The Pin-and-Needle Combine fell apart the next day. The Grindstone National Bank followed it the day after. Richard and Robin had turned the handle a little too briskly and the Grindstone had flown to pieces. Three or four other banks followed.

Little O'Grady danced with joy. His curse had told. And the great hulking bully that had dared to cuff him was flat on his back with the rest. When O'Grady fully realized what he—he—had done his breast heaved proudly. He ran over to see the fatal placard fastened on one of the Grindstone's great polished columns, and then tramped on down the avenue of ruin with the step and mien of a conqueror. All this devastation was due to him—whatever the foolish newspapers, groping in the dark, might say. He alone was the Thunderer; he alone wielded the lightning.

There was but one drawback; never should he get Eudoxia Pence's profile—now.

Eudoxia felt that the McNultys had disgraced her,—"as people of that sort always will if you give them a chance." Virgilia lingered in the limbo of engagement; impossible to say, now, when matrimony might ensue. The question of money was the question still. Dill was no Prochnow, to carry her off by main force, nor was she a Preciosa to permit it. She could not conceive of existence beyond the pale of society; the impulsive action of a pair of social outcasts could scarcely serve as a precedent. "I must wait," said Virgilia. Unconsciously she compared Daffingdon with Ignace Prochnow and realized how easy it would be for her to wait quite a while without discomfort, regret or protest.

Prochnow and Preciosa were married in the midst of the crash. Little O'Grady and Medora Joyce took the other two seats in their carriage and saw them through the ceremony. Preciosa knew that her mother would never forgive her, but she thought it not improbable that her grandfather might acquiesce. In any event, she would marry the man of her choice.

Little O'Grady patted Preciosa's hand patronizingly as the carriage rolled along. He, none other, was the good angel of the whole affair. "What do we care, darlin'," he said, "for the Morrell Combine?—hasn't it kept us on pins and needles long enough? What do we care for the Grindstone, either?—hasn't it ground our noses as long and hard as it could? Down wid 'em both—and let 'em stay down, too! And let anybody think twice, my children, before he tries to prick the skin or grind the nose of little Terence O'Grady!"

* * * * *

DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH

* * * * *

DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH

I

When Dr. Gowdy finally yielded to the urgings of Print, Push, and Co.—a new firm whose youthful persistency made refusal impossible—and agreed to steal from his sermon-writing the number of half-hours needed for putting together the book they would and must and did have, he certainly looked for a reward far beyond any recognisable in the liberal check that had started up his pen. For Onward and Upward was to do some good in the world: the years might come and go for an indefinite period, yet throughout their long procession young men—it was for them he was writing—would rise up here, there, and everywhere and call him blessed. To scrimp his sermons in such a cause was surely justifiable; more, it was commendable. "Where it has been dozens it will now be thousands," said the good Doctor. "I will guide their feet into the right path, and the thanks of many earnest strugglers shall be my real recompense."

Onward and Upward was full of the customary things—things that get said and believed (said from mere habit and believed from mere inertia),—things that must be said and believed (said by the few and believed by a fair proportion of the many) if the world is to keep on hanging together and moving along in the exercise of its usual functions. In fact, the book had but one novel feature—a chapter on art.

Dr. Gowdy was very strong on art. Raphael and Phidias were always getting into his pulpit. Truth was beauty, and beauty was truth. He never wearied of maintaining the uplifting quality resident in the Sunday afternoon contemplation of works of painting and sculpture, and nothing, to his mind, was more calculated to ennoble and refine human nature than the practice of art itself. The Doctor was one of the trustees of the Art Academy; he went to every exhibition, and dragged as many of his friends with him as could be induced to listen to his orotund commentaries; and he had almost reached the point where it was a tacit assumption with him that the regeneration and salvation of the human race came to little more than a mere matter of putting paint upon canvas.

These were the notions that coloured the art chapter of Onward and Upward. I hardly know where the good Doctor got them; surely not from the ordinary run of things in the Paris studios, nor from any familiarity with the private lives of the painters of the Italian Renaissance, which show, if anything does, that one may possess a fine and rigorous conscience as an artist, yet lapse into any irregularity or descend to any depravity as a man. But Dr. Gowdy ignored all this. Art—the contemplation of it, the practice of it—worked toward the building up of character, and promoted all that was noblest in human life.

These views of his were spread far and wide. They competed with the novel of adventure on the news-stands, and were tossed into your lap on all the through trains. One copy penetrated to Hayesville, Illinois, and fell into the hands of Jared Stiles.