THE REDEMPTION OF KENNETH GALT

YOUNG Doctor Dearing sat in the little church at an open window through which he had a partial view of that portion of old Stafford which stretched out desultorily toward the east. Immediately in front was a common fairly well covered with grass and weeds, except at the pawed and beaten spot where the public hitched its riding-horses, and beyond stood rows of old-fashioned residences of brick and stone, interspersed with a few modern frame cottages which, in gaudy paint, thrust themselves nearer the street than their more stately neighbors.

It was a Sunday morning, and the smile of a balmy spring day lay over every visible object, filling the ambient air with a translucent message that no human mind could interpret. It was as though an infinite God were speaking to eyes and ears too coarsely fashioned to fully see and hear.

The whole was conducive to the doctor's feeling of restfulness and content and good-will to every human being. He liked the young minister who was seated in the high-backed rosewood chair behind the white pulpit, holding a massive Bible on his slender knees, a look of consecration to a sacred cause in his brown eyes. There was an assuring augury that spoke well for the youth of the town in the spectacle of the choir—the young men in their best clothes, and the young women in their flower-like dresses and plumed and ribboned hats.

His gaze was drawn perforce to the face of the young organist, who sat staring listlessly over the top of her hymn-book. She had a face and form of rare beauty and grace. Her features were most regular; her skin clear; her eyes were large, long-lashed, dreamy, and of the color of violets. Her hair was a living mass of silken bronze.

“She looks tired and worried,” was Dearing's half-professional comment. “Perhaps her mother is worse, and she sat up last night. Poor Dora! she has certainly had a lot to contend with since her father died. I'll wait for her after church and ask about her mother.”

The service over, he made his way through the throng down the aisle toward the door. He was quite popular, and there was many a hand to shake and many a warm greeting to respond to, but he finally succeeded in reaching a point in the shaded church-yard which Dora Barry would pass on her way home, and there he waited.

For some unaccountable reason she was almost the last to leave the church, and the congregation had well-nigh dispersed when he saw her coming. He noticed that she kept her glance on the ground, and that her step was slow and languid; he was all but sure, too, that he heard her sigh, and he saw her firm round breast heave tremulously as she neared him.

“Good-morning, Dora,” he said, cheerily; and she started as, for the first time, she noticed his presence.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, a flush forcing itself into the pallor of her really exquisite face. “I thought—that is, I didn't expect to—to see you here, and, and—”

“I have been watching you this morning instead of the preacher,” he said, with a boyish laugh, “and I made up my mind that I'll have to take you in hand. You are burning the candle at both ends, and there is a fire-cracker in the middle. What is the use of being your family doctor if I let you get down sick, when I can prevent it by raking you over the coals? How is your mother? You had to be up last night—I can see it by the streaks under your eyes.”

“No, I wasn't up,” the girl answered. The color had receded from her cheeks, and the abstracted expression which he had noticed in the church began to repossess her wondrous eyes. “She is not quite well yet, but she did not call me at all through the night. Your last prescription did her good; it soothed her pain, and she rested better.”

“Well, I'm going to walk home with you and stop in and see her, to make sure,” he answered, still lightly. “If you don't look out you will be down yourself. Two sick persons in a family of two wouldn't be any fun.” She made no response; her eyes had a far-off look in their shadowy depths, and as he walked along beside her he eyed her profile curiously.

“Well, I declare, Dora,” he said, half jestingly, “you don't seem overjoyed to have a fellow's company. Of course, I'm not a ladies' man, and—”

“Forgive me, Wynn.” She looked up anxiously, and her lip trembled as she suppressed another sigh. “It wasn't that I didn't want you to come. You know better than to accuse me of such a thing. I have always considered you the best, kindest, and truest friend I have.”

“I was only joking,” he responded, touched by the undoubted sincerity of her tone and manner; “but, really, I don't like to see my little neighbor looking so glum, and I am going to stop in and see how your mother is. If she needs a trained nurse I'll get one, or come over and look after her myself.”

They had reached the cottage where Dora lived. It was small, and stood in a diminutive but rather pretty flower-garden on a short, little used street immediately behind Dearing's home. And when he had opened the sagging gate in the white paling fence, she preceded him into the low, vine-grown porch, and narrow, box-like hallway, from which she led him into the parlor, the room opposite to the chamber of the sick woman.

“Sit down, won't you?” Dora said, in a weary tone, as she began to unfasten her hat. “I'll tell her you are here.”

He took a seat in the bowed window of the plainly furnished room, and she brought a palm-leaf fan to him. “I'm sure my mother won't keep you waiting long.” And with the look of abstraction deepening on her mobile face, she turned away.

A neat matting made of green and brown straw covered the floor, on which were placed rugs made of scraps of silk of various colors artistically blended. A carved rosewood table with a white marble top stood in the centre of the room, and on it rested a plush-covered photograph-album, a glass lamp with a fluted and knotched paper shade on a frame of wire, and a vase of freshly cut flowers. Between the two front windows, which, like their fellows, were draped in white lace curtains of the cheapest quality, stood Dora's piano—a small, square instrument with sloping octagonal legs and lyre-shaped pedal-support. Against the wall near by leaned a time-worn easel, on which lay some torn and ragged sketches, a besmeared palette, and a handful of stubby, paint-filled brushes. The ceiling overhead was made of planks and painted light blue; the walls were plastered and whitewashed and ornamented by some really good family portraits in oil which had been done by Dora's deceased father, who had been the town's only artist. A Seth Thomas clock presided over a crude mantelpiece which was bare of any other ornament. The deep chimney was filled with pine-tops and cones, the uneven bricks of the hearth were whitewashed.

Dearing heard the girl's returning step in the hallway, and then she looked in on him.

“She is sitting up,” Dora announced. “She wants you to come to her.”

As he entered the room across the hall Dora turned toward the kitchen in the rear, and he found himself facing her mother, a thin, gaunt woman about fifty years of age, who sat in a low rocking-chair near her bed, the latter orderly arranged under a spotlessly white coverlet and great snowy pillows.

“This is not a professional visit, Mrs. Barry.” He smiled as he bent to take her thin, nervous hand, the fingers of which were aimlessly picking at the fringe on the arm of the chair. “Dora was headed for home, and so was I. The truth is, I am not half so much worried about you as I am about her. Your color is coming back fast enough, and you have no fever. You are all right, but she looks upset and nervous. It may be due to her highly artistic temperament, which is a thing medicine can't easily reach. Do you know if her appetite is good?”

“Really I haven't noticed about that particularly,” the woman answered, in a plaintive tone. “You see, since I got down I haven't been about the dining-room at all. She has waited on me instead of me on her.”

“Well, you'll be all right in a day or so,” Dearing said, his brows drawn thoughtfully, “and then you can take charge of her. She declares, though, that her health is tip-top.”

The old patient folded her thin, blue-veined hands tightly for a moment, and twisted them spasmodically together; then suddenly she fixed her sharp, gray eyes anxiously on the young man's face, and he saw that she was deeply moved, for her lower lip was twitching.

“I have always felt that you are the one young man whom I could trust—absolutely trust,” she said, falteringly. “Physicians are supposed to keep certain matters to themselves, anyway, but even aside from that, Wynn, it is hard to keep from speaking to you in a familiar way, having seen you grow up from babyhood right under my eyes, so I hope you will forgive me if—”

“Oh, I wouldn't have you quit calling me that for the world!” Dearing flushed deeply and laughed. “I haven't grown a full beard yet to make me look older and wiser than I am, as many young sawbones do. I hope I'll always be simply Wynn Dearing to you, Mrs. Barry.”

She looked as admiringly and as proudly as a mother might at the strong, smooth-shaved face, with its merry eyes of brown, firm chin and mouth, and shock of thick, dark hair, and at the tall, muscular frame and limbs in the neatly cut suit of brown.

“Yes, I can trust you,” she muttered, her voice growing husky, “and it seems to me if I don't confide in some one, I may as well give up.”

“Why, what is the matter, Mrs. Barry?” Dearing inquired, now quite grave.

“Oh, it is about Dora!” The old woman sighed. “Wynn, I may as well confess it. My sickness is partly due to worry over her. It is not because she is unwell either. It is something else. I am afraid she has some—some secret trouble. You must not show that you suspect anything—that would never do; but all is not as it should be with her. Naturally she has as happy a disposition as any girl I ever knew. Her art pupils adore her, and up to quite recently she used to laugh and joke with them constantly; but she has altered—strangely altered. I catch her sitting by herself at times with the saddest, most woebegone expression on her face. When I try to worm it out of her, she attempts to laugh it off; but she can't keep up the pretense, and it is not long before she begins to droop again. Her room is there, you see; and as the partition is thin, I often wake up in the dead of night and hear her cautiously tiptoeing over the floor—first to the window and then back to her bed, as though she were unable to sleep.”

“That is bad,” Dearing said, sympathetically, as Mrs. Barry paused and, covering her wrinkled face with her hands, remained silent for a moment.

“I would like to ask you something,” the old woman continued, hesitatingly—“something of a personal nature. I have no earthly right to do such a thing, but I thought, you see, that it might help me decide whether I am right in something I fear. Is it true that—that your uncle has forbidden Fred Walton to visit your sister Margaret?”

Dearing shrugged his broad shoulders and contracted his heavy brows. “I may as well tell you that he has, Mrs. Barry. I don't like to speak against another young man, and one who has never harmed me in any way; but I agree with my uncle that Fred is not exactly the kind of man I'd like to have Madge make an intimate friend of. His general character is not what it ought to be, and he seems to be going from bad to worse. He still has plenty of friends and even sympathizers, who think Fred would reform and settle down to business if his father were not quite so hard on him. Madge is one of them. She has a sort of girlish faith in the fellow, and the slightest word against him makes her mad.”

“Well, it is about Fred Walton that I want to speak to you,” Mrs. Barry resumed, tremulously. “He has been coming to see Dora a good deal for the last year. He passes by the gate often in the afternoon, and they take long walks over the hills to the river. Sometimes he accompanies her when she goes to sketch in the woods. And now and then she slips out after dark, and won't say where she has been. You see, I am speaking very frankly. I have to, Wynn, for I am in great trouble—greater than I ever thought could come to me at my time of life. My child is an orphan, and there is no one, you see, to—to protect her. It is hard to think that any man here at home could be so—so dishonorable, but they all say he is reckless, and—well, if I must say it—I am afraid she cares a great deal about him. I may be very wrong, and I hope I am, but I am deeply troubled, and need not try to hide it.”

“I see how you feel,” Dearing said, his face hardening as he bit his lip, and a fixed stare came into his eyes, “but I am sure you have nothing very—very serious to fear. Dora may think she cares for him. He seems to have a wonderful way with women, young and old. They all stand by him and make excuses for his daredevil ways.”

“Well, I do hope I am wrong,” Mrs. Barry said, brightening a little. “It has made me feel better to talk to you. We'll wait and see. As you say, it may be only a fancy on Dora's part, and it may all come out right. I have said more to you, Wynn, than I could have said to any one else in the world. That shows how much confidence I place in you.”

“You can trust me, Mrs. Barry,” Dearing said, as he looked at his watch and rose to go. “I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

As he was leaving, Dora stood motionless at the window of her room, hidden from his view by the curtains. She watched him as he passed out of the yard and crossed the narrow street to reach the rear gate to his own grounds.

“If he knew the truth he'd despise me!” she moaned, as she sank into a chair and tensely clasped her little hands in her lap. “How can I bear it? I'm so miserable—so very, very miserable!”

She rose, and went to her bureau, and took up a photograph of Fred Walton; as she gazed at it her eyes filled and her lip quivered.

“Dear, dear Fred!” she said, fervently, “in spite of all the faults they say you have, you are the best and truest friend a poor girl ever had. If I'd only listened to your advice I'd never have been like this. Oh, what will you think when you hear the truth—the awful, awful truth!”

She threw herself on her bed, and with her face covered she lay trying to sob, trying to shed tears, but the founts of her agony were dry.

CHAPTER II

DR. DEARING'S house was an old-fashioned structure built long before the Civil War. It fronted on the main residential street of the town, and was of red brick partly covered with clinging ivy. It had a colonial veranda with the usual tall, fluted columns, which were painted white and rested on square blocks of masonry. It had been the property of several generations of Dearings more or less distinguished in the history of the State, and since the death of the doctor's father, a prosperous merchant, slave-holder, and planter, it had been in the possession of the brother and sister, who, with an aged maternal uncle, General Sylvester, now occupied it.

As Dearing entered the lower gate of the grounds he saw Kenneth Galt, his next-door neighbor, crossing the lawn to reach his own house just beyond a low hedge of well-trimmed boxwood. And hearing the clicking of the iron gate-latch, Galt paused, turned, and advanced toward his friend. He was a handsome man, tall, dark, well-built, about thirty-five years of age, and with a strong, secretive face—the face of a man full of nervous force and the never-satisfied hunger of ambition.

“You've been to church like a good little boy,” he laughed, as he paused and stood cutting at the grass with his cane.

“Yes, and it is exactly where you ought to have been,” Dearing retorted, with a smile. “If you would only listen to a few good sermons on the right line you'd burn up that free-thought library of yours, and quit thinking you know more than your good old Godfearing ancestors.”

“I simply couldn't sit and listen to such stuff with a straight face,” Galt answered. “Goodness knows, I've tried it often enough. It really seems an insult to a fellow's intelligence. I can't agree with you that any man ought to try to think as his forefathers did. You don't in your profession, why should a man do it in more vital matters? You don't bleed your patients as doctors did fifty years ago, because you know better. I believe in evolution of mind as well as of matter. We are constantly advancing. Your old-time preacher, with all his good intentions, is a stumbling-block to intelligence. You may listen to a man who tells you your house is burning down over your head and urges you to save your life, but if you don't believe him you wouldn't care to have him pull you out by the heels on a cold night to convince you. But you don't hear what I am saying!” Galt finished, with a short laugh. “I am sowing my seed on stony ground. I've been in to see the General. I have some important letters about the railroad that he and I are going to get built one of these days. As a rule, he is more than eager to talk about it, but he was certainly out of sorts just now. I have never seen him so upset before. While I was talking to him he kept walking up and down the room, and not hearing half I was saying. He is not well, is he?”

“No, he really is not in the best of shape,” Dearing answered, with a thoughtful shadow on his face; “but I think he will pull through all right. I see him on the porch now. I'll walk on, and talk to him.”

As Dearing drew near the house General Sylvester, who was a tall, slightly bent old man with long gray beard and hair, came down the steps and walked across the grass to a rustic seat under a tree. He was about to sit down, but seeing his nephew approaching he remained standing, a gaunt hand held over his spectacled eyes to ward off the sunlight.

“I have been waiting for you,” he said, in a piping, irritable voice. “Kenneth was in to talk business, but it seems to me that I'll never be interested in such things any more. What's the use? I didn't want the money for myself, anyway. I saw the others coming back from church some time ago, and couldn't imagine what delayed you. I've had another row with Madge, and this time it is serious—very, very serious.”

“Oh, that's the trouble!” Dearing cried, and he attempted to laugh. “Uncle Tom, in your old age you are just like a school-boy with his first sweetheart. You are actually flirting with your own niece. You and she bill and coo like doves, and then get cold as ice or as mad as Tucker. What's wrong now?”

“Well, I think a young girl like she is ought to take the sound advice of a man as old and experienced as I am, and she won't do it. That's all—she won't do it, sir!”

“Of course she ought to,” Dearing said, still inclined to jest, “but you are wise enough to know that no woman ever took the advice of a man, young or old. See here, uncle, I'll bet you haven't had your medicine yet, and the dinner-bell will ring soon and you will have to wait fifteen minutes before you shall taste a bite. You and I 'll quarrel if you don't do as I tell you. Madge won't obey you, but you've got to get down on your marrow-bones and follow my orders.”

“Oh, I'll take the blasted stuff in time!” the General fumed. “I don't want to eat now, anyway. I tell you, I'm too mad to eat.”

“I suppose it is Fred Walton again,” Dearing said, resignedly.

“Who else could it be?” the old man burst out. “She tries to close my eyes as to her doings with him; but I got it straight that he was out driving with her last night while you were in the country.”

The face of the doctor clouded over. “You don't mean to say that—”

“I mean that he was afraid to drive up to the door like a gentleman, but met her down-town and took her from there, and when they got back, long after dark, he left her at Lizzie Sloan's, to keep us from getting on to it. You know, folks will talk about a thing like that.”

Dearing's eyes flashed, and a touch of whiteness crept into his face, but he said, pacifically: “Oh, there must be some mistake. I hardly think Madge would—”

“But there isn't any mistake, for she admitted it to me not ten minutes ago, and just as good as told me it was none of my business besides. Now, listen to me, my boy. I am an old man, but I am still in the possession of my faculties, and I know what I am talking about. I was in the bank yesterday, and had a talk with his father. He told me frankly that he intended to cut the scamp off without a penny. He gave the fellow a position of trust in the bank, but instead of behaving himself properly, he started into gambling, speculating in futures, and every reckless thing he could think of. He turned customers away, scared off depositors, who don't like to leave their money in such hands, and in many ways injured the business. Old Walton was so mad he could hardly talk to me, and when I told him right out how I felt about my niece going with him, he said he didn't blame me; that he wouldn't let such a rascal go with a servant of his, much less the acknowledged belle of the town, and a prospective heiress. Now, Wynn, this is what I have decided to do. You know that I have made my will, leaving all I have in the world to her.”

“And it is blamed bully of you, Uncle Tom,” Dearing said, laying his hand on the old man's shoulder, which he could feel quivering with a passion not good for even a younger man. “I am sure, neither of us is worthy of the great interest you have always taken in us.”

“You are, my boy. I am proud of you. You are already a shining light in your profession, and will make all the money you'll ever need. But I always have worried about Madge. I want to provide well for her, and I haven't many years to live. Sometimes I think I may snuff out like a candle without a moment's notice, so I don't intend to leave my affairs in such a shape that Fred Walton will gloat over my demise and throw away my savings. No, sir. I tell you if your sister does not agree to give that scamp up inside of the next twenty-four hours, I will set my effects aside for another purpose.”

“I'll see her and talk to her, Uncle Tom,” Dearing promised, gravely. He had never seen the General so highly wrought up, nor heard such an exasperated ring in his voice. “Now, you go take your medicine. Madge will be sensible. She loves you, I know she does.”

“Well, remember what I've said,” the old soldier threw back as he turned away.

Dearing waited till he had disappeared through the side entrance of the house, and then he went up the front steps, crossed the wide veranda, with its smooth, rain-beaten floor of ancient heart pine, and stood in the great hall, straw hat in hand, looking about him.

“I'll see her at once,” he thought. “She must come to her senses. She is driving uncle to his grave with worry over her silly conduct.”

“Oh, Madge!” he called out. His voice rang and echoed in the great opening through which the walnut stairs and polished balustrade ascended to the corridor and sleeping-rooms above, but there was no response.

Still holding his hat, with which he fanned his heated face in an absent-minded, perturbed sort of way, Dearing went through all the lower rooms—the parlor and library and adjoining study, and even the dining-room and kitchen. The colored cook, old Aunt Diana, a former slave of the family, in white apron and turbaned head, informed him that his sister was in her room.

“I know she is, Marse Wynn, 'case she sent Lindy down fer some fresh col' water not mo'n ten minutes ago.”

Back to the front hall Dearing went, and thence up the stairs to his sister's room, adjoining his own. The door was ajar, but he stood on the threshold and rapped softly.

“Come!” It was a sweet young voice, and belonged to a pretty girl seventeen or eighteen years of age, who, as Dearing entered the room, sat at a quaint mahogany writing-desk between two lace-curtained windows through which a gentle breeze was blowing. She wore a becoming wrapper, and her small feet were shod in dainty embroidered slippers. Her abundant hair was quite dark, and her eyes very blue. She had been writing, for on the page of tinted note-paper before her he saw an unfinished sentence in the round, schoolgirl hand.

“I don't want to disturb you, Madge,” Dearing began, “but you will have to stop anyway soon, and get ready for dinner.”

“I am not going down,” she told him, her glance falling to the rug at her feet. “I had breakfast late, and I am not a bit hungry.”

“But that wouldn't be treating Uncle Tom quite right, you know,” Dearing gently protested, as he took a seat on the broad window-sill, swung his hat between his knees, and eyed her significantly. “You know how childish he is getting, Madge. It really upsets him not to have you at the table. He is old-fashioned, and was something of a beau when he was a young man. Making a fine lady of you and paying court to you seems to be about all the pleasure he gets in life. I know it must be tiresome, but there are many things we—”

“He is childish!” Margaret exclaimed, her eyes flashing angrily, “but I bore with it because I loved him, and because mother would have approved it; but he is getting worse and worse. He wants me at his beck and call every minute in the day, and even if I go out to see one of my girl friends he either comes or sends one of the servants to see if anything has happened. Then he—he—oh, there are a lot of things a girl can't put up with!”

“You mean his opposition to the visits of a certain friend of yours?” Dearing said, in a forced tone of indifference, as he glanced out at the window. Although his eyes were still ostentatiously averted, he saw her cautiously draw a blank sheet of paper over the lines she had written.

“Yes,” she said, “that is one thing. Fred Walton is a friend of mine, and for all I know his feelings may be hurt by what uncle has said and done. I know Fred is wild and reckless, but he has a good side to him—a side everybody can't see who doesn't know him intimately.”

Young as he was, Wynn Dearing was wise in the ways of the world, and he well knew that a temperament and will like his sister's would never be coerced. He decided to profit by the error in the method of his blustering uncle.

“You have never heard me abuse Fred,” he said, gently. “Many young men who have wealthy parents are inclined to 'sow wild oats,' as the old folks say; but really, Madge”—and he was smiling now—“for an honest, inoffensive cereal, the 'wild oat' has to bear the burden of many a tough young weed. Charity is said to cover a multitude of sins, but for genuine selfsacrifice give me the old-fashioned, long-bearded wild oat, in all its verdant and succulent—”

“Brother, I'm not in a mood for silliness!” the girl interrupted him, quickly, and with an impatient flush.

“I'm not either, Madge.” He took one of his knees between his hands, and drew it up toward him. “The fact is, I am worried—worried like everything! I may not show it, but this thing has taken a deep hold on me. Something has got to be done, and that right away. Young folks may love each other, or think they love each other, and if it does no harm to any one else, why, all well and good. But if their love business is causing suffering—yes, and positive bodily injury to another—then they ought to stop and ponder.”

“You mean that Uncle Tom—”

“I mean this, Madge, and now I am talking to you as a physician—his physician, too. The old man is actually so near the end of his natural life that irritation like this is apt to undermine what little constitution he has left. I've known old men to worry themselves into softening of the brain over smaller things than this. You may not think it would make much difference; but remember that if any act of yours and Fred Walton's were to cause his death, even indirectly, you could never outlive the reproach of your conscience. Uncle Tom is in a dangerous condition: his heart-action is bad, and so are his kidneys. You are too young a girl to take such a responsibility as that on your shoulders; besides, Madge, I must say that Fred—it is my duty as a brother to say—”

“You are going to abuse him; remember, you have not done it so far!” Margaret broke in. “You won't gain by it, brother. The whole town has talked of nothing lately but him and his faults, and I appreciated your silence, and so does he. We were speaking about it only yesterday, and he praised you for it. He said you were the truest, most perfect gentleman he had ever known, that you knew human nature too well to expect young men to be absolutely perfect, and that—”

“I wasn't going to say a word against his honor, Madge,” Dearing interrupted her, gently; “but I am going to say this: if I were in his place right now I'd feel that I could not conscientiously, or even quite honorably, continue to pay attention to a young lady situated—well, situated just as you are.”

“Why, what do you mean?” the girl asked, her lip quivering stubbornly.

“This, sister, and nothing else. We may say what we please about Fred's good qualities, his sincerity, his—his devotion to you; his plans, whatever they are; but a very disagreeable fact stands out like a black splotch on the whole business, and that is simply this: Fred really has failed to make good in the way a man ought to make good who aspires to the hand of a girl like yourself. His father gave him a splendid chance in the bank, but Fred's best friends admit that he hasn't profited by it. Instead of attending to business and helping his old daddy—who, harsh old skinflint though he is as to money matters, is a safe man in any community—instead of doing what was expected of him, Fred—well, he has turned his father against him, that's all. The old man swears he is going to cut him off without a penny, and everybody in town knows he means it; Fred doesn't dispute it himself. So, taking that along with the other thing, I honestly can't see how he can talk of love and marriage to a girl like you are.”

“What other thing do you mean?” Margaret demanded, pale with suppressed emotion.

“I mean the fact that his marriage to you would cause Uncle Tom to disinherit you outright. A man might sink low enough to want to marry a girl after he himself has been disinherited for his irregular conduct, but no creature with a spark of manhood in him would let his act impoverish the woman he loves. I have said nothing against him so far, but when he knows what uncle has determined to do—when he is told that if he persists—well”—Dealing's eyes were burning now with the fire of genuine anger—“he'll have me to reckon with, that's all—me, Madge!”

Margaret stared at him for a moment, and then, with a piteous little sob, she covered her face with her hands. “You are going to tell him!” she said, huskily. “Yes.” Dearing stood up and laid his hand on her head. “I'm going to tell him, Madge, but it will be only for his own good. In any case, he couldn't honorably ask you to marry him now, and the delay—if he is willing to wait—won't do either of you any harm. You are both young, and the world is before you. You can't realize it now, Madge, but this very thing may be the making of him. If he loves you as truly as he ought, this will be only a spur toward proving his worthiness.”

“Brother, must you really—? oh, I can't—can't—” The girl stood up, her cheeks wet with tears, and clasped her hands round his neck appealingly. “You really must not! He is already in trouble. Surely—surely—”

“There is no other way, Madge, but I'll not be rough; I pity the poor chap too much for that.”

“When do you intend to—to see him?” She was sobbing again, her face pressed against his shoulder.

“This evening, Madge, if I can find him at home. There is no other way. Uncle and I are the only protectors you have, and he is too angry and easily wrought up to be trusted with the matter. I'd better manage it; but you know I'll be fair.”

The girl gazed fixedly at him for a moment, and then, in a storm of tears, she threw herself oh her bed and hid her face in a pillow. Glancing at her pityingly, and with moisture in his own eyes, Dearing turned from the room.

“I am sorry for them both,” he muttered. “They are having hard luck, and yet Fred Walton isn't, from any point of view, worthy of her; there are no two ways about it. He has got himself into a terrible plight, and he has no right to involve my sister. No, and he sha'n't!”

CHAPTER III

THE greater part of the ensuing afternoon was spent by Dr. Dearing in his musty little office on the ground-floor of a building in the central square of the town which was devoted to lawyers' quarters, the rooms of the sheriff of the county, and the council-chamber where the mayor held his court. He received a few patients, made some examinations, wrote several prescriptions, and, considering that it was Sunday, he felt that he was fairly well occupied. His mind, however, was constantly on the topic of the morning and the disagreeable task confronting him. Finally he turned over the placard on the door till the word “out” was exposed to view, and went home to supper. Here, however, he met only General Sylvester, who, a dejected picture of offended loneliness, sat on the veranda, a dry cigar between his lips.

“Where is Madge?” Dearing asked, half standing, half sitting on the balustrade in front of the old gentleman, and assuming a casual tone which was far from natural.

“She hasn't been down at all to-day,” the General answered, pettishly. “I wouldn't send for her. She knew I wouldn't knuckle like that, but she knows I always expect to walk with her Sunday afternoons, and she stayed pouting in her room. She resents what has been said about that blackleg gambler, and wants to show it as plainly as possible, so there won't be any mistake between her view and mine. She knows I don't intend to leave any property to her if she keeps this up, but she doesn't care a rap. She's dead in love with the scamp, and, bad as he is, she glories in the opportunity to show her contempt for me and all that pertains to me. She can't toss me about like a ball, my boy! This thing has got to end right here and now, or I'll see my lawyer to-morrow and put something on paper that may never be wiped out while I am alive.”

“Well, give her till to-morrow, then,” Dearing said, with strange, suppressed calmness. “Her very sullenness now may be a sign that she is about to give him up. I've talked to her, and, while I am not certain what she'll do, I have an idea that she may respect your wishes and abide by your judgment.”

“I don't think so,” the old man said, with an anxious look into the face of his nephew; “that is, not so long as the rascal holds her to whatever understanding they may have between them. When I was a young man”—Sylvester clinched his fist and pounded his knee, as if to emphasize his words—“things like this did not hang fire. A man who could make no showing as to his being a proper suitor for a girl under age was given orders from her family to desist in his harmful attentions, and if he refused he was promptly dealt with—that's all: dealt with!”

“Nowadays it's different, Uncle Tom,” Dearing said, with the tone of an older man. “Shooting or threatening to shoot about a young woman is sure to cast a blight on her reputation, and there generally is some other method to—”

“You learned that up among those Yankees!” the General said, alluding to the period his nephew had spent in a New York medical college. “But I am miserable enough as it is without wanting you to stain your hands with blood and have us all brought into court to justify your course. He is a coward, I'm sure; no man has any pride or backbone who will cling on to a respectable family, under the pretext of being in love, when his own people have cut him off. His mother belonged to a good family, but he hasn't inherited any refinement of feeling from that side of the house.”

“I don't think, to do Fred full justice,” Dearing gently urged, “that he quite realizes the seriousness of your objections to him. I really believe, when he is told of the step you are about to take, that he will act sensibly. He has a good side to him when he is thoroughly himself, and I am going to look him up after supper and lay the whole thing fairly before him.”

“Does Margaret know you—” The General's voice failed to carry further.

“Yes; I've told her what I intend to do, and I think that is one reason she has remained in her room. She is hard hit, Uncle Tom. Girls never can understand things of this sort. Their sympathies always go with the unfortunate, and Madge knows Fred is down, and that most people are against him.”

“Well, I hope you will accomplish something,” General Sylvester said, hopefully. “You can straighten it out if any one can. I can trust you, Wynn, and I am proud of you—proud of you in every way. I never regret the loss of the old order of things when I think of what you are and what you are bound to become as a leader of young men of your period.”

“We are certainly sharp enough to pull the wool over kind old eyes like yours, Uncle Tom.” Dearing laughed as he leaned forward and laid his hand on the old man's shoulder. “In your day young blades boasted of what they did under cover of the night, but we thank the darkness for its shelter and don't talk of our acts. Why, you old-timers didn't know the first principles of devilment! If it were not giving away professional secrets, I'd tell you things that would make your hair stand on end. You've heard me say I believe in the good old-time, psalm-singing, God-fearing religion—well, I do. The longer I live the more I think we need it. Look what modern thought has done for Kenneth Galt. He has read so much on science and philosophy that he has reduced us all—good, bad, and indifferent—to mere cosmic dust. According to him, we are simply mud babies energized by planetary force, and living on the pap of graft. Ask him to account for good spiritual impulses, and he will—if he admits there are any—show you conclusively that good conduct is the mere evolutionary result of communal self-interest; men came to believe murder was wrong only because they didn't want their own throats cut.”

“I have always wondered what Kenneth does believe,” Sylvester said, with his first smile. “He certainly is an interesting man; and he's rich, and growing more so.”

“Yes; he was well provided for at the start,” responded Dearing, “and he has invested wisely.”

“I have seen him talking to Margaret several times of late,” Sylvester remarked. “That is one thing that irritates me. I don't care a red cent about his cranky religious views; they will take care of themselves, for he is a straight, safe, and honorable man; and if this harum-scarum Fred Walton had not been taking up so much of her time, why—”

“You old match-maker!” Dearing laughed. “I'm going to stir up Aunt Diana and get something to eat. I am as hungry as a bear.”

While he and his uncle sat together at the long table in the big dining-room, Dearing asked the cook if she had notified his sister that supper was served.

“Yesser, Marse Wynn,” the woman answered over the coffee-tray she was putting down, “I sent Lindy up dar to her room, and she say young miss didn't want er bite. I reckon she sho' is sick. She haint tetch er mouthful since 'er breakfast.”

“Well, let her alone,” Dearing said, as his eyes met the wavering glance of his uncle across the table. “She will be all right in the morning.”

The gloomy meal over, the General strode back to the veranda, and Wynn went up to his room. He did not light the gas, as he intended doing, for it occurred to him that there was really no need for it, and he sat down in the darkness. He could see one of the windows of Margaret's room in the ell of the building, across the open court. A dim light was burning there, and the curtains were drawn.

“Poor child!” he muttered; “that fellow has hit her hard. Women have a wonderful amount of sympathy for him. It may be that Mrs. Barry is correct in her fears, and that Dora may be in love with him, too. Beautiful, trusting Dora—even she is suffering on his account. Yes, I must see him. There is no other way.” Dearing stood up and went to his bureau to get a fresh handkerchief, and while his hand was fumbling collars, cuffs, and neckties, it touched the cool, smooth handle of a revolver. He picked it up and held it for a moment reflectively, and then laid it down.

“No, I'll not go to see him even with the thought that I may have to use force,” he said. “My mission in life is to cure men, not to spill their blood. They say he sometimes goes armed, and if we met on that sort of level there might be trouble.”

He closed the drawer, stood for a moment looking at the light in the window of Margaret's room, and then, shrugging his broad shoulders, he turned away. He met no one on the stairs, but as he passed out at the front door he saw the flare of his uncle's cigar and the wrinkled, brooding face and gray head and beard at the end of the veranda. Going down the wide brick walk, which was edged by rows of well-trimmed boxwood, he descried, near the gate, a willowy figure in white. It was Margaret. She looked up as he approached, and in the piteous lines of her face he read her final desperate appeal.

“I thought you were in your room,” he said, in an effort at gentle deception. “Madge, old girl, I'll have to take you in hand.” He passed his fingers playfully under her cold chin. “You are on a direct road to a thirty-day course of that very tonic you despised so much last spring. No dinner to-day and no supper to-night. I don't get any fee for doctoring you, but I'm going to keep you in good shape as an advertisement, if for nothing else. I don't intend to have my patients throwing it in my face that they won't believe in me until I cure my own family.”

She did not return his smile, and drew back from his caress as if she half resented it.

“Are you really going to see Fred?” she asked, falteringly, her eyes fixed coldly, half fearfully, on his through the dim, vague starlight.

“Yes, Madge,” he answered, simply. “I've thought it over deliberately and calmly, with no feeling of ill-will toward him, and I can't see my duty in any other way.”

“To-night?” She breathed hard, her hand on her breast.

“Right away, sister; that is, if he is in town.”

She moved a little nearer to him. He saw the hand which started toward his arm tremble, as it diverted its course to one of the palings of the fence, which it clutched in visible desperation.

“Do you realize,” she asked, “that to—to tell him what Uncle Tom intends to do in case he and I don't give each other up may insult him? He is not a man to care about a girl's fortune; he hasn't shown that he wants his father's money. He knows that I don't let such things weigh with me. What you are now starting out to do may be the immediate cause of—of our both defying you!”

“Oh, I see,” Dearing said. “Well, in that case I shall have done all in my power to protect your interests. I'll tell you one thing, though, Madge, little girl: the matter looks black enough as it stands; but, really, if I felt that you were going absolutely penniless to a man who has shown himself as reckless of his own interests as Fred Walton has, I'd be blue in earnest, and—and I don't know that I'd be quite able to restrain my temper if such a reckless spendthrift were to thrust himself between you and your natural rights, boldly robbing you, blind as you now are, of what you ought to have, and which later in life you will sadly need. I am not a fighting man, but—well, he'd better not interfere with your material interests, that's all.”

She shrank back before the force and suppressed fury in his face and voice, and now, her last hope gone, she simply stared, speechless. He had put his hand upon the iron latch of the gate when she caught his arm and clung to it convulsively.

“Oh, brother, you don't know Fred as I do!” she wailed. “He has some faults, I'll admit; but he is true and noble at heart. You see, I've heard him talk in a confidential way and you haven't. The last time I met him he almost cried in telling me of his troubles. He does try very hard to please his father. You see, I am convinced that he has just reached a sort of turning-point, and I am afraid this very thing may make him more desperate.”

“If he is sincere,” Wynn retorted, “and is any sort of man, he will be glad of being warned against impoverishing the girl he professes to love. You leave it all to me, sister. I am not going to be harsh with him. I don't really dislike him, and he has nothing against me.” From the expression of utter despair in her eyes he knew that she intended to resist no longer. She lowered her head to the top of the fence, and without looking at him, she asked, in a smothered voice: “What time do you think you will—will be back?”

“I can't tell, Madge. I may not find him at once, you know.”

“I shall wait up for you,” she gulped. “I couldn't close my eyes until I see you and know what he says. Oh, brother, I am afraid—”

“Afraid of what?” he demanded, quickly.

“I hardly know how to express it.” She looked up, and on her cheeks lay the damp traces of the tears she had wiped away on her sleeve. “But he is desperate. I am actually afraid he may try to—to do himself harm. It looked, the other evening, as if he were constantly on the point of telling me something about some crisis or other in his affairs which has just come up. He would start out as if about to make a disclosure of some horrible kind, and then he would stop and say: 'But I can't worry you by telling you everything. It won't help matters to talk about my trouble.”

“Poor chap,” Dearing said. “I will not be hard on him, sister; I promise you that. I may find him at church; he sometimes goes to take Dora Barry.”

“Yes; they are good friends,” Margaret said. “That is one thing I admire in him. She is poor, and doesn't receive much attention. Fred takes her to places and goes to see her out of pure kindness of heart.”

“Well, I'm off,” Dearing said, as he turned to leave. “Now you go to bed, young lady, and forget about this disagreeable mess for to-night, anyway. It may be all for the best.”

CHAPTER IV

LEAVING Madge mute and motionless at the gate, staring through the starlight after him, Dearing strode down the street past the fine old home of Kenneth Galt, which was set well back in spacious grounds on the left. Along the way were old-fashioned houses in bad condition, old buildings which had been modernized, and which stood on well-kept lawns, and others which had no touch of antiquity. After a few minutes he reached a plain two-story frame house which had once been white, but now showed little trace of its original paint. It was the home of Fred Walton's father, Stafford's well-to-do banker, money-lender, “note-shaver,” and all-round speculator in stocks, bonds, and real estate.

“Fred may be here,” Dearing reflected, as he paused at the ramshackle gate and viewed the forbidding old house as it loomed up among the trees, fifty yards from where he stood; “but he'd certainly be excusable for seeking a more cheerful place to spend an evening, considering that meddlesome stepmother of his.”

The parsimony of old Simon Walton could not have been better illustrated than by the fact that not a ray of light showed itself in all the rooms of the house. It was said of him that, fond of smoking though he was, he never lighted his pipe without getting a match and tobacco from some one else. At all events, he was at home. And as he went up the uneven brick walk, Wynn saw him seated on the front porch without his coat.

He was tall, lank, and raw-boned, and though nearly seventy years of age, his brown hair and short, scraggy whiskers were devoid of the slightest touch of gray. He was a man who, though outwardly sound of body, brain, and limb, was not without certain haunting fears of dissolution. He had had a slight stroke of paralysis which had left a numbness in his right side, and he was constantly trying to obey certain directions Dearing had laid down on the day his clerks had found him unable to rise from his desk in his bank. Dearing's skill had put him on his feet again, and the young doctor had tried diplomatically to show his patient that the cause of the trouble lay in an overworked brain too sharply centred on a none too worthy purpose. But in this he had failed. Old Simon would have believed in any lotion, any surgical operation, or any medicine prescribed by Dearing, no matter how costly, for that was in the young man's line; but he declined to listen to any hint—from such a source, at least—that his mental watchfulness ought to be curbed. He had won by his method, and that was ample proof of its correctness. He had risen from between the plough-handles, he told Wynn with a satirical laugh, and men who had advised him to think less of the almighty dollar and more of his God were in their mountain hovels giving away advice for others to live by. The wise fellows who had said in his youth that he was “as close as the bark on a tree” and “too mean to live” were now ready to beg at his feet for money to enable them to purchase food for their families.

“Well, here you are at last!” he thundered, as Wynn approached through the gloom. “And it's high time, I am here to say! It doesn't take a man two hours to go to that bank and bring back a simple statement like that. I want to know to a fraction of a cent, too, just how that thing stands, and—”

“Well, you don't owe me a penny, Mr. Walton.” Dearing laughed. “I only wish you did.”

“Oh, I thought it was Fred!” old Simon ejaculated, not a little chagrined by his lack of hospitality. “Me and him have had a little quarrel over his way of doing things, and I was looking for him to bring some papers from the bank. He went off with the key an hour ago, and hasn't showed up yet. Have you seen anything of him?”

“No; in fact, that's what I dropped in for. I wanted to speak to him.”

“Then I reckon he's not at your house calling on Miss Margaret. I thought he might be there, or gone to take that other girl, the daughter of that old picture-painter, to meeting. I picked up a note from her to him the other day, making some appointment or other. I might know he wasn't at your house, though, after the talk I had with the General. Huh! your uncle needn't be mealy-mouthed with me about what he thinks of the scamp! In my day and time a fellow of that stripe would be egged out of the community he lived in. But the blamed fools here in Stafford say Fred's pardonable to some extent because I've saved up a few cents. Huh! I'll show them and I'll show him a thing or two before I am through! I've given him a good education at a fine, high-priced college, and put him in the bank in a place of trust, and he is treating it as if it was a front seat at a circus. Huh! they all laugh and call him the 'Stafford Prince'; they say he is a high-roller; that he's invented a cocktail, and lets bank-notes go like leaves in a high wind. They needn't say it is due to the little I've made, either, for there's yourself, for instance. You had money and property left you, but it didn't make a stark, staring idiot out of you. By gum! I never see you or hear of your fine operations without wanting to cuff that fellow behind the ear and kick him out into the street. Came to breakfast this morning with his eyes all bunged up and swollen. There is one thing about him that is to his credit, I'll admit, and that is he won't lie when you are looking him smack dab in the face, and when I asked him if he had been playing poker he acknowledged it. Think of that! A boy of mine—of Simon Walton's—playing cards for whopping big stakes when I have toiled and stinted and saved as I have to gain the little headway I've got.”

“Well, I see he is not here,” Dearing said, awkwardly. “Perhaps I can find him up-town.”

“Don't hurry; set down,” and the gaunt man stood up and pointed to another chair. “I clean forgot to be polite, I'm so worked up. Take a chair—take a chair. I simply want to see what it feels like to sit and talk to a decent man under thirty.”

“No, I thank you, Mr. Walton, I really can't stay,” and Dearing laid his hand gently on the quivering shoulder of the old man. “But I want you to remember my warning about that little trouble of yours. You must not let things stir you up like this. You can't stand it, you know, as well as some other men can.”

“Show me how to help it—show me how to want to help it!” spluttered the banker. “I don't want to keep my temper! I don't want to hold my tongue! I wish the law of the land would let me take him, big as he is, and thrash him on the streets before the very folks that call him, as some have, an improvement on his stingy old daddy. Once I thought I had him. Once I thought I'd caught him dickering with bank funds, and I had started to have him put in limbo when he showed me I was wrong. That's the kind of man I am! I put honesty above everything else, and I won't hide dishonor, even in my own blood.”

“Well, I'm off,” Wynn Dearing said. “I see I only keep you going on the very topic I have warned you against. Good-night.”

As the young doctor was approaching the gate he saw a figure in gray, enveloped, as to head and shoulders, in an old cashmere shawl, emerge from a clump of plum-trees near the fence. It was Fred Walton's stepmother, a tall, thin woman of more than sixty years of age, and even dim as the starlight was he noticed the hardness of her features as she clutched the shawl under her chin and eagerly peered out from its folds.

“Oh, we have had a day of it, Dr. Dearing!” she said, familiarly, and with a dry, forced laugh. “When you came in at the gate just now I made the same mistake Simon did—I thought it was Fred, and hung back at the side of the house to hear the row. I reckon the boy has decided he's had enough tongue-lashing for one day, and don't intend to sleep here to-night. I don't blame his father one bit,” she ran on, volubly, “and I have the first one to meet who really does. Fred certainly keeps himself in the public eye. There is hardly a day that some fresh report don't crop out as to his scrapes. And the match-makers! Great goodness! They have enough to keep ten towns the size of this busy. They are eager to see now which Fred will tie to for life: your sister, with all her money and fine old name, or that strip of a girl who paints and teaches for a bare living. Some say she is daft about him, and that if your uncle kicks him out he will settle on her. That's what folks say, you know. The truth is, I live sort of out of the way, and don't hear all that is going the rounds.”

“That is a matter I am not posted on, Mrs. Walton,” Dearing said, as he opened the gate and politely raised his hat in parting. “I must hurry. I only wanted to see Fred a minute.”

As he neared the central square of the town the rays of light from the church where he had that morning attended service streamed across the green, and he approached the little edifice, ascended the steps to the vestibule, and cautiously peered in at the worshippers, wondering if by any chance Fred Walton might be there as Dora Barry's escort. But no one of the numerous backs turned toward him resembled Fred's, and his glance moved on to the pulpit. The choir was in full view, facing the door, and beside the keyboard of the organ sat the girl who played it. Was it the shadows from the gas above her, or was the tense expression in her eyes and the droop to the sweet young mouth due to some trouble even greater than any he had yet surmised? He shuddered as he turned away and pursued his walk toward the square. He would look for Walton at the bank, and try to divest his mind of the disagreeable duty he had to perform; but Dora's face continued to haunt him. The mute appeal of her white, shapely hands patiently folded in her lap, the suggestion of utter despair in her whole bearing, clung to him and wrung his manly heart. She had been his playmate when she was a tiny girl and he an awkward boy in his teens. He had loved her gentle old father, with his long hair and high, poetic brow, and had believed for years that Dora had inherited his genius. The artist had gone back to Paris to study, intending to send for his wife and child when fortune smiled, as he was sure it would. But he had died there, and was buried by his fellow-students of the Latin Quarter. They had written the fact to the wife and orphan, but that was all. It was his child who was in trouble, and Dearing's heart ached with a dull, insistent pain.

There was a light in the bank; he saw its gleam through the old-fashioned panes of glass in front, but it went out just as he drew near the door, which he saw was slightly ajar. As he stood wondering, he heard some one coming. It was Fred Walton; he was smoking, and the flare of his cigar lighted up his dark, handsome face for a bare instant. He was tall, well-built, and strong of physique.

“Hello! Is that you, Fred?” Dealing called out. There was a pause. Walton seemed to shrink back into the darkness for a moment; then he said:

“Yes. Who is it?”

“It is I, Fred—Wynn Dearing.”

“Oh, it is you!” Walton drew the heavy door to after him as he came out and locked it. Then they stood together on the sidewalk in the faint rays from a gaslight on the corner near by.

“Yes, I've been looking for you, Fred. I went to your house; your father told me you might be here. Can't we go in the bank?”

Fred Walton stared. His face was rigid; beads of sweat stood on his brow and cheeks; the cigar in his mouth shook.

“It is terribly hot in there,” he said, after a pause. “I was looking over the books, and—almost fainted. I didn't think it worth while to unscrew the rear windows, and not a breath of air is stirring in the beastly hole.”

“We might walk on to my office; it is always cool. I never bother to shut the windows, even before a rain.”

“Yes, if—if you wish it, Wynn; that is, if you wish to—to see me.”

“Yes, I want to talk to you, Fred.”

They walked side by side along the pavement. Walton had his hat off, and was wiping his face with his handkerchief. Once his foot struck against some object, and he almost fell. Something like an oath of impatience escaped his lips as he drew himself up and caught the slow, deliberate step of his companion.

Reaching the door of his office, Dearing unlocked it, pushed it open, and they entered the little reception-room in the dark. The doctor struck a match and lighted a lamp on a table, and pointed to a rocking-chair. “Take a seat, Fred.” A cold smile which gave his face almost a wry look lay on his firm mouth as he himself sat down near a table on which lay some books and magazines. He had not removed his eyes from his companion, who, hat in hand, was settling heavily into the big chair. “I've got an unpleasant duty before me, Fred—darned unpleasant, because we've been friends all our lives, and—”

“That's all right, Wynn, go ahead.”

“It is about you and my sister, Fred.”

“I was afraid it was that, Wynn,” the young man muttered. “The thought came to me when I heard your voice in the dark just now. Well, nothing you can say will surprise me. I am prepared for anything—for the very worst; in fact, I am prepared to have Marga—pardon me, your sister—send me word that she herself wishes to see no more of me.”

“I have no such message as that, Fred, but still it is my duty to lay the facts before you just as they are; and I am going to do it, with the hope, old man, that you'll be reasonable and—help me out.”

In a calm voice, full of sincerity and stern conviction, Dearing then recounted all that had taken place between him and his uncle, ending with: “I give you my word, Fred, and the opinion of a physician who knows the case, that my uncle is not only likely to worry himself into the grave over the matter, but that he will absolutely, and at once, cut my sister out of her rightful inheritance.”

“But she—surely she herself will tell General Sylvester that she is willing to—forget me, and—”

Dearing, without looking directly at the speaker, shook his head. “It is only fair to her to say that she is not made that way, Fred. She believes in you; nothing on earth will change her; she believes you are the soul of honor, and is ready to throw my uncle's money into his face. That's why I came to you—to you. I thought, and Uncle Tom did, too, that under the circumstances you might, you see, rather than stand between her and—”

Dearing went no further. He was interrupted by the look of agony which had clutched the lineaments of the listener like the throes of death. Walton's hands, outspread till the fingers looked like prongs of hard wood, rose to his face and covered it. Dearing saw a shudder of restrained emotion rise in the strong frame and quiver through it. A sound like a sob issued from the bent form. Neither spoke for more than a minute. The step of a passer-by rang sharply on the still night air. The tones from Dora Barry's organ swelled out in the distance and rolled toward them, followed by the singing of the choir. Suddenly Walton rose, and leaned on the back of his chair.

“It is all up with me, Wynn!” he groaned, deeply. “After to-night you'll never be troubled by me in any shape, form, or fashion. I wish I could be man enough to make a clean breast of it all to you, but what's the use? It wouldn't do any good or help the matter. You'll know to-morrow, as all Stafford will. I'll say this, though: I am wholly unworthy of your sister's confidence and respect. To have paid her such attentions, situated as I am situated, was an insult. I have committed an offence known so far to no one but myself, and which can never be pardoned. I am at the end of my rope, old chap. If I could undo my act by ending my wretched life, I'd do it to-night. I love your sister as sincerely as a man ever loved a woman, but I have no earthly right to think of her, much less to consider myself a suitor for her hand. When she knows the truth—the whole wretched truth—she herself will turn from me in disgust, and blush with shame at the thought of ever having encouraged me. You have the right, as a man and her brother, to kick me for my presumption. I can't go into details. I could not bear to see your face as you hear it, but it will be in every one's mouth tomorrow.”

“Oh, Fred, surely you—” Dearing started to say, but, raising his hand, Walton interrupted him.

“Never mind, Wynn. I have said enough. I have no right to send your sister even a farewell message, certainly not to tell her what my feeling for her is at this moment; but it will be best for the General to rest assured, so you may give him my word that I'll never cross her path again. I am going away to-night, never to be seen here any more. I am not man enough to face this town after my conduct becomes public. I was weak. I fell—that's all. I don't know what will become of me. I blame no one but myself, certainly not my poor old father. You will not see me again. Goodbye. I need not wish you well; you will do well. You were marked by Fate from the start as one of the lucky, uncursed ones.”

The doctor stood up and extended his hand to detain him, but Walton had turned hastily away. Dearing heard his dragging feet in the corridor and then on the sidewalk.

“Poor chap! It is something very, very serious,” he mused. “Nothing but terrible trouble would work a man up like that. I wonder if—” He started and shuddered. Mrs. Barry's pale, troubled face of the morning came before him, then Dora's downcast attitude as he had seen her in the choir only a few moments before. He started, and his blood ran cold through his veins. Could it be possible—could any man sink low enough to—? No; he would not even think of it, else he would regret not having killed the man as he sat bowed before him. No, it wasn't that—the human monster did not live who could pluck and stamp upon that beautiful and helpless flower of maidenhood. He extinguished the lamp, went out into the dark street, and closed his door. The congregation was leaving the church as he reached it. Among the last to go was Dora. He fell in behind her, but made no effort to catch her up. She had shown no willingness to talk to him that morning, and he would not disturb her now. Perhaps the girl was really in love with Walton, and had gleaned some inkling of the young man's trouble. Yes, that would explain her present depression. He walked behind her till she disappeared at the cottage gate; then he turned and went homeward past Kenneth Galt's grounds. He saw a spark of fire moving about under the trees to the right of the gloomy-looking residence which to-night seemed devoid of any light, and knew that Galt was there smoking alone, as was his habit at that hour. Dearing put his hand out to the gate-latch. Perhaps a chat with his philosophic friend would help clear his brain of the maddening thoughts which surged about him, but he paused.

“No; Madge will be up waiting for me,” he reflected. “I may as well meet her and let her know the worst. Poor girl, she'll have to be brave!”

He moved on to his own gate. There was no one on the veranda, as was often the case in warm weather, but in a little pagoda-shaped summer-house on the lawn he descried a white object. It stirred as the hinges of the gate creaked, and he entered, It was Margaret, and she came to him like a spirit across the grass.

“I told you I'd wait,” she reminded him, and her voice sounded strange and even harsh in its guttural tendency. “I thought you'd never come.”

Through all that had passed between him and Fred Walton that night Dealing's anger and resentment had been held in check by sympathy for the man in his desperate plight and despair; but now, as he saw the evidences of his sister's agony written all too plainly upon her young being, his indignation kindled. The scoundrel, the coward, was running away to keep from facing public opinion, yet was leaving this poor, crushed girl to suffer in consequence of his conduct!

“You ought not to have waited,” he reproached her, in a tone she had never heard him use. “Your being here now, looking like this, is an acknowledgment that you actually care for the cowardly cur—you, who ought to—”

“Brother, stop!” The girl clutched his arms. She breathed hard against his breast as she leaned close to him. “'The cowardly cur,' you say—you, who have never abused him before.”

“I wonder now that I let him go with a whole bone in his body,” Dearing retorted, raspingly. “I didn't realize what I was doing, or I—”

“Oh, what do you mean?” Margaret interrupted, giving him a quick, impatient shake. “You needn't come here trying to make me believe vile slander. It is easy enough for lies to get circulated in a town noted for its tattling busybodies.”

“I've had his own deliberate confession,” Dearing answered. “With his head hanging in shame and his face covered he told me he was forced by some dishonorable act to leave town, never to return. He didn't tell me what he had done; he said he'd rather not go into it, but that it would all be out to-morrow. Of his own accord he proposed to give you up, and said I might tell Uncle Tom that he'd never see or write to you again. Whatever it is, you ought to have sufficient pride to—”

Dealing stopped short. With a low moan Margaret was reeling toward him, and, as he caught her to keep her from falling, he saw that she had fainted. Lifting her up, Dearing bore her into the house and up the stairs to her room. He laid her on her bed, glad that his uncle and the servants had not noticed the accident. He sprinkled her face with water. She opened her eyes as he bent over her in the darkness, and recognized him.

“You are all right now, Madge, darling,” he said, huskily, as he fondly kissed her. “Be calm and go to sleep. You must not suffer on account of this man. He is absolutely unworthy of your regard, and that ought to settle it, so far as you are concerned.”

Margaret sat up, and put her arms about her brother's neck.

“I was afraid the other day that something was wrong—that something terrible was about to happen to him,” she sobbed. “He was awfully gloomy. He seemed to be on the point of confiding in me every minute, but couldn't get it out. You say you have no idea what it is?”

“No; but he says it will be public property to-morrow. Try to forget it. You must call your pride to your aid. Uncle was right in his objections to him, and you were wrong. I neglected my duty in not seeing him even sooner than I did. Now, good-night.”

Leaving her with a kiss on her cold cheek, Dearing, choking down a lump in his throat, went to his own room. The windows facing the south looked out on Kenneth Galt's grounds, and Dearing could still see his friend's cigar intermittently glowing as the student, philosopher, and successful financier strode back and forth.

“Who knows? Kenneth may be right, after all,” Dearing mused, bitterly. “At such moments as this one wonders if there really can be a God who is justly ruling the universe. What has poor little Madge done, in her gentle purity, to merit this crushing blow? It was her very trusting innocence that brought it upon her.”

It was one of Dealing's habits to say his prayers at night on retiring, and when he had disrobed he knelt by his bedside. But somehow the words failed to come as readily as had been their wont; he was trying to pray for the relief of his sister, but reason kept telling him that it was a futile appeal. God had not hindered the approach of the calamity; why should mere human appeal immediately lift it? So he said his “Amen” sooner than usual, and with a brain hot over the memory of Walton's looks and words, he rolled and tossed on a sleepless bed till far into the night.

CHAPTER V

WHEN Fred Walton left Dearing's office, he went along the street toward his father's home. He walked slowly, absolute despair showing itself in the droop of his powerful body, and in the helpless, animal glare of his eyes. He had reached a point from which, the street being on a slight elevation, he could see the old house in which he was born. He paused. All about him was peace, stillness, and incongruous content. The town clock, capping the brick stand-pipe of the waterworks, struck nine solemn strokes, and he could feel the after-vibrations of the mellow metal as the sound died away. He turned, leaving his home on the left, and walked on aimlessly till the houses which bordered the way became more scattered, and then he reached a bridge which spanned a little river. A full moon was rising. Through the foliage of the near-by trees it looked like a world of fire away off in space. Its red rays fell on the swiftly rushing water, throwing on its surface a path of flaming blood. He went out on the structure, and leaned against the iron railing. Just beyond the end of the bridge rose a green-clad hill. It had a high fence around it, and a wide gateway with a white, crescent-shaped sign above it. It was the Stafford cemetery.

“Yes, I ought to see it once more before I go,” he said. “It will be the last time—the very last; and surely, though I'll blush in her dead presence, thief as I am, I ought to go.”

He crossed to the other side, and went into the gate of the enclosure. Threading his way among the monuments, his brow reverently bared to the solemn moonlight, he came to a square plot surrounded by an ivy-coated brick wall with a granite coping. It contained several graves bearing his name, but only one engaged his attention. He sat down on its footstone, and, with his head still bare, he remained motionless for a long time.

“She didn't know the son she used to be so proud of would ever come to this,” he said, bitterly. “With all her hopes and prayers, she little knew that I'd be an outcast—actually forced to flee from the law; she little dreamed it would come to that when she used to talk of the great and good things I was to do. Poor, dear, little mother! You'd rather be dead than alive to-night. I wonder if it is absolutely too late? Perhaps, far away, under a new name and among strangers, I may be able to live differently. And if I could, she would know and be glad. Mother, listen, dear!” A sob rose in him, and shook him from head to foot. “The wrong I did was done when my brain was turned by liquor, and I did not realize my danger till it was too late; I swear here—right here—to you, dear little mother, that from this moment on I'll try to be better. I may fail, but I'll try. I swear, too, that from this moment on I'll bend every energy of my soul and body to the undoing of the thing of which I am guilty.”

He stood up. Ten solemn strokes of the town clock rang out on the profound stillness. The air was vibrant with a myriad insect voices from the marshes along the river. Rays of lamplight shot across the shrubbery between the shafts and the slabs of stone. They came from a window in the cottage of the sexton of the cemetery. The lone visitor saw a shaggy head of hair, a long, ragged beard the color of the clay beneath the soil, and a rugged face, gashed and seamed by time. The old man was smoking—placidly smoking. Even a humble digger of graves could be content, while this young, vigorous soul was steeped in the dregs of despair. Walton turned away, slowly retraced his steps to the outside, crossed the river, and, careful to avoid meeting any one, he finally came again to his father's house. It was dark.

“I might get in at a window and bring away a few things to wear,” he reflected. “But no, I must not risk it. He might meet me face to face and demand the truth. I'd have to tell him. Sharp of sight, and suspicious as he now is, he would read it in my face, and order my arrest. Yes, he would do it. He is my father, but he would do it.”

On he went, now headed for the square. Reaching the bank, the thought occurred to him that, having a key, he would go in and write a note to his father. A moment later he had locked himself within the stifling place, and under a flaring gas-jet, and seated on the high office-stool at a desk, he wrote as follows:

My Dear Father,—Surprised though you've never been at my numerous bad acts, you will be now at what I am about to confess. For more than a week I have been covering up a shortage in my account which amounts to more than you can afford to lose without warning. I am five thousand dollars behind, and am absolutely unable to replace it. I shall make no excuses. Being your son gave me no right to the money, but taking it at a time when I believed it would save me in a certain speculation in futures, I told myself that I had the right, as your son and heir, to borrow it. That I looked at it that way, and was half intoxicated at the time the deed was committed, is all that I can say by way of palliation of my offence.

You once said to me that if I ever did anything of this sort that you would turn me over to the law exactly as you would any stranger, and I understand you well enough to know that you will keep your word. You would do it in your anger, even if you regretted it afterward; so, father, I am leaving home to-night, never to return. Don't think I am taking any more of your money, either, for I am not. I am leaving without a penny. I don't know where I shall go, but I am starting out into the world to try to begin life anew. You have always contended that my hopes of inheriting your savings was the prime cause of my failure, and that had I been forced to struggle for myself, as you had to do as a young man, I should have known the true value of money. I believe you are right, and to-night, as I am leaving, a certain hope comes to me that maybe there is enough of your sterling energy in me to make a man of me eventually. Perhaps it won't count much with you for me to say that I am going to try to be straight and honorable from now on. You never have had faith in my promises, but you have never seen me tried as I shall be tried. I know how much I owe you to a cent, and as fast as I earn money—if I can earn any—it shall be sent back to you, and, if I live, I shall wipe out the debt which now stands against me. I wish I could put my arms round your neck to-night and beg your forgiveness before I go, but you'd not trust me. In your fury over your loss you'd not give me the chance I must have to redeem myself, and this is the only way. But, oh, father, do, do give me this last chance! For the sake of my mother's memory, and your name, which I have tarnished, don't try to hunt me down like a common thief! I want one more opportunity. Do, do, give it to me! Good-bye.

Frederic.

Folding the sheets on which he had written, Walton put them into an envelope and placed it on his father's desk. He was now ready to go, but paused again.

“I can't write to Margaret,” he said. “I have promised not to. Her brother will tell her enough, anyway, to make her ashamed that she ever knew me; but there is poor Dora—my dear, trusting friend. I must not go without a line to her.”

He seated himself again, and wrote as follows:

My Dear Little Friend,—You have said several times of late that you feared I had some burden on my mind because I was not as cheerful as I used to be. Well, your sharp, kindly eyes were reading a truth I was trying to conceal. I have got myself into most serious trouble. I haven't the heart to go into details over it; I need not, anyway, for my father will let it out soon enough. Every tongue in old Stafford will wag and clatter over the final finish of the town's daredevil to-morrow. And it will pain you, too, for of all my friends, young as you are, you were my soundest adviser. You used to say that I'd soon sow my wild oats, and settle down and make a man of myself. You used to say, too, that I'd finally win the girl who—but, disgraced as I am, I won't mention her name.

I have lost her forever, dear Dora. She may have cared a little for me, but she won't when she knows how low I've fallen. I am going far away to try to hew out some sort of a new road. I may fail, as I have always failed, but if I do, my failure will not be added to the list of my shortcomings here in Stafford.

Now, dear Dora, forgive me for speaking of something concerning you. For the last month, though I did not mention it, I have been afraid that all was not going quite well with you, either. You almost admitted it once when I caught you crying. You remember, it was the evening I met Kenneth Galt and you in the wood back of your house—the evening your mother, you remember, thought you had been out with me, and scolded us both. I saw plainly that you did not want her to know you had met him, and so I said nothing; but the thing has troubled me a great deal, I'll admit. I really know nothing seriously against the man, but he has queer, almost too modern, views in regard to love, and I think, dear Dora, that maybe you have imbibed some of them. Secret association like that cannot be best for a young girl, and so I feel that I can't go away without just this little warning. He is a wealthy man of the world, and his friendship with a sweet, pure girl like you are ought to be open and aboveboard. You are rarely beautiful, dear Dora. Your painting shows that you are a genius. You have a great future before you; don't spoil it all by becoming too much interested in this man. It may appeal to your romantic side to meet him like that, but it can't—simply can't be best. Now, you will forgive your “big brother,” won't you? I may never come back; I may never even write, but I shall often think lovingly of you, dear friend. Good-bye.

When he had signed, sealed, and directed the letter, he put a stamp on it and went out and closed the bank, pushing the key back into the room through a crack beneath the shutter. He then slowly crossed the deserted square to the post-office on the corner and deposited the letter. After this he stood with his strong arms folded, looking about irresolutely. In front of him lay the town's single line of horse-cars, which led to the railway station half a mile distant. One of the cars stood in front of him. It had made its last slow and jangling trip to meet the nine-o'clock north-bound train. The track stretched out before him, the worn bars gleaming like threads of silver in the moonlight. Casting one other look about him, and heaving a deep sigh, he lowered his head and started for the station.

“I think this is Jack Thomas' run,” he reflected. “If it is, he will take me aboard.”

The Redemption of Kenneth Galt

THE REDEMPTION OF KENNETH GALT

By Will N. Harben

Author of “Gilbert Neal” “Abner Daniel” “The Georgians” “Ann Boyd” etc.

New York and London: Harper Brothers Publishers

M C M I X

TO

MABELLE

PART I

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V