Chapter IV: Part 4

"Yes," agreed the Watermelon, "your empty head."

"Now, don't get sassy," warned the man, growing angry. "I'm an officer of the law and I'm not going to take any of your sass."

"An officer of the law can't arrest a law-abiding citizen," snapped the Watermelon with righteous indignation.

"Law-abiding?" jeered the man.

"What have we done?"

"Try to guess," suggested the man pleasantly and the other laughed.

"I can't guess," said the Watermelon. "Is it for riding through the cow lane? We didn't hurt the lane any. I rode through this same lane last summer and the Browns didn't kick up any row over it. In fact, they were with me, that is, Dick and Lizzie were."

The man stared and the Watermelon frowned coldly.

"Do you know the Browns?" demanded the fellow.

"Not very well," admitted the Watermelon. "I was through here last summer and stopped over night at their place. They were fine people, all right. They told me if I ever came this way again to drop in and I said I would. It was a sort of joke. They gave me a latch-key." He drew a key from his pocket and held it out as proof of his integrity.

"Huh," said the man dully, gazing from the key to the Watermelon.

The second man took it. "Which door does it fit?" he asked.

"The front door," said the Watermelon promptly. "Go try it if you want proof."

"Not so fast," said the second man, who had taken the affair into his own hands. "If you know the Browns, tell me something about them? No, you chuffer feller, hold on, back there. Don't try to slip by, for you can't. You automobilists think that the Lord created Heaven and earth for your benefit and then rested on the seventh day and has been resting ever since. That's better. Now, then--" turning again to the Watermelon--"how many in the family?"

"How many?" queried the Watermelon. "I don't know. I only saw Ma and Pa and the three kids, Dick and Lizzie and Sarah. Sarah was a young lady about twenty, if I remember rightly; Lizzie was eight and Dick was a bit older, ten or twelve--twelve, I think he said. I remember his birthday came in January, anyway."

"Well, goldarn it," laughed the first man, thoroughly convinced. "Well, say, ain't we the easy marks?"

"Don't blame yourselves," said the Watermelon gently. "Father used to say that anything colossal, even stupidity, was worthy of admiration."

"What did Dick look like?" demanded the second man, loath to give up.

The Watermelon straightened up. "See here, my man," said he sternly, "we are in a hurry. You have detained us long enough. I have told you as much as I am going to about the Browns. It's a year ago this summer that I was there and I haven't been dwelling on their beautiful countenances in rapt and joyful contemplation ever since. I have seen a few people during the interval. Dick was fairly good looking, but Lizzie was the cutest. I took them through the cow lane to show them how they could go for the cows in a motor-car, farming up-to-date, see. Now move aside and let us pass, please."

"No, you don't," returned the man sharply. "Let that chuffer feller in the back car come up to the house with me while I try this key. Tom, you keep the others here, till I come back."

The Watermelon leaned back wearily indifferent and drew out his cigarette papers. Alphonse climbed obediently from the car, with his usual imperturbability. Calmly and willingly he scaled the stone wall and set off across the field with his captor. Tom thoughtfully examined his gun, one eye on the motor-cars.

The general's desire to explain was superseded by a still greater desire to get away. The grim faces of the two men impressed him with the gravity of the event. If they were to escape, now was the time, when the forces of the enemy were divided, but there was his car.

He could not leave that behind and the man in the road was a fairly good reason for him to remain where he was and make no attempt to reach it. Batchelor had put up a clever bluff, but it had been called, and they had to sit there until the return of the other man, when they would be exposed, for of course the key wouldn't fit. That second man was a stubborn brute. The Lord had made mules. He didn't intend men to be.

The general turned irritably and glanced at the Watermelon, lolling gracefully in his seat and humming a ridiculous little song between airy puffs of his cigarette.

Henrietta repressed a wild wish to scream aloud. Never, never again would she go into another man's house unless expressly asked to do so by the owner. She glanced behind, up the hill, toward the house. Alphonse and his captor had just come into sight again and were returning through the field. Henrietta breathed heavily. This was awful. When the two reached the stone wall, she hoped she would faint. She knew she wouldn't, she never fainted. She turned around that she might not see them. Nothing could be done, apparently, but simply wait for the hand of the law to fall upon them. The Watermelon had made a good guess as to the children, it seemed; why hadn't he been content to let it go at that? Why had he hauled out that useless key? She had ceased to feel, to think. She looked at Billy. Billy was frozen dumb. This was the end. Bartlett glanced at the man in the road and tried to figure his price.

The Watermelon turned carelessly and spoke to Henrietta. "That was a pretty bird up there. Did you see it?"

"Yes," said Henrietta automatically, though she had seen no bird. She heard the two men now right behind the car and she sank back limply. All was over.

"Well?" queried the Watermelon.

"By gum," admitted the man with the key. "It fits."

*CHAPTER XIII*

*ONLY TO BE LOST*

Bartlett grinned and removed his hat to wipe his brow. The general strove not to show a guilty surprise, Billy giggled and Henrietta began to live again.

The Watermelon held out his hand. "My key, please. Kindly remove that piece of artillery from the road and we will go on."

The man, covered with perspiration and embarrassment, handed back the key. "When the Browns come back, shall we tell them you called?"

"Certainly," said the general pompously, and in the exuberance of the reaction, he drew a half dollar from his pocket and handed it to the fellow. "Kindly give that to Dick," said he with the benevolence of a grandfather.

Billy waved to the crestfallen two and Henrietta gave them a gracious, forgiving bow.

"Never again," said she, "shall I do wrong. The possibilities of discovery are too nerve-racking."

"Father used to say--" began the Watermelon.

"I'll bet your mother didn't talk much," laughed Bartlett.

But the general had passed through an unhappy half hour and had no heart for jesting.

"If you knew the Browns, Mr. Batchelor," said he, "it was your duty to have told us so."

"Yes," said Henrietta. "I have aged ten years, and at my time of life that is tragedy."

"And why," asked Billy, "if you had the key, didn't we go in by the front door last night?"

The Watermelon stared from one accusing face to the other in frank surprise. Even Mike with his fat wits would have grasped the situation. "I didn't know them," he protested. "When I can go in by a door, I don't choose the window."

"But the key," objected Billy.

"Dick and Lizzie," added Henrietta.

"Their very ages," climaxed the general.

"It was only a bluff," said the Watermelon wearily. "I remembered their names and ages from books I had seen around the room last night and on the dresser, sort of birthday presents and things, you know. I never saw one of them."

The general roared and loved the boy. Henrietta leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder. "Wonderful, wonderful Holmes!" said she.

"Did you take the key on purpose?" asked Billy, all athrill with admiration.

The Watermelon flushed. He had taken the key if by any chance he should ever be in that neighborhood again, and the family away, he could spend the night in a comfortable bed instead of under a hayrick. Besides keys always came in handy. He didn't look at Billy. Like a sudden flash of lightning on a dark night, he had seen the difference between them, between what he had become and what he had been. But it came and was gone and the old careless indifference rushed back. He laughed and changed his seat to the one between the two girls.

"When I locked the front door, I slipped the key out without thinking, I suppose," said he. "Besides, keys are handy. When you are stony broke, you can rattle them and make the other fellow think maybe they're the mon."

"Now for breakfast," cried the general gaily, never long forgetful of his meals.

"Tell me," begged Henrietta, "what would father say?"

"Grace," said the Watermelon.

The general, as he informed Henrietta at the first roadhouse they came to and at which they stopped for breakfast, was full of the old Nick. He felt that there might be no limit to his daring, he might go as far as to rob an apple orchard and make no attempt to repay the owner, that was, if the apples were ripe. Henrietta's own spirits were rising. One never realized what liberty was until one threw aside conventionality--not honor, but conventionality, the silly, foolish laws of senseless ages. Billy as usual laughed at every remark, while the general, the tramp and the financier grew fairly brilliant beneath the spur of two pretty women's laughing eyes.

The Watermelon, in his silk socks, his soft panama and fine linen, was too much in the habit of taking fate as he found it, without wonder or protest, to marvel now at his change of fortune or to be disturbed or embarrassed at the unexpected society in which he found himself. Between him and Bartlett was only the difference of a few millions, both lived by their wits, and if one preferred to walk while the other rode, it was merely a matter of choice--no sign of inferiority between man and man.

They stopped that evening at a small town in the north of Vermont, as far from a railway and telegraph office as Bartlett could bring them. He had watched Batchelor carefully for signs of restlessness, but the young man appeared entirely absorbed in the present, with no thought for anything but the moment and Billy and Henrietta.

After supper, they loitered a while on the porch. The night was dark and warm. Across the road and over the fields, the frogs in a distant pond were croaking, and the air was thick with fireflies.

"Isn't it dark and still," said Billy, her hands thrust into the pockets of her linen coat, her feet slightly parted, as a boy would stand, her small head thrown back.

The Watermelon watched her covertly from the cigarette he was rolling, the clear oval of her dainty profile, her slender throat and well-shaped head with its coronet of braids.

"Dark as misery," said Henrietta dreamily.

"In the day, one sees a world," quoted Bartlett, standing beside her where she leaned, a slender figure, against the post of the porch. "In the night one sees a universe," and he waved his lighted cigar vaguely toward the myriads of stars above them.

"What good does that do," asked the Watermelon, "seeing a universe? It's miles away and can't help you any."

"Ah, but it's beautiful," cried Henrietta, who had never had much experience with misery. "It teaches one to look up, the night-time does."

The Watermelon lighted his cigarette in the cup of his hands and tossed his match away. "If you are trying to walk in the dark," he objected, "trying to get out of your troubles, say, and not standing still in the same old place, you can't look up."

"You have no beauty in your soul," declared Henrietta. "I think the idea is beautiful, seeing a universe."

"When you are down and out, you don't take any pleasure in looking at a universe," said the Watermelon. "A dollar, or even a quarter, will look a darned sight more beautiful."

"I wouldn't like to be poor," said Billy. "It must be so terrible to have no motor-car, for one thing."

"It is," agreed the Watermelon, who would have agreed to anything Billy said. "It's simply awful."

"What did you mind most," asked Billy, "when you were a newsboy?"

"Let's go look at the universe," suggested the Watermelon hastily. "We can see it much better down the road a bit."

Billy consented, and they strolled away in the dark. The general, who thought he was talking politics, was laying down the law to the hotel clerk, and Henrietta and Bartlett were left alone. They lingered a moment on the porch and then quietly disappeared up the road in the opposite direction from that taken by Billy and the Watermelon.

Bartlett's desire was to reach Maine as soon as possible and get lost over Saturday, but to avoid every city and larger town on the way and to hurry by the smaller places where there might be telegraph or telephone connections.

"Out of touch of the world for a week," he was fond of repeating, "no letters, no papers, no worries and no nerves."

And his desire was the Watermelon's. The more they avoided towns, the better the youth liked it. Telegraph and telephone stations were zealously shunned. He would have liked to have seen a paper, so as to judge what the police thought in the case of the theft of the wealthy young stock-broker's car, provided Batchelor had allowed the thing to become public, which he very much doubted, from the little he knew of the man's character. It was hardly an episode one would care to see in print if one was dignified and self-made. And the Watermelon chuckled.

It took them longer than Bartlett hoped, sticking to narrow, unused country roads, and the next night found them still in Vermont. They spent the night at the village boarding-house, and once again Billy and the Watermelon went down the road a bit to look at the universe, and Henrietta and Bartlett went up the road.

The following day, to Bartlett's satisfaction, they got lost. It was late in the afternoon when they stopped at Milford, a small town in New Hampshire, and made inquiries about the next town. Was it far and would the accommodations be good? It wasn't far, the farmer whom they questioned, assured them, only five miles. He directed them how to go and they thanked him and pushed on.

They went on and on and nightfall found them in a lonely bit of wooded road apparently miles from any town or habitation. Bartlett was pleased. They were lost, and by great good luck they might remain lost for a considerable length of time. The general, too, was delighted. They would make a night of it. It was what he had long wanted to do and now they would have to. The lunch basket had been filled earlier in the day at a country store, so there would be enough to eat. The seats of the autos were soft and one could sleep in the cars or on the ground, as one preferred. It was warm and the rugs and shawls would be covering enough.

They ran the cars out of the road to a convenient clearing. Henrietta got out the basket, shawls were spread on the ground in the light of the two cars and they prepared to make the best of things.

"This is like old times," declared the general genially; "a night on the march, far out on the prairies, not a thing in sight, not a sound but a coyote yelping or the cry of a wolf."

"And Indians," said Henrietta, "hiding back of the nearest hillock, creeping up on you unawares."

Billy glanced behind her at the woods and wished they had chosen a more open place to dine.

"Yes," agreed the general cheerfully, "or down in some southern swamp, with the Johnny Rebs stealing through the bushes."

"Oh, please," begged Billy. "What's the use of telling about things creeping up on you?"

And she glanced again at the bit of wood she could see in the light of the lamps. Far in the west the moon was sinking and here and there a star twinkled between the rolling clouds. A thunder-head was now and then revealed distinctly by flashes of distant lightning, and thunder rumbled ominously in the sultry night. A whippoorwill called steadily and once a bat on graceful wing flew by in the eery light.

The general laughed. "That was living in those days, Billy," he said. "A man was a man and not an office automaton, a dimes saving bank."

*CHAPTER XIV*

*BILLY, BILLY EVERYWHERE*

Bartlett nodded. He had been watching Henrietta through half-lazy, half-closed lids, leaning against a fallen log. Somehow out there in the coolness and sweetness of the summer night, in the open country, with only the drumming of the insects and the shrill clamor of frogs to break the silence, nothing seemed to matter, to be worth struggling for. He felt that he hardly cared what was happening in his absence, back there in the hot, crowded, dirty city. A few more millions added to the useless many he already owned, what did it matter? What amount could buy the night, the peace and sweetness and content? He glanced at the Watermelon and felt no triumph in the thought that this was Wednesday and so far not a paper had been received, not a letter sent to spoil his plans. He wondered lazily that he had gone to the bother of planning the small, petty intrigue of the small, petty city, like dogs snarling over a worm-eaten bone. How trivial it all was!

"You're right, General," said he, watching the play of Henrietta's thin white hands in the lamp light, as she and Billy arranged the evening meal. "A man's not a man in the city--nothing but a dirty, money-grubbing proposition. Dollars and cents, dollars and cents, the only reason of his being."

"I know," agreed Henrietta, nodding. "I sometimes wonder why it was so arranged--the world, you know. Why couldn't love, courage, honor have been made the medium of exchange, the most vital necessity of life? Every one has to have money, so every one has to struggle for it. Why couldn't things have been started differently?"

"Potatoes, two kisses a peck," suggested the Watermelon.

"Three," said Bartlett, "if the purchaser is young and pretty. A smile would be enough, if she were old and wrinkled and unwed."

"A motor-car would probably necessitate a wedding," said the general.

"No, no, no," protested Henrietta. "How silly! You don't understand me at all."

"I would hate to be a clerk at a bargain sale," said the Watermelon, pilfering a cracker from the box Billy held.

"Yes," agreed Bartlett, "think of the microbes--"

"Microbes?" asked Billy who had not been following the conversation. "Where?"

"In kisses, Billy," said the general. "I should think you would have found it out by this time. Everybody you kiss--"

"I never kiss anybody," protested Billy, blushing delightfully.

"Father used to say--" began the Watermelon.

"Look here," interrupted Bartlett, "that father of yours was a minister, you say. I vow he could know nothing about this subject."

"He married more people than you have," said the Watermelon.

"Yes," said Henrietta kindly, "he must have known all about it. Do tell us what he said."

"He used to say that kissing was just the reverse of poker--"

"Poker," cried Bartlett. "No wonder your father left the ministry."

"It says in the papers that your father was a policeman," declared the general.

"A policeman of souls," said Henrietta softly.

The general waved the sentiment aside as immaterial. "How could he have been a policeman and a minister?"

"I can't say," answered the Watermelon, and turned to help Billy with a sardine can as the best way out of a tight place.

"How is kissing the reverse of poker?" asked Henrietta, always amused by the Reverend Mr. Batchelor's remarks.

"A pair would beat a royal flush," replied the Watermelon.

"Surely," persisted the general, "if your father were a minister--"

The Watermelon looked up from the key of the tin he was laboriously turning and glanced gently at the general, his woman's eyes amused and pitying, the expression they always wore for the general.

"Why, you see that is just what I always fancied. He used to preach and have a church--but if the papers say he was a cop, he probably was."

"It's a wise child that knows his own father," said Henrietta. "Come to supper everybody."

Bartlett spread the filmy paper napkin on his knees and taking the plate Henrietta handed him, balanced it on his lap with great nicety. He was so sure that the Watermelon was William Hargrave Batchelor that it never occurred to him to doubt it. There were the cards, the monogram on the automobile and the general to vouch for it. The papers were a bit wrong.

Supper over, the general conceived the sudden inspiration of tinkering a while with the cars. Alphonse stood by to assist and the others wandered off down the road before turning in for the night.

Billy and the Watermelon soon drifted away by themselves up a tiny cow lane, fragrant with sweetbrier. They wandered up it side by side, like two children, neither saying a thing, content to be together. At the end of the lane, they leaned for a while on the pasture bars. The sultriness of the earlier part of the evening had passed. The thunder was less ominous and only sheet lightning, low on the horizon, was visible. A breeze, cool and sweet, whispered by. The fireflies danced in gay little flashes of light among the shadows.

The two stood side by side, their elbows on the top rail, their hands before them. They said nothing. There was nothing to say, just the night and they two, alone, among the sweetbriers and the fireflies.

Now and then Billy sighed, unconsciously and happily. A great silence had enwrapped Billy for the last two days, a silence in which she was content to dream and in which words seemed superfluous and uncalled for. She wondered that Henrietta could talk so much. What was there to say? Billy had never been in love. She wondered vaguely if the enfolding content, the longing for solitude and her own thoughts were forerunners of approaching death. The good die young, and Billy felt that she was content to go, to drift away into the eternal peace of the after life. She was not of an analytical disposition and she only knew that she was happy, causelessly happy, and did not ask the reason. The Watermelon stood so closely beside her that once when he turned she could smell the tobacco on his breath. She wanted to rub her head on his shoulder like a kitten, and wondered if she were growing weak-minded.

Without warning the bushes at her side parted and a cow with great gentle eyes peered out at them, so near that Billy could feel the breath, warm and sweet, upon her cheek. With a little cry, she shrank close to the Watermelon.

He felt her slender body, soft and yielding, nestling against him, smelt the fragrance of her curly hair, and suddenly a great tide of longing, of passion, of desire welled up in him and choked him. He wanted to crush her to him, to cover eyes and hair with kisses, to hold her so tightly that she would cry for release. All the ungoverned feelings of the past few years surged over him and threatened to carry both for ever out of sight of land and decency. But, blindly, not knowing what he did, he turned from her and picked up a stick to hurl at the cow. She had turned to him in her fear, and with the honor of his clerical father, he controlled himself.

Billy laughed and straightened up, as the cow, grieved and surprised, backed off in the dark. "I'm not afraid of cows, Willie," said she. "Don't you know it? She just came so suddenly I was startled."

"Yes," agreed the Watermelon dully. "So was I. Why did you call me Willie?"

"Short for William, and William is your name, goose. Don't you remember your own name?" crooned Billy, leaning toward him in the dark.

"Yes, surely," said the Watermelon. "But I hate my name. Call me Jerry. That's what the boys call me."

He did not add that his name was Jeroboam Martin. He being the seventh young Martin to arrive, his distracted parents had turned to the Bible for help in names as well as in the more vital necessities.

"Jerry?" laughed Billy questioningly.

"Yes," said Jeroboam gravely, and added abruptly, "Let's go back."

They turned and retraced their steps, Billy all athrill with she knew not what, singing a foolish little song beneath her breath, the Watermelon staring angrily before him, denying hotly to himself what would not be denied, that he loved Billy. He loved her, not as he had loved other women, not as a careless, lazy tramp, taking what offered, good, bad or worse, with airy indifference, but as the son of his poor virtuous, mother and of his gentle, reverend father would love and cherish the one woman.

But who was he to love like that? The past few years had branded him as a thing apart from Billy. He tried to think it out, but the blood pounded in his temples and he could not think, could only know that he loved her more than he did himself, with a love stronger than the mad passion and longing for her that throbbed in his pulses like leaping fire. The knowledge had come so suddenly, he was so unprepared, that he could not reason it out, could only know that Billy must never dream of such a thing. A companion of Mike and James, who was he to talk of love to Billy? God!

His head moved restlessly as though in pain and his hands, unconsciously jingling the keys in his trousers pockets, clenched tightly. Billy swayed against him in the dark and straightened up with a laugh and a smothered yawn.

"Oh, law," said she, "I'm tired."

"So am I," said the Watermelon moodily. "Tired of living."

"Do you know," said Billy, "I was just thinking that death might not be so awful, just to close your eyes and drift out into space, on and on and on."

"It would be a darned sight better than living," answered the Watermelon. "Hell would be preferable. I beg your pardon."

"Aren't you well?" asked Billy anxiously. "As for me, I never really want to die unless I am feeling perfectly well."

Henrietta and Bartlett strolled up as they approached the cars, where they found the general pacing up and down the road, filled with righteous indignation and anger.

It seemed Alphonse had long ago taken his rug and pillow and retired to the edge of the woods and slumber. Left alone the general had lighted a cigar and was walking slowly back and forth in front of the cars, waiting for the others to return, when a buggy, with two men in it, passed, the horse shying a bit and the general offering his assistance and advice. To his surprise they had not gone by more than three yards, when they stopped, tied the horse and came back on foot.

"First," said the general, as the four gathered around him in the light of the car lamps, "first I thought they were hold-up men. The lamps on my car had gone out and they did not see it, thought that there was only one car, so there would not be many to defend it; besides, I was the only one they had seen, and doubtless they surmised I was alone and they could have held me up easily."

"Father," cried Henrietta, "what did you do?"

"Before I could do anything they asked me the make of my car. I told them. They said it didn't look like a Packard, and I saw that they were looking at Will's car and hadn't seen mine, back near the wall and with the lights out. I pointed to it and said that was my car. They seemed surprised to see two cars. I told them my name, gave them my card, and told them I was motoring to Maine with a party of friends and asked them what they were going to do about it."

"What did they say?" asked Bartlett, while the Watermelon slowly rolled a cigarette.

"Oh, they apologized," admitted the general. "But what I want to know, and what I don't like at all, is why every one is so curious to know the make of my car, the engine number and the license number. What business is it of theirs?"

The two girls slept in one car, Bartlett and the general in the other. The Watermelon lay on the grass on Billy's side of the car and sought to reason the thing out, to plan what to do. Alone in the dark, he did not sleep, but stared before him, ears attuned to the many sounds of the summer night.

In every whir of insects' wings, in every whispering breeze that passed, he heard Billy's soft sweet voice. He stared up at the stars and likened them to Billy's eyes, twinkling points of light as far above him as Billy was, for Billy was Billy, and he was a tramp, a hobo--a Weary Willie.

*CHAPTER XV*

*LOVE IN IDLENESS*

One not born a vagabond in heart can never understand a vagabond's love for the open places, for absolute freedom, to go where he wants, see what he wants, work when he wants. To a vagabond an office is intolerable, the accumulation of dollars, grinding another man to gain a petty advance for oneself, utterly uninspiring, conventionality, the ceaseless humdrum round of existence as a clerk at ten per, revolting. Following step by step in the well-worn, beaten path, where no man dares step aside lest he be jeered at, where none dares fall, lest he be pushed from the road and another take his place, where all think alike, look alike, act alike, spending one's days in an office, bent over a littered, dusty, shabby desk, one's nights at some cheap play-house, seeking to find an outlet for the battered nerves, for the ceaseless strain of the day by stupefying the senses with some garish parody of life, is not living to a vagabond. He is willing to work if the work is a part of himself, a development of that clamorous ego that must find peace in the open, in the physical side of existence. If he is born rich, he will become a traveler, a mountain climber, an aviator; if poor, a tramp, and the Watermelon was born poor.

For the last few years his feet had followed his errant will, now here, now there. He was impervious to hardship while he could wander as he wished, indifferent to good clothes when the price was eight hours a day spent in a stuffy office, bent, round-shouldered, hump-backed, over a column of figures. Beneath good clothes or shabby, there was nothing but a human body, all more or less alike. So the Watermelon had gone his careless, contented way, now resting here, now working there, unworried by rent days falling due, by collars fraying around the edges, coats getting shabby and shiny at the seams, and then Billy came along, Billy, young, sweet, conventional, an honored member of convention's band, walking around and around the same well-beaten path, in the same small inclosure. If he had elected to be one of the throng, he would never have met her. Struggling along at ten per, he would have been so far down the line, plodding painfully on, that Billy would never have seen him.

But now he was out and a fence unscalable was between them. If he climbed the fence again, it would do no good. No vagabond can ever fall in line and keep step, and there is not room enough in the inclosure for the man who has dared to climb the fence and drop down the other side.

Bartlett, like Billy, wondered if he were growing simple-minded. A desire to confide in Henrietta, to tell her what he was up to, had come upon him and seemed too strong to be resisted. Last night, up the quiet country road, alone with Henrietta, he had been forced to suppress the desire sternly, and now in the garish light of day it was still upon him. He took a seat beside her on the stone wall where she tried to be comfortable as she fished olives from a nearly empty bottle, the remains of last night's supper.

"I wonder," said he, hovering on the edge of his foolish desire, "if any one can become a man with nothing to regret."

"Certainly not," said Henrietta. "There would always be the years."

"I mean something that he had done himself," explained Bartlett soberly, a sandwich in one hand, a buttered roll in the other.

"Don't tell me your troubles," said Henrietta, thinking miserably of the years it would soon be so hard to deny. "I have enough of my own. Confession may be good for the soul, but it's the death-blow to your reputation."

"Father used to say that if there were public confession instead of private in the Catholic church, there would be no Catholics," said the Watermelon, helping Billy to the last of the sardines.

"Let's have a public confession," cried the artless Billy. "Everybody tell the worst thing that they ever did in their lives."

The Watermelon laughed and leaned toward her, a moth flirting with the candle flame. "Oh, kid; I'll bet the worst you ever did was to swipe the jam-pot when ma wasn't looking."

"No," said Billy, "I did an awful thing once."

"Let's hear it."

Billy took the olive bottle from Henrietta, speared an olive and passed the bottle on before she spoke. "Will you confess, if I do?" she asked, pausing with the olive half way to her mouth.

"Sure," said the Watermelon. "I robbed an apple orchard once."

"You're fooling," accused Billy. "I'm not. I'm really serious."

"So am I," vowed the Watermelon.

"Billy," said Henrietta, "spare us. I am too young to listen to a tale of depravity."

But the lure of the confessional held Billy and she passed Henrietta's remark without notice. She turned to the Watermelon. "If I tell you the worst thing I ever did, will you tell me the worst you ever did?"

"I haven't done the worst yet," explained the Watermelon.

The general having nearly wrecked the cars and seen the damage repaired by Alphonse, hurried to the four sitting on the stone wall.

"Come on," said he. "It is time we were going. We have no blue book, you know."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Henrietta, "if there were not a rare chance for some one to confess a heinous crime."

She looked at Bartlett as he held out his hand to help her down and her eyes laughed deep into his.

"In self-defense--" he pleaded in a whisper.

It was very early. The freshness of night still clung to fields and wood. The air was full of the clamor of birds and from the valley below came the stentorian crow of a rooster. Little wisps of white clouds drifted by in the deep blue of the sky and a breeze played gently with the girls' long auto veils.

So in the freshness of the early morning they dipped down the hill into the valley, passed farm-houses and corn lands. They stopped about nine at a farm-house and partook of a breakfast of coffee, bacon and eggs. Alphonse filled the cars at a village store and they went on. The glory of the day, the close proximity of Henrietta, who sat beside him, dainty, merry, feminine, the success so far of his plan, which in his saner moments he still cherished, raised Bartlett's spirits higher and higher and they went faster and faster. They swept over the boundary line into Maine with a rush, taking the hills at high speed and skimming into the valleys, now entering a stretch of cool dark wood, now tearing into the sunshine again, past corn-fields, hay-fields, and rocky pastures. Cows whisked their tails at the cars' approach and dashed awkwardly away from the fence rails. Chickens squawked and tore madly to safety with flapping wings. Farmhouses appeared and disappeared in a cloud of dust. Lakes were seen one moment and gone the next. They swept around a bend in the road and into a man trap, a pile of wood across the road and three farmers waiting grimly with loaded guns.

The Watermelon in the tonneau of the general's car, with Billy, straightened up with a sickening fear of being arrested in her presence. The fun and excitement of the adventure had disappeared. In their stead stalked the grim reality of the fear of exposure, of the surprise, scorn, perhaps anger, maybe pity, he would see in Billy's eyes. When they parted and the Bartletts returned to the city, they would learn how they had been deceived, and Billy would be angry, scornful and a bit amused, for Billy enjoyed a joke even against herself and her ideas of humor were young and of the same style, more or less, as those of the Watermelon. But if he could he would drop out of her sight, first, the good-natured, successful young financier, not slink away, the shiftless, beaten tramp.

The general for a moment considered it merely another means taken by the conspiracy to rob him of his car and contemplated stern defiance of the law's command to stop.

"It's not highway robbery, Charlie," laughed Bartlett. "We've been going a bit fast and have to pay up, that's all."

Haled before the justice of the peace in the village store, Bartlett paid his fine with casual indifference, the general with the haughty disapproval of a judge presiding at the bar of justice, while Henrietta, with gentle condescension, bought some highly-scented soap, "to help them out," she explained, meaning the owners of the store, and the Watermelon, to all outward appearances, frankly bored by the proceedings, presented Billy with a choice assortment of gaily tinted, dusty candy.

They put up for the night at a small town in Maine. It consisted of four or five scattered houses, a school, a store, and a barrel factory. They found rooms in one of the houses and after supper, Henrietta, Bartlett and the general sat on the stoop, while the men smoked and the stars came out one by one, the frogs croaked dismally and the whippoorwills called and called.

The Watermelon asked Billy to take a walk with him and she consented. She must never know, thought the Watermelon, with boyish self-loathing, that he had dared to insult her by thinking of love, but it would not hurt any one but himself to walk with her. There was only a day or two more at the most before they parted, she to go to Newport and Bar Harbor, and he to drift out on the tide again, one with James and Mike.

They walked up the road in the soft beauty of the summer night. Billy was tired and thoughtful, her girlish eyes catching a far off vision of womanhood and what it meant. Unconsciously to both, a man's soul had spoken and her woman's soul had stirred in answer, stirred, but would it fully waken?

The Watermelon rolled a cigarette and puffed moodily, too busy himself with thoughts to talk, and the Watermelon did not like to think. He was not used to it.

"Darn it," he mused, "what did the Lord give us bodies for to want and want and then add minds to think?"

They came to a New England graveyard, perched on a rise of ground, where the road cut through a hill, a lonely, neglected place, overgrown with weeds and tall rank grasses, the gravestones flat or falling. Hardly aware of what they did, they turned in and picked their way among the sunken graves.

"God's acre," whispered Billy softly, for youth loves sadness, at certain times.

The Watermelon tossed away his cigarette and took off his hat. Somewhere, over there among the Green Mountains, in just such another place, his tired little mother slept. Was her grave sunken, he wondered, her tombstone flat or falling limply sidewise?

The moon was sinking slowly in the west, a silver crescent just above the dark outlines of the woods. The sky was bright with stars, like the kindled hopes of those who have gone. A wind stole softly by, rustling the tall grasses and swaying the tree tops. But there among the graves, it was very dark and still.

Billy sat down on the bank by the driveway, and the Watermelon sat beside her, not too near. There was at least a foot between them.

"We are all alone," said the Watermelon, thinking aloud half of his thoughts. "All alone, but for the dead."

Alone, and the seven seas could not have parted them farther.

"And God," added Billy piously.

"If there is one," admitted the Watermelon.

Billy looked at him quickly, earnestly. "Oh, Jerry, of course there is a God. Don't you know it?"

"No," said the Watermelon. "When a person is happy, they know there is a God; when they are wretched, they say, every one does, 'There is no God.' If there is one, why doesn't He let the miserable wretch realize it instinctively as well as the happy person?"

Billy had never suffered, had never felt the foundations of her world falling around her in ruins, had never cried aloud in anguish, "How long, oh Lord, how long?" She answered from her inexperience, from the faith that had never been tested, "Of course there is a God. Every one knows it, every one prays. Why, if your father was a minister, I should think you would know that there is a God."

"That's the trouble. He was a minister and he lost faith, and when he who should have known, wondered if there was a God, we kids knew there wasn't. I suppose it's the same if a boy finds that his mother has lost her virtue. He thinks there is none."

Billy placed her hand on the bank between them and leaned toward him on her straightened arm. "Poor old Jerry! But if your mother still believed?"

"A mother always believes in God and her worthless sons. It's a part of being a mother, I suppose."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*A THIEF IN THE NIGHT*

Billy laughed a low, throaty gurgle, and laid her hand an instant on his sleeve. "Don't you see, she believed in God and she believed in you. You didn't go back on her. Would God?"

The Watermelon did not answer. He was busy with a scene of the long ago. He and the youngest Miss Martin had been engaged in a set-to which hardly savored of brotherly love, and parental authority had separated them and passed judgment.

"Sister should not have struck you," the mother said as she stood him grimly in the corner. "But, Jeroboam, you should not have deceived sister. If you men would only keep faith with your women, this world would be too good to leave, even for Heaven," she had added with her usual tired sigh.

How had he kept faith with Billy? The question stared him in the face and he felt like the child again, standing in the corner, unable to answer. For the sake of an amusing week of her society, he had practically betrayed her father, had branded himself a thief by keeping the clothes, the watch, the money, which he had taken wrongly, for a few hours' fun, but which he had intended to return. In the love he felt for the girl, his long-stifled conscience slowly stirred again.

Billy was talking, crooning her comfort with the maternity latent in all women for the men they love. "Don't you see, Jerry, there is a God? Think of what you did for your mother, think of how proud she was of you when you did so well. By sheer grit you have made yourself what you are. You are tired and blue to-night, poor old boy."

The Watermelon was not listening. He took a roll of bills from his pocket and counted them. Billy watched him in perplexity. Was he worrying over money, she wondered. One hundred and seventy-four dollars left. He had not had an opportunity to spend more of that roll of bills which he had betrayed a woman and lowered his manhood to steal. He crushed the bills back into his pocket and rose.

"We had better go back," said he shortly. "It's late."

They found Henrietta and Bartlett on the front porch, talking in low voices, oblivious to all else. The general had long since sought the doubtful comfort of the country bed for city boarders.

Billy held out her hand to the Watermelon, a little ceremony she had heretofore neglected, wishing in her tender little heart that she understood his strange mood better and could comfort him.

"Good night," said she gently.

"Good night," said the Watermelon.

Henrietta rose. "I didn't know it was so late. Wait, Billy, I am coming with you. Good night, all."

Bartlett followed the girls, but at the door he stopped and glanced back at the Watermelon, standing on the grass by the steps.

"Better come to bed," said he.

The Watermelon nodded abstractedly and Bartlett went in, leaving him out there alone.

Without thinking of Billy other than as a pretty girl with whom to flirt, moved by the mischief of the moment, he had placed her father financially at the mercy of his enemy. And now to right the wrong to Billy, the only thing he could do would be to tell them who he was, a tramp, masquerading with decent people in his stolen finery. Petty thieving, the sharp tricks of the road, had passed quickly from his conscience, but this was different. A woman had been thrown into the bargain, the woman he loved, and Henrietta and the general trusted him. Bartlett deserved all he got, and Batchelor he dismissed with the comforting conviction that he was doing him a good turn. But Billy, Henrietta and the general! A wry smile twisted the Watermelon's mouth as he thought of the horror on the general's face when he learned that he had spent the week in the company of a nameless hobo. For a while he contemplated hurling away the watch along with the rest of the "hardware" and stealing away in the dark, hitting the trail again and catching up with Mike and James on their annual pilgrimage north. He drew the bills from his pocket and thought of all Bartlett would lose if he crept away without explaining, and Bartlett was Billy's father.

He heard a step on the porch and turned to see Billy hesitating in the doorway. "Jerry," she whispered softly and glanced behind her as though fearful of seeing her father or Henrietta peering at her over the banisters.

He went toward her, the bills still in his hand. "Billy," said he, thrusting the money into his pocket, "what are you doing at this time of night?" And he looked down at her tenderly in the dark where the hall lamp could not reveal his face.

Billy hesitated. She had seen the bills again and knew that he was worried. To worry over money matters was an unknown experience to Billy. She felt a delicacy in mentioning her errand.

"I--I--I came to see if the moon had set," she faltered.

"It's set," said the Watermelon.

"Well," said Billy, "then I will go back."

"Good night," said the Watermelon.

"Good night," said Billy, and lingered.

Then she laid her hand on his arm and spoke in a rush. "Oh, Jerry, please don't worry. If you want any money, father has heaps. You can have all you want."

The Watermelon drew a bit nearer. "Billy, Billy," said he softly.

"I think it must be terrible to worry about money," Billy hurried on. "It's not worth it."

"I'm not worrying about money, kid," said the Watermelon with a laugh. "I have a bunch. What made you think I was?"

"Twice to-night you've counted your money."

"Esau's bowl of pottage," sneered the Watermelon, turning unconsciously to the old familiarity with the Bible. "Say, Billy, if he found he didn't like his pottage, could he give it back and get his birthright again?"

Billy blushed. She was not sure who Esau was. In a dim way she remembered the name and vaguely associated it with the Bible. "Couldn't he have gotten something else?" she asked judiciously.

"No," said the Watermelon. "He had nothing more to sell."

"What did he sell?"

"His birthright--for a mess of pottage."

"Why'd he do that?"

"He was stony broke, he wanted something to eat, see, and he sold his all for a mess of pottage. Now, if he found he didn't like his pottage, could he have given it back and gotten his birthright again?"

"Yes, indeed," chirped Billy. "I don't see why not. But why didn't he get something better than a mess of pottage?"

"Don't ask me, kid. But, I guess you're right. No one can keep your birthright unless you're willing they should."

"I usually know more about the Bible," stammered Billy, fearful of the impression her ignorance must have made. "I know about Moses and Ruth."

The Watermelon nodded. "You see, I was raised on the Bible," he said kindly.

"Yes," agreed Billy, "and I was raised on Mellen's food."

A step was heard on the floor above and she started hastily. "I guess I had better be going," she whispered. "Good night, Jerry."

"Good night, Billy."

She slipped away and the Watermelon was again alone.

"She's right. If you don't like your pottage, you can get your birthright back. I can leave a note," he thought and laughed bitterly. "Haven't a thing, name, clothes, honor. Sneak away like a whipped cur. Gosh, I'll be hanged if I can't do something respectable. I will tell them in the morning and they can do and say what they please. If you've sold your birthright to the Old Man, you have to go after it in person to get it back. Why the deuce did I fall in love with Billy? I had fun in the beginning--but now!"

When the Watermelon awoke next morning he lay for a time, stretching and yawning in the comfortable bed and the pea-green silk pajamas he had found in the suit-case in Batchelor's car. He glanced at the general slumbering beside him, his mouth open and his round fat face as pink as the pink cotton pajamas he wore.

"Here's me in silk and him in cotton," thought the Watermelon. "He couldn't tell a lie to save his soul, and I-- Stick to your pink cotton, general," he whispered and slipped quietly out of bed. He crossed the room to the bureau where he had left the watch the night before to see the time. The watch was not there and he turned to look in his trousers pockets, thinking he might have left it in them. But his pockets were empty, save for a few old keys, his knife and "the makings." Money, watch, cigarette case, all were gone. He turned to the bureau. Cuff links and stick pin were also gone. Gingerly he felt in the general's pockets. They, too, were empty. He stood a moment in the middle of the room in his pea-green silk pajamas and gently stroked his back hair, then he chuckled softly and glanced at the bed.

The general was awake, looking at him with half-shut, sleepy eyes.

"Robbed, General," said the Watermelon.

"Robbed?" repeated the general, sitting up.

"Everything gone," said the Watermelon, "or I'll eat my hat."

The general rose and they made a systematic search through empty pockets and rifled bureau.

Bartlett came in gloomily. Without a cent among them they could not continue the trip. They would have to make for the nearest telegraph station and wire for help, and Batchelor, his whereabouts known to his brokers, would probably receive an urgent call to return at once.

"Robbed?" asked the general.

"They left me my name," said Bartlett grimly. "Who steals your purse steals trash, I suppose. We have that comfort."

"Not my purse," said the Watermelon. "Mine had money in it."

"My watch," said the general, "was a family heirloom. My great grandfather carried it."

"I wonder if the girls lost anything," said Bartlett.

"We will have to go to the nearest telegraph station and telegraph for money," declared the general.