John looked at Miner quietly for a few seconds, without saying anything. The little man was evidently lost in admiration of the magnitude of his friend’s ‘jag,’ as he called it.

“I say, Frank,” said Ralston, at last, “it’s all a mistake, you know. It was a series of accidents from beginning to end.”

“Oh—yes—I suppose so. You managed to accumulate quite a number of accidents, as you say.”

Ralston was silent again. He was well aware of the weight of the evidence against him, and he wished to enter upon his explanation by degrees, in order that it might be quite clear to Miner.

“Look here,” he began, after a while. “I’m not the sort of man who tries to wriggle out of things, when he’s done them, am I? Heaven knows—I’ve been in scrapes enough! But you never knew me to deny it, nor to try and make out that I was steady when I wasn’t. Did you, Frank?”

“No,” answered Miner, thoughtfully. “I never did. That’s a fact. It’s quite true.”

The threefold assent seemed to satisfy Ralston.

“All right,” he said. “Now I want you to listen to me, because this is rather an extraordinary tale. I’ll tell it all, as nearly as I can, but there are one or two gaps, and there’s a matter connected with it about which I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Go ahead,” answered Miner. “I’ve got some perfectly new faith out—and I’m just waiting for you. Produce the mountain, and I’ll take its measure and remove it at a valuation.”

Ralston laughed a little and then began to tell his story. It was, of course, easy for him to omit all mention of Katharine, and he spoke of his interview with Robert Lauderdale as having taken place in connection with an idea he had of trying to get something to do in the West, which was quite true. He omitted also to mention the old gentleman’s amazing manifestation of eccentricity—or folly—in writing the cheque which John had destroyed. For the rest, he gave Miner every detail as well as he could remember it. Miner listened thoughtfully and never interrupted him once.

“This isn’t a joke, is it, Jack?” he asked, when John had finished with a description of Doctor Routh’s midnight visit.

“No,” answered Ralston, emphatically. “It’s the truth. I should be glad if you would tell any one who cares to know.”

“They wouldn’t believe me,” answered Miner, quietly.

“I say, Frank—” John’s quick temper was stirred already, but he checked himself.

“It’s all right, Jack,” answered Miner. “I believe every word you’ve told me, because I know you don’t invent—except about leaving cards on stray acquaintances at the Imperial, when you happen to be thirsty.”

He laughed good-naturedly.

“That’s another of your mistakes,” said Ralston. “I know—you mean last Monday. I did leave cards at the hotel. I also had a cocktail. I didn’t say I wasn’t going to, and I wasn’t obliged to say so, was I? It wasn’t your business, my dear boy, nor Ham Bright’s, either.”

“Well—I’m glad you did, then. I’m glad the cards were real, though it struck me as thin at the time. I apologize, and eat humble pie. You know you’re one of my illusions, Jack. There are two or three to which I cling. You’re a truthful beggar, somehow. You ought to have a little hatchet, like George Washington—but I daresay you’d rather have a little cocktail. It illustrates your nature just as well. Bury the hatchet and pour the cocktail over it as a libation—where was I? Oh—this is what I meant, Jack. Other people won’t believe the story, if I tell it, you know.”

“Well—but there’s old Routh, after all. People will believe him.”

“Yes—if he takes the trouble to write a letter to the papers, over his name, degrees and qualifications. Of course they’ll believe him. And the editors will do something handsome. They won’t apologize, but they’ll say that a zebra got loose in the office and upset the type while they were in Albany attending to the affairs of the Empire State—and that’s just the same as an apology, you know, which is all you care for. You can’t storm Park Row with the gallant Four Hundred at your back. In the first place, Park Row’s insured, and secondly, the Four Hundred would see you—further—before they’d lift one of their four thousand fingers to help you out of a scrape which doesn’t concern them. You’d have to be a parson or a pianist, before they’d do anything for you. It’s ‘meat, drink and pantaloons’ to be one of them, anyhow—and you needn’t expect anything more.”

“Where do you get your similes from, Frank!” laughed Ralston.

“I don’t know. But they’re good ones, anyway. Why don’t you get Routh to write a letter, before the thing cools down? It could be in the evening edition, you know. There have been horrid things this morning—allusions—that sort of thing.”

“Allusions to what?” asked Ralston, quickly and sharply.

“To you, of course—what did you suppose?”

“Oh—to me! As though I cared! All the same, if old Routh would write, it would be a good thing. I wish he were going to be at the Van De Waters’ dinner to-night.”

“Why? Are you going there? So am I.”

“It seems to be a sort of family tea-party,” said Ralston. “Bright’s going, and cousin Katharine, and you and I. It only needs the Crowdies and a few others to make it complete.”

“Well—you see, they’re cousins of mine, and so are you, and that sort of makes us all cousins,” observed Miner, absently. “I say, Jack—tell the story at table, just as you’ve told it to me. Will you? I’ll set you on by asking you questions. Stunning effect—especially if we can get Routh to write the letter. I’ll cut it out of a paper and bring it with me.”

“You know him, don’t you?” asked Ralston.

“Know him? I should think so. Ever since I was a baby. Why?”

“I wish you’d go to him this morning, Frank, and get him to write the letter. Then you could take it to one of the evening papers and get them to put it in. You know all those men in Park Row, don’t you?”

“Much better than some of them want to know me,” sighed the little man. “However,” he added, his bright smile coming back at once, “I ought not to complain. I’m getting on, now. Let me see. You want me to go to Routh and get him to write a formal letter over his name, denying all the statements made about you this morning. Isn’t that taking too much notice of the thing, after all, Jack?”

“It’s going to make a good deal of difference to me in the end,” answered Ralston. “It’s worth taking some trouble for.”

“I’m quite willing,” said Miner. “But—I say! What an extraordinary story it is!”

“Oh, no. It’s only real life. I told you—I only had one accident, which was quite an accident—when I tumbled down in that dark street. Everything else happened just as naturally as unnatural things always do. As for upsetting Ham Bright at the club, I was awfully sorry about that. It seemed such a low thing to do. But then—just remember that I’d been making a point of drinking nothing for several days, just by way of an experiment, and it was irritating, to say the least of it, to be grabbed by the arm and told that I was screwed. Wasn’t it, Frank? And just at that moment, uncle Robert had telephoned for me to come up, and I was in a tremendous hurry. Just look at in that way, and you’ll understand why I did it. It doesn’t excuse it—I shall tell Ham that I’m sorry—but it explains it. Doesn’t it?”

“Rather!” exclaimed Miner, heartily.

“By the bye,” said Ralston, “I wanted to ask you something. Did that fellow Crowdie hold his tongue? I suppose he was at the Assembly last night.”

“Well—since you ask me—” Miner hesitated. “No—he didn’t. Bright gave it to him, though, for telling cousin Emma.”

“Brute! How I hate that man! So he told cousin Emma, did he? And the rest of the family, too, I suppose.”

“I suppose so,” answered Miner, knowing that Ralston meant Katharine. “Everybody knew about the row at the club, before the evening was half over. Teddy Van De Water said he supposed you’d back out of the dinner to-night and keep quiet till this blew over. I told Teddy that perhaps he’d better come round and suggest that to you himself this morning, if he wanted to understand things quickly. He grinned—you know how he grins—like an organ pipe in a white tie. But he said he’d heard Bright leathering into Crowdie—that’s one of Teddy’s expressions—so he supposed that things weren’t as bad as people said—and that Crowdie was only a ‘painter chap,’ anyhow. I didn’t know what that meant, but feebly pointed out that Crowdie was a great man, and that his wife was a sort of cousin of mine, and that she, at least, had a good chance of having some of cousin Robert’s money one of these days. Not that I wanted to defend Crowdie, or that I don’t like Teddy much better—but then, you know what I mean! He’ll be calling me ‘one of those literary chaps,’ next, with just the same air. One’s bound to stand up for art and literature when one’s a professional, you know, Jack. Wasn’t I right?”

“Oh, perfectly!” answered Ralston, with a smile. “But will you do that for me, Frank?”

“Of course I will. You’re one of my illusions, as I told you. I’m willing to do lots of things for my illusions. I’ll go now, and then I’ll come back and tell you what the old chap says. If by any chance he gets into a rage, I’ll tell him that I didn’t come so much to talk about you as to consult him about certain symptoms of nervous prostration I’m beginning to feel. He’s death on nervous prostration—he’s a perfect terror at it—he’ll hypnotise me, and put me into a jar of spirits, and paint my nose with nervine and pickled electricity and things, and sort of wake me up generally.”

“All right—if you can stand it, I can,” said Ralston. “I’d go myself—only only—”

“You’re pretty badly used up,” interrupted Miner, completing the sentence in his own way. “I know. I remember trying to play football once. Those little games aren’t much in my line. Nature meant me for higher things. I tried football, though, and then I said, like Napoleon—you remember?—‘Ces balles ne sont pas pour moi.’ I couldn’t tell where I began and the football ended—I felt that I was a safe under-study for a shuttlecock afterwards. That’s just the way you feel, isn’t it? As though it were Sunday, and you were the frog—and the boys had gone back to afternoon church? I know! Well—I’ll come back as soon as I’ve seen Routh. Good-bye, old man—don’t smoke too much. I do—but that’s no reason.”

The little man nodded cheerfully, knocked the ashes carefully from the end of his cigar—he was neat in everything he did—and returned it to his lips as he left the room. Ralston leaned back in his arm-chair again and rested his feet on the fender. The fire his mother had made so carefully was burning in broad, smoking flames. He felt cold and underfed and weary, so that the warmth was very pleasant; and with all that came to his heart now, as he thought of his mother, there mingled also a little simple, childlike gratitude to her for having made up such a good fire.

The time passed, and still no word came from Katharine. He was willing to find reasons or, at least, excuses, for her silence, but he was conscious that they were of little value. He knew, now, that there had really been paragraphs in the papers about him, as he had expected, and that they had been of a very disagreeable nature. Katharine had probably seen them, or one of them, besides having heard the stories that had been circulated by Crowdie and others during the previous evening. He fancied that he could feel her unbelief, hurting him from a distance, as it were. Her face, cold and contemptuous, rose before him out of the fire, and he took up the magazine again, and tried to hide it. But it could not be hidden.

Surely by this time she must have got his letter. There could be no reasonable doubt of that. He looked at his watch again, as he had done once in every quarter of an hour for some time. It was twelve o’clock. Miner had not stayed long.

John went over the scene on Wednesday evening, at the Thirlwalls’. Katharine had been very sure of herself, at the last—sure that, whatever he did, she should always stand by him. Events had put her to the test soon enough, and this was the result. They had been married twenty-four hours, and she would not even answer his note, because appearances were against him.

And the great, strong sense of real innocence rose in him and defied and despised the woman who could not trust him even a little. If the very least of the accusations had been true, he would have humbled himself honestly and said that she was right, and that she had promised too much, in saying all she had said. At all times he was a man ready to take the full blame of all he had done, to make himself out worse than he really was, to assume at once that he was a failure and could do nothing right. On the slightest ground, he was ready to admit everything that people brought against him. Katharine, if he had even been living as usual, would have been at liberty to reproach him as bitterly as she pleased with his weakness, to turn her back on him and condemn him unheard, if she chose. He would have been patient and would have admitted that he deserved it all, and more also. He was melancholy, he was discouraged with himself, and he was neither vain nor untruthful.

But he had made an effort, and a great one. There was in him something of the ascetic, with all his faults, and something of the enthusiasm which is capable of sudden and great self-denial if once roused. He knew what he had done, for he knew what it had cost him, mentally and physically. Lean as he had been before, he had grown perceptibly thinner since Monday. He knew that, so far, he had succeeded. For the first time, perhaps, he had every point of justice on his side. If he had been inclined to be merciful and humble and submissive towards those who doubted him now, he would not have been human. The two beings whom he loved in the world, his mother and Katharine, were the very two who had doubted him most. As for his mother, he had not persuaded her, for she had persuaded herself—by means of such demonstration as no sane being could have rejected, namely, the authoritative statement of a great doctor, personally known to her. What had followed had produced a strange result, for he felt that he was more closely bound to her than ever before, a fact which showed, at least, that he did not bear malice, however deeply he had been hurt. But he could not go about everywhere for a week with Doctor Routh at his heels to swear to his sobriety. He told himself so with some contempt, and then he thought of Katharine, and his face grew harder as the minutes went by and no answer came to his letter.

It was far more cruel of her than it had been in his mother’s case. Katharine had only heard stories and reports of his doings, and she should be willing to accept his denial of them on her faith in him. He had never lied to her. On Wednesday night, he had gratuitously told her the truth about himself—a truth which she had never suspected—and had insisted upon making it out to be even worse than it was. His wisdom told him that he had made a mistake then, in wilfully lowering himself in her estimation, and that this was the consequence of that; if he had not forced upon her an unnecessary confession of his weakness, she would now have believed in his strength. But his sense of honour rose and shamed his wisdom, and told him that he had done right. It would have been a cowardly thing to accept what Katharine had then been forcing upon him, and had actually made him accept, without telling her all the truth about himself.

He had done wrong to yield at all. That he admitted, and repeated, readily enough. He made no pretence of having a strong character, and he had been wretchedly weak in allowing her to persuade him to the secret marriage. He should have folded his arms and refused, from the first. He had foreseen trouble, though not of the kind which had actually overtaken him, and he should have been firm. Unfortunately, he was not firm, by nature, as he told himself, with a sneer. Not that Katharine had been to blame, either. She had made her reasons seem good, and he should not have blamed her had she been ever so much in the wrong. There his honour spoke again, and loudly.

But for what she was doing now, in keeping silence, leaving him without a word when she must know that he was most in need of her faith and belief—for abandoning him when it seemed as though every man’s hand were turned against him—he could not help despising her. It was so cowardly. Had it all been ten times true, she should have stood by him when every one was abusing him.

It was far more cruel of her than of his mother, for all she knew of the story had reached her by hearsay, whereas his mother had seen him, as he had seen himself, and his appearance might well have deceived any one but Doctor Routh. He did not ask himself whether he could ever forgive her, for he did not wish to hear in his heart the answer which seemed inevitable. As for loving her, or not loving her, he thought nothing about it at that moment. With him, too, as with her, love was in a state of suspended animation. It would have been sufficiently clear to any outsider acquainted with the circumstances that when the two met that evening, something unusual would probably occur. Katharine, indeed, believed that John would not appear at the dinner-party; but John, who firmly intended to be present, knew that Katharine was going, and he expected to be placed beside her. It was perfectly well known that they were in love with one another, and the least their greatest friends could do was to let them enjoy one another’s society. This may have been done partly as a matter of policy, for both were young enough and tactless enough to show their annoyance if they were separated when they chanced to be asked to sit at the same table. John looked forward to the coming evening with some curiosity, and without any timidity, but also without any anticipation of enjoyment.

He was trying to imagine what the conversation would be like, when Frank Miner returned, beaming with enthusiasm, and glowing from his walk in the cold, wet air. He had been gone a long time.

“Well?” asked John, as his friend came up to the fire, and held out his hands to it.

“Very well—very well, indeed, thank you,” answered the latter, with a cheerful laugh. “I’ll bet you twenty-five cents to a gold watch that you can’t guess what’s happened—at Routh’s.”

“Twenty-five cents—to a gold watch? Oh—I see. Thank you—the odds don’t tempt me. What did happen?”

“I say—those were awfully good cigars of yours, Jack!” exclaimed Miner, by way of answer. “Haven’t you got another?”

“There’s the box. Take them all. What happened?”

“No—I’ll only take one—it would look like borrowing if I took two, and I can’t return them. Jack, there’s a lot of good blood knocking about in this family, do you know? I don’t mean about the cigars—I’m naturally a generous man when it comes to taking things I like. But the other thing. Do you know that somebody had been to Routh about making him write the letter, before I got there?”

“What? To make him write it? Not Ham Bright? It would be like him—but how should he have known about Routh?”

“No. It wasn’t Bright. Want to guess? Well—I’ll tell you. It was your mother, Jack. Nice of her, wasn’t it?”

“My mother!”

Ralston leaned forward and began to poke the logs about. He felt a curious sensation of gladness in the eyes, and weakness in the throat.

“Tell me about it, Frank,” he added, in a rather thick voice.

“There’s not much to tell. I marched in and stated my case. He’s between seven and eight feet high, I believe, and he stood up all the time—felt as though I were talking to scaffold poles. He listened in the calmest way till I’d finished, and then took up a letter from his desk and handed it to me to read and to see whether I thought it would do. I asked what it meant, and he said he’d just written it at the request of Mrs. Ralston, who had left him a quarter of an hour ago, and that if I would take it to the proper quarter—as he expressed it—he should be much obliged. He’s a brick—a tower of strength—a tower of bricks—a perfect Babel of a man. You’ll see, when the evening papers come out—”

“Did you take it down town?”

“Of course. And I got hold of one of the big editors. I sent in word that I had a letter from Doctor Routh which must be published in the front page this evening unless the paper wanted Mr. Robert Lauderdale to bring an action against them for libel to-morrow morning. You should have seen things move. What a power cousin Robert is! I suppose I took his name in vain—but I don’t care. Old Routh is not to be sneezed at, either. You’ll see the letter. There’s some good old English in it. Oh, it’s just prickly with epithets—‘unwarrantable liberty,’ ‘impertinent scurrility’—I don’t know what the old doctor had for breakfast. It’s not like him to come out like that, not a bit. He’s a cautious old bird, as a rule, and not given to slinging English all over the ten-acre lot, like that. You see, he takes the ground that you’re his patient, that you had some sort of confustication of the back of your head, and that to say that you were screwed when you were ill was a libel, that the terms in which the editor had allowed the thing to appear proved that it was malicious, and that as the editor was supposed to exercise some control, and to use his own will in the matter of what he published and circulated, it was wilfully published, since the city paid for places in which people who had no control over their wills were kept for the public safety, and that therefore the paragraph in question was a wilfully malicious libel evidently published with the intention of doing harm—and much more of the same kind of thing—all of which the editor would have put into the waste paper basket if it had not been signed, Martin Routh, M.D., with the old gentleman’s address. Moreover, the editor asked me why, in sending in a message, I had made use of threatening language purporting to come from Mr. Robert Lauderdale. But as you had told me the whole story, I knew what to say. I just told him that you had left the house of your uncle, Mr. Robert Lauderdale, after spending some time with him, when you met with the accident in the street which led to all your subsequent adventures. That seemed to settle him. He said the whole thing had been a mistake, and that he should be very sorry to have given Mr. Lauderdale any annoyance, especially at this time. I don’t know what he meant by that, I’m sure—unless uncle Robert is going to buy the paper for a day or two to see what it’s like—you know the proprietor’s dead, and they say the heirs are going to sell. Well—that’s all. Confound it, my cigar’s out. I’m a great deal too good to you, Jack!”

Ralston had listened without comment while the little man told his story, satisfied, as he proceeded from point to point, that everything was going well for him, at last, and mentally reducing Miner’s strong expressions to the lowest key of probability.

“So it was my mother who went first to Doctor Routh,” he said, as though talking with himself, while Miner relighted his cigar.

“Yes,” answered Miner, between two puffs. “I confess to having been impressed.”

“It’s like her,” said John. “It’s just like her. You didn’t happen to see any note for me lying on the hall table, did you?” he asked, rather irrelevantly.

“No—but I’ll go and look, if you like.”

“Oh—it’s no matter. Besides, they know I haven’t been out this morning, and they’d bring anything up. I’m very much obliged to you, Frank, for all this. And I know that you’ll tell anybody who talks about it just what I’ve told you. I should like to feel that there’s a chance of some one’s knowing the truth when I come into the room this evening.”

“Oh, they’ll all know it by that time. Routh’s letter will run along the ground like fire mingled with hail. As for Teddy Van De Water, he lives on the papers. Of course they won’t fly at you and congratulate you all over, and that sort of thing. They’ll just behave as though nothing at all had happened, and afterwards, when we men are by ourselves, smoking, they’ll all begin to ask you how it happened. That is, unless you want to tell the story yourself at table, and in that case I’ll set you on, as I said.”

“I don’t care to talk about it,” answered John. “But—look here, Frank—listen! You’re as quick as anybody to see things. If you notice that a number of the set don’t know about Routh’s letter—that there’s a sort of hostile feeling against me at table—why, then just set me on, as you call it, and I’ll defend myself. You see, I’ve such a bad temper, and my bones ache, and I’m altogether so generally knocked out, that it will be much better to give me my head with for a clear run, than to let people look as though they should like to turn their backs on me, but didn’t dare to. Do you understand?”

“All right, Jack. I won’t make any mistake about it.”

“Very well, then. It’s a bargain. We won’t say anything more about it.”

Miner presently took his departure, and John was left alone again. In the course of time he gave up looking at his watch, and relinquished all hope of hearing from Katharine. Little by little, the certainty formed itself in his mind that the meeting that evening was to be a hostile one.

Not very long after Miner had gone, another hand opened the door, and John sprang to his feet, for even in the slight sound he recognized the touch. Mrs. Ralston entered the room. With more impulsiveness than was usual in him he went quickly to meet her, and threw his arms round her, kissing her through her veil, damp and cold from the snowy air.

“Mother, darling—how good you are!” he exclaimed softly. “There isn’t anybody like you—really.”

“Why—Jack? What is it?” asked Mrs. Ralston, happy, but not understanding.

“Miner was here—he told me about your having been to old Routh to make him write—”

“That? Oh—that’s nothing. Of course I went—the first thing. Didn’t he say last night that he’d give his evidence in a court of law? I thought he might just as well do it. The business is all settled, dear boy. I’ve seen the lawyer, and he’s making out the deed. He’ll bring it here for me to sign when he comes up from his office, and the transfers of the titles will be registered to-morrow morning—just in time before Sunday.”

“Don’t talk about that, mother!” answered John. “I didn’t want you to do it, and it’s never going to make the slightest difference between us.”

“Well—perhaps not. But it makes all the difference to me. Promise me one thing, Jack.”

“Yes, mother—anything you like.”

“Promise me to remember that if you and Katharine choose to get married, in spite of her father and all the Lauderdales, this is your house, and that you have a right to it. You won’t have much to live on, but you won’t starve. Promise me to remember that, Jack. Will you?”

“I’ll promise to remember it, mother. But I’ll not promise to act on it.”

“Well—that’s a matter for your judgment. Go and get ready for luncheon. It must be time.”

Once more John put his arms round her neck, and drew her close to him.

“You’re very good to me, mother—thank you!”