Chapter II (1)

"_And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die._"

And then the days dragged on, a week of days, each containing full measure of bitter humiliation; full measure also of feverish suspense and anxiety, for Theodore Carden did not find it quite so easy as he had thought it would be to clear himself of this serious and yet preposterous accusation of complicity in the murder. But Major Lane was surprised at the courage and composure with which the young man faced the ordeal of confrontation with the various men, any one of whom, through a simple mistake or nervous lapse of memory, might compel his presence, if not in the dock, then as a witness at the coming murder trial.

But at last that ordeal was over, for, as a matter of fact, none of those brought face to face with him in the sordid promiscuity of such scenes singled out Theodore Carden as resembling the mysterious individual who had almost certainly provided Mrs. Garvice with the means wherewith to poison her husband. So it was that suspicion became gradually directed to quite another quarter; that is, towards an accountant in Garvice's employment, who had been socially welcomed at his house. But of this man no trace had as yet been found.

It was after the need for active defence had passed away that the hours began to drag heavily with Theodore Carden; and yet, at the end of each long day, the unhappy man would have given much in order to recall the daylight hours.... The moment twilight fell Carden was haunted, physically and mentally possessed, by the presence of the woman he had known at once so little and so well, that is, of her he now knew to be Pansy Garvice.

Especially terrible were the solitary evenings of those days when his father had been away, performing the task of breaking so much of the truth as could be told to the girl to whom his son had been engaged.

As each afternoon drew in, Carden found himself compelled to remain more or less concealed in the rooms which overlooked the garden of Watermead. For, with the approach of night, the suburban road in front of the fine old house was filled by an ever coming and going crowd of bat-like men and women, eager to gaze with morbid curiosity at the dwelling of the man who had undoubtedly been, if not Mrs. Garvice's accomplice--that, to the annoyance of the sensation-mongers, seemed decidedly open to question--then, her favoured lover.

But to these shameful and grotesque happenings Theodore Carden gave scarce a thought, for it was when he found himself alone in the drawing-room or library that his solitude would become stealthily invaded by an invisible and impalpable wraith. So disorganised had become his nerves, so pitiable the state of his body and mind, that constantly he seemed conscious of a faint, sweet odour, that of wood violets, a scent closely associated in his thoughts with Pansy Garvice, with the woman whom he now knew to be a murderess. He came at last to long for a tangible delusion, for the sight of a bodily shape which he could tell himself was certainly not there. But no such relief was vouchsafed him; and yet once, when sitting in the drawing-room, trying to read a book, he had felt a rounded cheek laid suddenly to his; a curl of silken, scented hair had touched his neck....

Terrifying as was the peopled solitude of his evenings, Carden dreaded their close, for at night, during the whole of each long night, the woman from whom he now felt so awful a repulsion held him prisoner. From the fleeting doze of utter exhaustion he would be awakened by feeling the pressure of Pansy's soft, slender arms about his neck; they would wind themselves round his shuddering body, enclosing him slowly, inexorably, till he felt as if he must surely die under their gyves-like pressure. Again--and this, perhaps, was what he learned to dread in an especial degree--he would be suddenly roused by Pansy's liquid, laughing voice, whispering things of horror in his ear; it was then, and then only, that he found courage to speak, courage to assure her, and to assure himself, that he was in no sense her accomplice, that he had had naught to do with old Garvice's death; but then there would come answer, in the eager tones he remembered so well, and the awful words found unwilling echo in his heart: "Yes, yes, indeed you helped!"

* * * * *

And now the last day, or rather the last night, had come, for the next morning Theodore Carden was to leave Birmingham, he hoped for ever, for New Zealand.

The few people he had been compelled to see had been strangely kind; quiet and gentle, as folk, no doubt, feel bound to be when in the presence of one condemned. As for Major Lane, he was stretching--no one knew it better than Carden himself--a great point in allowing the young man to leave England before the Garvice trial.

During those last days, even during those last hours, Theodore deliberately prevented himself from allowing his mind to dwell on his father. He did not know how much the latter had been told, and he had no wish to know. A wall of silence had arisen between the two who had always been so much, nay, in a sense, everything, to one another. Each feared to give way to any emotion, and yet the son knew only too well, and was ashamed of the knowledge, with what relief he would part from his father. There had been a moment when Major Lane had intimated his belief that the two would go away and make a new life together, but Theodore Carden had put aside the idea with rough decision. Perhaps when he was far away, on the other side of the world, the former relations of close love and sympathy, if not of confidence, might be reestablished between his father and himself, but this, he felt sure, would never be while they remained face to face.

And now he was lying wide awake in the darkness, in the pretty, peaceful room which had once been his nursery, and where he had spent his happy holidays as a schoolboy. His brain remained abnormally active, but physically he was oppressed by a great weariness; to-night, for the first time, Carden felt the loathsome wraith which haunted him, if not less near, then less malicious, less watchful than usual, above all, less eager to assert her power.... Yet, even so, he lay very still, fearing to move lest he should once more feel about his body the clinging, enveloping touch he dreaded with so great a dread.

* * * * *

And then, quite suddenly, there came a strange lightening of his heart. A space of time seemed to have sped by, and Carden, by some mysterious mental process, knew that he was still near home, and not, as would have been natural, in New Zealand. Nay, more, he realised that the unfamiliar place in which he now found himself was Winson Green Gaol, a place which, as a child, he had been taught to think of with fear, fear mingled with a certain sense of mystery and excitement.

Theodore had not thought of the old local prison for years, but now he knew that he and his father were together there, in a small cell lighted by one candle. The wall of silence, raised on both sides by shame and pain, had broken down, but, alas! too late; for, again in some curious inexplicable way, the young man was aware that he lay under sentence of death, and that he was to be hanged early in the morning of which the dawn was even now breaking.

Now, strange to say, this knowledge caused him, personally, but little uneasiness, but on his father's account he felt infinitely distressed, and he found himself bending his whole mind to comfort and sustain the old man. Thus, he heard a voice, which he knew to be his own, saying in an argumentative tone, "I assure you, father, that an extraordinary amount of nonsense is talked nowadays concerning--well, the death penalty. Is it possible that you do not realise that I am escaping a much worse fate--that of having to live on? I wish, dear dad, that I could persuade you of the truth of this."

"If only," muttered the old man in response, "if only, my boy, I could bear it for you"; and Carden saw that his father's face was scared with an awful look of terror and agony.

"But, indeed, father, you do not understand. Believe me, I am not afraid--it will not be so bad, after all. So do not--pray, pray, father, do not be so distressed."

* * * * *

And then with a great start Theodore Carden awoke--awoke to see the small, spare figure of that same dear father, clothed in the long, old-fashioned linen night-shirt of another day, standing by his bed-side.

The old man held a candle in his hand, and was gazing down at his only child with an expression of unutterable woe and grief. "I will try--I am trying, my boy, not to be unreasonably distressed," he said.

Theodore Carden sat up in bed. Since this awful thing had come on him he had never, even for an instant, forgotten self, but now he saw that his sufferings were small compared with those he had brought on the man into whose face he was gazing with red-rimmed, sunken eyes. For a moment the wild thought came to him that he might try to explain, to justify himself, to prove to his father that in this matter he had but done as others do, and that the punishment was intolerably heavier than the crime; but then, looking up and meeting Thomas Carden's perplexed, questioning eyes, he felt a great rush of shame and horror, not only of himself, but of all those who look at life as he himself had always looked at it; for the first time, he understood the mysterious necessity, as well as the beauty, of abnegation, of renunciation.

"Father," he said, "listen. I will not go away alone; I was mad to think of such a thing. We will go together, you and I,--Lane has told me that such has been your wish,--and then perhaps some day we will come back together."

After this, for the first time for many nights, Theodore Carden fell into a dreamless sleep.

A BUNK-HOUSE AND SOME BUNK-HOUSE MEN

BY ALEXANDER IRVINE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. C. YOHN

About fifteen years ago I was appointed spiritual adviser to the Diocese of the Bowery and Chatham Square. This strange whirlpool of humanity presents a problem of more than ordinary proportions to the policeman or the missionary. The Bowery is a mile of American life in which the nations of the earth meet for excitement and change. There is a business aspect of it which is permanent, but the many-colored throng surging up and down its side-walks all day and all night is ephemeral. It is the place for the homeless, for the out of kilter, for the rudderless wrecks who drift. Its fifty or more lodging-houses are filled with men whose only home is the six-by-ten room in which they sleep.

A block from Chatham Square I found a resort which I at once made a base of operations for my campaign. It was a bunk-house, a big five-story rear tenement at No. 9 Mulberry Street. The entrance to it was a slit in the front block--a long, deep, narrow alley, then, as now, indescribably filthy. Over the iron gate at the entrance was the name of the house and the price of some of the beds. "Bismarck" was the name; the lodgers used to call it "Hotel de Bismarck." The lower floors were filled with ten- and twelve-cent bed-cots; the upper floors were bunk dormitories. A bunk is a strip of canvas. For seven cents a night the lodger gained admission to the dormitory. Once there, he might stretch himself on the bunk, or he might take advantage of the floor. Of the three hundred guests, more than half were accommodated on canvas or on the floor.

The covering on the ten-cent bed was changed once a month; if a man wanted toilet accommodations, he paid for them elsewhere. The Bismarck never had a bath, nor a wash-basin.

A ten- or twelve-cent guest had a wardrobe; it was seldom used, but it was there. At the head of each cot stood this tall, narrow receptacle for the clothing and valuables of the guests, but in the old days wise guests slept in their clothes. I have known of unsuspecting wayfarers who deposited their belongings in the wardrobe, locked it, and hid the key under the pillow, and next morning had to wrap themselves in newspapers or in a borrowed sheet until they could reach a junk-store. The key was safe, but the wardrobe and contents had disappeared.

On the second floor was the sitting-room. There was a stove for winter months, and against the wall on four sides of the room were built benches. There was but one chair in the room; that was the clerk's. The walls were whitewashed; the windows were covered most of the time with cobwebs and dirt, and the floor was littered with rubbish.

The clerk was a quiet man by the name of Allen. He had a bouncer named McBriarty--his nickname was "Gar." The bouncer had an understudy who was called Frank--"Big Frank." The house was owned at that time by a banker named Barsotti.

_The Gathering of the Men who Were_

Every afternoon, winter and summer, about five o'clock, the men began to gather about the little iron gate, and as Big Frank swung it back, they filed through the slit in single file and ascended the stairs.

Ten-cent men registered. Bunk-men threw down a nickel and two cents and became guests at large. Guests who registered were handed a chunk of wood too large to enter an ordinary pocket; attached to the wood was the key of the wardrobe. A small discount was made on a week's lodging paid in advance, but few took advantage of it, for nobody ever expected to stay a week; some had been there for years, but they paid each night as they entered, for they expected each night to be their last. Old customers looked into each other's faces at evening with a glance which meant: "Hello! back again?"

I saw a woman there once. She came to look for a son, and sat by the door, scanning the faces as they passed her. Over a hundred men lingered around the sitting-room that night. At least a score of them repassed her, just to get a glimpse of her face, in which, though it was that of a stranger, many of them retraced their steps back over life's jagged roadway. They asked the clerk questions that needed no answer, just to get near for a moment. They tiptoed across the floor; they spoke in whispers; and they indignantly hustled several half-drunken lodgers out of the room. Her anxious face set them all thinking; it created an atmosphere in which those men of life's undertow grew tender and kind.

I tabulated, by the aid of the clerk, the ages, nationalities, and occupations of one hundred of them. Fifty were German, twenty Irish, sixteen native Americans; the rest were from the ends of the earth. Each of them gave an occupation; there were barbers, tinkers, teamsters, tailors, waiters, laborers, longshoremen, painters, paper-hangers, and scissors-grinders. One man put "banker" opposite his name. This led to an extra inquiry.

"Of course," he said, "I am for the time being down and out; but banking is my business."

Their trades were of the past--their vitality had oozed out, their grip on life was relaxed; if it ever tightened again, the first result of it would be another grade of surroundings.

In order to find out how they got a living, I followed some of these men through the maelstrom of city life. I found some distributing circulars. Others sold pencils, matches, laces. They lounged around saloons, sticking their dirty fists into the free-lunch dishes. They played lame, sick, halt, blind; they panhandled on the streets and alleys--especially the alleys, where they fared best. A dozen or more attended the ferries, waiting for a chance to carry baggage. They were unfit for hard work--they would not die.

Twelve cents a day kept most of them. When they didn't manage seven cents for a bunk, they "carried the banner"--walked the streets or stood in a "dead-house" saloon, where there are no seats and where a man must stand. Many of them, when worsted completely, would "hit the bread-line," after midnight, not so much for the bread as for a place to stand where they would be immune from the policeman's club.

Despite some plain lessons to the contrary, I believed most of them to be victims of laziness; but in a single year twelve of them dropped on the floor dead: to these I gave the benefit of the doubt.

"_The Hardest Work Is No Work at All_"

One Sunday night I told a hundred men in the Bismarck that the reason they had no work was, that they were loafers and didn't want work. This was in accordance with my theory--the prevailing theory--that poverty is the child of sin, that lack of work is the fruit of shiftlessness. I offered to change clothes with any man in the house, and to go out in the world and show him how to get a job. The challenge was accepted instantly--by an Irishman.

I wisely changed the article of agreement regarding clothes; I got up my own outfit! Next morning, at half-past five, I met Tim, the man who had accepted the challenge, and we proceeded to the labor-market.

From the "want" columns of the morning papers we selected a few bits of labor bait. We ran them down, failed to find anything, and turned to the shops and factories on the West Side. The answers were monotonous. "Full up," they said, or a card at the door or gate announced that the firm had a "full complement." I felt like a mendicant. I found myself begging for work in a subservient tone and manner. In one place, I remember, I said, "For God's sake." The superintendent laughed and waved us away.

"The harrudest work, for sure, is no worruk at all, at all!" said my companion, by way of sympathy.

It was mid-afternoon; I was growing desperate with my sense of failure, and at this point I launched a scheme which had been growing in my mind for hours.

"Keep close to me now, Tim," I said, and I led him into a drug-store at the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery.

"Sir," I said to the clerk, "you are not accustomed to giving credit, I know; but perhaps you might suspend your rule for once and trust a stranger for a very small sum?"

"What is't?" asked the clerk, with something of a sneer.

"I am hungry and thirsty. I have looked for work since five o'clock, and have utterly failed to find it. Now I have a scheme; I know it will work. Oxalic acid eats away rust. If I had five cents' worth, I could make a dollar an hour--I know I could."

The clerk listened and looked. He was good enough to say that I didn't talk like a bum, though I looked like one. He inquired anxiously if I was "off my hook." At last he said: "By ----! I've been on the Bowery a long time, and haven't been sold once. If you're a skin-game man, I'll throw up my job!" I got the acid.

Then I played the same game in a tailor-shop for rags and in a hardware store for some polishing-paste. The stock cost fifteen cents--on credit.

There used to be a big dry-goods store on the east side of Chatham Square. It had two immense brass signs.

"Nawthin' doin'," said the man, when I applied for the job of cleaning them. Nevertheless, I cleaned and polished a square foot of one big sign. The boss looked at it, and then at Tim and me.

"I'll clean both for a dime," I said.

"Well, go ahead," he said. The Cleaning Company went from store to store until we had enough money for our bills, a meal, and a surplus in the treasury.

As we sat down to dinner at "Beefsteak John's," I handed Tim the surplus, and rather impatiently probed for his acknowledgment of my victory. I had made good, and wanted all that was due me.

"What do you think of it, Tim?" I asked, with an air of satisfaction and confidence.

"Shure, ye're a janyus, yer Honor; no doubt av that at all, at all; but----"

"Go on!" I said.

"I was jist switherin', yer Honor, what a wontherful thing ut is that a man kin always hev worruk whin he invints ut!"

"Well, that's worth knowing," I said disappointedly. "Did you learn anything else?"

"Well, it takes to do that thrick what most av us hevn't got; ut takes brains, sor--ut takes brains!"

"Why don't you have brains, then?"

He looked dumbly at me, and hung his head.

"I dunno--I dunno," he muttered.

The men at the Bismarck needed no urging to attend the meeting the following Sunday. Grogan had told his story; they were anxious to hear mine. The room was crowded to suffocation. They stood on the benches; they sat on the window-sills--everywhere; from all directions, the eyes of that dull, heavy human mass were penetrating me.

I was frank and explicit in my analysis of the experiment. I had no idea that Grogan would speak, but he did, and his speech was pointed.

"Whin ye talk religion, mister," he said, "ye're O.K.; but whin ye say we're lazy hobos, all av us, ye're spakin' round the rim av yer hat!"

Grogan made the crowd laugh when he told them how I had been turned away from shops and factories.

"Some av us poor divils hev done that same," he said, "fur weeks--until, begobs, we wisht we wur dead or hung or anythin'!"

I was about to close the meeting, when an old man known as "Judge" shuffled out to the front and asked permission to speak. He was a man of education whom I had not hitherto been able to engage in conversation.

The Judge administered a scathing rebuke, closing with a touch of humor, which was lost on the crowd. I stood there in the midst of a handful of friends, who mingled their pity with indignation. I took what belonged to me, and thanked the old man. The experiment exploded some of my theories and sent me to the school of facts.

_Graf von "Habenichts"_

Nothing in the life of the bunk-house was more noticeable than the way men of intelligence grouped themselves together. Besides the Judge, there was an ex-Parliamentarian, an ex-lawyer, an ex-soldier of Victoria, and a German Graf. I named them the "Ex-Club." Every morning they separated as though forever. Every night they returned, and looked at one another in surprise.

At election-time both political parties had access to the register, and every lodger was the recipient of two letters. Between elections a letter was always a matter of sensational interest; it lay on the clerk's table, waiting to be claimed, and every lodger inspected it as he passed. Scores of men who never expected a letter would pick it up, handle it in a wistful and affectionate manner, and regretfully lay it down again. I have often wished I could analyze the thoughts of these men as they handled tenderly these rare visitors conducted by Uncle Sam into the bunk-house of Blind Alley.

It was a big letter with red seals and an aristocratic monogram that first drew attention to a new-comer who had signed himself "Hans Schwanen." "One-eyed Dutchy" had whispered to some of his friends that the recipient of the letter was a real German Graf.

He was about sixty years of age, short, rotund, corpulent. His head was bullet-shaped and set well down on his shoulders. His clothes were baggy and threadbare, his linen soiled and shabby. He had blue eyes, harsh red hair, and a florid complexion. When he arrived, he brought three valises. Everybody wondered what he could have in them.

The bouncer was consumed with a desire to examine the contents, and, as bouncer and general floor-manager of the house, expected that they would naturally be placed under his care. When, however, it was announced that the new-comer had engaged One-eyed Dutchy as his valet, the bouncer swore and said "he might go to ----."

There was something peculiar and mysterious in a ten-cent guest of the Bismarck hiring a valet. "Habenichts" kept aloof from the crowd. He had no friends, and would permit no one to establish any intercourse with him.

Dutchy informed an intimate friend that the Graf received a check from Germany every three months. While it lasted, it was the valet's duty to order, pay for, and keep a record of all food and refreshment. When the bouncer told me of these things, I tried very hard to persuade the Graf to dine at my house; but he declined without even the formality of thanks. After a few months the revenue of the mysterious stranger dried up. One-eyed Dutchy was discharged.

A snow-storm found the old Graf with an attack of rheumatism, and helpless. Then he was forced to relinquish his ten-cent cot and move upstairs to a seven-cent bunk. When he was able to get out again, he came back, dragging up the rickety old stairs a scissors-grinder. Several of the guests offered a hand, but he spurned them all, and stuck to his job until he got it up.

Another snow-storm brought back his rheumatism; he got permission to sit indoors. The old wheel lay idle in the corner; he was hungry, and his pipe had been empty for a day and a night, but still he sat bolt upright, in pain, alone, with starvation staring him in the face. The third day of his involuntary fast he got a letter. It contained a one-dollar bill. The sender was watching at a safe distance, and he recorded that the Graf's puzzled look almost developed into a smile. He gathered himself together and hobbled out to a near-by German saloon. Next day came the first sign of surrender. He accepted a commission to take a census of the house. This at least helped to thaw him out, but it didn't last long.

Because his rheumatism prevented him from pushing his wheel through the streets, I secured him a corner in a locksmith's basement. He had not been there many weeks when he disappeared. The locksmith told a story which seemed scarcely credible. He said the old Graf had sold his wheel and given the proceeds to an Irishwoman to help defray the funeral expenses of her child.

Some months later, Allen, the clerk, got a postal-card from One-eyed Dutchy. He was on the Island, and the Graf and he were working together on the ash gang. I helped to get him off the Island--at his own urgent solicitation. I myself considered him much better off where he was.

When the Graf returned to the bunk-house, every one who had ever seen him noted a wonderful change. He no longer lived in a shell. He had become human, and took an interest in what was going on. One night, when a few of the Ex-Club were exchanging reminiscences, he was prevailed upon to tell his story. He asked us to keep it a secret for ten years. The time is up, and I am the only one of that group alive.

_The Tale of the Old German Noble_

"In 1849 it was; my brother and I students were in Heidelberg. Then broke out the Revolution. Two years less of age was I, so to him was due my father's title and most of the estate. 'What is revolution?' five of us students asked. 'We know not; we will study,' we all said, and we did. For King and fatherland our study make us jealous, but my brother was not so.

"'I am revolutionist!' he says, and we are mad to make him different.

"'The King is one,' he said, 'and the people are many, and they are oppressed.'

"I hate my brother, and curse him, till in our room he weeps for sorrow. I curse him until he leaves.

"By and by in the barricades he finds himself fighting against the King. In the fight the rebels are defeated and my brother escapes. Many are condemned and shot. Not knowing my heart, my mother writes to me that my brother is at home.

"I lie in my bed, thinking--thinking. Many students have been shot for treason. Love of King and fatherland, and desire to be Graf, are two thoughts in my heart.

"I inform. My brother is arrested, and in fortress is he put to be shot.

"Four of us students of patriotism go to see. My heart sinks to see my brother, so white is he and fearless. His eyes are bright like fire, and he stands so cool and straight.

"'I have nothing but love,' he says; 'I love the cause of truth and justice. To kill me is not to kill the truth; where you spill my blood will revolution grow, as flowers grow by water. I forgive.'

"Then he sees me. 'Hans!' he says, 'Hans!' He holds out his arms. 'I want to kiss my brother,' he says. The general he says, 'All right.'

"But I love the King. 'No! I have no brother! I will not a traitor kiss!'

"My Gott! how my brother looks! He looks already dead--so full of sorrow is he.

"A sharp crack of guns! They chill my heart, and down dead falls my brother.

"I go away, outside glad, but in my heart I feel burn the fires of hell. Father and mother in one year die for sorrow. Then I am Graf.

"I desire to be of society, but society will not--it is cold. Guests do not come to my table. Servants do not stay. They tell that they hear my mother weep for sorrow in the night. I laugh at them, but in my heart I know them true. Peasants in the village hide from me as I come to them.

"But my mind is worse. Every night I hear the crack of the rifles--the sound of the volley that was my brother's death. Soldiers I get, men of the devil-dare kind, to stay with me. They do not come back; they tell that they hear tramp, tramp, tramp of soldiers' feet.

"One night, with the soldiers, I take much wine, for I say, 'I shall be drunk and not hear the guns at night.'

"We drink in our noble hall. Heavy doors are chained, windows barred, draperies close arranged, and the great lamp burns dim. We drink, we sing, we curse God und das Gesindel. 'We ourselves,' we say, 'are gods.'

"Then creeps close the hour for the guns. My tongue is fast and cannot move; my brow is wet, and frozen is my blood.

"Boom! go the guns; then thunder shakes the castle, lightning flashes through draperies, and I fall as dead.

"Was I in a dream? I know not. I did not believe in God; I did not believe in heaven or in hell; yet do I see my past life go past me in pictures--pictures of light in frames of fire: Two boys, first,--Max, my brother, and I,--playing as children; then my mother, weeping for great sorrow; then the black walls of the great fortress--my brother with arms outstretched. Again my blood is frozen, again creeps my skin, and I hear the volley and see him fall to death. I fear. I scream loud that I love the King, but in my ear comes a voice like iron--'Liar!' A little girl then, with hair so golden, comes and wipes the stain of blood from my brow. I see her plain.

"Then I awake. I am alone; the light is out; blood is on my face. I am paralyzed with fear, so I cannot stand. When I can walk, I leave, for I think maybe that only in Germany do I hear the guns. For twenty years I live in Spain. Still do I hear the guns.

"I go to France, but yet every night at the same hour freezes my blood and I hear the death volley.

"I come to America, which I have hated, yet never a night is missed. It is at the same hour. What I hate comes to me. Whatever I fear is mine. To run away from something is for me to meet it. My estate is gone; money I have not. I sink like a man in a quicksand, down, down, down. I come here. Lower I cannot."

"One day in the Bend, where das Gesindel live, I see the little girl--she of the golden hair, who wiped my stain away.

"But she is dead. I know for sure the face. What it means I know not. Again I fall as dead.

"I have one thing in the world left--only one; it is my scissors-grinder. I sell it and give all the money to bury her. It is the first--it is the only good I ever did. Then, an outcast, I go out into the world where no pity is. I sit me down in a dark alley; strange is my heart, and new.

"It is time for the guns--yet is my blood warm! I wait. The volley comes not!

"The hour is past!

"'My Gott! My Gott!' I say. 'Can this be true?' I wait one, two, three minutes; it comes not. I scream for joy--I scream loud! I feel an iron hand on me. I am put in prison. Yet is the prison filled with light--yet am I in heaven. The guns are silent."

One day a big letter with several patches of red sealing-wax and an aristocratic monogram arrived at the bunk-house.

Nearly two hundred men handled it and stood around until the Graf arrived. Every one felt a personal interest in the contents. It was "One-eyed Dutchy" who handed it to the owner, and stood there watching out of his single eye the face of his former master. The old man smiled as he folded the letter and put it into his pocket, saying as he did so: "By next ship I leave for Hamburg to take life up where I laid it down."

_A Statesman Under a Cloud_

I was sitting on the bench near the door in the bunk-house one day at twilight, when I noticed a profile silhouetted against the window. I had seen only one profile like that in my life, and that was when I was a boy.

I moved closer. The man sat like a statue. His face was very pale, and he was gazing vacantly at the walls in the rear of the building.

Finally I went over and sat down beside him.

"Good evening," he said quietly, in answer to my salutation.

I looked into his face--a face I knew when a boy, a face familiar to the law-makers of Victoria for a quarter century.

I called him by name. At the sound of his own name his paleness turned to an ashy yellow.

"In Heaven's name," I said, "what are you doing here?"

He looked at me with an expression of excruciating pain on his face, and said:

"I have traveled some thousands of miles in order to be alone; if you have any kindness, any pity, leave me."

"Pardon me," I said, "for intruding."

That night the Ex-Club invited him to take part in their deliberations. He refused, and his manner showed that he considered the invitation an insult.

I had known this man as a brilliant orator, a religious leader, the champion of a sect. In a city across the sea I had sat as a bare-legged boy on an upturned barrel, part of an immense crowd, listening to the flow of his oratory. Next day he left the bunk-house. Some weeks afterward I found him on a curbstone, preaching to whoever of the pedestrians would listen.

At the close of his address I introduced myself again. He took me to his new lodging, and I put the questions that filled my mind. For answer, he gave me the House of Commons Blue Book, which explained the charge hanging over him. Almost daily, for weeks, I heard him on his knees proclaim his innocence of the unmentionable crime with which he was charged. After some weeks of daily association, he said to me: "I believe you are sent of God to guide me, and I am prepared to take your advice."

My advice was ready. He turned pale as I told him to pack his trunk and take the next ship for England.

"Face the storm like a man!" I urged, and he said:

"It will kill me, but I will do it."

He did it, and it swept him to prison, to shame, and to oblivion.

_A St. Francis of the Bunk-house_

One Sunday afternoon I was going through the dormitories, calling the lodgers to prayer. On one of the ten-cent cots an old white-haired man was reading a life of Buffalo Bill. His face was marred by a scar over one of the eyes. He spoke gently and with a pronounced Irish accent.

"I am an Episcopalian," he said, when I invited him below to the meeting.

"We have all denominations," I assured him. Everybody in the bunk-house had a connection, more or less remote, with some sect.

"Say," said the bouncer, concerning the old man, "dat ol' duffer's got de angel goods on him O.K."

His name was Edward Dowling. He was a gentleman. He had soldiered under Sir Colin Campbell and Sir Henry Havelock in India. Later he owned a ranch in the West. Then an accident deprived him of the use of an eye, and he spent all he had in trying to preserve his sight. Homeless and penniless on the streets of New York, he had learned to do tinkering and the mending of umbrellas.

In his poverty he drifted to the bunk-house.

The following Sunday, at our meeting, he had an awakening which reminded me of the account of Paul's conversion on the way to Damascus. It revolutionized his mental processes, and he began to give outward expression to his new-found inner joy.

He would buy some stale bread overnight, and early in the morning he would make coffee on the bunk-house stove in a quart tomato-can. Each man, before he left the place, had a bite of stale bread and at least a mouthful of warm coffee. Then they would uncover their heads while the old man asked God to bless them for the day.

He tinkered for a living, but his vocation became the conversion of men. From these small beginnings in quiet evangelism, he branched out into work of the same kind among the tenements. He mended pots, kettles, and pans, and charged for the job a chapter in the Bible. I came on him suddenly one morning in an alley. Snow was on the ground, and he was reading a chapter with his face close to a broken pane. It appeared he had done some soldering for an Irishwoman, and asked the privilege of reading to her.

"Begorra," she said, "the house isn't fit to read the Holy Book in, but if yez w'u'dn't mind reading through the window, I'll take the rags out."

So she took the bundle out of the broken pane, and Dowling bent over and read his chapter.

When the Rev. John Hopkins Dennison took charge of the old Church of Sea and Land, he established a sort of latter-day monastery in the old square tower, and there Brother Dowling had a cell, where he lived and worked among the poor for many years.

In an escapade with two other soldiers in the Sepoy rebellion, Dowling had looted the palace of a raja. In the act of burying several canes filled with diamonds, one of the three was shot dead. Dowling and the other escaped. One day on the Bowery, forty years afterward, a man laid his hand on Dowling's shoulder and asked him what he did with the loot. It was the other man.

"What did _you_ do with it?" Dowling asked. Each had lived in the belief that the other had got away with it.

The tinker-preacher was very much stirred up over this. He wrote at once to the governor-general of India, told the whole story, and offered to come out and locate the stolen booty. Money was appropriated to pay his passage, but the old man was going on another journey. He wrote a full description of the place and transaction, and then lay down in the tower of the old church and died.

_"Doc," our Volunteer Organist_

"Say, Bub," said Gar, the bouncer, to me one day, "what ungodly hour of the mornin' d'ye git up?"

"At the godly hour of necessity," I replied.

"Wal, I hev a pal I want ter interjooce to ye at six."

I met the bouncer and his "pal" at the corner of Broome Street and the Bowery next morning at the appointed hour.

"Dat's Doc!" said Gar, as he clapped his hand on his friend's head.

His friend bowed low and in faultless English said: "I am more than pleased to meet you."

"I can give ye a pointer on Doc," the big fellow continued. "If ye tuk a peaner t' th' top av a mountain an' let her go down the side sorter ez she pleases, 'e cud pick up the remains an' put thim together so's ye w'u'dn't know they'd been apart. Yes, sir; that's no song an' dance, an' 'e c'u'd play any chune iver invented on it."

"Doc" laughed and made some explanations. They had a wheezy old organ in Halloran's dive, and Doc kept it in repair and played occasionally for them. Doc had a Rip Van Winkle look. His hair hung down his back, and his clothes were threadbare and green with age. His shoes were tied to his feet with wire, and stockings he had none. He was a New-Englander, and had studied medicine until his sheep-skin was almost in his hand. Then Doc slipped a cog and went down, down, down, until he landed at Halloran's dive. For twelve years he had been selling penny song-sheets on the streets and in saloons. He was usually in rags, but a score of the wildest inhabitants of that awful dive told me that Doc was their "good angel." He could play the songs of their childhood, he was kind and gentle, and men couldn't be vulgar in his presence.

I saw in Doc an unusual man, and was able to persuade him to go home with me. In a week he was a new man, clothed and in his right mind. He became librarian of a big church library, and our volunteer organist at all the Sunday meetings.

After two years of uninterrupted service as librarian, during which time Doc had been of great service in the bunk-house, I lost him. Five years later, crossing Brooklyn Bridge on a car, I passed Doc, who was walking in the same direction. At the end of the bridge, I planted myself in front of him. "Doc," I said, "you will never get away from me again!" I took him to New Haven, where he has been janitor of a hall in Yale University ever since.

_Gar, Bouncer of the Bismarck_

I have mentioned Gar, or Garfield, bouncer of the Bismarck. A strong, primitive man, he is worth a chapter in himself. When I met him first, I was scrubbing. Before I came, the Bismarck floor, like the Bismarck linen, was cleaned once a month. Having made the house my headquarters, I took some pride in it. I got permission to scrub that floor mid-month, and, dressed in a suitable outfit, I proceeded with the job. I hadn't gone far when a tall, gaunt form lurched into the room.

"Hello," he grunted.

"Hello," I said, as I paused for a moment.

"What's up?" he asked.

"You haven't seen me before, have you?" I asked.

"Don't know ye from a hole in the ground!"

"Well, I'm the missionary, and as there's a vital connection between soap and salvation, I'm making a beginning on the floor. When I finish this, I'll try my hand on you."

He laughed a hoarse, guttural laugh, and said:

"Don't git bug-house, boss; ye'd wind up jest whar ye've begun!"

He had several names; his real name was Brady. In the bunk-house they called him "Gar." He was bull-necked, bullet-headed, tall, round-shouldered, stooped. The story of a hard life was in his face. He had been in the army, but they couldn't drill him. They couldn't even get rid of his stoop. He must have looked like a gorilla with a gun. In the Bismarck, he became the terror of the lesser breeds--the king by right of conquest.

Gar was a challenge to me, for I saw in him something wild, untamed, and, perhaps, untamable. I resolved to dispute with my own methods his mastery of the place. Such was his power over the other men that, could I only conquer him, the rest would be easy. I concentrated on Gar.

It was virgin soil. He was ignorant of the vocabulary of religion. This was the more amazing because he had spent fifteen or twenty years in prisons. His special difficulty, I found, was intemperance. My first task was to cure him of that.

One night, as he approached his bunk, he found me stretched out on the next one.

"Well, I'll be----," he said.

"What's the matter, Gar?"

"Dat's what I ask youse. What's wrong with your machinery? Have ye been rejooced to the ranks, or has Gawd bounced ye?"

I went up close and whispered in his ear:

"Look here, old man, I'm glued to you; night, noon, and day, I'm going to eat, sleep, loaf, work, and play with you until every shred of your miserable soul belongs to God."

He laughed loud enough to wake every man in the dormitory.

"Sonny," he said, "I'll give ye three nights, and if ye haven't lost yer little goat be dat time, I'll set up de drinks fur all hands at Halloran's."

Then Gar set out to make good in the role of a prophet. At first he tried to disgust me. He kept up a rapid fire of the most vulgar profanity. That night he started several fights, and put the light out in the dormitory. The men, yelling for light, ran about, smashing every one in their way. When things quieted down, he asked me how I liked the entertainment. I complained that it was tame.

"Gee!" he said, "youse must 'a' been a barker at Coney!"

I kept him sober for a week; then he went back to his cups, and in a frenzy he nearly killed a bartender. I found him hiding in a rag-picker's basement. It appeared that the man had used the name of Christ in a vile connection, and Gar became a champion of the Nazarene.

"Hangin'," said Gar, "is too dead easy fur d' sucker what keeps cool when Jesus's insulted. Dat's d' fust time I ever soaked a guy on account of religion, an', b'jiminy, I'm tickled t' death over it."

When Gar squared himself again, he began a wholesale house-cleaning in the bunk-house. He persuaded the management to make several outlays, and he gave himself to the work. We installed a book-case and books, and Gar himself selected some chromos to hang around. Over a dent in the wall, made by a chair with which he had tried to kill a man, he hung this motto: "Let Brotherly Love Continue."

For ten years Gar struggled to be master of himself. He spent some years in a soldiers' home, but it was against his principles to die in such a tame institution. He wound up where he had spent his strange career--in Chatham Square.

A bunk-house man--old and half blind--was crossing the street, and roaring down on him came a Third Avenue car. It was Gar's one opportunity, and, with a spring, he pushed the old fellow on his face out of danger, but the wheels pinned Gar to the rails.

"I kin tell ye, boys," he said to the few friends who lingered around his cot at the close, "I'll do no simperin' around God wid hard-luck stories; I'll take what's comin' an' vamoose to m' place--whether up or down."

There was a slight pressure of the big hands, then they became limp and cold.

The bouncer was dead.

THE KING OF THE BABOONS

BY PERCEVAL GIBBON

ILLUSTRATION BY EUGENE HIGGINS

The old yellow-fanged dog-baboon that was chained to a post in the yard had a dangerous trick of throwing stones. He would seize a piece of rock in two hands, stand erect and whirl round on his heels till momentum was obtained, and then let go. The missile would fly like a bullet, and woe betide any one who stood in its way! The performance precluded any kind of aim,--the stone was hurled off at any chance tangent,--and it was bad luck rather than any kind of malice that guided one three-pound boulder through the window, across the kitchen, and into a portrait of Judas de Beer which hung on the wall not half a dozen feet from the slumbering Vrouw Grobelaar.

She bounced from her chair and ballooned to the door with a silent, swift agility most surprising to see in a lady of her generous build, and not a sound did she utter. She was of good veldt-bred fighting stock, which never cried out till it was hurt, and there was even something of compassion in her face as Frikkie jumped from the stoop with a twelve-foot thong in his hand. After all, it was the baboon that suffered most, if his yells were any index to his feelings. Frikkie could smudge a fly ten feet off with just a flick of his whip, and all the tender parts of the accomplished animal came in for ruthless attention.

"He ought to be shot," was Frikkie's remark as he coiled up the thong, at the end of the discipline. "A baboon is past teaching if he has bad habits. He is more like a man than a beast."

The Vrouw Grobelaar seated herself in the stoop-chair which by common consent was reserved for her use, and shook her head.

"Baboons are uncanny things," she answered slowly. "When you shoot them, you can never be quite sure how much murder there is in it. The old story is that some of them have souls and some not; and it is quite certain that they can talk when they will. You have heard them crying in the night sometimes. Well, you ask a Kafir what that means. Ask an old wise Kafir, not a young one that has forgotten the wisdom of the black people and learned only the foolishness of the white."

"What does it mean, Tante?" It was I who put the question. Katje, too, seemed curious.

The old lady eyed me gloomily.

"If you were a landed Boer instead of a kind of schoolmaster," she replied witheringly, "you would not need to ask such a question. But I will tell you. A baboon may be wicked,--look at that one showing his teeth and cursing!--but he is not blind nor a fool. He runs about on the hills, and steals and fights and scratches, and all the time he has all the knowledge and twice the strength of a man, if it were not for the tail behind him and the hair on his body. So it is natural that sometimes he should be grieved to be such a mean thing as a baboon, when he could be a useful kind of man if the men would let him. And at nights, particularly, when their troop is in laager and the young ones are on watch among the high rocks, it comes home to the best of them, and they sob and weep like young widows, pretending that they have pains inside, so that the others shall not feel offended and turn on them. Any one may hear them in the kloofs on a windless night, and, I can tell you, the sound of their sorrow is pitiful."

Katje threw out a suggestion to console them with buckshot, and the Vrouw Grobelaar nodded meaningly.

"To hate baboons is well enough in the wife of a burgher," she said sweetly. "I am glad to see there is so much fitness and wifeliness about you, since you will naturally spend all your life on farms."

Katje's flush was a distress-signal. First blood to the Vrouw.