Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

The executive went to his feet. "I'll see that he's pardoned at once, Warden. While the matter is being arranged, keep him in the hospital; and tell the doctors to give him plenty of medicines and instructions when he starts for home--don't forget it."

"If you don't mind," Charley Wolfe murmured, rising with his father's help, "I'd like to stick it out, sir. I consider that this is a debt I owe. A Wolfe always pays his debts, and tells the truth, and keeps his word. I--I want to stick it out."

"You're going home," frowned Old Buck. "You've got to go, so you can get well. We'll be there with you, in about three more months. Don't say anything against it, Charley."

He was still the chief of the Wolfes. There was no disobeying him. Before the sick young man's mental vision there flashed scenes of home and loved ones and the majestic dim-blue mountains with their trees and rocks and sparkling streams. A great longing came to him, the longing he had fought away so many times. He caught the Governor's hand.

* * * * *

Three months later, the rest of the Wolfes walked proudly out of the State's prison and started for the railway station. They were dressed in the clothing of Southern gentlemen, and they attracted no little attention on the street.

"Say, but we're sure goin' to miss 'em," remarked Bully McCrary to Pale Tom Ledworth. "Look at Warden Gray; even him, he's got that I-wonder-will-I-ever-be-happy-again look on him. Say, take this from me, Pallid, them was all men, them Wolfes."

"It's not being free that makes them so glad," Pale Tom replied in his soft voice. "They had a letter from home this morning, and it told them that Charley was improving rapidly. That's what makes them so glad."

XXV

It came to pass in June.

There alighted from an early morning train in Conradsville, North Carolina, a tall and muscular, smooth-faced and sober-visaged, youngish man wearing boots that were laced high in front, a suit of blue serge, a blue flannel shirt, a slim, black tie, and a broad-rimmed black hat. He sent his baggage on to Johnsville, Tennessee, bought for himself a week's supply of traveling rations, and set out immediately, on foot and alone, for the heart of Doe River Wilderness.

It was, of course, Little Buck Wolfe, the Arnold Mason that was. He had been in the great Northwest, dealing in timberlands, for a little more than seven years.

His rise had not been meteoric, but it had been steady. He began by obtaining an option on a wide and finely-timbered boundary of woodland; soon afterward, he won the interest of a group of Eastern lumbermen, and arranged a transfer that gave him a cash base to build upon. Gradually he became known as a timber Midas. In the seven years he had cleared enough money to pay back all that had been lost in the Wolfe's Basin fire, and he was now on his way to pay it. Then the law could have him, if it still wanted him. But first he had to visit the little cabin that stood on the shore of the lake that was the source of Doe River.

During all that time, he had not written once to Colonel and Mrs. Mason. He considered his reason for not writing a very good one, indeed. Whitney Fair was post master at Johnsville. Wolfe's fear of being arrested before his purpose was accomplished had become an obsession, overshadowing everything, except the purpose itself. And then, the fine humility of the man had convinced him that without the money necessary to pay the colossal debt he was a nonentity, nothing, non-existent.

He reached Doe River at a point some two miles below the lake shortly before midnight. This bank of the stream was for the most part cliffs, and, as there was no visible way of effecting a crossing, the remainder of the journey to the cabin would of necessity have to be made in the daytime. Wolfe lighted a fire under a tree, rolled himself in his blanket, and went to sleep.

Early the next morning he rose and climbed down to the crystal-clear river's brink to bathe his face and hands. As he turned from the edge of the stream, he saw, lying on a nearby low ledge of the cliff, where some high water had left it years before, a bare and bleaching human skeleton.

Wolfe stood aghast, dumb, frozen. It had come from the lake, of course, but whose--_which was it?_ Was it the skeleton of a man, or that of a woman?

He approached it slowly, knowing not whether to bless it or to curse it, to hold it sacred or to hate it. Then he saw on one of the arm bones, the unmistakable mark of a bullet, and he knew; it was the mark of the bullet that poor old Grandpap Singleton had fired that long gone day in Devil's Gate to save his, Wolfe's, life. The bones were those of Cat-Eye Mayfield.

The realization clenched Wolfe's fists iron hard, sent him as white as a man in the grip of certain death. He would stone the accursed thing--he would crush to bits all that was left of that most unspeakable of wretches.

No, he wouldn't. He would do as Tot would have him do if she could know; this had been the motto, the balance-wheel, the guiding light of his seven years in exile. With his hands he made a hole in the soft black earth at the cliff's base, and buried the skeleton. When it was done, he felt glad that he had obeyed the finer impulse. And it was a consolation to know that Mayfield had been cheated of the last mean part of his triumph.

Wolfe looked up and down the river's banks for the other skeleton, and didn't find it. When one has drained the iron chalice, Fate is very apt to be merciful!

The little cabin was much dilapidated. Half the stone-and-clay chimney had tumbled down before the eternal onslaughts of wind and rain; a storm had carried away a fourth of the split-board roof. Ferns and rattleweed grew over the doorstep as though trying to bar the way to feet that might profane. Wolfe crossed the feeble green barrier, and entered his holies of holies, the place that had seen enacted his life's one perfect chapter. The interior was damp and musty and mildewed. The rafters were lined with the tiny homes of mudwasps. A copperhead lay coiled comfortably in the little pit where they had kept their savings hidden; he killed the snake with one shot from his revolver and threw it out.

There were a few mementoes of the gloriously happy days. A rusted table knife, a rusted spoon, a broken dish, two mother-of-pearl buttons, a rusted wire hairpin, a rotting mealbag window-curtain that Tot's own fingers had hemmed. He fondled them for a little while, a sort of Pagan worship in his eyes; then he put them down on the mildewed table and went out and sat in the lush grass beside the bluish-black lake for a long time. The milestones of his life trooped back to him there, passed before him one by one, like soldiers in review.

Two days and two nights he spent there in the silence.

He set out for Wolfe's Basin at daybreak of a fine morning. Yellowhammers and squirrels were making love and quarreling everywhere in the forest about him. Bright-winged butterflies were busily sipping honey from the tiny blossoms of the rattleweed; wild bees were humming about the pink-eyed bloom of the ivy and the white and waxen cups of the laurel flowers. It was springtime for every living thing on earth but him.

After walking hard all that day and all the next and one hour more, he reached the rugged, pine-fringed crest of a mountain that he believed to be his home mountain, the Big Blackfern. He strained his eyes to the westward, trying to make out in the darkness the shape of bald and majestic Picketts Dome above the Lost Trail. He saw dimly a peak that he believed to be Picketts Dome.

Then he went on, and halted at a point from which he could look down into the long, broad valley that lay below. In a building that stood in the center of that valley, there was a series of lighted windows.

"It's Sunday night, and that's a church," he said to himself. "I've lost my way. There's no church in Wolfe's Basin. That must be Beechwood. Perhaps--wait! Maybe I've----"

A fine hope broke into his heart; he was no very religious man--churches went with civilization's advance, always. When he reached the level land it was late, and there was not a light to be seen anywhere; a perfect stillness reigned. He found himself walking along a graveled street between two rows of vine-covered cottages. The mingled perfume of honeysuckles and roses was well-nigh intoxicating. He passed between a church and a schoolhouse, both of which were painted white.

There was a wide concrete bridge that had been built across a rippling, tinkling creek. He went over and turned up the stream, looking for a stately willow that stood over a bar of white sand. If he could but find the willow, he would know.

He found it, and he knew!

For the present, this was enough. He would wait until morning to meet his people. Besides, he dreaded having to tell the Singletons about poor Tot. He stretched his weary figure out on his blanket, and watched the bright stars--Grandpap Singleton's promises--through the branches of the patriarchal tree until he went to sleep. He dreamed then that he sat on a burning desert with a heavy cup in his hand; and that a woman, in flowing white, came and took the cup from him, and dashed it away.

Little Buck Wolfe woke in a cold sweat. It was hard for him to go to sleep again.

When he woke again, broad daylight had come. He rose, combed his hair with his fingers, put on his hat, and looked about him. Nearby stood an especially home-like cottage with an inviting veranda in front. All manner of sweet, old-fashioned flowers bloomed in the spacious yard. He went slowly toward it.

Sitting in a deep and comfortable veranda rocker, he saw a very old woman in dark-figured calico; she wore a red bandanna about her perfectly white head, and there was a long-stemmed clay pipe in her toothless mouth. It was Granny Wolfe, yet alive.

"Buck, is 'at you?" she asked shrilly as he approached. "'Pears like it's yore walk, and 'pears like it hain't. But whoever it is, come right on in and set down here wi' me. Hey?"

She was now almost blind. The strapping figure of her grandson was only a blur to her eyes.

Wolfe bent over her. "Don't you know me, grand--grammaw?"

The poor old creature did not recognize his voice. "Not from Adam's off ox, nor a side o' sole-leather!" she cried. "You're a stranger to me, shorely! And might I ax, dad-burn it, what ye're a-sellin'--lightnin'-rods, sewin'-machines, patent churns, spec's, potater-peelers, or hillside plows; hey?"

Wolfe dropped into a chair facing hers, and picked up one of her pitifully thin hands.

"I--I'm Little Buck, grammaw," he said, a trifle unsteadily.

She pulled her hand away quickly. "Stuff! Stuff!" she exclaimed. "It's a durned pore joke, stranger! Little Buck, pore boy, he's been dead a long time. And ef ye try to spring 'at joke on me ag'in, I'll bust ye acrost the forrard wi' my stick--ef I don't, I wisht I may drap dead right here in my tracks, and never git another breath!"

Wolfe shrugged, then he asked anxiously, "Are the Masons still living? And who--who has died here in the last seven years?"

"The Masons is both alive. Hain't been but one grown pusson died here in the last seven year; 'at was pore old Grandpap Bill Singleton, the Prophet. Pore old Bill! Yes, he's done went up to his little shelter in the skies."

The assurance that both his fathers and both his mothers still lived filled Wolfe's heart with thankfulness. "If you'll only listen, grammaw," he pursued, "I'll prove to you that I'm Little----"

"Hush yore mouth!" she cut in angrily. "I hain't a-goin' to listen to no sech danged fool talk! But--" and she lowered her creaking voice to a whisper--"but I mustn't be so consarned loud. The widder woman I live with here she's a-sleepin', and she mustn't be woke up. Pore gyurl, she set up mighty nigh it the whole night wi' Lon Singleton's little boy, Robert Bob, who went and et a whole wagon-load o' green apples yeste'day."

"So Lon is married?"

"Why, shore; he married Hallie Wolfe, o' course," rather irritably. "He was the fust pusson 'at ever married a Wolfe and kep' his own name. But sence then, the's been sev'ral Singletons married Wolfes and kep' their own names, jest as the's been sev'ral Wolfes married Singletons and kep' their names. I can tell ye, stranger, them 'ar Singletons is good folks, every one of 'em."

Wolfe looked thoughtfully out across the bottom of the great basin. Suddenly he realized that he was staring at one of a series of yawning holes that had been made in the base of the Blackfern. Those holes had not been there seven years before, certainly. He asked his grandmother about them.

"Iron," said the old woman.

"Iron!"

"Yes, iron." Three puffs at her clay pipe. "What they calls magnetic iron ore, and the finest in Ameriky--says the Colonel. Both mountains is chuck a-bustin' full of it. My son, Buck, he found it whilst he was hid in a cave from the law. The depity he chased Buck back in the cave a hundred yards, and thar Buck found it. It was the treasure the dyin' stranger talked about a long, long time ago, and which Buck he allus thought was gold."

Her grandson gasped. She went on in her garrulous way.

"The colonel he took a-holt of it. He borried money from the bank, and bought t'other side o' both mountains, bought out t'other part owners o' the lumber comp'ny, and built the narrer-gauge railroad on down to the big blast furnace at Johnsville. This here--this here--er, what'n the devil was I a-talkin' about' anyhow? Oh, yes--iron. I never slep' none last night. Why, yes--the colonel he paid the bank back mighty soon, I'm a-tellin' ye, Mister!

"The colonel he gives all o' us Wolfes and Singletons work at plum' scan'lous good pay. Bless the bones of him, he built us a church and a schoolhouse, and brung in a fine teacher and a fine preacher; and he put up a big gen'al store and a post office fo' us, too. Utopia, 'at's the name o' the post office. Utopia, Tennessee. Purty, hain't it? And the colonel he gi' us all land in the name o' pore Little Buck, and he he'ped us to build dandy houses like these ye see. Se we're all happy 'cept fo' one thing, which is the losin' o' pore Little Buck. God rest the ashes o' him!

"Mister, I--" Again she caught herself and lowered her voice. "Durn my old pickcher, I allus was a fool fo' talkin'. Why, I bet I've done woke her up." (It was a safe bet) "I wisht these here drotted boys'd keep them wagon-loads o' green apples out o' their blasted little bellies, so's she could stay home o' nights whar she belongs. Anybody gits sick--she's the nuss and doctor."

The heart of Wolfe throbbed wildly. His most roseate hopes, long lost, had never touched so perfect a fulfilment of his dream, his big dream. If only he had Tot! If only she could know! The insufferableness of it made him weak. He slumped down a trifle in his chair.

The front door's screen opened and closed softly, and he heard the pattering of small feet beside him. It was a very little boy, chubbily-built; he was strutting proudly in his first pair of knee-trousers, real knee-trousers.

"Good morning, Judge!" smiled Wolfe.

"Good mawnin', suh!" the very little boy said sweetly, in a grown-up fashion that was delightfully ludicrous--and Wolfe knew then that the child had been much associated with old Colonel Mason, Southern gentleman. Granny Wolfe jumped out of the edge of a nap.

"Why, Bobolink!" she cackled. "You've come out here to show off yore new britches, you honey-dumplin'! His name, Mister, is Bob Taylor Wolfe; but the's so danged many Bob Taylor Wolfe's here in Utopia 'at we calls him mostly Bobolink to make a diffunce. He's got another name, too, which, down in the hearts of us, we likes the best; I think it was his granpaw, Old Buck, my son, who put him up to it. Now, Bobolink, tell the stranger yore other name."

It came promptly, "Littlest Buck Wolfe."

Little Buck Wolfe went as white as chalk. He looked straight into the boy's wide, serious, unflinching eyes, and the light broke suddenly--he was looking into his own eyes. But he dared not hope. It couldn't be. Tot was dead; she had been dead for seven eternities of years. Still----

It was at that moment that the Littlest Buck Wolfe's mother came to the door. She was round-figured, mature, magnificent; her face was that of a Madonna; her hair was of the color of dark copper.

Her husband shot up straight.

"_Tot!_"

* * * * *

After they had succeeded in convincing Granny Wolfe that she had been talking to her own grandson, Wolfe told the story of the tragedy, as he knew it, that had taken place at the lake that was the source of Doe River.

"Mayfield deceived us both," said Tot. "Most of what he told you was true. But instead of going down in the lake, I took the stolen money and my rifle and came back here to prove your innocence of the charge of robbing the company's safe. Mayfield had been threatening to kill me if I didn't marry him and run away to Virginia with him. I escaped by some means, I never could remember just how, for I was really sick and delirious; I got back here only after days and days of wandering. How he must have hated you, to die as he did! But he was blind.

"And the man in officer-blue was Lon, my brother!" she went on. "He had himself made a deputy-sheriff, and went to hunt Cat-Eye Mayfield. He didn't take any irons along; he meant to kill Mayfield. And that miserable little ant--what a tiny, tiny thing to keep us apart for so long! But life is like that."

"Well, we won't be separated again," said Wolfe, "unless Whitney Fair has me prosecuted for helping my people get away."

"Whitney Fair is dead, and his family don't live in Johnsville any more," Tot replied. "I'm sure nobody else will remember it against you."

In which she was correct.

News of Little Buck Wolfe's return spread rapidly. The people of Utopia hastened to welcome him; the Masons came up in a little passenger car carried by the daily ore train. It was a gala day, a Christmas, a July Fourth, and a Thanksgiving Day, all in one.

When the pointed shadow of Picketts Dome was reaching for the crest of the Big Blackfern, Wolfe stole away with his wife to pay his respects, as it were, to the one soul that had not been there to greet him. Tot led the zigzag way up the bald peak, upon which the ironwood cross still stood. They gathered sheafs of waxen-white laurel bloom, and later they put these in reverence on a mound between the great cross and a great boulder, the last earthly resting place of Grandpap Singleton, who had been called the Prophet.

"There, look," Tot said in the hushed voice of one who speaks in an atmosphere of holiness. She pointed. "The colonel had that done."

High on the even face of the huge stone had been cut in bold letters;

GRANDPAP WILLIAM SINGLETON

He, too, had drained life's iron chalice bravely. Wolfe's eyes dimmed.

And below the name, in the old hill dialect, had been chiseled in smaller letters this gem from the Prophet's crude philosophy, which well might ring down the centuries to come:

_To Them As Thinks The' Ain't No God
The' Ain't None, So Far As They're
Concerned_

THE NORTH WIND'S MESSAGE

By DANFORD G. BRITTON

Outside the North Wind howls and blusters.
As I sit by the friendly hearth;
And a picture comes in the leaping flames
From the land of the mystic north.
Where the silent trails lie dim and pale
In the glistening ice and snow;
And the hunger cry of the lean wolves' wail
With the mercury sixty below.
There the jackpine's ghostly shadows
Ripple the snowy path;
While the gray clouds scud like a roaring flood
From the north wind's howling wrath.
And for those who travel that great white waste
In the numbing cold and frost,
Death lies in wait, like the hand of fate.
Stop fighting once--and you're lost.
But though the trail may be hard and crooked,
With many a twist and bend,
There's gold at the foot of the rainbow
For those who stick to the end.
Though it's not so much what you win,
If you lose, it's about the same;
But the test of a real man's metal, is,
Friend, are you still in the game?
So when you're near discouraged
And tempted to quit the fight,
Why remember the test of the long grim trail,
In the north land's arctic night.

IN MEMORY OF HENRY CLAY MANLEY

By THOMAS McMORROW

WHERE WOULD YOU TURN IF YOUR WHOLE FUTURE DEPENDED ON YOUR EARNING
CAPACITY AT THE END OF EIGHTEEN MONTHS--AND YOU WERE OUT OF A JOB?
AN INTERESTING QUESTION TO A CERTAIN YOUNG AMERICAN, AND WITH AN
INTERESTING ANSWER

I

"Now, if _I_ was running this country," said Paul Manley, lighting a new cigarette, and ending a diatribe against things as they were in the U. S. A. in the year 1920, "I tell you what I'd do! First I'd----"

A customer descended hurriedly from One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street into Hepp's Bargain Basement where Paul was employed as sales clerk.

"Want a pair of shoes!"

"What kind of shoes?" grumbled Paul. He would have liked his job in Hepp's Bargain Basement well enough if it weren't for customers always coming in and taking his mind off important affairs.

"A good, strong shoe I'm not hard to suit," said the customer, a gray-haired and well-dressed business man.

"You're going to wear them--not me, mister," said Paul, yawning. He rose slowly from the bench at the back of the little shop, and came forward. He was a tall and skinny youth of about twenty.

"Sit down, will you?"

The customer sat down, thrust out his foot, and glanced at the clerk. Manley had walked away toward the shelves. The customer grunted, pulled a foot-rest to him, and began to unlace his shoe.

"I don't want a tan shoe," he said a moment later.

"I'm no mind-reader, mister," said Paul. He slapped the rejected shoe back into the box, and pulled out another pair.

"I don't want a vici kid," said the customer.

"That's the style nowadays."

"I don't care. I don't want it!"

"Well, try it on, can't you?" grumbled Paul. "There, how does it feel?"

"It's too tight That's not my size."

"It certainly is your size! It's a 9-D, and that's what you've got on right now. Don't tell me my business, mister. Look--see? That's your size."

"I say it doesn't fit! And I don't want a vici kid, anyway. I can have a good strong walking shoe if I want it, can't I?"

"Oh, you want a shoe for walking! Why didn't you say so in the first place and save my time? Sure, you can have it; I got no objection. What do you want to pay?"

"About six dollars."

"We don't keep cheap shoes, mister," said Paul, getting up from his knees.

"I don't want a cheap shoe."

"Yes, you do! What do you call a six dollar shoe, if it ain't a cheap shoe? Say, I might sell you one shoe for that."

"Young fellow," growled the customer, pulling on his own shoe again and jabbing viciously at the eyelets, "you couldn't sell me any shoe at all. You need a lesson in good manners, you do!"

"Go along now, mister," said Paul, reclining again on his bench. "You're in the wrong store, see?

"I guess I showed that fresh guy where he got off," he chuckled satisfiedly as the enraged customer went stamping up the iron stairs to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street.

"Yah," grunted Ernest Birdsong, his fellow clerk from the ladder where he was sorting stock. Ernest was a recent arrival from Europe.

Paul sprawled on the bench and lit a cigarette, which he "ate" in long, lung-filling inhalations.

"There you go," he went on, "working your fat head off. You'll learn better, or I miss my guess! You're some of this here blamed pauper labor that wants to come here and lower the American standard of living. You ain't got the mind of a free man, Birdy. Go ahead, and work yourself to death, and see what you get for it! Old Hepp doesn't care a whoop for you or for me, except what he can get out of us. I'm telling you. That's where the old tight-wad's head is level; I don't care a whoop for him except for what I can get out of him, see? He's a blood-sucking capitalist, that's what old Hepp is. Pretty soft for him--five stores, and not a blamed thing to do but go around from one to the other, and crash the cash-register!"

"Yah, Mr. Paul," murmured Ernest inattentively.

"Aw, gosh!" yawned Paul. "I'm feeling all in today. Had a big time last night, Birdy. Yep, we had a large time. Punished a quart between three of us, we did. Say, Birdie, I know where I can get genuine _Old Cobbler_, rye, for six bucks a bottle. You want some good booze?"

"No, Mr. Paul."

"Say, Birdy, I feel like taking in a movie today. There's nothing doing here, and you're going to stay anyhow, ain't you? Old Hepp won't be back until six, or half-past. You can take care of the store by yourself, can't you? I'll do as much for you some time. If old Hepp pops in, you say I got sick, and went around to see a doctor. So long--see you some more. Don't take any wooden money!"

II

He pulled on his overcoat, which was built out at the shoulders until it gave Paul still another of Jack Dempsey's dimensions. He adjusted it until he was as wide on one side as on the other, pulled out his cravat until it bowed, slanted his velour hat over one eye, and strode from the store. He strode; Paul's self-respect depended on his clothes. He never strode in a bathing-suit. When he was in a bathing-suit he sidled, and walked modestly, and even somewhat slinkingly, feeling distressingly naked. But now he strode, swinging his wide shoulders, and looking the world in the eye to stare it down.

He went over to the Belvedere--continuous, eleven to eleven, fifteen cents for the best seat in the house.

He had a crush on the young lady cashier of the Belvedere, who sat in a box in the middle of the foyer from eleven to eleven with intervals out, and worked an apparatus which caused tickets to sprout in the slab before her as often as she was paid fifteen cents. Her single eye to his fifteen cents had titivated Paul's interest; as she could gaze upon him without excitement he thought she must be a very superior person. She had a share in securing his steady custom for the Belvedere.

"It'll be a nice day, if it don't rain," he said to her, and smiled fascinatingly.

She made an assenting noise through her broad, common sense nose, and did her trick with the apparatus.

"It'll be a long day, if it don't shrink!" he tried again, with a fixed grin. Paul could not afford a vaudeville show more than twice per week, and he tried to remember the jokes.

She looked up at him with a slight contraction of her brows. "I beg your pardon?" she said.

Paul leaned on the slab, and twisted his mouth sideways to spring the gag again; he felt that he had her going, at least a little.

"Shake it up!" called an impatient patron from the line.

Paul turned his shoulders slowly about, and surveyed the line, and knitted his black brows at a little man whose eyes were as innocent and timorous as a rabbit's.

"Are you in a hurry?" he asked in a bass voice.

"No!" exclaimed the little man.

"Then don't try to hurry me!" said Paul, swinging his shoulders back again, and letting his heavy frown rest on the young lady cashier for a moment, so that she might see what kind of a man he was.

He came out of the Belvedere at half-past five. His face was flushed from generous emotion and bad air, and his eyes were glassy from protracted staring at "Black Roger of Brimstone Gulch." An intending patron was talking to the young lady cashier.

"I say I give you a two!" shouted the patron.

"It was a one," said the cashier patiently. "Take your change, please. There's the dollar you gave me."

"That's a dollar fast enough," said the patron, "but it ain't the dollar I give you, because I didn't give you no dollar. I give you a two!"

"Do you want your dollar back?"

The patron, a short and dark-faced young man, drew back, lifted his shoulders, sighed noisily, and uttered an oath. It was not a very gross imprecation--he recognized that he was talking to a lady, and the rather suave way in which he swore almost robbed the utterance of offence.

"Here!" called Paul. "How dare you use language to a lady?"

"Is that so?" breathed the patron, turning.

Paul Manley narrowed his eyes and looked very bleakly at the low-set young man. "You heard me," he said.

"Wait a minute, lady," said the patron, waving a hand behind him as he lurched toward Paul. "Just wait a minute. Listen, fellow, what are you butting in for? Do you want a good smack in the nose?"

"Well, that's no way to talk to a girl," said Paul, weakening.

"Then I'll talk to you the same way!" He crowded up against Paul and shoved him back against the wall of the foyer. "Come on, you big cake-eater, and put up your hands! So you're working with her, are you?"

"Knock the big stiff out, Jimmy!" yelled a comrade joyfully.

"She's nothing to me," mumbled Paul, his bluff caving completely. "On the level, she isn't! Don't hit me. I didn't mean anything--honest, I didn't!"

"You're a liar," snarled Jimmy, roused to fury by the prospect of an easy victory. With sound military instinct he swung his fist for Paul's jaw, leaping forward and pivoting with the blow.

"Cheese it, Jimmy!" yelled his ally. "She's coming out!"

The young lady cashier had blown her police whistle and had flung open the door of her cage. She had evidently a reputation for peace-keeping, for Jimmy, who was tearing at Paul like a wolf at a sheep, now bent forward and hunched his shoulders toward his ears and ran off. Paul had crouched and covered up, and had taken the weight of his vicious blow on the forearm, but it had staggered him, and shaken his velour hat over his nose and dislocated the shoulders of his overcoat.

"Let me alone!" he yelled, when he felt her hand on his arm.

"He's gone," she said.

He straightened, coughed, and shook himself into order. She was gazing at him soberly, understandingly, and yet with an effect of admiring him.

"You're terribly hot-tempered, aren't you?" she said.

"That fellow was enough to make anybody mad."

"It was nice of you to take my part," she said. "I'm awfully obliged. As a usual thing I blow my whistle and get the policeman; there aren't many fellows will step up and take a girl's part, like you!"

"Well," said Paul, in a deeper and more assured tone, "that's the kind of man I am, I guess! I always stand up for a lady!"

"It was very brave of you. You're all right now, aren't you?"

"You bet I'm all right. Lucky for him he took me unawares. Why, say, I could work around him like a copper around a barrel!"

"I bet," she said. And she smiled at him again, nodded, and skipped back into her box.

Restored to his own good opinion by her deftness, Paul swaggered back to Hepp's Bargain Basement. He knew that she had seen the episode, and that she could not have misinterpreted it; but still he had not lost face.

Hepp was waiting for him. "Where were you the last two hours?"

"Aw, I wasn't feeling right."

Hepp, a short and big-bellied man with a pink and shining head, compressed his lips. "Look here, Manley, did you make this sale?"

"Yes," said Paul, glancing at the sales-slip. "That's some of my work, Mr. Hepp!"

"I might have recognized it. You sold this pair of shoes to a colored fellow, and he left his old shoes to be sent home. Well, he was in here just now, raising Cain, and threatening to cut me. You sent him a pair of ladies' dancing pumps in the box instead of his shoes, and he says he forgot the ten dollar bill that he had hidden in his old shoe. And he wanted it!"

"Aw, he's a liar!"

"Maybe so, but I was in no position to argue. Here's two dollars."

"What for? Thank you, Mr. Hepp!"

"For your pay up to tonight--twelve dollars, less the ten that I had to give to the colored fellow. Manley, you've got too much brains for the shoe business. You've got too much on your mind besides selling shoes. So we're going to part company. Keep your hat and coat on."

"You want me to quit?"

"Exactly," said Hepp, walking away. "Good luck, and good-by!"

"Then I'll quit!" shouted Paul indignantly. "I'll quit right here and now! Say, Hepp, I want to tell you a few. The matter with you is you don't know how to treat a white man. You're a blamed old slave-driver, that's what you are! You're a mean, stingy old tight-wad! Where do you get that stuff--trying to fire me? Why, say, you old dumb-bell, I forgot more about the shoe business than you ever knew! I got too much brains for you--that's what's the matter. What do you know, anyhow? Put your hat on, you old fool--you're half-naked!"

He left the store hurriedly, and ran to the street. He had not had time to remember all the gags which he had saved up in loving anticipation of just this occasion, but he felt he had done pretty well.

"I guess I told him where he got off!" he jubilated.

III

Paul lay in bed late the following morning. He was not much worried; he was out of a job, but he had been out of a job often before. He argued himself into feeling no shame at his discharge; after all, that was the natural end to any term of employment. He twisted and rolled in bed, holding his eyes shut, trying to hang onto sleep, but it finally escaped him.

He rose, dressed slowly, pushed over his ninety-eight cent alarm clock and walked down the stairs of his rooming-house.

"Mail, Mr. Manley!" called his landlady.

Paul glanced at the inscription of the envelope--"_Beaks & Sipperman, Attorneys-at-law, 32 Nassau Street, New York City_." Under his landlady's curious gaze he dropped it into his pocket.

He opened it in the cafeteria while eating his twenty-cent Club Breakfast.

Nov. 16th, 1920.

Dear Sir:

If you are the nephew of Henry Clay Manley, formerly of this city,
we beg to inform you that your uncle died in August last in Omaha.
The will is to be probated in this state, and our Mr. Beaks is
nominated as executor and trustee. As you are the only heir-at-law
of the testator, and are also a beneficiary under said trust, we
request that you call upon us at your first convenience to receive
citation and to be advised of your interest. Your uncle left a
considerable estate.

Ask for our Mr. Beaks.

Very truly yours.

"Uncle Harry!" exclaimed Paul with shining eyes. "After all the letters I wrote him asking him to do something for me, and getting nothing out of him but hot air and advice, he dies and leaves me his fortune! Well, that is what I call handsome of him!"

He did not know his uncle Harry personally; Henry Clay Manley had gone to the West before Paul was born, and had never revisited New York. Paul had then no sentiment toward him, other than the anomalous kindliness which anyone must feel toward a stranger who has been good enough to die and leave him money. He was even able to see that his uncle had shown foresight and wisdom in turning down his begging letters.

He scalded his mouth with hot coffee, and ran from the lunchroom to the subway kiosk. He saved a nickel by running the three blocks; he saved another nickel by dropping into the turnstile at the station a metal slug which a shifty-eyed street fakir had sold him at six for five, and which was as good as a nickel for all the purposes of the Transit Company, save one. Paul beat his fare when he could, and refused to see harm in it; it cost the traction company nothing extra to carry him, whereas paying his fare would have made to him the poignant difference of a nickel.

He entered the Mutual Life building at 32 Nassau Street and wandered through the ramifying halls of that commodious and old-fashioned structure until he found a door upon whose ground glass was lettered _Beaks & Sipperman_.

Mr. Beaks was at his piled desk in his private room. He was a big, old man with faded blue eyes; his manner was suave and cold.

"I'm in conference, Miss Prouty, until Mr. Manley leaves," he said to the office-girl. "Don't disturb me. Sit here, Mr. Manley."

He picked a red-ribboned document from a pigeonhole, snapped it open, stared at it, and blew through his lips softly and reflectively.

"This is your uncle's will. Did you know him very well?"

"Never saw him. He always lived out West."

"It's an unusual will, Mr. Manley. Did you ever write to your uncle, asking money of him?"

"More than once," grinned Paul.

"Yes; he left a queer will, and I'm not very thankful to him for making me trustee. However--he was an old friend. There's a trust provision here, Mr. Manley, for your benefit--or for the benefit of the Platte County Home for the Feeble-minded, as the event may prove. Your uncle's estate, Mr. Manley, should amount to ninety-five or one hundred thousand dollars after debts, funeral expenses, inheritance taxes, etc., have been paid. Are you working?"

"Not just now."

"What salary were you getting last?"

"Seventeen dollars per week."

"Listen to this clause, Mr. Manley:

"I have given much thought to the question of my responsibility
toward my sister's son, Paul Manley, of the City and State of New
York, who is my nearest relative and my only heir-at-law. It has
seemed to me that this, my nephew, was an idle and worthless youth;
nevertheless I feel that I should fail in my duty toward him,
and toward the memory of my beloved sister, if I should make no
provision for him in this my last will and testament.

"I do therefore ordain as a first charge upon the trust fund, that
my said nephew shall receive monthly during the term of his natural
life a sum equal to the monthly wage, salary or income which he
is earning at any honest employment. So that my said nephew may
make fullest avail of this bequest, I direct that the earned income
above referred to shall be the earned income of which he is in
receipt eighteen months after he has been given personal notice of
the terms of this provision. After my said nephew's decease, the
principal of the trust fund with accumulations shall be paid over
to the _Platte County Home for the Feeble-minded_, on the single
condition that the name of that institution be changed to _The
Henry Clay Manley Memorial_.

"So far," continued Mr. Beaks, looking over his spectacles at Paul, "we have plain sailing. You have now been put on notice. Eighteen months from today payments to you will begin, on the basis of the salary you are then earning."

"How much could I get?" breathed Paul.

"Between five and six thousand per year; between four and five hundred dollars per month."

Paul's eyes dilated. "But how am I to live until then?"

"You might begin to earn it."

"Work!" exclaimed Paul indignantly. "With all that money coming to me?"

"Your uncle," said Beaks, removing his glasses to polish them leisurely, "seems to have understood your bent of mind. You may work little or much as you please. But you will receive a stipend equal only to the income you are earning from honest work eighteen months hence! I see that term is ungrateful to you, here is one which you may like better:

"The above provision is upon the express term and condition that my
said nephew shall engage in no remunerative work after he begins to
receive this income from the trust fund. There shall be deducted
from the payments to be made him sums equal to any moneys which
he shall be receiving from any other sources; so that, to take
full advantage of this provision for him, my said nephew shall be
required to abandon all efforts to support himself, and to engage
in no remunerative work whatsoever.

"In other words," said Beaks, "you are debarred from earning your own living so long as you take this money; you are expressly forbidden to work!"

"Is there anything else?" asked Paul, wondering why Beaks paused.

"You have no objection to that?"

"Of course not! You don't think I'd be fool enough to work if I didn't have to, do you? That's only common sense, that part. Up to six thousand per year--why, say, I'll live in clover!"

"Your confidence is inspiring," said Beaks in a tone that was slightly nasal. "There is one further provision, covering the contingency that you will refuse to accept the proposed annuity according to its terms."

"You need not bother to read that part, Mr. Beaks," said Paul politely.

But Beaks proceeded to read it, unheeding:

"If my said nephew shall refuse to accept the said beneficial
interest according to its terms, he shall receive nothing whatever
from my estate, but my entire estate shall be divided, share and
share alike, among the institutions named in the sealed letter
of instructions which will be found in my vault of deposit and
which will be given unopened to my executor and trustee. To avoid
raising expectations which might be disappointed, and to prevent
any attempt at collusion between my said nephew and possibly venal
officials of these institutions or any of them, I hereby enjoin
and direct my said executor and trustee to preserve this letter of
instructions inviolate and unopened until my said nephew shall, at
the end and termination of the said period of eighteen months, have
definitely refused and rejected the above mentioned life-estate in
the trust fund."

"When I do," nodded Paul. "Believe me, if they are going to wait until I throw that easy money over my shoulder they are going to wait!"

"There is the letter to which the will refers," said Beaks, pointing to the pigeonhole. "As it is to all effects and purposes a part of this will, it should be proven with the will; the Surrogate may decide that the institutions referred to are entitled to citation. On the other hand, the will vests me with the power of sale during the eighteen months, so that there is no suspension of the power of alienation. We may have to withhold the will from probate until the end of the eighteen-month period.

"However," he said, sitting up to his desk again, "these worries do not interest you! I shall find a way to carry out my old friend's wishes. Good day, Mr. Manley! Don't forget to come here eighteen months from today, and after you have formally accepted the bequest I shall commence to pay you seventeen dollars a week."

"Seventeen dollars per week!"

"Unless the wage-level should fall, Mr. Manley, as some economists predict. After having had the pleasure of knowing you, it seems to me highly improbable that I shall be required to pay you more."

"Well," said Paul, suddenly troubled, "it will be a whole lot more than that--but--where in thunder am I to get a job that will pay me five or six thousand per year?"

"That is for you to discover," said Beaks, smiling moonishly at him through his glasses. "You will certainly be a very exceptional young man if you get it. Here is a copy of the will. Ponder it. Digest it. Note the provision that the trust is to lapse as to you if you contest it. You have my best wishes, and I am sure that you had the best wishes of your uncle, as well as his lively distrust. You have eighteen months during which you may fix the income you shall receive during the lifetime of inactivity whose prospect seems to please you. You may call me up, if there is anything I can explain. Good day!"

He picked up his desk telephone. "The conference is ended, Miss Prouty," he said.

IV

Paul went down into the subway in a daze; so distraught was he that he dropped a real nickel into the turnstile.

Five or six thousand per year! He didn't know anybody who made such a royal salary. He knew, by hearsay, that such lucky fellows existed; he supposed that the towering buildings of lower New York must house a number of them. He had heard that movie actors made a million dollars per year apiece, but such large sums meant nothing to him--as, in all probability, they mean nothing to many movie actors. Men in banks, where money is visible in heaps, made no such salaries; he knew a paying-teller in a Harlem bank who sat amid currency like a junkman amid bundles of old newspapers, and he made per week only twenty-three dollars.

But, if he could only get it, what couldn't he do with five or six thousand per year! Why, he couldn't waste time working if he was ever to spend so much money; his uncle had shown sense there. For ten dollars per week he could get a large and sunny room in a swell apartment, with hot and cold water, steam heat, electric light, and breakfast optional. He would have a belted dressing-gown--five dollars in Sonnenthal's--and a smoking table with Virginia and Turkish and English cigarettes. After his optional breakfast he would lay off in an easy chair, and read three or four newspapers--he had never had time to read newspapers thoroughly. He would smoke cigarettes, yawning and tapping his mouth, and glancing occasionally through the window to see ordinary people hurrying about their work.

If the day was fine he would take a stroll down Seventh Avenue--he pictured the apartment as situated on Seventh Avenue--and in the afternoon he would take in a matinee; the best matinees in Harlem could be taken in complete for a dollar. When the show was done he would stroll and saunter some more, across One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, slapping his stick jauntily against his faultlessly creased trouser-leg, watching common working people exuding wearily from stores and offices and lofts, nodding slightly to his friends. He would dine at a Greek restaurant, a rotisserie, at a secluded little table beneath a pink shade, waving the obsequious waiter and the menu away, and ordering the Regular Dinner like a lord.

He would invite fellows to his rooms--he did not see that he could utilize more than one room, but rooms would be the right word. He would have a square-face of gin in his rooms--he could get it for two and a half, and the real stuff--and he would have rye, and a bottle of pale and smoky Scotch.

But all this would not exhaust five or six thousand per year. Sometimes he would go to other fellows' rooms, and would drink free of their rye and their Scotch. He would have a lot of money left over, week after week.

Well--he could play the ponies! He had always wanted to play the ponies, but the game had been too rich for his blood. But five or six thousand per year would be ample. It would be more than he could use. Why, even fifty per week would be wonderful; that would be three times the salary on which he had been managing to get along. He didn't know any fellow who was making fifty per week. He would be as snug inside it as a worm inside a nut. But----

He had to get it. Even if he was modest enough to be satisfied with it, he would not get it until he had earned it. What had possessed his old fool of an uncle to stick such a joker in? Why, Paul could not begin to earn fifty per week in a month of Sundays! Spend it? Well, yes, there was some chance of that. But earn it? Get some miserable tight-wad of an employer to put into his glad hand five big, crinkly, glistening, vividly green ten-dollar bills every Saturday? He could see him doing it--yes, he could!

So, sunk in an April state of mind, alternating glorious sunshine and overcast weather, he arrived at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street again, walked west, toward the Belvedere. He did not know why he was going there; but there was one person who knew something about him, one person who had caught a glimpse of him, one person upon whom he had not imposed a fictitious Paul Manley.

The pleasant-faced cashier was just going to lunch. Paul lifted his hat; she was passing him with a curt nod when she noticed that his face was troubled.

"Listen," he said, "could I talk to you a little bit? I want to ask you something. Can I take you to lunch?"

"If you let me pay my own."

"Oh, sure, that will be all right! Let's go over to the Palace cafeteria; that's a nice place and they got tables for ladies."

He escorted her into the lunchroom, and took off his hat when he sat down. The numerous unaccompanied men in the place wore their hats.

"Let's have some of that ox-tail braise," he suggested. "It's nice here. It's made out of the tail of an ox."

"Maybe," she said. "We have it in our house on Mondays, ox-tail soup--my mother makes it out of the neck of a chicken!"

They laughed. "Two ox-tail braises," ordered Paul.

"Listen," he said, after they had exchanged introductions, "An uncle of mine died, and left me a big fortune!"

"You always have a new one, Mr. Manley," she said with expectant smile. "Well, go ahead and spring it."

"Spring what?"

"The joke! Or am I supposed to ask something? Who is your uncle, or what did he die of, or something like that? I'm awful slow, Mr. Manley."

"This ain't a joke. Well, it is a kind of a joke, too. Read over this letter, and then I'll tell you about it."

She read the letter, and then he told her about it. "So now you see what I'm up against. Where in heck am I to pull down five or six thousand per year?"

"Oh, you could do it if you put your mind down to it. What do you work at?"

"Well, just now I am not working. To tell you the truth, I got canned yesterday. I was working over in Hepp's Bargain Basement, and the boss got me sore, and I got right up and told him where he got off. You know I got a hot temper."

"What were you getting?"

"Seventeen dollars."

"That's not much for a fellow like you. Don't you know any trade?"

"Nothing better than selling shoes."

He spoke in a low tone of voice, glancing guardedly about him to see that he was not overheard. Mingled with his humiliation, he felt a certain rare pleasure in telling this girl the truth; but he was quite content to enjoy this pleasure at her expense only, and would probably have been very unhappy if it had been broadcasted that Paul Manley had been fired from a job which paid seventeen dollars a week.