.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 45136
   :PG.Title: He Comes Up Smiling
   :PG.Released: 2014-03-14
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Charles Sherman
   :MARCREL.ill: Arthur William Brown
   :DC.Title: He Comes Up Smiling
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1912
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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HE COMES UP SMILING
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      HE COMES UP
      SMILING

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      *By*

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      CHARLES SHERMAN

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      WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
      ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN

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      INDIANAPOLIS
      THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
      PUBLISHERS

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      COPYRIGHT 1912
      THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

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      PRESS OF
      BRAUNWORTH & CO.
      BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
      BROOKLYN. N. Y.

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   HE COMES UP SMILING

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER

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I  `The Beauty Contest`_
II  `A Close Shave`_
III  `Enter Mr. Batchelor`_
IV  `And When I Dine`_
V  `A Plan and a Telegram`_
VI  `What Is Heaven Like`_
VII  `Watermelon Yields`_
VIII  `Gratitude Is a Flower`_
IX  `On the Road`_
X  `The Deserted House`_
XI  `A Night's Lodging`_
XII  `The Key to the Situation`_
XIII  `Only to be Lost`_
XIV  `Billy, Billy Everywhere`_
XV  `Love in Idleness`_
XVI  `A Thief in the Night`_
XVII  `Alphonse Rides Away`_
XVIII  `Oh, For a Horse`_
XIX  `A Broker Prince`_
XX  `The Seven O'Clock Express`_
XXI  `Rich and Poor Alike`_
XXII  `The Truth At Last`_
XXIII  `Back to the Road`_
XXIV  `The Poet or the Poodle`_
XXV  `As He Said He Would`_





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.. _`THE BEAUTY CONTEST`:

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   HE COMES UP SMILING

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   CHAPTER I

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   THE BEAUTY CONTEST

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"You have a phiz on yer," said the
Watermelon with rare candor, "that
would make a mangy pup unhappy."

"I suppose you think yer Venus," sneered
James, a remark that he flattered himself was
rather "classy."

The Watermelon sighed as one would over
the ignorance of a child.  "No," said he,
"hardly."

"Don't let that bloomin' modesty of yers
keep yer from tellin' the truth," adjured James.

The Watermelon waved the possibility aside
with airy grace.  "With all due modesty,
James," said he, "I can't claim to be a woman."

"Not with that hay on yer mug," agreed
Mike, casting a sleepy eye upward from where
he lay in lazy content in the long, sweet grasses
under the butternut tree.

"When I was a kid, I took a prize in a
beauty show," announced James, with pardonable pride.

"Swiped it?" asked the Watermelon.

"Dog show?" inquired Mike drowsily, listening
to the pleasing drone of a bee in a near-by
clump of daisies.

James sat up and ran his fingers with musing
regret through the coarse stubble on cheeks and
chin.  "I was three, I remember, a cute little
cuss.  My hair was yellow and ma curled
it—you know how—all fuzzy—and I had a little
white dress on.  It was a county fair.  I got
the first prize for the best lookin' kid and was
mugged for the papers.  If I was shaved now
and had on some glad rags, I'd be a lady killer,
all right, all right."

"'Longside of me," said the Watermelon,
"you'd look like a blear-eyed son of a toad."

"You!  Why, you'd make a balky horse run,
you would."

"When me hair's cut, I'm a bloomin' Adonis,
not Venus;" and the Watermelon drew
languidly at an old brown pipe, warm and
comfortable in the pleasant shade, where soft
breezes wandered fitfully by, laden with the
odors of the fields in June.

James was skeptical.  "Did y' ever take a
prize in a beauty show?" he demanded, still
musing upon those bygone honors.

"No," admitted the Watermelon.  "My old
man was a parson, and parsons' kids never
have any chance.  Besides, I wouldn't care to.
Too much like the finest bull in a county fair,
or the best laying hen."

"Huh," sneered James.  "My folks was of
the bon-ton."

"The bon-tons never broke any records in
the beauty line," replied the Watermelon.
"And the bon-tonnier they are, the uglier."

"Beauty," said James with charming
naiveté, "runs in my family."

"It went so fast in the beginning then, yer
family never had a chance to catch up,"
returned the Watermelon.  "We'll have a beauty
show, just us two."

Inspired by the thought, he sat up to explain,
and Mike opened his eyes long enough to look
each over with slow scornful derision and a
mocking grunt.

James fondled the short stiff hair on his
cheeks and chin and waited for developments.

The Watermelon went on.  "We will meet
this afternoon, here, see?  Shaved and with
decent duds on.  And Mike can pick the winner."

"Mike!  He can't tell a sick cat from a well
one."

"That's all right.  He knows enough to tell
the best lookin' one between you and me.  A
*blind* mug could do that."

"But—"

"We haven't any one else, you mutt.  We
can't have too much publicity in this show.  I
dislike publicity any way, at any time, and
especially when I have on clothes, borrowed,
as you might say, for the occasion.  If
the gang was here, we could take a vote, but
seein' that they ain't, we got to do with what
we got."

"I ain't goin' to get in no trouble wid this
here burg," declared Mike.  "I want a quiet
Sunday, some place where I can throw me feet
for a bite of grub and not run no fear of the
dog's taking one first.  See?  Besides, it's a
decent, law-abidin' burg, God-fearin' and pious;
too small to be made unhappy.  You want to
take somethin' yer own size."

"Aw, who's goin' to hurt the jerkwater
town?" demanded the Watermelon with indignation.

"The cost of livin' is goin' up so these days,
it's gettin' hard even to batter a handout,"
groaned Mike, whose idea of true beauty
consisted of a full stomach and a shady place to
sleep on a long quiet Sunday afternoon.  "I
ain't goin' to get every place soured on me.  If
the public gets any more stingy, I'll have to give
up de turf for a livin', that's all.  To throw
a gag will be harder den hod-carryin'."

"We ain't goin' to hurt the burg none," said
James.

He rose languidly and stretched.  "You be
here this afternoon, Mike, about three, see, or
I'll knock yer block off.  It's a nice quiet
hangout and far enough from the village to be safe.
I'm goin' to get a shave and borrow some duds
from the bloomin' hostelry up yonder to do
honor to de occasion."  He knocked the ashes
from his pipe and slipped it into his pocket.  "If
you don't get the clothes and de shave, Watermillion,
you'll be counted down and out, see?"

"Sure," agreed the Watermelon.

He lay at length on the ground beneath the
butternut tree and James paused a moment
to run his eye critically over him, from his
lean face with its two-weeks' growth of beard
to his ragged clumsy shoes.  James smiled
grimly and drew himself up to his full height with
just pride.  He was six feet two in shoes that
might as well have been stockings for all they
added to his height.  His shoulders were broad
and muscular, with the gentle play of great
muscles in perfect condition.  His neck, though
short, was well shaped and sinewy, not the
short thick neck of a prize-fighter or a bull.
His hips were narrow and his limbs long and
straight.  Beneath his open shirt, one saw his
bronze throat and huge chest.  A splendid
specimen of the genus *homo*, for all the rags
and tatters that served as clothes.

The Watermelon was a bit shorter, with
narrower shoulders, but long-legged, slim, graceful,
and under his satiny skin, his muscles slid
and rippled with marvelous symmetry.  Where
James was strong, slow, heavy, he was quick,
lithe, supple.  Dissipation had not left its
mark, and the hard life of the "road" had
so far merely made him fit, an athlete in
perfect condition.  His features were clean-cut and
symmetrical, with a narrow, humorous,
good-natured mouth and eyes soft and gray and
gentle, the eyes of a dreamer and an idler.

James looked at the slight graceful youth,
sprawled in the shade of the butternut tree, and
grinned, doubling his huge arms with slow,
luxurious pleasure in the mere physical action
and watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the
great muscles.

"You might get honorable mention in one of
these county fairs for the best yoke of oxen,"
admitted the Watermelon from where he lay at
ease.

"There ain't going to be no show," said Mike
firmly.  "Not if yer have to swipe the duds.  I
ain't going—"

James showed that he was a true member of
the bon-ton.  He waved the other to silence
with the airy grace of a master dismissing an
impudent servant.  "There is goin' to be a
contest for the just reward of beauty and yer goin'
to be here, Mike, and be the judge or y' will
have that red-headed block of yours knocked
into kindlin' wood."

Mike was fat and red-headed and dirty.  His
soul loathed trouble and longed for quiet with
the ardor of an elderly spinster.  "No, I ain't,"
said he, in a vain struggle for peace.  "I ain't
goin' to hang around here until you blokes
swipe the rags and come back wid de cops after yer."

"There ain't no cops around this place, you
mutt," contradicted the Watermelon with the
delicate courtesy of the road.

"There's a sheriff—"

"Sheriffs," interrupted James coldly, "ain't
never around until the job's done."

"Sunday," added the Watermelon, from
knowledge gained by past experience, "is the
best time to swipe anything.  No one is lookin'
for trouble that day and so they don't find
it, see?"

"Sure," agreed James.  "Every one's feelin'
warm and good and stuffed, and when yer feel
good yerself, yer won't believe any one is bad.
You know how it is, Mike.  When yer feelin'
comfortable, yer can't understand why the devil
we ain't comfortable."

"Well, why the devil ain't yer?" demanded
Mike.  "I ain't takin' all the shade er all the
earth, am I?  Lie down and be quiet.  What do
yer want a beauty show for?"

"Aw, stow it!" snapped the Watermelon.

"Yes, I'll stow it all right when we're all sent
to the jug.  I tell yer I ain't fit to work.  The
last time I got pinched, I pretty near croaked.
I wasn't made to work."

"We ain't going to get pinched," said James.
"You make more talk over two suits of
clothes—"

"It ain't the clothes.  It's the damn fool
notion of swipin' 'em and then comin' right
back here, and not makin' no get-away—"

"This hang-out is more than four miles from
the burg, you galoot," sneered the Watermelon.
"No one would think of coppin' us here.
They'll go to the next town, or else watch the
railroads—"

"But they might—"

"Might what?  Might be bloomin' fools like
you."

"Where are you goin' to be shaved?"

"In a barber shop," said James mildly.
"You probably favor a lawn-mower, but
personally I prefer a barber."

"Yes," wailed Mike, "go to a barber shop
and let every guy in town get his lamps on yer—"

"You're gettin' old, Mike, me boy, and losin'
yer nerve," said James.  He stretched and
yawned.  "Well, I'm off before church time or
the barbers will be closed.  Remember, Mike,
this afternoon, between four and five."

He pulled his clothes into place, adjusted his
hat at the most becoming angle and started up
the narrow woodland path, whistling gaily
through his teeth.  As he disappeared among
the trees, the far-off sound of church bells stole
to them on the quiet of the Sabbath morning.





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.. _`A CLOSE SHAVE`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   A CLOSE SHAVE

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The Watermelon climbed the stone wall
and paused a moment to view his
surroundings.  The road wound up the hill from
the village nestling at its foot and dipped again
out of sight farther on.  On all sides were the
hills, falling rocky pasture lands, rising to
orchards or woods, and now and then a
farmhouse.  It was summer, glad, mad, riotous
summer.  The sky was a deep, deep blue, with here
and there a drifting, snow-white cloud.  The
fields were gay with buttercups and daisies, and
wild roses nodded shyly at him from the briers
along the roadside.  In the leafy recesses of the
trees, the birds twitted and sang.  A little gray
squirrel peered at him from the limb close by
and then scampered off with a whisk of its
bushy tail.  A brook laughed and tumbled
under a slender bridge across the road.

The Watermelon was a vagabond in every
fiber of his long graceful self.  The open
places, the sweep of the wind, the call of the
birds, the rise and fall of the hills, hiding the
fascinating "beyond," found unconscious
harmony with his nature.  As a captive animal,
given a chance for freedom, makes for the
nearest timber; as a cat, in a strange neighborhood,
makes for the old, familiar attic, so the
Watermelon sought the country, the peace and
freedom and space where a man can be a man
and not a manikin.

He paused a moment now, in perfect contentment
with the world and himself, while up the
valley, over the hills, through the sun-warmed
air, borne on the breath of the new-mown fields
came the sound of distant church bells, softly,
musically, soothingly.  Slipping from the wall,
he set out for the village below in the valley,
where the road wound steeply down.

The village boasted but one barber shop, a
quiet, little, dusty-white, one-room affair,
leaning in timid humility against the protecting wall
of the only other public building in town,
drygoods, grocery and butcher shop in one.  The
church bells had stopped for some time when
the Watermelon turned into the wide empty
street, and strolled carelessly up to the faded
red, white and blue pole of Wilton's Tonsorial
Parlor.  In its Sunday calm the whole village
seemed deserted.  A few of the bolder spirits
who had outgrown apron strings and not yet
been snared in any one's bonnet strings, had
remained away from church and foregathered
in the seclusion of the barber shop.  The
Watermelon regarded them a moment through the
window as he felt carelessly in his pockets for
the coins that were never there.  It was a quiet
crowd, well brushed hair, nicely polished boots
and freshly shaved faces.  They were reading
the sporting news of Saturday's papers and
ogling any girl, fairly young and not
notoriously homely, who chanced to pass.  The barber
was cleaning up after his last customer and
talking apparently as much to himself as to
any one.  Convinced of what he knew was so,
that he had no money, the Watermelon pushed
open the door and entered.

"Hello," said he.

"Hello," said the barber.

All the papers were lowered and all conversation
stopped as each man turned and scanned
the new-comer with an interest the Watermelon
modestly felt was caused by some event
other than his own entry.  He surmised that
James had probably been there before him, and
the next words of the barber confirmed his
surmise.

That dapper little man scanned him coldly,
from the rakish tip of his shabby hat to the
nondescript covering on his feet which from
force of habit he called shoes, and spoke with
darkly veiled sarcasm:

"I suppose you are a guest from the hotel up
to the lake?"

The Watermelon grinned.  He recognized
James' favorite role.  "No," said he cheerfully,
"I'm John D., and me car is waiting
without."

"A guest up to the hotel," repeated the
barber, upon whom James had evidently made a
powerful impression.  "Just back from a two
weeks' camping and fishing trip—"

"No," said the Watermelon.  "I don't like
fishing, baiting the hook is such darned hard
work."

"Just back," went on the barber, still quoting,
his soul yet rankling with the deceit of
man.  "Look like a tramp, probably—"

"Am one," grinned the Watermelon.

"And you thought you would get a shave as
you passed through the village, wouldn't dare
let your wife see you—"

"Say," interrupted the Watermelon wearily,
"what are you giving us?  Did any one bunko
you out of a shave with that lingo?"

"Yes," snapped the barber.  "About an hour
ago a feller blew in here and said all that.  He
talked well and I shaved him.  He said he had
sent his camping truck on to the hotel by his
team; he had stopped off to get a shave.  I
shaved him and then he found he hadn't any
money in his old clothes—but he would send it
right down—oh, yes—the moment he got to
the hotel.  It ain't come and Harry, there, says
there ain't no one up to the hotel like that.
Harry's the porter."

"Sure," said Harry importantly.  "I passed
the feller as I was coming down and there ain't
any one like him to the hotel."

The Watermelon laughed heartily.  "A hobo,
eh?  Bunkoed you for fair.  You fellers
oughtn't to be so dog-goned easy.  Get wise,
get wise!"

"We are wise now," said the barber ruefully,
and added sternly, "If you want a shave,
you've got to show your money first."

"Sure, I want a shave," said the Watermelon,
and carelessly rattled a few old keys he
carried in his pocket.  They jingled with the
clink of loose coins and were pleasing to the
ear if not so much to the touch.  "I came here
for a shave, but I pay for what I want, see?
Say, I'll bet that feller busted your cash
register," and he nodded pleasantly toward the
new shiny receiver of customs on the shelf
near the looking-glass.

The remark brought an agreeable thrill of
excited expectation to all save the barber.  He
shook his head with boundless faith in his new
possession.  "I bought that just last week and
the drummer said it was practically thief proof."

"Do you want to bet?" asked the Watermelon.
"All there is in the register, huh?
Even money," and he jingled the keys in his
pocket.

"Naw," said the barber.  "I know he
couldn't have robbed it.  It's impossible, even
if the thing could be robbed, which it can't be.
I was right here all the time."

"It's near the lookin'-glass," said the
Watermelon.  "He went close to the counter to see
himself, didn't he?"

The Watermelon knew vanity as James' one
weakness and realized with what pleasure he
himself would stand before the mirror and
gaze fondly at his own charms, uncontaminated
by a shaggy, two-weeks' growth of beard.

"Yes," admitted the barber slowly.  "He did
look at himself for a long time."

"And some of the time your back was
turned," added the Watermelon.  "You were
probably cleaning up or looking for a whisk."

"Yes," admitted the barber again, still more
reluctantly.  "But nobody can bust into one
of them cash registers, not without a noise that
would be heard across the room."

"I'll bet he did," said the Watermelon.  "Do
you take me?"

"But they can't be busted," reiterated the
barber.

"Then why the devil don't you bet?" demanded
the Watermelon.  "You are bettin' on
a sure thing."

"Yes, go on.  Don't be scared," encouraged
Wilton's gay youth in joyful chorus.

The barber started for his precious register,
but the Watermelon reached it first and laid
his hand on it.

"Do you take me?" he asked.  "You have to
say that before you can count the change or
the bet's—Say, is that the galoot?" he nodded
suddenly toward the window and all turned
quickly, instinctively, to look up the village
street.  The Watermelon hastily thrust a thin
comb between the bell and the gong so it would
not ring as he gently pressed the twenty-five
cent key, registering another quarter, then he
joined the others, pushing and struggling to
see the man who did not pass, and gazed
languidly over their heads.

"There ain't no one there," exclaimed the
barber.

"He's passed out of sight," said the Watermelon,
making a feeble attempt to see up the
street.  "He was almost by as I saw him."

"Do you take me?" he asked, as they returned
to the counter and the subject of the
cash register.  His hands were in his pockets
and occasionally he jingled the keys.

"Aw, go on," urged Harry, who was a
sport.  "What are you afraid of?"

"He couldn't have picked it," insisted the
barber, whose faith in his register was really
sublime.

"Sure he could.  They are easy to a guy
who knows the ropes," declared the Watermelon.
"The drummer was handing you a
lot of hot air when he said they can't be picked.
You don't want to be so easy."

The slur on his mental capacity was too
much for the barber.  His vanity rose in
defense of his register where his faith had failed.
"I have some brains," he snorted.  "I know
the thing is perfectly safe.  Yes, I take you."

He started to open the register, but the
Watermelon objected.  "Here," he cried, "let
Harry do it.  I'm not wanting to be bunkoed
out of me hard-earned lucre."  And he lovingly
rattled the keys in his pockets.

Harry and the others stepped forward.

"How much has been registered?" asked the
Watermelon.

Harry drew forth the strip of paper and
after a few moments of mental agony, confused
by the different results each obtained as
all peered eagerly over his shoulder, he finally
arrived at the correct answer, three dollars
and sixty cents.  It was Sunday and shaving
day for the male quarter of the population.

"Three, sixty," announced Harry in some
trepidation, lest he be flatly and promptly
corrected.

The barber reached for the slip and added it
on his own account.  "Three, sixty," he agreed,
and sighed.

"Count the cash," ordered the Watermelon,
and Harry counted, slowly, carefully, laboriously,
and the rest counted with him, more or
less audibly.

When the last coin had been counted, there
was a moment of puzzled silence.  The
Watermelon broke it.

"Three, thirty-five," said he.  "What did I
tell you?"

"Here," snapped the barber, "let me count it."

He pushed Harry aside and again all
counted as the barber passed the coins.
Quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, the last one
was lingeringly laid on the pile and the sum
was lacking a quarter to make it complete
according to the registered slip.

"Three dollars and thirty-five cents," said
the Watermelon again, like the voice of doom.

"Well, I vum!" exclaimed Harry.

"How'd he do it?" asked the grocer's son,
with an eye out for possibly similar
emergencies nearer home.

The Watermelon shrugged.  "I don't know,"
said he.  "Can't do it myself, but the fellers
in the cities have gotten so they can open 'em
the minute the clerk turns his back.  They can
do it without any noise, too, and so quick you
can't catch 'em.  I'll be hanged if I know how
they do it."

Again the barber counted the change, again
he totaled the numbers on the registered slip.
They would not agree.  That painful lack of
a quarter could not be bridged.

"He said it was automatic bookkeeping,"
moaned the barber, glaring at the slip that
would register nothing less than three dollars
and sixty cents.

"The bookkeeping's all right," said the
Watermelon, "it's the money that ain't."

He gathered up the coins, slowly, lovingly,
and the barber turned away from the painful
sight.

"Do you want a shave?" he asked crossly.

The Watermelon sank gracefully into the
chair.  "It's hard luck," said he sympathetically,
"but you oughtn't to be so easy.  Get
wise, get wise."





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.. _`ENTER MR. BATCHELOR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   ENTER MR. BATCHELOR

.. vspace:: 2

With hair nicely cut, face once more
as smooth as a boy's, and three dollars
and ten cents in his pocket, the Watermelon
gazed fondly at himself in the glass and felt
sorry for James.  He gently patted his hair, wet,
shiny and smelling of bay rum, arranged his
hat with great nicety at just the graceful angle
he preferred as doing the most justice to his
charms, and sallied forth to look for a suit of
clothes.  He had scanned critically those he
had encountered in the barber shop with an eye
to future possession, but none of them, at
least what he had been able to see of them, the
coat having generally been conspicuous by its
absence, had pleased him.  They had the
uncompromising cut of the country and the
Watermelon felt that the attractions that
gazed back at him from the mirror were
worthy of something better.  He had a vague
fancy for light gray with a pearl-colored
waistcoat and purple socks—a suit possessing the
gentle folds and undulations of the city, not
the scant, though sturdy, outlines of the
country.  The hotel seemed the best place to
look for what he wanted, so he turned in that
direction.

The hotel was several miles from the
village.  Its gables and chimneys could be seen
rising in majestic aloofness from the woods
on a distant hillside.  The Watermelon paused
where the road dipped down again into the
valley and ran his eye over the intervening
landscape.  By the road, it would be at least
five miles; through the woods, the distance
dwindled to about three.  The Watermelon
took to the woods.  They became thicker at
every step, the quiet and shade deeper and
deeper.  A bird's call echoed clear and sweet
as though among the pillars of some huge
grotto.  A brook laughed between its mossy
banks, tumbling into foamy little waterfalls
over every boulder that got in its path.  The
Watermelon determined to follow the brook,
sure that in the end it would lead him to the
hotel.  City people had a failing for brooks
and no hotel management would miss the
chance of having one gurgling by, close at
hand.  The brook grew wider and wider, and
through a break in the trees the Watermelon
saw a lake, disappearing in the leafy distance.
He heard a splash and saw the shiny white
body of a man rise for one joyful moment
from the green depths ahead and then dive
from sight with another cool splash.

The Watermelon decided from habit to get
a better view of the lonely swimmer before he
let his own presence become known.  He
slipped into the bushes and slowly wriggled
his way to the little glade.  The lake was
bigger than at first appeared.  It turned and
twisted through the woods and was finally lost
from view around a small promontory.  The
trees grew nearly to the water's edge, a dense
protecting wall to one who wished to sport in
nature's solitude, garbed in nature's simple
clothing.  The lake was too far from the hotel
to have been annexed as one of the attractions
of that hostelry.  All this the Watermelon
noticed at a glance.  He also noticed that the
man swimming in the cool brown depths, with
long easy strokes, was alone and a stranger.
The Watermelon looked for the clothes and
found them on a log, practically at his feet.

In everything but color, they fulfilled his
dream of what raiment should be like.  Instead
of the pale gray he rather favored, the suit
was brown, a light brown, with a tiny green
stripe, barely visible, intertwined with a faint
suggestion of red, forming a harmonious
whole that was vastly pleasing to the Watermelon's
æsthetic senses.  In the matter of socks,
he realized that the stranger had not taken the
best advantage of his opportunity.  Instead of
being red or green to lend character to the
delicate suggestion of those colors found in the
suit, they were a soft dun brown.  There was
a tie of the same shade and a silk negligée shirt
of white with pale green stripes.  The owner
was clearly a young man of rare taste, unhampered
by a vexatious limitation of his pocket-book.

He could be seen swimming slowly and luxuriously
in the little lake, perfectly contented,
unconscious that some one besides the
woodpeckers and the squirrels was watching him.
The swimmer's strokes had quickened and the
Watermelon perceived that he was swimming
straight up the lake with the probable intention
of rounding the promontory and exploring the
farther lake.  When he disappeared, the
Watermelon quickly, carefully, gathered up the
clothes and likewise disappeared.

The swimmer was a big man and the clothes
as good a fit as one could look for under the
circumstances.  They set off the Watermelon's
long, lean figure to perfection, and the hat, a
soft and expensive panama, lent added
distinction.  The Watermelon removed the three
dollars and ten cents and the keys from his own
pockets, and making a bundle of his cast-off
dollies, stuffed them out of sight in a hollow
log, where later he could return and find them.
It was just as well to leave the stranger a
practical captive in nature's depths until the beauty
show was pulled off.  After that event, he
would return, and if the stranger was
amenable to reason, he could have his good clothes
back, but if he acted put out at all, for
punishment he would have to accept the
Watermelon's glorious attire.

Clean-shaven, well-clothed, there was no
longer any need for him to go to the hotel,
unless he wished to dine there.  If the devotee
of nature, back in the swimming pool, was a
stranger in these parts and not a guest at the
hotel, the Watermelon felt that he could do
this with pleasure and safety.  It was after
twelve, and his ever-present desire to eat was
becoming too pronounced to be comfortable.
It would be a fitting climax to a highly
delightful morning to have dinner, surrounded by
gentle folk again, for the Watermelon came of a
gentle family.  He had no fear, for some time
at least, of the owner of the borrowed clothes
making himself unnecessarily conspicuous.
But, on the other hand, if he were a guest at
the hotel, the clothes would probably be
recognized and murder be the simplest solution of
their change of owners.  Still, reasoned the
Watermelon, with a shrewd guess at the truth,
if he were a guest, it was hardly likely that he
would be swimming alone in the isolated pond,
in the bathing suit designed by nature.  The
clothes hardly indicated a young man of a
serious turn of mind, who would seek the
wooded solitudes in preference to the vivacious
society of his kind to be found in a big hotel.

The wood ended abruptly at a stone wall.
There was a road beyond the wall, and beyond
the road, another stone wall and more woods.
It was a narrow woodland road, a short cut
to the hotel.  It wound its way out of sight,
up a hill, through the pines.  It was
grass-grown and shady and the trees met overhead.
Sweetbrier and wild roses grew along the
stone walls, while gay little flowers and
delicate ferns ventured out into the road itself,
and with every passing breeze nodded merrily
from the ruts of last winter's wood hauling.
By the side of the road, like a glaring
anachronism, a variety theater in Paradise, a vacuum
cleaner among the ferns and daisies, stood a
huge red touring car with shining brass work
and raised top.  No one was anywhere in sight
and the Watermelon climbed into the tonneau
and leaned comfortably back in the roomy
depths.

"Home, Henry," said he languidly to an
imaginary chauffeur.

A honk, honk behind him answered.  He
leaned from the car and saw another turn into
the road and come toward him.  It was a
touring car, big and blue.  An elderly gentleman,
fat, serious, important, was at the wheel.
Beside him sat a lady, and a chauffeur languished
in the tonneau.

"Hello, Thomas," called the old gentleman
with the affability of a performing elephant,
addressing the Watermelon by the name of
his car, as is the custom of the road.

"Hello, William," answered the Watermelon,
wondering why they called him Thomas.

The old gentleman flushed angrily and the
lady laughed, a delightful laugh of girlish
amusement.  The Watermelon smiled.

"We are a Packard," explained the old
gentleman stiffly.

"Are you?" said the Watermelon, wholly
unimpressed by the information.  "Well, I
ain't a Thomas."

"I called you by the name of your car," said
the old gentleman.  "I surmise that you have
not had one long."

"I don't feel as if I owned it now," the
Watermelon admitted.

The old gentleman smiled genially.  Anything
was pardonable but flippancy in response
to his own utterances, none of which was ever
lacking in weight or importance.  The young
man, it seemed, was only ignorant.

"Are you in trouble?" he asked with a gleam
of anticipated pleasure in his eyes.  To tinker
with a machine and accomplish nothing but a
crying need for an immediate bath was his
dearest recreation.

"No," said the Watermelon, thinking of the
three, ten, in the pocket of the new clothes and
of the lonely swimmer.  "I ain't—yet."

The old gentleman was vaguely disappointed.
"Can you run your machine?" he
asked, hopeful of a reply in the negative.

"No," said the Watermelon.

"Won't go, eh?"  The old gentleman turned
off the power in his car and stepped forth,
agilely, joyfully, prepared to do irreparable
damage to the stranger's car.  He drew off his
gloves and slipped them into his pocket, then
for a moment he hesitated.

"Where is your chauffeur?"

"I haven't one," said the Watermelon.

The old gentleman disapproved.  "Until you
know more about your machine, you should
have one," said he oratorically.  "I am
practically an expert, and yet I always take mine
with me."

He waved aside any comment on his own
meritorious conduct and foresight and turned
to the machine.  "There is probably something
the matter with the carburetor," said he, and
raised the hood.

"Probably," admitted the Watermelon,
alighting and peering into the engine beside the
old gentleman.

"Father," suggested the lady gently, "maybe
you had better let Alphonse—"

Alphonse, sure of the reply, made no move
to alight and assist.

The old gentleman, with head nearly out of
sight, peering here and there, tapping this and
sounding that, replied with evident annoyance.
"Certainly not, Henrietta.  I am perfectly
capable—"

His words trailed off into vague mutterings.

The Watermelon glanced at the lady, girl
or woman, he was not sure which.  Between
thirty and thirty-five, the unconquerable youth
of the modern age radiated from every fold
of her dainty frock, from the big hat and
graceful veil.  Her hair was soft and brown
and thick, her mouth was rather large,
thin-lipped and humorous, and yet pathetic, the
mouth of one who laughs through tears, seeing
the piteous, so closely intermingled with the
amusing.  Her eyes were brown, clever, with
delicate brows and a high smooth forehead.
The Watermelon decided that she was not
pretty, but distinctly classy.  She was
watching him with amused approval, oddly mingled
with wistfulness, for the Watermelon was
young and tall and graceful, good-looking and
boyish.  His man's mouth and square chin
were overtopped by his laughing woman's
eyes, soft and gentle and dreaming, a face that
fascinated men as well as women.  And he
was young and she was—thirty-five.  He smiled
at the friendliness he saw in her eyes and
turned to the old gentleman, who was now
thoroughly absorbed.

"I need a monkey-wrench," said he.  "I
thought at first that there was something the
matter with the carburetor, but think now that
it must be in the crank shaft assembly."

"Oh, yes," agreed the Watermelon vaguely,
and got the wrench from the tool-box as
directed.

"I—I think that maybe you had better let
us tow you to some garage," said the lady
timorously, her voice barely audible above the old
gentleman's noisy administrations.

"Search me," returned the Watermelon,
standing by to lend assistance with every tool
from the box in his arms or near by where he
could reach it instantly at an imperious command.

"Automobiles," said the lady, "are like the
modern schoolmarms, always breaking down."

"Like hoboes," suggested the Watermelon,
"always broke."

The old gentleman straightened up.  "There
is something the matter with the gasolene
inlet valve," he announced firmly.

"The whole car must be rotten," surmised
the Watermelon, catching the oil-can as it was
about to slip from his already over-burdened
hands.

"No, no," returned the old gentleman reassuringly,
as he buttoned his long linen cluster
securely.  "The crank shaft seems to be all
right, but the—"

He knelt down, still talking, and the
Watermelon had a horrible fear for a moment that
his would-be benefactor was about to offer up
prayers for the safety of the car.  He reached
out his hand to stay proceedings, when the old
gentleman spoke:

"I must get under the car."

"Maybe it's all right," suggested the
Watermelon, who did not like the idea of being
forced to go after him with the tools.

"Father," the lady's voice was gentle, but
firm, and the old gentleman paused.  "Let
Alphonse go.  You know we are to dine with the
Bartletts.  Alphonse, please find out what the
trouble is."

Alphonse alighted promptly.  He was a thin,
dapper little man with a blasé superiority that
was impressive as betokening a profound
knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of motor-cars.
He plainly had no faith in the old gentleman's
diagnosis.  He approached the car and
announced the trouble practically at once.

"There is no gasolene."

The old gentleman was not in the least
perturbed over his own slight error in judgment.
"A frequent, very frequent oversight," said he,
rising.  "We will tow you to the hotel, my
dear sir.  You can get the gasolene there."

"Never mind," said the Watermelon.  "I
can hoof it."

"Hoof it!"  The old gentleman was pained
and hurt.  "Hoof it, when I have my car right
here!  No, indeed.  Alphonse, get the rope."

The Watermelon protested.  "Aw, really,
you know—"

"Weren't you going to the hotel?"

"I was thinking some of it.  But the car—"

"Alphonse, get the rope.  It will be a pleasure.
We have always got to lend assistance to
a broken car.  We may be in the same fix
ourselves some day."

Alphonse brought the rope and the Watermelon
watched them adjust it.  When the last
knot was tied to the old gentleman's liking, he
turned to the Watermelon and presented him
with his card.  The Watermelon took it and
read the name, "Brig.-General Charles
Montrose Grossman, U.S.A., Retired."  Then, not
to be outdone, he reached in the still
unexplored pockets of his new clothes with
confident ease, and finding a pocket-book drew it
forth, opened it on the mere chance that there
would be a card within, found one and
presented it to the general with lofty unconcern,
trusting that the general and the owner of the
clothes were not acquainted.

"William Hargrave Batchelor," read the
general aloud, while his round fat face beamed
with pleasure.  "I have heard about you, sir,
and am glad to make your acquaintance."

The Watermelon grasped the extended hand
and wrung it with fervor.  "The pleasure is
all mine," said he with airy grace and sublime
self-assurance.

"Let me present you to my daughter.
Henrietta, this is young Mr. Batchelor of New
York.  You have read about him, my dear, in
the papers.  He broke the cotton ring on Wall
Street last week.  You may remember.  Miss
Grossman, Mr. Batchelor."

The girl put out her hand and the
Watermelon shook it.  Her hand was slender and
white, soft as velvet and well cared for.  The
Watermelon's was big and brown and coarse,
and entirely neglected as to the nails.
Henrietta noticed it with fastidious amusement.
William Hargrave Batchelor was not in her
estimation, formed from the little she had read
about him in the papers, a gentleman.  He had
started life as a newsboy on the streets of New
York, and doubtless had not had his suddenly
acquired wealth long enough to be familiar
with the small niceties of life.  Besides, he was
so young and so good-looking, one could
forgive him a great deal more than dirty nails.

"You hardly look as old as I imagined you
to be from the papers," declared the general,
regarding a bit enviously the youth who had
made millions in a few short weeks by a
sensational stroke of financial genius.

"I have a young mug," explained the Watermelon
modestly.

The general looked a bit startled.  Henrietta
laughed.  She had always wanted to meet a
man in the making.

"I hope that if you have no other
engagement, you will dine with us," said she.

"Certainly," cried the general.  "Have you
a previous appointment?"

"With myself," said the Watermelon.  "To dine."

"You will dine with us," declared the
general, and that settled it.  "Get into my car.
Alphonse will steer yours."

The Watermelon made one last protest
against highway robbery in broad daylight, but
the general waved him to silence and the
Watermelon decided that if they wished to
make off with the stranger's car it was no fault
of his.  He had done his best to stop it.  He
climbed into the general's car, the general
cranked up and they were off, Alphonse and
the Thomas car trailing along behind.





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.. _`AND WHEN I DINE`:

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   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   AND WHEN I DINE

.. vspace:: 2

Henrietta turned sidewise that she
might the better converse with her guest.

"I noticed by the papers that you always
make it a point to spend Sundays in the
country somewhere near New York, so that
you can return quickly in your car.  I suppose
that you really need the rest and quiet for your
week's work."

"I never work when I can rest," said the
Watermelon truthfully.

"That's right, that's right," agreed the
general, torn between a desire to talk to the
phenomenal young financier, who in one night had
set New York all agog, and to avoid a smash-up
with the stone walls on either side of the
road.  "Men are altogether too eager to make
money."

"Yes," said Henrietta.  "Everything
nowadays is money, money, money."  Then
remembering who her guest was, she added
quickly, "I think it is splendid in your getting
away from it all and spending one day a week
in the country, close to nature.  They say that
stock-brokers are never happy away from the
Street."

"But I am not a stock-broker," explained
the Watermelon, with his candid, boyish smile.
"I'm a lamb."

Henrietta laughed.  "But not fleeced," said
she gaily.

"Not yet," admitted the Watermelon, wondering
if William Hargrave Batchelor was still
enjoying his swim.

"What you want to do, now that you have
made your 'pile,'" advised the general, as the
machine swerved dangerously near a tree, "is
to leave the Street at once.  Invest your money
in U.S. government bonds and buy a place in
the country."

"You don't like the country yourself, father,
except in the summer," objected Henrietta.

"That's all right, my dear, but when a man
has three millions invested in government
bonds, he does not have to spend all of his life
in the country.  Your last deal brought you
three millions, I believe the papers
said?"  Never before had the general discussed a
friend's private affairs with such sylvan
frankness and interest, with such complete
unconsciousness of his own rudeness, but the youth
who had risen one night from the obscurity
of New York's multitude to a position of
importance in the greatest money market in the
world appeared to the general in the light of
a public character, and as he would have
discussed aviation with the Wright brothers, the
North Pole with Peary, so now he discussed
money with the Watermelon.

"Three, ten," chuckled the Watermelon.

"Ah, yes," sighed the general.  Money is
power and every man wants power.  The general
was old, without the time, training or
opportunity to make money, while this
long-legged youth with the ridiculous woman's eyes,
sat on the back seat and babbled lightly of
millions as the general could hardly do of thousands.

"Ah, yes, three millions.  Have you ever
lived in the country?"

"Oh, off and on," said the Watermelon.

"I suppose you are fond of it or you
wouldn't come up here every Sunday," went
on the general, missing the wall on the right
by a fraction of an inch.  "Do you care for
fishing?"

"If the bites ain't too plentiful."

Henrietta laughed.  "You can't do it,
Mr. Batchelor," said she.

"Do what?" asked the Watermelon, leaning
forward.  The Watermelon never lacked
self-assurance under any circumstances, and before
a pretty girl it merely grew in adverse ratio to
the girl's years and in direct ratio to her good
looks.  Henrietta was not pretty, but she had
charm and grace and good breeding, and a
combination of the three sometimes equals
prettiness.

"Make us believe that you are as lazy as you
are trying to."

"If I can't do it, I won't try," laughed the
Watermelon.  "But you can't do it, either."

"Do what?"

"Make me believe that you are the general's
daughter," returned the Watermelon, letting
his voice fall, gently and softly.  The general
was busy at that moment preventing the car
from climbing a tree and trying to decide
between Maine and Virginia as the best place for
the Watermelon to invest in his country estate.
Personally, he preferred Maine in summer and
Virginia in winter.  Was it therefore preferable
to roast in summer and be comfortable in
winter, or to freeze in winter and enjoy yourself
in summer?

"Don't I look like him?" asked Henrietta,
wishing that she had not made the conversation
quite so personal thus early in their acquaintance.

"You look like him," admitted the Watermelon,
"but—"

Henrietta laughed faintly.  "You wouldn't
take me for his sister, would you?" she
questioned, fearing he would say yes.  William
Hargrave Batchelor had spent his youth
peddling papers and blacking boots.  A frank
disregard for all social graces and hypocrisies was
doubtless one of his most pronounced
characteristics.  The little social amenities would
hardly be required in the strenuous existence of
newsboy and boot-black.

"For his granddaughter," said the Watermelon.

"Of course," said the general, aloud, "Maine
has fine shooting in winter."

"None of Maine for mine," declared the
Watermelon conclusively.  "Maine is a
prohibition state."

The general frowned.  "You don't drink, I
hope, young man?"

"Drink," said the Watermelon, making Henrietta
think unreasonably of a minister, "Drink
causes a psychological condition which each
man should experience to obtain a clear insight
into the normal condition of the mind."  He
paused impressively and Henrietta felt almost
compelled to say "Amen," for what reason she
did not know.  "But," added the youth in the
solemn tones of the benediction, "when I get—lit,
I like to do it on whisky and not poison."

The general who had intended a scathing
reply, and firm but gentle counsel to lead back
to the narrow path this promising young man
hovering on the brink of ruin, with all his
glorious possibilities, found himself agreeing.

The car had reached the top of the steep hill,
and suddenly left the trees, the narrow,
woodland road, with the columbine and wild roses
nodding at them from the underbrush, and
swept out on to a wide, well-kept driveway,
with smooth rolling lawns on each side and a
majestic white building as a crowning glory
on the top of the hill.

Grandview did not belie its name.  High on
the topmost ridge, it looked over valley and
woods and streams, beyond to farther hills,
peak after peak, range after range, fading into
a blue shadow against the sky.  It was a big,
square, garish building, gaunt and unlovely
among its lovely surroundings.  There were
two porches, one up-stairs and one below.
They were filled with chairs and gay, brightly
fringed hammocks.  Behind the hotel was a
stable and garage, white and gaunt and square
like the main building.

It was the dinner hour and in the country
there is never any need to urge one to the table.
So, save for a man and a girl, waiting on the
steps, there was no one in sight.

"There are the Bartletts now," cried
Henrietta, as the train of cars approached the
porch.  "Poor dears, we have kept them waiting."

"I wonder," said the Watermelon, "why a
guy always gets so hungry on Sunday."

"Nothing else to do," suggested Henrietta,
"but eat."

The car stopped and she started to alight
but the Watermelon was before, offering his
hand with a grace bred of absolute unconsciousness
of self.

"Alphonse can take your car to the garage
and fill it with gasolene," said the general.  He
always felt that after he had done his best to
put a car out of order for good, he practically
owned the car and its owner.

"Aw, don't bother," protested the Watermelon.

"Tush, tush, man, it is no bother," and the
general turned to the coldly respectful Alphonse.

Henrietta had started toward the steps and
the Watermelon turned to follow her, when he
saw *her* standing on the top step, looking
straight at him across Henrietta's shoulder.
His first impulse was to stand and stare, his
second, to turn and run back to Mike and James
and his old clothes, his third, which he followed
blindly, was to stumble forward, hat in hand,
not from any respect for woman in the abstract,
but just for her, her tiny feet, her small white
teeth, her dimple.  She would not come up to
his shoulder by at least six inches, she was very
slender, and in her high-waisted, yellow frock,
she seemed a mere wisp of a girl.  Her hair
and eyes were brown, her cheeks flushed like
the petals of an apple blossom.  She had a
crooked little smile that brought a single dimple
in one soft cheek.  Her hat was a big, flapping
affair, covered with buttercups and daisies.

The Watermelon, gazing at her, forgot
everything, Henrietta, dinner, the general.  He
stared and she stared back.  The brown suit
with the pale green stripe and the faint
suggestion of red, lent an undeniable improvement to
the broad shoulders and long limbs of the
graceful Watermelon.  The admirable shave
and hair-cut the village barber had given him
in exchange for his own quarter, revealed the
square-cut chin and the good-natured, careless
mouth of the born ne'er-do-well.  Under
the brim of the soft expensive panama, were
his woman's eyes, now tragic and unhappy, for
who was he but a tramp, a frequenter of the
highways and back streets, an associate of
James and Mike?

"Billy," said Henrietta, "we have had an
adventure and picked up another guest.  Miss
Bartlett, Mr. Batchelor."

"Were you part of the adventure?" asked
Billy, holding out her hand.

"Yes," said the Watermelon, incapable of
further speech.

Henrietta presented him to Mr. Bartlett, a
stout, red-faced gentleman of middle age.
Wealth, success, self-complacency radiated
from him like the rays of the sun.  He grasped
the hard brown hand of the Watermelon and
looked the young man up and down, noticing
the pin in his tie, the panama and the silk socks
without seeming fairly to notice the man.

"William Hargrave Batchelor?" he murmured
questioningly.

"The same," answered the general heartily,
feeling that he had done something praiseworthy
in capturing the young man.  He drew
off his gloves and beamed at the Watermelon.

"He is a young one to beat us, Bartlett.  We
ought to be Oslerized."

Bartlett's eyes gleamed and he shook the
Watermelon's hand with renewed pleasure.
"Youth," said he oratorically, "is hard to beat,
General, but we aren't deaduns yet.  I have
had an occasional try at the Street, myself,
Mr. Batchelor.  You may have heard of me."

"Oh, yes," said the Watermelon absent-mindedly,
thinking of the girl with the single
dimple and the turned-up nose.

"Father took me, once," said Billy.  "It was
terrible.  Are you a broker, Mr. Batchelor?"

"Haven't you read yesterday's papers,
Billy?" exclaimed Henrietta.

"I never read the papers," admitted Billy,
with a charming smile.  "Just the front page
head-lines, sometimes."

"He was there," laughed the general.  "In
inch-high print.  He broke the cotton ring,
my dear."  The general's tone was full of
reflected glory as the host of the great man.

"Oh," cried Billy, "that's where father lost
so much.  He told me this morning, just as we
left the house—"

Bartlett glanced sharply at the Watermelon
and interrupted Billy with a laugh.  "You get
everything wrong, my dear," said he, tweaking
her ear.  "I said a good deal of money had been
lost—"

"But, papa," protested Billy, "you said—"

"Come to dinner, everybody, please," interrupted
Henrietta, in response to an appealing
glance from Bartlett.  "I am starving whether
you others are or not."

"We had better," cried the general jocularly,
"or this young man will become a bear
instead of a bull."  He laid his hand affectionately
on the Watermelon's shoulder and walked
down the hall with it resting there.





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.. _`A PLAN AND A TELEGRAM`:

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   CHAPTER V


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   A PLAN AND A TELEGRAM

.. vspace:: 2

The big, cool dining-room, with tall
palms and plants, snowy tables and
gleaming silver, the crowd of well-dressed
people, the talk and laughter, and the obsequious,
hurrying waiters, was not a new experience to
the Watermelon.  For one short, painful week,
he had essayed to be a waiter and had finally
seen the folly of his ways and given it up after
he had broken more china than his wages,
which were withheld, could cover.  His
complete indifference as to what people thought of
him made him entirely at his ease, while his
scattered wits were coming back with a rush
and his colossal self-assurance was growing
every moment he was in the society of the
charming Billy.

"I was a hash-slinger once," said he, gazing
at her across the table.

Her small nose wrinkled with pleasure and
the single dimple flashed forth and was gone.

"That's right," said the general, who grew
more fond of his guest with every passing
remark.  "Don't be ashamed of the past just
because you have money now."

"You blacked boots, too, I believe?" questioned
Bartlett, the results of that unfortunate
cotton deal he had participated in still rankling.
"Quite interesting."

The Watermelon had ears only for Billy.
She spoke and it was as if the others had been
silent.

"Was it fun?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," drawled the Watermelon sarcastically.
"It was fun all right.  Everybody
wanted to be waited on first and everybody
wanted the white meat."

"What did they do when they didn't get
waited on?" asked Billy.

"Yelled at me," said the Watermelon, "as if
I was their servant.  This is a free country and
we are all equal.  I said that to one old gent
once and it raised Cain."

"What'd he say?"

"He said that might be, but we didn't
remain equal."

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'I know it and I am sorry for you,
sir.  Don't blame yourself too much,' I said.
'Was it drink that did it?'  When I left they
didn't give me any pay."

"Why not?" asked Billy, eagerly amused.

"They said I had broken too many dishes.
I said if I had known they were going to keep
my pay, I would have broken twice as many."

"Why didn't you do it, then?" asked Billy,
whose ideas of vengeance were young and
drastic.

"Too much work," explained the Watermelon.
"If I wasn't extra strong, I wouldn't
have been able to break what I did."

"I presume you return to the city to-night?"
questioned Bartlett.

The Watermelon thought of the shivering
wretch who was trying to hide his nakedness
in the forest depths and shook his head.  "I'm
leaving about three," said he, putting the parting
off as long as possible because of Billy.  It
hurt him to think of leaving her, even then,
charming, dainty Billy.

"Tell me some other things you have done,"
teased Billy.

"If I sat over that side," said the
Watermelon with the boldness of desperation.  In
two short hours they would part for good, so
why not make the most of the short time
allowed?  "If I sat over that side, I could tell you
so much better the sad, sweet story of my life."

"Come on," laughed Billy.  And the Watermelon
rose, to the amusement of those nearest,
went around the table and drew up a chair
beside Billy, with the general on the other side
of him.

Henrietta made vain attempts to take a
hostess' part in the conversation, and both
Billy and the Watermelon made equally polite
and good-natured endeavors to include her, but
when two are young, and one is pretty and the
other handsome, a third person assumes the
proportions of not a crowd so much as a mob.
The general was enjoying himself sufficiently
with his dinner.  He and Bartlett had gone to
the same school and he felt as much right to
neglect Bartlett as though he had been a
brother.  Henrietta turned to Bartlett and they
chatted on the trivial affairs of the day, while
Henrietta wondered if she did seem so very old
to the Watermelon and Bartlett matured a plan
that had come to him like an inspiration as he
watched the Watermelon's frank admiration
for Billy.

In the crash on the Street which had
broken the cotton ring and had brought a
comparatively young and hitherto unknown
man into prominence, Bartlett had lost more
than he cared to think about.  Though his
name had not appeared, he had been heavily
involved.  The ring had needed but a week,
a day, more to bring it to perfection, then in a
night, from whence hardly a soul knew, having
worked quietly, steadily, persistently, this
unforeseen factor had arisen and defeat stared
the ring in the face.  Another week would
bring complete collapse unless this William
Hargrave Batchelor could be suppressed.  They
had tried to see him, but he would not be seen.
Clearly he had no price, preferring to fight to
a finish, which was an admirable quality in one
so young, but hardly to be desired in an
opponent who unfortunately had every chance to
win.  Voluntarily, he would not leave the fight,
but if he could be suppressed?  The following
Saturday was the crucial time.  If he did not
return until the day after?

Bartlett had left the city late the previous
afternoon to spend Sunday with Billy, away
from the heat and worry of the scene of battle,
and here was William Hargrave Batchelor,
apparently doing the same thing.  Clearly it was
a dispensation of Providence.  There was
Billy, and after all William Hargrave
Batchelor was young and human.  He had probably
never known girls like Billy before, or dined
with them as equals.  He certainly had made
no attempt to hide his admiration for this
particular one.  Bartlett chatted gaily with
Henrietta and watched the two opposite, trying to
decide if it would be possible to kidnap the
young man for a week, take him farther into
the country, get him away from Wall Street
at any cost.  Were Billy's charms equal to the
attempt?

William Hargrave Batchelor was said to
be a cold, hard-headed youth, who had risen
by sheer grit and determination to the place
he now held, riding rough-shod over his own
and every one else's desires and pleasures.  A
calm, imperturbable young man, with cruel
keen eyes, the papers described him.  Watching
him across the table, Bartlett decided that
his square jaw and thin mouth fitted the
description fairly well, but that the eyes were a
complete contradiction.  They were neither
keen nor cruel, but soft and mild and sleepy.
The whole face was careless, indifferent, and
if it were not for the jaw, Bartlett would have
hardly believed it possible that Batchelor was
sitting opposite him.  His own jaw snapped
and he swore to himself that he would keep
him for a week, either through Billy or otherwise.
So strong is the power of suggestion, it
did not enter his head to question the youth's
identity.

They were rising from the table now.  The
general, having dined to his satisfaction, was
beaming with good humor and stories.  Excusing
himself a moment, Bartlett hurried to
the telegraph station in the office.  He hunted
for his code, but could not find it and had to
write the telegram in English.  It would be
safe enough.  The operator was a raw country
youth who wouldn't be able to understand it
anyway, and it would go direct to his broker,
who would be spending the day at his country
place on Long Island.

"Have W.H.B.," wrote Bartlett.  "Will
take him for a week's tour in the country, with
Billy's help.  Eat them up."

"Rush it," he ordered sternly, "and bring
me the answer.  I will wait for it on the porch."

The news soon spread that the stranger dining
with the general and his daughter was none
other than the suddenly famous young stock
broker, whose grim defiance of the Street
was told in head-lines in the daily papers, and
whose life from the cradle up was thrillingly
recounted in the Sunday supplement.  When
he had changed his seat at the table, there had
been a suppressed titter of amusement for the
eccentricities of a great man, and those who
made a study of human nature saw plainly an
indication of that character which knew what
it wanted and would get it and keep it,
overriding all obstacles.  A man like that, nothing
could down.

As they stood on the porch after dinner,
waiting for Bartlett to rejoin them, the four
were soon surrounded by an ever-growing
circle of friends and near friends, and to his
pained surprise, the Watermelon was the
admired center of the group.  All looked on him
much as the general did, not so much as a man
but as a character out of the Sunday
supplement.  Bored to exhaustion, he shook hands
limply with a score or more whom he did not
know and did not want to know.

It was getting late and he would have to
return the clothes and become once more merely
the Watermelon.  He had forgotten the beauty
show and had no heart for it now.  When he
left Billy nothing more counted, nothing
mattered.  Old clothes or good, hobo or millionaire,
without Billy, one was as desirable as the
other.  He would return the clothes and beat it
up the line that evening.  James and Mike
could go to grass.  Meanwhile, instead of
getting the most out of the short space of time
allotted to him and having Billy alone
somewhere, here he was shaking hands with a
frowsy bunch of highbrows.

"Mr. Batchelor, would you invest in copper,
if you were I?" queried an elderly maiden
whose hand he had weakly grasped and but just
dropped.

The Watermelon looked around, desperately,
miserably.  Billy was gazing at him from the
edge of the crowd, awe fighting with admiration
and amusement on her small face.  Henrietta
had presented him gaily, to this one and
that, and the general, thoroughly in his
element, stood by and showed him off as though
he were a new horse or the latest model motor-car.

"No," said the Watermelon.  "I would not
invest in copper."

"Have you any copper?" questioned another
with a wink that the great man was caught.

"No," repeated the Watermelon with the
animation of a hitching-post.  "I have no
copper.  I have never had any, not even pennies,"
he added, thinking how fast the time was going
and he would become a tramp again, with
ragged clothes and empty pockets, while Billy
would still be—Billy.

Every one laughed and the general essayed
a joke on his own account.  "Greenbacks are
a better investment," said he, "and you have
invested in them pretty well."

"How could you tear yourself away from
the Street?" asked one impressionable young
thing.

"I don't know," said the Watermelon.
"Wall Street is practically my home."  And
he gazed languidly over their heads into the
trees across the road.

"Oh, Mr. Batchelor, do you think the tariff
will affect the cost of living?" inquired another
of his new friends.  "So many people claim
that it will."

Henrietta laughed.  "Poor Mr. Batchelor,"
said she.  "You can now realize some of the
drawbacks to greatness."

"The tariff," said the Watermelon monotonously,
"is all right.  Take it from me."

He glanced again at Billy.  The clock in the
garage struck two and he hesitated no longer.
"My car," he muttered vaguely, and made for
the steps.  He ran down them and started
around the hotel toward the stables.  As he
passed near the place where Billy stood, he
looked up straight into her eyes.

"Aren't you coming to see my car—Billy?"
he asked, the odd little name below his breath,
so that even she did not hear.

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Billy.

He caught her hands and swung her down
to the lawn beside him.

At the garage they did not stop.  The Watermelon
heard the general panting behind in the
distance, but he did not pause.  Ungratefully
he led the way down a narrow path around the
stable, into the deep, cool shade of the woods.
It was two.  He would give himself until the
clock struck three, before he slunk away into
the unknown again.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHAT IS HEAVEN LIKE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   WHAT IS HEAVEN LIKE

.. vspace:: 2

They found a little mossy knoll beside
the brook and Billy made herself comfortable
against a tree trunk, while the Watermelon
sprawled at her feet.

"Say," said he, "what do those guys take
me for?  The editor of the 'Answer to
correspondents' page?"

"I bet you know as much," said Billy with
artless simplicity.

"Sure, I know as much," grinned the Watermelon.
"But I'm not paid to tell what I know.
It would be starvation rates for mine," he
added.

Billy laughed.  "Didn't you ever go to
school?" she asked.

"Yes, I went to school, when father didn't
forget."

"Didn't forget?"

"He had eight kids, you see, and he used to
say a man couldn't be responsible for more
than six.  Two kids, he used to say, were a
blessing, four a care, six a burden, and eight
an affliction, and no man is responsible for his
afflictions."

"I wish I had some relatives," said Billy
wistfully.  "There are only daddy and I.  Don't
you like relatives, some one who belongs to you?"

"Father used to say that relatives were an
affliction, and he supposed a man had to have
afflictions to make a man of him, but if he had
had any influence with Providence, he would
have preferred not to be a man."

"Who was your father?" asked Billy.

"A minister," answered the Watermelon,
clasping his hands behind his head and staring
up at the interlaced boughs overhead.  "A
country minister.  He used to say that there
was just one thing in this world more pitiful
than a country minister, and that was his wife."

"Why," cried Billy, "the papers said he used
to be a policeman."

"I thought you didn't read the papers?"

"I don't, just the Sunday supplements," said
Billy frankly, as one to whom his intellectual
development is of minor importance.

The Watermelon wheeled over with a laugh
and caught her hand.  "Hang dad!" he
exclaimed.  "Where'd you get your name?"

He drew himself up on the log beside her,
as near as he dared.  He wanted to put his
arm around the slim waist, but decided that
he had better not.

She jerked her hand away and laughed, her
small nose wrinkled, the dimple coming and
going.  "Don't you like it?"

"Sure.  It's classy, all right.  But what is
the long of it?"

"Wilhelmina.  Dad's is William, just like
yours.  We're all Billies."

"Mine ain't William," sneered the Watermelon,
edging a bit nearer.

Her eyes opened and she stared in frank
surprise.  "But the papers say—"

"The papers lie faster than I can," said the
Watermelon, "and that's fairly speedy."  He
had only an hour and he did not care what she
thought between him and the papers.  "Billy
is a darned cute little name, and a cute little
girl," he added.

"I guess you can lie faster than the papers,"
said she.

"I can when I want to," admitted the
Watermelon.  "Father used to say that a man that
couldn't lie was a fool and one who wouldn't,
a bigger."

"I should think if your father was a minister
that he wouldn't lie," said Billy severely.

"I know.  But he used to say he had to in a
business way.  To tell a man that there was a
bigger hell than this earth was a lie on the face
of it."

"Why?"

"Because there couldn't be, he used to say."

"Don't you believe in Heaven?" demanded Billy.

"Sure," said the Watermelon.

"What do you think it's like?" asked Billy.

"A watermelon patch," said the Watermelon
promptly.  "Just when all the fruit is ripe.
Don't you think so?"

"I think it's an ice-cream counter," said
Billy.

"Naw.  At an ice-cream counter you would
have to have money."

"Not in Heaven, you wouldn't," said Billy.
"It would all be free and you could have as
much as you wanted."

"Who would wait on you?  Any one could
pick a watermelon, but everybody can't mix
an ice-cream soda."

"The bad people would.  That would be hell,
you see, always serving it to others and never
allowed to taste any."

"That wouldn't work, either," objected the
Watermelon.  "Because there would be so
many more to do the serving than there would
be people to serve.  No, we are both wrong.
Heaven is a grove of trees back of a white
garage.  There's a fallen log and a couple
sitting on it."

"I should think that would be monotonous,"
said Billy.  "Do they talk?"

"Sure, they talk.  Heaven ain't a deaf and
dumb asylum."

"I should think they would get talked out
during eternity."

"Ah," said the Watermelon, leaning a bit
nearer, "eternity is but a minute."

"What do they talk about?"

"Heaven."

"Are they angels?"

"One is."

Billy laughed.  "Who are you?" she asked,
leaning toward him, one hand resting on the
log between them, her steady eyes on his face.

The Watermelon again drew forth the card
case, extracted a card and presented it to her
with a flourish.

Holding it, she shook her head dubiously.  "I
mean are you a stock-broker?  Are you on
'Change?  Father has been nearly all his life,
and he looks it.  His eyes and—everything.
Your eyes are different, quite different.  I
don't mean in color and size, for of course they
would be, but in expression."

"How do you know?" asked the Watermelon.
"You have only seen their expression
when I have been looking at you, and a man
doesn't look at a girl as if she were the tape
from the ticker."

"I know," acknowledged Billy.  "But I have
known brokers all my life, and some have been
young, and they—they aren't like you.  I never
sat on a log with one and talked about Heaven."

"Well, you see, I am a minister's son, and
I had Heaven with every meal, as it were."

"Maybe that's it," agreed Billy.

A stick snapped behind them as though some
one were approaching their retreat with
stealthy tread under cover of the friendly
bushes.

"Are you afraid of cows?" asked Billy,
glancing over her shoulder fearfully.

"Not of female cows," said the Watermelon.

"A broker wouldn't have said that," objected
Billy, pursing up her mouth.  "A broker would
say, 'No, indeed, Miss Bartlett.  Don't be
afraid.  A cow is really harmless,' and smile
as if I were young and half-witted, anyway."

A stick snapped again, nearer, and a
woodpecker fled from a group of trees, scolding
angrily.

Billy rose nervously.  "If that's a male cow—"

"Sit down," ordered the Watermelon.  "It's
no cow, unfortunately.  It's the general."

"Don't you like the general?" asked Billy,
sitting down again, but ready to rise quickly,
instantly.

"Yes, I like him, but I don't think I would
if I were a motor-car."

"I have known him and Henrietta all my
life," said Billy.  "Henrietta has been like a
mother to me," she added, a statement
Henrietta would have denied, shortly but firmly.
"Really, we ought to go back."

"Politeness is not politeness unless it comes
from the heart," said the Watermelon, in the
tones that had made Henrietta think of a
minister, she knew not why.

"Did your father used to say that?"

"No, he never had any cause to.  We never
were polite."

Billy glanced around.  "I thought I heard
some one cough."

"So did I.  It can't be the general.  He
wouldn't cough."

A hollow cough sounded distinctly from the
bushes behind and the Watermelon rose to
investigate.  It was nearly three and at three he
would have to go, or the man down yonder
in the swimming hole might come after him to
reclaim his clothes and motor-car.  The
Watermelon begrudged every precious moment.

"Wait, and I will see what the mutt wants,"
said he.  "You will wait, won't you?" he
pleaded, looking down at her where she sat on
the log.

"We really ought to go," said Billy.

"All right, but don't run off until I've—I've
cured that cough, will you?"

Billy nodded and the Watermelon strode to
the bushes from whence had sounded the harsh,
constrained cough.  He pushed the branches
aside and gazed into the small, pinched face of
a thin youth of about eighteen, dressed in the
uniform of the hotel.

"Hist," cautioned the boy, before the
Watermelon could speak.  "I want to tell you
something important."

"All right, spit it out and be quick about it,"
ordered the Watermelon.

If the real William Hargrave Batchelor had
managed to get word to the hotel about the
impostor, the sooner he knew it the better.  The
boy had probably come to offer to help him
escape in exchange for something, money most
likely.  Like all tramps, the Watermelon was
quick to read faces, and in the crafty young
face before him, he saw only the dollar mark.

"It—I don't want no one to hear me," said
the boy, with a motion toward the log and
Billy's slim young back.

The Watermelon hesitated, but in the shifty
eyes he saw fear and deference.  If he knew
the Watermelon for a tramp, there would be no
deference.

"Gwan, spit it out," ordered the Watermelon.
"I ain't keen for the pleasure of
hearing any of your heart to heart secrets."

"It's very important," said the boy, "and no
one must hear."

"I suppose you think every one is busting to
hear your words of wisdom," said the
Watermelon.  "Probably get a dime a word, eh?"

"It's about you," said the boy, harsh with
impatience and nervousness.  "It's—"  He
drew a piece of paper from his pocket and held
it out.  "He gave me that to send."

"Who are you?"

"The telegraph clerk," whispered the boy,
with a frightened glance toward Billy on the log.

The Watermelon read the paper and smiled
a slow, sweet smile of anticipated pleasure as
the full import of Bartlett's telegram became
clear.  He glanced at Billy and his smile
deepened.  Then he turned and drew the boy
farther away.

"Bartlett sent this, eh?"

"Yes," cried the boy, eager with excitement
over the service he was rendering the great
man.  "And the minute I read it and knew that
you were here, I knew you ought to have it."

"Didn't you send it?"

"Yes, I had to.  You see he stood right
there.  But just as soon as he went, I lit out to
find you."

"Where is he now?"

"I seen him on the front porch with Miss
Grossman.  Say, you'll want to be going now,
won't you, huh?  You ken get to New York
to-night if you hurry."

The Watermelon rattled the coins in his
pockets and looked down at the thin, crafty
face of the youngster.  "Kid," said lie, "if you
keep on as you've begun, you'll be doing time,
sure.  You're a thieving little snipe and ought
to be the head of a corporation some day, or
a United States senator, 'cause you haven't as
much honor as a grasshopper, see?  I don't
know why you shouldn't land in Sing Sing, if
you miss the corporation job or the senate."

"Huh," said the boy, reddening with the
praise of the great man.

"If you let on that you have shown this
to me, you will lose your job here, you know.
So, until I can see my friend, J. Pierpont,
about that other job for you, you'd better keep
your mouth shut.  Understand?"

"Sure," cried the boy.  "Course I understand."

The Watermelon handed him a quarter.
"When I reach New York," said he airily, "I'll
send you me check for a thousand."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WATERMELON YIELDS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   WATERMELON YIELDS

.. vspace:: 2

Eager to accomplish the plan he had
suddenly conceived, the Watermelon
turned and strolled back to Billy, while the boy
gazed after such majesty in awed admiration.

"Who was it?" asked Billy, looking up as
the Watermelon approached.

"The telegraph clerk," said the Watermelon
calmly.  "A telegram—and he brought it to me."

He made no motion to sit down and Billy rose.

"I suppose you have to go back," said she.
She had to throw back her head to see into his
face, for the top of her beflowered hat only
reached to his shoulder.

"No," said the Watermelon, preparing the
way for the future.  "I could take a few days
off, if I wanted to.  Come on.  I might as well
try and save the remains of my car after the
general has done his best to ruin it.  I heard
him go into the garage as we got out of sight.
The general is more expensive than a motorcar."

"I like the general," said Billy, as they
started slowly back.

"I suppose he has been like a grandfather to
you," said the Watermelon, glancing down at
the top of the big hat.  "Don't you want me
for a relative of some kind?"

"You said relatives were afflictions,"
objected Billy.

"I know; but it is only through our afflictions
that we can rise to higher things."

"What higher things?"

"Why, Heaven, as I described it last."

They found the general with Henrietta and
Bartlett in the garage.  The general was kindly
superintending the filling of the absent Batchelor's
car with gasolene, Bartlett was expounding
the merits of his make of car as superior to
any other make, while Henrietta sat on the step
of the general's car and pretended to be listening.

"I took the liberty," apologized the general,
as the other two appeared in the doorway,
feeling, on the contrary, that he was doing the
young man an inestimable favor.

"Go ahead," said the Watermelon.

"Draw the line somewhere," advised Henrietta.
"Father is too fond of trying to see what
makes the wheels go round to give him carte
blanche with any car."

"I understand a car thoroughly, Henrietta,"
said the general.  "I have always been fond of
mechanics."

"I know it, dear," said Henrietta with
contrition.  "I have always said that if you hadn't
been a general, you would have been a master
mechanic."

"Thank God, he's a general," whispered the
Watermelon into the small ear of Billy.

"To thoroughly appreciate a car, you should
take a trip of a week or two," said Bartlett,
not glancing at the Watermelon, apparently
talking to the general alone.  "There is nothing
like it.  It has revolutionized travel.  Have
you ever done it, General, spent a month, a
week, at least, in your car, going where you
wanted, stopping as long as you wanted and as
often?"

Assured that Alphonse was attending to the
gasolene, the general withdrew his invaluable
supervision and turned to the others.

"We spent a week in the car last summer,
and we intended to do it again this year, but
have somehow put it off."

"It's perfectly delightful," said Henrietta.
"You wonder how you ever tolerated a train."

"It is tramping idealized," declared Bartlett.

"It's dandy," cried Billy.  "Daddy, do you
remember that time we went from Maine
straight down the coast to Maryland?"

The general turned to the Watermelon.  "I
suppose you have grown tired of it," said he,
"A young unmarried man can go when and
where he wants."

"Oh, I've been around some," admitted the
Watermelon modestly.  "But never in a car."

"You should try it, my dear sir," said
Bartlett.  "Upon my word, you have no idea how
fascinating it is."

"I never owned a car."

"You do now," laughed Henrietta.  "Now's
your chance."

"I've no one to go with," replied the
Watermelon innocently, smiling down at Henrietta
on the car step and not looking at Bartlett.

Henrietta laughed and threw out one of her
delicate, graceful hands with a little gesture
that embraced the whole group.  "You have all
of us, now," said she.  "We have made you one
of us."

Bartlett agreed with a chuckle.  Things were
coming his way with hardly any effort on his
part, as they, had had a way of doing until
William Hargrave Batchelor had made himself
too annoying.  He took it as a good sign and
smiled cheerfully.

"You can take us all," laughed Billy.

"A week," said Bartlett tentatively, "in the
country, away from telegrams and letters and
papers, it would do me a vast amount of good.
I have been overworking lately."  He nodded
gravely, in confirmation of his own remark.
"I would like to drop everything, now, this
minute, crank up the car and start, no matter
where, any place, any road.  You don't need
clothes.  The lighter you travel, the better.
You can put up anywhere you happen to be
for the night, and, if you get lost it does not
matter, merely adds to the fun and affords an
adventure."

"It sounds alluring," said Henrietta.  "Suppose
we all go, just as we are!"

"We could," cried Billy.  "Why, Dad, we
could do it easily.  I have that linen dress I
wore yesterday, and my brush and comb and
things, and you have yours."

"But the general and Henrietta," objected
Bartlett.  "They only ran up here for the day,
my dear.  They may not have anything."

"Yes, we have," cried Henrietta, "We
planned to stay a week or two and sent a trunk
along.  We could easily pack a suit-case."

"Oh!" exclaimed Billy.  "Do let's do it."

"I noticed a suit-case in your car, Batchelor,"
Bartlett turned to the Watermelon, genially.
"I judge you are planning to take a few
days' jaunt somewhere."

"I was thinking of it," acknowledged the
Watermelon, with truth, lounging gracefully
in the doorway.

Bartlett laughed.  "We are crazy, all of us,"
said he and waved the suggestion aside as a
whimsical fancy best forgotten.

"Oh, Daddy, please," teased Billy.

"But, Billy, child, the others don't want to
do it, the general or Batchelor."

"I want to," said Henrietta, "and so does
the general.  Father, wouldn't you like to take
a trip in the car somewhere for a week or two?"

The general's attention had wandered back
to the car.  He turned abstractedly.  "Do what,
Henrietta?"

"Take a trip in the car for a week or two."

"Yes, we must plan one later, as we did last
summer."

"But we mean now, father, start right now."

"Now?  Henrietta, you're foolish, my dear."

"No, indeed, father.  Why not now?  'Do it
now' is your favorite motto, you know."

"It is impossible," and the general, also,
dismissed the subject.

Bartlett thrust his hands in his pockets and
appeared absorbed in his car.  He knew Billy.

"Why impossible?" asked Billy, laying a
small hand on the general's arm.  "You were
going to spend a week here.  Why not spend
it in your car?  You have no engagement, have
you?"

"No," said the general, smiling into her
pretty face.  "But what about clothes?"

"Clothes," laughed Billy, "why, clothes—"

"Be hanged," said the Watermelon.

Bartlett laughed.  "Quite so.  Wash out on
the line, general.  Better come."

"Pretend the Indians have risen," said
Henrietta, "and you are given an hour to get
into marching order."

"Ah, yes," cried the eager Billy, patting the
arm she clung to.  "You used to do it, General,
why, in half an hour, out on the plains."

"What do you know about it, puss?" asked
the general.

"Didn't you?" pleaded Billy.

"Yes," said the general, who always gave in
to a pretty woman.  "I used to.  In those days
we were always ready for a fight."

"So you will go?  I knew you would."

"But Mr. Batchelor may have to return to
the city," suggested Henrietta, glancing at the
Watermelon.

Bartlett shot a glance at the young man and
began to whistle softly through his teeth as he
indifferently raised the bonnet of his car and
examined the clean, well-ordered machinery
within.  Would Billy's charms be enough to
hold the young man against his better
judgment?  Could he forget what the next week
meant to him, forget the lure of the Street,
the rise and fall of stocks, in the light of a
woman's eyes, in the sound of a woman's
laugh?  If Billy could not keep him, what
could?  He must be kept.  A week with him
out of the way, the ring could be renewed,
strengthened, that which was lost, regained.
Bartlett bent low over his car, but he heard
Billy, sweetly speaking to the Watermelon.

"You don't have to return to the city, do
you?  You would much rather go with us,
wouldn't you?"

The Watermelon glanced at Bartlett.  If
he accepted too readily, Bartlett might wonder,
yet if he hesitated, if he thought apparently of
how important his presence in the city would
be in the coming week, even if there were to
be a few days of armed neutrality, it might
seem even more impossible that he would
consent to go.

"Can't you join us, Batchelor?" asked the
general.  "You've made enough for one while.
When you run out of that three million, you
can go back.  Time enough then."

"Swollen fortunes are a crime nowadays,"
said Henrietta, smiling her odd, half gay, half
tender smile.

"Come ahead, Batchelor," urged Bartlett
with friendly good nature, neither too eager,
nor too insistent, but his eyes were half shut
and the palms of his hands wet as he rubbed
them on his handkerchief.

"We will start to-night," said Billy.  "It
will be beautiful.  In the night, driving is
perfectly lovely, you know, Mr. Batchelor."

"Better come," advised the general.  "We can
keep in touch with the telegraph.  It's not as
if we were going into the wilds of Africa."

"No, indeed," said Bartlett.  "I have interests
in New York, myself, that I want to keep
an eye on."

Billy laid her hand on his arm.  "Won't you
come?" she teased.

The Watermelon looked down, under the
brim of her hat, into the gray-green eyes and
smiled.

"Yes," he said simply.  "I would like to."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GRATITUDE IS A FLOWER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   GRATITUDE IS A FLOWER

.. vspace:: 2

James lay in the shade of the butternut
tree and smoked gloomily.  He was
well-shaved and his hair newly cut and carefully
brushed, but his clothes were still the rags that
had graced his muscular form since the dim,
nearly forgotten long ago, when he had stolen
them one lucky night from some back yard
passed in the course of his travels.

He squinted at the sun through the tree tops
and judged it to be about four.  The
Watermelon had evidently done no better or he
would have turned up before.  Mike, sprawled
in the grass beside him, slept with the
stentorian slumber of the corpulent.  James kicked
him.

"Aw, wake up," he growled.  "I want your
rare intelligence to unbosom me sorrowful
and heavy heart to."

Mike yawned, stretched and sat up, pushing
his shapeless hat to the back of his round hot
head.  He drew his sleeve across his streaming
forehead and yawned and stretched again.

"You ought to relax, James," said he, cutting
a square from the plug of tobacco that he
carried carefully wrapped in a soiled piece of
tinfoil.  "Youse will have noivous prostration
one of these days with the strenuous life youse
leads.  The modern hurry and worry is all
wrong.  Now, take me—"

"No one would take you, not even a kodak,"
sneered James, scowling before him moodily.

"The matter with you, James," said Mike,
sticking the tobacco into his mouth with the
blade of his knife, "the matter with you is
youse are harboring and cultivating that
green-eyed monster called jealousy.  Youse are, in
short, jealous of me young friend, the Watermillion."

"Aw, jealous of a kid!  Who?  Me?  Not
on your tin-type."

"You say so, James.  We all deny the
werminous cancers that gnaw our vitals.  But look
into your own heart, question yourself—"

"Aw, pound yer ear," snapped James.

Some one was heard approaching and Mike
paused from cleaning the blade of his knife
in the ground before him to listen.

"The youth comes," said he, and rose clumsily
to his little fat legs.  He stepped aside to
see up the path, but James did not move.

"A radiant vision of manly beauty," announced
Mike, one hand on his heart, the other
shading his small eyes as though dazzled by a
great and brilliant light.

James glanced up sullenly.  A youth was
coming through the trees, tall and graceful and
broad-shouldered.  His suit of soft brown, his
gently tipped panama, his light shoes and silk
socks brought with them a breath of
motor-cars and steam yachts, of the smoker in a
railway train, with a white-clad, attentive porter,
instead of the brake beam underneath and an
irate station-master and furious conductor.
From the lapel of his coat gleamed a heavy
gold chain and in his stylish tie a pin of odd
but costly workmanship caught the eye of the
enraptured beholder.

Mike laid his hand on his heart again,
removed his hat, and standing aside for the
youth to pass, bowed low.

"Me lud," said he in humble salutation.

.. _`"Me lud," he said in humble salutation`:

.. figure:: images/img-096.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Me lud," he said in humble salutation

   "Me lud," he said in humble salutation

James glanced up from his seat under the
butternut tree.  He regarded the vision of
affluence before him a moment in growing
admiration and awe.  Then he removed his pipe
and spoke.

"You'll get three years for this," said he
cheerfully, and put his pipe back into his
mouth.

"Three nothing," sneered the Watermelon.

"Jealousy," said Mike, putting his hat on
the back of his frowsy head.  "Jealousy maketh
the tongue cruel and the heart bitter.  Me,"
he spread forth his fat dirty hands, "me
beauty is such it gives me no concern.  I
realize youse can not gild the lily."

The Watermelon drew himself up to his full
height, threw back his shoulders and fastidiously
adjusted his cuffs, with their heavy gold
links.

"With every passing moment, more beautiful,"
murmured Mike.

James snorted.

"Well," asked the Watermelon, "who gets
the prize?"

"Me humble faculties," said Mike, with one
wary eye on James, "me humble faculties are
incapable of rendering true and accurate
judgment in the present case where two such rare
specimens of manly beauty compete in my
honored and deeply grateful presence."

The Watermelon laughed and ran his hand
over his smooth chin and hairless cheeks with
a gesture of gentle pride.  "James said if I
could not get a suit, I would be counted down
and out.  I," and he drew himself up, "I do not
have to take advantage of a mere technicality.
I scorn to win by default."

"True nobility," said Mike, "is in them words."

"Aw, cut the gas!" growled James.
"Where'd you get the blooming outfit?"

"I win, do I?" persisted the Watermelon.

"Mike's the judge," returned James, losing
interest in what was too obviously a one-sided
contest.

"In this competition, there are three points
to decide," declared Mike, not quite sure whom
he feared the more, James or the Watermelon.
"Beauty of face, beauty of clothes and beauty
of soul.  The one who gets two points out
of the three wins."

The Watermelon nodded, James grunted.

Mike glanced thoughtfully from one to the
other and decided that danger lay in either
choice.  "Neither of you," said he slowly and
wisely, "win.  For unexcelled art in raiment,
me young friend here might be said to be the
only competitor.  For rare physical beauty and
winning charm in looks, unaided by mere
externals, me friend and fellow-citizen, James,
gets the just reward, and for pure, manly
beauty of the soul, truth, which I always
follow, compels me to give the prize to me humble
self."

"Aw," growled James, "this ain't no show.
We will have another."

The Watermelon hitched up his trousers and
chose a clean seat on a fallen log.  When coat
and trousers legs were adjusted so as best to
keep their faultless creases, he spoke with the
bored accents of the weary scion of great
wealth.

"I'm starting for a motor tour with some of
me friends," said he.

"I," said Mike, "have always felt for you
as for a dear and only son."

"Gwan," said James imperiously.  "Where
did you get the glad rags?"

The Watermelon told them briefly how from
a nameless hobo a few short hours before, he
had become a famous young financier, hobnobbing
with generals and millionaires.  He
chuckled as he told it with the half-cynical
amusement of the philosopher for the follies of
the poor, seething, hurrying, struggling crowd
of humanity, too busy in their rush for gold
and social position to see their own laughable
pitiful shams and affectations.  Poverty clears
the eyesight as nothing else can, and the
Watermelon had been poor so long and was so
indifferent to his position that he had lost none
of his clearness of vision in the strenuous
endeavor of the others, and he saw, unconsciously,
but nevertheless keenly, the dead level
of human nature, with its artificial hills of gold
and social position.

"Me father, I believe, is a policeman," said
he.  "Me mother a wash-woman.  If I had
a grandfather, no one knows.  I'm fortunate
to have a father and no questions asked, yet
just because I can write me check, as they
think, for a million and have it honored, I'm
'my boy' to the elite of the land, the 'best
people.'  Gosh, it's enough to make an ass bray."

"It is that," said Mike.  "For me, only the
intrinsic worth of the soul.  Maybe there was
a bit of change in the pockets?" he added as an
afterthought.

"Yes, there was quite a bit.  He's fresh at
the game and carries a roll to show off with,"
returned the Watermelon, pulling a roll of bills
from his pocket.  Mike edged a bit nearer.
"See here, I want you fellers to do something
for me."

"For you," said Mike, "I would give me
immortal soul."

"I want something more than that, Mike,"
said the Watermelon.

"Me plug of baccy?" asked Mike with feeling.

The Watermelon shook his head as he slowly
pulled a greenback from the bunch he held.  "I
want you two to go to that lake, get my clothes
out of the log and give 'em to the poor devil."

"Don't be a fool," advised James.  "He's all
right.  Nothing will happen to him."

"I know, but I keep thinking of him.  He
can afford to lose what he is going to lose, but
all the same, he's cold and tired."

"Aw, don't go and do that," pleaded Mike.
"He'll have youse arrested—"

"I ain't going to be around here; besides, no
one would think of looking for me with the
swell bunch I'm going with."

"Maybe not," admitted James gravely, "but
there's always the danger that some cop will
have brains.  And he's bound to get away
to-night, all right, and have the bulls on you the
minute he does.  You had better take all the
time you can to get away and don't try to
shorten it none."

The Watermelon slowly unwound another
bill and nodded.  "I know, but I'm sorry for
him.  A few hours won't make much difference.
He hasn't the slightest idea who swiped
his clothes.  He'll think some tramp did and that
the feller is getting out of the country by
cross-cuts and as fast as he can.  Don't you see?
No one will look for me with the general and
Bartlett.  I'm going to have a week of fun—"

"Maybe," said James gloomily.  "Hardly,
if you give that bloke his clothes before you
need to."

The Watermelon waved the statement aside.
"We are going to leave about five," said he.
"They are waiting for me, now.  It will take
you a bit of a walk to find the place.  I put the
clothes in an empty log near a pile of rocks at
the foot of three tall pines, standing together
about ten yards from the lake.  You can't help
but find it.  Give him the clothes and this
check-book and fountain pen.  I can't use them
and you two won't get gay with them 'cause
Mike's a coward, and James has too much sense."

"You're a damn fool," said James shortly.

"He's all right," argued Mike, meaning the
man in the forest shades.  "What can hurt him?"

"I know, but he's mighty uncomfortable.
Can't sit down, maybe, and there may be flies
and mosquitoes—"

"Naw," protested Mike.  "He's just comfortable.
If it was the style, I would like to
have gone naked to-day."

"He'll have the police after youse," warned
James, "as soon as he can reach the village."

"Sure he will.  Gratitude is a flower," said
Mike grandiloquently, "that I have never
picked."

"And never will," added James with grim
pessimism.

"That's all right," returned the Watermelon.
"I ain't gathering any flowers this trip.  Here's
a ten-spot for each of you, and mind you do
what I say."

"For you," said Mike, "I'd give me heart's
blood."

"Where do we find this pond?" asked James.

"Come with me and I'll take you to the road
that leads by it.  You give me time to get to
the hotel, though, before you give him his
clothes."

"Trust me," said Mike, lovingly concealing
the greenback in the dark dirty recesses of his
rags.

They parted in the road where the Watermelon
had come upon the big red touring car.
Mike and James watched him until he disappeared
over the top of the hill, then climbed
the wall and made their way through the
woods to the little mountain lake.

"We won't get the clothes," said James,
"until we have had a talk with the guy and
tried to get him into a reasonable frame of
mind.  It's just likely that he may be somewhat
put out."

There was no one in sight as they made their
way cautiously to the edge of the lake.  The
trees grew nearly down to the narrow, pebbly
beach and were reflected in the quiet depths
of the water.  The little brook, tumbling over
its miniature waterfall, with a ripple and splash,
was the only sound that broke the all-pervading
silence.  Nothing stirred in the underbrush,
neither man nor beast, and James and Mike
were about to slip away as quietly as they came
when a stick snapped behind them sharply and
Mike wheeled.

A man was peering at them eagerly over the
tops of a few bushes.  His face was white and
his teeth chattering.  His arms, dimly
discerned through the branches, were wrapped
around his shivering form with fervor and he
was standing gingerly on first one foot and
then the other.

"Hello," said Mike facetiously.  "Going
in?" and he nodded casually backward to the lake.

"Been in," chattered the miserable wretch,
trying to control his teeth so that he could say
more.

"Oughtn't to stay in too long," advised
James solicitously.  "Your lips look blue."

"Bad for the heart," said Mike.

"We ain't ladies," added James with
delicacy.  "You might come out from them bushes."

"Some—some one stole my—my—my
clothes," stammered the young man, stepping
carefully forth.  "Been here—here since
this—this morning."  He looked sharply at the
shabby pair before him, with quick distrust in
his bloodshot eyes and added coldly, "Some—some
tramp."

"Did you see him?" asked James.

"No—no—no.  But who else could have
stolen them?"

"I," said Mike, drawing himself up to his
five feet five and throwing back his pudgy
shoulders, "I am a tramp.  I trust, sir, you
meant no insult to me profession?"

The stranger waved the question aside.
"Get me some clothes and I'll give you some
money."

"What money?" asked James.

"I will send you some.  I am rich.  My car
is in the road.  Maybe you saw it.  I was
coming through the woods to the hotel to get a tow
up, for I was out of gasolene, when I saw the
lake.  It was early and I thought I would take
a swim.  Maybe you saw my car by the side of
the road?"

"I didn't see no car," said Mike.

"Did you come by the road?"

"Yes, a narrow wood road."

"Yes, yes; that's where I left it.  The damned
thief has probably gone off with my car, too."

"Then he couldn't be a tramp," said James
judiciously.  "Tramps don't know nothing
about motor-cars."

"Maybe he took it up to the hotel," said
Mike, cheerfully helpful.

The stranger shook his head.  "No, he
wouldn't do that.  He would get out of the
country as fast as he could."

"If there wasn't no gasolene," suggested
James tentatively.

"He could easily get some from the hotel.
It was early when he stole my clothes."  And
James realized with relief that the youth before
him was, in his own eyes, always right, and
advice wholly superfluous.

"I saw a big red car," said Mike, "down the
road a bit, over the other side of the village,
going south.  But maybe your car wasn't red."

"Yes, yes, it was," cried the stranger.
"What was the make?  Could you tell?"

"A Thomas car—"

"Ah, my car.  Get me something to put on
and I'll make it worth your while.  I'm
William Hargrave Batchelor.  Maybe you have
read about me in yesterday's papers?"  And
the poor, shivering, naked wretch drew himself
up proudly and smiled with much complacency.

"I," said Mike, tapping himself on his breast,
"am George V., of England."

"No, no," protested the stranger.  "I'm not
fooling.  Get me, some clothes and come with
me to the nearest telegraph office and I'll show
you."

"How much," asked Mike, "will you give me?"

"Us," corrected James.

"How much do you want?"

"How much will you give?"

"Ten dollars."

"For a suit of clothes?"  Mike's fat red face
depicted his horror.

"Twenty," cried the stranger.

"Apiece?" asked James.

"Apiece," declared the unhappy youth.

"Apiece, James," said Mike, turning
inquiringly to his companion.

"Make it thirty," said James, "and we may
be able to help you."

"All right, thirty apiece.  Get me the clothes."

"You might write us each a check," suggested
James, and drew forth the pen and
check-book.

"For innocence," groaned Mike, "commend
me to me loving comrade, James."

The stranger's eyes glittered as he
recognized his book and pen.  He glanced from one
ragged specimen before him to the other, from
James' crafty face to Mike's sly visage, but he
said nothing, merely took the pen and book.

"Your names?" he asked, opening the book
and resting it against a tree for support.

"Better put 'to bearer,'" said James.  "Simplicity
is always the best."

The stranger wrote the checks, signed them
and turned to the two watching him.  "Bring
me the suit," he said quietly, "and these are
yours."

Mike shuffled off into the trees and James
and the stranger waited in silence for his
return.  He came back presently and threw the
suit at the stranger's feet.

"You'll notice," said he, "that this nobby
spring suit in our latest style is cheap at the
price.  Fancy, a thing like that for only sixty
dollars!"

"I see," said the stranger.

"Payable in advance," said James.

The stranger handed them each a check and
thoughtfully drew on the shabby clothes of
the Watermelon.  It had not been long since he
had worn rags of a necessity, and he hitched
them up with the skill bred of familiarity.  He
thrust the pen and book into a pocket he had
first made sure was holeless.  Then he turned
to the two and his eyes gleamed.

"How much for the car?" he asked.

Mike raised his hands to Heaven.  "The
car?  James, does he think we stole his car?"

"A stock-broker," said James, "would
suspect his own mother."

"If you want youse car," said Mike, "go to
the hotel."

"Bah," snapped the stranger.  "Do you
think I was weaned yesterday?  Be quick and
tell me your price."

"I have no price," said Mike proudly, not
sure where the car was.

They started through the woods to the village,
the stranger leading and Mike and James
following.  At the edge of the village, they
paused instinctively and without a word.

"Tell me where the car is and who your
accomplice is," said the stranger in the short
sharp tones of one born to command, "and you
two can go free.  If you don't tell, I'll do my
best to have you arrested and sent up for grand
larceny.  Understand?"

"Oh, yes," said Mike, "I understand.  When
I was young I learned English, foolishly, as I
haven't used it since."

"We don't know where your damn car is,"
declared James.  "And we didn't steal your
blooming outfit.  What do you take us for,
anyway?"

"Very well, then," snapped the stranger.  "I
see that you won't tell.  Remember, I gave you
your chance."

He turned and hurried down the village
street.  The two watched him as he stopped a
pedestrian and apparently asked to be directed
to the justice of the peace, then they slipped
away in the woods and quietly, simultaneously,
turned north, falling into a gentle lope that
took them far with the minimum of effort.

"I hope the kid ain't pinched," said James,
after a while.

Mike sighed and shook his head.  "Grand
larceny," he murmured.  "That's gratitude for
you."





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.. _`ON THE ROAD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   ON THE ROAD

.. vspace:: 2

The general never went anywhere
without a well-stocked library, guide-books,
instruction books, maps.  All were consulted
long and often, and with a childlike faith that
Henrietta's sarcasm and the sign-posts had not
been able to shake.

If the guide-book read, "White rock on left,"
the general stopped the car if the rock were not
immediately seen where it should be according
to the book and refused to go farther until it
had been discovered.  If the rock could not be
located, the general ran back a little way or
ahead a little way and if the white rock still
refused to be seen on the left, the general did
not see what right any one had to remove
valuable landmarks.  Henrietta's tentative endeavor
to point out the possibility that the book was
mistaken, doubtless unintentionally, but still
mistaken, was simply waved aside as one more
indication of woman's inferiority to man.  If
the book said that there was a hill at such and
such a place and there was in fact no hill there,
the book was still correct.  There was
something the matter with the landscape.

Bartlett knew of this unfortunate tendency
of the general's and resolved to get rid of
those books and maps and papers.  With every
mile indicated and nicely tabulated, every turn
and landmark mentioned, it would be almost
impossible to get off the beaten route, and
they must avoid telegraph stations and
post-offices as much as possible.  The success
of the scheme lay in keeping Batchelor away
from all touch and communication with the
city.  They must, if possible, get lost, and with
the multitudinous books and maps they would
not be able to.  Therefore, they must get rid
of the books and maps.

When they had separated to prepare for the
trip, Bartlett returned hastily to the garage.
No one was in sight except a strange chauffeur
lounging in the doorway.  Bartlett collected all
the literature from the general's car and
hastened back to the hotel.  Surreptitiously, he
entered an empty room near the one assigned to
him and when he emerged again, his arms were
burdenless and he was smiling gently.

They waited for the Watermelon on the
porch, intending to have an early supper and
start while it was still light.  Bartlett greeted
the returning youth with relief and lead the
way to the dining-room.  He mentioned a small
village some thirty miles to the north, where
they could find accommodations for the night
in an old farm-house.

"Friends of mine," said he.  "I go there
every fall."

The general rose to get his blue book.  "We
will look it up," said he.

Bartlett stopped him.  The town was not in
the book.  He knew, for he had tried to find it.

"The maps will do," said the general, who
liked to locate every town visually on the maps
or in the books before he undertook to motor
there.

Desperate, Bartlett declared that it was not
on the maps.  But the general would not be
daunted.  They could put it on the maps
themselves if they knew in which county it was,
near what post-office—

"We don't want to locate it," said Bartlett,
growing stern and cross of a necessity.

They found the cars waiting at the steps and
a small crowd to see them off and wile away
the time before supper.

Bartlett said, as he knew the way, he would
lead.  "We need only two cars.  Mr. Batchelor's
car can be left until we return."

"Three cars might come in handy," protested
the general, who objected to every suggestion
not his own, on principle.

"Why?" asked Bartlett coldly.

"Mr. Batchelor might become offended at us
and want to ride by himself," suggested
Henrietta, laughing.

"Yes," agreed Billy, who, though young and
charming, was sometimes lacking in that
reserve that should have stamped her father's
daughter.  "He and dad are fighting each other
now on 'Change."

Henrietta flushed, the Watermelon laughed
and the general looked pained at the thought
of any possible lack of congeniality.

"My dear Billy," said Bartlett, "the third
auto would be extremely handy for you and
your tongue, at least."

Billy glanced miserably from one to the
other.  "Why, Daddy, you told me, yesterday—"

"I have told you many things," said Bartlett,
"both yesterday and the day before."

He took the general by the arm and gently
but firmly thrust him into his car, getting in
himself and taking the wheel.  The young folk
could ride in the tonneau and Alphonse follow
in the general's car with the luggage.

The cars started down the hill in the first
sweet flush of evening.  Birds were going to
bed with noisy upbraidings.  A few cows at
the pasture bars watched them pass with great,
stupid, placid eyes, jaws going slowly,
rhythmically, as they waited for the milking time.
Now they flashed from the shadows of the
woods to the open country, pastures and
rolling grain fields on each hand.  Now they
plunged among the trees again with the drowsy
twitter of birds and the clear babbling of a
brook somewhere off among the ferns and
brambles.

The Watermelon leaned back in the deep
soft cushions of the big car and smiled a smile
of calm and peace and comfort.  The car ran
smoothly, noiselessly, little breezes laden with
the sweetness of the approaching night
wandered by, on each side of him was a pretty girl.
Tramping idealized!  It was living idealized.
And that morning, hungry, shabby, unshaved,
he had been content to lie in the sweet lush
grasses of a chance meadow, under a butternut
tree, with the convivial James and the
corpulent Mike!  He crossed one well-pressed,
silken leg over the other and saw by the
wayside, lounging in the shadows, waiting for the
car to pass, the two, James and Mike—Mike,
fat, red-faced, dirty, his frowsy hat pulled
aslant over his small, bleary eyes, shoulders
humped from long habit in cold weather, toes
coming out of his boot ends; James, clean
shaven, but otherwise no better dressed, no
cleaner, both chewing tobacco with the
thoughtful rumination of the cows watching
over the pasture bars at the end of the wooded
lane.

Over the trees, the sun was dropping from
sight.  Clearly and sweetly on the quiet air of
the eventide, the church bells began to toll
from the village below them in the valley.

Billy nudged the Watermelon to call his
attention to the two weary figures by the wayside.

"Poor fellows," said Henrietta softly, lest
they hear her.

The Watermelon glanced at them in lofty
disgust and catching James' eye, his own
flickered the fraction of an inch and he raised his
hands languidly to adjust the brown silk tie at
his throat.  When they had passed, he turned
and waved a graceful farewell.  He explained
to Billy as they swept on into the deepening
dusk.

"You might as well encourage the poor
fellows.  They probably want to ride as well as
I."  And Henrietta fancied that possibly his
father had looked thus on a Sunday, in the
pulpit of a country church.

"Yes," agreed Billy.  "They may be perfectly
dandy fellows."

"Assuredly," laughed Henrietta.  "The stout
one fairly radiated truth and nobility, a manly,
upright youth."

"I don't care," declared Billy warmly.
"You can't always tell from appearances.  You
ought to know that, Henrietta.  Clothes don't
make the man."

"Nor his manners," laughingly retorted
Henrietta.

"Sure," said the Watermelon.  "Father used
to say that manners didn't count any more than
the good apples on the top of the box to hide
the rotten ones beneath."

"I think your father was a cynic," said
Henrietta sharply, into whose ears Billy had been
recounting the sayings of the absent divine.

"Yes," admitted the Watermelon, "he was."

"Cynicism is a sign of failure," quoted
Henrietta.  "Surely your father wasn't a cynic."

"Yes, he was," declared the Watermelon,
"and you didn't make that up yourself.  You
heard some failure say it.  Father used to say,
and he's right, that if a man reached forty
without becoming a cynic, he was a fool and
might better never have reached forty.  A
success can be a cynic, for cynicism is simply a
pretty good idea of the meanness of human
nature and no unfounded expectation of
anything especially decent coming from it, isn't
that so?  Father used to say that love was
divine, hate devilish and meanness just cussed
human nature, and a mixture of the three in
more or less degree made man."

"Your father was a philosopher," laughed
Henrietta.  "I would like to have met him."

"I thought the papers said—" began Billy,
in her slow, anxious way to get things right.

"Yes, they did," interrupted the
Watermelon, "and they were right."

It was quite dark now.  Bartlett stopped a
moment while Alphonse lit the lamps, and then
they went on and on, faster and faster, into
the summer night.  Once in a while they
passed a lighted farm-house and a dog rushed
out and barked at them.  Twice they whirled
through small villages and the villagers, going
home from church, paused to watch them pass
and be swallowed up in the dark ahead.  The
air was full of fireflies.  A whippoorwill called
plaintively from the bushes, and low in the west
were flashes of heat lightning, with now and
then an ominous rumble of distant thunder.
Silence had settled on all, even Billy mused in
her corner, half asleep.

The general had been worried for some time.
They were apparently getting nowhere.  He
felt that he should have consulted the blue
book.  He was about to suggest that they stop
and get the book from the rear car, when
Bartlett waved toward the dark bulk of a house
looming out of the night, some little way
ahead.

"That's the place," said he.  "We can spend
the night there and get one of the best chicken
breakfasts I ever ate."

The general looked at the place and rallied
his sinking spirits.  It appeared dark and he
should say it was deserted, but Bartlett
doubtless knew what he was talking about.  The
people probably lived in the kitchen.  He was
hungry and tired and the thought of hot sausages,
bread and jam and milk and then a soft cool
bed was nearly as good as the reality.  He
turned gaily to the quiet three in the tonneau.

"Wake up and hear the birds sing."

Bartlett glanced back and laughed.  "Asleep,
eh?  We're there," he added, turning the car
neatly into the open driveway.  "Guess you
won't refuse a good supper very strenuously."

The drive was rough and they rolled slowly
tip to a great dark house, standing on a slight
rise of ground, a typical New England
farmhouse, square and gaunt and unadorned, with
a small front stoop and a long side porch.
From the trees behind the house, came the
dismal cry of a hoot owl, as the cars came to a
rest, and an answering cry from the grove
across the road.

"Ghosts," whispered the general.

"Oh, hush," pleaded Billy.  "There is no
need of fooling with things like that."

"This house ain't lived in," said the Watermelon,
as he slipped from the car to straighten
his cramped legs.

"Folks gone to bed," explained Bartlett
cheerfully, since he was not the one who had
gone to bed.  "We will just have to rout them
out."

He shut off the power and alighted from the
car, pulling off his gloves.  Alphonse came up
in the other car and peered out at the dark,
quiet, lonely house and shook his head with
forebodings.

"There isn't any one here," insisted the
Watermelon, "asleep or awake."

The general climbed out.  "If we had
consulted the book—"

"My dear sir," interrupted Bartlett, a bit
irritated, "the book could not possibly have
told us that the family had moved since last
fall when I spent two weeks here, hunting."

"Certainly not," laughed Henrietta, who
spent a good part of her life steering with
infinite care and constantly growing skill
between the Scylla of her father's wrath and the
Charybdis of the hurt feelings of those whom
the general had offended.  "This is simply one
of the unforeseen misfortunes of the road."

"Besides," said Bartlett, "we don't know
that the Higginses have gone!"

"Don't you see that there aren't any signs
of life?" demanded the Watermelon.  He had
lived by his wits so long that he noticed
instinctively the little things which mean so much
and are generally overlooked.  "If there was
any one here some window would be open on
a night like this, wouldn't it?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE DESERTED HOUSE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE DESERTED HOUSE

.. vspace:: 2

"Wonderful, wonderful!" murmured
Henrietta in the tones of the
famous Watson.

Bartlett looked at the house and nodded
gloomily.  "I guess you are right.  Funny they
should have left without writing me about it.
I have known them for years."

"I will get the blue book," said the general,
with the calm satisfaction of one who at last
comes into his own.  "We can return to the
nearest village—"

"What do we want a blue book to do that
for?" sneered Bartlett.  "I should think two
motor-cars could do it, provided we followed
the road."

"Hold on a shake," said the Watermelon.
"I will get in a window and open the door."

"We had better not," objected Henrietta,
"Wouldn't that be house-breaking?"

The general agreed.  "Certainly.  It is warm
and we can spend the night outside quite
comfortably if you do not want to return to the
village."

Billy shuddered and glanced appealingly at
the Watermelon.  A deserted house was bad
enough, but outside where the owls called
dismally from the woods and where bats flitted
by in the dark held possibilities infinitely worse.

"I have known these people longer than I
have Billy," said Bartlett.  "I used to come
here when I was a kid.  It will be all right to
break in.  They are like my own folks."

The Watermelon immediately jumped to the
porch, disdaining the few steps, and disappeared
behind the vines which covered one end
and concealed the window.

Bartlett turned reassuringly to the general.
"It will be all right, Charlie.  Don't worry
about it.  Why, I've always called Mrs. Higgins,
Aunt Sally."

Visions of hot sausages, bread and milk die
hard when one is hungry and the general
snorted.  "That's all right.  I am hungry
enough to break into the Bank of England if
it resulted in something to eat, but what can
we find in an empty house?"

"Ghosts," said Henrietta.

Billy pinched her.  "If you think there are
ghosts in there, Henrietta, I simply won't go in."

"Certainly there are ghosts," said Henrietta.
"There always are in empty houses.  Where
else do you find them?"

"We will return to the village," declared the
general, "and get something to eat.  I will get
the book—"

"An empty house is better than the countryside,"
said Bartlett.  "And we have plenty to
eat in that basket Henrietta put up."

"If there is something to eat—" wavered the
general.

A light gleamed a moment through the crack
of the door and then the door opened and the
Watermelon grinned at them in the light of a
small smoky lamp he held.

"Where did you get the lamp?" asked the
general as the Watermelon led the way in.

"Found it," said the Watermelon.  "The
place is furnished.  The family is probably
only away for a visit."  He set the lamp on
the table and from long habit wiped his dusty
hand on his trouser leg.  "I fell over
everything in the room before I got next to the fact."

He glanced about with some pride and the
others stood in a semicircle and stared around.
The room was a typical country kitchen, a huge
stove side by side with a large chintz-covered
rocking-chair.  A dresser for the crockery and
a haircloth lounge took up one side.  There
was a center-table with a red checked cloth,
a few chairs and a sewing-machine near the
window.  On the walls were a number of cheap
prints and several huge advertising calendars
With gay pictures of young women in large hats
and low-cut dresses.

Bartlett glanced around and at every
unfamiliar object his heart sank lower and lower
and his first sickening suspicion became a
painful fact.  He had never been in that room
before.  The Higginses had never lived there.
Everything was strange, the furniture, the
rugs, the very shape of the room.  Where were
they?  Whose house had they unceremoniously
broken into?  A clammy chill crept down
Bartlett's back and his florid face grew still
redder.

None of the others was noticing him.  The
general was prowling around to see that the
enemy could not come upon them unawares.
The Watermelon had lifted the basket on to
the table and the girls were preparing gaily to
set forth the repast, all three rummaging in
closets and drawers for plates and knives and
forks.

The general returned to the table.  "All
serene along the Potomac," said he, thrusting
his hands into his pockets and peering into the
basket with renewed hope.  Henrietta smiled
gaily.  She had pushed aside her auto veil, her
cheeks were flushed with the joy of the
adventure and her eyes bright.

"Father," said she, "in all our lives, we have
never had an adventure before, because you
persist in using those blue books."

The general laughed and helped himself to
a sandwich.

Billy opened the dresser and peered gingerly
in, her small nose wrinkled for any unforeseen
emergency.  She had taken off her hat, and her
soft yellow hair, bound back by a black velvet
snood, escaped around her temples in
tiny waves.  Her eyes, thought the Watermelon,
were brighter than the lamp upon the
table and her laughing, kissable mouth redder
than the crimson lips of the fair creatures in
the gay calendars on the wall.  Her hand
upon the latch of the door was so near his own,
that he was tempted to put his on it, but
instead slipped his into his pocket with a
delicacy he did not recognize in himself.  She was
a girl, young and sweet and attractive, and
because she was attractive, she had been flung
into the maw of the Street, a victim of the
age's insane desire for money and more money.
Each dainty curl, each flash and disappearance
of her single dimple had been reckoned as so
much in dollars and cents.  So the Watermelon
put his hand in his pocket and only watched
her with poorly veiled admiration.

"Do you know what I am looking for?" she
asked, glancing at him, her eyes full of mischief.

"For the family silver," said the Watermelon.
"We might as well take some souvenir
of our visit."

"I don't believe the family silver is silver,"
said she.  "I am trying to find a bucket which
you can take to the well and fill for tea.  It
will give you an appetite."

"We will let Alphonse go for the water,"
said the Watermelon, turning over the articles
on the dusty, crowded shelves.  "The general
sees to the cars.  We will give Alphonse a
chance to earn his pay."

"You should do something to earn yours,"
said she.

"What is mine?" he asked, trying to see into
her eyes.

"We must find that bucket," said she,
gazing innocently upward at the higher shelves.
"I love to muss around among other people's
things.  They are so much more interesting
than your own.  I wonder why."

"We can't be amused with ourselves and our
things," said the Watermelon.  "We are too
important.  Father used to say nothing else was
really important but ourselves and what
affected us."

Henrietta, fussing with the alcohol lamp at
the table, laughed.  "Why didn't your father
write a book," she asked, "a philosophy?  It
would have been a deal more interesting than
James or Spencer or Decant."

"He used to say that a man who knew life
never wrote about it.  It would be too
painful.  It wouldn't sell."

There was a heavy step on the porch and
Bartlett turned quickly with sickening fear.  It
was Alphonse come from putting the cars
away in the shed beside the barn.  Bartlett
wiped his brow and swallowed heavily.  This
was terrible, this being in another man's house
unlawfully.  The utterly hopeless inability to
explain satisfactorily took all one's nerves
away.  He glanced at the other four, merrily
unconscious of his ghastly discovery, their
thoughts filled only with the desire to eat.

"Billy," said he sharply, "what are you
doing in that closet?  Come away at once."

"I was only trying to find a bucket,"
stammered Billy.

"Those things don't belong to you.  You
have no right there."  And Bartlett sternly and
promptly shut the door.

Billy drew back hurt.  "I don't see why it is
so wrong to break into a man's pantry," said
she, "after you have broken into his house.
Besides, Daddy, you have known these people all
your life."

"That's the trouble," said Bartlett desperately,
with a rush, "I don't know these people.
I have never been here before."  He glared
defiantly at the general, daring him to suggest
the blue book.

For a moment no one spoke.  Alphonse at
the door, hat in hand, the general by the table,
another prematurely acquired sandwich in his
hand half way to his mouth, Henrietta, busy
with the flame of the tiny alcohol lamp, Billy
before him, the Watermelon on the edge of the
dresser where he had seated himself, all stared
in dull surprise.  The Watermelon broke the
silence.

"Better to break into another man's house
than have him break into yours," said he.  He
glanced at Bartlett with just the flicker of
amusement in his mild gray eyes, thinking that
Bartlett had got lost already, deliberately,
with the intention of spending the greater part
of the following day finding themselves, and
so successfully passing one day of the seven.
Bartlett glanced at the young man and flushed.
It seemed to him for one fleeting moment that
the youth with the sleepy eyes knew a bit more
than Bartlett cared to have him know, cared
to have any one know, that he even seemed to
suspect him of having got lost on purpose.
Then the sleepy eyes turned again to Billy and
the older man told himself that he was
mistaken.  He was growing nervous and reading his
own intentions in every one's eyes.  He strove
to regain the mastery of his nerves by airy
indifference.

"A slight mistake," said he.

"Ah, yes," said Henrietta, "as when you go
off with another man's umbrella."

She turned down the flame, which threatened
a conflagration, and put the cap on,
extinguishing the lamp.  One did not take tea in
another's house when one had entered by
mistake and through the window.  One merely got
out again, quietly and with no unavoidable delay.

The general, with rare nerve, took a bite
from the sandwich and laid it on the table.  He
drew his handkerchief and wiped his hands.  "I
will get the blue book," he began busily, his
mouth still rather full.

"We don't need the blue book to tell us to
get out," said Henrietta, a bit tartly.  She
looked at the dainty pile of sandwiches, the
cold chicken, cakes and olives on the table with
the wooden plates and gay paper napkins she
had arranged for the coming feast and
hesitated.  She wished some one was courageous
enough to suggest that they eat before they
leave.

"Certainly not," said the general.  "But if
we had consulted them before we left—"

"Sort of in the fashion of an oracle,"
sneered Henrietta as she began slowly to
gather up the napkins and the wooden plates.

"Tell me," said Bartlett calmly, impersonally,
not as one desiring an argument, but simply
as a humble seeker after knowledge, with
no prior views on the subject, "tell me, can
you never make a mistake if you have a blue
book?"

"No," said Henrietta, "never.  With the
blue book one could go directly to Heaven.  It
would be impossible not to."

Billy laughed.

"Billy would laugh at her funeral," said
Bartlett coldly.

"We haven't anything to cry about," said
the Watermelon, frankly unconcerned.  "It's
for the man who owns the house to do the
crying."

"How did we get here?" demanded the general,
as Alphonse went to get the blue book,
for the general could no longer be gainsaid in
his desire for his book.  "Is this where the
Higgins' home should be?"

"Why, no, father," said Henrietta, "or it
would be here."

"I meant, Henrietta, did we come the right
way?  If we took every turn and have come
far enough and not too far, this should be the
Higgins' house."

"It should be," admitted Bartlett.  "But it
isn't."

Through the open door came the many
noises of the summer night, the incessant hum
of insects, the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill,
the strident chorus of the frogs in the
pond back of the bam.  A moth, fluttering
around the dingy lamp, fell on the table with
scorched wings and Billy tenderly pushed it on
a plate and carried it to the door.

"Why not eat here?" suggested the Watermelon,
unimpressed by the aspect of the affair
as it struck the others.  "We can hunt for the
Higginses afterward.  They ought to be around
somewhere unless we're helplessly lost."

Henrietta smiled and took out the napkins
she had laid back in the basket.  "It won't take
us long," she agreed.  "We don't need to have
any tea."

"No," protested Bartlett, glancing at the
door and listening for the crunch of wheels on
the gravel without, "no, we must leave at once.
We aren't lost.  The Higginses' is probably the
next house."

"Suppose it isn't," said Billy.

"Just so," said the general.  "We will return
to the village and put up at the hotel.  It isn't
late."

"It's half-past eleven," said Henrietta, glancing
at her watch.

Alphonse returned, blasé, indifferent.
"There are no books," said he, devoid of all
interest in the affair.

"No books?" cried the general.  "Alphonse,
what has become of them?  Did you take them
out of the car before we left?"

"No," said Alphonse, and violent, positive
protestations could not have been more convincing.

"But where are they?  I left them in the car."

"They probably fell out, father," said Henrietta.

"They have never fallen out before," snorted
the general, with base suspicions against
Henrietta.

"We can get another to-morrow," said Henrietta.
"We will simply return to the hotel in
the village for the night."  And once more she
replaced the napkins in the basket.

"Yes," agreed Bartlett.  "There is a good
hotel near the railroad tracks."

"Where are the railroad tracks?" asked the
general, who had lost all faith in Bartlett's
knowledge of the country.  "We passed no
railroad tracks."

"Just before you come to the village," retorted
Bartlett, irritated as a badgered animal.
"You have to cross them as you come up the
main street."

"We crossed none," said the general, with
the indifference of one who realizes that there
is no more to hope for.  The boat is sinking, let
it sink.  The last cent gone and the landlord
coming for two months' rent.  Let him come.

"No," said Billy gently, "we didn't, father."

"Why, we did, we must have," protested
Bartlett.  "I always come here on the railroad
train.  They have to flag it, but it stops.  Why,
I know there are tracks there."

The general did not attempt to argue.  "We
are lost," said he, and one knew that the
unfortunate event was entirely due to the scorn
of others for the blue book.

"No," said Henrietta kindly, "there were no
tracks.  I remember saying to Billy I was glad
there was one town not spoiled by the garish
contamination of the world.  Didn't I, Billy?"

"Yes, she did," admitted Billy, looking
pityingly at her father.

"If we didn't pass through Wayne, we are
lost and the Higgins' home is probably miles
from here and there is no use looking for it,"
said Bartlett, and smiled—grimly, the general
thought; happily, the Watermelon thought.  It
would be rare luck to be lost thus early.

They were all gathered around the table,
except the Watermelon and Alphonse.
Alphonse still stood by the door, hat in
hand.  He was merely a paid hireling.  His
master's affairs were none of his.  The
Watermelon still sat on the dresser and swung his
feet.  The predicament was only one of the
many he was more or less always involved in
and not worth thinking about.  Batchelor and
the police did not worry him that night.  It
was too early.

"Why not eat something before we go?" he
said.  "We have been here about an hour now,
and another hour won't make our crime any
the worse."

"Yes," agreed Henrietta promptly, surprised
at her own depravity.  "Let's," and again she
took out the plates and napkins.

"Suppose they come back," softly whispered Billy.

Instinctively they all glanced at the door, and
Henrietta paused with her hands on the edge
of the basket.

The Watermelon laughed.  "You ain't worrying
because you broke into another's house,"
said he.  "What's fretting you is that you may
be found out."

"It's awful," acknowledged Billy.  "I feel
funny in my stomach and have creeps up my back."

"So have I," said Henrietta, and nodded
grimly.

"Do what you please," said Bartlett.  "But
don't get caught."

"They won't come," said the Watermelon.
"They have been gone for quite a time and
aren't coming back."

"Ah, my dear Holmes," said Henrietta,
"explain your deductions."

"They've been gone long because there is so
much dust on everything and the house smells
so close.  They won't be back to-night because
none of the neighbors have been in to leave
anything for them to eat and there aren't any
chickens in the chicken-house.  Alphonse would
have stirred 'em up if they had been there."

"Suppose some one passes and sees the
light," suggested the general, tempted to the
breaking point by the dainty supper so near at
hand and the thought of the terrible apology
of a meal they would get at the dilapidated
hotel they had passed in the village.  And
above all things, the general loved his meals.

"We are at the back of the house and it is
almost twelve.  Every one is in bed and those
who aren't are drunk and wouldn't be believed
anyway."

"It's five miles to the village," added
Bartlett with no apparent relevance.

"Aw, be game," encouraged the Watermelon.
"Be sports."

"Just being hungry is enough for me," declared
Henrietta, taking the last of the edibles
from the basket.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A NIGHT'S LODGING`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   A NIGHT'S LODGING

.. vspace:: 2

The general hesitated.  It was not
lawful, not right.  They had broken into
another man's house and should leave at once.
But all his life he had lived by rules and
regulations, followed life's blue book as
persistently and as well as he did the auto blue book.
Now he was lost, the blue book was gone and
there was an indefinable pleasure in letting
go the rules and regulations that had governed
him so long.  In the warm June night, with
the youthful, foolish Billy, and the irresponsible
Watermelon, the general's latent criminal
tendency came uppermost, that tendency in all
of us once in a while to do wrong for the sake
of the adventure in it, for the excitement and
fascination, rather than for any material gain.
In the experience of being in another man's
house unknown and uninvited by the owner, of
listening for the rattle of a wagon turning in
at the gate, for the crunch of a foot on the
gravel without, there was an exhilaration he
had not known for years.  He felt that a bold
lawlessness which he had never had and had
always felt rather proudly was only kept under
by the veneer of civilization, was rising in him
and that he was growing young again.  He had
always believed that if the occasion arose, he
could out-Raffle Raffles.

"It will not do any harm," he thought with
the remains of his old conscience.  "We will go
directly after supper."

It was a jovial meal.  The conversation
waxed merrier and merrier.  The general grew
younger with every mouthful and Bartlett
more and more genial.  He forgot that he was
kidnapping a famous young financier, and told
all his most enjoyable stories with the skill of
many repetitions.  When they had finished, no
one for a while made any motion to clear up
the table preparatory to leaving.  Billy, with
her chin on her hand, thoughtfully gathered up
the crumbs still on her plate and transferred
them to her mouth.  Henrietta leaned back in
her chair, her hands clasped behind her head,
gazing dreamily at the flickering lamp.  Bartlett
and the general smoked in contented silence
and the Watermelon rolled a cigarette with his
long, thin fingers, his old clay pipe discarded
with his rags.  Alphonse was already asleep.
A snore from his corner drew their attention.

The Watermelon licked his cigarette paper
and glanced at Billy.  "He's got his nerve,"
said he, putting the cigarette in his mouth and
reaching for a match.

"I don't think that any of us have been lacking
in nerve to-night," said the general, with
no little pride.

"You're dead game sports," admitted the
Watermelon.  "Let's stay all night."

"It's morning already," said Henrietta.  "We
have stayed all night."

"Let's sleep here," said the Watermelon.
"We can leave early."

"Er—er—are there any beds?" asked the general.

"Father, father," cried Henrietta, "you are
backsliding."

The general protested, immensely flattered.

"Father used to say if you didn't backslide
once in a while, goodness wouldn't be goodness
but a habit," said the Watermelon.

The general always looked back on that
night and the week that followed with wonder,
thankfulness and pride.  When the Watermelon,
waiting for no further consent, picked
up the lamp and started to investigate the
bedrooms, the general was the first to follow him.

They found two bedrooms on the ground
floor, and though the beds only had mattresses
and pillows on them, even the Watermelon did
not suggest a search for sheets and pillow-cases.
The girls took one room, the men the
other.  Alphonse was aroused enough to be
dragged to the haircloth sofa in the kitchen,
from which he kept falling during the course
of the night with dull thuds that woke no one
but himself.

The Watermelon was having the time of his
young life.  Abstract problems of right and
wrong did not trouble him.  He took each
event as it came and never fretted about it
when it was over or worried about the next to
come.  Last night in the open with the fat
Mike and the languid James, all dirty, all tired,
all tramps, he had slept as peacefully and had
fallen asleep as quickly, as he did that night
in a comfortable bed with an austere member
of the New York Stock Exchange as
bedfellow and a retired general of the United
States army on the couch at the foot.  The
whole adventure was diverting, amusing,
nothing more.  He took each day as it came and
let the morrow take care of itself.  Batchelor
would probably try to make trouble, but if
Bartlett were as successful as he hoped to be,
and kept on getting lost, there was little danger
from that source.  Bartlett, desiring secrecy as
much as the Watermelon, had effectually
silenced the enterprising reporter at the hotel.

It was early when Bartlett awoke.  The
birds were singing riotously in the vines over
the porch and the sun streamed through the
cracks in the shabby window shade.  He
yawned and stretched, glancing with amusement
at the general, still raising melodious
sounds of slumber from the couch at the foot
of the bed.  Then suddenly he became aware
that the place at his side was empty, that the
Watermelon was gone.  He crawled stealthily
out of bed and dressed, filled with misgivings.

Batchelor had consented so readily the day
before to come with them that now, when he
had had time to think it over, he might have
regretted his decision and be already on the
way to the railroad, somewhere.  His had been
the master mind to conceive the check and
ruination of the cotton scheme, and surely he
would see the folly in what he had done
the day before, when lured on by the pretty,
bewitching Billy.  He would realize now in the
clear light of day that he must return to the
city or get word to his brokers somehow.  He
might even then be in a telegraph office,
sending a despatch of far-reaching importance.

Bartlett dressed with feverish haste and
hurried out to the side porch.  The Watermelon
was there, sitting in the sun, his feet hanging
over the edge of the porch, talking carelessly
with the immobile Alphonse.  Both were
smoking and both had apparently been up for some
time.  Had Batchelor been to the village and
telegraphed already?  He would have had time
to go and return if he had used one of the cars.

The Watermelon looked up.  "Hello," said he.

"Hello," said Bartlett.  "Been up long?"

"Not so long," said the Watermelon.

"Are the cars all right?" asked Bartlett.

"I haven't been to see," returned the
Watermelon, rolling another cigarette.

Bartlett drew a sigh of relief and started
after Alphonse for the shed beside the barn.

The Watermelon had not had time to walk to
the village and back, besides telegraphing.
Bartlett paused and glanced over his shoulder.

"Aren't you coming?"

"No," said the Watermelon.  "I ain't bugs
about the gasolene buggies."

Bartlett walked on, shrewdly guessing that
the languid youth was waiting for Billy.  Her
charms, it seemed, had not grown any less
effective.  He decided that he would not try
to get in touch with his broker.  He could
trust him to take care of the city end of the
business if Batchelor were to be eliminated
until the following Sunday.  Batchelor was an
ordinary youth and if Billy's charms were not
enough to hold him, finding himself an equal
and on friendly footing with people in what his
policeman father and washerwoman mother
reverently called "society," would probably
turn his otherwise level head completely.
Bartlett admitted to himself, as he gazed
abstractedly at the shining cars, that the young
man had not appeared visibly impressed either
by himself or the general.  But Batchelor was
clever and would hide his elation.

The Watermelon's slow drawl at last
aroused him.

"Cut it," said the Watermelon.  "The cops
are coming."

One of New York's leading citizens, bank
president and corporation director, felt a slow,
cold, clammy chill creeping up his spinal
column.  His first instinctive desire, like that of
the small boy caught robbing an apple orchard,
was to hide.  Last night was one of those
unfortunate occurrences it were best to pass over
in silence.  He turned and glanced at the house.
The place looked deserted in the morning
sunshine.  The blinds were drawn, the doors shut.
The general and the girls apparently still slept,
and no country variety of New York's "finest"
with warrant and shotgun could be seen
approaching.  Alphonse looked up from the car
and gazed a moment at the house with the
scornful indifference for the law and its
minions of the confirmed joy-rider.

"I do not see any one," said Bartlett with
calm dignity.

"They are creeping up on us," said the
Watermelon cheerfully.  "Trust the rube to
do the thing up in style.  Three men came
along.  They stopped down by the gate and
talked, pointing up here, then one ran on to
the village to get help, I suppose, and the other
two are waiting down there."

"I will go and explain that it was a mistake,"
said Bartlett.

"Now, don't do that," adjured the Watermelon.
It was just possible that the police had
already picked up his trail and he preferred the
chance of escaping in a car to stealing away
by himself, through the woods, a tramp again,
leaving behind him Billy and a week of fun.
"Alphonse can bring up the cars and we can
slip away before the reinforcements come.  See?"

"I will explain that it was a mistake—"

"Mistakes," said the Watermelon coldly,
"aren't on the cards in school and the law.
Come up to the house and see the others first, anyway."

"One can afford mistakes as well as any
other luxury," said Bartlett.  "Money is all
the fellows want."

"Let's talk it over first with the others,
anyway," urged the Watermelon, feeling that it
might be that money was not all they wanted.

They found the general and the girls in
the kitchen putting it in order.

"Certainly," said the general with the
calmness of one immune from the law.  "We will
explain."

"What?" asked Henrietta, as she drew shut
the basket lid and slipped in the catch.

"Father used to say that if what you've done
makes a fight, explanations will only make
another," said the Watermelon.  While he had
the time he realized that he should slip away,
but there was a chance that the police, finding
their youthful quarry in the society of a
general and a reputable and wealthy citizen of New
York, could be impressed with the belief that
they had made a mistake, and the Watermelon
was always ready to take chances.  Still, there
was no need of running needless risk, and if
he could persuade them all to escape with him
in the cars, he would do it.

Henrietta nodded.  Billy was for an instant
flight.  "We might as well," she explained
lucidly, eying her father questioningly.

"Not at all," said Bartlett.  "Money is all
they want."

"An explanation," said the general, "will be
sufficient.  We do not want any tampering
with the law."  He picked up his hat and
started for the door as he would sally forth and
demand the surrender of a beaten foe.

"But, father," Henrietta's clear voice made
him pause, "what can we explain?"  She
pushed back her auto veil and gazed from one
to the other in gentle deprecation.  "How we
got in?  But they wouldn't want us to explain
that.  You see, they can surmise that."

The general came back to the table.  A little
firmness, tempered with a lucid explanation in
words of one syllable had always been his
method in dealing with the weaker sex.  "My
dear Henrietta, we can explain why we are
here."

"Why are we?" asked Henrietta meekly.

"Why are we?" demanded the general.  "Because
we took it for the house of a very old
and dear friend."

"But as soon as we entered, father, we knew
our mistake."

"Henrietta," said the general, "I can not
argue with you."

"No, father," agreed Henrietta.  "But when
we found out our mistake, why didn't we
leave?"

"I can not argue with you, Henrietta,"
repeated the general.

"Money," said Bartlett, "is all they want.
They always fine all motorists for breaking
speed laws.  It becomes a sort of habit with
them."

"This ain't breaking the speed laws," warned
the Watermelon.  "This is house-breaking."

"Sir," demanded the general, "do you
accuse me, me, of house-breaking?"

"The whole damn family," said the Watermelon
bruskly.  He wanted to slip away
quietly, whether the men at the gate were
waiting for him alone or for all of them, having a
tramp's dislike for anything that smacked of
a possibility of falling into the hands of the
law.  "This is some different from speed-breaking,"
he added gloomily.

"This is preposterous!" cried the general.
"That I, *I*, should be arrested!  Why, I refuse
to be.  No one has a right to arrest me."

"If you break into another person's house,
father—" began Henrietta.

"But, Henrietta, I am not a house-breaker.
I deny the charge."

"We all are," said Henrietta.  "That is all
I can see to it."

"Money—" began Bartlett again, the refrain
of his life.  He felt he could not be arrested
and haled before a magistrate, even such an
humble one as a country justice of the peace.
His whole scheme would be ruined.  Batchelor
would probably want to return to the city as
soon as he could bail himself out, and not
care to have anything more to do with motor
trips run on similar lines.

"No," snapped the general, "we will have
no graft."

"Graft," sputtered Bartlett.  "Who
suggested graft?  A wise manipulation of the
financial end of a difficulty will more often
save you than not.  There is no graft in paying
for a night's lodging."

"Under the present circumstances, paying
for a night's lodging is graft," declared the
general.

"It's graft, then, or prison," snapped Bartlett.

"Prison," said the general heroically.

"Prison is foolish," said Billy, "when one
has a motor-car and can get away."

"Besides," said Bartlett, "graft is not
dishonest for the man who gives the bribe."

"It ain't," agreed the Watermelon, "if the
man has money enough to give publicly to some
college or institution."

Henrietta drew on her gloves.  "I think you
are all cynics," said she.  "Graft is dishonest."

"Why?" asked Bartlett, turning to her.
"Why, Henrietta?"

"Because," said Henrietta firmly.

"The only dishonor is playing on another
man's weakness, using that for your own ends.
If I know a man has a price, am I dishonest
to take advantage of the knowledge?  No,
certainly not.  The dishonor is in him who has
a price, whose dirty little soul cares so much
for money that he lets his manhood go at so
much in dollars and cents, like merchandise."

"Ah," cried Henrietta with quick sympathy
for the tempted.  "Poverty is so terrible and
money such a temptation.  It doesn't seem to
be fighting fair to take advantage of it."

"Father used to say that it would take the
constitution of an ostrich, the empty head of a
fool and the nerves of a prize-fighter to stand
poverty," said the Watermelon, thinking of
those days when there were eight children and
no money.

"I think," said Billy, as one propounding a
wholly original suggestion, "that we should
go at once."

"If we have done wrong," said the general,
"we should suffer for it.  We should not
attempt to evade the consequences of our acts."

There was a heavy step on the porch without.
The general turned pale, Bartlett reached
for his pocket-book and Billy leaned weakly
against the knobby end of the haircloth sofa.
Only Henrietta and the Watermelon were quite
calm, the latter with the calmness of
desperation, the former, of despair.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE KEY TO THE SITUATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE KEY TO THE SITUATION

.. vspace:: 2

The Watermelon accepted the inexorable
with the tramp's sang-froid; Henrietta
with a sweet dignity, though slightly flushed.
The door had been shut before the conference
began and the person on the porch had not
come in sight of the windows.  With a slow
wink at Henrietta, the Watermelon strode to
the door.  Instinctively the general started to
lay his hand on the young man's arm as he
passed, to detain him a moment, but instead
picked up his hat from the table and hoped that
no one had seen that involuntary little gesture.
The Watermelon threw open the door with a
bit of a flourish and Alphonse, stolid,
unsmiling, entered.

There was an involuntary sigh of relief
from all, even the general.

"Well," asked the Watermelon, "what are
the sleuths doing?"

"Where are the cars, Alphonse?" asked the
general sternly, in the reaction of the suspense
of the moment before.

"I left them at the back door," answered
Alphonse, as one who understood perfectly the
whole aspect of the case and realized that
sometimes a quiet exit is more to be desired than
great acclaim.  "I thought you would not want
them seen from the front."

"I have no objection to my car being seen by
everybody," returned the general with a wave
of his hand, which appeared to include the
universe.

The back door was locked and the key gone,
and the Watermelon had hurried to the door
into the sheds and was struggling with the
rusty lock.  "This is the way," said he,
"through the woodshed.  That door's locked
and there ain't a key; family probably left that
way.  I noticed the woodshed route this morning."

"We can shut this door on the side porch
and lock it just as we found it," said Henrietta.

She shut the door and Alphonse as quietly
turned the key.  She lowered the window the
Watermelon had opened and, finding that he
had broken the lock in doing it, she slipped a
dollar from her purse and left it on the ledge.
It seemed to Henrietta to leave more, to pay
for their night's lodging, would simply be
adding insult to injury.  One can not take
unpardonable liberties with another's possessions
and then pay for it in the gold of the land.

"Come," said she.

The Watermelon had already opened the
door and was working on the lock of the one
in the woodshed.  Henrietta paused in the
house door, the basket on her arm, and glanced
back at the others.  "Come on," said she.

"I will explain," began the general, with a
firmness that was fast weakening.

"Father," said Henrietta, "you can not explain.
Graft is dishonest.  The only thing we
can do is to run."

Billy grabbed up her gloves and obeyed with
alacrity.  Bartlett and the general followed in
dignified majesty.  Alphonse came last and
shut each door as they passed through.  With
no undue haste, and yet with no loitering to
admire a perfect summer morning, they
climbed into the cars; Alphonse alone in the
general's, the other five in Bartlett's, with
Bartlett at the wheel.

"Shall we rush them?" suggested the Watermelon
with happy anticipation.

Alphonse, like the voice of reason, calm,
unemotional, blasé, spoke: "There is a cow lane
back of the barn.  It is wide enough for the
cars.  It leads into the road farther on.  I left
the bars down."

"You're a man, Alphonse," said the Watermelon.

They glided without further comment
through the barnyard into the rocky,
tree-shaded cow lane.  The general glanced behind.
No one was in sight.  The lane was narrow
and rough, last spring's mud having hardened
into humps and ridges from the passing of
many feet.  The cars ran slowly of a necessity,
and while the engines throbbed, the noise was
not loud, and the slight hill on which the house
stood deadened the sound and concealed the
cars from any one in front.

Henrietta leaned toward the Watermelon,
who sat on the small seat just in front of her
and just behind the general.  "On such an
occasion as this," she asked, "what did 'father'
used to say?"

"Nothing," said the Watermelon.  "There
were two times when he never said anything,
one was when he was asleep and the other was
when he was escaping from the police."

"Oh," cried Billy, "he was a minister, why
should he have had to escape from the police?"

"He left the ministry," explained the Watermelon.

"What did he say when he left it?" teased
Henrietta.

"Good-by," said the Watermelon.

Then the cars turned into the road and two
men stepped from the bushes on either side.
They were tall, raw-boned country men, in
flapping straw hats and blue jeans.  Each
carried a shotgun in the crook of his arm with a
tender pleasure in the feel of it, each chewed a
big piece of tobacco and each was apparently
more than enjoying the situation.  The
Watermelon, leaning forward, with wary eyes, was
pleased to see a look of surprise flit across their
square-jawed, sun-tanned faces as they saw the
second car slowly following the first, and four
men instead of one, as the telegram had said
"one man in a big red touring car," the make
and engine number given.

For a moment the general could think of
nothing to say.  If he had been permitted to
sally forth from the front door, he could have
explained clearly, emphatically, with all his
old-time belief that being himself no one could
possibly doubt him or his good intentions.  But
now, caught thus, acknowledging his guilt by
his surreptitious leave-taking, he did not know
what to say, where to begin.  Bartlett reached
for his pocket-book.

"What's the make of your car?" demanded
the taller of the two of Bartlett, laying his
hand on the fender.

.. _`"What's the make of your car?"`:

.. figure:: images/img-170.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "What's the make of your car?"

   "What's the make of your car?"

Surprised, Bartlett told, thankful that he
had not been asked for his name.

"Engine number?" demanded the man.

Bartlett gave it.

"License number?"

"Great Scott!" snapped Bartlett.  "What do
you want next?  My age?  My number is on
the back of my car.  I have so many cars I
have forgotten it.  Go and look, or ask my man.
Alphonse, what's the number on the back?"

"97411," droned Alphonse coldly.

"Be both these cars yours?" asked the man,
puzzled and a bit disappointed.

"That car," said the general pompously, "is
mine.  Allow me."  He drew his card-case
from his pocket, and to the tall man's
consternation and Bartlett's horror, presented him
with his card.  The two withdrew and
consulted a moment.  Clearly the family party
before them was not the young man wanted in
Wilton for stealing a motor-car and a suit of
clothes, but for all that, what were they doing
in an empty house?

"We can arrest 'em and get a fine anyway,"
said the taller of the two, and the other agreed.

The Watermelon leaned forward with languid
interest, his hat on the back of his head.
"How d'ye do?" he drawled.  "What are you
doing with the popguns?"

"Hunting," grinned the spokesman pleasantly.

"Any luck?" asked the Watermelon.

"Bet cher life!" said the man.  "Got what
we were after."

"Bear?" asked the Watermelon innocently.

"Autos," said the man.

"Sir," began the general.  He felt a pressure
on his shoulder so firm, that, irritated, he turned
to remonstrate with Henrietta.  One could not
explain the situation with any degree of pride
in the first place, still less so, if some one
behind were apparently endeavoring to suppress one.

The Watermelon frowned.  "We weren't
breaking any speed limit, unless the snail is the
standard you regulate your speed laws by."  The
men no longer believed that they had
caught the thief, but if they insisted on taking
the party before a magistrate, each would have
to give his name.  With the general present,
fictitious names would only be so much waste
of breath, and the Watermelon had no desire
to give his assumed name to any one in the
employ of the law.

"Naw," sneered the man, spitting with gusto.
"There're other things to break besides speed laws."

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

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

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

"Law-abiding?" jeered the man.

"What have we done?"

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

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

The man stared and the Watermelon frowned coldly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well?" queried the Watermelon.

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





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.. _`ONLY TO BE LOST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ONLY TO BE LOST

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Father used to say—" began the Watermelon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But the key," objected Billy.

"Dick and Lizzie," added Henrietta.

"Their very ages," climaxed the general.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Grace," said the Watermelon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Dark as misery," said Henrietta dreamily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BILLY, BILLY EVERYWHERE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   BILLY, BILLY EVERYWHERE

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Father used to say—" began the Watermelon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A policeman of souls," said Henrietta softly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Jerry?" laughed Billy questioningly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LOVE IN IDLENESS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   LOVE IN IDLENESS

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Let's hear it."

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

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

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

"So am I," vowed the Watermelon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And God," added Billy piously.

"If there is one," admitted the Watermelon.

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

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

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

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

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

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





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.. _`A THIEF IN THE NIGHT`:

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   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

.. vspace:: 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good night," said she gently.

"Good night," said the Watermelon.

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

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

"Better come to bed," said he.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's set," said the Watermelon.

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

"Good night," said the Watermelon.

"Good night," said Billy, and lingered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What did he sell?"

"His birthright—for a mess of pottage."

"Why'd he do that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good night, Billy."

She slipped away and the Watermelon was
again alone.

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

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

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

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

"Robbed, General," said the Watermelon.

"Robbed?" repeated the general, sitting up.

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

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

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

"Robbed?" asked the general.

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

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

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

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

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

"I suppose so," growled Bartlett, and trailed
from the room to finish dressing.

They found the girls in the dining-room,
unaware of what had befallen them.  They had
slept late and the clock on the mantel registered
half-past nine as the three men filed into the
room.  The general was calm, pompous,
austere, but Henrietta had not lived with him
for five and thirty years without having
acquired the ability to read his every mood.

"Father," she asked, "what's the matter?
Have your sins found you out?"

The general waited for the slatternly maid-servant
to give them their breakfast and leave
the room before he spoke.

"We have been robbed," he said calmly,
casually, as one would mention the weather.  His
tones implied that he was perfectly willing to
listen to reason, but that he knew who the thief
was and anything stated to the contrary was
not reason.

"I spend my whole life, father," said Henrietta,
"finding the articles you have been robbed
of.  Your system is all right.  You have a
place for everything, but you never remember
the place."

The Watermelon pulled out the linings of
his empty pockets and held out his wrists that
they might see the cuffs tied together by a bit
of string.

Henrietta and Billy stared.

"I have never had a thief in my room," cried
Billy.  "I would like to see how it feels."

"I'm not robbed," said Henrietta, making a
hurried examination of the small-sized trunk
she carried as a hand-bag.

"It's the stable-boy," said the general.  "I
noticed him carefully last night.  He would not
look any one in the face."

"He goes home every night," objected
Henrietta.  "Mrs. Parker told me so."

"That's no reason he couldn't come back,"
said the general.

"No," said Henrietta.  "But because a boy
won't look at you is no reason to say that
he is a thief."

"He does look at you, anyway," said Billy
innocently.  "He looked at me."

"It was clever in him to take our checkbooks,"
said Bartlett.

"He will forge our names," declared the
general.  "I made a check out to pay for the board
here, signed it, too, I remember, and then I
found some cash and thought I would use that
and went to bed and forgot to destroy the
check.  I know it was the stable-boy for my
room has a balcony in front, over the porch,
and last night it was so warm I left the door
open."

"Maybe it was," agreed Henrietta.  "I hate
to suspect him, though."





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.. _`ALPHONSE RIDES AWAY`:

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   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ALPHONSE RIDES AWAY

.. vspace:: 2

"The stable-boy would have access to
the back of the house, too," said the
general, who felt that if he had not become a
general and had escaped being a master
mechanic, he would have been a famous detective.

"Yes," agreed the Watermelon.  "But I don't
think it is the boy.  I was out until after eleven,
and just before I came in I saw him drive up
with the girl.  They had been out to some dance
and he left her and drove on."

The girl appeared in the doorway wiping a
plate, slip-shod and awkward.  Henrietta
blushed, the general was painfully confused
and the other three turned their attention
hastily to their food.

"Want anything?" asked the girl.

"No, thank you," replied Henrietta gently,
feeling that in judging the stable-boy she had
somehow injured the girl.

The girl lingered a moment, glanced
significantly at the clock, and went out.

"Who could it be?" asked Billy, pleasantly
excited.

"Why, this is terrible," said Henrietta.  "If
the boy didn't do it, there is no one else who
could have, but the family."

"It looks that way," admitted the Watermelon.

"What shall we do?" gasped Billy.  "What
shall we pay them with?"

The slatternly girl again appeared in the
doorway much to the general's nervousness.

"Want anything?" she asked, and glanced
again at the clock.

"No," said Henrietta.  "No, thank you."

"I will speak to Parker," declared the
general as the girl left.

"I wish you didn't have to," sighed Henrietta.
"It's horrid to lose your money, but it
must be so much worse to need money so that
you would steal it."

"But that's the test of honesty," declared the
general.  "To need money and not steal."

"I know," admitted Henrietta, pushing aside
her coffee cup.  "I do admire strong people
who can resist, but I'm so much sorrier for the
weak who can't.  It's pitiful, that's what it is."

"Yes," cried Billy, as usual carried away by
her feelings.  "Let's not say a thing."

The door opened for the third time, but
instead of the ineffective maid-servant, the
farmer's wife, fat, red-cheeked, good-natured,
entered.

She approached the table and smiled jovially
from one to the other.

"I hope you liked everything," she said
with a gentle hint in her tones that they had
lingered around the breakfast table long
enough.  "Have you had plenty, General?
Can't I get you some more coffee, Miss Crossman?"

"No, thank you," said the general, confused
and unhappy.

Mrs. Parker smiled still.  "I am glad you
liked everything.  Your man should be back
soon.  He hasn't had any breakfast yet."

"Where'd he go?" asked the general, feeling
that that was safe enough ground.

"My husband thinks that he went out in one
of the automobiles very early, for he found
one of them gone."

"Did your husband see him go?" asked Bartlett.

"Oh, no, but he thinks he must have gone
because there is only one automobile—"

"Oh, yes," said Henrietta, and stared at the
others, fearful of reading her own crushing
suspicion in their eyes.

Alphonse, the quiet, blasé, peerless
Alphonse?  Could it be he?  That Alphonse had
gone for an early morning spin lured by the
dew on the clover fields, by the sweet chorus
of awakening birds, borne by the unsuppressible
desire to see the shy, sweet advent of a new
day creeping up the flushed and rosy sky, was
wholly out of the question.  Alphonse's soul,
in the early morning hours, was filled only with
the beauty and glory of bed.  The general had
always been forced to arouse his serving-man
and the process had often been painful, calling
for sternness and suppressed wrath on the
general's part.  Alphonse a thief was more
believable than Alphonse getting out of bed
uncalled.

Billy was the first to speak.

"The car," she whispered.

"Oh, yes," said the landlady hastily, not
quite sure what had happened or was to happen
by the expression on the faces before her.  "Oh,
yes," reassuringly, "he took the car.  My
husband wasn't up when he went—"

The general rose, his face red with anger.
"If he has taken my car," he thundered, "I
shall have him prosecuted whether Henrietta
likes it or not."

"It's an outrage," sympathized Bartlett.
"We can telegraph the police."

"Oh," moaned Henrietta, "I did love that car."

The landlady sought to reassure them in a
calm, placid manner that savored of a big,
gentle-eyed cow.  "Why, he has only gone for
a ride.  He went—"

The general paused in the doorway.  "He
went last night, madam," said he coldly, and
slightly dramatically, for the general never
believed in spoiling a good story by a mild
delivery.  "And he took not only the car, but
all our money."

Led by the general and followed by the
landlady, they made for the barn.  There, in
the middle of the floor where last night two
cars had stood side by side, a red and a blue,
was now only one, a big, blue Packard.  A few
hens stepped daintily here and there, around
and under it, while the cat cleaned her paws
contentedly from her seat on the running-board.

The general stopped in the doorway and
stared.  His car?  And such a wave of thanksgiving
rushed over him that it was not his car
that was missing that he felt he owed Alphonse
a debt of gratitude and forgave him immediately.

"My car," said he, and chuckled with relief.

"Where's mine?" demanded Bartlett, growing
red and angry.

"Where's Alphonse?" suggested the Watermelon
significantly.

Henrietta laughed with positive gratitude to
her erstwhile serving-man.  "Why," she cried,
"he left us ours."

"Alphonse was very fond of me," said the
general with some little pride, as he patted his
car tenderly.

"Yes," agreed Bartlett, "I can see that.  He
demonstrated it fully.  I am glad he didn't
love you or he might have killed Billy and me."

The landlord, followed by the slatternly
maid-servant and the shifty-eyed stable-boy,
trailed into the barn.

"Man gone off with your car?" asked the
landlord.  "I locked up last night about twelve.
He must have left before then."

"The general's man did," said Bartlett, who
felt that the general was in some way to blame.

"He has taken all our money," added Henrietta.

"A thief, eh?" said the landlord.

"Can't we follow the car by the tracks?"
asked Henrietta.  She went to the door and
peered eagerly at the many wheel tracks in
the dust of the drive.

The general waved the suggestion scornfully
aside.  "You can't tell whether the tracks are
coming or going," said he.

"All detectives do," said Billy, following
Henrietta to the door.

"I'm sorry," whispered the Watermelon in
Billy's ear.

Billy laughed.  "We have more cars at
home," said she.  "It doesn't bother me at all.
That's the trouble of being rich, you can't be
robbed and feel badly about it."

"Batchelor, you say that you were up until
after eleven," said the general, feeling that the
occasion called for intelligence.  "Did you see
Alphonse go out?"

"No," said the Watermelon.

"The landlord says, however, that he must
have gone before twelve," went on the general.
"Then don't you see how Alphonse could not
have stolen the money?  Those thefts were not
committed until after twelve."

"I don't see how you work that out," said
Henrietta, puzzling over it with knit brows.

"Don't you see, Henrietta, that if Alphonse
stole our money after twelve, he could not have
gone out in the car before eleven, so if he went
out in the car before twelve, he did not steal
the money.  He either stole the money or the car."

"Maybe he didn't take the money," said
Henrietta, feeling vaguely and disappointedly
that she was not a person with detective-like
instincts.

"You see," said the general, "if Alphonse
took the car, he did not take the money; if he
took the money, he did not take the car."

"He certainly did take the money," snapped
the farmer.

"And my car," added Bartlett angrily.

"He could not have taken both," declared the
general.

"You were robbed last night, weren't you?"
demanded the farmer.  "Well, then?"

"And my car is gone, isn't it?" demanded Bartlett.

"Yes, yes," acknowledged the general,
feeling that every word he said only made the
other two angrier, but still clinging to his
deductions as to his life's principles.  "Yes, of
course; but Alphonse could not have done both.
He went off with the car before eleven, so he
could not have robbed us after twelve—"

"Sir," interrupted the farmer with a quiet
dignity that was impressive, "do you accuse
any of us of stealing?"

"No, no," protested the general, now hopelessly
rattled.  "But if Alphonse stole the money—"

"Alphonse swiped both," said the Watermelon,
and that settled it as far as the general
was concerned, for the general had boundless
faith in the young man's deductive abilities.  "I
went in about eleven.  He took the car out, ran
it down the road a bit and then came back
and sneaked our things."

"Certainly," said Bartlett, who could not
help feeling irritated with the general for the
fault of his man.

Billy laughed.  "All this bother about nothing,"
said she.  "Dad, what's one car, more or less?"

"A car is a car, Billy," said Bartlett coldly,
refusing to be comforted for the ruin of his
plan to keep Batchelor away from the city over
Saturday.

"Yes," agreed Henrietta sympathetically,
"any one hates to lose a car."

"But when you have seven," objected Billy.

"We haven't got them here, have we?" asked
Bartlett.

"No, but we have one, and that's enough for
five," declared Billy, finding the usual difficulty
in persuading people to count their blessings.
"We didn't need two, anyway."

"Yes, we did," said the Watermelon, thinking
of the tonneau with only Billy and him, the
general in front completely absorbed with the car.

"Why?" asked Billy.

"Why," stammered the Watermelon, who
no longer cared to flirt with Billy and who had
spoken without thinking, "why, so the general
and your father could each run a car," he
explained weakly.

"Oh, yes," chirped Billy.  "What will they
do now?"

The Watermelon turned and glanced out of
the wide doors, down the tree-shaded road, and
thought pityingly of the unfortunate Alphonse,
gone off at the wrong time, with the whole
country-side on the watch for a lone youth in a
big red touring car.  That the car was of a
different make from the one they were hunting
for would not impress the sheriffs so forcibly
as the fact that the youth also carried a
time-piece as big as a clock, along with a cigarette
case, cuff links and stick pin, all marked plainly
and beyond question, with the damning initials,
W.H.B.

The Watermelon laughed softly, and glancing
at Billy, laughed again.  With Bartlett
going directly back to the city, he would not
have to confess to make things right.  He
could leave them at the telegraph office and
drift away on some pretext or another, leaving
Billy gaily, head up, as became a successful
financier, not slink away like a whipped dog,
with only the scorn and loathing in her eyes to
remember, to obliterate all the other memories
of that one nearly perfect week.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`OH, FOR A HORSE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   OH, FOR A HORSE

.. vspace:: 2

The farmer forgave the general with
lofty dignity and turned to Bartlett with
suggestions and offers of help.  There was a
telephone in the village store.  They could
telephone Boston or Portland, or they could
telephone Harrison and Harrison could telegraph
the larger cities.  With the police notified
promptly, Alphonse would not be able to get far.

Bartlett meditatively chewed a straw and
pondered the suggestion, leaning against the
nearest stall and frowning thoughtfully at the
general's car, while the others stood around
him in a semicircle.

They were ten miles from the nearest railroad,
and the train service, when they did strike
a road, was decidedly poor in that out-of-the-way
locality.  Still, by good luck, quick work
and prompt connections, Batchelor would be
able to reach Boston late that afternoon or
evening and New York before ten A.M.,
Saturday morning, and at ten A.M. Saturday the
last fight was to be fought, the last stand made.
Without their brilliant young leader, the
opponents to the cotton ring would be
outnumbered and outclassed, hopelessly beaten.
Bartlett's fighting blood was up at the thought.
Was he to have his week spoiled by the worthless
Alphonse's deviltry?  Batchelor should not
run the slightest chance of reaching Boston
that day, if he could help it.  Henrietta had a
little money in her bag that would tide them
over.  Better avoid anything to do with
telegraph and telephones as long as possible.  They
could make an attempt to reach Harrison and
get lost.  But getting lost wasn't as easy as it
appeared, when the general was along, thoroughly
determined not to get lost.  Bartlett's
thoughts were broken in on by the Watermelon
in a way that caused him quick alarm.  The
young man had at last awakened to the gravity
of the situation, as Bartlett had been expecting
him to do ever since the trip began.

"We had better telephone," said the Watermelon,
"as Parker says.  We can telephone for
money and have it sent to Harrison, and we
can ride to Harrison and probably get there the
same time as the money does and get the train
for Boston.  It's time we were back in New
York, anyway."

The trip was ended and the sooner he left
Billy the better.  He could give them the slip
at Harrison and once more hit the road.

"Telephoning from here won't help matters
at all," objected Bartlett, fighting for that
opportunity to get lost again, just for one more
day—twelve hours would be enough.  "We can
drive to Harrison and telegraph from there.
It is only a ten-mile drive.  We can make it in
fifteen minutes."

"No joy-riding," warned Henrietta, "when
we haven't any money to pay the fines.  I don't
want to do my time in the workhouse."

"We will do it in twenty minutes, then,"
laughed Bartlett, who saw another way to
create a delay that might be used with advantage.
The Parkers scorned to accept the few dollars
Henrietta still had in the dark recesses of
her bag.

"You can send it to us," said they, and the
farmer added, heaping coals of fire on the
general's unfortunate head, "We trust you
perfectly."

The Watermelon looked sharply at Bartlett
and wondered if he were up to any tricks.  The
Watermelon had only ten more miles of Billy
and he didn't want to shorten the precious time
by a confession if there were no need for one.

"Let's hurry," said he.  There was no need
of prolonging the misery in the thought of the
parting.

"Worrying over his affairs," thought Bartlett.
"He has come to at last."

The general insisted upon driving, and as it
was his car, Bartlett perforce had to be content.
He protested, however, that he knew the road
thoroughly, and could direct the general with
no instructions at all from the farmer, waving
them all good-naturedly aside.

They were all quiet as they started down the
road.  Henrietta was depressed thinking about
Alphonse.  She had always stood in awe of his
superlative virtues, and the fact that he lacked
several was a bit of a shock.  The general also
was grieved.  He had trusted Alphonse and
Alphonse had failed him.  Billy was silent, for
she wanted to think, and all her thoughts were
of the youth beside her, tall, slim, good-looking,
with his merry eyes and devil-may-care
indifference.

They could all go to New York together, she
planned, and later, when her father and
herself went to their summer place on the coast of
Maine, they would get him to visit them there
in their own home.  And in the winter—and
Billy's thoughts lost themselves in the hazy
rosy glow of the future, with its possibilities
and pleasures.

It was after three.  The day was intensely
warm, even in the shady wooded road on
which they found themselves.  They had been
running through the woods for nearly an hour,
and apparently had not reached the end of it.
The last abandoned farm-house, gray, weather-beaten,
forlorn, had long ago been passed.  The
birds chattered shrilly in the leafy profusion
overhead; somewhere out of sight in the
underbrush a brook gurgled refreshingly over its
stony bed, and once, far away and very faintly,
they heard the wild loon's dismal cry.

The general stopped the car and turned
sidewise to face those on the back seat.  "We are
lost," said he.  "Look at the odometer.  We
have come twenty miles since we left Stoneham
and we are no nearer Harrison than when
we started."

"Lost again," wailed Henrietta.  "How very
stupid we are!"

"It's my fault," admitted Bartlett truthfully,
but with contrition.  "I said to take this turn
back there near that barrel factory."

"We can go back," suggested Billy.

"Parker told me last night," said the general
gloomily, "that there was no settlement north
of here for forty miles.  We have probably
come north."

"If we have come twenty miles, we can go
twenty more without dying," said Bartlett.

"I don't know," laughed Henrietta.  "I am
famished now."

"So am I," wailed Billy.  "Henrietta,
haven't we a thing to eat?"

"Not a thing," said Henrietta.

"Hit her up," cried Bartlett jovially.  "We
will break some more speed laws, by George.
I want something to eat."

"We have heard nothing from father,"
teased Henrietta, her laughing eyes on the
Watermelon's face, full of tender amusement.
He was so young and looked so serious and
almost unhappy that she was unhappy herself.

The Watermelon was unhappy.  By this
time they should have been in Harrison, with
the parting over, and he wanted it over.  The
thought that they would probably be together
a day longer did not please him.  The sooner
he took to the road again and became a bum
and a hobo, the better.  Billy did not care for
him.  He was the only one who would suffer,
and every moment he was with her only made
the suffering worse.  He turned to Henrietta
with relief from the thoughts that were
insistently bothering him and would not let him
alone.

"Father was never in a motor-car," said he.
"He used to say that his funeral would be just
another irony of fate.  The only chance he had
to ride, he wouldn't be able to appreciate it."

"I know that it is terrible to be poor," said
Henrietta, "but I think people ought to enjoy
other things than just those that money can
give."

"What things?"

"Why, the woods and fields, a beautiful day—"

"Rent day, probably, and no rent money.
Father used to say when you're poor, every day
is rent day."

"We're nearing the end of the woods," cried
Bartlett.  "And I think I see a house."

And then the car stopped.

"Gid ap," chirped Bartlett.

Henrietta leaned forward.  The general was
hastily trying all the brakes, slipping one lever
then the other, fussing here and fussing there,
and Henrietta knew the symptoms of approaching
trouble.

"Father, is there anything the matter?"

"Oh, no," pleaded Billy.  "Not here?"

The Watermelon leaned forward and opened
the door.  "Every one get out," he ordered.
"We can walk to the house.  We mustn't
monkey with the car unless we want a pile of
junk on our hands."

He stepped out and turned to help the girls.

"Not at all," declared the general.  "I know
all about a car.  I can fix it directly."  He
alighted and started to raise the bonnet.  The
Watermelon intervened.

"Look in the gasolene tank first," he begged.

The general was already deep in the mechanism,
oblivious to all else.  "It's the carburetor—"

"Carburetor nothing," pleaded the Watermelon.
"It's the gasolene."

"Yes," agreed Henrietta indiscreetly, "maybe
it is."

"That won't help us any," snapped the
general angrily.  "Where can we get more?  Much
better to have something else wrong—"

"Not for the car," said the Watermelon.
"None of us would be able to fix it."

"My dear sir," said the general warmly, "I
have owned this car for a year—"

"I know," murmured the Watermelon.  "I
think it marvelous."

"I am perfectly capable—"

"Will you bet with me," interrupted the
Watermelon, "that it's the gasolene?  Alphonse
may have filled the other car at the expense of
this one."

It was the gasolene, or rather the lack of
gasolene, that had stopped the car.

"That's where a horse beats a car," lamented
Henrietta.  "You don't have to keep bothering
with their works."

She sat down on the car step and clasped her
hands in her lap.  "We could spend the night
here, but in the morning we wouldn't be any
nearer gasolene than we are now."

"I'm not fretting about gasolene," said Bartlett.
"I want something to eat.  Let's all go
to that house—"

"We can't leave the car," objected the general.

"No one could go off with the car," argued
Henrietta.

"And we can get them to send a horse,"
added Bartlett.  "I am starving."

"I feel like the car," said Billy.  "I have no
gasolene."

"I can not leave the car," reiterated the general,
and Henrietta realized that that settled it
as far as the general was concerned, and that
it would take her greatest tact to unsettle it.

"I will go and get a farmer and a horse,"
said the Watermelon, unexpectedly siding with
the general.  "We would have to be here
anyway, to see that they towed it in right."

"A horse would do," said Billy gravely.
"We don't need the farmer."

"I have hopes of Billy sometimes," said
Bartlett, regarding his daughter quizzically.  "I
sometimes even think that she may grasp the
difference between sunshine and rain and
realize it's best to keep out of the latter."

Billy looked hurt.  "Father doesn't like me
any more," said she, adding shrewdly, "He
thinks I'm getting rather too old for him, anyway."

Bartlett blushed, Henrietta laughed and the
general roared.

"You grown-up daughters are so hard to explain,"
said he.  "Not once do you offer to be
a sister to us."

"I wouldn't be a sister to father for anything,"
protested Billy.  "He must be fifty, at least."

Bartlett flushed angrily.  He dared not
glance at Henrietta.  "I am forty-five," said
he coldly, which was at least two years and a
half as near the truth as Billy's rash statement.

"Yes," sneered Billy.  "And I'm only eighteen."

Henrietta changed the subject.  When one is
eighteen one can announce the fact loudly and
cheerfully.  When one is thirty-five, one
prefers to talk of other things.

"Why not all go for the horse?  The car will
be all right, father; and I am so hungry," she
added pathetically.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A BROKER PRINCE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   A BROKER PRINCE

.. vspace:: 2

"I am going," said Billy with determination.

"We can't leave the general alone," objected
Bartlett.

"I don't see how I would be able to help the
general any," returned Billy in injured accents.

"I thought you could push him in the car,"
explained Bartlett with gentle sarcasm.

"You all wait here," said the Watermelon.
"I will go and get you something to eat and
see about having the car towed, also about
rooms for the night."

"Why not all go?" pleaded Henrietta.  "Why
wait here starving—"

"I can go faster alone," answered the Watermelon.

"Certainly, certainly," seconded the general.
"We would have to help you girls over every
wooden fence and under every barb wire one
we came to.  You would probably even then
get stuck on one or under the other."

"I never get stuck on anything," contradicted
Billy perversely.

Henrietta laughed.  "Billy, cheer up.  The
worst is yet to come."

"That house may be empty," said the Watermelon.
"Then we would be all over there and
have to come back."

"We've been in empty houses before," said
Henrietta crossly.

"But what good would that do, to be over
there without food?" asked the Watermelon.

"What good to be here without gasolene?"
retorted Henrietta.

"I can not leave the car," reiterated the
general.

"Father," exclaimed the exasperated Henrietta,
"some night I will find that you have
taken the car to bed with you."

"Suppose we leave the car here—" began the
general argumentatively.

"We can't," sighed Henrietta.  "Such a
supposition would be impossible with you the
owner of the car."

The Watermelon laughed.  "Aw, cut out the
conversation," said he.  "I will be right back."

"So will I," said Billy.

Now the Watermelon objected.  He did not
feel equal to a *tête-à-tête* with the adorable
Billy, adorable still, though a bit cross.

"Cut out the conversation," mimicked Billy,
and scrambled with more speed than grace
under the broken bars of the worm-eaten fence.

The Watermelon leaped the fence after her.
Henrietta slipped under the fence after the
Watermelon.  Bartlett hesitated one moment,
glanced guiltily at the deserted general and
then followed Henrietta.

Billy and the Watermelon were young and
light of foot and soon outdistanced the stout
Bartlett, who did his gallant best to keep up
with the nimble Henrietta, but found that the
years of good living told against him.

Henrietta waited politely for him at the
stone wall which Billy had just scaled and the
Watermelon jumped.

"What are we hurrying for?" asked Bartlett,
removing his hat to wipe his heated brow.

"I am sure I don't know," laughed Henrietta.
"Monkey see, monkey do, I suppose.
That is why there is such a thing as style.  No
one thinks."

"If we waited here," suggested Bartlett,
"our dinner would come to us."

"As the office to the man," agreed Henrietta.

"Precisely."

Henrietta sat down on the wall and Bartlett
leaned beside her, gazing over the field to the
distant woods.  He felt thoroughly comfortable
and contented.  No matter what happened
now, Batchelor could not reach the city by
Saturday.  The cotton ring was saved.

The scene before them was a typical Maine
landscape, rugged, hilly, beautiful, with the
long shadows of approaching evening creeping
across the fields.  From where they rested, the
farm seen from the road was hidden from
sight.  The whole place seemed desolate,
primeval, with a beauty and a charm that were
all its own.

Henrietta drew a quick sigh of pleasure and
fell silent, with dreaming eyes wandering into
the mysterious shades of the distant woodland,
her hunger for the time forgotten.  The place,
the time of day, just at eventide, suggested
romance, the one man and the one woman, and
the world not lost, but just attained.  She
wished she was Billy, young and foolish and
pretty, and that Bartlett was the Watermelon,
long-limbed, broad-shouldered, with the glory
of youth that sees only glory down the
pathway of the future.

Bartlett broke in upon her reveries.  "See
that hill?" and he waved toward the slope
ahead of them.

Henrietta nodded, still wrapped in her
dream.  "The hill of life," said she, "with glory
at its top."

"A railroad," said Bartlett, prosaically
matter-of-fact, "a railroad has been cut through the
hill.  See, there go the children, suddenly out of
sight."

Henrietta came back to earth.  "How do
you know?  Maybe there is just a steep incline
the other side and that is why they disappeared
so quickly."

"No, there is a cut up there.  Don't you
notice how abrupt it looks, and there are no
trees or bushes.  They haven't had time to
grow since the cut was made.  And those big
lumps, see, covered with grass, they are the
earth thrown up out of the cut.  It's the Grand
Trunk.  It runs through Maine, you know,
into New Hampshire."

Henrietta nodded and frowned.  "There is
no more romance," and she threw out her
hands with a graceful gesture of hopeless
disappointment.  "It went when the first
steam-engine came."

Bartlett looked at her, amused, with a man's
tolerance.  "What do you want romance for?
A railroad pays better."

"Pays, pays, pays," cried Henrietta.  "I
want something that doesn't pay—that isn't
associated with returns.  You men have nothing
but a bank-book for a heart.  It's so lovely
here, so quiet.  Don't you feel it?  With the
shadows creeping across the pasture?  I was
young and beautiful—"

"And a princess."

"No, a goose maid.  My hair was brown and
thick and hung over each shoulder in two long
braids.  I was bare-headed, with sleeves rolled
to the elbows of my shapely arms—"

"You would have got malaria," said Bartlett.
"It's very damp here.  I think there must
be a pond over there in the woods.  You can
hear the frogs."

"Oh, yes," agreed Henrietta.  "I would have
had malaria and rheumatism, but I wouldn't
have cared, then—for you see, I had come
after the geese, and down here in the tiny glen,
with the hush of evening over all, I had met
him—"

"Who?  Me?"

"My lover," said Henrietta.

"Me," said Bartlett softly, and to Henrietta's
surprise he laid his hand gently on hers.

Henrietta blushed and looked away.  Her
lover, this stout, grim, hard-eyed man of
business?  She raised her hands to her cheeks and
her heart fluttered so she could hardly breathe,
while before her startled gaze swam the vision
the years had been unconsciously forming.
Had romance come to her thus late, in this
guise?  Was a middle-aged member of the
New York Stock Exchange her prince?

"Henrietta," he asked gently, leaning toward
her, "shall I finish the story?"

"Why no," said Henrietta, "there was no
finish.  It had just begun."

"Just begun," whispered Bartlett, and took
her suddenly into his arms.

"Oh, please," begged Henrietta, feeling that
modesty called for some remonstrance.

"Please," he taunted.  "When you were the
goose girl and I was the prince, you didn't
say please."

Henrietta laughed.  "And neither did the
prince," she dared him.

"No decent lover would," said Bartlett,
bending and kissing her full on her whimsical
mouth.

After some little time they saw the others
reappear over the top of the hill.  Henrietta
had returned to her seat on the fence and
Bartlett was beside her, his arm around her
waist, her head on his shoulder with a
simplicity truly bucolic.  So might the Parkers'
shifty-eyed stable-boy be wooing the slatternly
maid-servant in some secluded place behind the
barn.

Henrietta straightened quickly and blushing
crimson after the manner of the maid-servant,
raised her hands to her hair so that one
side of her coiffure might not appear
unnecessarily flattened before the sharp eyes of the
youthful Billy.

"Aren't we silly?" said she, glancing at
Bartlett with the same expression with which the
maid-servant would have glanced at the stable-boy.

"Why silly?" demanded Bartlett.  "We love
each other, don't we?  Why shouldn't I put my
arm around you?"

"Oh," said Henrietta, "you should, but—er—er
we seem so old for such things."

"Old?" Bartlett laughed.  "Love is the
oldest thing in the world."

"I know," agreed Henrietta, "but not before people."

"Why not before people?  People have
become too artificial.  They must not love, nor
hate, nor have any feelings, apparently, before
people.  Feelings are interesting and we ought
to show them more."

Henrietta laughed.  "Oh, you are silly, silly,
silly.  I never knew a New York broker could
be so silly, so mushy."

"There's not a man living whom the right
woman can't make mushy.  Women never realize
how silly men are at bottom, my own.  They
are frightened by our exteriors, by the ingrain
fear of the chattel for her master, born in
women since Eve handed the larger share of
the apple to Adam."

"I always thought that I would be dignified
and sweet—"

"You are, my love."

"No, I am as silly as you.  I put my head on
your shoulder just as these girls do whom you
see in Central Park on Sunday afternoons.  I
never thought that I would be like that."

"You have never loved before—"

"Indeed, I have.  I have loved nearly every
one I have ever met.  Most all girls do."

"That isn't love.  Merely an increased
vibration of the muscles of the heart.  Love—ah,
Henrietta, do I have to tell you what love is?"

"No," whispered Henrietta.  "It's just giving."

She paused, gazing before her into the deepening
shadows of the evening with misty eyes,
for the first time realizing the completeness of
life.

She nodded after a moment toward the
approaching Billy and the Watermelon.  "What's
the matter with the children?  They look so
serious, and yet they must have something to
eat, for they are carrying bundles."

"Probably couldn't arrange for a tow for
Charlie's car and see where we sit up with it
all night and hold its head."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SEVEN O'CLOCK EXPRESS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SEVEN O'CLOCK EXPRESS

.. vspace:: 2

As Bartlett said, the hill was cut through
by a railroad.  The deep gully brought
Billy and the Watermelon to a halt when they
had outstripped Bartlett and Henrietta, leaving
them behind at the foot of the hill.  The sides
of the gully were overgrown with grass and
tangled briers, but a narrow foot-path led
down to the tracks and up the incline on the
other side.  The Watermelon helped Billy down
one side and dragged her up the other.

"I would hate to be a tramp," panted Billy
as she reached the other side and paused a
moment for breath.  "I would get so cross if I
were hungry and knew I couldn't get anything
to eat for a long time."

The Watermelon flushed hotly, but she was
not looking, and when he spoke he spoke
carelessly enough.  "You would get used to it," said
he.  "You can get used to anything.  Father
used to say that the idea of hell for all eternity
was an absurdity—you were sure to get used
to it and then it wouldn't count any more as
a punishment."

"I suppose that's so," agreed Billy.  "But
how do you know?  You weren't ever a tramp,
were you, Jerry?"

"A tramp, kid, is the only man in America
to-day, besides the millionaire, who is his own
master.  Do you know that?"

"I would kind of hate that sort of master,"
said Billy.

"A tramp never has to worry about rent—"

"I know, but I should think the house might
be worth the worry."

The Watermelon changed the subject.

A grim, elderly woman, thin and work-worn
before her time, listened to their troubles in
the faded, weather-gray farm-house.  Her man,
she explained, was out in the fields with the
horses, but when he returned, she would send
him around and he would tow the car in for
them.  She never took boarders.  The house
was a sight, but if they didn't mind, she did
not and they could have two rooms.  She
wrapped some bread, fruit and cookies up for
them in newspapers, and they started back to
wait with the others by the machine until the
farmer came.

The still hush of evening was over everything,
creeping with the lengthening shadows
across the pasture.  A flock of turkeys was
making noisy preparations for bed in some
trees near by.  The frogs had begun to croak
and once in a while a whippoorwill called
from the woods.  In an adjoining hay-field,
hurrying to get in the last load before dark, the
Watermelon saw the farmer.  A pair of sorry
looking nags drooped drearily, attached to the
cart with its high, shaky load of new-mown hay.

"I'm going to speak to him myself," said the
Watermelon, stopping.  "It will save time.
You wait here.  I won't be long."

"Give me the food," said Billy.  "I will take
it to the others.  Poor things, they must be
starving."

"I won't be long," objected the Watermelon.
"You can't carry it alone."

"Indeed, I can," protested Billy.

The Watermelon laughed down at her.
"You couldn't get up the other side of the
crossing," he teased.

"A girl," said Billy sagely, "is a lot more
capable when she is alone than when she is
with a man."

She took the ungainly bundle and he
watched her hurry away across the fields, slim
and graceful, dainty and sweet, while he was—a
tramp!  His eyes darkened with pain and he
threw one hand out after the small figure in a
gesture that was full of mingled longing and
hopelessness.

"Billy, Billy," he whispered, then turned
from the thoughts which were coming thick
and fast and started toward the distant field
and the farmer.

.. _`"Billy, Billy," he whispered`:

.. figure:: images/img-274.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Billy, Billy," he whispered

   "Billy, Billy," he whispered

The farmer listened with blunt stupidity,
hot and tired and cross.  Yes, he would come
for the car as soon as he could, but the hay
had to be got in first.  It was late now.
That train whistle you could hear was the
seven o'clock express.  His horses were tired,
too, but, of course, if he were paid, why that
made a difference.  He would be around as
soon as he could get his load in.  It was the last
load, anyway.

The Watermelon turned and far in the distance,
echoing and reëchoing through the hills,
he heard again the scream of the approaching
train.

"Billy win be across the tracks by this time,"
he thought.  "I will have to wait for it to pass.
Glad it ain't a freight."

He hurried moodily through the field.  His
position had become intolerable and yet he
could find no chance to get away without
revealing his identity, and to do that now would
do no good.  They could not reach the railroad
any sooner than they were trying to.  He
longed for the morrow that would end it all
and yet dreaded the barrenness of the future
without Billy.

As he approached the cut, he saw the smoke
of the train rising above the bushes, an
express, tearing its way through the evening calm
like some terrible passion searing the soul.  The
Watermelon stepped to the edge of the cut and
glanced carelessly downward.

There was Billy on the track, struggling to
free herself from the rail which held one small
foot.  Around the bend came the huge engine
with its headlight already lit for the wild night
run.

The next two minutes were ever after a
blank to the Watermelon.  He was in the cut,
beside the white-faced, struggling girl almost
simultaneously with seeing her.  As he shot
down the bank, he felt for and drew his knife.
The engineer had seen them and the engine
screamed a warning, while the emergency
brakes shrieked as they slipped, grinding on
the rails.  On his knees, with one slash, the
Watermelon cut the lacings which, becoming
knotted, had held her prisoner, then with one
and the same move, he had regained his feet
and forced her flat against the bank, as the
train whirled by in a cloud of dust and cinders,
brakes grinding, wheels slipping, whistle
screaming, a white-faced engineer leaning
horrified from the cab window.

Trembling violently, Billy clung sobbing to
the Watermelon, her face hidden in his breast.
The Watermelon crushed her to him as if he
would never let her go, his arms tightening
with the agony of remembrance.  He was
trembling as much as she from the horror of that
terrible moment.  His head rested on her hair
and he talked, poured out his love in a rush of
misery and thankfulness.  Words tumbled over
themselves and were repeated again and again,
in phrases hot from his lips came all his
pent-up longing for the girl.

"Sweetheart, sweetheart," he whispered with
white lips as Billy still sobbed.  "Darling, hush.
Dear heart, my love, my Billy."

After a time her sobs stopped and she raised
her face.  The Watermelon bent his head and
they kissed frankly with the simplicity of
perfect understanding, perfect love.  For a
moment they clung together, still, then Billy was
the first to rally.

"We've got to go," said she, her hands
raised to her tumbled hair as she tried her best
to laugh.

The Watermelon caught her hands and
forced them down, drinking her in with
hungry eyes.  Then he bent his head and buried
his face for a moment in the backs of her
small hands, while something like a sob shook
his shoulders.

"Jerry," whispered the girl, a woman now,
tender, compassionate, gracious.

The Watermelon dropped her hands and
turned abruptly.  "I'm a damn fool," he
muttered and picked up the bundle, still beside the
track.

"Why did you come?" she asked, all solicitude
for him.  "You might have been killed."

The Watermelon did not answer.  He
stalked across the track to the other foot-path
and Billy perforce had to follow.

Henrietta and Bartlett had not even heard
the wild scream of the engine as it shrieked
past, and when the Watermelon and Billy
joined them, were too preoccupied to notice
anything for long in any one else.  All four
returned to the general, quiet and apparently
depressed.  The general was depressed himself.
He did not see how it would be possible to get
gasolene in that neighborhood, and without
gasolene they might as well be without a car.

Billy divided the bread and fruit, and
without a word, they sat side by side and partook
of their humble repast, the two girls, the
general, the tramp and the financier.  The color
returned to Billy's face and in her eyes was a
great and shining light every time she looked
at the Watermelon, where he sat on the step
of the car, bread in one hand, an apple in the
other, a part of the paper spread on his knees
to serve for napkin.

But he would not look at her.  His face was
still white and he read the paper before him
that he might not think.  Billy knew of his love
and loved in return, white, pure, decent Billy,
and he a filthy piece of flotsam washed for the
moment from the slime of the gutter.  Slowly,
precisely, he reread the article he had just read
without having comprehended a word of it.

The parting that evening was slightly
prolonged, much to the general's annoyance.  He
was tired and wanted to go to bed, and why the
others should prefer to linger on the small
stoop which served for porch, he could not
understand, and what he could not understand
always vexed him.  Bartlett wanted to take a
stroll before turning in, and when the general
kindly offered to accompany him, he decided
suddenly and rudely, the general thought, that
he didn't care to go.  Henrietta wanted to sit
on the stoop apparently all night.  Billy wanted
to walk, too.  Walking, the general decided,
ran in the Bartlett family, but instead of taking
a stroll with her father, she hung around the
stoop with Henrietta; while the Watermelon
did not know what he wanted to do as far as
the general could make out.  He was quiet,
strangely uncommunicative, seemed to be
thinking deeply on some important subject.
Worried over the past week, thought the general.
Irritated and tired, the general could not
bother with such nonsense and tramped off to bed.

The Watermelon felt that he could not say
good night alone with Billy.  He had read the
desire in her eyes for a bit of a walk with him
and to escape the temptation, he wished them
all good night and followed the general up to
bed.

All the strength of the man cried constantly
for the girl, for her sweetness, her charm, her
grace.  But he loved with the love that is love,
that will give all and ask nothing, a love that
is rare and fine and that comes to king and
peasant alike, and to no one twice, to some not
at all.  His week was up.  He would slip away
that night when they were all asleep.  Billy
would forget him and he would be better with
his old cronies, fat blear-eyed Mike and
James of the bon-ton.

Long he lay on his narrow cot and stared at
the gray square of the window, while the
gentleman he was born fought gallantly with the
tramp he had become.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`RICH AND POOR ALIKE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   RICH AND POOR ALIKE

.. vspace:: 2

He lay staring at the window while
Bartlett's and the general's snores rose
and fell, mingling in a steadily growing
crescendo of sound.  As he stared, he noticed
suddenly a faint glow in the east.  It was too early
for daybreak and the glow was of a different
color, brighter, more orange in tint.  He
watched it a while without comprehending,
waiting until it was time for him to steal away
from Billy, back to the road again.  And as
he watched, he was brought to quick consciousness
of what it was by a tiny crimson flame
which appeared for an instant and was gone.

The Watermelon leaped to the window.  The
barn, which, fortunately, was unlike Maine
barns, stood some little way from the house
instead of being attached to it.  With a mighty
burst of flames the roof caught from the sides,
which had been slowly smoldering.  Every
moment the flames mounted higher and higher,
fanned by a bit of a wind that had arisen when
the sun went down.  The place was filled with
the summer hay, and even as the Watermelon
took in the scene, he knew that there was no
hope to do more than to save the live stock, if
they could do that.

Turning he aroused the general and Bartlett.

"Get up," he whispered, not to disturb the
girls, "the barn's on fire."

Bartlett was up and half in his clothes
before the general had opened his eyes.  The
Watermelon had already slipped quietly from
the room.

"Fire," cried the general hoarsely, at last
awake.  He stood a moment in the window,
brightly lighted now from the dancing flames
in the summer darkness.  Then he swore.

"My car!"

"Quick."  snapped Bartlett.  "The gasolene—"

"There was no gasolene," said the general
sadly, as one would talk about a loved and
dying friend.  He turned mournfully from the
window.

The fire had gained too much headway to
leave the slightest possibility of saving the
barn.  The farmer, with the help of the Watermelon,
Bartlett and the general, had barely time
to lead out the horses and turn the cows into
a temporary shelter.  When that was done there
was nothing more that could be done but to
watch the walls crumble and the roof fall in
a shower of sparks and a roar of flames,
leaping and dancing in a mad riot of destruction.
All night the fire burned and all night the four
men and the three women turned their efforts
to protect the house.

The general, by right and instinct, took
command.  He formed a bucket brigade, stationing
the Watermelon on the roof, at one end of the
line, and the girls and the farmer's wife at the
well to fill the buckets at the other end of the
line.  They worked hard and quietly, as people
work when face to face with the grim forces
of nature.  Under the general's able
management the few sparks which did threaten
were quickly extinguished and save for
a slight scorching here and there the house was
safe.  In the excitement no one but the
general thought of the general's car.

The cold, gray streaks of dawn found them
worn out, excited and hungry.  Unable to
console the farmer and his wife, the five drew in
a semicircle around the smoldering heap which
had been the barn, and forlornly watched the
last tiny flames licking around the twisted,
blackened ruin that had once been a motor-car.

"Gone," said the general sadly.

And Billy sniffed.

"Better Alphonse had taken it," lamented
Henrietta.

"What shall we do now?" asked Bartlett.
It was Saturday and Batchelor would not be
able to reach New York now no matter what
happened.  He had won, the ring was safe,
but he turned sadly to the general, and laid
his hand kindly on his old friend's shoulder.
"Hard luck, man," said he.  "Hard luck."

"We will have to go home," said Henrietta dully.

"We have no money," replied the general
quietly, unmoved by his penniless condition,
thinking only of the motor-car that was no more.

"I have a little," said Henrietta.  "About six
dollars."

"We owe at least all of that here for supper
and rooms," said Bartlett.

Henrietta glanced from one to the other,
then laughed, a gay little bubble of mirth.
They had no money, but what did that matter?
What did anything matter when one loved and
is loved?  She felt guilty because she was not
sorrier over the loss of the car, and she patted
the general lovingly on the shoulder.

"Cheer up, daddy, we haven't a cent, none
of us," she crooned.

"We can telegraph," suggested Billy.

"From where?" asked Bartlett shortly.

"Why, we can drive somewhere where we
can," returned Billy desperately, under her
father's calm scrutiny of amusement.

"Drive what?" asked Bartlett.

"A horse," said Henrietta mildly.

"What horse?" questioned Bartlett.  "There
are two.  The farmer wants them both to help
clear up and to go to a neighbor's for
assistance.  What shall we drive?"

"Shank's mare," said Henrietta.  "At the
nearest farm, we can get a team and drive to
some town where we can telegraph."

Bartlett and Billy agreed.  The general said
nothing.  There was nothing to say.  The dream
of his heart, the occupation of his days, was
gone.  What was there to say?

The Watermelon also was silent.  He felt
that he could not leave them, now that they
were again in trouble.  When they reached the
town and had telegraphed, he would go—back
to the road.  He was chewing a straw, hands
in his pockets, gazing with the others in dull
apathy at the remains of the car, and he raised
his head instinctively to read the sky for
approaching storms.  There would be a moon that
night and a good breeze, which would make
walking easy.

"Hungry?" asked Billy gaily, smiling at
him, her eyes asking what the matter was.
Had she done anything to offend him since the
evening before when they had climbed the
railroad cut together?

"I'm always hungry, Billy," said he and
joined the general on the way to the house.

Billy stood a moment, hurt and flushed, then
she followed the others in to breakfast.

The farmer's wife had made some hot coffee,
strong and black, and fried some bacon, and
with thick slices of bread and butter, they all
ate ravenously at the bare deal table in the
kitchen, with no pretense whatever of
tablecloth or napkins.  The Watermelon and the
farmer's wife stood alone in the kitchen after
the others had left and he looked down kindly
at her with the camaraderie felt only by one
unfortunate in trouble for another in a like place.

"It's damn hard on you," he said.

"And on him," said the woman.  "All the
hay was just in."

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures—"
murmured the Watermelon laconically,
instinctively turning to the Bible on every
occasion.  "Pity you aren't a man.  Then you could
chuck the whole show and hit the road with
me.  I'm stony broke, too."

He patted her shoulder gently and tears
leaped into the woman's tired eyes.  She cried
a bit and he soothed her softly as one would
soothe a tired child.

"Those others," said she, wiping her eyes on
her coarse apron, "they are kind, but they don't
understand."

"They mean well," said the Watermelon,
"but you have to go through the mill yourself,
to *do* well.  I know what poverty means.  Its
ways ain't ways of pleasantness by a dog-gone
sight."

.. vspace:: 2

"Beggars all, beggars all," cried Henrietta,
as they started up the road, in the dewy
freshness of early morning.

It was still early and quite cool, with the
breeze of the night following them, laden with
the depressing odor of charred timbers and
burning leather.  The road wound around a
hill, sloping now and again into the valley and
rising again to the heights.  The view swept
fields and hills and woods, all of the deep green
of mid-June, and over all bent the blue sky of
a summer day.

The air was like ozone.  It was a physical
joy simply to walk, to breathe the odor of
fields and woods and open places and to let
one's eyes dwell on the beauty and the glory
of the land.

"I am glad it pleases you, Henrietta," said
the general tartly.

Henrietta sobered.  "Father, I feel as badly
as you do about the car.  But I can't go into
mourning for it."

"You needed another one anyway," consoled
Billy, with the kindly reassurance and
hopeless misunderstanding of the rich.  "The
last model is out now, you know."

"Billy," said Henrietta, "do you think we
can buy a car every time the humor moves us?
You don't understand."

"I know," said Billy humbly, crushed under
repeated rebuffs from every one.  "I am a
perfect fool, Henrietta, but I can't help it."

If the general could have forgotten the car
for a while, he would have been agreeably
pleased and flattered by the Watermelon's
sudden apparent infatuation for him.  The young
man insisted on walking with him, suiting
his long, lazy strides to the general's best
endeavors.  Bartlett, Henrietta and Billy swung
along briskly ahead.  Henrietta was touched.
The boy was trying to show his sympathy, she
thought, and liked him more than ever.

It was nearly noon when they came in sight
of their destination, a gaunt gray farm-house,
perched on the top of the gentle slope
overlooking the valley and the winding river to the
woods on the hills beyond.  They came to the
bars of a cow pasture and a narrow cow path
leading across the field to the house, a shorter
way than by the road.

Henrietta and Billy, seeing no cows in sight,
allowed the Watermelon to let down the bars
and to pass through.  Billy waited inside the
fence, standing by the path, among the sweet
fern, until all had entered and all but the
Watermelon had started up the path for the
house.

Quietly she watched the Watermelon as he
slowly and reluctantly replaced the bars.

"Jerry," said she, when he had at last
finished, "what's the matter?"  She had stepped
into the path in front of him and he had to
stop and face her.

He flushed hotly and would not look at her.
"There is nothing the matter," said he.  "Why?
What makes you think so?"

She drew herself up with pretty dignity.
"You need not have told me what you did
yesterday in the railroad cut, if it were not so,"
said she, quite simply.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TRUTH AT LAST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TRUTH AT LAST

.. vspace:: 2

"Billy," began the Watermelon,
turning aside with darkening eyes, his
flushed face growing slowly white as he
realized that the reckoning had come.  Billy must
know all now, know who her companion of
the past week was, know the status of the man
who had told her he loved her.  Then he turned
to her again with all his mad, wild, foolish,
hopeless longing in his eyes and voice and held
out his arms.

"Oh, kid, I love you," he whispered, as she
went to him, frankly and happily.  "I love you
so I can't marry you."

"It's old-fashioned to love your wife, I
know," chirruped Billy, "but let's be
old-fashioned."

"It isn't that, Billy," said the Watermelon
slowly.  He held her a moment, looking down
into her eyes as she looked up at him, her
hands on his shoulders, her head back.

"What is it?" she asked, frankly puzzled,
but refusing to be dismayed.  "You can't
afford a wife, you who made three—four—millions
this year?"

"Yes," said the Watermelon, grim and quiet,
"that's it."  He let her go and thrust his hands
into his pockets.  "I haven't a cent, haven't
ever had one.  I'm not Batchelor with a few
millions.  I'm a tramp without a cent, stony
broke.  That suit-case," kicking Batchelor's
suit-case which he had carried with him, "is
another's and I'm going to chuck it to-night."

Billy stared, mouth slightly parted, her
brows drawn together in wonder, unbelieving.
"Not Batchelor?" she stammered.  "William
Hargrave Batchelor?"

"I am Jeroboam Martin of Nowhere and
Everywhere," said the Watermelon bitterly.
"That Sunday I met you, I found Batchelor in
bathing down in the woods.  I swiped his
clothes, Billy, for the dinner I could get at the
hotel.  Then I saw you.  I wanted the week
with you and I just went on being Batchelor.
See?"

"How?" asked Billy through white lips,
staring at him from where she stood in the
middle of the tiny cow lane, winding away up
the hill among the sweet fern and the bracken.

The Watermelon raised his hand to his head
and gently brushed his back hair with futile
embarrassment.  "Why, you know that guy we
heard coughing in the bushes?  Well, he put
me wise to the fact that your father—er—that
your father and Batchelor were enemies on
the Street and I thought—maybe—er—if—why,
your father asked me to go with you on
the trip, you know, and I thought—er—that if
Batchelor was in the city alone and your
father thought he was with him—why, Batchelor
could beat him on the Street and not mind the
loss of the few things I had to take—er—see,
I deceived the gang of you for a week's fun.
See what a cheap guy I am, Billy?  A bad egg."

"Yes," said Billy.  "Father asked you to go.
Why did he do that?"

The Watermelon flushed.  "Why—er—"

"Father knew you were an enemy.  He told
me that you, Batchelor, I mean, had made him
lose a lot of money last week and would
probably make him lose more next week.  Maybe
father thought as you did, that if you were out
of the city—" she knitted her brows and gazed
off across the valley.  "Father telegraphed just
before we went to that place behind the bam,
right after dinner.  I know, for I saw him go
to the office.  Why don't you tell me the truth,
Jerry?"

"God, Billy, ain't I giving you the straight
goods?"

"Not about father," replied Bartlett's
daughter gravely.

"Why—er—he may have telegraphed—"

"Certainly, he did," said Billy.  "This whole
trip was father's idea."  She brushed the subject
aside as one to be returned to later.  "Tell
me, Jerry, isn't your father a minister?"

"Yes, that's straight.  He was poor, darned
poor.  We were all poor.  He used to say that
a man with more children than brains had no
place in the ministry."

"I should think that possibly your father had
brains," suggested Billy.

"Yes," admitted the Watermelon.  "But
they didn't keep pace with the children."

"What happened to you all?  Why—er—why
couldn't you have worked at something?"

She was gazing at him bewildered, trying to
get a grasp on the new state of affairs.

"Aw, we went from bad to worse," muttered
the Watermelon sullenly.  "Father left the
ministry.  He used to say that you could
appreciate the glory of the Almighty much better in
a dollar bill than in the Bible."

"Maybe he had—er—no leanings toward the
ministry," murmured Billy, endeavoring to
express as politely as possible her growing
conviction that the Reverend Mr. Martin was not
a godly man.

"Maybe not," agreed the Watermelon.  "But
when a man's down, every one's down on him.
Nothing father did went right.  Ma died and
the home broke up—I don't know what's
become of all the others—working, I suppose, day
after day, like slaves in a galley, you know.  I
tried it, and every night I drank to drown the
damnable monotony and stupidity of it all.  So,
you see what I am, a bum—a tramp."

"And yourself, my love, my Jerry."

Billy held out her hands and he caught them
and held them tightly in both his own for a
moment, then dropping them, turned away
with half a sob.

"Don't, Billy.  Don't make it so hard for
me, dear.  We can't marry.  I'm filth and
you're sweetness and purity."

"But other men have married.  You aren't
the only one who isn't clean."

"I know, but I love you.  See?  When you
love a person, you don't make them suffer for
it.  You can't understand, Billy, for you have
never known life.  You don't begin to know
what it means.  I will probably marry a girl
from the streets, or one with no brains and no
soul.  But, you see, I love you."

Billy's eyes blazed.  "You will never marry
any one else with me alive," said she.

"How could I marry you, dear?  I have
nothing—absolutely nothing.  We couldn't
have a home anywhere."

"We can make a home," pleaded Billy.  She
leaned toward him and laid her hand on his
arm, smiling into his moody face with all the
charm, the daring, the tenderness of a woman
who loves and is fighting for her happiness
with every weapon at her command.

"You can't make a home with nothing to
make it on," said the Watermelon.

"Ah, but we have something to make it on,"
cried Billy.  "We have you and me."

"But no money."

"Why, Jerry, I have money; hundreds,
thousands, dear."

But the Watermelon shook his head.
"Money wouldn't be any good when I'm
rotten," said he.

"Dear," crooned Billy, and kissed him on the
chin, for she could reach no higher.

"Billy," he groaned.

"Tell me you love me, Jerry."

"Tell you I love you?  Ah, sweetheart."

"Tell it to me, Jerry."

"Billy, I love you so, that if there is a God,
I will thank Him all my life for this week and
the thought of you."

"You may not," said Billy, "when we have
been married a year."

"We can't marry, dear.  Don't you understand?
I am a tramp."

"And so am I."

"Your father will kick me out when he
knows—"

"It's none of my father's business," said
Billy with a saucy tilt of her small chin.  "He's
marrying whom he pleases and I shall do the
same."

"Wait until I speak to him—"

"No," said Billy promptly.  "I will speak,
Jerry.  Promise me that you won't say a thing
until we get to the town where we can telegraph.
Oh, Jerry, my love, promise me."

"I promise, Billy, kid."

"Promise you won't say a thing until I speak."

"I won't say a thing until I can't help it, but
what good will that do?"

"Let's be happy while we can," returned
Billy, with a pretty evasion.  "We have one
more day."

"Oh, Billy," whispered the Watermelon.

Billy turned and led the way up the path to
the house while the Watermelon picked up the
two suit-cases and followed her.

At the house they found the general with his
usual inability to conceal a thing, explaining
that they had no money, but wished to have a
two-seated team and a driver to take them to
the nearest town.

The farmer did not hail the proposition with
unalloyed joy.  He looked thoughtfully from
one to the other while Bartlett explained
earnestly who he was, who the general was,
who they all were, in a vain attempt to undo the
general's commendable, if mistaken, frankness.
Upon promising to let the driver keep his
watch as a guaranty of good faith, to be
returned when the money they were to telegraph
for arrived, Bartlett persuaded the man to give
in and go to the barn for the horses.

Billy drew her father aside, while the
general, Henrietta and the Watermelon retired
discreetly to the well for a drink.

"Father," said Billy, coming directly to the
point and evading it with a skill that befitted
her father's daughter.  "Jerry wants to marry
me.  Oh, father, I love him so.  I love him as
much as you do Henrietta."

Bartlett flushed and dismissed Henrietta
from the conversation.  "My dear Billy, you
have only known him a week."

"I know, father," agreed Billy, "but a week
is long enough to fall in love in.  Truly, it is,
father.  And we both care so much, so very much."

Bartlett was secretly elated at the idea.  He
and Batchelor, with their differences reconciled,
fighting together, instead of each other, would
become rulers of the Street, could attain to
any height.  Batchelor was young, clever,
lovable.  There seemed nothing to object to.  But
he felt that he should.  Conventionality,
Henrietta, Mrs. Grundy, one or all would clearly
see that there was something wrong, would
counsel delay, waiting.  He had never given a
daughter away in marriage and was not sure
what to do.  He hemmed and hawed and
wished that he could consult Henrietta.

"We don't want the others to know," went
on Billy guilefully.  "Wait until we get to the
town before you say anything, won't you,
father?"

"But, Billy, a week."

"Now, father," advised Billy, "just forget it.
And I will forget about you and Henrietta."

"About me and Henrietta?" snapped Bartlett.

"Yes," said Billy, "and last night on the
porch when you thought we had all gone in."

"That will do, Billy.  We did nothing at all
but say good night.  I have no objection to
Batchelor as a son-in-law from what I know
of him; but only a week—"

"It was only an hour," said Billy.  "I loved
him that very first day.  And please, father,
you won't say anything, will you, even to him,
about it?  Just be nice to him, you know.  And
then I won't say anything."

"Certainly I won't say a thing if you don't
want me to, Billy—but there is nothing
whatever that you could say."

"No," said Billy, "only what I heard."

The carriage drove up at that moment,
which was well.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BACK TO THE ROAD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BACK TO THE ROAD

.. vspace:: 2

Bartlett took the telegram the clerk
handed him in an elation it was hard to
conceal from Batchelor, who leaned against the
counter of the store and telegraph office
combined, and watched him moodily.

"Realizes that it was a piece of foolishness,
his taking that trip," thought Bartlett with the
sympathy of the victor for the beaten.  "Has
probably forgotten Billy for the time.  Poor
Billy!"

He tore open the telegram quickly and read
it eagerly and then slowly and still again more
slowly, while his florid face grew first red and
then white.

"Come back, for God's sake.  B. here all the
time.  Where have you been?" signed by his
broker's name.

After the third reading, Bartlett raised his
eyes and glanced dully at the Watermelon,
leaning against the counter, among the gay
rolls of calico and boxes of rubber overshoes
and stockings, watching him with thoughtful
wary eyes, and Bartlett wondered if he were
going mad.

It was late in the afternoon.  The general
and the girls, having telegraphed for money,
had gone to the hotel to wait for the answers,
while Bartlett and the Watermelon had remained
in the store, Bartlett eager to receive
the answer to the joyful congratulations he had
sent his broker on the success of his plan, and
the Watermelon because he scorned to run
away like a whipped cur, preferring Bartlett
to know who he was.

"To ask me for Billy," Bartlett had at first
decided, but changed his mind as the youth's
gloom became apparently impenetrable.

Bartlett's jaw was set squarely, sternly, his
eyes gleamed angrily and a small pulse beat in
his cheek.  He handed the Watermelon the
telegram and watched him as he read it.

"Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely,
when the Watermelon had finished reading the
message and returned it.

"Jeroboam Martin," said the Watermelon
slowly, a grim amusement in his half-shut eyes.

"Jero—what?"

"Jeroboam Martin."

"But Batchelor," stammered Bartlett,
confused.  The power of suggestion had been so
strong that, though he occasionally thought the
youth a bit eccentric for a stock-broker, it had
never entered his head to question his identity.

"Batchelor is in New York," returned the
Watermelon.  "I just telegraphed him, C.O.D.,
where he could find his blooming car.
Don't suppose the police had sense enough to
look for it at the hotel."

"A low dirty trick," sputtered Bartlett.

The Watermelon agreed.  "Typical of the
Street," he sneered.  "Yah, it fairly reeks
with the filth of money, your plan and mine."

"My plan?" Bartlett flushed and looked
away.  "Stung," said he humbly, and crumpled
the telegram in his hand as he gazed moodily
through the open door to the village street,
impotent to refute the words of the Watermelon.

The Watermelon nodded without any undue
elation, in fact, not thinking at all about
Bartlett, he was too entirely absorbed in his own
troubles.

"I suppose you are his partner—friend?"
questioned Bartlett, after a moment's painful
readjusting of ideas.

"No, I am a stranger.  We met by chance,
as you might say.  I am a tramp."

"A tramp!"  Bartlett's business chagrin
vanished before the rush of his paternal alarm
and surprise.  "But, by heavens, man, I told
Billy she could marry you."

The horror in his tones angered the Watermelon.
The hot blood leaped into his face and
his hands clenched.

"Well, why not?" he demanded.  "I am a
man if I am a tramp."

"Bah," sneered Bartlett.  "A man?  A cow,
rather, an animal too lazy to work.  I suppose
you stole your clothes."

Both talked in low voices that the clerk,
who only restrained himself from approaching
by the exertion of tremendous will power,
might not hear them.  The Watermelon's face
was very white, and he spoke slowly, carefully,
as he retold the episode of the swimming-hole
and the stolen car, still leaning against the
varied assortment of dress goods.  "I
borrowed these clothes," he concluded, "to keep
you away from New York for a week.  That
object may not sound original to you, and it
wasn't.  You were the one who suggested it
to me through the telegraph clerk last Sunday."

"That boy would take candy from the baby,"
swore Bartlett gently.

"You were stung, that's all.  I love Billy and
she loves me.  I hate work, but for Billy I
will work and am going to work.  I love her."

"Does she know you are a tramp?"

.. _`"Does she know you are a tramp?"`:

.. figure:: images/img-310.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Does she know you are a tramp?"

   "Does she know you are a tramp?"

"Yes."

"You haven't a cent, I suppose."

"No, but I can earn some."

"How?"

"Working."

"At what?"

"Something."

"What?"

"Anything.  Damn it, I ain't incapable of
anything but sleep!"

"I've lost thousands through that dirty trick
of yours—"

"Yours.  You originated it, you know."

Bartlett leaned against the counter beside
the Watermelon and glared at the floor.
Neither thought to leave the store, and even
forgot the clerk, who gazed at them dubiously
from a discreet distance and wondered how
many more telegrams they wanted.

Bartlett knew Billy.  Billy said that she was
going to marry this man and so she would
marry him—unless something more effective
than verbal opposition were used.  He had
never exerted any authority over Billy and
knew that it would be too late to begin now.
Billy would only laugh at him.  But after all,
he was Billy's father, he loved the girl and had
some right to object to her marriage with a
tramp.

He glanced at the thin clever face beside
him and admitted that the man had brains and
apparently was not besotted or brutalized,
merely indifferent, lazy and wholly
unambitious; besides, very young, impatient of
restraint and the dull grind of a poor man's life.

"Who are your people?" asked Bartlett to
gain time.  He must make a plan to separate
Billy from this impecunious suitor.  Authority
was useless.  He must use tact, finesse.

"My father was a minister," returned the
Watermelon.  "Yours was a grocer.  Billy
told me.  Families don't count in America."

Bartlett nodded agreement.  "Why did you
become a tramp?"

"Through inclination, not the whisky bottle.
Not that I am above getting full once in a
while, 'cause I ain't.  Just, I'm not a drunkard.
See?  I didn't keep on losing jobs through
drink and finally had to take to the road
because I was a bum.  I took to tramping because
I hate to work.  It takes too much of your
time.  An office is like a prison to me.  A man
loses his soul when he stays all day bent over
a desk.  He isn't a man.  He's a sort of
up-to-date pianola to a desk, that's all.  There's a
lot of things to think about that you can't in
an office.  I wanted to think and so I took to
tramping.  Besides, I don't like work."

"Lazy—"

"Yes," snapped the Watermelon, "but a
man.  I love your Billy—my Billy, and I can
work for her."

Bartlett nodded indifferently, hardly hearing
what the other said.  He frowned thoughtfully
at the floor as he pondered the situation.  If he
objected to the youth in Billy's presence, she
would stand up for him, all her love would be
aroused to arms and she would see no wrong
in her hero.  If the fellow snapped his fingers,
she would run away with him.  What did
Billy, tender, gently-guarded Billy, know of
tramps, of the rough, unhappy side of existence?
Nothing.  But if she caught a glimpse
of it with her own eyes, saw this lover of hers
in his true light, dirty, drunk, disreputable, the
shock would kill her love utterly and Bartlett
would not have to use that authority of his
which was no authority, which Billy would
refuse to obey.  She had been free too long for
any one to govern her now.  The only person
who could effectually break the unfortunate
tangle was the Watermelon himself.  Bartlett
glanced at the gloomy face beside him and read
it as he had grown used to reading men and
events.

The Watermelon was young, hardly older
than Billy; he was desperately in love, with a
love that was pure and true and generous.  He
was thinking of Billy and not of himself.  His
opposition to Bartlett was merely the anger
aroused by Bartlett's sneers.  He was in reality
filled with humility and repentence to a degree
that he would do anything to kill the love
Billy bore for him, knowing with his man's
knowledge that he was not worthy of her, and
longing with his youth and love to sacrifice
himself for her best good, seeing through
young, unhappy eyes, only the past, his own
shame and profession.  Forgetting the possibilities
of the future, he had gone to the extreme
of self-loathing.  The one thing he saw was his
past, that past that was wholly unfit for Billy.
It blocked the entire view, crushed him with
the weight of inexorable facts.  To the young
there are but two colors, black and white, and
the Watermelon was very young.  Bartlett
looked at him keenly and decided that his plan
would work, that he would not have to take a
last desperate and ineffectual stand against Billy.

"See here.  In August we are going to our
place in Westhaven.  It's a small town in this
state, up the coast away north of Portland.
Come to her there at the end of August, come
as you are, a tramp, dirty, shabby, drunk—"

"I don't drink, not as the others do."

"Come drunk.  Let her understand what
being a tramp means, what your life has been.
If she still wants you, I hardly see how I can
stop her.  That's only fair, for what does she
know about you and your life?  You know all
about her, what she has done and been and is
going to do.  Leave her now, this evening.  Go
on being a tramp and then come to her, at the
last of August.  Come as a tramp, mind.  Don't
let her think that it is a test she is being put to
or she will only laugh at it and us and go on
wanting you just the same, scorning to be
tested, to think that her love could fail.  Give
her some other excuse for your going.  You
must see that it is only fair to the little girl to
let her see what she is up against."

"Yes, I see.  I tried to tell her," agreed the
Watermelon gloomily.

"If she loves you through it all, she can have
you, and I suppose I will have to consent.  I
can afford a penniless son-in-law and I guess
an American tramp is preferable to a European
noble."

"I won't be penniless," said the Watermelon.
"I could work like a nigger for a month and
own forty dollars, thirty of which I would owe
for board."

"That's just it," declared Bartlett promptly.
"You can't support Billy in the way she is used
to being supported, can't give her the things
that have become necessities to her."

"I can support her in my own way," said the
Watermelon, trying to reason down his own
benumbing repentence and humiliation as well
as to convince Bartlett of that which he
himself knew to be all wrong.

"But that isn't Billy's way.  You couldn't
give her a servant, for instance, and servants
to Billy are like chairs to some people,
absolutely necessary."

"We love each other," said the Watermelon
simply.

"That's all right.  But you can't always be
sure your love is like elastic and stretchable.
Come as a tramp and I will give my consent."  Bartlett
grew bold, positively convinced that
Billy could no longer care when she had once
seen the drunken sot, promised as he had
grown used to doing on the Street, to do
that which he knew he would not have to do.
"I will give my consent, if Billy still can care.
I know that Billy would be a lot happier with
my consent, too, than without it.  For, though
the modern child has no respect for her
parent's authority, she likes to have her wedding
peaceful and conventional."

"Can I say good-by to her?"

"Yes, but I trust you not to let her know that
she is to be put to a test.  If you love her, you
can see that I am right."

"Yes," said the Watermelon, "I love her and
will not let her know."

He straightened up and pushed his hat
farther back, with the slow, inbred languor of
the thoroughly lazy man.  "I love Billy, and
that is why I consent.  I tried to make her
understand what I am, have been, but I couldn't."  He
took a handful of beans from a near-by barrel
and let them run slowly through his fingers.
"I suppose she will give me the double cross."

"I hope so," answered Bartlett.  "I'm not
very particular, but a tramp—"

"A gentleman pedestrian," suggested the
Watermelon, with a faint flicker of his usual
sublime arrogance.

Bartlett laughed and held out his hand.
"Well, good-by.  I've enjoyed the week
immensely, for all this rotten ending.  That
scurvy trick of yours—"

"Of yours," corrected the Watermelon.

"Yes, yes, I suppose so.  I hope that
Henrietta won't ever know.  Do you think Billy
does?"

"Billy isn't as simple as you think," returned
the Watermelon.

"What did she say?"

"'Father suggested the trip and he telegraphed
after dinner,' or something like that."

"You didn't tell her it was my plan?" begged
Bartlett.  "I have to go on living with her."

"No, I didn't tell her, but she's next to the
fact."

"I will speak to her," said Bartlett hastily.
"I wouldn't like Henrietta to find out about it.
Billy has wanted a motor boat for some time.
I may give her one."

They walked slowly toward the door and
once more shook hands.

"I would gladly have given the thousands I
have lost to have you Batchelor, boy," said
Bartlett gently.

"Aw, thanks," said the Watermelon.

"Tell the others I will be around when I
have sent another telegram."

The Watermelon found Billy sitting on the
steps of the only hotel in town.  It was a big,
square, uncompromising affair, blank and
unattractive, and Billy, alone on the top step,
looked somehow small and forlorn and
child-like.  The Watermelon sat down beside her.

"Where's Henrietta?" he asked, ignoring
her eyes and the question they asked.

"Up-stairs," said Billy, "fixing up."  She
raised her hands to her own soft hair and bit
her lip to get up courage to voice the question
her eyes had already asked.

"Where's the general?" asked the Watermelon.

Billy nodded backward.  "In the office, trying
to convert the landlord.  The landlord's a
democrat, you know."

"Come and walk down the road with me a
bit?" asked the Watermelon.  He rose and
held out his hand to help her up.

Billy rose with a trembling laugh that
failed miserably in its manifest attempt to be
brave.

It was late afternoon, sweet and cool as they
left the village behind.  The deep quiet of the
last of the day was over fields and woods and
road, the heat and strenuous business of the
morning done.  Cows were slowly meandering
across the pastures to the familiar bars, empty
teams rattled by on the way home, the driver
humped contentedly over the reins, thinking
of the day's bargains and of the supper
waiting for him.  The shadows were lengthening,
long and graceful across the village green.

Neither Billy nor the Watermelon spoke
until they had left the village some little way
behind and had come to four cross-roads with the
usual small dingy school-house, door locked,
dirty windows closed for the summer and
shabby, faded blinds drawn.

Billy knew from the Watermelon's face that
the interview with her father had been far
from satisfactory.  She feared that the
Watermelon had not "stood up" for himself, that her
speaking to her father that morning had not
helped matters as she had hoped it would.  She
tried to think of something to say that would
influence the boy, something she could do to
show him how she cared, so he would not think
of leaving her.  The Watermelon was silent,
for, now that the hour of parting had come, he
did not know what to say, could not bring
himself to leave her, gay, foolish, light-hearted
Billy.

He, however, was the first to speak.  The
school-house recalled miserable days of long
dull confinement, and he nodded toward it,
pausing in the grass by the wayside.  "A
standing monument," said he, "to buried freedom."

"I never went to school," said Billy.  "It
must be awful."

"Awful," the Watermelon shrugged.  "It's
taken ten years from my life.  Schools should
be abolished."

They sat down on the tiny, weather-stained
step, side by side, in the gathering dusk.

"Billy," began the Watermelon earnestly,
and then stopped.

Poor little Billy's heart fluttered and she
put her hand to her hair in her nervousness.
"You know," she said firmly, irrelevantly, "I
love you, Jerry."

"I know, dear," replied the Watermelon.
"And I love you.  No matter where I am,
Billy, no matter what happens, you are the best
in me and I will keep you best.  I'm shiftless,
lazy, no 'count, but Billy, kid, I'll always love
you."

"And we will get married and live happily
ever after," crooned Billy.

"I'm going away to-night, Billy, back to the
road."

"Oh, Jerry, please, clear.  If father knew
how much I care—"

"No, Billy, your father's right.  He said to
give you time; for me to go away for a while
and maybe you would get—over it."

"And if I did," demanded Billy, "if I loved
another, wouldn't you be jealous?  Wouldn't
you kill that other, Jeroboam Martin?"  She
clenched her small fist and pounded him on the
knee to emphasize the passion in her voice.

"If he were a decent chap—" stammered the
Watermelon, "it would be better for you."

"It's terrible," interrupted Billy, "when the
girl has to do all the loving."  She pushed the
hair out of her hot face and stared angrily
before her, across the road.

"You only love me, but I love you.  See the
difference?" asked the Watermelon.  "It's
simply impossible for your love to be as great as
mine for that reason.  Your father said I could
come to you the last of August at Westhaven,
and I'm coming, Billy."

"And then we can marry, did father say
that?" asked Billy, turning to him.

"If you care still," muttered the Watermelon.

"Care," Billy laughed the contrary to merry
scorn.  "Care?  Why, Jeroboam Martin, when
will I not care?"

The Watermelon flushed and rose as the
wisest course under the circumstances.  "I'm
off.  Say good-by to the others for me, will
you, Billy?"

"You will be my knight," whispered Billy.
"And I will be your lady, and no knight ever
went back on his lady, yet, Jeroboam."

"You've got a darned poor knight," grunted
the Watermelon.  Suddenly he turned and
caught her in his arms, dragging her to him
and forcing back her head to see into her eyes.
"Billy, Billy," he cried, "will you be true to me,
for ever and for ever, no matter what happens,
no matter what I do?  Could you, will you love
me always?"

"Always, always," whispered Billy.

"Dirty, drunk?"

"Dirty and drunk and sick and always,"
promised Billy.  "Only you won't drink,
because I love you."

"Love never yet stood between a man and
the whisky bottle," sneered the Watermelon.
"You don't know men, kid."

He let her go and turned away with a
shamed laugh.  "Good-by, Billy."

"Good-by, Jerry," replied Billy, frightened
at she knew not what, realizing that there were
after all things in men's lives of which she
knew nothing.  She walked with him to the
fence and watched him swing over it.

"Cross-cuts for me," he explained, holding
out his hand.  She placed hers in it and he
crushed her small fingers until they hurt, then
turning abruptly, left her there among the
brambles, watching him across the bars.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE POET OR THE POODLE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE POET OR THE POODLE

.. vspace:: 2

The day was unusually hot for late
August in Maine.  The grass was brown
and dry, the leaves hung limply on the trees
and the dust in the roads was ankle deep.  No
breeze came from the sea, while the sails of
the pleasure boats drooped in warm dejection.
Every one had sought shelter from the sun,
and wharfs, streets and houses of the small
seaport town appeared deserted.

Bartlett had taken himself off to the dim
seclusion of the house, where he lounged with
windows opened, blinds drawn and a small
table of cooling beverages near at hand.  The
heat, the drowsy, shrill hum of the crickets and
the muffled, monotonous roar of the sea had a
soothing influence and Bartlett let his book fall
from his hands and slept, stretched at ease in
the steamer chair.  A door gently opening and
softly shutting aroused him.  He sat up,
yawned and grunted.

"Hello," drawled a voice, slow, indifferent,
familiar.

Bartlett recalled a week in June, when, with
rare credulity, he had kidnapped a stranger and
had discovered that he had been the one in
truth to be kidnapped.  He turned his head and
saw the Watermelon crossing the room.  He
knew that it was the boy by the size of the
shoulders and the grace of the long limbs, but
the thin, good-natured face was covered with
a month's growth of light hair, the brown suit
with the pale green and red stripe was a suit
no longer, merely a bundle of rags.  The shirt
was opened at the throat, without a tie or
button, while the panama was shapeless and
colorless, but worn with the familiar jaunty ease.

"Ah," said Bartlett.  "Jeroboam Martin."

He smiled as one who meets an old and
congenial friend, for Jeroboam Martin had shown
a fine capability for getting out of a tight place
and carrying through a desired project with
success and nerve, and Bartlett had grown to
like the lad.

"Am I bum enough?" asked the Watermelon,
with no answering smile.  When one
has come to test love, life is too grim for
smiles.

"You are fairly dirty and shabby," agreed
Bartlett.  "You look thin."

"I have had hard luck," said the Watermelon.
"How's Billy?"

"Pretty well, thanks."

"Expecting me?" asked the Watermelon,
taking off his hat and gently patting his back
hair as he had a way of doing.

Bartlett nodded.  "Yes, but not exactly as
you are."

"It's tough on the little girl," muttered the
Watermelon.  He sank into a chair and
stretched out his long legs with the weather-stained
trousers and dirty, broken shoes.  "Oh,
mama, I'm tired.  Been hoofing it since sun-up
yesterday with hardly a stop, I wanted to see
the kid so."

"Well, go and get drunk," returned Bartlett.
"And then you can see her."

The Watermelon frowned.  "See here, I
don't drink, necessarily.  I'm not a brand to
be plucked from the burning, a sheep strayed
from the fold.  The whisky bottle wasn't my
undoing and didn't make me take to the
highway.  I'm not fallen.  I was always down, I
guess.  I hate work; I hate worry and trouble,
slaving like a Swede all day for just enough
money to be an everlasting cheap guy.  I like
leisure and time to develop my own soul."  He
waved his hand in airy imitation of James.

"That's all right," said Bartlett.  "But get
drunk.  If she can stand you soused, she can
stand you sober.  She has got to know what
she's getting, if she decides to take you after
all."

The Watermelon's tired face grew a bit
whiter under the tan and beard.  He shrugged
hopelessly and rose.  "All right, if you say so.
I hope to hell it will kill her love on the spot and
she won't suffer for it afterward.  I suppose
it will."  He started for the door and paused,
one hand on the knob.  "Shall I have it on
you?" he asked with a smile.  "I'm broke."

Bartlett tossed him a bill.  "Is that enough?"

"Yes," said the Watermelon and slipped it
into his pocket.

"Have one with me before you go," said
Bartlett, pushing a glass and the bottle across
the table.

The Watermelon filled his glass and raised
it.  "To Billy," said he.

"To Billy's happiness," amended Bartlett.

Maine is a prohibition state, but the
Watermelon had been there before and knew just
where and how to obtain what he was looking
for.  With the bottle in his pocket, he sought
the beach and made his way up it to some
secluded place where he could drink in peace and
out of the heat of the sun.  A sea-gull flew
wheeling gracefully by to the distant cliffs, the
waves, long, purring, foam-flecked, ran
indolently up the gleaming sands, broke with a
gurgling splash of seaweed and tumbled stones
and ran back to meet the next one.  The ocean
stretched limitless before him and behind rose
the rocks, hiding him completely from the sight
of land.  With a grunt of dissatisfaction, he
sat down and drew the cork of the whisky
bottle.

As the day advanced, the sun crept around
the headland until it streamed unchecked upon
the Watermelon, sprawled, drunk and warm
and dirty in the lee of the rocks.  The
combined heat of the sun and the poison he had in
him, called by courtesy whisky, grew unbearable,
and he rose in drunken majesty to find
some cooler place.  The sun would soon
have thrown long shadows on the beach, but
the Watermelon could not wait for that.  He
must get cool at once, and in the waves
splashing, gurgling, laughing, breaking at his very
feet, he found a suggestion.  Where could one
get cool if not in the sea itself?  A steam yacht
far away like a streak of white, was seen
creeping slowly landward, but the Watermelon
did not trouble about such a thing.  He began
to undress, solemnly, stubbornly, with the one
thought to get cool.

.. vspace:: 2

The yacht, *Mary Gloucester*, was a gay little
bark, all ivory white and shining brass work.
A brightly striped awning covered the deck,
there were large, comfortable chairs, with
many-colored pillows and ribbons and chintz,
and daintily arranged tables to assuage one's
thirst and offer cooling bodily comfort on a
hot day.

The *Mary Gloucester* was named after a
poem of Kipling's, and her owner was explaining
this fact, ensconced gracefully, if solidly, in
a many-cushioned chair, her feet a bit
awkwardly on the rest before her, a fan in one
hand and a small, fat, white, woolly dog on her
lap, his fore feet on the railing, his mouth
open and his tiny red tongue flapping moistly
from between his teeth.

"Whom do you love the more," asked Bertie
Van Baalen, "Kipling or this angel child?" and
Bertie sought to pull one fluffy white ear near
his hand.  But the little dog snarled angrily
and snapped sharply at the hastily withdrawn
fingers.

"Ah, the duckems, naughty man shan't tease
him," crooned the lady, slapping at Bertie with
the fan, while the little dog turned again to the
sea.

"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Armitage," said Henry
Bliven solemnly.  "Tell us truthfully, whom
do you love the better, Kipling or the blessed
duckems?"

"Do not hesitate or seek to spare either of
their feelings," urged Bertie.

Mrs. Armitage laughed, fat, contented,
placid.  "Oh, you silly boys, comparing a poet
and a dog, a blessed little doggie."

"I know it's hard on the dog," agreed
Henry, gracefully launching a smoke wreath
upward from his fat, red lips, moist like a
baby's.  "No dog would care to be compared
with a thing so far beneath him as a poet, but
all the same, are you a sport or an intellect?"

"An intellect?" questioned the lady, wrinkling
her brows and gazing puzzled at the youth
in the chair beside her.

"Are you, in other words," explained Henry,
"of intellectual or sporting tendencies?"

"Think," warned Bertie, "before you answer.
Kipling, a great poet, author of sentiments
that will stir mankind for all ages,
sentiments that will ennoble, strengthen—"

"Do you know," confessed the widow with
the gleeful naiveté of a child, "I like Kipling
because he's so bad.  He says such wicked
things."  She nodded and glanced audaciously
from one youth to the other.

Henry reached wearily for his glass on the
table beside him and Bertie Van Baalen sighed
heavily.  "You women!  You make us bad.
Don't you know you do?  You want us bad,
so we are—anything to please you beauteous
creatures."

"I don't want you *men* bad, just poets,"
explained the widow, fanning herself slowly,
cheerfully.

Henry waved the digression aside.  "Now,
tell us frankly, truthfully, black and blue, cross
your heart, do you prefer a small, dyspeptic,
overfed, snapping bundle of cotton wool which
is, for the sake of euphemism, called a dog, to
one of the greatest minds of the day?"

"Yes," said Bertie.  "Suppose we sat here
now, and you had the blessed angel, mother's
pet, and one volume of Kipling complete, the
only book of his in the world, and the only
one there could ever be, the only book in which
we could hand on to our children and our
children's children such sublime thoughts, the only
book, mind you, and if you had to throw one
or the other overboard, a piece of sticking
plaster or the greatest poet of modern times, which
would it be?"

"If I threw my blessed pet over, would you
go after him, Bertie?" demanded the widow, to
whose mind a question of grave import had
just presented itself.  "Henry, would you?
You know how I love my dainty little kitty kit,
would you save him from cruel death for me?
For my sake?"

"No harm," said Henry with feeling, "shall
befall the angel child while I live to protect
it—her—him."

"For your sake," said Bertie, "I would die."

"Then," said the widow placidly, "I would
sacrifice my own for the sake of posterity.  For
you would rescue him for me and you wouldn't
an old book."

"Ah, no," protested Bertie, "that was not
our proposition.  Neither the book nor the
latest thing in worsted—"

There was a splash, a gurgle and a horrified
scream from the widow, as with a sudden lurch
of the boat, the little dog lost his balance and
fell overboard.

"Oh, my precious, my lamb," cried the
widow.  "Bertie, save him for me."

"Yes, yes," declared Bertie, hanging over the
rail and watching the struggling dog in the
water below.  "Yes, yes, certainly."

"Henry," pleaded the widow.  "If you love me—"

"Trust me," said Henry soothingly, hiding a
gleam of satisfaction in his mild blue eyes.  "I
will have the boat stopped."

The widow's daughter and chaperon
appeared in the companionway, flushed and
sleepy.  "Mama, what *is* the matter?"

"Caroline, my precious lamb," and the
widow motioned dramatically seaward.
"Henry, you said—"

"I will," said Henry.  "I will have the boat
stopped."

"I will do that," cried the widow.  "You
jump overboard and save him."

Caroline yawned and raised her soft white
hands to her tumbled hair.  "Do save him,
Bertie, I'm not equal to the task of comforting
mama, just now."

Bertie looked at his immaculate yachting
clothes and hesitated.

"Ah, you do not love me," cried the widow.
"Oh, my baby, my own."

"I love you so," said Bertie solemnly, "I
refuse to leave you in your grief even for a
moment."

A long white arm shot over the crest of a
tumbled wave and was followed by a man's
head and long, thin body.  The man swam well
and quickly and was making straight for the
now swimming dog.

"A rescue, a rescue," cried Henry, and
added softly to himself, "Oh, poppycock!"





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.. _`AS HE SAID HE WOULD`:

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   CHAPTER XXV


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   AS HE SAID HE WOULD

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The widow leaned far over the side.
"Oh," said she, "the man is naked."

"As truth," agreed Bertie.  "You might
retire, you know."

"I won't look," promised the widow, turning
her back and peering over her shoulder.  "But
is he near my lamb now?  Will he, can he save
him?"

"Unfortunately, yes, mama," said Caroline.

Bertie and Henry leaned over the rail and
watched the rescue, the long, easy strokes of
the swimmer and the amusement on his face
as a wave carried the struggling dog within
reach and he grabbed the little woolly back.

"Saved!" cried Bertie, and turned just in
time to grab Mrs. Armitage, who was also
turning to see over the rail, by her fat
shoulders and whirl her around again.  "Safe, dear
lady, but look the other way.  Our hero is
clothed in the seafoam and his own nobility,
nothing else."

Henry was already disappearing down the
companionway, the yacht was stopping and the
crew standing by on the lower deck to lend
assistance to rescued and rescuer.

The evening was warm and sultry.  What
little breeze there had been during the day had
gone down with the sun, while the ocean
heaved and moaned in long, green swells and
ran softly whispering up the beach and
splashed against the rocks with hardly a flake
of foam.  The sun, sinking behind the hills,
cast long orange and pink streaks across the
waves, and turned the small white clouds
overhead a dainty, rosy mass of drifting color.

Bartlett and Billy strolled down the winding
street of the little seaside town, out on the pier
and stood idly waiting for the evening mailboat
to arrive.  Henrietta and the general were
coming on the evening boat to spend the
autumn in a small cottage which the general
was pleased to call his "shooting-box."  But
Bartlett's pleasure at seeing Henrietta once
more was mingled with worry and uneasiness
over Billy and the Watermelon.  He smoked
thoughtfully and watched Billy warily,
tenderly.  She leaned against a pile and gazed
over the vast unrest of the ocean to the distant
horizon, with dreaming, unfathomable eyes.
Bartlett knew of whom she was thinking,
whom waiting for more and more eagerly
every day now as August drew to a close and
still he did not come.  But this evening he had
come, he was in the same neighborhood, drunk
and probably hungry.  When they met, as they
must and that shortly, would he make a scene,
become loud-mouthed, foul, abusive?  It would
be hard on Billy, and Bartlett wished vainly
that he could spare her.  But it was best that
she should know, should understand fully and
with a sudden quick cut it would be over with,
the June madness when one is young and
pretty and care-free.  Billy would read her
folly in the bleared eyes of a shiftless fool.
Yet the boy was clever in getting out of a tight
place, and Bartlett admired cleverness
intensely, not being slow himself when it came to
a hard bargain.  The boy had gentle blood in
his veins, too, more's the pity.  It was simply
a case of a good family gone to seed.  Poor
little Billy and her puppy love!  A most
unfortunate affair, the whole mistaken, unhappy
business!

"There comes the *Mary Gloucester*," said
Billy, breaking into his thoughts.  She nodded
toward the yacht, steaming majestically around
the headland, pennons gaily waving and the
bright awning a splash of color in the afterglow.

"The *Mary Gloucester*," chuckled Bartlett.
"That woman hasn't the sense of her ugly little
poodle dog."

"I know," said Billy, "that is why I have
always been so afraid of her."

"Why afraid of her?"

"For a mother," explained Billy
unfortunately, but characteristically saying the
wrong thing.

Bartlett flushed.  "You just admitted that
she was a fool.  Do you think I would marry
that kind of a woman?"

"Men always do," said Billy.  "A fool's bad
enough, but a fool and money are simply
irresistible."

"You know too much for your age," said
Bartlett coldly.

"I don't exactly know it," blundered Billy.
"I just see it."

"Billy, have you ever seen me—"

"Yes, father.  That night in the pavilion at
the Ainsleys'—"

"That will do, Billy."

Billy was hurt.  "I don't mean to be nasty,
father; but you asked me—"

"There comes the mail boat," interrupted
Bartlett firmly.

Billy looked at it and sighed.  It was the last
of August and Jeroboam Martin had not come.
Had he forgotten her in two short months?

Bartlett laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder.
"Forget him, girlie.  He's not worthy of you."

"He said he would come," whispered Billy.

"If he doesn't, dear, you have me.  We have
stood together through everything for eighteen
years and will stand, still, eh, Billy?"

Billy bent her head and rubbed her cheek
against the hand on her shoulder with a half
laugh and a half sob.

With the first sight of the smoke on the
horizon, heralding the approach of the principal
event of the day, the arrival of the evening
mail, a crowd had begun to gather, the usual
motley crowd of a summer resort on the coast.
Townspeople hung indifferently on the
outskirts, while the summer visitors, in dainty
dresses and baggy trousers, sun-burnt, jovial,
indefatigable, pressed to the front.  The hum
of talk and laughter grew as the crowd grew,
good-natured, meaningless chatter.  The sight
of the *Mary Gloucester*, steaming gracefully
into port, was greeted with a gay flutter of
handkerchiefs and straw hats, and Billy and
Bartlett, standing where the yacht would dock,
were soon the center of the laughing, merry
crowd, ready and eager to welcome home the
stout widow, her unfortunate chaperon and the
two "supplements," as a village wag called the
fat Henry and the slim Bertie.

As the yacht drew near, the widow's corpulent
form was seen by the rail, on one side a
tall youth, and on the other, two, side by side
and apparently in no very good humor.

"Three, by George," cried Blatts, a prosperous
brewer from Milwaukee.  "She left here
with two and returns with three.  Where did
she get him, Bartlett?"

But Bartlett did not answer, did not hear.
The gang-plank had been lowered and he was
watching in numb fascination, the tall youth
walking beside the widow, her ridiculous dog
in his arms.  It was Jeroboam Martin in an
immaculate white suit of Bertie's.  His hat was
off and his hair, after the swim, gleamed soft
and yellow.  For the sake of the widow upon
whose boat he found himself, he had shaved
as well as he could with Henry's razor, and
while his cheeks were smooth enough, he still
wore a small yellow mustache and goatee.
Both were brushed until they shone like his
hair and they lent a fascinating and distinctly
foreign air to his long, thin, clever face.  In
his arms was the little dog with its enormous
bow of sky-blue ribbon.

Bartlett wondered if he were going mad and
seeing things that were not so.  At two, or
thereabouts, he had seen Martin, dirty, shabby,
tired, and had given him money on which to
get drunk.  At seven, a yacht, which had not
been in Westhaven for over a week, carefully
deposits the youth, clean, fresh, well-dressed at
his very side.  Was he mad?

Billy, too, had seen, but did not wonder.
She knew he was a tramp, for he had said he
was, but she never thought of him or pictured
him other than well-dressed, well-cared for,
gently blasé and a bit languid.  She looked at
him now over the heads of the intervening
crowd and her heart did not question how he
came there, only rushed out to him with the
gladness in her eyes, the joyous smile on her
parted lips.  He had said he would come, and
there he was.  Further she did not question.
Their eyes met over the heads of the people,
eager questioning in his, joyful answer in hers.

Hastily he dropped the pup with the sky-blue
bow upon the wharf, among the plebeian feet
there assembled, and reaching Billy's side
through the crowd, grabbed both small hands
and stood laughing down at her.

.. _`And stood laughing down at her`:

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   :align: center
   :alt: And stood laughing down at her

   And stood laughing down at her

"Billy," he whispered, "Oh, you Billy."

There was, there must be some explanation,
Bartlett told himself desperately.  It could not
be that this was not Martin?  Bartlett had not
slept with the youth for nearly a week without
being pretty familiar with the long lank form,
the thin, careless face.  And it was equally
impossible that the forlorn piece of humanity who
had stood that afternoon in the drawing-room
and inquired for Billy was not Martin.  They
were one and the same and once more he and
Billy had met on equal footing.  To ask the
boy again to get drunk was an absurdity.

"I suppose I can give him a job where he
won't have much more to do than draw his
pay," thought Bartlett, hopelessly, dazedly.

The Watermelon dropped Billy's hands and
turned to her father in well-bred greeting, but
their eyes met and in the Watermelon's was
grim defiance.  He had seen Billy again and
nothing could part them now.  All his
humility and repentance had gone, and in their
place was his old-time arrogance and sublime
self-assurance.  Fate in the form of a little
white dog had brought him and Billy together
again, with the Watermelon, still clean, still
well-dressed, and to all outward appearances
the same as the other gay youths of Billy's
acquaintance.  With head up, jaw shut, he
scorned to lower himself for any one.  He
would prove himself worthy, not unworthy of
Billy.  Out of his repentance had grown his
manhood.  He was no nameless hobo of the
great army of the unemployed.  He was
Jeroboam Martin, son of the late Reverend
Mr. Martin, in temporary financial embarrassment
that could be soon remedied.  He would work
for Billy and they would be happy on his
wages.  He drew himself up and held out his
hand.  Bartlett could take it or not as he
pleased.  The Watermelon had sought or
desired no man's favor, and Jeroboam Martin
would not stoop to do so.

For one second the two stared at each other
grimly, square jaws shut, lips unsmiling, then
Bartlett's hand shot forth and he clasped the
Watermelon's.

"Ah, Martin," said he, "how are you, boy?"

And still holding him by the hand, he patted
the Watermelon on his arm, jovially.  After
all he liked the boy, and right or wrong, wise
or foolish, fate was against any other action,
fate in the form of a half-drowned poodle dog.

The Watermelon rested his arm on Bartlett's
shoulder with boyish affection.  "Say, Bartlett,"
said he in a low voice, "I got drunk, honest
to rights.  But it was so blamed hot, I
cooled off in the ocean before I knew what I
was about and that sobered me up again.  Then
I saw something fall from the yacht and I
thought it was a kid from the noise they were
making, not just a pup.  I swam out to help
and of course they hauled me on board, and
now the widow is planning to marry me."

Bartlett roared.  "Say, boy, er—er—maybe
you need a loan until I can see about that job
for you."

Once more their eyes met and this time in
complete and tender accord.

"You're all right," whispered the Watermelon,
his face softening.  "And don't you
worry about Billy," he added, "I'll take care
of her."

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   THE END

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