up with the steam-dredge Vulcan, poking along the channel in its customary morose way. Their agile turnings whirled the water into seething eddies. Schooners, sloops, barks, and brigantines lay alongside the great wheat elevators, and these structures, bulky and imposing as basilicas of some Titantic race, poured into their holds, through wooden troughs, streams of grain as golden as the sands of the Pactolus. Warehouses of yellow brick, reflected in its depths, rose along the margins of the river. The merchant on the water streets had his ship at his rear door and drays at the front. The mellow haze of autumn, boldly broken now and then by a black hull, a red smoke-stack, a bright pennant, and the clustering spars, brooded over the whole, which, though so American in kind, had almost the picturesque interest of a canal of Rotterdam.

The revenue cutter appointed to look after the government’s interests in these waters passed our travelers, going the same way. The officer in command of her glanced up, when alongside, and sought, with evident anxiety, the recognition of Miss DeBow.

That young lady murmured to herself presently, “ Florence Lane.”

Her companion, whose attention had been for the moment elsewhere, turned, and repeated, with a sharp tone of inquiry, “ Florence Lane ? Florence Lane ? ”

She had simply been reading the name, as he could now do for himself, on the stern-post of the receding cutter.

“ Oh, I knew a person of that name once,” he thought good to state, in explanation. “ I recollect that she was from this place. It is natural enough that it should be preserved here, where she was born and brought up. The family was a very prominent one, I believe.”

“ Oh, did you know Mrs. Varemberg, Florence Lane that was ? ” asked his companion, hailing with pleasure this fresh note in a conversation that was beginning to flag. “Abroad, I suppose?”

“ Yes, I met them abroad.”

“Yes, indeed, hers has always been a prominent family here. The boat was called after her by some friend of her father’s while he was governor. Ah, she was a remarkable woman,” with envious admiration ; “accomplished, beautiful, one of the greatest of belles. And yet not exactly a belle, either: I mean that it always seemed more that she could have been than that she wanted to be. Florence Lane was always one of my ideals ; I used to look up at her, when a child, with an ecstatic adoration.”

She dropped naively, in her impulsiveness, to the more natural manner of her age, and even forgot more than once to pronounce the Boston broad a.

“ But tell me how she seemed to you,” she went on.

“ The first I ever saw of her was at the entertainment of a high functionary, in Paris,” replied Paul Barclay, with a certain air of constraint, and yet willingness, after all, to furnish this reminiscence of a traveler. “ I arrived at an official palace in the Rue de Varennes, where two statue-like cuirassiers sat on horseback in the court-yard. At the foot of a grand staircase a chamberlain in black velvet, with a ribbon and medal about his neck, waved you up to another, who announced you in the reception-rooms. I remarked a lady of a grace and distinction far beyond all others present. ‘ There,’ said I, ‘ is surely the true type of a Montmorency or La Rochejaquelein; there is the vielle roche, the very flower of patrician loveliness.’ I was still in my first days abroad, and full of romantic notions. I asked who she was, and they told me, ‘ The daughter of the American minister.’ ”

“ Then, of course, you knew all about her wedding, too, and were probably present at it ? The society papers were full of it at the time. They gave long lists of guests of rank and distinction. There were even presents from crowned heads, — on account of her father’s position, I suppose. Let me see : it, was a Belgian she married, I think ? ”

“Yes, Varemberg was a Belgian.”

“ He was not titled himself, but had grand connections, and was very rich ? ” “ Varemberg was supposed to be a person of fortune. He was an accomplished, entertaining fellow. I recollect he professed an especial liking for Americans.”

“ It was called a very brilliant affair. What a pity it turned out so badly!”

She sighed, as if in pity that it ever had to be said that brilliant things turned out badly.

Barclay looked at her with a glance of rising curiosity.

“ She is so changed now one would scarcely know her,” went on the informant. “ She is not the same person at all, since her return.”

“ Her return ? She has been here, then, on some visit ? ”

“ No, indeed, she has been living here, with her father, for a year past. She returned not very long after he was recalled from his post.”

“ Mrs. Varemberg is here ? ”

“ To be sure she is, though one scarcely ever sees her. She keeps in close seclusion. It is partly on account of her troubles, I suppose, and then she is a good deal of an invalid.”

“ And her husband ? ” “ She has left him.”

The recipient of this intelligence showed a disturbance of manner over it that would hardly have been occasioned by an ordinary piece of gossip.

“ What seemed to be the trouble ? ” he asked.

“ People do not know exactly what happened; it has all been kept very quiet.”

By way of withdrawing attention from any unusual agitation he may have exhibited, the young man, upon this, affected an unusual interest in things on the river. Justine DeBow was dying to know if he were likely to stay, and if she should meet him in the society of the place. She ventured to ask him.

“ I am here only on a brief business errand,” he responded.

The Chippewa Street bridge was at hand, and Ludwig Trapschuh was making his observations. A tug, puffing near the bow of the Pride of the West, put on an extra pressure of steam to drag out a heavy flour-scow it had in tow. The strain proved too much for a defective portion of the machinery. Bang! With a sharp explosion, off blew a cylinder head; her smoke-stack and part of her cabin roof came flying against the propeller’s side as if shot from a catapult, and carried away some stanchions of the rail, close by our couple. It was over in an instant, and no serious harm was done, but Justine was affected by a nervous panic, and Barclay was obliged to reassure her till her parents came up and her own better sense prevailed.

He himself showed no signs of fear, but seemed strangely thrilled by another cause. He exclaimed, —

“ History repeats itself! My father was killed at this place.”

It was all in the papers of the same afternoon, and particularly in that very enterprising sheet the Keewaydin Index. This paper “ interviewed ” James DeBow, and endeavored to do as much for Paul Barclay, but could not find him. It put also at the head of its column the motto, “ History repeats itself.” Then, followdng a smart journalistic practice of printing everything apropos of the occasion, it rehearsed the whole history of the tragedy at the Chippewa Street bridge, of years before, with full notes of the inquests and sketches of the principal participants.

However it was with others, the papers of that day were extremely interesting reading for ex-Mayor, ex-Governor, and ex-Minister David Lane, in his handsome mansion on the bluff, by the lake shore.

Paul Barclay landed, and was driven to the principal hotel, the Telson House, the trim facade and spacious corridors of which were the especial pride of Keewaydin. He left the hotel again for the office of a law firm known as Mackintosh and Rand, in Keewaydin Block. Mackintosh was dead, it appeared, but he was received by the surviving partner, a man of gaunt, bony figure and not too prepossessing countenance. He was led through an anteroom, where a pallid clerk was writing at a desk, and a stout, middle-aged gentleman was seated with an air of wearily dancing attendance.

“ I have been expecting you, Mr. Barclay,” said Rand. “ The death of our Mr. Mackintosh, who had your matters particularly in charge, embarrassed me a little, of course, but I have caught up, and you ’ll find everything ready for your inspection, whenever you please to go over it.”

“If quite convenient, then, I should like to do so at once. I am on my way to New York, and anxious to be off again as soon as possible.”

“ So I judged by your letter from San Francisco. Sit down. I ’ll be with you immediately.”

The lawyer went out to the anteroom, and returned with a tin box, labeled with a list of its contents. These were spread upon a large table, and the two men sat down to their examination.

It was a question of timber lands in Eau Claire County, mineral deposits near Escanaba, a water privilege and saw-mills on the Chippewa River, a large tract in Marathon County,— on which there was a proposition to establish a colony of Danes, —and some city blocks and the like in Keewaydin. This was property left by the original Barclay, and his son had now for the first time, at the request of his family, stopped to look into it.

“ By the way,” said he, “ they have also forwarded another letter, which was sent to me in their care.”

He drew from his pocket a bulky communication, which proved to be a pathetic appeal, from a Keewaydin correspondent, to be saved from impending bankruptcy. The attorney glanced at it with a shrug.

“ Oh, yes,” said he, “ it is Maxwell, again, about his Barclay’s Island property and the Stamped-Ware Works. So he gets at you, too ? He has all but talked me to death with his plea for an extension, but I don’t see that we can do anything for him.”

“ Tell me about the affair and this Maxwell. What is he like? Is he honest ? ”

“ Oh, honest enough, I dare say, as far as that goes,” with a clear implication that there are much more important things in the world than honesty. “ He is over-sanguine, a poor calculator, and weighed down by a large family, too, and has been making a losing fight of it all the time.”

“ And what are the merits of the case ? ”

“ Why, just this: the factory is in excellent condition, and if we foreclose now we make a good thing of it; while if we wait, and let him run along, everything will go to rack, and will hardly be worth taking. He has put too much money into improvements, and we get the whole for a song.”

“ Are such things done ? ” asked the young man, in surprise.

“ My dear sir, very few of us are so well off in this world’s goods as to be able to afford to actually throw money away, and that is what it is doing to neglect a chance like this. I speak as one business man to another. You would hardly wish me to be less devoted to your interests than my own.”

“ My business experience has been of rather limited extent up to this time.”

“ Naturally, naturally, and you do well. Why should a young gentleman of your fortune and position bother his head about such matters ? ”

“ It is your judgment, then, that the mortgage should be foreclosed ? ”

“ Certainly it is. Maxwell has nobody to blame but himself; he would tell you so frankly. He is outside there now, I see ; his time is up to-morrow, and I suppose he has come in for some sort of final palaver.”

With this he appeared satisfied that he had laid any trifling scruples there might be in the mind of his patron entirely at rest.

I will see Maxwell,” said Barclay, impassively.

The attorney touched a bell, and the pallid clerk ushered in the dejected-looking gentleman from the anteroom. Maxwell went over his story again, in person. Once only, yielding to a touch of his natural hopefulness, he said,—

“ With a little more money, that fartory could be made one of the best paying properties in the world.”

The lawyer sent toward his principal, at the man’s expense, shrewd smiles of commiseration, or, again, glances, as who should say, “ Shall I cut him short ? Have we had enough of this nonsense?” So sure was he of the upshot that he even took upon himself to save his patron the trouble of replying.

“ It won’t do, Maxwell,” said he. “ You have no new considerations of any business kind to offer. Mr. Barclay has been kind enough to hear you himself, and now you ought to be satisfied, but you see as well as I do things have got to take their course.”

The manufacturer turned in a broken way to depart. He seemed from the first to have expected little else.

“ Hold on ! ” cried Paul Barclay, suddenly throwing off his impassiveness. “ I will extend the mortgage.”

Maxwell dropped into a chair, and like Rand stared at him at first in openmouthed astonishment.

“ But I thought — we had agreed ” — began Rand, in expostulation.

“ I do not wish to make money in any such detestable way,” said Barclay, with indignation. “ And for the future,” he added, “ I beg to take the management of my affairs into my own hands.”

He was apparently a person not afraid to make enemies, at least in a good cause, a quality already somewhat rare in our too enervating civilization. The change of management he proposed, it may be told, would reduce the income of his property, but it would add to the comfort of many persons, for everybody on the Barclay estate had long been having a very hard time of it.

When all was concluded he went out with Maxwell.

Tears of emotion filled the eyes of the grateful manufacturer, if, indeed, they did not quite well over.

“ It seems too good to be true! ” he exclaimed. “ I was all ready to be ruined ; my family were waiting to be turned into the street.”

“ By the bye,” said Barclay, in parting with him, “ let me have some figures about the factory in writing. If it be as you say, a little further capital may perhaps be found for it.”

He went next to find his relatives, the Thornbrooks, and then spent some time in musing on the Chippewa Street bridge.

In the evening he left his hotel once more, and drove to see the Mrs. Varemberg of the conversation on the steamer, at the house of her father, David Lane.

William Henry Bishop.