The Golden Justice

IX.

A WINSOME APPARITION.

THE retirement in which Mrs. Varemberg lived had no doubt contributed to keep the full measure of her intimacy with Barclay from the public observation. It took place at her father’s house, under the eye of her father and aunt, and could not be charged with impropriety. The intrusive tongue of gossip began at last to wag, however, and Barclay, in a punctilious devotion to the interests of his friend, thought best to take cognizance of it. He would have been sorry, furthermore, to have really deserved the reproach of ingratitude for the courtesies that had been shown him in the place ; and so, on many accounts and in spite of the improved opportunity open to him by the allayed opposition of David Lane, he for a while saw considerably less of Mrs. Varemberg and more of general society.

The snow, at Keewaydin, lay white and firm on the ground for many months at a time, and, instead of an enemy, was made to be an ally and friend in all the daily affairs of life. There was coasting down the long, steep streets, followed by dancing and suppers, in which some elderly persons of prominence, as well as the young, took part. Barclay did not hold himself above this diversion.

He joined more than once the merry procession of sleigh-riders on Grand Avenue. He went, by invitation, to a session of the young women’s Saturday Morning Club, and finally he even selected a partner to accompany him to that most brilliant social event of the winter, the annual Charity Ball.

The choice of this partner was determined by an incident at the Saturday Morning Club. He was one of a few masculine visitors admitted to these favored precincts on some rare occasion, as that of a lecture or the like. Justine DeBow was there, amoug others. She was seized with a sudden dizziness. Barclay happened to be beside her, and aided her. It was held by some that this fainting was but assumed, on the part of Miss DeBow, to draw attention to herself and monopolize the services of the admired guest of the occasion, and several others wished they had bethought them of the same opportune device. The elfish Miss Shadwell, with a face like a withered apple, found opportunity to approach him about Justine. She would have liked to do so about Mrs. Varemberg, also, but that she felt compelled to reserve to another time.

“ We all like and admire Justine so much,” she said. “ She has only one drawback.”

“ And what is that ? ”

Copyright, 1886, by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co.

“ You never see her mother.”

“ I have not observed that any American mothers are unnecessarily visible,” he returned, wondering to what this tended.

“ Oh, yes, I know they are a retiring class, who think that it is not their bright eyes, but their daughters’, that visitors come to see ; but this is something different. DeBow, when quite young, married a very common, ungrammatical sort of person, — a servant in a hotel, in fact. They say he was captivated by her good looks, but she has bravely got over them. They keep her discreetly in the background, under pretense that ” —

“ I do not find it an interesting subject! ” exclaimed Barclay impatiently.

“ Oh, people do not snap me up like that,” said Miss Shadwell ; “ it ’a of no use. I am one of the kind who say things.”

But he had already turned away, as abruptly as might be without marked rudeness.

This, then, was one cause of the reserve and dignified little airs assumed by Justine DeBow. Her hauteur was but a manifestation of sensitiveness, a species of defensive armor. He construed it quite as favorably as it probably deserved, and it added a touch of interest to her case. Largely in protest against her spiteful little assailant, yielding to a quixotic impulse of the moment, he begged her to be his companion at the coming Charity Ball.

When the evening of the ball arrived, he called for her towards nine o’clock, in a carriage of his own providing. After the custom of the place, they had no chaperon, and they might return at whatever hour they would, in the same simple fashion. He waited for her in the parlor, while she above put some finishing touches to a much more elaborate toilette than usual. Good Mrs. DeBow took this occasion to come in and greet him. She entered in a diffident way, making a pretext of seeing that another gas-burner was lighted ; then sat down on the edge of a chair and talked to him. She had heard his inquiries after her at various times, and felt within herself that he was one who appreciated her. She had said to her daughter more than once that he was a real gentleman, and not a mere imitation, like so many who came there. She was by no means convinced in her own mind that her discourse was worthy of the severe repression and rebuke with which it was customarily visited in the house. It was at present full of solecisms, but there was also an attempt in her manner at an elegant formality, of which Justine’s was a curious echo.

This conversation was in full progress when Justine came down. Her brow grew dark at the sight; she knew what naturally must have happened. Tears of mortification sprang to her eyes, which she hid. At the front door she wavered, seeking if there were not some pretext on which she could refuse to set forth, but at such a moment it was entirely too late to retreat.

Barclay saw this, in spite of himself, and did his utmost to reassure her. He employed a peculiar fineness of manner, neither too easy nor formal. He appeared neither to overlook the circumstance by which she was so troubled, nor to be impressed by it. You would have said he had never talked to mothers who comported themselves any differently.

“ Ah,” thought the girl with gratitude, “ he does not mind it.”

This unusual beginning of the evening no doubt had its influence on the whole course of it; there seemed a certain need of continuing the same air of reassurance and devotion. Two persons looked on at this with unquiet minds. The one was Lieutenant Gregg, who, it was plain to be seen, had long been enamored of Justine. A fierce displeasure afflicted the excellent revenue officer at the appearance of so good an understanding between the couple. The other was Mrs. Varemberg, who — a thing highly unusual for her — had come to the ball, intending to remain a short time as a spectator. When Barclay went to pay his respects to her, in the box where she sat with her father, she received him but coldly. She resented his slowness in coming, and also what she deemed his whole neglect of her of late, based though this was, as we have seen, upon his prudent regard for her own fair fame. Is it, then, credible that jealousy, some trace of which perhaps lurks, tigress-like, in even the softest of feminine breasts, had sprung up in that of Mrs. Varemberg, — she who had no worldly future, no warrant to her own freedom, nor right to be the slightest check upon that of any other ? Alas, what new calamity did this dangerous feeling portend ? She resolved, as soon as she was sensible of it, that she would tear it from her heart at once ; it should have no real foothold there. She pleaded an indisposition, and very soon withdrew.

Thenceforth, for some time, she adopted a new role of conduct, a policy of stricter seclusion than before, and denied herself even to Barclay as well as the others. Her father, witnessing with astonishment this repulse of Barclay, felt for the first time something like positive cheerfulness. The bugbear that had so dismayed him seemed, after all, to have no real existence; the alarming friendship had fallen to pieces of its own accord, by its own weight as it were.

Barclay marveled, during this time, that Mrs. Varemberg should be moved to carry his own purpose to so much greater an extreme; but he was used to construing her favorably, and if his glance, in their rare meetings, sought hers in involuntary questioning, he had no open question of her conduct to offer. In his eyes whatever she did was right. He was first apprised of the embittered state of mind of Lieutenant Gregg through some quite offensive conduct towards him, on the lieutenant’s part, at that ambitious social organization,— an imitation of prototypes in larger cities, — the Keewaydin Club.

It was thus, among other things, that Barclay came to know that he could not apply in person to Gregg for aid in the case of William Alfsen.

The unpleasantness was finally settled through the good offices of Ives Wilson.

Such misconception of Barclay’s small courtesies to Justine DeBow was absurd. Nevertheless, he determined to give no further occasion for it. As he seemed to have made so bad a business of his attempt to show local society a proper recognition of its favors, he turned away from it all with a new indifference, and gave to his factory a yet more complete attention.

The lieutenant was now left the clearest possible field in the quarter to which his aspirations extended. Miss Justine DeBow, however, put her own construction upon what she deemed Barclay’s avoidance of her. It was not long before she approached her mother, and in a painful scene — one of not unusual occurrence in that household — said to her: —

“ It was because you went into the parlor, and he heard you talk, that he stays away. He is not used to it ; he will never come here any more.”

“ I know I ought not to have done it. I will not disgrace you again,” returned the mother, accepting the charge with a full measure of abject humility.

“I — I did not mean that,” said the daughter, a little staggered herself at this way of putting it. “ But oh, why would you not learn, when I tried so hard with you?” and she broke into hysterical sobs, “ Not to use long words, and not to say ‘ I done it ’ and ‘ I seen it’ and ‘ them are,’ and — and — just a few others,” summing up, with a definite pathos, her poor attempt to alleviate this source of her chagrins.

“ Don’t cry so, deary. I will try, — I will try,” protested her listener, who, fair enough though she was in the other relations of life, an especially tender mother, and a person, too, of a certain good judgment, was so obtuse in her faculties through early neglect of them as never to have been able to master even the simple educational system outlined above. Her husband had undertaken it with a will shortly after his imprudent marriage to her, and so had her children in turn as they arrived at years to be mortified by it, but all alike had proved in vain.

New Year’s Day—one of the oldfashioned sort — soon arrived. The custom of making calls, since fallen into abeyance, was kept up at Keewaydin with great spirit. To call was almost a religious observance. The streets were gayly alive all day with sleighloads of men, in couples and quartettes, going to and from the houses of friends, each priding himself on filling the largest list. Nor was it the young alone who ventured forth : there were elderly bachelors in the concourse; husbands, grown lax about social observances, were laughingly driven out by their helpmeets from their own comfortable firesides; and even urchins, arrayed in their best, began a society career by making their dancing-school bows in the parlors of friends of the family.

Barclay counted on finding Mrs. Varemberg at home on that day, if on no other; and so the event proved. Her father’s house was open, as became one of his position, but without glitter or parade, and it was she who had mainly to do the honors of hospitality. When Barclay arrived, she sat, in reverie, before a wood fire, in a temporary lull of the calling. It was between daylight and dark, and the lamps were not yet lighted ; the short winter afternoon had been yet further shortened by a lowering sky, and snow-flakes were beginning to whirl coldly down. The thick, soft carpet gave so little response to the step of the visitor that he was beside her before she knew it.

“ What do you see in the fire? ” he asked, after he had touched, in an easy way, on some of the events of the day. “ That is a question always in order when one is discovered looking so fixedly at it.”

“ I see you there, among other things.”

“ I trust I have not been tried in the crucible, as it were, and found wanting ? ”

“ That remains to be ascertained. I was thinking that I was rather tired of seclusion, and had perhaps been overdoing it, and that I might send for you, if you did not happen in. Would you have come, if I had?”

“ Oh, no ; of course nothing would have induced me to,” he replied, seating himself easily beside her. “ But now that it is proper to speak of it, I don’t quite understand what it was all about. We have scarcely met long enough to exchange two words since the Charity Ball.”

“ We can stand so little pleasure, in this life, that we have to make up for it by long periods of depression afterwards.”

“ I should hardly have thought the ecstasy of a Keewaydin Charity Ball so great as that.”

“ Well, then, it was one of my moods, — that is all : you must know I have them sometimes ? ”

And this was all the explanation ever given— till a long time after. She had fought the battle out with herself, and determined to throw open her doors again, and reap from this friendship, which filled so important a place in her life, whatever solace it was capable of affording, while it was still vouchsafed to her. She talked now of friendship ; made a theory, as people are given to doing, to strengthen themselves in insecure positions, that friendship was the greatest good, and quite sufficient for human happiness without any admixture of the warmer sentiment.

“ The quiet stars alone,”she said, using this as a comparison, “ supply a great part of the heat of our globe.”

“ They raise its temperature from nothing at all to one hundred degrees below zero, and the sun does the rest ; but few of us would care to remain permanently even at one hundred below zero,” Barclay returned, promptly. “I have read the same scientific article, you see.”

Now, too, that Mrs. Varemberg had reached this new position, it was shown almost immediately how baseless and fantastic the one she abandoned had been.

Barclay soon came, in the course of talk, to the case of William Alfsen. He told her of his desire to get him a place on the revenue cutter.

“ Why do you not ask Lieutenant Gregg ? ” she inquired.

“ My hated rival ? No, indeed ; that would never do.”

“You and Lieutenant Gregg rivals ? And on what subject? ”

“ It seems to have been supposed to be for the favor of the fascinating Justine DeBow.”

“ How interesting ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Varemberg, but her countenance fell greatly, in spite of herself. It brightened again remarkably, however, when she heard from him a full account of this little episode.

“To show that I have not the least design in the world against his peace of mind,” went on Barclay, “ I have let his sweetheart, with society in general, perhaps somewhat brusquely alone. Still, there may be a lurking acrimony on his part, and I am not the one to beg him to do anybody favors.”

“ And there was really nothing in it ? What with your eye for good looks and your interest in situations a little out of the common, how could one tell that your intentions were not highly serious ? ”

“ Was it likely ? ” he responded : “ I am devoted to — to — eternal celibacy, like the Kev. Edward Brockston.”

“ Then, let me take charge of the application in Alfsen’s favor,” she suggested with alacrity. " I will speak to Lieutenant Gregg about it at the first opportunity. Perhaps he will do what you want, on my recommendation.”

Upon this a new-comer entered, — no less a person than Schwartzmann, the designer of the Golden Justice, who had come home for a visit, after a long absence in Europe. There was a small exhibition of his works in progress at the present time, at Fogle & Stein’s, the leading music and stationery store of the place. Schwartzmann showed something of his profession in his looks. He had a high, narrow forehead, bushy brows, and meagre, bristling beard ; his clothes were openly of the ready-made sort, and he wore them carelessly. There was a trace in his manners of the rudeness of the lower stratum from which he had sprung, yet this was far more than balanced by the refinement of his own ideas, helped by familiar association with refined people. He was a bright, intelligent man, with the assured briskness and confidence of a successful one also. He was very buoyant and gay in his talk about matters of art, his own life abroad, and the like. Barclay, on going away, left him there.

Lieutenant Gregg came in, later in the day, and Mrs. Varemberg approached him on the subject of which she had assumed charge. He promised it, in fact, his most favorable consideration.

A brief period, of a new sort, now began for our couple. David Lane no longer opposed; they had laid at rest their scruples of conscience, persuading themselves by one sophistical argument or another of the rectitude of their own intentions ; there seemed never to have been a better understanding between them, — never a calmer, more satisfying, more thorough friendship, and friendship alone.

They planned together new devices for the factory. Mrs. Varemberg manifested in this a keen desire to be made of use, a touching eagerness to put herself under direction, that she might be utilized for any worthy end. On one occasion she brought down a somewhat notable collection of valuable trinkets she had. Barclay facetiously dubbed these the Crown Jewels, as if she were a beautiful and hapless monarch in exile ; and he sat on an ottoman at her feet, while she handed out to him in turn these trophies of her days of earlier youth, and of hope and happiness at a brilliant foreign court. Again, they joined the sleigh-riders on Grand Avenue. Barclay wore a seal-skin cap, pulled low down over his ears ; his companion, well wrapped in furs, with a bird’s wing standing straight up in her hat, sometimes held her muff before her face, roseate from the tingle of the keen air. They went slowly up the right hand of the broad avenue, and then came flying down the left at headlong speed, in company with others, as many as four abreast, while clods of snow were spurned gayly backward from the heels of their horses.

Mrs. Varemberg was a person of changeable moods, and by no means to be depended upon for unvarying uniformity. In her present contentment at the unwonted appreciation and companionship she enjoyed, she sometimes surprised Barclay by an exhibition, among other ways, of a child-like amenability to his influence, — an almost Griseldalike meekness. It was a pathetic testimony to her hard fate, to the chilling rebuffs with which her naturally affectionate nature had been met. It afforded, too, a glimpse into that mysterious region of feminine character in which it appears to be a sort of luxury to be dominated over, even to be thwarted in its wishes, by one it loves, — a trait corresponding to the masculine tendency to dominate. She would express, after some simple occasion, — perhaps his merely having dined with them en famille, in the most uneventful way, — a pleasure out of all proportion to any cause for it that seemed to have been given.

“ But why ? but how ? ” once queried Barclay, puzzled. “ Nothing remarkable has happened.”

“ It is not necessary for remarkable things to happen. I have not been maltreated, I have not been beaten ; that is all.”

After some random critical remarks of his, in a gay discussion on furnishing, he was astonished, on his next visit, to find the position of some important articles, a leading picture, and even the arrangement of an entire room quite altered.

“ I shall be afraid to open my mouth next,” he protested, in whimsical expostulation. “ What right have I to interfere with your surroundings, or put you to any trouble whatever ? ”

“ I like to please you,” she said ; and there was a thorough-going completeness in this abject submission and a cooing gentleness in the tones of her voice that made his heart beat high with a mysterious joy and trouble. What might not these peculiar marks of favor be construed to mean ?

“ Perhaps you would enjoy being beaten, after all ? ” he said.

“ Perhaps I would,” she replied sweetly.

But, this mood was as brief as it was phenomenal ; however she may have still adhered to it in spirit, it was far too tame to comport with such habits of self-assertion and charming bold caprice as were naturally hers.

The general manner of their talk was that Mrs. Varemberg was much the more animated, and contributed much the greater share of it. of the two.

“ It is a dangerous trait in you,” she would sav to him, " that you are so good a listener.”

But when her spirits were down, she had her silent moods, also. She was known to fade away so completely into the region of her own griefs and fancies that it was impossible to recall her from it, and her friend could only withdraw, and leave her to the restorative influence of time. Sometimes, under less depression than this, she would try to have him talk uninterruptedly — which was a difficult thing for him to do — for her distraction. One day she insisted, in such fashion, with a ray of humor in it, that he should tell her some long story from his travels, to relieve her ennui.

“ But you have heard all about my travels already ; I can think of nothing further of importance,” he demurred. " And you yourself are quite capable of talking to-day.”

“ Once when I was in the Sandwich Islands,” she threw out, as if quoting in advance the opening sentence of his narrative.

“ But I tell you ” —

“ Once when I was in the Sandwich Islands,” she persisted inexorably.

“ Have you any particular reason for selecting the Sandwich Islands ? ” he asked, struck by a sudden startling recollection.

“ I select them quite at random, but that is no reason why ” — she answered, with an imitation of capricious tyranny.

“ Then, by heaven ! ” cried Barclay excitedly, " once when I was in the Sandwich Islands, I saw your husband there. It was Varemberg, as sure as I ’m alive. It must have been. I know it was.”

“ What do you mean ? ” demanded his auditor, aghast. She had no trace of ennui, either real or pretended, now.

“ It all comes back to me. I did not know, at the time, he was in that part of the world, or that there was any rupture between you. I do not know why I did not think of this the other day, when you told me of his having been heard of in the South Seas.”

“ Tell me all that you saw and know.” " I went into a court, to see something of the administration of justice in those latitudes. I observed — it was in the prisoner’s dock — a man bearing a singular resemblance to Varemberg.”

“ Oh ! could it have been ? Did you speak to him ? Did you identify him ? ” " Not by name, certainly. I asked the by-standers about him and his case. They returned a different name, one I had never heard of. I thought it but one of those coincidences in looks that are so commonly happening. I sometimes think we are all cut out only upon a dozen patterns, or so, and everywhere you go you find people who closely resemble those you have left behind. But now all hangs together. The offense for which he was on trial exactly corresponds with what you have told me of his violent character. And then, certain peculiarities of his manner, his sharp glance, — yes, I could not have been mistaken ; it was he.”

“ What had he done ? ” asked the unfortunate wife, trembling.

“ He was accused of killing one of the coolies who had worked for him on a sugar plantation, of which he had recently become the overseer.”

“ And was he — convicted ? ”

“ No, I afterwards heard he was not. One poor cooly was not of much consequence, after all; and the defense was mutiny and self-preservation, — though it was alleged, on the other hand, that the disturbance or uprising was due to intolerable cruelty on the part of the overseer.”

“ How long ago was all this ? ”

“ Just before I left for San Francisco ; a bare six weeks, say, before my arrival here.”

Mrs. Varemberg gave a convulsive shudder.

“ Ah,” she said, “ if he was so near, it was but a step for him also to San Francisco, and what is to prevent his coming here ? ”

“ He would never dare ! ” and Barclay started to his feet, his eye blazing indignation. “ No, it is impossible.”

He had not thought of it in that light. He saw that his story had alarmed her. Distressed at her agitation, he endeavored to repair the effects of what he deemed his imprudence. His surprise at a strange coincidence had inadvertently betrayed him into it. He pretended that he might, after all, have been mistaken. But it was too late. The story had made a deep impression on its hearer. It accented also the bondage, sometimes half forgotten, that held her, and the irreparable distance fixed between her and others. It was a warning of personal danger to Barclay, too, like the discovery by Crusoe of the first foot-print on the sands, and, as with Crusoe’s foot-print, it was long before uneasiness from this source was allayed on either side.

Even with the best allowance for a mental blindness and for good intentions, it is evident that such a situation as that outlined between the pair could not last. The days went by, and their awakening from their self-imposed delusion rapidly approached.

Barclay made many a furtive study of the looks of his intimate companion, and, though she could certainly not have been much better, was surprised to find himself thinking of her but little as an invalid. There were certain aspects of her appearance — now it was a poise of the head, now the curves of her eyebrows and lids — which he would say to himself, when alone, were too perfect to be real ; but on going back to see them again he would find, to his astonishment, that the fact far surpassed his recollection. He had some singular moments, in looking at her, when she seemed to swim before him in a sort of luminous haze. It had a magnetic quality ; it emanated from her eyes, and was full of the sweetness of her glance and her smile, and he could not see her quite clearly. He would draw forth some small treasures, once of her personal belonging, that he possessed, and sit in reverie or rapture before them, quite in the most usual lover-like way. These were a glove, a bit of lace from her gown, a card on which she had scribbled some words, a faded rose, — the common trumpery paraphernalia.

What! to reverence such treasures, and yet remain only a friend ?

“ Yes,” he made answer, in specious sophistry; “ all such homage need not be given over to the lover alone. The warm friend, too, may start at the opening door, tremble at seeing a dear presence afar, watch for a window light, turn pale and red at the receipt of a letter, at the little touch of a hand, or even at the tones of a voice.”

The thoughts of Mrs. Varemberg, on the other hand, were forever hovering about Barclay. His interests were almost the only ones that occupied her ; he filled her long musings by day, her dreams at night. It was his very merits that constituted his most deleterious influence ; it was not because he was bad, but because he was good, that he was secretly drawing her away from allegiance to her most firmly settled convictions. She was forever making idle contrasts.

“ Why could it not have been ? ” she said, bemoaning her fate. “ With him, I should have had a career of honor ; I should have been a useful being in the world, and not the poor, forlorn creature I am.”

Through all this she kept an inexorable watch upon her tongue; she meant to let fall no word that might betray her state of feeling. One afternoon in the late winter, when there was a new premonition of snow in the soft, calm air, some errand took her to the South Side of the town. She passed Barclay’s factory at a distance, on the way, and she said to herself that she felt a certain joy to be even so near to him as that, though she did not see him. A deft artistic hand might have drawn the Polish settlement, as it appeared to her in its winter dress, in a few lines and washes of gray and sepia, on a bit of white paper. At the church, with its twin towers and domes of shining tin, a festival was evidently being made ready for the ensuing Sunday: a large quantity of carpets, painted images, and tall vases of paper flowers were being conveyed in; the entrance doors were wide open, and the sexton and a number of assistants were busy about the altar. Mrs. Varemberg recollected that this church had been recommended by Barclay as one of the minor curiosities discovered in his search for the unusual; the notion took her, in passing, to enter it, and she did so. Some silken banners of benevolent societies were planted by the chancel rail, and there were a few eikons, or sacred pictures, of which the face and hands were sunk into a gilded ground, while the rest was painted on the flush surface, — nothing of any real importance, but only interesting because they had interested him. Fatigued, this unusual visitor sat down in one of the front pews; presently she half knelt, and remained a considerable time with her face buried in her hands. She was aroused by finding Paul Barclay standing beside her. She was just rising from her devotional attitude when he found her.

“ I was driving by,” he said. “ I could not very well avoid recognizing your sleigh, with your man waiting patiently on the box. and I came in on the chance of finding you. So you have gone over to the Polish form of worship ? ”

“ Do not taunt me; if you once begin, you will never have reason to stop.

I do not know but I have been trying to pray.”

“ St. Jude’s would have been nearer for the purpose, and it is rather more affected by your friends.”

“ Any temple is good enough for a petition that will not and probably ought not to be granted.”

“ Will you tell me what you have prayed about ? ”

“ Oh, general wretchedness,” she answered, at first evasively ; then, looking at him directly, and as if under an emotion she could not control, “ For simple, sweet earthly happiness. Eternity is too far away, too long to wait. But it cannot be granted, and it is wicked even to ask for it.”

“ Poor child ! ” he murmured, and an absorbing tenderness welled up in his heart for her ; then, in a louder tone, with reassurance, “ Patience; all will yet come right.”

“ No ; all will come right for others, but not for me,” she responded, desperately.

Barclay was on the eve of some great outburst. In another moment he would have given expression to the feelings with which his whole being had long been pervaded. But his companion herself first recovered her lost control. She stepped lightly along the aisle, and drew her wraps around her, preparatory to going forth into the outer air. In the vestibule she hastily began to read aloud a placard, in amusing English, affixed to the wall.

“ No person who has not a pew (seat),” said this remarkable notice, " is not allowed to enter the same, for we have not got that church for nothing. By so doing they will oblige every holder of a pew, as it would deprive them of their respective place. By order ” —

When Barclay would have recommenced at the serious point where they had left off, a final diversion was created by William Alfsen, who caught sight of them in the portal, and came running up the steps to thank them both gratefully for their efficacious service in having secured him the coveted place on the revenue cutter. He had been inducted into his duties, it appeared, a week before, and this was the first opportunity he had had to get off long enough to go and see anybody. He had been intending, he said, to call on them both.

“ And now, I suppose, with all the rest,” said Barclay, as the sailor was withdrawing, “ you can marry Stanislava ? ”

“ I don’t know about that,” replied Alfsen, scratching his head dubiously. “ The old man, he don’t let up on us yet; and Stanislava, she ’s one o’ them kind what don’t make no trouble in her family. I guess we got to wait a while yet.”

When this was over Mrs. Varemberg drove away homeward by herself. A lighter note had opportunely been struck, and a most dangerous moment had been averted.

David Lane could hardly fail to note, of late, that his daughter was more disturbed in mind than usual, even for her. She was growing paler and thinner. He thought good to let fall a suggestion to the Rev. Edward Brockston that the latter should take occasion to talk with her, and help bring her to a more reconciled feeling with existence. This man of wise counsel did so to the best extent he could. He showed her yet further, in the usual way, that this life is to be regarded as of no real importance in itself, but is only a preparation for another. Perhaps he had some shrewd perception of how the land lay, for he was not an obtuse person, and so he managed to touch delicately, too, upon the church doctrine of divorce. He aimed to strengthen her belief in the binding force and obligation of the marriage contract by as cogent words as possible. “ The house that God has not built,”

he said, concluding this topic, " is not built at all.” A public entertainment was to be given, known as a Peasants’ Carnival. He urged her to take a part in this, both to aid the charitable object for which it was intended, and also as a relief and distraction to herself from the perhaps rather too morbid state of mind into which she was allowing herself to drift. Contrary to what might have been expected of her and to her usual practice, she consented to do so. She was not strong enough to enlist herself in the active work of the carnival proper, but it was finally arranged that she should accept a character in some tableaux vivantes projected in connection with it, a rôle in which her noble and distinguished bearing could be well turned to account.

The sculptor Schwartzmann first aided some of the members individually, then allowed himself to be impressed into the service as general manager of the whole. Barclay found him advising Mrs. Varemberg about her costume. He saw her involved in a profusion of soft tissues and stuffs of cloth of gold. One evening, on which he endeavored to draw from her what her character was to be, he chanced to be so posted that he could see her not only directly in front, but also reflected sidewise in one of the pier-glasses of the drawingroom. The mirror duplicated all the stuffs and their shining, as it duplicated her gracefully bent, slender figure. She was clad in a soft black silk, with a camel’s-hair scarf about her shoulders. As he gazed, his fancy was comparing her to some mediæval châtelaine, some Lady of Shalott, weaving a fabric of intertwisted threads of fate. The identity of the characters was not to be disclosed, however, till the performance itself, and Barclay, in spite of his humorous guesses, was left in the dark, like the others.

On the opening of the carnival, the interior of the Academy of Music was found filled with small, gayly decorated booths, arranged around the outer circumference of the auditorium, which was floored over. Swiss chalets stood alongside Norwegian cottages, of varnished logs, and German foresters’ huts. There was an old English inn, with pots of roses on the window ledges and a stout host in the vine-clad porch. There were a Spanish posada, and a chic auberge taken bodily from a French opera bouffe.

Paul Barclay, on his arrival, found himself in an atmosphere thick with smiles, bows, and compliments, the choice perfume of civilization. The eye was greeted by pyramids of fantastic objects for sale, baskets and arches of exotic flowers, and glitter of china and silver, brought out to serve dainty refreshments upon. There were belles in the ordinary costume of society : some of the demure, high-necked sort, and other sirens in low dresses, making a fascinating display of neck and arms through their gauzes. All the pretty, frail peasants, in their coquettish caps and aprons, would probably have drawn laughing scorn from the buxom originals in the mother country, but they were none the less fair to see for that. The masculine Tyroleans, Troubadours, and Highlanders, young business men of Keewaydin, concealed with but little success their daily identification with the affairs of East and West Water streets.

Barclay had made the rounds to a certain extent, and was buying some trifle of a pretty girl, who represented the Belle Chocolatière of the Dresden Gallery, when he suddenly found himself next to Justine DeBow. She wore a quaint old embroidered white satin wedding-dress, handed down from some ancestor on her father’s side, with powder and patches to match. She looked handsomer than perhaps ever before, but there was an evident cloud of trouble on her brow. After receiving her greeting. Barclay would have passed on from her, also, with some few of the usual polite forms, but she said to him in a low tone: —

“ Will you not take me for a short walk ? There was something I wanted to say to you.”

He offered her his arm, and they strolled about a little, and then withdrew to a point near the stage, somewhat remote from observation, where there was a bower, in which were constructed artificial banks of mossy green baize. Miss DeBow made as if she would have entered this bower, but he did not follow her lead. The young woman then stood still, faced him, and, first drawing a long, gasping breath, demanded : —

“ Is it on account of my mother — on account of what you—you heard that evening, that you no longer wish to associate with me?”

“ Not associate — Could you think me capable of it ? ” he protested, at first not comprehending her meaning, and then shocked and pained both for her and himself.

“ Then why have you so changed ? ” she exclaimed. “Why are you so cruel to me? Why do you stay away?”

This was a case requiring far more delicacy of treatment and tender consideration than that of Mrs. Rycraft. In brief, she made love to him outright. She shed tears, and showed all the signs of a genuine emotion. The rôles of the sexes are, on some rare occasions, thus reversed. All this might, perhaps, have been only a deliberate plan, of an unmaidenly sort, a last throw, on the chance of winning him ; or it might have been the spontaneous outburst of an ill-regulated nature, yielding to a spell its own imagination had woven.

“Oh, I love you! I want you to take me for yours ! ” she said to him passionately. “ You are so different from all the others I have ever known. I want to be with you always.”

Paul Barclay was surprised indeed to find how callous he could remain to even such an appeal, how efficacious was the panoply by which he was protected.

“ I must not let you talk so. You are not quite yourself in this,” he answered her, gently. “ You will smile at your own folly, I am sure, when you look back upon it, after a little time.”

“ At least you will not betray me,” she asked, when she was at last convinced that her effort was of no avail.

“ You have given me a great proof of your confidence,” he said, “ and it shall be most sacredly respected.”

A little bell rang sharply : all eyes were turned towards the stage ; the coquettish peasants left their booths, and stood forward expectantly in the hall, taking attitudes of unconscious grace. The little bell rang again, and the curtain went slowly up on the first of the tableaux. What a sight it was on the stage that met the astonished eyes of Barclay !

A vivid lime-light streamed full upon the figure of the Golden Justice. It was Mrs. Varemberg, clad in severe, straight-falling draperies of cloth of gold. On her head was a golden helmet, by her side a long, straiglit-hilted golden sword, and in her hands a pair of golden scales. She was raised upon a pedestal resembling that to which the statue was actually attached, and she stood against a deep blue ground, representing the sky. Her hair and eyes and the smooth flesh of face and hands mingled a warm human element with the imitation of metal. She recalled one of the famous chryselephantine statues, of ivory, ebony, gems, and gold. It was of such precious materials, instead of the bare, cold marble, that the sculptors of antiquity delighted to fashion their choicest works.

A murmur of surprise, increasing to admiration, ran around the hall. “ How striking, how original ! ” was the comment. “ Who would have thought that the image from our own city hall, apparently so void of romance, could be made to figure in such a way ? ” The Golden Justice was a greater success than all the Cleopatras, Dorotheas, and Priscillas of the occasion. It was voted a triumph of ingenuity on the part of both Schwartzmann and the eminent lady who carried out the conception they had planned together, and it gave to Mrs. Varemberg a new accession of prestige.

The apparition stood immovable, an epitome of serene majesty and loveliness. It was gloriously bright, like the seraph Uriel, or Gabriel, chief of the angel guards of heaven. Barclay gazed, breathless, as if any motion of his might cause it to vanish before its time. The young girl beside him saw the rapture in his glance, and knew at last that all was hopeless between herself and him, and why it was.

“ It is she,” she said, desperately. “ Ah, she does well to use her arts of a woman of the world against a poor girl! ”

“Hush!” said Barclay; “you must not speak against her. She is the best, the dearest, being in the world.”

At the same time the statue seemed to direct at him, where he stood in his ill-assorted companionship, a glance as of a certain reproach. He broke away, left the hall almost fiercely, and went to attempt to allay his turbulent agitation in the little park by the lake shore, which had become a favorite resort with him. His moment of thorough awakening had come. He knew, without a shadow of disguise, that the fiction of a disinterested friendship he had been so long bolstering up was an utter mockery. He knew that he was as wildly in love with Florence Lane as in the maddest moments of the earlier time. And there was now this singular thing about it that made his affection even stronger than then. In former days his ideal of her had been compounded with that of most blooming health and strength. She had been made up, for him, of even the elements that haunt a schoolboy’s fancy ; she had hardly been of flesh and blood, but of sugar and spices, the rose and the lily, milk, honey, and perfumes, ivory, alabaster, coral, and jade. Today, and long since, in his tender sympathy, his love had embraced with an equal ardor her human weakness and decline. He conceived a union of soul and essence, from which the body with all its imperfections might be eliminated and his affection remain unchanged.

The discovery caused him the keenest pain. He did not want to admit to himself that it was so. The situation was such that the feeling ought not to be disclosed. Should he conceal it and suffer in silence ? To suffer heroically was part of a Spartan discipline he had marked out for himself, but he knew that in fact his state of mind could not be hidden. He groaned aloud as he paced the esplanade in the darkness.

“ Is this to be the end ? ” he asked. “ Am I to put myself in antagonism with all those social laws which it should have been my part rather to strengthen and enforce? Am I to join the wretched strugglers with an illicit passion? No; one thing a man can save when all else is lost,— his honor. I must go away from here, and never return.”

That same night, Mrs. Varemberg, fatigued and depressed by the unusual exertion she had undergone, drove home as soon as her own part was over. On alighting she inquired for her father, and learned that he was then at home, in his library. He had not gone to the carnival, as he had intended doing, having been detained, it appeared, at the last moment. The secret had been kept from him as well as the others, and his daughter wished now that he should see her in the full paraphernalia of her costume before it should be permanently laid aside. She threw a veil of a light tissue, therefore, over her features, which both added to the statuesque effect and concealed her identity, and went to present herself before him in the library. The door was ajar. She glided in.

David Lane looked up from his writing, and saw the veritable Golden Justice, from the dome of the city hall, in his presence. Whether it was the apparition itself, as something really uncanny, or that he feared he was becoming a prey to dangerous hallucinations, or only the sudden suggestion of all that the figure contained for him, his heart gave a terrible throb; he became very white ; he staggered to his feet, gasping, and leaned upon a corner of his desk for support.

“ Why, papa, am I really so formidable ? ” cried his daughter gayly. She had reason to be alarmed at the unlooked-for success of her stratagem.

“I — I am very nervous,” he stammered, abating the rigid fixity of his attitude, and sinking back again into his seat. “ You should have given me a little notice. I was so occupied I did not hear you come in.”

“ It seems to me I make almost too good a ghost. It is like the statue of the commander walking in to Don Juan. But you are no Don Juan, poor papa.”

Of all possible conceits in the range of imagination, who could have foreseen that this would be chosen to torture him with? Destiny, he said to himself, which meant to destroy him, had descended to petty tricks of detail, to a malicious ingenuity. It was playing with his heart-strings as a cat with a mouse.

But he mustered his calmness again. He began to compliment his daughter on her improved appearance. He said he thought it would be well if she would often take part in some such affairs, and try to see a little more of the life of the social world than she was in the habit of doing. Mrs. Varemberg’s golden helmet and emblems of office were now laid aside ; her hair flowed freely over her shoulders; she extended herself in an arm-chair, and had more than ever the aspect of some seraph from the bright hosts of the Paradise Lost, or some warrior saint of Palma Vecchio. She spoke of her usual avocations, her ennui and longing. The storm must have been long in gathering, but it now broke out as if from a clear sky.

“ I will have a divorce ! ” she suddenly cried. " I will be free. I can stand this life no longer.”

“ Is it this man, this Barclay, who is at the bottom of it ? ” demanded her father sternly.

“It is — it is— I cannot explain,” she responded, not able to be quite ingenuous, even in the midst of her vehemence, which this question tended to abate. " I bear a name identified with all that is hateful; is not that enough ? ” “ And you will abandon your most cherished convictions ? ”

“ Oh, is it so irreparable ? Is there no honorable relief ? Must I drink the cup of wretchedness to the very dregs ? ” she cried, passionately. “ You do not know what I have suffered. If it had been only poverty, how gladly I would have shared it with him ! If it had been only sickness, how devotedly I would have nursed him! I had such a thirst for affection. I used to go to him sometimes and kiss him in his sleep, and beg his forgiveness, because I dared not address him thus when awake, — though I was not in fault. But oh, papa, when he does not want me, and never wanted me — when I can benefit neither him nor myself — when all can do no good ” — So she spoke, standing flushed and panting before him in her shining garb. David Lane was aroused, never to be mistaken more, from the false security into which he had lulled himself. He could only murmur, just as Barclay had done before him, —

“ Try to be patient, dear ! All will yet be well.”

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Varemberg humbly, at length, “ you are right. I hardly know what I am saying. I will try to be patient; I must be patient.”

X.

A NAVAL ENGAGEMENT.

The position of Paul Barclay in Keewaydin thus seemed untenable. His passion for Florence Lane was renewed in all its original intensity. In sweeping away the sophistries in which he had lately immersed himself, he was harshly unjust even to the purity of his original intentions.

“ She alone was my object in settling here!” he exclaimed fiercely. “My pretense of a regular avocation has been but the most wretched piece of hypocrisy.”

At his factory he contemplated his men in their shops, as he had often done before, but now with a new feeling. He contrasted again the dingy interior in which they worked with the parlors, full of light and color and rare bibelots, which employers, himself like the rest, enjoyed from the product of this labor. But, after all, he reflected, these men had compensations in their work. They took a pride in their feats of strength and skill. They did not mind the grime, nor tread gingerly over it, but they were prepared for it in a rough-and-ready dress it could not spoil. What, indeed, in the last analysis, are dirt and grime ? They are but particles of the general matter of which the universe is made; at the very worst, but one of its phases of transformation. Under the microscope, the ash-heap and even the gutter are as full of crystals of loveliness as the snow. As he looked around, he could feel that he had benefited in a small way many of these employees. His stay there had not been altogether in vain, so far as they were concerned. For instance, he had aided old Fahnenstock to secure the long-coveted cottage and bit of land at White-Fish Bay, to be a retreat for his old age; he had established the ambitious, too hard-working McClary in a shop of his own ; he had seen the boy Martin Krieg apprenticed to an architect, and making an excellent beginning in that profession ; he had ameliorated the lot and somewhat brightened the views even of the saturnine Hoolan, and given a set or two of useful books to Hassler, who had a taste for reading, — and so the story went. Few but were the better in some way for having known him. But their troubles now moved him less than formerly ; care for their hardships was engrossed in that for his own, which, though different in kind, seemed not less in degree. He found himself saying in a summarizing way, —

“ It is not the special situation in life that is important; it is the character, the disposition, of the man. To every lot is attached its pains, as well as its compensations, and it may well be that the pains of the higher station are often the keenest.”

So far as he had had any definite intentions to make himself an authority on the laboring classes, and to enter into practical philanthropy in that field, — in his despondency he doubted if he had really had any such intentions, — they might at some time be prosecuted elsewhere.

He passed several days of mental conflict and wavering, and nights of broken slumbers. Then he arrived at an inflexible resolve, confirming that towards which he had tended at first, as the solution of the difficulty. Heroic resolutions are said to be those which are preferred in love, because they are impossible of fulfillment. At last, his shilly-shallying was at an end. He determined to see no more of Mrs. Varemberg, to withdraw from the partnership with Maxwell, and to leave Keewaydiu at the earliest possible moment. Yes, there seemed nothing for it but that he must go.

Spring was wont to be slow in coming to Keewaydin, and it was as yet only the beginning of March, but there had come along a spell of exceptionally mild weather. The winter had been an eccentric one in many ways, but the oldest inhabitants — the ancient weather-vanemaker, Ole Alfsen, among them — said that nothing like this had been seen in a good twenty years at least.

On the morning of the final resolve referred to, Barclay hurried away from his untasted breakfast. Instead of taking a more straightforward route to his factory, he repaired thither by the way of his favorite promenade along the lake shore. Once there, he lingered awhile, giving way to his discontent and melancholy, enhanced by the subtle mildness of the air. Like another Achilles, he paced by the sounding sea, and grieved his noble heart for beautiful, lost Briseis.

“ I who aimed to play the providence in the lives of others,” he lamented, “ what have I done for my own ? ” And he went on : “ Where next shall I turn ? What next, in the world, shall I do ? ”

Patches of snow were melting, and the water from them was running gayly away in the gutters, simulating that of the mightiest streams. A few tender shoots of grass had put forth their green heads from under the snow, perhaps astonished at their own temerity. Down on the margin of the lake, under the steep incline, some children were playing boldly on the floating ice; making believe that the broken cakes, from one to another of which they leaped with the aid of poles, were their boats and islands. The great body of the ice in the bay was loosened, and going out under the impulse of favoring winds from the south. Detached masses of it flecked the blue expanse far and wide, like shining islands of the blessed.

There was to be noted in the offing a large bark, making her way in, and acting strangely. She proved to be the Ocean Wanderer, a vessel loaded with jute and paraffine, which had been winter-bound, above, by the sudden close of navigation in the fall, and was now availing herself of the first opportunity to run for her port. Barclay was to see her again, later in the day, under strange circumstances indeed. While he followed, scarce wittingly, the motions of this vessel, Ives Wilson drove by in a bespattered buggy, and hailed him.

“ Oho, spring fever,” said the editor, characterizing his air of listlessness ; “ but you are forcing the season a good two months. There is a great deal more chilliness, too, in this air than you may be aware of.”

He insisted on taking Barclay up and carrying him a part of the way on his journey ; and the latter, who had already loitered a good deal longer than he had meant to, accepted the accommodation.

“ I am flying around, seeing my aldermen, supervisors, and that sort of people,” said Wilson. “ The elections are coming on soon, and the matter of the city and county printing has got to be looked after. I always make it a point to attend to those things myself.”

“ Is there danger, then, of your losing your profitable contracts ? ”

“ Well, no ; the Index always sticks to a good thing when it has it, and of course it will now. Our readers expect it of us. Of course it’s all right, but I go round once in a while and keep our friends up to the mark.”

“ I hear Jim DeBow is going into politics, and is likely to be our next mayor,” said Barclay, by way of keeping up the conversation.

“ Going in ? It would be more of a novelty if he would keep out. He’s always been in, more or less, under the surface. Yes, this time he wants an office for himself, — though, to tell the truth, it’s not so much for himself, either. He wants to help Rossmore to the seuatorship, — at the next session of the legislature, you know. If DeBow is mayor, he ’ll work the city employees and contractors for his friend Rossmore, and against Gulmore, for all they are worth. Well, that’s all right. I’m for Rossmore, too.”

“ You give me an interesting inside view of things.”

“Oh, that’s nothing; you’ll be in politics yourself, some day, and then you ’ll see the real inside. Why don’t you use the popularity they say you’ve got down there among the factory hands, and run for something now ? The Index will back you ; you can depend upon that.”

“ Considering that I have not been a resident long enough, and for some few other reasons, I hardly think I will,” said Barclay dryly.

“ Oh, as to residence, our law is a little peculiar. In order to encourage the investment of capital, it makes a manufacturing enterprise like yours equivalent to a period of residence, you know. You are a citizen in good and regular standing, and can run for any office you please.”

“ Thank you ! It is worth knowing.” Little his interlocutor thought of the brief space of his remaining stay.

“ By the bye,” began Ives Wilson again, “ there’s a man down your way — Idak, the landlord of the Johannisberger House — whose vote I ’d like to secure, in case he’s nominated for the new board of aldermen, as they say he will be ; and yet we have n’t got much pull on him, as it were. Our readers want to see the Index have Idak’s vote, of course, but the fact is we’ve been obliged to haul him over the coals a good deal of late, — show him up as a corruptionist, blackguard, and that sort of thing, — and he probably don’t feel any too friendly towards us just at present. You don’t think you could let it get to him from you, do you, that the custom of your place would depend upon his giving the Index his vote ? ”

“No, I don’t think I could.”

“ Oh, a mere suggestion ; no offense,” said the other, with the greatest goodnature. “ He wants to go into the board only to get another lamp-post in front of his house, I understand, and most likely we can block him any way, if he is n’t with us.”

The river, as well as the land, showed the unusual forwardness of the season. Several of its bridges had begun to turn, for passing vessels, with considerable frequency. People who were hindered by them did not give vent to their impatience in the ordinary way, but lingered, and noted gladly the stir on the water which furnished such tangible evidence that the long embargo of winter was at last broken, and the genial spring at hand. The sail-lofts and block and cordage shops were open, active repairs were in progress, and the smell of tar, oakum, and fresh pine shavings pervaded the docks.

Regular navigation was by no means yet open, but several craft in the river had taken advantage of the occasion to change their moorings from one point to another, in tow of the stout little steam-tugs. The lower works of many, which were for the first time visible, now that they were fairly denuded of the ice, presented but a battered and rusty appearance after their hard usage by the winter. The circle of gossips, who had too long hibernated round the large stove in the main room of the Johannisberger House, were glad to come forth to the porch and see a little of actual marine affairs out-of-doors. One Coffee John, on the street hard by, threw open for the first time his booth, the shutters of which blossomed out like the leaves of some dusty sort of Victoria Regina.

The cutter Florence Lane, among the other craft, had pulled out, and taken a brief turn beyond the mouth of the Straight Cut, with its two long piers, and was now lying at her wharf, with steam partly up. She was short-handed, her complement of men, furloughed for the winter, not yet having been recalled to duty ; but she had limbered up her engines a bit to prepare for the coming season. Barclay heard this, in passing, from William Alfsen, who was bustling about her in an important way. His chief superior was absent that day, serving as groomsman at a wedding, and the second was temporarily ill; leaving him in the position of leading care-taker, and he seemed very much in his element.

Ives Wilson set Barclay down at the Chippewa Street bridge, — the latter insisting upon his doing so, —and went his way. Worthy Ludwig Trapschuh, at that place, was found to have resumed his full air of bumptious arrogance, kept a little in abeyance, perhaps, during the winter, by his diminished consequence as a simple landsman. He was accustomed to look at Barclay with gangrened vision. He had heard of peculiar doings on the part of this manufacturer, to which, as a conservative person, he did not give his approval, but it was the aid to the Alfsens that was chiefly offensive to him. Not only had the son secured, lately, the place on the cutter, but the old man, his father, — so it was stated, — had been given a very profitable job of ornamental copper-work to do for the factory itself. But Trapschuh was accustomed to give this regular passenger a semi-respectful nod, nevertheless. As he did so to-day in the usual way, he said, —

“ Some kind o’ circus goin’ on over by your fectoree, ain’t it ? ”

Barclay looked, and saw that a disturbance of some sort was in progress on the Island. The aspect of it grew more serious as he approached. A rioting mob of longshoremen, in fact, were trying to prevent the unloading of a vessel, recently arrived at the coal and wood yards of Miller & Blake, some neighbors, with whom he had a slight acquaintance. Matters had reached a dangerous pass by the time he set foot in the midst of them. The foremost rioters were already hustling, and on the point of exchanging fisticuffs with, the men on the vessel, and some of the latter had drawn long knives and were menacingly on the defensive. His eye caught that of Fahnenstock, who stood back in a small assemblage of spectators on the sidewalk, at a safe distance from the fray. The old man stepped promptly forth in response to his inquiry. A number of the other men and boys from his factory were there as well; all were watching with interest the issue of events. The police had been sent for, but bad not yet come.

“ What is the matter ? ” asked Paul Barclay. “ What is going on? ”

“ Supply and demand is the matter. The unify in’ o’ labor is the matter,” responded the usually quiet employee, indulging in mild sarcasm, something very unusual for him. “If Hoolan was only here, he’d give you all the outs and ins of it. It’s a strike,” he went on. “ The coal - heavers would n’t work for the wages offered ’em, and the owners put on a gang o’ Polacks in their place, and now they are tryin’ to drive the Polacks away.”

“ The Polacks is takin’ the bread out of our mouths ! ” the cry here arose. “ D—n ’em, we ’ll club ’em ; we ’ll throw ’em into the river ! ”

Barclay hurried forward. He would have been sorry to see his neighbors or their property come to any harm. Blake, the junior partner, a small, weak man, emerged from his office, near the wharf, and, mounting a temporary rostrum, attempted an address.

“ I tell you, men,” he began, “ the rate we offer is better than that paid in Buffalo, Detroit, or Cleveland to-day.”

“ Down with him ! Give us our money ! Put up or shut up ! ” shouted the unruly mob, interrupting him wildly.

All at once a shower of sticks and stones filled the air. A rush was made for the orator; he was overturned from his brief prominence, and it would without doubt have fared hardly with him but for the protecting arm of Barclay, who had forced his way through the crowd in the nick of time, followed zealously by some of his own men. The young rescuer had a sort of leonine, intrepid air he was seldom seen to wear. He took the rostrum himself. He was already known, and his reputation for fearlessness commanded respect. His words put the matter in a very reasonable light, and he was allowed to speak without molestation.

“ One swallow does not make a summer,” he said in substance, “ nor one day of thaw like this a season’s marine traffic. You have here but a solitary vessel. She has worked her way through the ice with great difficulty, and is not likely to have any successors for a long time to come. Even supposing the pay be not all you think you are fairly entitled to, is it worth while to quarrel about so small a matter ? Come, I ask you to look at it as sensible men. Is it not better to wait till the Straits of Mackinaw are open ? When the fleet come through, and there are plenty of vessels and plenty of work, that is the time to settle the question of wages for the coming season.”

His own men, patriotically standing by “ the boss,” set up a shrill cheering upon this. Some of the strikers faintly joined in it. They were checked, at any rate, and during this time of vacillation a platoon of police arrived at double quick, and took possession of the ground. The sight of the guardians of the peace renewed a part of the irritation of the strikers and made them think again of their grievances, but it was now too late. They dispersed in small knots along the bridges leading to the mainland, and in front of the small saloons there; by degrees, they disappeared altogether, and danger of further rioting was at an end.

On reaching his own works, Barclay returned again to the momentous subject, which had been briefly driven out of his mind. He meant to announce his resignation from the partnership to Maxwell at once. Hut Maxwell was not there. On the contrary, he was met by a request from Maxwell — who had, in fact, been bulletined as a little indisposed for two or three days past — to come over and see him at his house as soon as he conveniently could. He accordingly hastened to Maxwell.

Arrived there, he found his elderly partner sitting up in bed, supported by pillows, and surrounded in a solicitous way by his family. He presented the appearance of quite a sick man. The Maxwell family never concealed their appreciation of the fact that Barclay had been their salvation from ruin, and their manner on the present occasion was not less full of affectionate gratitude towards him than formerly.

Maxwell feebly put out his hand to take that of the visitor.

“ Well, here I am,” said he, affecting cheerfulness, as invalids do. “ Here I am, laid up in dry-dock, and hardly likely ever to get afloat again, worth mentioning.”

“Don’t say that!—What seems to be the trouble ? ”

“ The same old trouble, — liver and kidneys, I suppose. Perhaps I ’ve never said quite enough about it to you. Never fear, it is n’t going to finish me this time. I thought, one while, it was. There’s one simple little straightforward thing, though, that’s got to be done, and that’s why I ‘ve sent for you.”

“ Let us do this simple little straightforward thing at once, then, by all means,” returned the younger partner smilingly.

“ I have got to give up business. You must run the factory alone.”

“What?” cried Barclay, astounded to find his own proposition taken out of his mouth in the reverse sense, and used against him. “ I cannot think of it.”

“ You must. There is no alternative.

It’s either a dissolution of the partnership or a dissolution of the senior partner. The doctors told me to stop work long ago, or it would stop me. I didn ’t do it, and this is what it has come to.”

“ I leave all my interests in your hands,” he went on presently. “ You shall give me what you please. All we have in the world, any way, comes from you, and why should we not trust it with you to the most unlimited extent ? ”

“ You magnify a very small matter,” protested his hearer modestly.

“ It’s so, and I want you to be willing to hear it. I have no fear but the business will prosper, and all of us with it. You have got to prosper; you are too good not to, if there’s any justice. I have no fear of your not being able to run the factory alone. You are a born manager ; you ’re a great success, and the very man for it.”

Careful inquiry and conference in detail with the medical advisers and the family but served to confirm the truth of the state of things here outlined. Retirement from the partnership was no mere whim of Maxwell’s, but an inexorable necessity. Barclay saw that he would be obliged to remain in the place until a proper winding up of the new responsibilities thus falling to his charge could be effected. He would not have hesitated to sacrifice his own financial interests by hasty action, but those of others could not be lightly treated. He must remain till there could be a sale and transfer of the business to other hands, and an equitable division of the proceeds.

As he left the house, his heart partly sank with an added depression, partly fluttered with a strange elasticity, at the thought of his enforced change of plan, and what might happen during the new period of his stay. Another change of temperature had occurred; the brief, unseasonable touch of spring weather was already over. The wind now blew from the northeast, driving all the ethereal mildness before it, and bearing some cutting snow-flakes on its wings. While still at Maxwell’s house, Barclay had heard the din of the fire tocsin in the muffled way in which it is conveyed to closed interiors. He now heard the brazen clangor taken up by one bell after another, till it reached the dimensions of a general alarm, and he saw many persons running wildly towards the river. He followed in the same direction, which was on his homeward way. When he reached a rising ground he saw that fire had broken out at a number of points along the river. The focus of the whole was surely at or near his own property on Barclay’s Island. He remembered the events of the morning, suspected incendiarism on the part of the dissuaded strikers, and hurried in hot haste towards the scene.

This is what had happened. The bark Ocean Wanderer had come into the harbor with everything drawing, and something so abnormal in her handling, so nervous in her haste, that calamity seemed announced in advance. She did not lower any sail, but tore through the Straight Cut at her greatest pace. Her steering was so wild that the lighthouse keeper thought it a miracle she was not dashed to pieces against the piers. He saw a part of her small crew lying on her decks, as if utterly exhausted, while others furiously worked the deck pumps. A speed of four miles an hour was decorously prescribed as the maximum for vessels moving in the river, but this, together with all other marine regulations, she disregarded. The harbor master’s deputies marked her with wondering eyes, and, recovering themselves, followed after her along the docks, to arrest her at the first opportunity, and subject her to condign penalties for such infringement. But she was not easily overtaken ; she seemed to have no idea of stopping. Some small craft in her way avoided her with much difficulty, and their amazed crews, when safe, hurled imprecations after her. The lower bridges flew open before her, to avoid collision, and she entered the wide, open expanse, or basin, by Barclay’s Island, in the very heart of the city. Where vessels were so frequent, to escape entanglement with her was impossible. She barely missed a schooner, carrying away a yawl from its davits, and the next moment struck a brigantine, head on, and sent this luckless craft to the bottom. Some of her men, meanwhile, danced about, called and signaled in a wild way, and ended by jumping overboard.

The mystery of her strange conduct was soon disclosed. From the yawning seams, opened by the shock, leaped forth tongues of flame, which licked up the sides of the hull, and quickly seized the shrouds and sails. The enigma was solved : the Ocean Wanderer was on fire. The hatches had been battened down, to keep the air from it, and the crew had fought it bravely, hoping to save the cargo, and bring their vessel within reach of efficacious assistance; but at the last moment they were too exhausted even to shorten sail, or properly direct her course.

A patrol from a harbor fire-boat got aboard, and let go an anchor ; but, the flames so wreathing the tackles that the sails could not be interfered with, the bark still drove onward, with such a momentum as caused the chain to snap. A hawser was then hurriedly made fast, and an enterprising tug undertook to draw her away from further mischief, and detain her where she could be effectually dealt with, but this burned off almost immediately. The heat now became so intense that all hands were obliged at last to seek their own safety, and leave her to her disastrous fate.

When Barclay arrived in the vicinity he found that the coal-yards of Miller & Blake, with the disputed vessel of the morning, and his own principal buildings as well, had been kindled by sparks from the floating fire-bug, and were wellnigh consumed. Foreman Akins, with a few assistants, was passing buckets of water to save a few of the minor outlying structures of the factory, but the whole essential part was blazing beyond repair. Old Fahnenstock, to whom calamities and notable happenings of every kind were portents connected with the approaching destruction of the world, was muttering, as he worked, apt quotations from Daniel and the Apocalypse.

The singular agent of destruction grew momentarily more dangerous. The sheets of flame streamed yet higher and more wildly about from her inflammable cargo. Her sails still drew, and the breeze that filled them, made the more capricious by the very heat of the conflagration, caused her to tack and veer about the basin as with a kind of malignant deliberation. One would have said a crew of demons on board directed her movements to where she might do the greatest possible harm. The firebells on shore were ringing continuously ; all the fire-engines were out and in active use. The citizens thronged to the water-side in thousands, to witness so unheard-of a spectacle.

The news had been brought to William Alfsen by vessels hastily changing their moorings and escaping up the river. Lieutenant Gregg, as has been said, was serving as groomsman at a wedding. About this very time he was going up the central aisle, at St. Jude’s. The beautiful bridesmaid on his manly arm was no less a person than Justine DeBow. Whether it was only pique on her part, or whether it was genuine liking for the lieutenant, suddenly developed, and that she was reconciled to her disappointment, — as we all become reconciled to the inevitable, — it is certain that she had never treated the commander of the cutter so well as now. And again, whether springing from an idea that had already entered her head, or only one that was to mature there by slow degrees, it may perhaps be added here as well as anywhere that she was to walk beside him as principal in another similar procession before the year was out.

The wedding march pealed forth from the organ at St. Jude’s. A modish bride in white satin and orange blossoms, beside a groom who looked a trifle stiff and embarrassed, paced back again down the aisle; four handsome bridesmaids in tea-rose and pink, with four gallant groomsmen, —Justine DeBow was making a mental note of the whole, and resolving that her own wedding should be very nearly like it, — followed them ; and four pretty children, with baskets of flowers, brought up the rear of the procession. In the church porch itself, Lieutenant Gregg was accosted by a messenger, sent by Alfsen to apprise him of what was taking place on the river. The messenger had waited a little time, it appeared, not having dared interrupt him at an earlier stage of the proceedings. There were great festivities still to take place at the house of the bride ; rice and old shoes were to be thrown after her as she stepped into her carriage to start on her wedding journey ; but the honest lieutenant knew that his duty lay elsewhere, and he hastened away. If his vessel were lost, it would be no excuse to make to the government that he had been assisting even at the most distinguished of marriage ceremonies.

When he reached the place of the cutter’s moorings, however, she had gone. Alfsen, in fact, finding him long in coming, had not waited for him. As the terror in the river increased, he had put on a full head of steam, to be prepared for emergencies. Information was brought him that the destruction below was appalling ; all efforts to check it were vain ; the whole town might be burned. A startling inspiration suddenly took possession of him. He hastily recruited a small force from the shore to aid that on board, cast off his lines, put out into the river, and turned his bow down the stream.

Ludwig Trapschuh opened his bridge for him, staring very hard indeed ; lively curiosity mingling both with his dislike and the excitement of the moment.

“ What he’s goin’ down stream instead of up for ? ” he wondered. “ And what he’s goin’ to do with them guns ? ”

The Florence Lane was a side-wheel steamer, of some four hundred tons burden, carrying two light deck guns forward and two aft. Alfsen shifted all these guns to the same side, and prepared as for action. The multitude of other witnesses around the margin of the basin when the cutter first appeared shared the curiosity of Trapschuh. Why was she actually coming down to court the danger, instead of seeking safety for herself in flight ? But all occasion for uncertainty was soon dispelled. The Florence Lane, after passing the bridge, wore round, manœuvred to windward, then ran down daringly close to the burning vessel, and delivered a telling broadside into her. An enthusiastic cheering from the shores filled the air: the plan was understood ; a form of deliverance had at last appeared.

A singular naval battle now ensued on this quiet stream, in the midst of the town. The pieces were but of small calibre, and the marauder, though staggered and checked in her headway, was not yet disposed of. Barclay, among others, saw her reel towards her assailant, as if actuated by a conscious purpose of revenge. The cutter glibly evaded her, and again manœuvred for a place of vantage. The fickle current of air that had caused the fire-ship to seem to follow the other abandoned her, and, appearing to disdain to chase further so cowardly an antagonist, she veered off once more towards the shore. She gathered speed as she went. She seemed to threaten in a direct line the most dangerous point yet selected, — one of the great imposing wheat elevators. One touch of her fiery beak, one blast of her burning breath, and it was gone beyond hope of rescue.

At this time Lieutenant Gregg arrived, having followed his missing cutter down the river. He shouted to Alfsen some hoarse orders through his coupled hands, and ran about in search of a boat in which to put off. The subordinate, in command, however, made no apparent change in his purposes. He steamed after the receding bark, and fired into her another broadside, this time astern. She reeled under it even more than before, but still kept threateningly on, and the distance between her and the shore was rapidly diminished.

Once more Alfsen ran boldly down to windward, and trained his guns, loaded with pieces of chain cable, on her quarter. The roar of this final report went forth from all the brazen throats at once. The death wound was inflicted ; the bark’s side was stove in. She gave a violent lurch downward ; the waters poured over her ; and with dense, suffocating clouds of steam from the contact of fire and water, she sank heavily out of sight. Only a small portion of her spars and cordage still remained above the surface, and these crackled and snapped awhile till they were consumed.

The danger and great further loss of property averted, William Alfsen, to whom it was considered due, became the hero of the hour. A purse was started for his benefit. This, not being completed under the inspiration of the moment, languished, after the manner of such subscriptions, and amounted to nothing important. A more tangible reward from Washington, in the shape of promotion, was also kept back for some time by the opposition of Lieutenant Gregg. That commander could not quite reconcile himself to having allowed another to reap the principal glory, and was even inclined to make charges against his subordinate. But this ill-will was eventually withdrawn, and Alfsen came to be estimated as a man in the way of yet higher advancement.

Paul Barclay, having seen the StampedWare Works reduced to ashes, turned away. Little time now was needed for cumbrous adjustments of affairs. It was but a question of collecting the insurance money. His experience and his quandary had been ended in the most effectual of ways ; he was free to go when he would.

He put some minor matters that might need attention into the hands of a reliable agent. He made provision for the hands thrown out of work, that they might not suffer till they had had ample time to find employment elsewhere. Then, when all was completed, and the preparations for his departure were made, at the very last moment, he went to pay his final respects to Mrs. Varemberg.

William Henry Bishop.