MAY I see Hicks?”

The stout, bearded jailor nearly-filled the doorway. He puffed his short pipe deliberately, and stared at Aidee. The smoke floated up and around the gas jet over his head.

“Ain't you the Preacher?”

“So they call me.”

The jailor stepped back, either in surprise or consent. Aidee walked into the opening and passed on. The jailor followed him.

“Where is his cell?”

“Spiritual consolation! That's it. That's the word,” said the jailor thoughtfully. “Some folks has the gift of it. Oils a chap up, don't it, so he'll slip out'n his corpse, like he was greased. Well, there's som'p'n in it. But I seen in the Press this mornin'—say, you ain't goin' to instigate him again?”

Aidee laughed, and said:

“They have to be lively.”

“That's right, Preacher. Folks say a thing, but what they got in their heads is the thing they don't say, ain't it?”

“You're a philosopher.”

“Oh, I do a pile of thinkin',” said the jailor complacently.

He mounted slowly to the upper corridor, knocked at a door, and unlocked it.

“Hicks, gentleman to see you.”

Hicks looked up, blinking and shading his eyes.

The jailor locked the door noisily behind Aidee, and walked away. At the end of the corridor he stopped and listened, and heard the murmur of low voices. He sat down and tipped his chair against the wall and meditated.

“Spiritual consolation! That's the word.”

Alcott leaned his back against the wall, and stared at Allen, who ran to his side and grasped his arm and whispered, “Don't you yell out!” while Sweeney was locking the door noisily. Sweeney's steps receded in the corridor.

“What do you come here for? Keep quiet!”

“Lolly!”

“Who told you it was me?”

He pulled him over to the table. They sat down and gripped hands across and looked dumbly at each other. Allen broke down first. He dropped his head on the table and gave soft, dry sobs.

“Lolly, boy!”

“Did he tell you it was me?”

“Who?”

“Hennion!”

“Nobody told me it was you.”

“You came to see Hicks!”

He looked up suddenly with an impish grin. “Hey! I know! You wanted to ask me what I shot Wood for? That's what they all want to know.”

It was the same twisted smile that Alcott knew so well, two-thirds on one side of his face, the same shy, freakish look in the eyes as of a cornered animal. They used to laugh at home over Lolly's queer smile—Lolly the original, the unexpected, the sudden and fierce in his small resentments, yet how passionately loving, and how lovable and clever! They used to think so at home. Here he was, then, with his twisted smile, and hot, black eyes and jerking, vivid speech. His thin, straggling beard had changed his looks. He had aged fast in the six years. Alcott thought he would hardly have recognised him at a little distance. So—why, Hicks!—Carroll said Hicks used to drink down Alcott's own speeches like brandy! Hicks had killed Wood!

“What else have you been up to, Lolly? That's the worst job yet.”

The eyes of each regarded the other's hungrily. Allen chattered on in a low, excited voice.

“Old Al, I love you so! Forgive me seventy times seven. Hey! I heard every speech you made, pretty near. What do you think? Say! What'll they do to me?” he whispered, turning to the window. “I wished I could get out. Say, Al, when you were in Nevada at Beekman's, where do you suppose I was? Over the divide at Secor's Lode, Number Two, and you came near spotting me once! I ain't a fool, anyway. I dodged you neat. I lived on the east side with Jimmy Shays. Say, he's a fool. I can sole two shoes to his one. But sometimes I don't remember, Al. I tried to remember how Mummy looked, and I couldn't. But I used to remember. But, Al, what'd you come for? Say, I cleared the track of Wood all right. Say, they'd never have caught me, if I'd got away then. They were too many. I kept out of your way all right. I wasn't going to mess you again, and that suited me all right, that way. I pegged shoes along with old Shays. Damn greasy Irishman, there, Coglan. I'll knife him some day. No! No! I won't, Al! Forgive me seventy times. I got something in me that burns me up. I ain't going to last long. Let 'em kill me. God, I was proud of you! I used to go home like dynamite, and collar old Shays, and yell, 'Down with 'em! Where's justice?' 'Wha's matter?' says Shays. 'Where is 't?' and goes hunting for justice at the bottom of a jug of forty-rod whiskey. Oh, Al! Al! Ain't we a sad story, you and I?”

He broke down again, chattering, sobbing with soft, small sobs, and hid his face on the table. The gas jet leaped and fell, feebly, fitfully. The noises of the city, the roll of wheels and clang of street-car gongs, came in through the barred window.

“I was running myself, too, Al, and that made me feel better. I been happy sometimes.”

“Aren't you glad to see me, Lolly?”

“Yes. But you ain't going to hold me down. Now, say, Al,” he pleaded, “don't you give it away! Folks'd be down on you. I ain't like I used to be. I'm proud of you, now. I ain't going to mess you any more, but I've done something myself, ain't I? Done for myself too, ain't I?”

“I've got to think this out. That was all wrong, boy. That old man, Wood, had a right to his life.”

“He had no right!”

Allen was on his feet, two fingers shaking in the air.

“Quiet, Lolly! Sweeney's in the corridor. I'm not blaming you. Why didn't you come to me? I'd have let you live as you liked. I'm going away to think it out. Never mind. I say, drop it, Lolly! We'll sled together again. I've said it, and you can quit talking.”

Allen clung to his hand.

“You're coming again, Al.”

He felt Alcott's old mastery gripping him again, the same thing that had always been to him the foundation of his existence, and yet always intolerable and smothering. Not being able to live without Alcott, nor yet with him, the four years in Port Argent had seemed a clever solution—not with Alcott, nor yet without him; free of his smothering control, but seeing his face and hearing his voice.

He rattled on half hysterically, while Alcott gripped his hand across the table, and said little.

Gradually the picture took shape in Alcott's mind, and his mental image of the last four years changed form and line of the new demand. He saw Allen going home nights from the Assembly Hall, with his light, jerky step, exulting, hugging himself gleefully. How he had hated Al's enemies! How he had longed to kill Carroll for sneering at Al in choppy paragraphs! How he had hated Marve Wood, whom Al called a “disease”! How he had lurked in the shadow under the gallery of the Assembly Hall! How he had pegged shoes and poured his excitement, in vivid language, into the ears of the east-side loafers in the shoe-shop! How flitted back and forth over the Maple Street bridge, where the drays and trolley cars jangled, where the Muscadine flowed, muddy and muttering, below!

“You've been in Port Argent all this time!” Alcott said at last. “I wouldn't have talked that way if I'd known you were there.”

“Say! You'd have been afraid? No! Why, you ain't afraid of anything, Al!”

“I was always afraid of you.”

“What for? You're coming again, Al!”

“You don't think I'm going to let you alone now!”

“I ain't going to mess you over again! No!” he whispered, twisting his fingers.

Alcott knitted his black brows and held his hand over the nervous fingers.

“Drop it, Lolly!”

“What you going to do? You're coming again?” His voice was thin and plaintive.

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“To-morrow. I've got to think it over. I can't stay now, Lolly.”

He rose and went to the door and rattled it. Sweeney's steps came slowly down the corridor. Allen sat still while the jailor opened the door.

“I'll see you again, then, Mr. Hicks.”

Allen looked up suddenly with an impish grin.

“Pretty cool, ain't he?” said Sweeney presently. “I didn't hear much noise. Now, when Mr. Hennion came here—look here, I told Mr. Hennion—why, you look at it, now! There ought to be a new jail.”

“I see. Not very creditable.”

“Why, no.” Sweeney argued in an injured tone. “Look at it!”

“I want to bring Hicks a book or two. May I?”

“Why, I guess so.”

Aidee went home, hurrying, not knowing why he hurried. His hands felt cold, his head hot and dizzy. He longed to hide and not see the faces on the street, faces which all judged that Lolly should die.

“Brotherhood of man!” He had a brother, one whom the rest of the brotherhood wanted to hang, a small man, with a queer smile and wriggling fingers, sitting under the dim gas jet.

Even in his familiar rooms he could not think or sleep. He saw before him days upon days, courts and lawyers, preparations for the trial, the long doubt, and what then? Only a black pit full of things intolerable, not to be looked at. Yet it stood there stolidly, in front.

The Assembly? He would rather have Wood than the Assembly to help him here, or Hennion, or Secor. But neither Hennion nor Secor would help him here. They were men of the crowd in the street, who all preferred to hang Lolly.

At daybreak he rose, dressed, and went out. It was Friday morning. The air was fresh and damp. He looked at the Assembly building opposite, and fancied himself speaking from the familiar wide platform within, saying: “I am the brother of Hicks, the murderer, in your jail—I who lied to you, calling you my brethren, protesting one universal bond, who have but one brother and one bond of blood,—to you who are my enemies. His name is Allen Aidee, and your name is Legion.”

People called him abrupt and sensational. It would be a relief to speak so, sharp and harsh, like the breaking of a window glass with one's fist in a stifling room.

He thought of the scores of times he had looked on the crowd of faces from the platform there, and he tried now to put into each picture one more item, namely, Allen sitting far back in the shadow under the gallery. When he had put this item in, it covered up the rest of the picture.

Probably Allen used to go across the river by following the side streets over to Maple Street, and so to the bridge. Alcott left Seton Avenue and walked toward Maple Street through that still sleeping section of the city. On Maple Street, the trolley cars were beginning to run, milk waggons clattered over the rough pavement.

“Poor boy!”

Lolly claimed to have been happy during those four years. After all, the arrangement he had made was characteristic, the very kind of thing he would be apt to do. Alcott wondered why he had never suspected that Allen was lurking near him.

Down Maple Street, then, Allen's regular road must have lain. How often he must have gone over the bridge, his nerves twitching and his head blazing with Alcott's last words! Here was the hurrying muddy river, running high now with the spring floods, mad, headlong, and unclean. Not an inch beyond its surface could one see. A drowned body might float, and if an inch of water covered it, no man would know.

Doctrines and theories! Do this, and think thus, and believe that which I tell you, and take my medicine for a world diseased! What notional, unsteady things were these, floating things, only on the surface of this muddy stream of life. They had no other foundation than the stream, and the stream drowned them all, in course of time. It drowned all interpretations of itself, in course of time.

In East Argent he turned to the right, into Muscadine Street. On one side of the street stretched the P. and N. freight yards by the river, on the other shabby and flimsy fronts, some of wood, some of brick, with shops in most of the ground floors, an inhabited story or two over each. Already Muscadine Street was awake. The freight yards were noisy with cars and hooting engines. The stream whistles of the down-river factories began to blow.

The harsh, pitiless iron clangour tortured him and he hurried through a street that seemed to lead away into the country back from the river. He stopped at a discarded horse car, that was propped up in an empty lot, and bore the sign “Night lunches,” and went up the shaky step, through the narrow door. The occupant was a grimy-aproned man, asleep with his head on the counter. Alcott drank a cup of coffee and ate something, he hardly noticed what. It tasted unpleasantly.

One corner succeeded another in the long street. Then came empty lots, cornfields, clumps of woods, scores of trestle pyramids of the oil wells.

“Lolly! Lolly!”

Men and their societies, and all the structures they built, and the ideas that governed them, were monstrous, implacable, harsh, and hard, iron beating on iron in freight yards and factories. Justice! What was justice? One knew the sense of injustice. It was like a scald. It was a clamour and cry, “He has done me wrong, a wrong!” But justice? An even balance? There was no such balance. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? It was revenge. There was no justice but perfect pardon. You must know that uttermost love was justice, and not one iota less than that was justice.

Alcott's old doctrines, these. Doctrines only, “floating things on muddy stream.” They seemed to mean to him now only, “I must have Lolly! I must have him!”

All that Alcott had built up about himself in four years now seemed suddenly wiped out of his desires. He wanted to take Allen and go away. It seemed a simple thing, not so complicated as the Seton Avenue Assembly, and the Brotherhood of Man. But bars and bricks, metal and stone, and the iron refusal of society, were in the way of this simple thing. Their stolid refusal faced him as well in the woods as in the city.

The woods were wet and cool. No sound reached the centre of the grove from without, except the far-off thudding of an oil well. Shy wood birds flitted and twittered. Fragments of twigs and bark dropped from heights where the squirrels were at their thriving enterprises, and the new leaves were growing.