THE BIG MOGUL

By JOSEPH C. LINCOLN

THE BIG MOGUL
QUEER JUDSON
RUGGED WATER
DOCTOR NYE
FAIR HARBOR
GALUSHA THE MAGNIFICENT
THE PORTYGEE
“SHAVINGS”
MARY-’GUSTA
CAP’N DAN’S DAUGHTER
THE RISE OF ROSCOE PAINE
THE POSTMASTER
THE WOMAN-HATERS
KEZIAH COFFIN
CY WHITTAKER’S PLACE
CAP’N ERI
EXTRICATING OBADIAH
THANKFUL’S INHERITANCE
MR. PRATT
MR. PRATT’S PATIENTS
KENT KNOWLES: “QUAHAUG”
CAP’N WARREN’S WARDS
THE DEPOT MASTER
OUR VILLAGE
PARTNERS OF THE TIDE
THE OLD HOME HOUSE
CAPE COD BALLADS
THE MANAGERS

The Big Mogul

by
Joseph C. Lincoln
Author of “Queer Judson,” “Rugged Water,”
“Shavings,” etc.

D. Appleton and Company
New York 1926 London

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1926, by The Crowell Publishing Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE BIG MOGUL

THE BIG MOGUL

CHAPTER I

THIS was the library of the Townsend mansion in Harniss. Mrs. Townsend had so christened it when the mansion was built; or, to be more explicit, the Boston architect who drew the plans had lettered the word “Library” inside the rectangle indicating the big room, just as he had lettered “Drawing-Room” in the adjoining, and still larger, rectangle, and Mrs. Townsend had approved both plans and lettering. In the former, and much smaller, home of the Townsends there had been neither library nor drawing-room, the apartments corresponding to them were known respectively as the “sitting-room” and the “parlor.” When the little house was partially demolished and the mansion took its place the rechristened sitting-room acquired two black walnut bookcases and a dozen “sets,” the latter resplendent in morocco and gilt. Now the gilt letters gleamed dimly behind the glass in the light from the student lamp upon the marble-topped center table beside which Foster Townsend was sitting, reading a Boston morning newspaper. It was six o’clock in the afternoon of a dark day in the fall of a year late in the seventies.

The student lamp was a large one and the light from beneath its green shade fell upon his head and shoulders as he sat there in the huge leather easy-chair. Most of the furniture in the library was stiff and expensive and uncomfortable. The easy-chair was expensive also, but it was comfortable. Foster Townsend had chosen it himself when the mansion was furnished and it was the one item upon which his choice remained fixed and irrevocable.

“But it is so big and—and homely, dear,” remonstrated his wife. “It doesn’t look—well, genteel enough for a room in a house like ours. Now, truly, do you think it does?”

Her husband, his hat on the back of his head and his hands in his trousers’ pockets, smiled.

“Maybe not, Bella,” he replied. “It is big, I’ll grant you that, and I shouldn’t wonder if it was homely. But so far as that goes I’m big and homely myself. It fits me and I like it. You can have all the fun you want with the rest of the house; buy all the doodads and pictures and images and story-books and trash that you’ve a mind to, but I want that chair and I’m going to have it. A sitting-room is a place to sit in and I mean to sit in comfort.”

“But it isn’t a sitting-room, Father,” urged Arabella. “It is a library. I do wish you wouldn’t forget that.”

“All right. I don’t care what you call it, so long as you let me sit in it the way I want to. That chair’s sold, young man,” he added, addressing the attentive representative of the furniture house. “Now, Mother, what’s the next item on the bill of lading?”

The leather chair came to the library of the Townsend mansion and its purchaser had occupied it many, many afternoons and evenings since. He was occupying it now, his bulky figure filling it to repletion and his feet, of a size commensurate to the rest of him, resting upon an upholstered foot-stool—a “cricket” he would have called it. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles were perched upon the big nose before his gray eyes and the stump of a cigar was held tightly in the corner of his wide, thin lipped, grimly humorous mouth. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, wore a stiff-bosomed white shirt, a low “turn down” collar and a black, ready-made bow tie. Below the tie, a diamond stud glittered in the shirt bosom. His boots—he had them made for him by the village shoe-maker—were of the, even then, old-fashioned, long-legged variety, but their leather was of the softest and best obtainable. Upon the third finger of his left hand—stubby, thick hands they were—another diamond, set in a heavy gold ring, flashed as he turned the pages of the paper. His hair was a dark brown and it and his shaggy brows and clipped chin beard were sprinkled with gray.

There was another chair at the other side of the table, a rocking-chair, upholstered in fashionable black haircloth and with a lace “tidy” upon its back. That chair was empty. It had been empty for nearly a month, since the day when Arabella Townsend was taken ill. It was pathetically, hauntingly empty now, for she who had been accustomed to occupy it was dead. A little more than a week had elapsed since her funeral, an event concerning which Eben Wixon, the undertaker, has been vaingloriously eloquent ever since.

“Yes, sir-ee!” Mr. Wixon was wont to proclaim with the pride of an artist. “That was about the most luxurious funeral ever held in this county, if I do say it. I can’t think of anything to make it more perfect, unless, maybe, to have four horses instead of two haulin’ the hearse. That would have put in what you might call the finishin’ touch. Yes, sir, ’twould! Still, I ain’t findin’ fault. I’m satisfied. The music—and the flowers! And the high-toned set of folks sittin’ around all over the lower floor of that big house! Some of ’em was out in the dinin’ room, they was. If I had half the cash represented at that Townsend funeral I’d never need to bury anybody else in this world. I bet you I wouldn’t, I’d have enough.”

Foster Townsend read his paper, became interested in a news item, smiled, raised his head and, turning toward the vacant rocker, opened his lips to speak. Then he remembered and sank back again into his own chair. The paper lay unheeded upon his knees and he stared absently at a figure in the Brussels carpet on the floor of the library.

A door in the adjoining room—the dining room—opened and Nabby Gifford, the Townsend housekeeper, entered from the kitchen. She lit the hanging lamp above the dining room table and came forward to draw the portières between that room and the library. Standing with the edge of a curtain in each hand, she addressed her employer.

“Kind of a hard old evenin’, ain’t it, Cap’n Townsend,” she observed. “It’s rainin’ now but I declare if it don’t feel as if it might snow afore it gets through.”

Foster Townsend did not answer, nor did he look up. Mrs. Gifford tried again.

“Anything ’special in the paper?” she inquired. “Ain’t found out who murdered that woman up to Watertown yet, I presume likely?”

He heard her this time.

“Eh?” he grunted, raising his eyes. “No, I guess not. I don’t know. I didn’t notice. What are you doing in the dining room, Nabby? Where’s Ellen?”

“She’s out. It’s her night off. She was all dressed up in her best bib and tucker and so I judged she was goin’ somewheres. I asked her where, but she never said nothin’, made believe she didn’t hear me. Don’t make much odds; I can ’most generally guess a riddle when I’ve got the answer aforehand. There’s an Odd Fellers’ ball over to Bayport to-night and that Georgie D.’s home from fishin’, so I cal’late—”

Townsend interrupted. “All right, all right,” he put in, gruffly. “I don’t care where she’s gone. Pull those curtains, will you, Nabby.”

“I was just a-goin’ to.... Say, Cap’n Townsend, don’t you think it’s kind of funny the way that woman’s husband is actin’—that Watertown woman’s, I mean? He says he wan’t to home the night she was murdered but he don’t say where he was. Now, ’cordin’ to what I read in yesterday’s Advertiser—”

“All right, all right! Pull those curtains.... Here! Wait a minute. Where’s Varunas?”

“He’s out to the barn, same as he usually is, I guess likely. He spends more time with them horses than he does with me, I know that. I say to him sometimes, I say: ‘Anybody’d think a horse could talk the way you keep company with ’em. Seems as if you liked to be with critters that can’t talk.’”

“Perhaps he does—for a change. Well, if he comes in tell him I want to see him. You can call me when supper’s ready. Now, if you’ll pull those curtains—”

The curtains were snatched together with a jerk and a rattle of rings on the pole. From behind them sounded the click of dishes and the jingle of silver. Foster Townsend sank back into the leather chair. His cigar had gone out, but he did not relight it. He sat there, gazing at nothing in particular, a gloomy frown upon his face.

The door leading from the rear of the front hall opened just a crack. Through the crack came a whisper in a hoarse masculine voice.

“Cap’n Foster!” whispered the voice. “Cap’n Foster!... Ssst! Look here!”

Townsend turned, looked and saw a hand with a beckoning forefinger thrust from behind the door. He recognized the hand and lifting his big body from the chair, walked slowly across the room.

“Well, Varunas,” he asked, “what’s the matter now? What are you sneaking in through the skipper’s companion for?”

A head followed the hand around the edge of the door, the head of Varunas Gifford. Varunas was Nabby Gifford’s husband. He was stableman on the Townsend estate, took care of the Townsend horses, and drove his employer’s trotters and pacers in the races at the county fairs and elsewhere. He was a little, wizened man, with stooped shoulders and legs bowed like barrel hoops. His thin, puckered face puckered still more as he whispered a cautious reply.

“Cap’n Foster,” he whispered, “can you just step out in the hall here a minute? I’ve got somethin’ to tell ye and if I come in there Nabby’s liable to hear us talkin’ and want to know what it’s all about. Come out just a minute, can ye?”

Townsend motioned him back, followed him into the dimly lighted hall and closed the door behind them.

“Well, here I am,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

Varunas rubbed his unshaven chin. His fingers among the bristles sounded like the rasp of sandpaper.

“You know Claribel?” he began anxiously.

Claribel was the fastest mare in the Townsend stable. The question, therefore, was rather superfluous. Claribel’s owner seemed to consider it so.

“Don’t waste your breath,” he ordered. “What’s the matter with her?”

Varunas shook his head violently. “Ain’t nothin’ the matter with her,” he declared. “She’s fine. Only—well, you see—”

“Come, come! Throw it overboard!”

“Well, I was cal’latin’ to take her down to the Circle to-morrow mornin’ early—about six or so; afore anybody was up, you know—and try her out. Them was your orders, Cap’n, you remember.”

“Of course I remember. I was going to remind you of it. You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

“I was cal’latin’ to, but—well, I heard somethin’ a spell ago that made me think maybe I hadn’t better. I’ve been give to understand that—” he leaned forward to whisper once more—“that there’d be somebody else there at the same time me and Claribel was. Um-hum. Somebody that’s cal’latin’ to find out somethin’.”

Foster Townsend’s big hands, pushed into his trousers pockets, jingled the loose change there. He nodded.

“I see,” he said, slowly. “Yes, yes, I see. Somebody named Baker, I shouldn’t wonder. Eh?”

Varunas nodded. “Somebody that works for somebody named somethin’ like that,” he admitted. “You see, Cap’n, I was down to the blacksmith shop a couple of hours ago—got to have Flyaway shod pretty soon—and me and Joe Ellis was talkin’ about one thing or ’nother, and says he: ‘Varunas,’ he says, ‘when is the old man and Sam Baker goin’ to pull off that private horse trot of theirs?’ he says. Course everybody knows that us and Sam have fixed up that match and it’s the general notion that there’s consider’ble money up on it. Some folks say it’s a hundred dollars and some says it’s five hundred. I never tell ’em how much ’tis, because—”

“Because you don’t know. Well, never mind that. Go on.”

“Yup.... Um-hum.... Well, anyhow, all hands knows that our Claribel and his Rattler is goin’ to have it out and Joe he wanted to know when ’twas goin’ to be. I told him next week some day and then he says: ‘I understand you’ve been takin’ the mare down to the Circle and givin’ her time trials in the mornin’s afore anybody else is up.’ Well, that kind of knocked me. I never suspicioned anybody did know, did you, Cap’n?”

“I told you to take pains that they didn’t. You haven’t done it but once. Who saw you then?”

“Why, nobody, so I’d have been willin’ to bet. I never see anybody around. Lonesome’s all git out ’tis down there that time in the mornin’. And dark, too. How Joe or anybody else knew I had Claribel down there yesterday was more’n I could make out.”

“Well, never mind. It looks as if they did know. Did Ellis tell you what time the mare made?”

“No. But he give me to understand that Seth Emmons, Baker’s man, was figgerin’ to come over from Bayport and be somewheres in that neighborhood to-morrer mornin’, and every mornin’, till he found out. Joe wouldn’t tell me who told him, but he said ’twas a fact. Now what had I better do? It’s the story ’round town that Rattler has made 2:20 or better and that the best Claribel can do is in the neighborhood of 2:35. If folks knew she’d made 2:18½ around that Circle Baker might have Rattler took sick or somethin’ and the whole business would be called off. I’ve known his horses to be took down in a hurry afore, when he was toler’ble sure to lose. When you’re dealin’ with Sam Baker you’re up against a slick article, and that man of his, Seth Emmons, is just as up and comin’. I better not show up at that Circle to-morrow mornin’, had I, Cap’n Foster?”

Townsend, hands in pockets, took a turn up and down the hall. His horses were his pet hobbies. Besides the span of blacks which he was accustomed to drive about town and which, with the nobby brougham or carryall or dog-cart which they drew, were the admiration and boastful pride of Harniss, he owned a half dozen racers. At the Ostable County Fair and Cattle Show in October the Townsend entries usually carried off the majority of first prizes. They were entered, also, at the fair in New Bedford and sometimes as far away as Taunton. Between fairs there were numbers of by-races with other horse owners in neighboring towns. A good trotter was a joy to Foster Townsend and a sharply contested trotting match his keenest enjoyment. The Townsend trotters were as much talked about as the famous and long-drawn-out Townsend-Cook lawsuit. The suit was won, or seemed to be. The highest court in Massachusetts had recently decided it in Foster Townsend’s favor. Bangs Cook’s lawyers were reported to have entered motion of appeal and it was said that they intended carrying it to the Supreme Court at Washington, but few believed their appeal would be granted.

Sam Baker was an old rival of his on the tracks. Baker was the hotel keeper and livery man at Bayport, ten miles away. He was not accounted rich, like Townsend, but he was well to do, a shrewd Yankee and a “sport.” The trotter Rattler was a recent acquisition of his and a fast one, so it was said. He had challenged Townsend’s mare Claribel to a mile trot on the “Circle,” the track which Townsend had built and presented to the town. It was a quarter mile round of hard clay road constructed on the salt meadows near the beach at South Harniss. A lonely spot with no houses near it, it was then. Now a summer hotel and an array of cottages stand on or near it. Foster Townsend used it as an exercise ground for his trotters, but any one else was accorded the same privilege. In the winter, when the snow was packed hard, it was the spot where the dashing young fellow in a smart cutter behind a smart horse took his best girl for a ride and the hope of an impromptu race with some other dashing young fellow similarly equipped.

Varunas Gifford watched his employer pace up and down the hall, watched him adoringly but anxiously. After a moment he returned to repeat his question.

“Better not be down to the Circle to-morrow mornin’, had I, Cap’n?” he suggested.

Townsend stopped in his stride. “Yes,” he said, with decision. “I want you to be there.”

“Eh? Why, good land! If that Seth Emmons is there spyin’ and keepin’ time on Claribel, why—”

“Sshh! Wait! I want you to be there, but I don’t want the mare to be there. Is Hornet all right for a workout?”

“Sartin sure he’s all right. But Hornet can’t do better’n 2:40 if he spreads himself, not on that Circle track anyhow. You ain’t cal’latin’ to haul out Claribel and put in Hornet, be you? There wouldn’t be no sense in that, Cap’n, not a mite. Why—”

“Oh, be quiet! If he does 2:45 it will suit me just as well, provided that is the best you can make him do. You say it’s dark down there at six o’clock?”

“Dark enough, even if it’s a fine mornin’, this time of year. A mornin’ like to-day’s—yes, and the way it looks as if to-morrow’s would be—it’s so dark you can’t much more’n see to keep in the road.”

“All right. The darker the better. If it’s dark to-morrow morning you hitch Hornet in the gig and go down there and send him a mile as fast as he can travel. He is the same build and size as Claribel, about, and the same color.”

“Eh?... Gosh!” Varunas’ leathery face split with a broad grin. “Yus—yus,” he observed, “I see what you’re up to, Cap’n Foster. You figger that Sam Emmons’ll see me sendin’ Hornet around the Circle and he’ll take it for granted—Eh! But no, I’m afraid ’twon’t be dark enough for that. Hornet is the same size and color as Claribel but he ain’t marked the same. Claribel’s got that white splash between her eyes and that white stockin’ on her left hind laig. Hornet he ain’t got no white on him nowheres. If ’twas the middle of the night Sam might be fooled, but—”

“Sshh! You’ve been whitewashing the henhouses this week, haven’t you? And as the job isn’t finished, I imagine you’ve got some of the whitewash left. If you have, and if you’ve got any gumption at all, I should think you could splash a horse white wherever he needed to be white and do it well enough to fool anybody on a dark morning, particularly if he wasn’t on the lookout for a trick. You could do that on a pinch, couldn’t you?”

Mr. Gifford’s grin, which had disappeared, came back again, broader than ever.

“I shouldn’t be surprised to death if I could,” he chuckled. “I see—yus, yus, I see! Sam he’ll see Hornet all whitewashed up like a cellar door and he won’t be suspicionin’ nothin’ but Claribel, and so when Hornet can’t do no better than 2:40 or 2:45 he’ll naturally—Hi! that’s cute, that is! Yes, yes, I see now.”

“Well, I’m glad you do. Go ahead and do your whitewashing. Whitewash isn’t like paint, it comes off easy.”

From behind the closed door of the library a sharp voice called: “Cap’n Townsend! Cap’n Townsend! Supper’s ready!”

Varunas started. “I must be goin’,” he whispered. “Don’t tell her about it, Cap’n Foster, will ye. She’ll pester me to death to find out what’s up and if I don’t tell her, she— But say!” he added admiringly, “that is about as slick a trick as ever I heard of, that whitewashin’ is. How did you ever come to think that up all by yourself?”

Foster Townsend, his hand on the knob of the dining room door, grunted.

“I didn’t think it up all by myself,” he said, curtly. “There’s nothing new about it. It’s an old trick, as old as horse racing. I remembered it, that’s all, and I guess it is good enough to fool any of Sam Baker’s gang. You can tell me to-morrow how it worked.”

He opened the door, crossed the library and sat down in his chair at the lonely supper table. Nabby Gifford brought in the eatables and set them before him.

“I made you a fish chowder to-night, Cap’n Foster,” she said. “I know you always liked it and we ain’t had one for a long time. Ezra Nickerson had some real nice tautog that his boy had just caught out by the spar buoy and there’s no kind of fish makes as good chowder as a tautog. Now I do hope you’ll eat some of it. You ain’t ate enough the last week to keep a canary bird goin’. You’ll be sick fust thing you know.”

Townsend dipped his spoon in the chowder and tasted approvingly.

“Good enough!” he declared. “Tastes like old times. Seems like old times to have you waiting on table, too, Nabby. Mother always liked your fish chowders.”

Mrs. Gifford nodded. “I know she did,” she agreed. “Time and time again I’ve heard her say there was nobody could make a chowder like me. Um-hum. Oh, well! We’re here to-day and to-morrow the place thereof don’t know us, as it says in the Bible. Ah, hum-a-day!... Speakin’ of waitin’ on table,” she added, noting the expression on his face, “I wanted to talk to you about that, Cap’n Townsend. There ain’t any reasons why I shouldn’t do it all the time. You don’t need two hired help in that kitchen now any more than a codfish needs wings. Ellen, she and that Georgie D. of hers will be gettin’ married pretty soon—leastways all hands says they will—and when she quits you mustn’t hire anybody in her place. If I can’t get meals for one lone man then I’d better be sent to the old woman’s home. You might just as well let me do it, and save your money—not that you need to save any more, land knows!”

Foster Townsend shook his head. “A pretty big house for one pair of hands to take care of,” he observed. “When Ellen goes—or if she goes—you better hire some one else, Nabby.”

“Now, Cap’n Foster, what’s the use? What for?”

“Because I want you to, for one reason.... There, there, Nabby! don’t argue about it. I know what I’m doing. At any rate I guess I can spend my own money, if I want to.”

“I guess you can. I don’t know who’s liable to stop you doin’ anything you want to, far’s that goes. Nobody has done it yet, though there’s a good many tried.... But while I’m talkin’ I might just as well talk a little mite more. I don’t see why you keep on livin’ in this great ark of a place. ’Tain’t a bit of my business, but if I was you I’d sell—or rent it, or somethin’—and have a little house that I wouldn’t get lost in every time I went upstairs.”

Her employer shook his head. “This is my house and I stay in it,” he said, crisply.

“Well, if you will you will, of course. When you bark at a body that way there ain’t a mite of use barkin’ back, I know that. And I realize that you and—and her that’s gone had the best time in the world buildin’ over this house and riggin’ it up. It’s just that I know how lonesome you are—a blind person could see that.... Here, here! You mustn’t get up from that table yet, Cap’n Foster. You’ve got to have some more of my tautog chowder.”

“No. Had enough, Nabby.”

“My soul! Well, then you must have a helpin’ of baked indian puddin’. I made it ’special, because I knew how you liked it. Don’t tell me you won’t touch that puddin’!”

“All right, all right. Bring it along. And I’ll have another cup of tea, if you’ve got it.”

“Got it! I’ve got a gallon. That Varunas man of mine would drink a hogshead of strong tea all to himself any time if I’d let him. I tell him no wonder he’s all shriveled up like a wet leather apron.”

She disappeared into the kitchen to return, a moment later, with the refilled cup. She was talking when she went out and talking when she came back.

“You hadn’t ought to keep on livin’ in this house all alone,” she declared, with emphasis. “I said it afore and now I say it again. It ain’t natural to live that way. It ain’t good for man to be alone, that’s what the Good Book says. Land sakes! afore I’d do that I’d—I’d do the way the rich man in the—what-d’ye-call-it—parallel done. I’d go out into the highways and byways and fetch in the lame and the halt and the blind. Yes, indeed I would! I’d do it for company and I wouldn’t care how halt they was, neither; they’d be better’n nobody. Speakin’ about that parallel,” she added, reflectively. “I’ve never been real sure just what ailed a person when he was a ‘halt.’ A horse—mercy knows I hear horse talk enough from Varunas!—has somethin’ sometimes that’s called the ‘spring halt,’ but that, so he tells me, is a kind of lameness. Now the parallel tells about the lame and the halt, so— Good gracious! Why, you ain’t through, be you, Cap’n Foster? You ain’t hardly touched your puddin’.”

The captain had risen and pushed back his chair. “I’ve eaten all I can to-night, Nabby,” he said. “My appetite seems to have gone on a voyage these days and left me ashore.... Humph! So you think I’d better have somebody come and live here with me, do you? That’s funny.”

“Why is it funny? Sounds like sense to me.”

“It’s funny because I had just about made up my mind— Oh, well, never mind that, I’m going out pretty soon. If any one comes to see me you can tell them I’ve gone.”

“Where shall I say you’ve gone?”

“If you don’t know you won’t have to say it.... Good-night.”

“Shall I tell Varunas to have the carriage and team ready for you?”

“No, I’m going to walk.”

“Walk! What’ll people think if they see you out a-walkin’ on your own feet like—like common folks? The idea!”

“Good-night. One thing more: If the minister comes tell him I’ll keep up Bella’s subscription to the church the same as she did when she was here—that is, for the present, anyhow. If he says anything about my giving money toward the new steeple tell him I haven’t made up my mind whether or not the steeple is going to be rebuilt. When I do I’ll let him know.... That’s all, I guess.”

He went into the library, drawing the curtains with his own hands this time. He glanced at the ornate marble and gold clock upon the mantel, decided that it was too early for his contemplated walk, and sank heavily into the leather chair. He picked up the paper from the floor, adjusted his spectacles and attempted to read. The attempt was a failure. Nothing in the closely printed pages aroused his interest sufficiently to distract his thoughts from the empty rocker at the other side of the table. He tossed the paper upon the floor again and sat there, pulling at his beard and glancing impatiently at the clock. Its gold plated hands crept from seven to seven-thirty and, at last, to ten minutes to eight. Then he rose and moved toward the front hall.

In that hall he took from the carved walnut hatstand a long ulster and a black soft hat. He had donned the ulster and was about to put on the hat when he heard Mrs. Gifford’s step in the library. She was calling his name.

“Well, here I am,” he answered, impatiently. “Now what?”

Nabby was out of breath, and this, together with the consciousness of the importance of her errand, did not help her toward coherence.

“I—I’m awful sorry to stop you, Cap’n Foster,” she panted, “and—and of course I know you didn’t want to see nobody to-night. But—but he said ’twas serious and he’d come all the way from Trumet a-purpose—and it’s rainin’ like all fire, too—and bein’ as ’twas him, I—well, you see, I just didn’t know’s I’d ought to say no—so—”

Townsend interrupted. “Who is it?” he demanded.

Nabby’s tone was awe-stricken. “It’s Honorable Mooney,” she whispered. “Representive Mooney, that’s who ’tis. He’s drove all the way from Trumet, rain and all, to see you, Cap’n Foster, and he says it’s dreadful important. If it had been any one else I wouldn’t have let him in, but honest, when I see him standin’ on the steps to the side door, lookin’ just as big and—and noble as he done when Varunas took me to that Republican rally and he made such a grand speech, I—well, I—”

Again her employer broke in.

“You have let him in, I take it,” he said, curtly. “And of course you told him I was in.... Well, I’ll give him five minutes. Send him into the sitting-room.”

The Honorable Alpheus Mooney was a young man serving his first term in the Massachusetts Legislature as Representative for the Ostable County district. He was extremely anxious to continue his service there, had been renominated and was now facing the ordeal of the election which would take place early in November. His manner as he entered the library was a curious mixture of importance, deference and a slight uneasiness.

“How do you do, Cap’n Townsend?” he gushed, changing his hat from his right hand to his left and extending the former. “How do you do, sir?”

He seized the Townsend hand and shook it heartily. The captain endured the shaking rather than shared in it. He did not ask his caller to be seated.

“How are you, Mooney?” he said. “Well, what brought you over here this wet night?”

Mr. Mooney sat without waiting for an invitation. He placed his hat upon the floor, clasped his hands in his lap, unclasped them again, crossed his knees, cleared his throat, and agreed that the evening was a wet one. Townsend, still standing, thrust his own hands into his trousers pockets.

“Well, what’s the matter?” he asked, dismissing the subject of the weather.

Mooney once more cleared his throat. “Oh—er—oh, nothing in particular, Cap’n,” he said. “Nothing much. I was over here in Harniss and—and I thought I would drop in for a minute, that’s all. I haven’t seen you since your—er—sad loss—and I—er—I can’t tell you how sorry I was to learn of your bereavement. It was a great shock to me, a dreadful shock.”

Townsend’s face was quite expressionless. “All right,” he observed. “Nabby said you wanted to see me about something important. Well?”

“Well—well, I—er—I did. Not so very important, perhaps—but ... you were going out, weren’t you, Cap’n Townsend?”

“Yes. I am going out in five minutes. Perhaps a little less.”

“I wouldn’t think of keeping you, Cap’n, of course not.”

“All right.”

“Cap’n Townsend, I—er—well, I am going to be—I am going to speak right out, as man to man. I know you would rather have me speak that way.”

Townsend nodded. “There aren’t any women here, as I know of,” he agreed. “Go ahead and speak.”

“Yes.” Mr. Mooney seemed to find the “man to man” speaking difficult. “Well,” he began, “it has come to my ears—far be it from me to say it is true; I don’t believe it is, Cap’n Townsend—but I have heard that you weren’t so very—well, anxious to see me reëlected Representative. I have heard stories that you said you didn’t care whether they reëlected me or not. Now, as I say, I don’t believe you ever said anything of the kind. In fact, I as good as know you didn’t.”

He paused and looked up eagerly, seeking confirmation of the expressed disbelief. The Townsend face was still quite expressionless, nor was the reply altogether satisfactory.

“All right,” said the captain again. “If you know it, then you don’t need to worry, do you?”

“No. No-o; but—you haven’t said any such thing, have you, Cap’n Townsend?”

Townsend did not answer the question. He regarded his visitor with a disquieting lack of interest.

“I was given to understand that you said you were as good as reëlected already,” he observed. “If you said that, and believe it, then what I said or what anybody else said isn’t worth fretting about, let alone cruising twelve miles in a rainstorm to find out about.”

“Well, but, Cap’n Townsend—”

“Heave to a minute. See here, Mooney, you’ve got the Republican nomination.”

“Yes. Of course I have, but—”

“Wait. And there hasn’t been a Democratic Representative from this district at the state house since the sixties, has there?”

“No, but—”

“All right. Then you don’t need to talk to me. If you’re a Republican, ready to vote every time with your party and for the district, you are safe enough. Especially,” with a slight twitch of the lip, “when you say yourself you’re as good as reëlected.”

This, perhaps, should have been reassuring, but apparently it was not. The Honorable Mr. Mooney shifted uneasily in his chair.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he admitted. “That’s all right, so far as it goes.... But, Cap’n Townsend, I—well, I know you aren’t as—well, as strong for me as you were when I ran before. You thought, I suppose—like a good many other folks who didn’t know—that I ought to have voted for that cranberry bill. You, nor they, didn’t understand about that bill. That bill—well, it read all right enough, but—well, there was more to it than just reading. There were influences behind that bill that I didn’t like, that’s all. No honest man could like them.”

“Um-hum. I see. Well, what was it that honest men like you didn’t like about that bill? I was one of those ‘influences,’ behind it, I guess. It protected the cranberry growers of the Cape, didn’t it? Looked out for their interests pretty well? I thought it did, and I read it before you ever saw it.”

“Yes. Yes, it protected them all right. But there are other sections than the Cape, Cap’n Townsend. They’re beginning to raise cranberries up around Plymouth and—and—”

“I know. And there are influences up there, too. Well, what has that cranberry bill got to do with you? You didn’t vote against it. Of course you told me and a few others, before you were elected the first time, that you would vote for it, but you didn’t do that, either. You weren’t in the House when that bill came up to a vote. You’d gone fishing, I understand.”

Mr. Mooney was indignant. “No such thing;” he declared, springing to his feet. “I hadn’t gone fishing. I was sick. That’s what I was—sick.”

“Yes?” dryly. “Well, some of the rest of us were sick when we heard about it. Never mind that. The bill was defeated. Of course,” he added, after a momentary interval, “it may come up again this session and Jim Needham, the Democratic candidate, says he shall vote for it, provided he’s elected. But you say you’re going to be elected, so what he may or may not do won’t make any difference.... There! my five minutes are up, and more than up. I’ve got to go. Honest men are scarce in politics, Mooney. Maybe all hands around here will remember that on election day and forget their cranberry swamps. Maybe they will. Sorry I’ve got to hurry. Good-night.”

He was on his way to the hall door, but his visitor hurried after him and caught his arm.

“Hold on, Cap’n Townsend,” he begged. “Hold on just a minute. I—I came here to tell you that—that I’d changed my mind about that bill. I—I’m going to vote for it. Yes, and I am going to work for it, too.”

“Oh!... Well, speaking as one of those ‘influences’ you were talking about, I’m glad to hear you say so, of course. But you said so before. What makes you change your mind this time—change it back again, I mean? Has that honesty of yours had a relapse?”

The Honorable Mooney ignored the sarcasm. He had journeyed from Trumet in the rain to say one thing in particular and now he said it.

“Cap’n Townsend,” he pleaded desperately, “you aren’t going to use your influence against me, are you? There’s no use beating around the bush. Everybody that knows anything knows that a word from you will change more votes than anybody else’s in the county. If you say you’re going to vote for Needham—well, this is a four to one Republican district, but I guess you can lick me if you want to. You won’t do that, will you? I’m going to work hard to get that cranberry bill through the House; honest, I am. I was a fool last session. I realize it now. If that bill can be shoved through I’ll help do it. That’s the honest God’s truth.”

Foster Townsend regarded him in silence. Mooney’s eyes met the grim intentness of the gaze for a moment, then faltered and fell. The Townsend lip twitched.

“You’re goin’ to make a speech here in Harniss sometime this week, aren’t you?” the captain asked.

“Yes. Next week, Tuesday night, at the town hall.”

“Um-hum. Going to say anything about that cranberry bill?”

“Yes, yes, I am. I am going to come out for it hard. I am going to tell everybody that I was wrong about it, that I’ve seen my mistake and they can count on me as being strong for it. That’s what I am going to tell them.... Say,” he added, eagerly, “I’ve got my speech all written out. It’s in my pocket now. Don’t you want to read it, Cap’n? I brought it hoping you would.”

Townsend shook his head.

“I can wait until Tuesday, I guess,” he replied. “I was planning to go to the rally. I’ll be there, along with some more of the dishonest influences. They will all want to hear you.”

“And you won’t work against me, Cap’n Townsend? I can’t tell you how sorry I am about—about this whole business.”

“Never mind. You can tell it all at the rally. It ought to be interesting to hear and, if it is interesting enough, it may bring some votes into port that have been hanging in the wind. I can’t say for sure, but it may.... There! I can’t spare any more time just now.... Nabby!” raising his voice. “Nabby!”

Mrs. Gifford appeared between the curtains. Her employer waved a hand toward his visitor.

“Nabby,” he said, “just see that Mr. Mooney finds his way out to his buggy, will you.... Good-night, Mooney.”

The honorable representative of an ungrateful constituency, thus unceremoniously dismissed, followed Mrs. Gifford to the dining room and from there to the side entrance to the mansion. Foster Townsend watched him go. Then he shrugged, sniffed disgustedly, and, pulling the soft hat down upon his forehead, strode through the hall, stopped to take an umbrella from the rack, and stepped out through the front door into the rainy blackness of the night.

The few who met and recognized him as he tramped the muddy sidewalks bowed reverentially and then stopped to stare. For Captain Foster Townsend, greatest among Ostable County’s great men, to be walking on an evening such as this—walking, instead of riding in state behind his span of blacks—was an unheard-of departure from the ordinary. Why was he doing it? Where was he bound? What important happenings hung upon his footsteps?

They could not guess, nor could their wives or sons and daughters when the story was told them. They were right, however, when they surmised that the magnate’s errand must be freighted with importance. It was—vastly important to him and no less so to the members of another household in the village of Harniss.

CHAPTER II

IN the Harniss post office Reliance Clark was sorting the evening mail. The post office was a small building on the Main Road. It sat back fifteen or twenty feet from that road and a white picket fence separated the Clark property from the strip of sidewalk before it. A boardwalk, some of its boards in the last stages of bearability, led from the gap in that fence to the door. Over the door a sign, black letters on a white ground, displayed the words “POST OFFICE.” On the inner side of that door was a room of perhaps fifteen by ten feet, lighted in the daytime by two windows and at night by three kerosene lamps in brackets. There was a settee at either end of the room, a stove in the middle, and a wooden box filled with beach sand beside the stove. The plastered walls were covered with handbills and printed placards. The advertisement of the most recent entertainment at the town hall, that furnished by “Professor Megenti, the World Famous Ventriloquist and Necromancer,” was prominently displayed, partially obscuring the broadside of “The Spalding Bell Ringers” who had visited Harniss two weeks earlier. Beneath these were other announcements still more passé, dating back even as far as the red, white and blue placards of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in ’76. The room was crowded with men and boys, dressed as befitted the weather, and the atmosphere was thick with tobacco smoke and the smells of wet clothing, fishy oilskins and damp humanity.

Across the side of the room opposite the door was a wooden partition, divided by another door into two sections. On the left was a glass showcase displaying boxes of stick candy, spools of thread, papers of pins and needles, and various oddments of the sort known as “Notions.” Behind the showcase was standing room for the person who waited upon purchasers of these; behind this a blank wall.

At the right of the door, and extending from floor to ceiling, was a wooden frame of letter boxes with a sliding, ground-glass window in the center. This window was closed while the mail was in process of sorting and opened when it was ready for distribution. In the apartment on the inner side of the letter boxes and window, an apartment little bigger than a good-sized closet, Reliance Clark, postmistress of the village of Harniss, was busy, and Millard Fillmore Clark, her half-brother, was making his usual pretense of being so.

Reliance was plump, quick-moving, sharp-eyed. Her hair had scarcely a trace of gray, although she was nearly fifty. The emptied leather mail bag was on the floor by her feet, packages of first and second class mail matter lay upon the pine counter before her and her fingers flew as she shot each letter or postal into the box rented by the person whose name she read.

Millard Fillmore Clark was older by five years. He was short, thin and inclined to be round-shouldered. He was supposed to be sorting also, but his fingers did not fly. They lingered over each envelope or post card they touched. Certain of the envelopes he held, after a precautionary glance at his half-sister, between his eyes and the hanging lamp, and the postal cards he invariably read.

“Humph! Sho!” he muttered aloud, after one such reading. Reliance heard him and turned.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s the matter now?”

Millard, who had spoken without being aware of it, looked guilty.

“Why, nothin’ special,” he answered, hurriedly. “I just— Humph! Seems that Peter Eldridge’s wife’s nephew has had another baby. That’s news, ain’t it!”

Reliance sniffed.

“Yes, I should say it was,” she observed, dryly, “if it was the way you put it. His wife’s niece, you mean, I suppose.”

“Well, it’s his wife’s nephew’s wife. That’s the same thing, ain’t it. He’s the one that married the girl from up to Middleboro. Simpson—or Simpkins—seems to me her name was, as I recollect. She—”

“Mil Clark, you put that postal in the box where it belongs. This mail is late enough already and I don’t want to stay out here in this office all night. If you would only mind your own business as well as you do everybody else’s you’d be the smartest man in this town, which—”

She did not finish the sentence. Mr. Clark regarded her suspiciously.

“Well, which what?” he demanded, after a momentary pause. “Which what? What was you goin’ to say?”

“Nothin’ in particular. Go to work and stop talkin’.”

“I know what you was goin’ to say. You’ve said it too many times afore. I’m gettin’ sick of havin’ it hove up to me, too. Just about sick of it, I am. A man can stand about so much and then he gets desperate. He don’t care what he does to himself. Some of these days you’ll be surprised, Reliance Clark—you and Esther and all the rest of ’em.”

His sister did not seem greatly alarmed.

“Um-hum,” she sniffed. “Well, just now you can surprise me by doin’ your share of this mail sortin’.... Oh, my soul and body!” she added, snatching the postal from his hand. “Either go to work or get out of my way, one or the other. Go out in the back room and sit down. You can sit down as well as anybody I ever saw.”

Millard Fillmore did not accept the suggestion. With the expression of a martyr he proceeded to cut the twine binding the bundles of papers and second class matter, muttering to himself and shaking his head as he did so. The contents of the bundles followed the letters and postals into the boxes. At last Reliance heaved a sigh of relief.

“There!” she exclaimed. “That’s done. Open the window.”

Mr. Clark slid back the ground-glass window. An eager crowd was standing at the other side of the partition. Millard faced his fellow-citizens with an air of importance. This was the part of the post-office routine which he liked.

“All right!” he announced, briskly. “Now then! Cap’n Snow’s first. Yes, sir! here you are. Quite a bunch of mail you’ve got this evenin’. All right, Hamilton, you’re next ... just a minute, Mr. Doane; I’ll attend to you in a jiffy.... Now, now, you boy! you hold on; you take your turn. No use shovin’, you won’t get it any sooner. This business has to be done systematic.”

The group before the window thinned as its members received their shares of the mail matter. Some departed immediately, others lingered to open envelopes or for a final chat. Suddenly there was a stir and a turning of heads toward the door. Some one had entered, some one of importance. There was a buzz of respectful greeting.

“Why, good evening, Cap’n Townsend!”... “How d’ye do, Cap’n?”... “Kind of bad night to be out in, ain’t it? Yes, ’tis.”

The salutations in general were of this kind. There were a few, and these from persons of consequence, which were more familiar. Judge Wixon said “Good evening, Foster,” and paused to shake hands, but even he was not in the least flippant. The Reverend Mr. Colton, minister of the old First Church, was most cordial, even anxiously so. “I stopped at your door, Captain Townsend,” he began, “but Mrs. Gifford told me—I gathered from what she said—”

The great man broke in. “Yes, all right, Colton,” he said. “I’ll see you pretty soon. I haven’t made up my mind yet. To-morrow or next day, maybe. Hello, Ben! Evening, Paine.”

He moved forward to the window, those before him making way for his passing. Millard Fillmore Clark’s bow was a picture, his urbanity a marvel. He brushed aside a lad who was clamoring for the copy of the Cape Cod Item in the family box and addressed the distinguished patron of the postal service.

“Good evenin’, Cap’n Townsend,” he gushed, “Yes, sir! I’ve got your mail all ready for you. It’s such a mean night I didn’t hardly expect you’d come for it yourself, but I had it all laid out cal’latin’ if Vaninas showed up, I’d—Eh? Oh, yes, here ’tis! There’s consider’ble of it, same as there generally is. Yes, indeed!”

Foster Townsend paid no attention to the flow of language. He took the packet of letters and papers and thrust it into the pocket of his ulster, and, pushing the speaker unceremoniously out of the way, leaned through the window and addressed the postmistress.

“Reliance,” he said.

Miss Clark, already tidying up the little room preparatory to closing for the night, looked over her shoulder.

“Yes,” she said. “What is it?”

“Come here a minute. I want to speak to you.”

Reliance finished brushing the counter before she complied. Then, pushing her half-brother a little farther from the window, she stepped to the place he had occupied. Millard accepted the push with as much dignity as was possible under the circumstances. It was no novelty; he was pushed out of some one’s way at least a dozen times a day.

“Well?” queried Reliance, briskly. Her tone in addressing Ostable County’s first citizen was precisely that which she used when addressing others less consequential. Of the two, it was Foster Townsend who seemed embarrassed, and embarrassment was not usual with him.

“Is—is that niece of yours in the house?” he asked.

For just an instant Reliance hesitated. She was regarding him intently.

“I suppose likely she is,” she said. “Why?”

“Hasn’t gone to bed, has she?”

“She usually sits up till I come in.”

“Um.... How much longer will you be out here in the office?”

“I expect to lock up at nine, same as I usually do.”

“I see. Going into the house then, aren’t you?”

“I certainly am. I don’t expect to go out walkin’ in a pourin’ down rainstorm like this one.”

Townsend’s embarrassment seemed to increase. He pulled at his beard.

“Well,” he said, “I—I want to have a talk with the girl and—er——”

Again he paused. Reliance, her gaze fixed upon his face, broke in.

“What’s that?” she asked, sharply. “Do you mean to say you want to talk with her—with Esther?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve got something to say to her, something rather important. I want you to be there when I say it. I’ll wait and go into the house with you when you’re ready. That is, if it’s all right.”

Another momentary pause. Then Miss Clark nodded.

“No reason why it shouldn’t be all right,” she said. “You better come into the shop and wait.... Be still, Millard! Here, you let Cap’n Townsend through into the shop and light the lamp there. Yes, and when you’ve done it you come straight back and help me sweep up. Bring the broom with you. Hurry now!”

Mr. Clark, whose eager ears had been strained to catch this conversation, hastened to unlock the door between the post-office waiting-room and the official quarters. He ushered the visitor into the large apartment at the rear of the building—or would have done so if the said visitor had not pushed him aside and gone in first. About this room were stands displaying finished hats and bonnets. Others, but partially finished, lay about upon tables and chairs. In the room also were two sewing-machines, workbaskets, scraps of ribbons and cloth, spools of thread, and the general disorder of the workroom of a millinery shop. Reliance Clark was the town milliner as well as its postmistress. “I and Esther and Mil have to live on somethin’,” Reliance had more than once told Abbie Makepeace, the middle-aged spinster who was her partner in the millinery business, “and what Uncle Sam pays me for sortin’ letters is nothin’, or next door to it.”

Millard Fillmore, agog with excitement, pulled forward a chair, carefully wiping its seat with a soiled handkerchief, and Foster Townsend sat down. Mr. Clark cleared his throat and offered apologies.

“We don’t usually look so—so sort of messed up out here, Cap’n Foster,” he explained; “but the mail’s been so extry heavy lately—election day comin’ and all—that we ain’t neither of us had hardly a minute to spare.... It ain’t any of my business, Cap’n,” he added, lowering his voice, “but did I understand you to say you’d come here to-night to see—to see—Esther? I wasn’t quite sure as I heard it straight, but—”

From the adjoining room his sister’s voice issued an order. “Bring that broom,” she commanded.

Mr. Clark hesitated.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, Cap’n Foster,” he explained. “You see, there’s a little too much work for Reliance to handle, and she—yes, yes, I’m comin’, Reliance. Heavens and earth! can’t you wait a minute?”

He took the broom from the corner and joined his sister. Foster Townsend, left alone, crossed his knees and leaned back in the chair.

At eight fifty-nine Miss Clark extinguished the bracket lamps in the waiting-room and locked the front door. A half minute later she appeared in the workshop, threw a black cloth waterproof over her shoulders and turned to her caller.

“All ready,” she announced. “Millard, put out that light.”

The trio emerged from the side entrance of the building just as the clock presented to the First Church by the late Arabella Townsend struck the hour. It was still raining heavily. They followed a path across a small yard and stood beneath a latticed portico covered with honeysuckle, the dry tendrils of the latter rattling as the rain fell upon them. Reliance opened the door beneath the lattice and they stepped into a tiny sitting-room. By a table, with a paper-shaded lamp upon it, a girl of seventeen was sitting, reading a public library book. She turned as Miss Clark and her brother entered, but when the bulky figure of Foster Townsend came through the doorway she rose, an expression of astonishment upon her pretty face. She was Esther Townsend, daughter of Freeling Townsend, Foster Townsend’s much younger brother, and Eunice, his wife. Freeling Townsend died in eighteen sixty-nine. Eunice, Millard Clark’s own sister and half-sister to Reliance, died five years later. Esther had lived with the Clarks ever since. And during that time not once, until this evening, had her father’s brother come to that house. She stood and gazed, but she did not speak.

Characteristically it was Millard Fillmore who broke the silence and, just as characteristically, it was Reliance who interrupted him.

“Esther,” began Mr. Clark, with bustling importance, “don’t you see you’ve got a caller? Can’t you say good evenin’? Take off your things, Cap’n Foster. Here! let me help you with your coat. Esther, can’t you see he’s holdin’ his umbrella? Don’t stand there gawpin’. Get—”

And here Reliance broke in. “Millard,” she ordered, “be still! Yes, you’d better take off your coat, Foster; that is, if you’re goin’ to stay any time. It’s warm in here. Esther usually has this house hot enough to roast a Sunday dinner. Esther, get him a chair.”

The girl brought forward the rocker she had been sitting in. Townsend pulled off his ulster and handed it and his hat and umbrella to Mr. Clark who was obsequiously waiting to receive them. He lowered himself into the rocker. Then he turned to the others.

“You better sit down, all of you,” he said. “What I’ve got to say may take a little time. Sit down, Reliance. Sit down, Esther.”

Mr. Clark’s name was not included in the invitation, but he was the first to sit. Esther took a chair at the other side of the table. Reliance was shaking out her waterproof.

“Sit down, Reliance,” repeated Townsend. Miss Clark’s reply was promptly given.

“I intend to, soon as I’m ready,” she declared, with some tartness.

The caller looked up at her. “Reliance,” he observed, with a grim smile, “you don’t change much. When you were a girl I remember you used to say ‘Black’ whenever anybody else said ‘White.’ Well, independence is a good thing, if you can afford it.”

Reliance, having arranged the waterproof to her satisfaction, hung it on a hook by the door. She drew forward a chair from the wall.

“I’ve managed to scratch along on it so far,” she announced, placing herself in the chair. “Well, what is it you’ve come to this house for, after all these years, Foster Townsend?”

Townsend was looking at his niece, not at her. And it was the niece whom he addressed.

“Esther,” he said, after a moment, “how long has it been since your father died?”

The girl met his keen gaze for an instant, then looked down at the book upon the table.

“Ten years,” she said. Her tone was not too cordial. This rich uncle of hers had been a sort of bugbear in her family. Her father never mentioned his name while he lived and, although her mother had mentioned it often enough, it was only to call its owner a selfish, proud, wicked, stubborn man. When their daughter and Foster Townsend met on the street he sometimes acknowledged the meeting with a nod and sometimes not. His wife had been quite different; she always sent the girl presents at Christmas and was kindly gracious. Esther would have liked her, or would have liked to like her. And she envied her, of course; every female in Harniss did that. She envied Foster Townsend, too, but she was far from liking him.

He repeated her words. “Ten years, eh?” he observed, meditatively. “Humph! is it possible! It doesn’t seem so long—yet, of course it is. And the last time I was in this house was at his funeral. No wonder you’re surprised to see me here now. I’m surprised, myself, to be here.... You’re surprised, too, aren’t you, Reliance?”

Millard hastened to declare that he was, but was awful glad, of course. His sister’s reply was a surprise in itself.

“I don’t know that I am, altogether,” she said. “I’ve been rather expectin’ you, if you want to know.”

Townsend swung about in the rocker. “You have!” he exclaimed, sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean what I say. I don’t know what you’ve come for, but I might guess, maybe. Most of us have got a conscience somewheres on the premises, even if some of us have kept it packed away up-attic so long we’ve pretty nigh forgot it.”

The captain regarded her with what appeared to be sincere, if somewhat grudging, admiration. “You’re a smart woman, Reliance Clark,” he declared. “Yes, you are! If Freeling had had sense enough to pick you out instead of— Well, well! there’s no use wasting breath about that.... You say you’ve guessed what I’ve come here for. If you have perhaps Esther hasn’t. I’m going to make her a proposition. I don’t expect her to answer it, one way or the other, to-night. I want to make it; then I want her and you, Reliance, to think it over and talk it over between you. When you’ve done that you can say yes or no. Esther,” turning to the girl once more, “how would you like to come up to my house and live with me?”

The question, thus bluntly put, had a varied effect upon his listeners. Millard Clark’s eyes and mouth opened and he gasped audibly. His half-sister nodded two or three times, as if with satisfaction at finding her suspicions confirmed. Esther gazed at the speaker in mute bewilderment. Townsend looked from one to the other and smiled.

“So you had guessed right, had you, Reliance,” he observed. “Well, whether you had or not, there it is. I am lonesome in that big house of mine, lonesome as the devil. I don’t suppose I’m what you’d call a sentimental man; I try to use my common sense and face what can’t be helped in a sensible way, but since Mother died I’m lonesome. For the last week I’ve been making up my mind what to do. I might travel, I suppose, but when I went to sea I cruised a whole lot and there wouldn’t be much that was new to look at and no satisfaction in looking at it alone. And I’d rather stay at home, anyhow. This is my town. I helped to make it grow and I’m more interested in it, and the folks in and around it, than I am in anything else. I might move out of my house to a smaller one, but I won’t. Mother and I built that house together. She thought the world of it and so do I. She lived in it till she died and that’s what I want to do. But I’d rather not live in it by myself. I want somebody to talk to and to talk to me, and I’d rather have a Townsend than anybody else. So I thought of Esther. If she wants to, she can move up there and call it home. I’ll look out for her and be as decent as I can to her. She can have all the things she wants—things she can’t have now—and all the money she wants—all I think it good for her to have, anyhow. What I’m trying to say is,” he added, with deliberate emphasis, “that, if you, Esther, come to live with me you’ll be the same as my daughter. And when I’m dead you’ll have what I have.... That’s the proposition—or part of it.”

The last sentence of his long speech was delivered with the snap of finality. The speaker leaned back in the rocker, extended his legs in order to more easily get at his trousers pockets, thrust his hands into those pockets, and looked at his niece, then at Reliance and then back at Esther. He did not look at Mr. Clark; the latter might have been one of the pair of crockery lambs on the mantel as far as receiving attention was concerned.

Yet it was Millard who broke the silence.

“Well—I vow!” he exclaimed, fervently.

His sister put him back in place just as she might have replaced one of the lambs. “Hush, Millard!” she ordered. “Wait, Esther!... So that’s only part of your proposition, is it?” she asked, addressing Townsend. “And what’s the other part?”

The great man jingled the change in his pocket. “It’s just this,” he replied. “I realize, of course, that Esther has been here with you, Reliance, so long that you’re about the same as a mother to her. She would miss you—at first, anyhow—and, for the matter of that, I suppose she ought to have a woman to talk to. I never had a girl of my own to bring up, or a boy either, so far as that goes—I wish to God I had—and there are some things a woman can advise her about better than a man. If I didn’t know you had sense, Reliance—as well as the stubbornness of a balky horse—I shouldn’t think of saying what I am going to say. I want you to shut up this house here. It is mine and I can sell it, I guess; or rent it, anyhow. And if I can’t do either I can afford to let it stand empty. Shut it up and come along with Esther to my place. There’s room enough there, too much room. I’ll make a home for you and pay your bills. Yes, and I’ll guarantee you’ll be more comfortable there, and have less care, than you ever had in your life. That’s the other half of my offer. Think it over.”

During this blunt statement of an astonishing proposal the face of Millard Fillmore Clark might have been worth looking at, had any one dreamed of doing such a thing. At first it had expressed eagerness and overwhelming curiosity. Then, when Foster Townsend extended the invitation—or delivered the command, for it was quite as much an order as a request—to his half-sister, the curiosity was superseded by joyful excitement. And now, when the speech from the rocking-chair throne had ended without mention of his own name, or even acknowledgment of his connection with the household, all symptoms of the aforementioned emotions were superseded by those of anxiety and alarmed indignation.

“Here! hold on!” he protested, springing to his feet. “What’s that you’re sayin’, Cap’n Foster? You’re cal’latin’ to take Reliance and—and Esther to—to live along with you and—and—” Reliance lifted a hand. “Ssh!” she said.

“No, I won’t ssh neither! He—he says he wants to—to take you and her away and shut up this house and—and— What about me?” his voice rising to a falsetto. “Where am I goin’? Eh! Who’s goin’ to—”

Townsend, even then, did not take the trouble to turn and look at him, but he did speak over his shoulder. “All right, all right,” he broke in, with careless contempt. “You can come, too. There’ll be a room for you and Varunas can find something for you to do around the stables, I guess. You’ll be looked after, don’t worry. Have to take the tail with the hide, I realize that,” he added, philosophically. “... Well, Esther,” turning to his niece, “how does it sound to you, now you’ve heard the whole of it?”

The girl, thus addressed, looked at him in faltering hesitancy. She turned to her aunt as if seeking the latter’s help in a situation too hopelessly impossible to be met without it.

“Well?” repeated her uncle.

Esther looked at Reliance, but the latter was looking at the captain, not at her. The girl turned back, to meet the searching scrutiny of the eyes beneath the heavy brows. The look in those eyes was not unkindly, in fact, it was the opposite, but she was frightened. This was the man who had quarreled with her father, whose prideful arrogant self-will was responsible, so Eunice Townsend had always declared, for the poverty and privation of their lives since his death. This was the man she had been taught to hate. And now he was bidding her come to live with him! She couldn’t do such a thing—of course she couldn’t—and yet, if her aunt came also, she—even then she was beginning to realize a little of the marvelous possibilities of that invitation.

The look in her uncle’s eyes was still kindly, but insistent. He had asked a question and he was expecting an answer. She must say something. She caught her breath, almost with a sob.

“Oh, oh, I don’t know!” she cried, desperately. “I don’t know! It doesn’t seem as if—but—oh, please don’t ask me—not now! I don’t know what to say.”

Townsend nodded. “Of course you don’t,” he agreed. “I didn’t expect you to say yes or no now, to-night. I was wondering how the idea sounded to you, that’s all. You and Reliance think it over and talk it over together and when you’ve made up your mind let me know. To-morrow—yes, or the next day—will be time enough. There’s no particular hurry.”

He rose from the rocker and took his hat and coat from the side table where Millard had reverently laid them. Mr. Clark sprang to help with the ulster, but he and his proffered assistance were ignored, as usual.

“There’s just one thing more that maybe I ought to say,” the captain added, turning to Reliance, who had risen when he did. “And that is this: She,” with a jerk of the head in Esther’s direction, “doesn’t understand yet all this proposition is liable to mean. If she comes to be with me, and we get along all right and I like her, she’ll be what I said before, just the same as my daughter. If she wants to go away to boarding school she can go, I guess; I’ll decide that later on. She’s got a good voice, they tell me. Everybody says she sings pretty well and that she could sing better if she was learned how by somebody that knew. Well, I’ll see that she is learned. I’ve got a good piano up at the house. At least I suppose it’s good; it was the best I could buy and I paid enough for it. Mother used to pick at it a little, but she always said it was a pity it wasn’t used more. Esther can use it all she wants to. I don’t know anything about music. I never had much use for a man who fooled with pianos and fiddles; fact is, I never considered that kind of fellow a man at all. But I haven’t any objections to a woman’s fooling with ’em. There’s the piano and there’s the music teacher, or there can be one as well as not. Think of that, too, while you are thinking.... I guess that’s all. Good-night.”

He picked up his umbrella and strode to the door. Reliance spoke once more.

“Just a minute,” she said. “Maybe it isn’t quite all. I can see what you mean to do for Esther and perhaps I can see a little of what Millard will have to do. But where do I come in? What will I do up in that twenty-odd room house of yours, Foster Townsend? You don’t expect me to play your piano, do you?”

He laughed, laughed aloud, something which he seldom did.

“No,” he said, “I don’t expect that, Reliance. I don’t care what you do. You can do nothing, if you want to. Or you can be my housekeeper, if that suits you better. Mother kept house the way it ought to be kept and she has told me more than once that you were about the only other woman she ever ran across who was as particular as she was. You can boss Nabby and whatever hired help we have, and run things to please yourself—provided they please me, too. That is fair, isn’t it?”

Miss Clark nodded grimly. “Maybe so,” she observed. “We won’t argue about it to-night. There’s one other thing, though, that I guess you’ve forgot. I’m postmistress here in Harniss. I run a milliner shop, too, but that is my own, or two-thirds of it is, and I can do what I like with it. But the post office is different. Do you expect me to walk out of that office and leave a note for Uncle Sam sayin’ ‘You and the mail can go to Jericho. I’ve gone to Foster Townsend’s!’ Do you expect me to do that?”

Townsend laughed again. He seemed in far better spirits than when he entered that sitting-room.

“Not exactly—no,” he replied. “As for the post office,—well, who had you made postmistress in the first place?”

Miss Clark stared at him. “Who had me made postmistress?” she repeated. “Why, the U.S. government appointed me, if that’s what you mean. And that was nine years ago. What do you ask such a question as that for?”

“I’ll ask you another one. When Sylvanus Oaks died you sent in a petition asking for his job, didn’t you?... Oh, never mind! I know you did, and so did Frank Parker and Reuben Hatch and a couple more. Why do you suppose the government people picked you out instead of one of the others? Their petitions were as long as yours. Well, I’ll tell you. It was because I told them to.”

She was surprised now, there was no doubt of that. “You told ’em!” she repeated, sharply. “You did! Why, you didn’t even sign my petition. Not that I asked you to sign it. I didn’t.”

“No. I wondered if you were going to, but you were your own pig-headed self and didn’t bring it near me. But I didn’t sign any one else’s either; you know that.”

“I don’t know it. I never cared enough to find out.”

“No?” with a chuckle. “Well, you know it now. What you haven’t known all this time is that I wrote to a friend of mine who was in Congress from this district and told him you were the fittest candidate for the place and to see that you got it. He saw just that. I put you into that post office, Reliance, just as I’ve rented you this house of mine, and if I take you out of both I can’t see that anybody has any ground for complaint. I’ll hear from you in a day or two, of course. Good-night. Good-night, Esther.”

He did not include Mr. Clark in his good-night, but the latter ran out after him in the rain and caught his arm.

“It’ll be all right, Cap’n Foster,” whispered Millard, eagerly. “Don’t you fret a mite. It’ll come out all right. Reliance she always has to argue and fetch up objections to ’most anything, but she’ll come round. We’ll be up there along with you inside of a week, all hands of us. You leave it to me. I’ll ’tend to it.”

Foster Townsend made no reply. He shook off the clutch upon his coat sleeve and walked away into the rain-striped blackness beyond the light from the open door. Millard Fillmore hurried back to the sitting-room.

“Gosh!” he whooped ecstatically, “Oh, my gosh! Say, ain’t it wonderful! Ain’t it—”

He stopped, for his half-sister was speaking to their niece and he caught a word or two—unbelievable, horrifying words which caused his pæan of triumphant rejoicing to break off in the middle of the first strophe.

“I should say not!” declared Reliance. “Well, I should say not! Humph! the idea! I could have slapped his face for him for darin’ to think such a thing, let alone sayin’ it out loud—to me. When I get so worn out and good for nothin’ that I can’t earn my own livin’ I’ll find the cheapest way to die and do it, and I’ll take care to have enough put by to pay for my buryin’. I won’t go up to his palace and live on the leavin’s from his table. I’m no Lazarus. Saucy patronizin’ thing! The idea!”

Esther might have spoken, but Mr. Clark cut in ahead of her.

“What!” he shouted, in a frenzy. “What’s that you’re tellin’ her, Reliance Clark? Do you mean to say you ain’t goin’ to take up with a chance like that? My gosh, woman, you’re crazy!”

She whirled on him. “You keep still!” she commanded. “This isn’t any of your business at all. Don’t you say another word.”

“But it is my business. Why ain’t it my business? Didn’t he ask me same as he did the rest of you? Didn’t—”

She did not let him finish. “No, he did not,” she declared, with fierce contempt. “He said he supposed he would have to take the tail with the hide, that’s what he said, and if you like bein’ called a tail, I don’t.”

“Aw, come now, Reliance! He never meant—he asked me—”

“He didn’t ask you; he took you same as he might take a—the scales on a codfish, because he knew he couldn’t catch the critter without ’em. It is Esther he’s after and he was shrewd enough to think that maybe she might not go unless I did. Yes, and that I couldn’t leave a helpless thing like you to float around creation with nobody to steer you. Oh, don’t make me any madder than I am, Mil Clark!”

“Aw, Reliance, have some sense! Why—”