It was then that the judge decided to take Collingeford to Maple House for over Sunday.

CHAPTER XIII

GERRY LANSING was sitting alone in the shade of a bush, his knees gathered in his arms, and his head bowed down. Great quivering sighs that were almost sobs were shaking his strong body. In one terrific swirl life had wrenched him from the moorings of generations, tossed him high, and dropped him, broken. He had, after all, been only a weakling, waiting to fall at the first temptation. It seemed as though it could not be true. The sun had only just risen. The mist still hung in the air in wisps. It was still early morning-the morning that he had found so glorious, the morning in which just to live had seemed enough; but it was true. Between the moment when he had plunged from the sand-spit and the moment when he and the girl had stood on the river-bank and laughed together to see the canoe, worked adrift by the eddy, swirl out into the river and away, eons had passed. In that laughing moment he had stood primeval man in a primeval world. With the drops of water from the river he had flicked off the bonds it had taken centuries to forge. And now the storm was past, the elation over, and his truant conscience returned to stand dismayed before the devastation of so short a lapse.

The girl, dressed in a homespun cotton robe belted at the waist, came down a half-hidden path, shyly at first, and then with awe to see him weeping. She tossed him a cotton jumper and trousers, and then drew back and waited for him in the path. He picked up the garments and looked at them. They were such simple clothes as he had seen laborers wearing. He rose slowly to his feet, dressed, and followed the girl.

She led him along the path through the brush and out into a little valley made up of abandoned cane- and rice-bottoms. In the middle was a slight elevation, too low to be called a hill, and on it was an old plantation house, white stucco once, now sadly weather-streaked, its tiles greenblack with the moss of years.

She pointed to the house and then to

pantomime, and nodded. When they reached the house, a withered and wrinkled little woman came out to the arched veranda to meet them. She looked Gerry over shrewdly, and then held out her hand. He shook it listlessly. They walked through a long dividing hall. On each side were large rooms, empty, save one, where a big bed, a wash-stand, and an old bureau with mildewed glass were grouped like an oasis in a desert. They reached the kitchen. the kitchen. It was evidently the livingroom of the house. A hammock cut off Chairs were drawn up to a rough, uncovered table. A stove was built into the masonry, and a cavernous oven gaped from the massive wall.

one corner.

"Blessing, Master! blessing!"

Gerry had learned the meaning of the quaint custom.

"God bless thee!" he answered in badly jumbled Portuguese. The girl and the wrinkled little woman looked at him, surprised, and then smiled at each other as women smile at the first steps of a child.

They made him sit down at the table, and placed before him crisp rusks of manioc flour and steaming coffee the splendid aroma of which triumphed over the sordidness of the scene, and through the nostrils reached the palate with anticipatory touch. It was sweetened with dark, pungent syrup and was served black in a capacious bowl, as though one could not drink too deeply of the elixir of life.

Gerry set down the empty bowl with a sigh. The girl had deftly rolled a cigarette in a bit of corn-husk scraped as thin as paper; now she slipped it into his fingers. The old negress picked up a live coal, and deposited it on his plate. Gerry lighted the cigarette. With the first long, contented whiff he smiled. The smile brought stinging recollection. With a

frown he threw away the cigarette and rose from the table.

"The brute is fed and laughs," he said aloud, and strode from the room. The girl and the little wrinkled woman looked at each other in dismay. They seemed to sense the unintelligible words.

Gerry went to seat himself on the steps of the veranda. Before him stretched the fallow valley, beyond it gleamed the black line of the rushing river. To the right were the ruins of a sugar-mill and stables; to the left, the debris that once had been slaves' quarters. The fields still bore the hummocks, in rough alinement, that told the story of past years fruitful in cane. All was waste, all was ruin.

The girl slipped to a seat beside him. She rolled a fresh cigarette, and then shyly laid a small brown hand on his arm. Gerry looked at her. Her big brown eyes were sorrowful and pleading. She held out the cigarette with a little shrug that deprecated the smallness of the offering.

They sat until the sun passed the zenith and, slipping over the eaves, fell like fire on their bare feet. Gerry stood up, pointed to himself, and then down the river to the town. The girl shook her head. She made him understand that he was cut off from the town by an impassable tributary to the great river, that he would have to make a long detour inland. Then she swept her hand from the sun to the horizon to show him that the day was too far gone for the journey.

He was not much concerned. An apathy seized him at the thought of going back. He felt as though shame had left some visible scar on his countenance that men must see and read. As he stood, thoughtful and detached, the girl grasped his arm with both her hands and drew his attention to her. Then she gave one sweep of her arm that embraced all the ruin of house and mill and fields. She pointed to herself. He understood: these things were hers. Then she folded her hands, and with a gesture of surrender laid them in his.

All that afternoon Gerry was very silent and thoughtful-silent because there was no one he could talk to, thoughtful because the idea the girl had put into his head was taking shape, aided by a long chain of circumstances. He looked back over his covered trail. If he had been

some shrewd fugitive from justice, he could not have planned it better. His sudden flight without visiting his home, his failure to buy a ticket, the subornation of the purser, with its assurance of silence as to his presence or destination-all that had been wiped out by his cablegram to his mother. But then Fate had stepped in again, and once more blotted out the trail. Gerry pictured the finding of the canoe. and paddle with his pajamas miles away from the spot where he had left them. Supposing there were any search for him from home, and there was no reason to believe there would be, since he had cabled. reassurance to his mother, it would come up against a blank wall with the tracing of the canoe, the pajamas, and the paddle. They formed a clue which could lead only to one conclusion.

Gerry decided. He looked at the girl, and she ran to him. He put his arms about her, and gazed with a sort of numbed emotion into her great dark eyes. Those eyes were wells of simplicity, love, fidelity; but below all that there were depths of unmeasured and unmeasuring passion that gave all and demanded all.

CHAPTER XIV

COLLINGEFORD gave a sigh of relief when he saw what manner of place was Maple House. As they gathered around the great table for dinner, he was the only stranger, and he did not feel it. Nance was there with the faint smile of a mother who has just put her children to bed. Charley Sterling, teasing Clematis, tried to forget that Monday and the city were coming together. Mrs. J. Y., with Collingeford on her right and the judge on her left, held quiet sway over the table, and nodded reassuringly at the old captain, who was making gestures with his eyes to the effect that a whisky and soda should be immediately offered to the guest. J. Y., pretty gray by now, sat thoughtful, but kindly, at the other end of the table. Clem was beside him.

It was not until the men were sitting alone after the glass of port in which all had drunk Collingeford's welcome to that house that the judge said casually:

"Collingeford saw Alan in Africa." "Eh! What?" said the captain, aroused to sudden interest. "What 's that about Alan?"

"I ran across Alan Wayne in Africa,” said Collingeford, smiling. "Do you want me to tell you about it?" "Yes," grunted the other, and J. Y. nodded as he caught the young man's eye. "Wish you would," he said, and leaned forward, his elbows on the table.

Collingeford was one of those men who are sensitive to men. His vocabulary did not run to piffle, but he loved an understanding ear. He looked at the judge's keen but restful face, at the captain's glaring eyes, which somehow had assumed a kindly glint, at J. Y.'s rugged figure, suddenly grown tense, and he knew that Alan Wayne was near to the hearts of these three. He fingered his wine-glass.

"Prince Bodsky and I were on a hunt. We were headed home after a long and unsuccessful shoot in new country, and we were as sore and tired and bored with the life of the wild as two old-timers ever get. On the day I 'm telling you about we were trekking up a river gorge to a crossing. After lunch and the long rest, we still had ten miles to go to cross, and it did n't help things to know that, once over, we had to come straight back on the other side. During the first hour's march in the afternoon we heard the strangest sound that ever those wilds gave forth. It was like hammering on steel, but we refused to believe our ears until a sudden curve brought us bang up against the indisputable fact of a girder-bridge in the throes of construction. Before the thought of the sacrilege to the game-country, before we could see in this noisy monstrosity the root of our recent bad luck, came the glad thought that we did n't have to do ten miles up that gorge and ten back. We would have whooped except that men don't whoop in Africa; it scares the game. "I said the bridge was in the throes of construction. It was just that. Its two long girders, reaching from brink to brink, with their spidery trusses hanging underneath, fairly swarmed with sweating figures, and the figures were black. It was that that brought us to a full stop, and just when our eyes were fixed with the intensity of discovery, one of the workers looked up, saw us, relaxed, and gave the loud grunt which in Landin stands for 'Just look at that!'

"The babbling and hammering about. him ceased; but while he still stared at us,

LXXXVII-8

we saw a veritable apparition. A white. man, hung between heaven and the depths of the gorge, was racing along the top of the slippery girder. His helmet blew off, hung poised, and then plunged in long tacking sweeps. The man was dressed in a cotton shirt, white trousers, and thick woolen socks. No boots. Of course, I did n't notice all that till afterward. In his hand he carried a sjambok. Suddenly the staring darky seemed to feel him coming; but before he could turn, the quirt came down with the clinging sting of hide on flesh. We saw the blood spurt. The negro toppled without a cry. He fell inside, caught on a truss, clung, and with a struggle finally drew himself up on to a stringer. stringer. A shout of laughter went up from his fellows. Bodsky and I had heard it often-the laugh of the African for his brother in pain. Then they fell to work again. The black, with the blood trickling off his back, rested long enough to get his breath, and then climbed back to his place on the girder. He was grinning. Don't ask me to explain it. Men have died trying to explain Africa.

"Now 's our time,' I whispered to Bodsky. He shook his head slowly from side to side, but I was already under way. I walked up to the white man and asked him if he could let us across. He glanced around, as though he had n't seen our outfit till that moment, and then he looked me square in the eyes.

'We knock off at six,' he said, and that was all.

"I turned back. I'd been angry before, but never as angry as that. Bodsky was already getting up the fly of a tent.

"I saw it coming,' he said, with his quiet little laugh that you never hear when there's anything to laugh at.

"Look here, Bodsky,' I said, 'let 's walk to the old crossing.' And he answered:

""My dear chap, I 'm going to sit right here. I would n't miss this for a shot at an elephant. That man is Ten Per Cent. Wayne.'

"Where'd you meet him?' I asked.

46

'Suppose we offer him a drink,' I said. "Bodsky looked at me pityingly.

'So you want to get burned again. Does that man look to you as though he was thinking about a drink? Well, let me tell you he is n't. Every bit of him is thinking about that bridge every minute. God! I have n't seen men driven like that since I was a boy. And I 've never anywhere seen a man drive himself like that.' All the Mongolian and Tatar that is said to lurk in every Russian seemed to be leaking out of Bodsky's narrowed eyes.

"We sat there and drank and smoked and sweated, and I sulked. Every once in a while Bodsky would say something. First it was: 'Those boys are from the South. Must have brought them with him.' Then it was: 'He knows something about the sun. He keeps his head in the shade-spot from that lonely palm.' And finally: 'Collingeford, I never despised your intellect before. What are you sulking for? Can't you see what 's up? Can't you understand that if a man will stand for two hours shifting an inch at a time with the shade rather than disturb half a dozen niggers at work to go and get a helmet, he is n't going to call those niggers off to let a couple, of loafers like us crawl across his girders? What you and I are staring at is just plain, common-garden Work with a capital W, stark naked and ugly, but by God! it 's great.'

"And right there I saw the light. To us two the mystery of Ten Per Cent. Wayne was revealed. He could drive men. He could make bricks without straw. While work was on, nothing else mattered. Right and wrong were measured by the needs of that bridge, and death was too good for the shirker. And with the light I forgot the brute in the man tearing along the dizzy height of the girder to lash a loafer, and remembered only that he had risked his life to avenge just one moment stolen from the day's work."

The stem of Collingeford's wine-glass snapped between his fingers.

"I'm sorry," he said, laying the pieces aside. He smiled a little nervously on the three tense faces before him. "I don't tell that story often. It goes too deep. Not everybody understands. Some people call Wayne no better than a murderer; but I'm not one of them. And Bodsky

says there have been a lot of murderers he 'd like to take to his club."

"J. Y., there's somebody listening at the door."

J. Y. swung around and threw it open. He sprang forward, and caught Clem in the act of flight. He brought her back into the room and sat down, holding her upright beside him. J. Y. was proud, and for a moment Collinge ford's presence galled him.

"What were you doing, Clem?" he asked.

Clematis was in that degree of embarrassment and disarray which makes lovely youth a shade more lovely. Her brown hair was tumbled about her face and down her back. Her cheeks were flushed, and her thin, white neck seemed to tremble above the deep red of her slightly yoked frock. Her lips were moist, and parted in excitement. She was sixteen, and beautiful beyond the reach of hackneyed phrases. The four men fixed their eyes upon her, and she dropped hers.

"I was eavesdropping," she said in a voice that was very low, but clear.

"Why, Clem!" said J. Y., gravely. Clem looked around on the four men. She did not seem afraid. Unconsciously they waited for her to go on, and she did.

"Mr. Collingeford was telling about Alan. I shall always eavesdrop when any one tells about Alan."

For a second, her auditors were stunned by the audacity. Collingeford's face was the first to light up, and his hand came down on the table with a bang.

"Bully for you, young un!" he cried, and his clear laugh could be heard on the lawn. Before it was over, the judge joined in, the captain grunted his merriest grunt, and J. Y. patted Clem's shoulder and smiled.

Clem was of the salt of the earth among womankind-the kind that waits to weep till the battle is over, and then becomes a thousand times more dear in her weakness. Her big eyes had been welling with tears, and now they jumped the barrier just as Nance rushed in and cried:

"What are you all laughing at?" Then she caught sight of Clem. From her she looked around on the men. "You four big hulking brutes!" she said. "Come to me, Clem, you darling! What have they been doing to you? There, there, don't