REUBEN Tracy rose at an unwontedly early hour next morning, under the spur of consciousness that he had a very busy day before him. While he was still at his breakfast in the hotel dining-room, John Fairchild came to keep an appointment made the previous evening, and the two men were out on the streets together before Thessaly seemed wholly awake.

Their first visit was to the owner of the building which the Citizens’ Club had thought of hiring, and their business here was promptly despatched; thence they made their way to the house of a boss-carpenter, and within the hour they had called upon a plumber, a painter, and one or two other master artisans. By ten o’clock those of this number with whom arrangements had been made had put in an appearance at the building in question, and Tracy and Fairchild explained to them the plans which they were to carry out. The discussion and settlement of these consumed the time until noon, when the lawyer and the editor separated, and Reuben went to his office.

Here, as had been arranged, he found old ’Squire Gedney waiting for him. A long interview behind the closed door of the inner office followed, and when the two men came out the justice of the peace was putting a roll of bills into his pocket.

“This is Tuesday,” he said to Tracy. “I daresay I can be back by Thursday. The bother about it is that Cadmus is such an out-of-the-way place to get at.”

“At all events, I’ll count on seeing you Friday morning,” answered Reuben. “Then, if you’ve got what I expect, we can go before the county judge and get our warrants by Saturday, and that will be in plenty of time for the grand jury next week.”

“If they don’t all eat their Christmas dinner in Auburn prison, call me a Dutchman!” was Gedney’s confident remark, as he took his departure.

Reuben, thus left alone, walked up and down the larger room in pleased excitement, his hands in his pockets and his eyes aglow with satisfaction. So all-pervasive was his delight that it impelled him to song, and he hummed to himself as he paced the floor a faulty recollection of a tune his mother had been fond of, many years before. Reuben had no memory for music, and knew neither the words nor the air, but no winged outburst of exultation from a triumphant Viking in the opera could have reflected a more jubilant mood.

He had unearthed the conspiracy, seized upon its avenues of escape, laboriously traced all its subterranean burrowings. Even without the proof which it was to be hoped that Gedney could bring from Cadmus, Reuben believed he had information enough to justify criminal proceedings. Nothing could be clearer than guilty collusion between this New Yorker, Wendover, and some of the heads of the pig-iron trust to rob Mrs. Minster and her daughters. At almost every turn and corner in the ramification of the huge swindle, Tenney and Boyce also appeared. They too should not escape. Reuben Tracy was the softest-hearted of men, but it did not occur to him to relent when he thought of his late partner. To the contrary, there was a decided pleasure in the reflection that nothing could avert well-merited punishment from this particular young man.

The triumph had its splendid public side, moreover. Great and lasting good must follow such an exposure as he would make of the economic and social evils underlying the system of trusts. A staggering blow would be dealt to the system, and to the sentiment back of it that rich men might do what they liked in America. With pardonable pride he thrilled at the thought that his arm was to strike this blow. The effect would be felt all over the country. It could not but affect public opinion, too, on the subject of the tariff—that bomb-proof cover under which these men had conducted their knavish operations. Reuben sang with increased fervor as this passed through his mind.

On his way back from luncheon—which he still thought of as dinner—Reuben Tracy stopped for a few moments at the building he and Fairchild had rented. The carpenters were already at work, ripping down the partitions on the ground floor, in a choking and clamorous confusion of dust and sound of hammering. The visible energy of these workmen and the noise they made were like a sympathetic continuation of his song of success. He would have enjoyed staying for hours, watching and listening to these proofs that he at last was doing something to help move the world around.

When he came out upon the street again, it was to turn his steps to the house of the Minsters. He had not been there since his visit in March, and there was a certain embarrassment about his going now. It was really Mrs. Minster’s house, and he had been put in the position of acting against her, as counsel for her daughters. It was therefore a somewhat delicate business. But Miss Kate had asked him to come, and he would be sincerely glad of the opportunity of telling Mrs. Minster the whole truth, if she would listen to it. Just what form this opportunity might take he could not foresee; but his duty was so clear, and his arguments must carry such absolute conviction, that he approached the ordeal with a light heart.

Miss Kate came down into the drawing-room to receive him, and Reuben noted with a deep joy that she again wore the loose robe of creamy cloth, girdled by that same enchanted rope of shining white silk. Something made him feel, too, that she observed the pleased glance of recognition he bestowed upon her garments, and understood it, and was not vexed. Their relations had been distinctly cordial—even confidential—for the past fortnight; but the reappearance of this sanctified and symbolical gown—this mystical robe which he had enshrined in his heart with incense and candles and solemn veneration, as does the Latin devotee with the jewelled dress of the Bambino—seemed of itself to establish a far more tender intimacy between them. He became conscious, all at once, that she knew of his love.

“I have asked mamma to see you,” she said, when they were seated, “and I think she will. Since it was first suggested to her, she has wavered a good deal, sometimes consenting, sometimes not. The poor lady is almost distracted with the trouble in which we have all become involved, and that makes it all the more difficult for her to see things in their proper connection. I hope you may be able to show her just how matters stand, and who her real friends are.”

The girl left at this, and in a few moments reappeared with her mother, to whom she formally presented Mr. Tracy.

If Mrs. Minster had suffered great mental anguish since the troubles came on, her countenance gave no hint of the fact. It was as regular and imperturbable and deceptively impressive as ever, and she bore herself with perfect self-possession, bowing with frosty precision, and seating herself in silence.

Reuben himself began the talk by explaining that the steps which he had felt himself compelled to take in the interest of the daughters implied not the slightest hostility to the mother. They had had, in fact, the ultimate aim of helping her as well. He had satisfied himself that she was in the clutch of a criminal conspiracy to despoil her estate and that of her daughters. It was absolutely necessary to act with promptness, and, as he was not her lawyer, to temporarily and technically separate the interest of her daughters from her own, for legal purposes. All that had been done was, however, quite as much to her advantage as to that of her daughters, and when he had explained to her the entire situation he felt sure she would be willing to allow him to represent her as well as her daughters in the effort to protect the property and defeat the conspiracy.

Mrs. Minster offered no comment upon this expression of confidence, and Reuben went on to lay before her the whole history of the case. He did this with great clearness—as if he had been talking to a child—pointing out to her how the scheme of plunder originated, where its first operations revealed themselves, and what part in turn each of the three conspirators had played.

She listened to it all with an expressionless face, and though she must have been startled and shocked by a good deal of it, Reuben could gather no indication from her manner of her feelings or her opinions. When he had finished, and his continued silence rendered it clear that he was not going to say any more, she made her first remark.

“I’m much obliged to you, I’m sure,” she said, with no sign of emotion. “It was very kind of you to explain it to me. But of course they explain it quite differently.”

“No doubt,” answered Reuben. “That is just what they would do. The difference is that they have lied to you, and that I have told you what the books, what the proofs, really show.”

“I have known Peter Wendover since we were children together,” she said, after a momentary pause, “and he never would have advised my daughters to sue their own mother!”

Reuben suppressed a groan. “Nobody has sued you, Mrs. Minster; least of all, your daughters,” he tried to explain. “The actions I have brought—that is, including the applications—are directed against the men who have combined to swindle you, not at all against you. They might just as well have been brought in your name also, only that I had no power to act for you.”

“It is the same as suing me. Judge Wendover said so,” was her reply.

“What I seek to have you realize is that Judge Wendover purposely misleads you. He is the head and front of the conspiracy to rob you. I am going to have him indicted for it. The proofs are as plain as a pikestaff. How, then, can you continue to believe what he tells you?”

“I quite believe that you mean well, Mr. Tracy,” said Mrs. Minster. “But lawyers, you know, always take opposite sides. One lawyer tells you one thing; then the other swears to precisely the contrary. Don’t think I blame them. Of course they have to do it. But you know what I mean.”

A little more of this hopeless conversation ensued, and then Mrs. Minster rose. “Don’t let me drive you away, Mr. Tracy,” she said, as he too got upon his feet. “But if you will excuse me—I’ve had so much worry lately—and these headaches come on every afternoon now.”

As Reuben walked beside her to open the door, he ventured to say: “It is a very dear wish of mine, Mrs. Minster, to remove all this cause for worry, and to get you back control over your property, and to rid you of these scoundrels, root and branch. For your own sake and that of your daughters, let me beg of you to take no step that will embarrass me in the fight. There is nothing that you could do now to specially help me, except to do nothing at all.”

“If you mean for me not to sue my daughters,” she said, as he opened the door, “you may rest easy. Nothing would tempt me to do that! The very idea of such a thing is too dreadful. Good-day, sir.”

Reuben this time did not repress the groan, after he had closed the door upon Mrs. Minster. He realized that he had made no more impression on her mind than ordnance practice makes on a sandbank. He did not attempt to conceal his dejection as he returned to where Kate sat, and resumed his chair in front of her. The daughter’s smiling face, however, partially reassured him, “That’s mamma all over,” she said. “Isn’t it wonderful how those old race types reappear, even in our day? She is as Dutch as any lady of Haarlem that Franz Hals ever painted. Her mind works sidewise, like a crab. I’m so glad you told her everything!”

“If I could only feel that it had had any result,” said Reuben.

“Oh, but it will have!” the girl insisted confidently. “I’m sure she liked you very much.”

“That reminds me—” the lawyer spoke musingly—“I think I was told once that she didn’t like me; that she stipulated that I was not to be consulted about her business by—by my then partner. I wonder why that was. Do you know?”

“I have an idea,” said Kate. Then she stopped, and a delicate shadowy flush passed over her face. “But it was nothing,” she added, hastily, after a long pause. She could not bring herself to mention that year-old foolish gossip about the Lawton girl.

Reuben did not press for an answer, but began telling her about the work he and Fairchild had inaugurated that morning. “We are not going to wait for the committee,” he said. “The place can be in some sort of shape within a week, I hope, and then we are going to open it as a reading-room first of all, where every man of the village who behaves himself can be free to come. There will be tea and coffee at low prices; and if the lockout continues, I’ve got plans for something else—a kind of soup-kitchen. We sha’n’t attempt to put the thing on a business basis at all until the men have got to work again. Then we will leave it to them, as to how they will support it, and what shall be done with the other rooms. By the way, I haven’t seen much lately of the Lawton girl’s project. I’ve heard vaguely that a start had been made, and that it seemed to work well. Are you pleased with it?”

Kate answered in a low voice: “I have never been there but once since we met there last winter. I did what I promised, in the way of assistance, but I did not go again. I too have heard vaguely that it was a success.”

Reuben looked such obvious inquiry that that young lady felt impelled to explain: “The very next day after I went there last with the money and the plan, I heard some very painful things about the girl—about her present life, I mean—from a friend, or rather from one whom I took then to be a friend; and what he said prejudiced me, I suppose—”

A swift intuition helped Reuben to say: “By a friend’ you mean Horace Boyce!”

Kate nodded her head in assent. As for Reuben, he rose abruptly from his seat, motioning to his companion to keep her chair. He thrust his hands into his pockets, and began pacing up and down along the edge of the sofa at her side, frowning at the carpet.

“Miss Kate,” he said at last, in a voice full of strong feeling, “there is no possibility of my telling you what an infernal blackguard that man is.”

“Yes, he has behaved very badly,” she said. “I suppose I am to blame for having listened to him at all. But he had seen me there at her place, through the glass door, and he seemed so anxious to keep me from being imposed upon, and possibly compromised, that—”

“My dear young lady,” broke in Reuben, “you have no earthly idea of the cruelty and meanness of what he did by saying that to you. I can’t—or yes, why shouldn’t I? The fact is that that poor girl—and when she was at my school she was as honest and good and clever a child as I ever saw in my life—owed her whole misery and wretchedness to Horace Boyce. I never dreamed of it, either at the time or later; in fact, until the very day I met you at the milliner’s shop. Somehow I mentioned that he was my partner, and then she told me. And then, knowing that, I had to sit still all summer and see him coming here every day, on intimate terms with you and your sister and mother.” Reuben stopped himself with the timely recollection that this was an unauthorized emotion, and added hurriedly: “But I never could have imagined such baseness, to deliberately slander her to you!”

Kate did not at once reply, and when she did speak it was to turn the talk away from Horace Boyce. “I will go and see her to-morrow,” she said.

“I am very glad to hear you say that,” was Reuben’s comment. “It is like you to say it,” he went on, with brightening eyes. “It is a benediction to be the friend of a young woman like you, who has no impulses that are not generous, and whose only notion of power is to help others.”

“I shall not like you if you begin to flatter,” she replied, with mock austerity, and an answering light in her eyes. “I am really a very perverse and wrong-headed girl, distinguished only for having never done any good at all. And anybody who says otherwise is not a friend, but a flatterer, and I am weary of false tongues.”

Miss Ethel came in while Reuben was still turning over in his mind the unexpressed meanings of these words, and with her entrance the talk became general once more.

The lawyer described to the two sisters the legal steps he had taken, and their respective significance, and then spoke of his intention to make a criminal complaint as soon as some additional proof, now being sought, should come to hand.

Ethel clapped her hands. “And Horace Boyce will go to prison, then?” she asked, eagerly.

“There is a strong case against him,” answered Reuben.

The graveness of his tone affected the girl’s spirits, and led her to say in an altered voice: “I don’t want to be unkind, and I daresay I shall be silly enough to cry in private if the thing really happens; but when I think of the trouble and wickedness he has been responsible for, and of the far more terrible mischief he might have wrought in this family if I—that is, if we had not come to you as we did, I simply hate him.”

“Don’t let us talk about him any more, puss,” said Kate, soberly, rising as she spoke.