"Yes, he would," said the young man, testily throwing into the rack the penholder he had been idly nibbling.

"Wall, I'm whipsawed!" exclaimed the superintendent. "I kinder suspicioned, but I could hardly believe it. Now let's git down to hardpan; what's your particular brand of cussedness?"

Young Mr. Hawes smiled whimsically and replied, "Art for art's sake."

"The devil you say! Bad as that, hey?" "Long Jim" was evidently in

the dark, but unwilling to confess it. 'Well, go on."

46

That's all," said young Mr. Hawes. "But-" began Rowe, struggling to frame a question.

66

Oh, go to thunder!" snapped young Mr. Hawes. Then he put on his hat and left the office.

Now the few men who had previously flouted "Long Jim's" authority had met sudden retribution. Yet, a six-foot, twohundred-pound man, if he be of Rowe's stamp, does not willingly use his fists on a slender youth. So the superintendent went to Corliss for explanation. "You're used to town ways, Tom," he said, "and you've been thick with the youngster. What's his lay?"

"Paints picters, heh!" echoed "Long Jim." He stopped to run a meditative finger over the stubble on his chin, indicating deep perplexity. "S'pose he drinks and gambles and shoots some on the side?"

"No," said Corliss, "he doesn't."

"No? Jest paints, heh? Wall, I'm switched. Paints!" It seemed that the full significance of young Mr. Hawes's iniquity was hard to grasp. "Paints picters!" he repeated. Now, I've heard of men that did that, but I never see none, only women. Kinder woman's work, ain't it ?"

"Not altogether," replied Corliss, smiling quietly.

"But can't he stop it?"

"Look here," said Corliss, "you don't seem to understand the trouble between Wetmore and his father. It's here: the boy has a natural turn for painting-gets it from his mother. The old man don't know any more about painting than well, than you do. All he knows is about mines, and ore, and the price of stocks. He'd counted on his boy's being the same sort. But Wetmore took to painting. He was sent abroad for his health, and studied for two years in Paris without letting the old man know. But somehow, after he came back, his father found it out. They had a big row. The old man threatened to cut him adrift without a dollar, and sent him out here to cure him. He thought the youngster couldn't paint out here. But he has. He's working on a picture of the lake, and I tell you it's a hummer. Want to see it ?"

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No," said the superintendent. "I don't want to know no more about it. Fact is, Tom, this proposition is one too many for me. Now, I like the young feller a heap, but this picter paintin' business sort of unsettles me. It don't seem jest the thing a man oughter be doin'. guess old Hawes got the right of it, when he asked me to help make a man of the youngster. What gits me, though, is where I can put my oar in. I've got to have time to think the thing over."

I

The act of thinking was a serious business to "Long Jim." For the rest of the day he went about like a person under a VOL. XXX.-7

Hawes as one might an intricate puzzle.

The next day being Sunday, Corliss and young Mr. Hawes started soon after breakfast for their usual stroll on the lake shore. They ended by seeking out the sun-warmed nook which the engineer had long since discovered at the foot of the Knob, and from which could be seen that wonderful view which the young artist was putting on canvas. In the foreground, to the left, were the richly tinted cliffs, like the walls of some fairy city. For the rest there were the wide, blue, mysterious waters of Superior, stretching north to the skyline. In silence they paid devotion to the scene for a long time.

"No wonder the Indians called it The Lake of the Great Spirit," said Hawes. What do you say is the Indian for that, Corliss ?"

Gitchigamme," replied Corliss, without removing the pipe from between his teeth.

"That's what I shall call my picture," said the young man, and again they were silent.

Reluctantly they left the nook and climbed the Knob. The splendid calm of the lake seemed to have swept inland and covered the land. But great calms are often in the van of great storms. So this peace of Painted Knob was to be followed by stirring events.

Chance and a whim of young Mr. Hawes took them back through the barrack-lined street, instead of along the path on their return to Mrs. Dwyer's boardinghouse."

Now, the Muscovite has no appreciation for the scenes in Nature's great picture gallery. Therefore he had not been worshipping at the shrine of Gitchigamme. Following his usual custom, he was spending his one day above ground in playing seven-up, which America had given him; and drinking corn brandy, which he had given America.

There were, unfortunately, exceptions. These comprised a group in which were a very old man, a rather young one, and a weeping girl. Above the latter's head, the old man flourished a whip of many lashes.

Had Mr. Wetmore Hawes been familiar with Muscovite peasant customs, he would have guessed at once that here

Mrs. Dwyer and Dan with me in one of the boats and go for a posse. You and Corliss wait until Joe comes back. Then you can follow in the other. P'raps they'll agree to simmer down in case they think you've skipped. If they do you can bring me word. But don't let 'em git at you. So long," and the superintendent, followed by Dan and Mrs. Dwyer, hurried down the path to where the double-ended Mackinac sail-boats were moored to the wharf.

"Well," said Corliss, "I guess you'd better pack your things. I'll watch for the Russians."

During all this time young Mr. Hawes had said little, but he watched earnestly the alarming results of his hasty act. Now he was rather pale. In fact, he was badly frightened. The abruptness with which the situation had developed shook his

nerve.

But instead of making ready for flight he sat very still, his teeth shut and his hands clinched. If he had inherited from a refined mother the spirit of an artist, he had also got from his father something of the grim courage which had pulled old John Hawes through many a panic and out of many a corner.

A full quarter of an hour he sat thus. Then he went outside where the engineer stood looking up the narrow gauge ore track.

"All ready?" asked Corliss. "Suppose you go down and shake out the sails." "Corliss," said young Mr. Hawes, "I'm not going."

"Wha-at!" exclaimed the engineer. "No, sir; I'm not going to run away like a scared dog."

"See here, this is nonsense. What show would you stand against two hundred crazy Russians. Come, Hawes, don't be a fool."

But young Mr. Hawes was obstinate. Corliss pleaded, warned, and scolded; all to no use. Finally he asked: "But when they get here, full of brandy and primed for deviltry, what will you do?"

"I have thought out a plan."

no reason.

with evident impatience, but when the scheme was all before him he pulled thoughtfully at his pipe for a while without speaking. "It will be a risky thing," he said at last, "but it might go through. By thunder, I'll stay and try it." "English Joe" came to them later with a long face. His friends would listen to They had drunk much corn brandy and their courage was high in consequence. The women urged them on. They would revenge the insult to the scion of the mighty Skobiloffs. So long as it was day they feared the spirit with which these two talked at dawn on the lake shore. But when the moon was up they would surely come. They would punish the Americans, destroy the mine, plunder the storehouse, and live forever after without work and in peace.

"A very fine programme," said Corliss, "but it won't work. Go back and tell your friends to come along. They shall see that we can call the spirit of the great water from his sleep. Tell them to listen for his voice and when they hear it to look out. Let 'em come."

"English Joe" having been sent off with this message, Corliss and young Mr. Hawes made some rather curious preparations. As soon as it was dusk they took some of Mrs. Dwyer's sheets and went cautiously up to the engine-house at the shaft mouth. In the nearby barracks they could hear an ominous hum, the sound of many voices.

After a half-hour's work young Mr. Hawes left Corliss in the engine-room and went alone down to the boarding-house. Lighting two lamps and several lanterns he placed them in the sitting-room, threw open the front door and sat down, in full view of the path, to wait.

The voice of a distant mob is a soulchilling thing to hear. It first strikes the ear like the buzzing of some great insect. Now it is like the hissing of hot steam from an immense escape-valve. Now it deepens into a guttural repetition of the letter R as it might sound if roared through a giant megaphone by some world-distant Titan. It has a kind of rhythm which rises and falls, swells and sinks, and rises again; each time with greater volume. At last it becomes a mighty growl; hoarse, brutal, intense, menace incarnate.

As young Mr. Hawes sat there in the lighted doorway and listened to this sound coming nearer he felt a terror such as it comes to the lot of few men to feel.

The mob seemed to creep along. Yet in the moonlight he could see that the men and women were running headlong down the steep path. The futility of his plan burst upon him. In a second he had a dozen impulses to action, but still he sat rigid in his chair.

Leading the mob was a giant miner, hairy, whiskered, wild-eyed. In one hand he flourished a long steel drill. It weighed at least twenty pounds. He handled it

as if it had been a broomstick. This man was within a dozen yards of the door before young Mr. Hawes stirred. Without evidence of haste he took up one of the lighted lanterns and stepped across the sill. Three times he swung the lantern before him in a circle from head to feet. Then he set it down and pointed dramatically toward the mine-shaft on the hill-top. The mob stopped as if it had run against a stone wall. With gaping mouths they turned to gaze toward the shaft-house.

They had not long to wait. Of sudden there came through the moonlighted air such a cry as these simple folk had never heard before; a weird ululation, like the wail of some disturbed monster.

"Ah-we-e-e-e! Ah-we-e-e-e!" it said, and the painted hills bandied back and forth the startling echo.

Gitchigamme, it seemed, had spoken. But this was not all. As they looked there appeared, silhouetted against the dark mass of the shaft buildings, a great white object. It was almost formless, but it appeared to have wings for, without an instant's stop or other warning than a second anguish-laden cry, it swooped down the hill directly toward them.

There came a rushing sound. There was a glimpse to be had of great, flapping pinions as the thing hurtled down the slope.

The Muscovites heard and saw. For a moment, obeying a common impulse, they huddled together. Then they broke in panic. By the time the sound of a mighty splash came up from the lake shore they were all in mad flight.

Early next forenoon came a steamer, from which landed "Long Jim" and many men armed with rifles and shotguns. Forming a somewhat uneven company front they deployed skirmishers quite creditably, and cautiously worked their way up the hill. To their amazement they found the shaft gear running, ore buckets coming up and going down with great regularity, and Tom Corliss with his hand on the drum-lever.

"Long Jim" expressed astonishment. with all the strong language at his command. Also he asked enlightenment.

It was a scheme of the youngster's," said Corliss. He called the spirit of Gitchigamme, and old Gitchi was right on deck. It cost us an ore-car and two of Mrs. Dwyer's sheets. But say, we can't use that new siren whistle that came from Chicago the other day. Hereafter that speaks only for Gitchigamme."

"By the great cats," roared "Long Jim," when he had heard the whole story, "but he's a slick one, that youngster is."

As a rule Painted Knob troubles itself not at all about what occurs in the world of art. Painted Knob wants only to know the price of copper, and the Escanaba quotations. But when in December there came a paper which told—in an inside column, to be sure about the appearance of a new artist whose first picture, called Gitchigamme, had been awarded the gold medal at a great national exhibition, there was quite an impromptu celebration. It was held in the sitting-room of Mrs. Dwyer's boardinghouse.

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"Yes," said Corliss, who had returned from a journey East, and who had brought the paper, "the picture made a great hit. Old man Hawes is as proud as a peacock, too. Here's something he sent you, Mr. Rowe."

The superintendent opened the big, thick envelope, and pulled out some stiff parchment-like sheets handsomely printed in blue.

"Preferred stock! Twenty shares ! Wall, I'm whipsawed!" exclaimed "Long Jim," not as a declaration of fact, of course, but merely from force of habit.